Scott Spendolini's Blog

Just got an e-mail from Joel Kallman with details of the memorial service for Carl, as well as the fund set up in his name: Please join the family in celebrating the life of Carl Backstrom on Thursday, the sixth of November two thousand and eight at one o'clock in the afternoon Orange Terrace Park 20010 Orange Terrace Park Parkway Riverside, CA 92508 In lieu of flowers the family has set up a Memorial Fund in behalf of Carl's daughter, Destany. Donations to Carl's Memorial Fund can be made several ways: Domestic wire transfers Account Number 152460903 Citibank ABA Number 322271724 International wire transfers SWIFT Code: CITI US 33 Checks Make payable to Susan Bailey (Carl's Mother) Address: 3395 S. Jones Blvd #403 Las Vegas, NV 89146 “And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.” - Abraham Lincoln

As you may have heard by now, Carl Backstrom , one of the APEX developers, was killed in a car accident late Sunday night outisde of Las Vegas, NV.  I met Carl a few years ago when I was still the Product Manager for what was then called HTML DB.  Carl was one of the most enthuiastic people that I have ever met, filled with a seemingly unending supply of energy. His great attitude was only surpassed by his technical expertise and willing to share it with others. Carl would go to great lengths to help complete strangers solve their APEX-related issues on the OTN Forums. My thoughts are with his family, friends and co-workers at this most difficult of times.

While it's still 2008, the planning for ODTUG Kaleidoscope 2009 has already begun!  And this year, APEX will be bigger than ever, with its own separate track!  So essentially, you can pick a seat in a room, and spend the entire conference in that seat, listening to nothing but APEX presentations all week!  (However, we do encourage you to return to your room at night for some sleep and a shower...) ODTUG has formed an APEX review committee comprimised of John Scott , Dimitri Gielis , Patrick Wolf and myself to help sort through the abstracts and put together the most comprehensive track that we can.  But we can't do it without YOU!  If you've been using APEX at all, and have a great story to tell or want to show off your skills, consider submitting an abstract .   If you're not sure what to present, or want others to help refine your ideas, check out the Kaleidoscope Community and see what others have to say. If selected, you'll get a free pass to the conf

Just saw that the much anticipated Oracle Data Modeling tool is available for download here: http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/database/sql_developer/files/Modeling.html Once you fill out a quick survey, you can download a complete build with JDK, or just the build for your specific OS. I have the Mac OS version up and running, and will be putting it to work today on a number of different projects. I'm glad to see that an enterprise-level data modeling tool has finally come to Mac OS X. One more item on the list can be checked off!

In case you missed it, the book that I contributed to - Pro Oracle Application Express - has finally shipped! According to the Oracle Bookstore at OpenWorld, it was the hottest book there, at least according to this site:  http://blogs.oracle.com/databaseinsider/2008/09/database_books_top_sellers_at.html So if you were one of the many who pre-ordered it, you should have it by now and I personally thank you for your patience!  I hope that you get out of it as much as we (especially John) have put into it!

After being on the road for 8 days, I am finally almost home - at my parents in Connecticut for a weekend visit. OOW was in a word, hectic.  I was afraid that it would actually be a bit worse, as it's hard to fit 43,000 people into a city and not have a suite of the obvious logistical issues.  Oracle did a fairly decent job, given the fixed issues of the sheer size of the conference.  Most of the presentations that I wanted to see were in Moscone West or the Marriott, which were just across from one another, which did make things easier. The registration system was a little bit less than I expected.  I would have liked to have had an interface that would let me know which presentations were coming up next and/or have an easy search to show me not only that but which presentations were in a specific venue.  Often, I found myself walking out of a meeting and would have liked to sit in on something close, but had no way of knowing aside from walking the halls and hoping to stumble

I've made it to San Francisco, safe and sound and only a couple minutes delayed.  Tomorrow will be a hectic day, as I am participating in the APEX Experts Panel then presenting/hosting the ODTUG APEX mini-conferece.  We have a great line-up this time, so even if you were at ODTUG this year, definitely stop by to hear what the US Army & Vista (the company, not the OS), WaMu, BAE Systems and Wachovia are doing with APEX. I was also greeted with a nice, heavy box of books - not just any book, but the one that I helped John Scott author.  It was just weird to see the words that I wrote appear in an actual book! I did, however, find the 1st typo:  in my Biography, they erronously listed ODTUG as the Oregon Developer Tools User Group.  Oops!  At least the Foreword is not the Forward ... In any case, please feel free to stop by to either session tomorrow.  You may even walk out with a new copy of the book...

