Download DB2 Express-C 9.7.5

IBM recently released a new edition of DB2 Express-C, the free edition of their powerful commercial database. You can grab DB2 Express-C 9.7.5 for Linux, Unix, and Windows here. This new version includes support for Oracle compatibility (which was previously only available for commercial editions), and a few other features, including an enhanced db shell known as CLP+. If you downloaded DB2 in the past, take this...

The Real Reason Italy Sucks at the Startup Game

For a long time now Italy has been experiencing political and economical turmoil that would require several drastic changes in order to reboot it. Italy needs a new class of politicians who truly care about the real problems that the country and its people are facing everyday. It desperately needs to reform the educational, tax, and labour systems, as well as a substantial reduction of bureaucracy at every level. In...

The Hadoop Programming Challenge Has Been Extended

In the past I’ve mentioned the Hadoop Programming Challenge, which is organized by Big Data University. After quickly registering and taking a free online course on Hadoop, you have the option to use your newly acquired skills to participate in a programming challenge. The submission deadline has been extended to Monday, October 10th, 11:59pm PST, so there’s still time for you participate, if you...

My Technical Blogging Book Is Now Available in Beta

Technical Blogging: Turn Your Expertise into a Remarkable Online Presence is now available in beta. This first beta includes about 200 of the estimated total 250 pages. Most of the information you need to know is already included in the existing chapters. Early feedback has been great and helped shape the book. The reception by early readers and reviewers has been nothing short of incredible. Here is one: My career...

Learn Hadoop and Get a Chance to Go to Vegas

This is a heads up for my readers who are interested in Big Data. Follow these steps to learn Hadoop and get a chance to win a trip to Las Vegas: Register with Big Data University. Enroll and complete the free Hadoop Fundamentals I course. You’ll receive a certificate of completion and an invitation to partecipate in the first Hadoop Programming Challenge. On October 3rd, three participants to this...

An Update On My Technical Blogging Book

Today I wanted to let those of you who don’t follow my adventures on twitter know that I have a few updates in regards to my upcoming technical blogging book, which I announced a while ago. The most important update is that the book is not going to be self-published. Instead, after receiving offers from a couple of major publishers earlier this year, I decided to publish the book with The Pragmatic Bookshelf....

IBM is Looking for a University Student with PHP skills in Toronto

My team is looking for a student for a paid internship, which will last for up to 18 months. The candidate should be legally permitted to work in Canada, as the location for this internship will be the IBM Toronto Software Lab in Markham, Ontario. PHP is a required skill for this position. If you have experience with cloud computing (Amazon EC2), relational databases, open source contribution, and/or Moodle, that...

Interview with the Compilr.com team

1. For those who don’t know, what is an online compiler and how did you come up with the idea? An online compiler, or online IDE is a full software development environment on the web. This allows us programmers to develop from a wider range of machines without any software installations, and to always have our code handy whenever we may need it. There are a wide range of online compiler’s out there...

The Great Web-Reality Divide

A couple years ago Tim O’Reilly invited a Web 2.0 expo audience to “stop throwing sheep” and start doing something worthwhile. More recently, a post with the title America Lacks Meaningful Innovation went so far as to question the ability and willingness of American companies (particularly web companies) to be innovative. Nearly three years on and today we’re throwing birds instead of sheep. Damn angry ones...

Results of the Technical Blogging survey

A couple of weeks ago I published a survey in which I asked you a few questions about a book on technical blogging I intended to write. The response has been very positive, so today I’m officially announcing that I’ve started writing this book. I also created a pre-launch landing page where you can signup to receive occasional updates about the progress of the project, and learn of when the book becomes...

Programming is a Super Power

In a society where technology and the Internet have become incredibly prominent elements of our daily lives, being able to program is akin to having a super power. In fact, a programmer is able to not only easily interact with cutting edge technology, but also to take advantage of said technology to transform pure thoughts into something as tangible and useful as software. I would argue that there has never been a...

Give your programmers professional tools

Professionals tend to have expensive tools that enable them to do their job as efficiently as possible. Even when cheaper, more commonly used tools exist, professionals often opt for higher-end ones that are faster, stronger, more durable, or more advanced. This is why the Canon Rebel — which is a great camera — isn’t the model in the hands of most professional photographers, who are more apt to go with a...

In-Depth Book Review: Authoring eBooks

Jeremy McAnally is a fairly well known name in the Ruby community. Among other gigs, he’s published three Ruby related books: Ruby in Practice, Humble Little Ruby Book, and most recently The Rails 3 Upgrade Handbook. The latter book earned him over $40,000 in a year. That’s excellent, considering that we are talking about passive income from a single, relatively small, self-published ebook. Jeremy has...

Why would you use a commercial database anyway?

Yesterday was the 25th birthday of the Free Software Foundation (FSF). Over the past 25 years they’ve managed to deeply influence the world of computing and technology. The ideas promoted by the FSF’s foundation and leader, Richard Stallman, have certainly veered on the radical side. However, even if you don’t agree with this group’s ideology, I’d argue that we are afforded a lot more...

Things I’ve learned from hiring interns for IBM

A few months ago I blogged about the fact that IBM was looking for two interns to fill a longterm (paid) internship. The good news is that after an extensive selection process and a hearty dose of governmental bureaucracy (which is not unusual when relocating countries), two students have finally been able to join our DB2 team at the lab. In case you are curious about who the students are, they’re Marius Butuc...

Web or iPhone OS applications to make money?

If you are a developer who’s interested in starting a new business or even just earning extra cash on the side, you have a few options that can lead to scalable profits and passive income. The most popular choices these days are SaaS (Software as a Service) and iPhone/iPad development. Choosing web application or iPhone OS development is a matter of personal taste, skills, goals, technical requirements, and...

A tale of two search engines

Remember when Altavista seemed good enough? Then along came Google and seemingly overnight everything changed. We didn’t even know that it was possible to receive such good link suggestions from a search engine. Yet there, right before our very eyes, it happened. These days, highly popular search engines are worth billions of dollars, mainly thanks to the massive advertisement businesses that can be built on...

Startup for sale on eBay (and it’s a great deal)

One of the best programmers I know is selling a web application on eBay, that he’s been developing and running for the past three years. Given the starting price and considering what one lucky person or company will walk away with, I must say, it’s an amazing deal. I’m writing about his auction here so that I can help it get the proper exposure it deserves and because I think it’s an...

In defense of ad-based business models

In the past I have been a strong advocate of web business models a la 37Signals, where you get to charge your users for a product or service that is provided. I still believe deeply in the viability of such an approach when it comes to making money online (in fact ThinkCode.TV will essentially do just this) – after all it’s the Internet equivalent of what we’ve been doing for thousands of years...

Announcing ThinkCode.TV’s new English newsletter

Ten days ago I mentioned ThinkCode.TV, my startup on the side, the aim of which will be to produce high quality screencasts about programming, both in English and Italian. My two co-founders and I are relatively well known in Italy, so I was expecting the announcement to generate some buzz in my home country. What surprised me though was finding out that my informal pre-announcement generated quite a bit of interest...