In my reading on Paul Graham’s recent article about Web 2.0, I learnt a website called reddit.com. It is about a phenomeno that the web has evolved mechanisms for selecting good stuff. The following introduces the basic working of reddit, which I extract it from Tyrantmizar’s Blog

Reddit is set up like so: Someone submits a website that they like. It shows up on the “Newest” list, and if people like it, they click on the up arrow. If people don’t like it, they click on the down arrow. It is a pseudo-voting system on websites.

This is most certainly web 2.0 software, as there is very little site restrictions. Anyone can post anything (as long as it isn’t adult content) and people will promote it, or demote it into oblivion. The good stuff ends up on the “Hottest” page, and the really good stuff ends up on the “top all-time” page.

Reddit has a karma system. If the stuff you submit is good and people rank it highly, then you get good karma. If it is bad, you get bad karma.

In addition to reddit, the following lists a few more websites that have similar nature of social selection of good stuff in the Web. The list is not complete; there must be more websites using social networking to select good stuff and beat damping in the Web. The following websites are what I frequently use to discover delicious stuff.

• del.icio.us / popular /
• digg
• diggdot.us - digg / slashdot / del.icio.us
• Del.icio.us popular sites

In my teaching of software architecture, I introduced several architectural styles that can be used as a basis for the architecture of different systems. These include layered systems, pipes and filters, and model-view-controller design pattern. However, when it comes to giving some concrete examples of these software architectures, and how they can be integrated to deal with a particular software design problems, it is not easy to give some good examples. Therefore, I searched the Web to look for some good articles for this purpose. Finally, I found this article good for learning, which describes something concrete about software architecture and design patterns. (more…)

Paul Graham’s articles are both insightful and amusing. His recent article is released on late November and touches a recently hot topic: Web 2.0. In this article, Paul Graham discussed the three big components of Web 2.0–Ajax, democracy, and not dissing users, and pointed out that Google was a pioneer in all those components.

The first element of Web 2.0 is AJAX, which empowers web-based applications. (more…)

Recently, I spent around 20 hours of hard-working in my spare time and sleep time to build a new website titled “Mentions of Hong Kong Universities”. I built it to demonstrate the usefulness of some public Web services, to prove myself adept at building a meaningful website with the valuable resources from the open source community, and to test the power of individual in the big wave of Web publishing.

The Idea

The website Mentions of Hong Kong Universities (MHKU) has a simple and clear theme: what the rest of the world is saying about Hong Kong universities and their people.

Hong Kong has eight universities. It is quite frequently that local media and newspapers report on what is happening in these universities. While local media mentions of them are frequent and abundant, how about a worldwide mentions? Are there any people in the rest of the world mentioning about Hong Kong universities? What are they saying, why do they interest, and what are their viewpoints and opinions? (more…)

Step 1: Sign up for a Google Maps API key via this URL.

The Google Maps API lets developers embed Google Maps in their own web pages with JavaScript. You can add overlays to the map (including markers and polylines) and display shadowed “info windows”.

A single Maps API key is valid for a single “directory” on your web server, so if you sign up for the URL http://www.mygooglemapssite.com/mysite, the key you get will be good for all URLs in the http://www.mygooglemapssite.com/mysite/ directory.

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Different from other mature fields of engineering, such as civil engineering and electrical engineering, the field of software engineering lacks established ways to help developing professional’s credentials. What does it means to be a professionally qualified software engineer? How do you get there? In recent years, a number of software engineering certification programs comes to address these issues. IEEE Computer Society Certified Software Development Professional (CSDP) Program is among them and provides a solid path to software engineering certification.

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