Just before the holiday weekend here in the states, it looks like APEX 3.1.2 is available as Metalink Patch #7313609.  More details can be found here .

Looks like Oracle updated the Forums software over the weekend. So far, this round has gone much better in the past. I do have one major gripe with the new point system. Everyone is a Newbie now, which kinda sucks for those who have posted hundreds or thousands of times. Sure, quantity does not infer quality, but we all know that there are a core group of regulars on this Forum who are anything but Newbies. My main concern is how your status is actually elevated. You only get points if someone marks their post as "answered". Looking at this weekend's posts, many of them are answered in the thread, but not actually "set" to answered. Thus, the person who answered the post correctly is no closer to a Guru than they were before. I imagine that this will come in time, as people get used to the new software and policies, or at least I hope that it does. This feature does have some promise, as there are definitely some benefits - looking at the list of posts, y

I saw this article the other day:  http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/entdev/article.php/3761921/The+Anti-Java+Professor+and+the+Jobless+Programmers.htm It seems that even universities are falling victim to the Internet "buzz" factor, caving in what people deem as popular and cool versus what industry actually needs.  This shift has or will cause a major issue when these students walk out of college and cannot find the challenging jobs they were promised, as companies building systems seek developers skilled in anything but Java.  Unfortunately, Ada isn't sexy; Java is. Sure, there's a demand for Java developers, and always will be for at least the forseeable future.  There's also a huge demand for what Dewar deems "trivial web applications" that can be met with a multiple number of tools.  These systems admittedly do have a different expectation when it comes to how reliable they must be as compared to an avionics system, for example.  But to the clie

It appears that the folks over at PL/PDF have released version 2.0 of PL/PDF.  According to their documentation, this is the list of new features for 2.0:  - SetDocDisplayMode: doc extended - native PNG support (PrintImageCell, PutImage p_type) - use without InterMedia - PrintFlowingTextLimit: bad charter handling fixed - PrintMultiLineCell: bad charter handling fixed - compress: LZW without Java - SetCompress: new parameter: p_method - plpdf_const package: new entries - PutImage: new parameter: p_type - PrintImageCell: new parameter: p_type Check out PL/PDF, as it is an excellent way to generate PDF files from the Oracle Database without requiring any middle tier hardware/software, as it's mostly PL/SQL.

We did some fun things back when I was working with the Oracle salesforce, but we never pushed the envelope quite this far: http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/A-Software-Problem,-A-Marketing-Solution.aspx Technically, it could be branded as an Oracle solution, and likely was...

I've never been a huge fan of the United Airlines "It's time to fly" campaign. It started out OK, as it was just after 9/11 that it was introduced, and was some sort of calling to the public that air travel is safe again. It then morphed into something just a bit too artsy for what I think an airline should be trying to convey, especially in today's day and age of nickel-and-diming the passengers for everything they've got. I just received an e-mail from them with a link to their new commercials, and they are downright weird, if not freaking scary. From the freaky crab directing an oceanic orchestra which includes a chest-thumping Shamoo to the guy who chases his paper ticket (who gets paper tickets anymore, as that costs an extra $20!) through a city and then falls into a throne help up by butterfly-people and balloons to the woman who cuts out her heart in what can only be described as a cross between a Gorillaz video and Indiana Jones and the Temple of D

No, I didn't win the lottery (I don't even play, and you can't win if you don't play). Evidently, some developer created an application for Apple's new AppStore called "I Am Rich".  He charged $999.99 for it - the maximum amount allowed.  All it does is show a glowing red ruby.  That's it.  The best part?  Eight people bought it before Apple took it down. See the full article in the LA times here .

When I switched from PC to Mac, there were a few applications that I knew that I would leave behind.  The one that stung the most was the ability to host online meetings.  On Windows, there were a number of options available - GotoMeeting, WebEx, Oracle iMeeting.  You could attend some of these meetings with Mac OS X, but you could not host a meeting.  Not fun. Well, I'm happy to report that this is no longer the case, as it seems that both GotoMeeting and WebEx are offering full Mac OS X clients now, eliminating the need to spin up a Windows VM every time I want to conduct an on-line meeting. This is great news, and so far, the GotoMeeting Mac client has worked almost flawlessly!  The one downside is that you can only share your desktop; not a specific application or region.  WebEx does allow specific application and region sharing, and I hope that this feature is on the radar for GotoMeeting in the near future.

