keeping the community informed...

You might have noticed that we often talk about being a member of the community, but have you ever thought about becoming a sponsor as well? The benefits are many, quite apart from helping to support the great resource that is DaniWeb. For as little as just $7.50 per month these include the ability to disable both graphical advertising and IntelliTXT advertising. Yes, that’s right, an advertising free DaniWeb experience and a large quick reply box as standard. An increase in PM space from 100 to 500 messages, and recipients from 5 to 10 per message. Avatars can be animated, and their size increased to 100x100 and 80Kb. Profile pictures can be animated, and their size increased to 300x300 and 150Kb. Bold and colored user name, a custom user title and a ‘Sponsor’ badge. And finally, access to the sponsor only Area 51 forum where there are discussions about the design and implementation of DaniWeb itself.

helping us to help you…

One of the biggest tasks faced by DaniWeb moderators on a day to day basis would have to be moving messages that have been posted in the wrong forum, snipping email links from messages, reminding posters not to ask for homework help without showing any evidence of doing any work themselves and so on. What all of these forum housekeeping tasks have in common is that they could all have been avoided had the original poster read the DaniWeb FAQ. Do so and you will also discover the origins of DaniWeb, find out who runs the place and learn about our privacy policy.

Even if you have been a community member for many months or years, it is worth checking the FAQ every now and then because we are always striving to improve DaniWeb. Sometimes this involves changes to the rules and guidelines. If you are a novice forum user, our Welcome Guide has been assembled to help you through your first posts on DaniWeb and includes details of how to search for an answer, find the most appropriate forum, post a new thread and reply to a thread. And, of course, as well as helping yourself you will be helping save our team of volunteer moderators a little time. Time that can be better spent helping answer your technical support questions…

or how Dani has been keeping busy this month…

As well as giving the whole of DaniWeb a refreshing new look, from font sizes to color schemes and layout, Dani has been unable to resist making some other changes here and there. Regular Geek’s Lounge visitors will have noticed that the word games have been moved to their own brand new Posting Games forum. These word games became so popular that they pretty much demanded we took them seriously and let them, and you, have a dedicated place to play. With 30 games and 26000 posts so far, the proof has certainly been in the pudding as they say. The most popular game has attracted 7000 entries to date, and been viewed an amazing 190,000 times!



Sticking with the keeping you happy theme, Dani has also given the smilies system a long overdue revamp with a whole new set of smiling faces to add to your posts. You can see all the new emoticons here, along with the shorthand needed to insert them into your messages.

Let us know what you think of these changes, or of any others that you would like to see implemented, over in the community feedback forum.

every month one member makes the DaniWeb hall of fame

This month we welcome Peter_Budo to the ‘Member of the Month’ club, and award him his ‘Featured Poster’ badge as a result of his excellent contributions to the DaniWeb community, not least within the Java forums. Peter is what you might call a fully rounded member of DaniWeb. Not only does he help fellow members of the community by offering advice and answering posts where he can, but he also helps moderators by reporting bad posts and flagging those which have been posted in the wrong forum for example. We asked a few probing questions to find out what makes Peter_Budo tick.

How old are you and where do you come from?

I will be 30 in August, and grew up in a small village in the middle of Slovakia, close to the mountains. However, I have been a resident of London for the past 6 years.

What is your occupation?

It may sound funny at my age, but I am a student! I have just finished my BSc in Internet Computing and am waiting for the results. I am also considering a MSc in Mobile Devices from this September. Other than my studies, I have part-time job in a company specializing in the production and processing of paper and electronic documents.

What brought you to DaniWeb?

Like many others, looking for the answer to a mysterious problem in C++ programming. I found the answer here at DaniWeb.

What makes you stay?

I could say the few verbal slaps from Narue, telling me I'm hopeless with C++, ha-ha-ha. But no, it is really the friendly aura of the forum, the respect of other members even when you are not as knowledgeable as they are, and the care with which Dani and her team maintain the site.

What are your interests outside of IT?

Books from authors like Wilbur Smith or Bernard Cornwell, the factual history of WWII. When it comes to movies, I like pretty much everything except horrors or psycho nonsense. Oh, and I also do some in-line skating when I am not feeling too lazy.

