It looks like the cellular companies couldn't stop the proposed legislation for slashing prices of roaming calls in the EU. Good news for frequent travelers and chatterboxes. more »

Quite a funny optical illusion - it looks like the little green dragon turns its head to follow you as your position moves, but it actually doesn't! Follow the link to see the original video, demonstrating the curious effect. more »

From Microsoft's Media Connect FAQ : Fewer software requirements. Unlike Windows Media Connect 1.0, version 2.0 no longer requires installation of Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 Well, even Microsoft sometimes dump .NET, although it is hard to believe. more »

After many years of development, GnuCash - the open source personal and small business money management application, has moved to version 2.0. This is essentially a port go gtk2/Gnome2, and will hopefully, run on Windows as well, given true cross-platform open source and high quality tool for everyone. I used GnuCash for many years and find it quite intuitive and simple. more »

According to this blog , some Chinese engineers claim, that they managed to reverse-engineer the protocol, used in Skype VoIP products. They are also said to be developing an example application implementing the protocol, which will be able to communicate with other Skype clients. more »

After almost a year of development, the long-awaited Linux version of Skype with proper sound support has been released . It definitely seems faster on my machine. more »

Firefox 1.5 is quite cool, but the forthcoming Firefox 2.0 should be even better. Built-in spellchecker and a few other user-visible features, and a lot of bug fixes and performance improvements. If you want to try it without tampering with your current installation, try using Portable Firefox 2.0beta . more »

According to an article in FT, EU is actively discussing the issue of taxes on diapers. I especially liked the phase, that it has "exposed a rare split in the otherwise harmonious 25-strong executive body of the EU" - I think it's rather ironic. more »

2020 update: this article was written well over a decade ago. Feel free to take a look at my recent thoughts on the subject of web development. Some might it also useful to read about my migration from Drupal to Django+Wagtail.AbstractC++ has always been considered a language for mission-critical server-side functionality. Web development, although in part server-side based, is done using different software development languages. I try to analyse what … more »