Open Source

When converting a PDF to an image, I noticed the quality always seemed to be lacking. Here is a command line example that seems to produce better results..

> convert -geometry 850x -density 300 sourcefile.pdf newfile.jpg

I have been getting more and more motivated to build my own PVR lately despite the fact that I already own two Series 2 Tivos. I guess a big motivating factor is that I want something that can do HDTV instead of just standard definition television. 

I personally do not have a High Definition television but I have had a chance to see plenty of shows in high def from my computer and I am impressed! Anyway, here are two new resources that can be valuable additions to the normal places for information (like http://mythtv.org and various discussion boards).

The first is a 15 minute video from former TechTV host Kevin Rose on his new site called Systm. Their second episode is somewhat of a HOWTO for building your own MythBox.

The second resource is an O'Reilly article called "Building My MythTV Box, Part 1: Hardware" that has very sound advice and does a great job of making some of the tough decisions on what to use for your HTPC.

John Coggeshall talks about Oracles new addition to their OTN site for php developers.

While I was attending the International PHP Conference in Amsterdam, I had an opportunity to stop by the Oracle exhibit and get introduced to a brand-new PHP Developer Center on Oracle's Developer Network! This is the second such announcement from a major database company (SAP recently launched a new PHP Development Forum which I am moderating as part of a SAP/Zend joint effort). Between Oracle, SAP and of course IBM it is becoming increasingly clear that PHP has moved from a thriving open source project to an enterprise solution powerhouse for web applications!

IBM is putting its corporate heft behind your favorite web development technology.

IBM announced a partnership with Zend to create a bundle called Zend Core, which includes IBM's Cloudscape-embedded database and Zend's PHP development tools. Zend sells tools built on the open-source edition of PHP and offers related services.

Just so you know, there is actually a fork of HTMLArea called
Xinha
which has alot of the bugs (that are currently in htmlarea) fixed. Most importantly, it is actively being developed where HTMLArea has pretty much died on the vine.