Anything about Everything

The old cliche goes that, the “Good programmers are lazy” and sometimes even dumb mostly because they always try to find the easiest solutions to the problem (dumb bit) by using as little effort as possible(lazy bit).

Being lazy as I am, I’m always looking for “easier” and quicker ways to generate software artifacts/applications from conceptual models with as little coding and hand-cranking as possible. The downside is that, one has to invest  significant amount of time and effort to learn  the different tools and frameworks that  can be used to achieve exactly that.

The one tool I have had experience with over the years is AndroMDA, but at the moment I’m looking at Tigerstripe to see what can be made out of it.

AndroMDA

AndroMDA was the very first tool that I actually used to turn my “dreams” of Model Driven Architecture and Engineering (MDA/MDE) into reality. It can generate mostly Java oriented software artifacts but it also supports .NET. The good thing is that, you can use AndroMDA to generate anything, you just have to remember to write a cartridge for it. Cartridges are like AndroMDA plugins that specify the translation from UML’s Platform Independent Model(PIM) into whatever your target platform’s artifacts are.

Tigerstripe

Another tool that I’m looking at recently is the Tigerstripe project which is an eclipse modeling tool with specific support for Telecommunication models like Managed Entities etc. The tool has recently been open-sourced from the commercial version of Tigerstripe@tigerstripedeve.net.

The BPNC is supposed to be Botswana’s centre for excellence whose primary “mandate” according to their mission and vision goals is to :

• Stimulate and generate productivity consciousness in Botswana
• Promote increased productivity in all sectors of the economy

So I guess, it’s only fair to expect very high standards in anything the BNPC does; their website included of course.

The Good

• clean and uncluttered design
• minimal use of flash (over-use of flash seems to be a pandemic in many botswana based websites)
• The Contact Us page at least seems to work

The Bad

• too slow, mayb it was my connection but heck, given that the pages use very minimal images, the load time is way too slow for most pages in the website.
• lack of imagery even in those content items that someone would expect images e.g. Conference Facilities->Accommodation, why not have image gallery of the accommodation facilities offered by the center?
• the Disclaimer pretty much absolves BNPC of any responsibility to provide accurate and reliable information in their website. I was particularly concerned when reading the following from the bnpc website
  

  Information, ideas and opinions expressed on this site should not be regarded as professional advice or the official opinion of the BNPC and Users are encouraged to seek professional advice before taking any course of action related to information, ideas or opinions expressed on this site.

  I mean, c’mon guys; why not at least take the necessary steps to ensure that the content is as accurate as possible than go itlhotlhora any form of responsibility as if the website belongs to a third party?

Verdict

Overall though, the BNPC website is a bit dull except for the flash animation at the top, there’s very little that’s engaging from the website. It could do with a makeover and a little bit of accountability from BNPC rather than distancing themselves from any misinformationfrom their website.

A website of the stature of BNPC should be an information portal and should lead by example especially an institution of BNPC’s stature.

Update : Link to the DN Registration Forms

Today’s post is a slight diversion from the usual website reviews, I thought maybe today I should be a bit more informative rather than critical. So having had to register a .co.bw domain name in the past, I thought it might be useful to some people who may want a .bw domain name.

.bw is the top level domain (TLD) for internet domain names in Botswana and the Botswana Telecommunications Corporation(BTC) are the authority over the .bw domain space. So this means that, if you want to register a domain name that ends with .bw you’ve got to get in touch with BTC, fill in some forms and wait for them to do their “magic”.

Unfortunately, you cannot check for the availability of your .bw domain name online, BTC does not have that facility just yet, so you have to do some paperwork to get your .bw registered.

The domain registration form provided by BTC is quite easy to fill in I must say, the good thing is that it has some pretty nicely written and straight forward instructions annexed to the form.

The following information is required to fill the form

1. The domain name you want to register [obvious, isn't it?], unfortunately, at the moment there’s no way of automatically checking whether the domain name is available for registration or not.
2. Domain Nameservers  and their IP addresses, you need at least the primary and the secondary nameservers which you can easily get from your prospective webhosting companies like Bluehost, Godaddy, Fastdomain, 1and1, Dotster, Fasthosts etc.
3. Money talks and it makes the world go round; the cost of a commercial or personal .bw domain name at the time of writing this article was BWP 500.00 for 2 years (roughly USD 35.00/year) which is rather expensive I have to say. Given that you can quite easily get a more popular .com domain name for as low as USD 8/year.
4. Apparently, the registration of a .org.bw domain name is free, I learnt this from one of my colleagues who was registering the domain name for the Botswana Scripture Union website- subotswana.org.bw (which “Dotex Web Hosting ” are developing kindly developing free as well ;-))

The domain registration forms are not available for download from the BTC website however,  but I do have a copy of the form, will just confirm with the guys at BTC whether I won’t be on the red if I redistribute it. I’ll put the link to the form here in due course if I get the all clear from BTC.

