Think Different

Widgets and gadgets are small applications that run on your desktop or in your web browser which enable you to keep track of things like the weather forecast or share prices. But widgets and gadgets can also be used to add additional functionality to existing applications to create flexible and personalised learning environments. We spoke to Scott Wilson from JISC CETIS and the Institute for Educational Cybernetics at the University of Bolton about the potential for using widgets in educational technologies. Introduction Widget is a funny word. For some people it means a small device at the bottom of a can of Guinness for others it’s a character in Marvel comics. In technology terms desktop widgets (or gadgets) are small programmes that run on your desktop to give you useful information. The Wikipedia definition of a desktop widget is: "a small specialized GUI application that provides some visual information and/or easy access to freque...

What's jQuery? Created by John Resig in early 2006, jQuery is a great library for anyone who works with JavaScript code. Whether you're new to the JavaScript language and want a library to address some of the complexities of Document Object Model (DOM) scripting and Ajax or you're an advanced JavaScript guru and tired of the boring repetition involved with DOM scripting and Ajax, jQuery will suit you well. jQuery helps you keep your code simple and succinct. You no longer have to write a bunch of repetitious loops and DOM scripting library calls. With jQuery, you can get right to the point and express yourself in the fewest possible characters. The jQuery philosophy is certainly unique: It's designed to keep things simple and reusable. When you understand and feel comfortable with the philosophy, you'll start to see just how much jQuery can improve the way you program. Back to top Some simple simplifications Here's a simple example of the impac...

Shindig - an Apache incubator project for OpenSocial and gadgets What is Shindig? Shindig is a new project in the Apache Software Foundation incubator and is an open source implementation of the OpenSocial specification and gadgets specification . The architectural components of Shindig can be broken down as follows: Gadget Container JavaScript -- core JavaScript foundation for general gadget functionality. This JavaScript manages security, communication, UI layout, and feature extensions, such as the OpenSocial API. Gadget Server -- used to render the gadget XML into JavaScript and HTML for the container to expose via the container JavaScript. OpenSocial Container JavaScript -- JavaScript environment that sits on top of the Gadget Container JavaScript and provides OpenSocial specific functionality (profiles, friends, activities, datastore). OpenSocial Data Server -- an implementation of the server interface to container-specifi...

Your enterprise portal or ERP site's server might have overloaded with huge records of your users and admin data. And you might have tried lot of options to over come this problem raised from your success eventually. But there is a ultimate solution after optimize the architecture and code. It is Load Balancing. Let take a look what is load balancing at a glance. Balance the overhead or load from one server to distribute into several replicated servers. So that application can manage the load very efficiently. Clustering and replication sometimes synonymous but it has also some basic and technological differences. First we will see what is replication and how to setup in respect of MySql. There are a number of different methods for setting up replication, and the exact method that you use will depend on how you are setting up replication, and whether you already have data within your master database. There are some generic tasks which may be required ...