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Konstantin A Lukin's Blog (14)

Howto manage Cron Jobs and Task Queues using Google AppEngine

In the process of discovering Google AppEngine's list of available features, I recently came across Cron Jobs and Task Queues. During my fairly extensive web development carrier, these terms always seemed like far away concepts that will not likely be a part of my average web development toolkit. At first, seeing these in AppEngine reminded me of those old mainframe systems that you read about in computer science manuals. One day I had some time to actually look into it, and was surprised and in… Continue

Added by Konstantin A Lukin on October 26, 2009 at 5:00pm — No Comments

Optimizing CSS with a simple Groovy script and CssTidy

Recently I've been working on a web project that requires quite an extensive CSS markup. Keeping it all in one file became unmanageable pretty quickly, so we've designed a way to split our styles into logical subdirectories with import statements, which is quite easily done with a css @import tag. Here is an example of what a main file might look like:


@import 'common.css';
@import 'base.css';
@import 'reset.c

… Continue

Added by Konstantin A Lukin on October 15, 2009 at 2:00pm — 2 Comments

An Overview of Google Web Toolkit (GWT)

Aloha TechHuians! If you have been hearing about GWT lately, but don't have the time to get into it, maybe this post sheds some light on more notable features that GWT offers, so you ca

… Continue

Added by Konstantin A Lukin on September 12, 2009 at 11:00am — 10 Comments

An Overview of Google App Engine (GAE)

These days, web developers are faced with a lot of difficult choices. One of them is which technology to pick for the next app, another is which hosting to use. It takes time and experience to make winning choices, especially when dealing with time sensitive deliverables. Back in the days… Continue

Added by Konstantin A Lukin on August 24, 2009 at 8:30pm — 2 Comments

How to use GMail as a handy personal database

GMail has been my email of choice for some time, but only recently that I've learned about some of its 'lesser known features', and especially their potential applicability. In this blog I'd like to describe how some of such features can… Continue

Added by Konstantin A Lukin on August 3, 2009 at 10:00am — 6 Comments

Google Chrome OS and the 'Web of Tomorrow'

IT ALL STARTED WITH A SEARCH ENGINE. Back in the days, Google Search has taken over the web by its simplicity, light-weight, and precision of returned results.… Continue

Added by Konstantin A Lukin on July 9, 2009 at 4:00pm — 5 Comments

GWT + Flex = GXT?

For all RIA fans out there who are deciding whether to go with GWT or Flex for your next projec… Continue

Added by Konstantin A Lukin on July 7, 2009 at 11:30am — 2 Comments

HOWTO: Turn Google Calendar into a useful Time Keeping Tool

Average software developer often juggles multiple projects at a time. One of common challenges is keeping track of time properly, especially when 'context switching' from one project to another. A quite useful tool for time tracking is Goo… Continue

Added by Konstantin A Lukin on July 4, 2009 at 2:00pm — 1 Comment

HOWTO: Consume a Groovy Web Service with Flex

Recently, I've been faced with the fact that Flex is quite popular as a web presentation layer. Given my Java background, at first I was quite reluctant to recognize this, until new projects paved the way to learn more about this RIA technology. Since I already have a considerable amount of serv… Continue

Added by Konstantin A Lukin on June 15, 2009 at 9:30pm — No Comments

HOWTO: Get started with LDAP

I've heard many times about LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol), yet never had the time to experiment with this technology. Somehow I always thought it was for those 'cool' developers, who actually had the opportunity to spend extra hours researching this topic. Well, the t… Continue

Added by Konstantin A Lukin on May 21, 2009 at 4:30pm — No Comments

HOWTO: Create a simple Groovlet

This post is for those who've heard about Serlvets and Groovy, but just don't have the time to put them together. Being no guru, I've developed a number of JSPs and Servlets in my professional carrier. Every time it is the same thing.. remembering method signatures, xml descriptors, etc.. It gets ev… Continue

Added by Konstantin A Lukin on April 21, 2009 at 5:30pm — 1 Comment

Supermarkets of the Future

Have you ever wondered what supermarkets of the future would look like? Did you ever consider an online alternative to getting your groceries? I am a surfer. I like to surf in the mornings. Then, sometimes, I do my grocery shopping. Once inside a supermarket, it is always the same thing. Looking for favorite brands, hunting for good prices, standing in lines, etc.. On average, a supermarket trip takes about 1 hour door to door. Does it have to be this way? Is there an alternative? Well, there… Continue

Added by Konstantin A Lukin on March 24, 2009 at 2:23am — 10 Comments

HOWTO: Create your own Slide Show Gadget using WebAlbums and iGoogle API

Besides programming all day, I also like to take pictures. One problem, is that after taking cool pictures, I tend to forget about them.. Recently I had some time on my hands to dig into Google technologies, especially their GData and Gadget API. Since I am already using things like iGoogle, Picasa, and WebAlbums, I wondered how difficult is it to put these technologies together to create a simple Slide Show Gadget. So in this post, I would like to discuss how to create your own Slide Show Gadge… Continue

Added by Konstantin A Lukin on March 8, 2009 at 8:00pm — 6 Comments

Is Direct RIA the next Big Thing in Web development?

Being an open source web developer for the last 10 years, I have probably tried most of open source web related technologies out there in some flavor. It all started with good old HTML. To make a long story short, now web arena is populated with things like JSP, JSTL, JSF, etc.. and notably GWT. Even though JSP is still going to stick around, GWT revolutionized my development toolbox by introducing pure Java to the world of JavaScript. Some also like to call it JavaScript hell. It is true, large… Continue

Added by Konstantin A Lukin on February 28, 2009 at 5:30pm — 2 Comments

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