So just when you thought technology will stay steady for a while, a new disc format will try to penetrate the market next year: a 300 GB disc. Nice, a full HD backup in a singe disc… you’ve got to love that.

GMail Drive is a Shell Namespace Extension that creates a virtual filesystem around your Google GMail account, allowing you to use GMail as a storage medium.

GMail Drive creates a virtual filesystem on top of your Google GMail account and enables you to save and retrieve files stored on your GMail account directly from inside Windows Explorer.

GMail Drive literally adds a new drive to your computer under the My Computer folder, where you can create new folders, copy and drag'n'drop files to.

Ever since Google started to offer users a GMail e-mail account, which includes storage space of a 1000 megabytes, you have had plenty of storage space but not a lot to fill it up with.

With GMail Drive you can easily copy files to your GMail account and retrieve them again. When you create a new file using GMail Drive, it generates an e-mail and posts it to your account.

The e-mail appears in your normal Inbox folder, and the file is attached as an e-mail attachment. GMail Drive periodically checks your mail account (using the GMail search function) to see if new files have arrived and to rebuild the directory structures.

But basically GMail Drive acts as any other hard-drive installed on your computer.
You can copy files to and from the GMail Drive folder simply by using drag'n'drop like you're used to with the normal Explorer folders.

Because the GMail files will clutter up your Inbox folder, you may wish to create a filter in GMail to automatically move the files (prefixed with the GMAILFS letters) to your archived mail folder.

You may want to create an email address used only to store files... but this extension works and it's extremely handy.

In an effort to break barriers between TV and a PC Cisco decided to acquire a video set-box maker … Internet companies such as America Online, Google and Yahoo are also getting into the video market. AOL announced it is funding a start-up called Brightcove, which helps programmers syndicate shows across the Web and collect money from it. Content providers like CBS are also seeking out alternative distribution channels for their shows…

More info here.

The blog is running now on BlogCFC 4.0.

Thanks Ray.

For more information please visit Ray's site.

So Yahoo released today their version of RIA maps, but unlike google using AJAX, they are using Flex.

Check it out here: http://maps.yahoo.com/beta/

It’s coming out great. I really like the option to toggle live traffic alerts, I was waiting for this for a really long time.

So, this is off-topic, but I ride bikes and I found this helmet cutting-edge and extremely useful. A rear-view mirror is built in improving safety… It belongs to a U.K. company Reevu.

Scripting, programming, and business in general are having a huge tendency toward object oriented programming and design patterns. Microsoft with .net, and SQL 2005, Macromedia with CFMX, and AS2.0… ICG should not stay behind due to that this is actually a great thing. Everyone in ICG should have a basic concept of what this means, know a couple of the jargon words, and understand at least in a very macro-vision why I’m pushing so hard for this.

OOP means to build everything in smaller pieces, with contained and explicit functionality with exactly what it needs to run and no more. This means that a project is always a combination of these smaller pieces to be combined into one massive application. These pieces have to be built in a fashion where they’re autonomous and completely disregard the environment. All the data and functionality is built in the object.

What this means? Perhaps a little more work. Yes, it will take longer to build than straight up procedural scripting, but it is worth in the long run. What this will do for us is to actually not have to rewrite code … sure you can cut and paste, adapt, merge pieces of your previous programs, but they don’t necessarily have to be compatible, it may not merge into what you have in mind precisely. OOP overcome that problem. You will not need to modify the object (unless you’re extending the functionality). The objects are being called by what is called a controller. This controller defined that this object does, and what does it interacts with. A new program really only need a new controller and new views, the objects will remain intact.

I am not referring to any specific language; this applies for .NET, ColdFusion, ActionScript, Java, or practically any programming language we could ever use at ICG.

If you’re not familiar with any of the following terms, look them up, ask around, or create a buzz in the office, for real, this is the future of scripting. OOP, MVC, Modularity, Inheritance, Encapsulation, Abstraction, Polymorphism, Reusability, Scalability, Encapsulation, Design Patters, Design by contract, UML, DAO, TO, Bean, Refactoring, Coupling, Cohesion, Data Hiding, Façade, Factory Method, Factory Object, Overload, Unit Testing… there are many more and I don’t expect you to fully understand all of them, but some are really important.

OOP mainly means reusability and scalability. These two terms for me mean robust, error-free, and time saving.

It is a completely different mentality, coding style, and I wouldn’t expect anyone to fully grasp it in a short period of time. At first it’s really hard to understand why bother, and why to go through all the extra work … it will end up saving you vast amount of time in the future. It is a structured way of organizing code, easy to document, easy to maintain, easy to share and work in a group environment.

We always have a tight deadline, time constrains, but we have learn, witnessed, and seen that if we do it the right wrong at the beginning we’ll have to end up redoing it… it will compensate to do it right!

 So there’s this huge ticket regarding the Firefox+Roboform problem. Seems like it’s not Firefox, but the roboform adaptor that actually uses some features it shouldn’t be using that were discontinued in version 1.0.5 for security reasons. Anyways, I just downloaded 1.0.6 and of course it broke. But! I upgraded the adaptor and it works. I just can’t live w/o by Roboform.

For those who use firefox and roboform,  do not upgrade to the latest version (1.0.5) because it will immedialy crash. I just had to installed 1.0.4 back.

Just thought I’ll spread the ColdFusion spirit across the community.
Get your CF t-shirt here.