This week’s link is an old favorite of mine that I had forgotten about until about two or three months ago. This website is a living and ever growing historical museum of the World Wide Web. They have been taking snapshots of what different website look and work like for years and you can search according to URL to find what a website looked like years ago.

It is pretty interesting to and search to see what some the older websites used to look like back when the web was just getting started. The two big ones that I can think of to search is http://www.yahoo.com and http://www.google.com.

http://www.archive.org

This is a special edition of Ten Minute Tech, because I am announcing the I am going to stop writing these for a little while. I have decided to put on hold publishing any more of these until I can build up a wealth of resources and topics.

I want this program to force/enable me to really dive into some technical topics that I wouldn’t otherwise study. But what I am finding is that I am continually short of topics and trying to write an article on just something random at the last minute. So I am going to stop focusing on meeting my weekly deadline and focus more on learning about technology. I plan to start compiling topics and research and once I have built up enough articles and information I will start publishing my weekly article again. I was just trying to be a little too ambitious. However I do only plan to take TMT off line for a month or two; so by the early to mid summer I should be back at it.

I found this website just the other day and was very impressed with the quality of results I was able to get. It is an nice aggregated dictionary search of many online dictionaries. I like the fact that it will give you a quick general definition and then let you seek out as many follow up definitions as you like.

However the thing I liked most about this site was the reverse lookup. It gave me some good results without much hassle. I truly found what I wanted by only having to take ‘one look’.

http://www.onelook.com

This is a utility that lets you lookup where a United States zip code is located in the nation. It was created by an MIT student while pursuing his Ph.D. It can show you what city a specific zip code is related to as well as give you an idea of how the postal code system is designed.

As far as I could tell it is pretty accurate and I couldn’t come up with a zip code that I knew that wasn’t listed. It is an interesting utility that is neat to look at, but not necessarily all that practical. I don’t think there are too many people out there constantly checking zip codes on it (unless maybe you work in package delivery).

http://acg.media.mit.edu/people/fry/zipdecode (requires Java)

Thanks to Tom Phillips from John Carroll University for sending this one in.

This is an installment of Ten Minute Tech; where I pick a technology related subject and then write a paragraph or two about what I know. I then pick and read a reference article related to the subject and then write another paragraph or two about what I learned. This edition’s topic is about the Software Development Life Cycle.

Before

I have been reading up on software development methodologies lately because I am currently in the process of redeveloping our companies policies when it comes to planning and executing development projects for our clients. This was also one of the topics I covered in the seminar I gave at Tri-C last fall.

The Software Development Life Cycle is an abstract model of the process of developing a piece of software. That is to say it defines that actual steps a person or group should take when developing a new software application. It lays out a set of steps (usually five to seven) that take the software project from research to coding and then implementation and maintenance. There are many varied methodologies and subprocesses involved under each step; some of which are based on strict standards while others are more abstract.

The steps vary depending what your reference is, but they generally include:
- define requirements
- analyze and model
- code
- implement and test
- maintain

Article: Software Development Life Cycle

After

This article lays out the steps a little different than I am used to, but the overall flow fundamentally achieves the same idea (plan, code, implement, test, maintain). It also goes into the details on how this model is actually applied. Overall it is a well written article but it could use some better referencing throughout.

Of the handful of process models they discuss, I would say I am most familiar with what would be considered the iterative or agile process. This is because I develop mostly in a corporate environment where clients want to see tangible results (which requires coding) even before they are able to define all of the requirements for us.

Although I know this link will not be an unheard of resource for all of you out there reading this. However, I figure since I reference this site so much in my research and writing; I think it is a great link to kick my new program off with. Besides there is a vast majority of people out there who have no idea what Wikipedia is all about. So without further rambling…

Wikipedia is a public maintained, web based encyclopedia that represents the collective knowledge of the world (or at least of those who contribute). It is place where anyone can contribute their knowledge in writing towards a particular topic. Anyone is able to add edit or delete content as they see fit. The ability for anyone to edit an article is well supported by a thorough and well structured content accountability and validation program.

This is by far one of my favorite projects to date and I use it on almost a daily basis. I have come to rely on it so much because its community contribution model is so well structured and maintained and it really focuses reference based information gathering. It is a great place to start your research for almost any topic.

http://www.wikipedia.org

This is an installment of Ten Minute Tech; where I pick a technology related subject and then write a paragraph or two about what I know. I then pick and read a reference article related to the subject and then write another paragraph or two about what I learned. This edition’s topic is about the Open Systems Interconnection Basic Reference Model (OSI Model).

Before

To be honest with you there is not a lot that I remember about this model outside of the fact that it exists. If I can recall my college days properly the OSI Model was developed as a way to standardize transmission methods for networks.

Article: Open Systems Interconnection Basic Reference Model

After

As I understand it is an abstraction to describe communication and network protocol design. It is broken into seven layers, with each layer having its own set of responsibilities. It is a logical representation of network based transmission and is used only as a theoretical model. The model was designed by the International Organization for Standardization in the 1970’s and has been a major influence in the design of most modern day transmission protocols.

I am not going to describe each layer in detail here; the article itself does a nice job of describing it as well as provides a table showing where modern protocols operate in order to handle communication. Since this model is just a logical design model, most modern day protocols operate on several levels of the model.

There was a good reference to an article that helps describe the function at each level of the model by putting it in terms of James Bond transporting a secret message.
James Bond Meets The 7 Layer OSI Model

I read this article about Dell acting like they are going to start seriously engineering their hardware to be more Linux friendly. Which is good news for Linux in terms of it actually building larger user base of non-geeky computer users. I myself being a Windows free (I say Windows free, because I still use a Mac) computer user; I still have trouble getting everything working as I need on Linux (and I have been running Linux in some form for over six years). And until Linux can fundamentally do everything right out of the box, the average computer user is still going to keep Windows.

I do enjoy hearing when a larger technology company at least starts to embrace choice when it comes to operating system software. I know Dell has offered Linux on their servers for some time but it is exciting to hear them talk about offering it on the end user computer.

This article specifically talks about Dell trying to get its various hardware certified by SUSE and also offering SUSE as an installed option out of the box. Which I have always wanted the option of an operating system free home purchase simply because I really don’t want to pay for a copy of Windows that I am just going to uninstall and then leave on my shelf.

It does however bring up an interesting point about how it is hard to create a truly Linux friendly machine because there is just so many distributions. However I would agree that there are some ‘difficult’ distribution nuances; but I think they are using that excuse as more of a blanket to hide under rather than it being a real unsurmountable issue.

Here is the full article.
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS8995206909.html

Another program that I am trying to start with my website is to provide an interesting link to check out every Thursday.

I am doing this because I realize that the few regular readers I do have are not necessarily working in the technology field. Which means that they get very little out of the articles I do write. So my goal is to come up with and publish a link to something that the average computer user/internet browser will find at least interesting, if not useful. This is not to say that I will not post technology related links under the guise of ‘Clickable’; it is just that I will have at least one a week that anyone might appreciate.

As I said I plan to do this every Thursday, and I am looking for contributions. So if you come across something cool please contact me with the link itself, why you think it is cool and how you like to be credited for the contribution.

My first link will be posted next Thursday (March 8th).