I’m currently starting to learn AJAX as I can see it being useful in a few projects I’m working on. The initial drive to do this had been that I was looking to have an online form dynamically update in response to input from a user. Clearly, this is easy to achieve in PHP, but it involves a page refresh, then needing an anchor to get the user back to the same spot they were at in the page. This works on a technical level, but it’s a bit clunky for the user.
I recently came across a page that did it without a refresh. This looked so cool, that I had to find out how it was done! I quickly realised that it was thanks to AJAX that something like this could happen so smoothly so that’s what started my drive to learn AJAX.
Now, in order to finish my code that I was working on, I needed to very quickly understand how to do this one cool bit of scripting, so I did a bit of digging. I came across a a great site by ‘Jamie’ called Nodstrum – A coders playground which had just the entry I was looking for! If you go to http://nodstrum.com/2007/03/20/jquery-content-loading/, you’ll find an example and the code needed to implement dynamic content loading using AJAX!
Enjoy! 
I’ve added a link to the right-hand sidebar of this site for Book Recommendations. This is where you’ll find all the books that I’ve personally found useful, as well as other programming relating books that may be helpful to you.
You can also go straight there via http://www.johnlandells.com/Recommends/Books
As a huge fan of Skype, I was very interested to read about the new Ringjacker add-on, which allows you to specify a custom ring-tone that the person you’re calling hears (yes – the person who you’re calling!!!). This intrigued me as I couldn’t see how you could do this without having some control over the other party’s Skype.
Well, a quick visit to Ringjacker’s website confirmed my suspicions:
“Note: if the contact does not have Ringjacker installed, the contact will be sent a message asking the contact to install Ringjacker. Only after the contact has installed Ringjacker will you be able to make a Ringjacker call to that contact.”
That brings me to the main point of this article – why??? If someone called me on Skype, but I was told I have to install some unknown software before I could even hear the ringtone (let alone take the call), why would I? Would you? In these days of viruses and spyware, I will only install something that I’ve researched myself and feel improves my interactions with my PC (such as Launchy). But an unknown app? Never!
If you feel you’d like the idea of installing some unknown software that will ultimately try to sell you more stuff, please let me know – I’m sure I could write something very quickly if there’s a demand! 
In the meantime, you can experience this firsthand at http://www.ringjacker.com/.
For more information on Skype, go to http://www.johnlandells.com/Recommends/Skype.
A small, tucked away news item from IDG caught my eye this morning. It was one of those “On this day…” lists that most people ignore, but the word Linux seemed to jump out at me. It turns out that the first version of the Linux kernel (0.02) was released to the public on this day in 1991!
I did some research, as this had piqued my curiosity….
http://www.linux.org had nothing specific on this – even in their section on the “Timeline” of the Linux OS. Even Wikipedia – usually a great source of information for me – was unable to help!
I eventually uncovered a post in another blog that talks about the release in some detail. You can read that at http://kerneltrap.org/node/14037.
Whilst browsing the Internet this morning, I came across a great site called ShrinkMyTunes. It intrigued me because it claims to be able to further compress MP3 files by up to 4x (yes, you read that right – 4 times!!!) in order to get more music on your iPod or MP3 player. Whilst this might not be a big deal to anyone using 160Gb iPod, those of us still using 256Mb MP3 players will welcome the technology!
However……
As a musician myself, I’m very critical about the audio quality of the music that I listen to, so I was skeptical that this technology could work without making the music sound harsh and tinny. If you go to the website (http://www.johnlandells.com/Recommends/ShrinkMyTunes) you’ll find that you can listen to some samples both uncompressed and compressed. I should point out that I couldn’t get them to work in IE7, but they worked fine under Firefox. Yes, with the good quality speakers that I have on my desk, I could hear a slight difference, but nothing that would be noticeable through in-ear earphones.
All in all, I think this is a remarkable piece of technology and I would highly recommend that anyone looking to get more music on their MP3 player gives this serious consideration.
UPDATE – 25th October 2007:
It seems that several people are having trouble dealing with this company! I would advise that you bookmark this blog and keep checking back to see if we can get things resolved before spending any money!