January 2009 was the first time that a USB 3.0 device was demonstrated in public. Seagate showed off its first externel hard disk with a USB 3.0 controller. It will take time for USB 3.0 ports to show up on motherboards and maybe longer for devices to become available, but the technology is proven to be ready and working.

Data Transfer: Up To 640 MB Per Second

The most prominent feature of USB 3.0 is an enormous tenfold increase in the potential data transfer rate. Now up to 640 MB/s (i.e approximately half the English movie in one sec!!!) of data can flow through a cable as compared to the 60 MB/s in USB 2.0.

This way USB 3.0 get the better of its predecessors and FireWire, and also leaps ahead of SATA and eSATA ports, which currently manage up to 300 MB/s. The speciality of USB 3.0 is that it still remains compatible with older standards, which means that all current USB devices still remain fully functional.

USB 2.0 supports three different speed levels, mainly for backwards compatibility: “Low Speed” works at 1.5 Mb/s whereas “Full Speed” and “High Speed” manage 12 Mb/s and 480 Mb/s (60 MB/s) respectively. USB 3.0 also supports these three speed levels so that the USB 2.0 devices do not sense any difference. In addition to these, a “SuperSpeed” levle is introduced. This is what enables a transfer rate of up to 5 Gb/s (640 MB/s).

Contrary to the initial announcement USB 3.0 does not require fiber optic cables to achieve such high data rates. The “SuperSpeed” mode operates with the help of the five addtional pins in the connector.

The Connector: “Extension” For Cellphones And Pritners

The USB type A connector has plenty of space for the five additional SuperSpeed pins, such that its external shape can be retained without any changes. Keeping that in mind, USB 3.0 connectors should be blue in color to distinguish them from USB 2.0 connectors, which are usually black, white or grey. The type B connector generally used for printers and hard drives is slightly enlarged in height to make room for the new pins. The micro USB connector designed for digital cameras or mobiles is unfortunately too small for the additional pins, and needs and “extension” to house them.

Features: Data Routing And A Power Saving Mode

Another innovation in USB 3.0 is the mode of data distribution in the USB “network”. In all previous USB standards, up to 127 devices could be connected to a USB port and data was transmitted to all connected devices (polling). USB 3.0 transfers data only to and from the defined target device (routing) and will also allow devices to initiate contact, eliminating the need to constantly be polled. Eace device will have its own communication path with the USB host.This saves bandwidth and power, since devices can be set in any of four different sleep modes. The new routing and the power saving functions will of course require new USB hubs.

Another improvement is that more power is now available for each device by default; in USB 2.0 this was 100-500 mA, whereas USB 3.0 devices can draw 150-900 mA. Although this is still insufficient for external 3.5-inch hard disks, it does improve stability for smaller devices.

Verdict

We hope that USB 3.0 is adopted as fast as USB 2.0 was. Users will not face any inconvenience since USB 2.0 ports on motherboards can just be replaced in one shot and no backwards compatibility issues will arise. Peripherals will be able to run faster, especially hard drives. Besides, the standard has admirable new fetures such as the increased power draw support and a more robust way to string multiple devices together.

Current plans peg the availability of SuperSpeed USB at early 2010. Till then, we’ll be waiting eagerly.

1. forums.sun.com
Your authenticated Java recourse from the founders of Java language.

2. Codeguru Java Forum
Most developers are aware of Codeguru. One of the best developer bandwagon.

3. Javaworld Forum
Not just forums, they have lots of articles, code snippets and news about Java.

4. Coderanch Java Forum
“A friendly place for java greenhorns!” as they describe themselves. Recourse intensive forum.

5. forums.java.net
“Powered by Sun Microsystems, Inc. and Oracle” and that says it all. Authentic recourse.

6. Javalobby Forum
Just another java forum! But there you can find out about books and whitepapers.

7. Java-Forums
Not so popular but quality posts.

8. Blackberry Java Devloper Forum
Official java developer forum for Blackberry mobile platform

9. Nokia Java Developer Forum
Official Nokia java developer forum

10. Devshed Java Forums
Another popular java forum.

Do you know any other forum? Share in comments.

The latest collection of web apps and tools for our readers. These websites or software are freely available or come with decent free account option. Indulge.

