I’m not crazy about Java, but this video is great.

Most people have heard of Google Chrome by now, a new web browser that is supposed to be faster, simple, and fully standards compliant. What most people don’t know is that Google Chrome is built from Chromium, an open source web browser with the same bells and whistles, but without all the Google branding.

After a full week of using Chromium, I like it so much that it has become the default web browser on my little netbook. Don’t get me wrong, I still prefer to use Mozilla Firefox with a few must-have plugins on my desktop for heavy-duty web development work; but this gives me another option.

What about you?  what is your favorite web browser?

Let’s face it, data can sometimes be boring. I recently discovered a really cool way to visualize your data and make it more interesting. Let me ask you a simple question — which one of the examples below is the easiest to understand?

(1)

(2)

We can all read the data in the 1st example, but the pie chart quickly puts the data into perspective for most of us.

Did you mouse-over the pie chart? This interactivity is made possible with gRaphaël, an open source javascript library with a goal to help you create stunning charts. We are basically using pure code to render scalable vector graphics (SVG) on the fly.

If you want to visualize some boring data for your next project, head over to gRaphael for more examples and to download the source code. Remember that a picture is worth a thousand words.

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you probably heard about Ubuntu; the FREE operating system that kicks ass. Ubuntu is open source software, that means that thousands of developers around the world work on it. Personally, I’ve been using it since version 6.04 and it keeps getting better! The new version due out this month.