In case you haven't heard the news, ODTUG & Sumner Technologies, LLC are proud to announce APEXposed 2008 !  What's just as exciting as the conference itself is that we're teaming up with Steven Feuerstein's OPP PL/SQL conference to offer two conferences in one!  Thus, one registration fee gets you into both conferences, so you can mix and match sessions as you please.  So not only will you get to hear from some of the best minds in the APEX community, but you'll also be able to see some of the best minds in the PL/SQL community, such as Stephen himself, Brynn Llewellyn and Dr. Paul Dorsey. In addition to the technical sessions, Oracle will also be demonstrating and discussing new features in SQL Developer including the new Data Modeling component that was mentioned at ODTUG.  We'll also be hosting a special event on Wednesday evening - details to be posted soon. You can register for both conferences here:   http://www.odtugapextraining.com/register.htm

The numbers are in, and it looks like that there will be 27 APEX-related sessions at OpenWorld this year! Sure, you could use the requisite Schedule Builder to search for all of them...  But a way cooler (and easier) way would be to use the APEX Interactive Reports-based version, which can be found here:   http://apex.oracle.com/pls/otn/f?p=338:1 According to David Peake , he will keep the "Seats Remaining" portion up to date.

I've just seen the first Oracle APEX advertisement from Oracle in the wild!  Point your browsers at http://odtug.com and check out the banner ad (you may have to reload a couple of times to catch it).  For those too lazy to check, here's a screen shot: Clicking on it will tell a quick and compelling story that, well - just click on it and see for yourself! :)

Oracle announced the details for its July 2008 Critical Patch Update today, and the good news is that there are no issues with APEX! Of course that doesn't mean to ignore it entirely - it's always a good practice to review these and then apply them as deemed necessary.

It seems as if there is another entry into the APEX Hosting Provider space. MaxApex is offering APEX hosting with five pre-configured plans: Free Starter Standard Professional Enterprise Details of each can be found on their site. It's good to see more companies getting into this space, as there is definitely more APEX applications being developed these days, and a lot of them will need a place to call home.

Well, my busiest day at ODTUG is already behind me! We had somewhere around 150 participants at the APEX Symposium yesterday, which was amazing as it was both a Sunday and Father's Day. The day started off with my keynote, which I successfully navigated through 431 slides in just 30 minutes. It was done in a different style - very rapid, each slide getting only a few seconds of display time. From what I've heard, people liked it, as it kept them engaged, something not easy to do on a Sunday morning after a night on Bourbon Street! The day was comprised of a number of APEX customers telling their stories about how they got APEX adopted into their environments. This was a departure from the normal "here's how to do something cool" approach, but it was a departure that was both well needed and received. It was very interesting to see the wide range of projects being done with APEX. One of the few common threads between all of the presenters is that each project

We all get telemarketer calls, even if you think you've signed up for the National Do Not Call Registry . It's just a fact of life these days. Thus, you can approach them a number of different ways: 1) Simply hang up 2) Demand to be removed from the list then hang up 3) Make them hang up I prefer #3, but that's not what this post is about. (ask me about my SkyMiles call, which is my personal favorite) I got a call from a certain hotel chain today that I stayed at from time to time. The call started something like this: "Mr. Spendoli (telltale sign of a telemarketer when the last "ni" is left off). We're calling our preferred customers to let them in on a great deal we're having at our properties in Las Vegas and Orlando." Before I go on, I need to note that this same hotel chain scuttled my rewards point account a couple months back because I did not stay there over the past 12 months or so. All of my accrued points went with it. No grace

Just read on the Revion blog that a new subsidiary called HTMLDBHost is offering APEX hosting at $24.95 for the first six months; the price goes up to the regular rate of $49.95 thereafter. It seems that you get the same levels of service, band width, disk space as the standard plan offered at Revion.com at a discounted rate.

In case you missed it, the APEX 3.1.1 patchset has been released as both a patch via Metalink (patch #7032837) and a complete download via OTN. For a complete list of what's fixed, have a look at the patch's installation notes .