1. Twhirl
A single lightweight app to monitor Twitter, Facebook and MySpace.

2. Spotify
Seamless streaming access to millions of music tracks for free (with the odd advert, natch).

3. Google Docs
Deal with words and spreadsheets online, and share them easily.

4. Handbrake
Back up and rip DVDs for your PC or PMP – but strictly for your own personal use, of course.

5. Audacity
Music creation fun and games with some of the functionality of professional paid-for apps.

6. iTunes
Bit of a no-brainer. Yes, music can be bought cheaper elsewhere, but the podcast library is unrivalled.

7. Cooliris
See all your Google Image and Flickr search results in a funky, Cover-Flow type of way.

8. Newsfire
Desktop RSS reader that keeps your news organised and displays it in an attractive way.

9. Paint.NET
Free Mac and PC photo editing app. Not as powerful as Photoshop Elements, but they are free.

10. Quake Live
Not just a hasty port to the cloud, but a remastered online version with training and skill-ranked opponents.

We keep posted our readers with fantastic design resources. This time we present collection of 25 3D Glass Effect Wallpapers, which can be used as Desktop wallpapers. These high resolution wallpapers contain beautiful 3D objects like fruits, hearts, lollypops and more, redered in excellent glassy effects. All wallpapers are zipped in one archive file and available for download freely at the end of this article.

Download All Wallpapers In High Resolution, Here (4.86 MB)

When I say ‘Image editor’, the first term blinks in mind is ‘Photoshop’, The most comprehensive and promising editor. But can everyone afford $699 price tag? Not really. So, sometimes people go for some cheaper solution, say GIMP or sometimes do piracy. Apart from that there are some good online alternatives to Photoshop. I have listed 9 such editors below. Some of them were surprisingly powerful enough to replicate whole Photoshop usability and feel. Mainly I’ve compared them on the scale of functionality and usability, and gave ratings out of 10. For better transparency, ‘how 10 points are segregated’ is mentioned at the end of this article.

1. Adobe Photoshop Express

Of course Adobe doesn’t want to ruin its business by offering exact Photoshop like online editor. It offers limited editing features as well as image decoration.
Registration required: Yes
Integration with social networking or photo sharing site: Yes
Functionality: 5/10               Usability: 9/10

2. Picnik

Pretty popular one, refreshing user experience but limited functionality for free version.
Registration required: No
Integration with social networking or photo sharing site: Yes
Functionality: 4/10               Usability: 8/10

3. Pixlr

Offers layer capabilities, vast range of functionality, least loading time and precise replica of ‘photoshop usability’ makes it best in class and my favorite.
Registration required: No
Integration with social networking or photo sharing site: No
Functionality: 9/10               Usability: 9/10

4. SplashUp

It is very much similar to Pixlr (except History window and few other less important features) and overall good editor to use.
Registration required: No
Integration with social networking or photo sharing site: Yes
Functionality: 8/10               Usability: 9/10

5. Aviary

Aviary has higher learning curve and bit slower at the time of loading. I have to say Aviary offers few out of box functionality with lots of complications.
Registration required: No
Integration with social networking or photo sharing site: Yes
Functionality: 8/10               Usability: 6/10

6. LunaPic

Lots of flashy advertisements on page. Applying each effect cause a page load. Over all LunaPic offers worst usability among this list.
Registration required: No
Integration with social networking or photo sharing site: Yes
Functionality: 7/10               Usability: 3/10

7. SumoPaint

SumoPaint has wide range of functionality with elegant usability. It also enables to have quick funny decorations.
Registration required: No
Integration with social networking or photo sharing site: No
Functionality: 9/10               Usability: 9/10

8. Phixr

It is more like applying readymade filters. Advertises and page transitions at the time of applying effects make unhealthy usability.
Registration required: No
Integration with social networking or photo sharing site: Yes
Functionality: 4/10               Usability: 4/10

9. FotoFlexer

Pretty cool editor. Number effects in one click, glittering text and animation, layer capabilities with good usability makes it eye catcher.
Registration required: No
Integration with social networking or photo sharing site: Yes
Functionality: 8/10               Usability: 8/10

Conclusion: Important for you is to decide which one is better for your custom needs. More functionality doesn’t mean it is ideal. However Pixlr, SumoPaint and SplashUp seems comprehensive and better to be with. Moreover Phixr and LunaPic are HTML based editors, so they can run on machine without installed Flash. Rest are Flash editors and Flash installation is must for them.

