ZXing, MongoDB and Search Exchange
It’s been a couple of weeks since I last posted. No excuses, just didn’t do it.
Lenya got back burnered, but it’s coming back out again next week. I’ve had a number of very interesting and cool quick projects with a client that precluded me from working on the Lenya implementation. I’m really excited about attacking this new project.
MongoDB 1.2.0 came out on Thursday. I’m looking at using MongoDB for a couple of different use cases over the next couple of weeks. I did stumble across the log4mongo project, a log4j appender for MongoDB, which will come in very handy for some of the logging that I’m wanting to do. I’m really looking forward to seeing how fast I’ll be able to stuff data into MongoDB. More importantly, I want to see how easy it’s going to be to query the store. It’s primarily going to be used for auditing type data, so it’s really important to be able to query it really easy. Hopefully I’ll be able to talk more about it in the next couple of weeks.
I installed Ganglia to monitor one of my client’s clusters. I’m not using it the way it’s intended, because I’m sticking servers of all types into the cluster. However, it gives a good high level view of all the servers of the “cluster.” So far, it’s working out well, but I would like to be able to break it up and use it more for how it was designed. Either way, I’m loving all the charts that it produces. It’s really helping in making some decisions on what some of the next steps for hardware should be.
On the iPhone front, I’ve started integrating the ZXing project to a couple of applications. This is the first time I’ve used the camera for processing barcodes and I have to admit, it’s pretty sharp. I’ll also be working at integrating the same library with a couple of Android apps in the near future as well. There are a couple of commercial iPhone barcode libraries, but for now the pricing is the holdup. If ZXing works good enough and the new feature gets enough traction, it may be worth the $$$$$ to purchase one of the commercial libraries.
I’m also considering switching from Pinch Media to Google Analytics for some of my iPhone analytics needs. I’m currently using Flurry and Pinch Media and I like both of them really well. I need to do a little more research to see if I really want to make the switch or not. If anyone has any experience or pros and cons, please leave them in the comments below.
I’m still reading Ship It and hope to have it completed this weekend. Manning had a special on Wednesday on Algorithms of the Intelligent Web. After a quick glance, I realized that a quick glance wasn’t going to cut it. Fortunately, the deal was the hard copy and a PDF for $20 plus shipping, so I’m looking forward to getting the hard copy so I can start marking it up. That’s all I need. . .some light reading over the holidays.
The 2010 Search Exchange Conference and Expo is May 17-19, 2010 in Charlotte, NC. I don’t profess to know tons about SEO or web analytics, but I do know how to tell the difference between the BS artists and the good guys. The guys putting on this conference are the good guys. Take a look at the site and if you think it’s something you would want to attend, consider signing up before January 1, 2010. That’s when the early bird registration ends.
Finally, probably most of you saw the Muppets version of Bohemian Rhapsody. If not, here it is:
Now, that’s cool, but IMHO this is cooler. . .maybe. Most of you reading this probably aren’t old enough to remember the Star Wars Holiday Special way back from 1978. This is for you.