I just got an e-mail from Bank of America: During our regularly scheduled account maintenance and verification procedures, we have detected a slight error in your billing information. This might be due to either of the following reasons: 1. A recent change in your personal information (i.e.change of address). 2. Submiting invalid information during the initial sign up process. 3. The services look that was changed recently: [Banking Log-In] Security Advisory, Bank Of America . *Important* failure to update your account at least 24hrs of notice might lead to account being locked and access will be restricted. I'll ignore the fact that I do not have a Bank of America account for the sake of this post, as that's just too easy. So let's review the signs thus far: Sign #1 : "Either" of the following reasons, followed by three, not two, reasons. Sign #2 : Poor grammar: The services look that was changed recently Sign #3 : Poor punctuation: failure to upd

Doug Gault from Hotsos will be presenting a FREE webinar on May 28th: Performance Tuning APEX Applications . From the Hotsos site: Application Express (ApEx) is a highly flexible and highly scalable Rapid Application Development environment for web applications. But what do you do when your application's success starts to become its downfall? This free, one-hour presentation will cover strategies and tactical advice for monitoring and addressing performance issues, and presents some of the best practices for making ApEx Performance Problems easy to diagnose. This webinar is presented by Doug Gault, head of Hotsos Product Development. No one that I know of does Oracle Performance Tuning like the folks at Hotsos do, so I'm sure that this presentation will be packed with tips and best practices.

I can across this post today (Disclaimer: link is very much NSFW only if you try to repeat the examples used for Urban Dictionary; also, other entries in this blog may be NSFW): http://www.cogentmetal.org/aux/archives/2008/if-you-arent-using-firefox-smart-keywords-you-arent-smart-or-a-keyword/ To summarize, Firefox allows you to not only bookmark a page, but turn that page into a function of sort, and allow you cal call that page with some sort of parameter. Thus, if you add a Smart Keyword for Google and call it "g", you can simply type "g oracle apex" into the location bar, and the resulting page would be the same as if you went to google.com, entered "oracle apex", and then clicked enter. So naturally, my first instinct to was to test this with an APEX application, and I was quite pleased to see it work flawlessly! I added two Smart Keywords - "a" and "c", which search the Accounts and Contacts pages of my APEX-based CRM application

Having just answered a question in the OTN forums on this, I figured I'd share the link that I often use to decode which feature maps to which version of the Oracle Database: http://www.oracle.com/database/product_editions.html Since Oracle will change what feature is included with which edition from time to time, it's handy to have this link bookmared somewhere. Also, what's most unique about this link is that it can only be (easily) found from oracle.com, not OTN.

I have been using SQL Developer since its early days, namely because it runs natively on the Mac.  Despite this fact, it has proven to be a formidable IDE to work with, allowing me to do 95% of what I need to quickly and easily, all without having to spark up a Windows VM. In this month's Oracle Magazine, David Peake , the APEX Product Manager, writes about how to use SQL Developer to assist in debugging APEX applications.  By instrumenting your processes in APEX with just a couple lines of code, you can trap and then debug your PL/SQL from APEX in SQL Developer's debugger. While you'll need DBA privileges to get this to work, it's something that's not intended for production environments, so I don't envision that to be much of an issue in most cases.

Based on the success of our March/April public training in Ashburn, VA, I'm happy to announce that we're going to do it again this July 21st through 25th. Like last time, there will be two sessions - a 3-day Intro to APEX 3.1 class and a 2-day Intermediate APEX 3.1 class. Both sessions filled up completely last time, so don't wait until the last minute! More details about each class and a registration page can be found on the Sumner Technologies, LLC web site .

The following is a re-post of the "Cloning your Corporate UI with HTML DB" series that I blogged about back in 2005 on the now-defunct Orablogs site. Most of the content and advise is still the same today, and has been reposted here exactly as it was on the old site. July 12, 2005 What's the best way to ensure that you have more work to do? Use a statement like "That about wraps up this series" in your "final" posting in a series! As Earl Lewis pointed out , things are not 100% correct when using MSIE. Now, there's a very simple cut-and-dry solution to this problem: Don't use MSIE. However, for those who have not yet made the switch to Firefox yet (which, according to traffic on HTML DB Studio is still about 80% of you), you will also see this error. Thus, it is critical that you test your site in both - if not more - browsers. This is something which I simply forgot to do. It's as simple as this: the same HTML can and often wil

The following is a re-post of the "Cloning your Corporate UI with HTML DB" series that I blogged about back in 2005 on the now-defunct Orablogs site. Most of the content and advise is still the same today, and has been reposted here exactly as it was on the old site. July 8, 2005 Finally! I just deployed the new look for both Oracle HTML DB Studio & Oracle HTML DB References . (I'll get to Best Practices PL/SQL a bit later today - have to do some customer calls first) I basically gave up on the DHTML menus - it was taking too much time and overall, I think it just didn't add enough value for me to keep pulling my hair out over. The base OTN Menus are there - clicking on them brings you to the appropriate page in OTN - where the menus work just fine... I did get a little over ambitious, and decided to give the splash page of both Studio & References a make-over. Check them out: Both of them now "look & feel" like the rest of OTN & o

