techtocks-blog

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Take a tour of a Google Data Center via Streetview! 

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Walk around the google data center! 

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Good example of real world use of virtual world tech…Real-world train station virtualized for work back in 2010.

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PHP Programming is HOTTTTT

Every day I get 10+ job posts in my email lists for PHP programmer jobs in Atlanta. PHP programmers are HOT right now for sure! As further evidence tomorrow night I'm attending the Atlanta PHP user group meetup where they are sold out at 50 seats and 16 on the waiting list. Plus since it's a joint meetup with the MongoDB group another 26 with signups is going to make this a very crowded meetup at Strongbox West coworking facility! I love technology!!!!

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Wordpress Training Opportunities in Atlanta Continue to Expand in 2012

Interesting to see there are some new (free) training workshops for Wordpress beginners in the Atlanta metro area starting January 2012...located in Marietta and Duluth. http://www.meetup.com/Atlanta-WordPress/

Here's another one in Alpharetta that has already had three meetings and I see the January 2012 meeting is already full. So if you want to attend in February better sign up quickly next month. http://www.meetup.com/Wordpress-for-Beginners/

Wordpress has become extremely popular over the past 2-3 years and apparently this trend is continuing in 2012. 

A not-to-be-missed Wordpress event coming up early February is Wordcamp Atlanta at SCAD's Atlanta campus. Better grab a $40 ticket soon if you are interested as I hear tickets are going fast and attendees will be capped at 350. This will be Atlanta's 2nd Wordcamp. I attended the first one in January 2010 and can attest it to be an incredibly valuable learning event.

Other long time Wordpress resources in Atlanta include the Atlanta Wordpress Users Group meetup held monthly at Urban Oasis Loft B & B and Event Space on Krog Street in Atlanta and the Atlanta Wordpress Developers and Designers (Advanced) meetup held monthly at Manuels Tavern in Atlanta.  

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Diving into Cloud Databases and Development Platforms

Spending time this morning exploring some of the new cloud database and application development platforms available nowadays. I'm blown away by how many of these platforms exist including Heroku, PHP Fog, MongoLab, Xeround, Google App Engine (GAE), Engine Yard, SimpleDB, and Orchestra just to name a few.

Incredible how things have changed from those days, not long ago, when you had to setup a local dev machine with your target operating system and database, programming language, web server, etc. in order to create and test a new application...and then deploy the application onto a production machine you own, running on a network you own...versus today's new inter-connected world where we create the app in the language of our choice...say Ruby or PHP on Heroku against a NOSQL database on MongoLab or MySQL database on Xeround and then simply give customers access to the application when completed...or even prior to completion for that matter. 

Now all you need is an Internet connection, laptop, and credit card to put together all the tools necessary for building and deploying the next Facebook or twitter.   

I have to say it's an awesome time to be in the application development business!

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Computer games - predicted to be the fastest growing form of media the next few years

PwC predicts that video games will be the fastest-growing form of media over the next few years, with sales rising to $82 billion by 2015. The biggest market is America, whose consumers this year are expected to spend $14.1 billion on games, mostly on the console variety. Consoles also dominate in Britain, the fifth-largest gaming market. In other parts of Europe, and particularly Germany, PC games are more popular. China has overtaken Japan to become the second-biggest market, and  is one of the fastest-growing, with sales rising by 20% last year.

(via Daily chart: Shoot ‘em up | The Economist)

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Mobile gaming vs handheld console gaming 2009-2011

Visualized  in Engadget Distro (pdf-link) based on data from Flurry

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Syncing a Zimbra Calendar to a Google Calendar

Today I found out that the Google Sync Plugin for Outlook now requires Google Apps for Business or Education. It no longer works with your private Gmail account. So after a little research discovered it's actually very easy to sync the two calendars without using Outlook as middleware in between.

Here's how:

Open your Zimbra calendar, right click on the calendar you wish to sync with Google and select calendar share. Select the public radio button (3rd one down) and then right click on the ical link (first one) and select copy link as on the pop up menu. Now go to your Google calendar and down in the Other section click the drop down arrow just to the right of Other....select Add By URL from the menu and paste the ical link from your Zimbra calendar into the box. Click Add Calendar and that's all there is too it!

Now you can further customize the title and color of the new calendar by clicking it's drop down arrow to change the color and selecting Calendar Settings to change it's name. 

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iaminternational:

PIX OF THE DAY: “Social Media Explained”

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This video titled "World Builder" has over 2.6 million views. If you have ever spent time in a 3D virtual world especially one where you can build 3D objects then you will appreciate this video.  

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Things have certainly changed in the past 2-3 years as business process automation technologies have evolved from primarily being on premise technology stacks by companies like IBM,Microsoft,and Oracle requiring on site system administrators to keep them running…to a new public cloud technology model from companies like Salesforce,Intuit,Google,and Amazon. These new public clouds are focused more on providing solutions rather than infrastructure.

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A Day Made of Glass by Corning Glass. I love this vision of the future which may be right around the corner! 

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Crop iPhone photos without installing any special apps

If you want to crop a photo first zoom in to eliminate unwanted background area then while holding down the home button click the on/off button...you should hear the camera snap. That's it!