Total 10 functionality points = 2 for Image cropping, resize, rotate + 2 for color balance, brightness, red eye removal + 2 for different tools like lasso, marquee, brush, clone stamp, eraser etc. + 2 for Layer capabilities + 1 for filters and remaining 1 for additional features.
Total 10 usability points = No clear segregation but different parameters were considered like presence of advertisement, page transitions while image editing, time required for loading, ease of accessibility to particular tool etc.

Jing is a basic screen capture utility for images and is a freeware project supported by TechSmith Corporation, the same team that develops Snagit. Jing can be installed on Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7 with Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0. Unix platform is currently not supported.

Let’s learn how to use it. After the Jing installation is over, you’ll notice that you have a small “sun” on your desktop, usually to the top of the screen. You can move it anywhere you like by simply dragging it – and it looks like a full sun while dragging it. This sun emits 3 “rays” while you hover over it, as shown below.

The first “ray” is what you click to perform a screen capture. After clicking it you get what can only be described as giant crosshairs on your screen, where you can select various squares or regions on the screen. As you select them, it gives you the size of that square, as shown below.

Once you select a region, Jing gives you the opportunity to select a smaller part – you simply drag the borders of the selected square until it contains just what you wanted to capture, as shown on top right.

After you have your desired selection bordered, you choose what you want to capture – image or video. Yes, Jing has the ability to capture video (with sound!) in flash format, screen-cam style within a 5 minutes limitation. Such utilities are really useful in tech support, product documentation, presentations, or simply showing someone how to do something.

After selecting image, you have the ability to add various enhancements to your screen capture. Notice the icons in the upper left of the frame. These icons allow you to add arrows, text boxes, borders, or highlight a selection in your screen capture. You can also change the colors of these various features using color selector. If you don’t like what you’ve done, Undo and Redo buttons are provided as well.

Once you’ve finished enhancing your screen capture, you can store it in a file directory.

There’s one more feature that is nice – the History window. If you click the middle “ray” of the Jing sun, you are presented with a clipboard of all stored Jing images. This clipboard provides you instant access to these images for reuse.

The third “ray” of the Jing sun gets you to the Jing preferences menu.

ASCII Heart Necklace

Geek Message In Html

Geeky Pillow

Nerdy Tee

HTTPanties

8-Bit Necktie

Valentine Scientists’ Way

Perfect iPods

Twitter & iPh0ne Gift Idea

Wii Remotes For Him and Her

3D – Glassess For Candle Light Dinner!

StarWars Girls For Him

And Finally The PacMan Candies

We are fan of extraordinary yet simple designs. If you own a business then business cards are the most essential part of your identity. Look at these 44 different, elegant and unusual business card designs for inspiration. Hope that helps you in designing yours.

Possible Strategies:
1)      Manual exception handling using try/catch block to take necessary action
2)      Using ‘throws’ clause to throw exception back to the caller method
3)      Handling logical errors that needs to be displayed back to user (This is not exactly exception handling, you will come to know about this in later part of article.)
4)      If you are using Spring framework then ‘Exception handling in Spring’
5)      In case of JSP, Page Directive named as ‘errorPage’

FYI: Error code(e.g. 404, 408) handling in Web.xml is different from Exception handling, Don’t mix up. Know more about ‘Error code handling’ and ‘Exception handling in Spring’ here. (I don’t want to reinvent the wheel by rewriting this article.)

Applying Strategies To Each layer:
a) Database Access Layer:
All methods inside this layer are called by respective methods of Business Layer. This layer is not ideal place to handle exception. So, you can choose the below option,
1)     Strategy#2: Define your method to throw exception back to Business method and handle it there.
e.g. boolean validateUserDAO(String name, String pwd) throws SQLException{…}

b) Business Logic Layer:
All validation part and business logic comes here.
1) Strategy#5: Usually validation related/logical errors are needed to display back to user beside proper field. E.g. “Username/Password is invalid.” – Such error message should appear just next to Username/Password field. In this case, with proper logic you need to route proper message to User. Attach attribute with proper error message in ‘Request Scope’ and render it in JSP.
2) Strategy#1(Manual handling)
3) Strategy#4 (Spring Framework strategies)
Let me put one sample model method here,

c) Presentation Layer:
If you are following good programming practice then chances of getting exception in JSP are less. It should contain rendering logic, strictly no business logic. Basically there are two ways,
1) Strategy#5: <%@ page errorPage=”/error.jsp” %>
This directive instructs to route the flow to ‘error.jsp’ in case of some error. This style of exception handling is bit awkward but of course depends on situation.
2) Strategy#1: Manual handling at least possible places.
Find Sample JSP below,