Name the best thing about DaniWeb, and one thing you would change if it were in your power?

The best thing about DaniWeb is that there is always somebody to answer your question as long as you know what to ask and how to ask for it. As for changes, well it would be the color of the Java section as it is hard to get used to!

You are busiest in the Java forum, what is it about Java that excites you?

A university study in Computer Science is really the process of learning different programming and scripting languages, and in most cases finding a language which suits you best. Java grabbed me by my heart. It is easy to learn, well documented, nearly platform-independent (still requires JVM) and free of charge. The last point is very important for most students.

Is your signature of ‘learn to see in another’s calamity the ills which you should avoid’ a philosophy you follow in your programming?

It is more a philosophy of life that extends into my programming, where I tend to try and analyze and understand the problems I face. Seeing what has been done and how it was done, trying to avoid previous mistakes. However, I do not try to re-invent the wheel, only to improve it if there is room for further improvement.

What motivates you to help others as much as you do?

I know how frustrating it can be trying to understand something that your teacher or a book you read did not explain to your full satisfaction, and looking for small typo in your code can be a nightmare.

How long do you spend, on average, on DaniWeb every day?

1 or 2 hours I imagine.

Windows, Mac or Linux? And why?

I used a Mac while I studied multimedia a few years back but soon discovered I’m not a new Picasso of the digital age so I have abandoned them. Windows is my main platform for now as I was far too lazy to seek any alternatives, but recently I uploaded Ubuntu on my second hard disk and I’m very impressed.

You are something of an online gamer, I understand, what are your current favorites?

Not a hard-core gamer with many games in my collection, but I do play some games. In these days mostly playing Call of Duty 2 and Battlefield 2, awaiting the arrival of Enemy Territory: Quake Wars.

And finally, if you had one word of advice for new members of DaniWeb, what would it be?

Be wise when you write your questions asking for help. Please mind the language and enjoy our company…

by happygeek

Thursday 31st May is the first ever Google Developer Day, with more than 5000 developers at 10 locations around the world taking part. Keynotes and breakout sessions will be taking place in Sydney, Tokyo, Beijing, Moscow, Sao Paulo, Madrid, Paris, Hamburg, London, and Mountain View, California. Both Google engineers and product managers will be on hand to discuss the future of web applications with developers from right around the globe.

The idea being that Google can articulate its strategy for working with the developer community while reinforcing its commitment to drive open standards for developers both inside and outside Google in order to create web applications quickly.

"One of the things we find most exciting about emerging web technologies is the ability to mash up many different pieces of technology to build new applications, create businesses, or even just satisfy that niche interest or convenience," Jeff Huber, vice president of engineering at Google told me. "We want to work closely with developers so together we can define the next generation of products available to users on the web."

During Developer Day, Google will share details and demos of a new open source technology for creating offline web applications. The new browser extension, named Google Gears, is being made available in its early stages to the developer community so that everyone can test its capabilities and limitations and help improve upon it. The long-term hope is that Google Gears can help the industry as a whole move toward a single standard for offline capabilities.

Google will also be releasing the Google Mashup Editor today, an experimental online code editor for building mashups using a simple markup language. Aimed at developers familiar with HTML and JavaScript, the Google Mashup Editor offers a simpler way to deploy AJAX user interface components atop existing feeds and Google web services. By substituting extended XHTML tags for entire blocks of JavaScript code and hosting the mashups on Google servers, the Google Mashup Editor speeds mashup creation and fosters more powerful, more interesting web applications. Also keep an eye open for Google Mapplets, an API for embedding third-party applications in Google Maps. Since the Google Mapplets API combines the Google Maps API and the Google Gadgets API, anyone familiar with those APIs can quickly build a Google Mapplet and reach millions of Google Maps users.

Not been invited? Never mind, the Google Developer Day website will provide live webcasts of the sessions from the Mountain View and London events. In addition, the website will offer blogs, schedules, presentations, Developer Day photos, and links to recorded videos from sessions around the world. Oh yes, and all session videos will also be available on a Google Developer Day channel on YouTube.