What is a PAD file?

PAD stands for Portable Application Description, and a PAD file is a clear and easy way for software authors to provide online sources with information about their products. The advantage of using a PAD file is that it enables you to store all the descriptions and specifications in one single place – system requirements, price, contact info, file names, download URL’s and more. Another great thing about PAD files is that they’re so easy to create – and that it doesn’t cost you anything! The Association of Shareware Professionals have put together a range of totally free tools that allow …

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The domain name life cycle

When you buy a domain name from a registrar, you are usually given the option to specify how many years you want to register it for. After that, you can transfer your name to a web hosting company that will either build and host your website, or just host it. When you “buy” a domain name, you’re actually just leasing it for the period of time you paid for when you registered it. As that period nears its end, a series of stages occurs which ends in the domain name being “deleted”.

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Building Scalable Databases: Denormalization, the NoSQL Movement and Digg

Database normalization is a technique for designing relational database schemas that ensures that the data is optimal for ad-hoc querying and that modifications such as deletion or insertion of data does not lead to data inconsistency. Database denormalization is the process of optimizing your database for reads by creating redundant data. A consequence of denormalization is that insertions or deletions could cause data inconsistency if not uniformly applied to all redundant copies of the data within the database. Why Denormalize Your Database? Today, lots of Web applications have “social” features. A consequence of this is that whenever I look at …

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Social Networking on Intranets

Summary: Community features are spreading from “Web 2.0” to “Enterprise 2.0.” Research across 14 companies found that many are making productive use of social intranet features. Through several rounds of research on intranet portals, we’ve repeatedly reached the same conclusions: When Intranet information architectures are structured according to the org chart, employees have a hard time finding their way around. It’s better to structure information according to how people use it, rather than what department owns it. Role-based personalization lets portals bring information to users in centralized views, rather than forcing users to navigate an immense information space to find …

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Programmer Stereotype

Cowboy Coder Cowboy Coders are programmers who write code according to their own rules. They may be very good at writing code, but it doesn’t generally follow the standards, processes, policies, or anything else derived from the group. Cowboy Coders work well alone, or in the old-style CaveProgrammer environment, but they rarely, if ever, work well in a team. Often times, they are a burr in the saddle that keeps the team from getting positive work done. The above elicits mixed emotions. I have often been a CowboyCoder; in some circumstances I didn’t have a choice (I was the *only* …

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Top-level domain (TLD)

O domínio de topo (sigla: TLD, do inglês top-level domain) é um dos componentes dos endereços de Internet. Cada nome de domínio na Internet consiste de alguns nomes separados por pontos, e o primeiro desses nomes é o domínio de topo, ou TLD. Por exemplo, no nome de domínio exemplo.com, o TLD é com (ou COM, visto que nos TLDs a capitalização é ignorada). Os TLDs são usados em primeiro lugar com o protocolo DNS, que transforma os nomes de domínio em endereços IP. Podem dividir-se em duas classes: TLDs de código de país (ccTLDs, de country code TLDs) e …

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Site ou portal?

As diferenças entre site, portal, hotsite e minisite. Por Bruno Rodrigues (http://webinsider.uol.com.br/index.php/2005/04/18/site-ou-portal/) Por vezes, dizer que o webwriter lida com o universo da informação na web é muito vago. Afinal, em que ?caixas? o texto, a imagem, a animação, o ícone e tantos outros elementos informativos da mídia digital ?moram? de fato dentro de um campo tão amplo? Definir estes espaços é a grande dificuldade para os profissionais do webwriting ? e não sem motivo. Conceitos como portal, hotsite e até mesmo site se misturam e provocam tantas dúvidas que acabam por interferir no resultado final da boa distribuição da …

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