Other places where you can apparently register a .co.bw domain name

BNamed

Marcaria - for a whooping $280.00 (that’s way too expensive)

Firs it was “rumours of Google Browser” then it was the Google Chrome Comic teaser and now it’s finally here; I’m actually writing this post from this stinking new browser which Google chose to call Chrome.

Released on the 2nd September 2008 under an Open Source licence, Chrome Browser albeit a Beta version is available for download at the browser’s home page. Among many other minimalist and non-intrusive feature set, the browser boasts of the following :

Crash Control

Google claim that every tab runs independently, so if one tab was to crash, it wont take the whole browsing session down. I’ll have to find a webpage that can crash my session and see if Chrome browser lives to the hype.

Advanced Tabbing

One feature I’ve always found to be lacking in Firefox was the ability to detach tabs; and boy! does Google’s Chrome make this easy; detaching a tab from a window is simply a matter of clicking on the tab and dragging it off. You can easily drag it back in or re-arrange the tabs by “juggling” them around. Easy peasy !

Tabs at the top of the screen rather than the traditional “Under the address bar” position

Chrome web browser has a microsoft’ish IE7/8 feel to it, especially the manner in which they have hidden away the Settings and Options menu. Obviously this gives you more browser window, work area.

Google Chrome Browser screenshot whilst dragging a tab off the window.

Incognito Mode

The ability to go incognito i.e. browsing the web without leaving any trace of your web activities, e.g. sites you visited, cookies, web or search history is not cached on your system. The Incognito mode works on the same principle as Internet Explorer 8’s Inprivate famously dubbed “Porn Mode” for obvious reasons.

Seems like the Google monopolistic philanthropy is going to continue for some time, only “God and Google” know what Google is doing behind closed doors, I guess next, we’re going to hear that Google has released a new Operating System ;-).

Download Google Chrome Browser from the Browser’s Home Page.

I read a very interesting exchange between two guys on the Hostgator forums yesterday. Below is an excerpt from the guy that calls himself “whatrevolution.”

The discussion was about website traffic analysis utilities like Awstats, Google Analytics and the forum poster was merely asking about which stats program they can use to filter out his own traffic just to increase the reliability of the stats of visitors to their website.

As it usually happens in forums, the discussion turned into the Google Dynasty and Dominance of the World Wide Web. So this is what whatrevolutions said about Google [Analytics] free service[s]:

Certainly, there are always alterior motives which justify a “free” service. Consider the differences between “rationale“, and “rationalization“.

Google is useful as a publicly accessible database, but not as a benevolent public service fueled by marketing revenue. You’ll laugh, because your skepticism has been conditioned out of you, and replaced by selfish greed for what you want right this instant. That you don’t question unjustified earnings reports and stock prices speaks volumes toward what you’re capable of not questioning.

It’s too good to be true.

Google is useful by design. This is incrementalist herding toward unquestioned total information awareness, which has been a completely successful operation. As useful as it is, and I use it too, in a much more limited fashion; Google is a bane upon self-sufficience in information technology.

Spend less time consuming, and more time building; and just because you “got the job done”, does not mean you did it right. “Google gets the job done. To each their own.”, case in point. Operant Conditioning.

I’ve always had some “reservations” about Google’s dominance, totalitarian tendencies and monopolistic attitude when it comes to all things web related. Think GMail, Adsense, Adwords, Google Checkout, Google Reader, Webmaster Tools and so forth and so on. All these are efficient tools and service that Google provides and mostly “FREE” but I’m well aware that Google is not running a charity, they’re building an empire. Most of these tools if not all of them are there to advance Google’s Business ambitions. They do however, have a philanthropic side effect in that everyone’s online presence and experience is enhanced.

In many ways, the Google practices have connotations of Microsoft except Google seems to be adopting a different approach, it’s a case of “From Philanthropy to Monopoly” unlike Bill Gates’ Monopoly to Philanthropy.

Most of the time, what Google does with the data gathered through using these tools and services is anybody guess. We all use Google everyday, some more than others, some their very online presence centered around Google services and tools. Talk of having your all your eggs in one basket.

They are good tools/services[no doubt] and mostly very efficient and they do get the job done as whatrevolutions says but remember, Google can expunge you from their system without explanation and without mercy and they are not obliged to show any or give you any explanation. So it helps to spread your online activities especially if they are your livelihood.

Check the following stories out, to see what I mean :

The Day Google Erased me from the Internet.

Got Kicked out of Google Adsense

Happy Googling but make sure you don’t suffer from Discomgoogolation ;-).