The following is a re-post of the "Cloning your Corporate UI with HTML DB" series that I blogged about back in 2005 on the now-defunct Orablogs site. Most of the content and advise is still the same today, and has been reposted here exactly as it was on the old site. June 14, 2005 In the last installment, the converted site looked pretty good, but the tabs were not quite working. The issue here was overlapping FORMs. If you look at the HTML source of the OTN Home Page, there's an HTML Form which processes the "Search" function. This form was overlapping with HTML DB's Form; thus generating an error when a tab was clicked - which essentially does an HTML POST via a JavaScript function. In HTML DB Templates, two commonly used tokens are #FORM_OPEN# and #FORM_CLOSE# . These tokens are used where you want to open & close the "functioning" portion of an HTML DB Page. When an HTML DB page is rendered, the #FORM_OPEN# & #FORM_CLOSE# tags are sub

The following is a re-post of the "Cloning your Corporate UI with HTML DB" series that I blogged about back in 2005 on the now-defunct Orablogs site. Most of the content and advise is still the same today, and has been reposted here exactly as it was on the old site. June 10, 2005 Before I jump into the Page Header & Footer, I thought that I'd take a minute to detail how moved all of the images from www.oracle.com to htmldb.oracle.com. Using Firefox, I'm able to view a list of all images on a page by right-clicking the page and selecting View Page Info. Under the Media tab is a list of all images referenced on this page. I decided to use http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/database/oracle10g/index.html as a starting point. All in all, there were about 15 images which I saved, and then moved to htmldb.oracle.com. I FTP'ed all of these images to a new directory on htmldb.oracle.com, in order to keep them all organized in a single place. Next, I have to cha

The following is a re-post of the "Cloning your Corporate UI with HTML DB" series that I blogged about back in 2005 on the now-defunct Orablogs site. Most of the content and advise is still the same today, and has been reposted here exactly as it was on the old site. June 8, 2005 Things look really good. The page rendered almost perfectly, it all mostly lines up, and there are only a couple of broken images. We're almost done, right? Wrong. There is still a lot of work to be done. Essentially, as it stands now, we have created a static Page Template that doesn't play well with the rest of HTML DB. Also, there are no navigational aids for HTML DB Studio left - they have been replaced by content from OTN. Which leads us to our next step - removing more OTN content. Removing OTN Content First of all, I don't need the content in the 3rd column at all on my pages (Resources For, Featured Downloads, Discussion Forums). However, I do want to retain that column and d

The following is a re-post of the "Cloning your Corporate UI with HTML DB" series that I blogged about back in 2005 on the now-defunct Orablogs site. Most of the content and advise is still the same today, and has been reposted here exactly as it was on the old site. Enjoy! June 8, 2005 I've often been asked how to create custom Themes & Templates with Oracle HTML DB. The truth is that it’s one half Art, and one half Science. (Note: Percentages may vary based on what you consider “Art” and “Science”). And since the desired look and feel varies from site to site, there’s no easy way to document these steps. Thus, I am going to attempt to “blog” my way through it, using a real-world example. As you may know, the look & feel of oracle.com was recently updated as part of the re-launch of oracle.com, OTN, etc. I believe that this is now the 4th UI in 2 years for oracle.com. Three sites that I manage - Oracle HTML DB Studio, Oracle HTML DB References, and Best Pr

APEX validations allow a server-side validation to occur for a number of different conditions - item not null, item is numeric/alphanumeric, regular expressions, etc. When a validation fails, you have four options to display the corresponding error message: Inline with Field Notification Message Both inline with field & Notification Message Separate Error Page With a simple template modification, you can create a fifth option, which is a variation of option #3 above. It will still display the message in the notification, but only highlight the label of the item in question. This allows for a couple of things: first, if you have a form with a number of items and a fixed width template, error messages inline with items will wreak havoc on the layout, pushing items off to the right and misalign your entire page. By only highlighting the label of the item in question, the user is aware of where the issue is, and can simply look in the notification region to understand what needs to

It seems as if someone didn't pay the bills, and OraBlogs.com - where my first blog was started - has been taken over by a, well, let's just say a less savory site. The content of the new site is slightly NSFW; clicking on any of the links we can only assume is definitely NSFW. The real shame is that it seems as if all of the content from not only my old blog, but those of several others, is gone and unable to be recovered. A couple of weeks back, I did manage to save off my posts about Cloning your Corporate UI, and will eventually resurrect them and re-post it here. However, all of my other content is lost for good, it seems. :( In any case, you may want to change your bookmarks & links to not reference orablogs.com anymore.