FYI: ${invalidLogin} is an Expression Language. It simply says, if attribute with name ‘invalidLogin’ exist in any of the scope then print its value otherwise do nothing. Not even printing ‘null’ in case of such attribute does not exist. Google it to know more about it.

d) Data Layer
As Database automatically propagates the exception to the Database Access Layer and in turn it throws back to Business Layer where it gets handled. No extra work needed, Sit back and relax!!

Let me conclude this, Exception handling has no strict rules. Important is knowing the possible strategies and their effectiveness.

Little Bit “About Twitter”

Twitter is a free microblogging service that enables its users to send and read messages in less then 140 characters per message. It founded in 2006 by Jack Dorsey with two other colleagues Evan Williams and Biz Stone. Headquartered in San Fransisco, Twitter actually came out of Obvious Corp’s venture Odeo where Jack worked. Eventually Twitter was formed as an independent entity Twitter, Inc. That’s enough for history lessons. Let’s move to economy class.

Twitter’s Growth And Lack Of Revenue Plans!!!

Twitter has 18 million users as of 2009, reported by eMarketer. And that’s a 200% increase over 2008 numbers. Unique visitors to twitter.com is around 21 million as reported by Nielsen. Enough numbers for revenue generation!! Probably it is for any hot new startup. And same was the case with twitter, but the road block was to What Should Be The Revenue Model? Twitter founders are not a big fan of banner or contextual advertising in particular. Though they don’t hate advertising as cited by co-founder Biz Stone in the blog post. But to continue operations, any business needs cash and twitter was no exception. Most obvious option was to serve advertising in user’s Twitter feed stream. To that Stone replied “Are we going to end up pissing them off?” Other options were to show ads in search results as well as “freemium” model where paid users won’t see any advertisement.

So Where’s The Twitter’s Cash Pot Exactly?

Ultimately twitter founders found two ways (at least) to monetize the service. The first was the deals between Twitter-Google and Twitter-Microsoft(Bing). The deals were to allow the use of tweet streams to show up on Google and Bing search results – The holy grail of Real-time search!! Real time search is quite a buzz word and it means enable searching of real time events and information available on the internet. What’s a better mean other than to tap twitter’s tweet stream for real time search on both the leading search engines. And it’s been said that twitter made lot of money by making those deals, though exact numbers are still a mystery.
The other way of revenue generation is also quite unique. Corporations paying money to use specialized premium services of twitter to stay in touch with their customers and increase their sales. Much talked case of Dell making $6.5 million in sales through twitter. Look at this Dell on Twitter page. Dell makes exclusive discounts for their followers of @DellOutlet on twitter. Ok, that’s another story. But the purport is twitter now has one proven business model to generate revenue without annoying end users with clutter of contextual or banner ads. How this premium model for businesses work? Read the excerpt below from the twitter blog post,

The feature we are beta testing is called ‘Contributors‘ – it enables users to engage in more authentic conversations with businesses by allowing those organizations to manage multiple contributors to their account. The feature appends the contributor’s username to the tweet byline, making the business to consumer communication more personal; e.g. if @Twitter invites @Biz to tweet on its behalf, then a tweet from @Twitter would include @Biz in the byline so that users know more about the real people behind organizations.

What’s The Conclusion Then?

Looking at the growth of twitter and how they devised revenue generation models without compromising user experience, one thing I can note is, they always thought of users and not the money. They made excellent yet simple service and parted themselves from greed of easy money – which they could have earned with in-content advertising. They showed patients for growth and love for the users. Any hot yet new startup should consider following twitter path. Case ends!!

Image Credit: TheNextWeb