Google’s Pacman Doodle and the New Era of Interactive HTML

For the first time, Google put interactive doodle on the homepage. The doodle is the reinterpretation of the popular Pacman game created back in 1980. The interactive doodle will be on the Google homepage for 48 hours, starting from May 21st to May 22nd, 2010. According to the news released by the company, the doodle was associated with the 30th anniversary of Pacman game which was first launhed to public on May 22nd, 1980.

While you might have enjoyed playing the game, you might also be interested in getting to know why it is now possible to play game on an image. Yep, if you right click on the doodle and save it into a file, you will see an image like one depicted as the following:

Pacman doodle initial picture

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Using Content Delivery Networks (CDN) to Speed Up Content Load on the Web

Waiting for content to be loadedYou may have heard somewhere on the net:
You may notice that this website is loaded very fast. It is since it uses CDN to deliver static contents

This article will elaborate a bit about Content Delivery Networks or CDN. You will find information about what constitutes a CDN and how it can speed up content retrieval.

Content Delivery Networks (CDN) is sometimes also referred to as Content Distribution Networks. It can be defined as dedicated collections of servers located on the internet which attempt to offload work from origin servers by delivering content on their behalf. In order to get better understanding of this definition, you will be provided a picture which represents an example of CDN.
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Eclipse Quick Tip: Resolving Error “The import javax.servlet cannot be resolved”

When you start to develop web application using Java, you may think to use Eclipse as the IDE. Assume that you have seen a good tutorial about Java servlet on the internet or read the chapter of a book discussing about web development using JSP.

You are now writing the first servlet by using the wizard provided by the IDE. However, as soon the template file is loaded on the source code editor, you encounter the infamous error “The import javax.servlet cannot be resolved” just like depicted in the figure below.

Servlet import error

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Quick Tip: Configuring Eclipse to Run for the First Time

Eclise GalileoFor Java developers, Eclipse is a convenient tool to develop software in broad range of programming languages. This tip is intended to help fellow developers who never use Eclipse before but are eager to start developing applications using Eclipse IDE.

Even though Eclipse is cross-platform, there is no guarantee that the tip provided in this post will also work for version of software and environment other than ones described below:

  • OS: Windows
  • Eclipse version: Eclipse 3.5 Galileo
  • JDK version: Java EE 6 SDK

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Expanding to Java-related Topics

Various topics covered in Amikelive Technology BlogSince its inception, frequent readers or random visitors of this blog may come into conclusion that this blog talks a lot about PHP-related topics. This is somewhat true since at the time the blog was firstly launched, I had dealt with mostly applications built under W/LAMP environment. Even though I also fiddled with applications developed without any PHP codes, the scarcity of hands-on experiences under such circumstances avoided me sharing experimental results, hacks, software components, or even simply a technical note.

As the time progressed and I got involved again in academia, Java started to take some portion of my development time-table. Several years ago, I used Java to build some simple stand-alone desktop applications. As for web application, the PHP advocates were successful to send me to the PHP island. It is the simplicity of PHP and my first impression to the slowness of a Java-based web application which prevented me from delving more into the Java world. Fortunately, there were situations which forced me to use Java in my work and some other scientific experiments. These initially-undesirable situations then turned into a phase of Java re-learning for me. But at the time, I already had had better systemic understanding and ability to look at the bigger picture. The phase of relearning gave me better insight and understanding about application design and to bigger extent, the system design.

I feel very ecstatic about expanding the topics of this blog to also include some Java posts. It can be a subject of lesser interests for you. However, I believe that being open to changes will bring other positive impact. As a technology blog which has been around and settled for more than three years, it is time for this blog to move forward. It is the time to broaden the user base without abandoning old users. Now get yourself ready for more good stuff to read. So, please stay tune!