eSATA goes power-cable-less

The Serial ATA international organization is working toward a new specification that will do away with a separate cable for power and instead deliver power over the eSATA cable. This ought to reduce the advantage that some USB and FireWire disks have on convenience. SATA 3.0 (3000 Mbps) still does better on speed than USB 2.0 and FireWire 800, though USB 3.0 (4800 Mbps) and FireWire 3200 (3144 Mbps) would catch up soon.

Note: USB 2.0 works at 480 Mbps and FireWire 800 works at 786 Mbps.

MS Office 2008 for Mac

Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac was released on the 15th January 2008. It seeks to replace Office 2004. With support for the MS Office Open XML format, it can work with the Office 2007 file formats however it doesn't support VBA macros.

You can get more information about it along with a demonstration video at: http://www.macoffice2008.com

George Bush visits Dubai

George Bush visited Dubai on Monday (14th January 2008). The parts of the city he was visited was entirely shut down. This includes the I.T. and media firms located at the Dubai Internet City and the Dubai Media City because they fall along the road between Abu Dhabi and Dubai (since President Bush was arriving from Abu Dhabi).

You can find pictures of his visit at: http://bushindubai.googlepages.com

Alienware Crysis Curved Monitor

With monitors getting larger and cheaper every year, Alienware has introduced the best thing yet since flat screen displays - it's a curved screen! The display surrounds the user with almost 4 subpanels that fit together almost seamlessly in one large package. It runs at the 2880*300 resolution, which is not common yet.

Oracle 11g Web SQL client

Oracle 11g does not provide the iSQLPlus interface or the GUI SQL*Plus client (sqlplusw). Instead, it provides SQL Developer and APEX (Application Express).

To get a web interface for typing in SQL and getting the results, you can use the Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM) web interface, accessible at: https://localhost:1158/em (assuming you've got Oracle installed on your computer).

To log into the OEM web interface, you need to have the SELECT ANY DICTIONARY privilege (or you can use the SYSTEM account :-P ). When you're logged in, click on the Data Movement 'tab' and click the SQL Worksheet link (under the related links section). You'll now have the iSQLPlus-like interface for executing SQL queries.

EDIT: If you're using Quest SQL Navigator, you will need version 5.5.4 or later to work with Oracle 11g; this version also supports Microsoft Windows Vista.

The End for Netscape Navigator

Netscape has announced the end of development on the Netscape web browser with the last of the patches being available till 1st February 2008.

After the acquisition of Netscape by AOL, development branched off to form the open-source Mozilla foundation leaving Netscape to be a little more than Mozilla with skins and extensions. Finally, the retirement of the Netscape browser has been announced, leaving Mozilla to continue development on the browser.

Happy New Year

I would like to wish you all a Happy New Year with many more blog articles coming up on .NET, Java and technology in general. Looking forward to much better times ahead.