We got two new tech pets over the holidays, two iDogs. These cool little toys look very Apple-style but were originally made by SEGA and are now distributed by Hasbro and others. You could use an iDog simply as a speaker for you iPod (or any other MP3-player – in case there are still other players out there) but it is so much...

Finally, Sun posted PDF formatted session documentation of all JavaOne 2005 sessions here: http://developers.sun.com/learning/javaoneonline/2005/ Even if you went to JavaOne, you probably missed Hans Muller’s Defining Swing GUIs Declaratively session and his take on Swixml. The PDF version of his slides is now available...

Last week, I sent the following brain teaser: public class Foo { private int secret = 47; public Foo() { new Hacker().hack(this); } public String tellSecret() { return String.valueOf(secret); } public static void main(String[] args) { System.out.println(''How secret are private members? ..''); System.out.println(''Psst: '' + new Foo().tellSecret(); } } Can you write a void hack(Object obj) method that would change foo’s private member...

This obviously rhetorical question was asked by Ivan Seidenberg, Verizon‘s CEO. During a short trip to San Francisco last week, I stayed at the stunning Hyatt Regency San Francisco (thanks to a great deal I got on HotWire). The biz section of the morning newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle had an interview with Verizon’s CEO that I found rather interesting. Seidenberg seriously complained about his customers’...

Current weather conditions here in Southern California made me buy a wetsuit for the PowerBook. We had more than enough of rain during the last couple of weeks and carrying an unprotected PowerBook outside, even for just the short distance between the office building and the car, was sometimes not an option. Finding a suitable bag for the huge 17″ model is not that easy but once I saw the Tucano Second Skin folder; there was no way...