More of a false alarm than anything else - it seems as if the two issues are resolved in APEX 3.0.1. Upgrading to 3.0.1 or the latest release - APEX 3.1 - should fix the two identified issues. For those running APEX 3.0, 2.2 or earlier, it looks like it's time to take a look at getting up to date!

As if April 15th doesn't bring enough joy to those of us in the US (Hint: it's tax day!), Oracle is scheduling its release of its next Critical Patch Update on the same day as most of us will be making a frantic late-day trip to the post office. From the bulletin on OTN: This Critical Patch Update contains 17 new security fixes for the Oracle Database including 2 for Oracle Application Express. Two of these vulnerabilities may be remotely exploited without authentication, i.e. may be exploited over a network without the need for a username and password. While somewhat vague, it does seem that there are a couple of APEX-related issues that will be addressed. We'll just have to wait and see what they are specifically...

If you're in Dublin next week, Oracle Ireland is hosting an APEX Developers Day at its offices in Clontarf. It seems as if the event is free of charge, but more information can be gained by e-mailing amanda.fay@oracle.com .

Looks like the press release for APEX 3.1 has hit the wire.

Jason Straub , another APEX developer, has recently joined the ranks of the APEX bloggers.  He kicks things off with a not-so-short post about getting APEX & NTLM integrated with PL/SQL.  That would sure make a nice addition to the supported APEX Authentication Schemes... - Scott -

Just in time for the weekend, it looks like APEX 3.1  is available for download. Unfortunately, I will not have time to install it, as I will be watching my beloved   Orangemen fight for a slot in the NCAA tournament up in Syracuse, NY .

Patrick Wolf blogged about a new feature of APEX 3.1 called Region Attributes.  I remember trying to get this in to HTML DB 1.6, back when I was the Product Manager in 2003! Basically, this feature enables you to specify a parameter at the region level which, in turn, will be placed where the #REGION_ATTRIBUTE# tag is located in the template itself. This feature will definitely cut down on the number of templates required for an application, as going with Patrick's example, the width of a region template can be defined differently for each instantiation of that template. I just ran into this issue with a client and had to use a slight workaround.  We have an application with 7 tabs - each of which is a different function.  We wanted to indicate which function a user was performing by placing the corresponding icon in the region itself.  I did not want to have to create 7 almost identical region templates, as that would be too cumbersome to manage. So, I simply created an Applicati

The folks at MAOP inform me that there are only a few seats left for this free event. So, if you're on the fence about attending, act fast and register today! Some of the topics that my presentation/demo will address: - MS Outlook Integration - Contacts & Events - DHTMLX Tree Integration - FusionCharts - PL/PDF

I've been invited to speak at the Mid-Atlantic Oracle Professionals user group's Brown Bag Lunch series. The presentation, You Can't do THAT with a Browser - Part II - is a continuation of addressing how to incorporate 3rd party tools and other non-traditional technologies with APEX. The original presentation can be downloaded from ODTUG.com here . The presentation is set for 28-FEB-2008 at noon at the offices of BBN Technologies in Arlington, Virginia - just a stone's throw from where I lived for the better part of 6 years or so. There is no charge, but you will need to register , and space is limited. I hope to see some of you who live in the DC area there!

Yes, it's that time of year, when legions of IT professionals and graphic designers alike skip lunch to sit in front of a browser and rapidly click "refresh" for the better part of an hour and a half.   MacWorld is upon us! Apple really does a good job of creating a buzz .  They are well aware that people will start watching the Moscone Center at least a week before the show for any banner , sign, or shipping container with a Cupertino, CA address on it.  This year, of course, it's the "There's something in the air" banner, which has led to a number of predictions from WiMax-enabled MacBooks to the new ultra-portable that has been unanimously coined the MacBook Air. I'll admit, it is fun to join in on the speculation - at least in moderation.  I suppose there's some element of pride to be had if you're right, as that would put your thought process on par with that of Steve Jobs' - if only for a moment.  However, there is one concern with