For technology enthusiasts living in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area there is never a shortage of interesting technical and networking events to attend. Most IT professionals in the area are aware of the larger organizations (NOVAJUG) and events (NFJS), but if you’re looking for something a little more specific, one great resource to use is the D.C. Tech Events Calendar.

I get it, I just don't want it.

I'm hearing the phrase User Experience thrown around quite a bit these days. It's become an overloaded term that means different things to different folks, yet we all seem to agree with the premise that a positive user experience is essential.

Did you know that the Hudson project has grown from 200,000 to 500,000 lines of code since January of 2007?

Did you know there's a guy in France (Jim Meyering) who has contributed to the GCC, CVS, Emacs, and Perl projects?

The website ohloh.com has this and lots of other interesting information about open source projects.

At the Macworld keynote address, Steve Jobs introduced the MacBook Air. It has been dubbed the world’s thinnest notebook, measuring 0.16-inches at its thinnest and 0.76-inches at its maximum height. I think the closest competitor to the MacBook Air is a notebook from Sony.

Researchers at Newcastle University in the UK are working on a project they call 'Draw a Secret'. Instead of using traditional textual passwords, 'Draw a Secret' allows users to draw a picture as their password. Originally this project was focused on providing a password alternative for users of handheld/mobile devices, for which pen input is easier than text input.

I joined Platinum Solutions 10 months ago today. My previous experience was with larger companies, corporate in nature I found my experience with these other companies to be more competitive in nature (peer to peer competition) versus the team environment I enjoy at Platinum Solutions.

Unless you have been living behind your monitor and keyboard only to look up to find the coffee mug you knocked over, you've most likely heard about all the attention dynamic languages, or dynlangs, have been getting these days. Dynamic Languages (or scripting languages) have been taking their spot in the limelight in recent years... I feel this is in large part due to the readily available video streaming sites showcasing the benefits of such languages/frameworks.

I've been a user of Debian since the "Potato" release in 2000. Ubuntu is a Debian based distro that focuses on a platform that should "just work" (TM). Ubuntu works great with my Dell D820 Laptop and had no problems with my sound card, video driver, and power management. I was definitely a happy camper so I thought I'd share how to create a dual boot environment with Ubuntu + XP.

Making a dual boot of Ubuntu with Windows XP on your PC is ridiculously easy. I'll describe the steps for the installation and also what you should do post-install to give you a more usable system.

Platinum Solutions recently rolled out “Success Factors”, a web-based hosted application that we use for performance reviews and goal management. The company, SuccessFactors, touts their product as a “Performance & Talent Management” system. This system replaced a tired MS Word template that we have used for the past seven years.

I recently completed my first review for one of our superstar software developers named Navid. While I have sat through a lot of demo’s Success Factors when we were evaluating it for purchase, this was my first real hands-on use of the system.