Social Bookmarks (Furl)

According to Answers.com, Social bookmarking is: “an activity performed over a computer network that allows users to save and categorize (see folksonomy) a personal collection of bookmarks and share them with others. Users may also take bookmarks saved by others and add them to their own collection, as well as to subscribe to the lists of others.”

Basically this means that instead of adding favourites or bookmarks in my browser of the moment, I collect and store interesting links online. My personal gain here is that I have build, and am building, an archive which I can reach regardless on which pc/mac I work. In the process the archive has become searchable and shareable. Many times I’ve discovered a valuable source through my social bookmarking peers.

Below you’ll find a short overview of my recent ‘social bookmarks’ at ‘Delicious‘.

Recent bookmarks:

1. Windows Server 2008 Core Quick Reference - Mark Empson's Blogalot - Site Home - TechNet Blogs:
   This month I have been setting up my first Windows 2008 core server to go into a production environment. It has been a very interesting experience as I was expecting a straight forward process but ran into a few challenges. What with some vendor specific hardware and a bizarre WSUS issue, I have certainly had some fun. Therefore I thought that I would share with you my cheat sheet that has a few basic commands that got me through this build and some commands seemed to be harder to find than expected. Now they are in no particular order from a technical point but are in the order that I found them/needed them.
2. How to Configure a Server Core Domain Controller: Vanilla to First DC in a Forest - Benp's Guide to Stuff - Site Home - TechNet Blogs:
   Sometimes you just want a new Domain created quickly for a bit of testing. Given that Windows 2008 ships with server core, a light footprint version of the OS, itě°Ë?€™s ideal for being the domain controller. As I am fairly inexperienced with Server Core I had to search all over the place to find information on how to go from a vanilla server core build, to a dc running a brand new domain. I figured out a set of commands that achieve this, so thought I would share them with the world.
3. 20 Fresh JavaScript Data Visualization Libraries:
   There are plenty of JavaScript libraries out there for rendering your otherwise plain and boring numerical data into beautiful, interactive, and informative visualizations. The beauty of using JavaScript for data visualization is that, if created correctly, your data will be highly accessible (usually via HTML tables). A long time ago (2008), I wrote about JavaScript solutions for graphing and charting data and this article revisits the topic with twenty more JavaScript libraries that you can use to bring your data to life.
4. Demos - JavaScript InfoVis Toolkit:
   The JavaScript InfoVis Toolkit provides tools for creating Interactive Data Visualizations for the Web
5. PebbleRoad: Manager’s guidebook on intranet redesign projects:
   The intranet manager is one of the most important people in an intranet design project. Usually the effort that goes into such a project is on the same level as that of a major organizational change initiative. It is therefore important that the manager is thoroughly prepared for the journey. If you are managing your first redesign project or are new to intranets or just love intranets then we have the resource to get you started: Manager’s guidebook to intranet design projects. This 64-page guidebook takes you through eight stages of a typical intranet design project. Each stage has many activities that go under it. We’ve described the activities and included the insights we’ve gathered over the years.
6. Filtering and Formatting with Date Values - MSDN Blogs:
   Whatever data source you use in your application (SharePoint list, SharePoint library, database connection, etc.), you almost certainly will need to work with date values. For example, a SharePoint library has built-in fields to track when an item was created and when it was modified. And you might create your own date field in a list or table to designate when an item is due to a stakeholder, or when you estimate it will be done, or when it was completed. Displaying a date value in a Data View is a fairly simple matter; you add it as you would any other column. If SharePoint Designer detects that the column holds date values, it automatically adds extra formatting (which you can customize) to properly display the date, and optionally the time. But filtering or conditionally formatting based on date values is a more complex capability to build. In this article I'll show you how to build rich date-value capabilities with minimal effort.
7. A tiny cute SharePoint calendar (Part II) " Path to SharePoint:
   Now, have you tried to drop a SharePoint month calendar on the home page of your SharePoint site? The result… not so cute: the calendar eats up half of the screen. In this post I am going to show how with the help of CSS you can shrink your SharePoint calendar and make it fit in the right column of a SharePoint page.
8. CAML & SPQuery in SharePoint:
   Using Collaborative Application Markup Language (CAML) queries with SPQuery and SPSiteDataQuery is a faster and more efficient way of retrieving items based on known criteria compare with for each on the SPListItemsCollection and checking for the criteria. In this tutorial I’m going to discuss how you can write CAML queries for retrieving items in SharePoint List.
9. tzdata A collection of XML, PHP, Javascript, Ruby, JSON and CSV files compiled from the latest Olson TZ Database:
   The tz database, also known as the zoneinfo database or Olson database is a collaborative compilation of the world's time zones. This project provides the latest distribution of Olson time zone data in the following formats: •XML •PHP •Ruby •Javascript •JSON •CSV
10. Compressing your JavaScript with Closure Compiler:
    Closure Compiler is actually a JavaScript compiler, but rather than generating machine code like most compilers, it produces valid JavaScript code. It can rewrite JavaScript code in many interesting ways. It can identify constant expressions and replace them with constant values, replacing (15 * 280) + 16 with 4216. By doing this, it cuts 15 characters to 5. More importantly, it gives you the freedom to write your code in a clear and understandable way, and frees you from worrying about the final size of the code. Functions called in only one or two places can be inlined, replacing the function call with the contents of the function body, saving the space needed for the function declaration. Closure Compiler can even tell when two different variables are never used at the same time, letting both share the same name and ensuring that as many variables as possible use very short names for better gzip compression.

Web Development specific bookmarks:

1. 20 Fresh JavaScript Data Visualization Libraries:
   There are plenty of JavaScript libraries out there for rendering your otherwise plain and boring numerical data into beautiful, interactive, and informative visualizations. The beauty of using JavaScript for data visualization is that, if created correctly, your data will be highly accessible (usually via HTML tables). A long time ago (2008), I wrote about JavaScript solutions for graphing and charting data and this article revisits the topic with twenty more JavaScript libraries that you can use to bring your data to life.
2. tzdata A collection of XML, PHP, Javascript, Ruby, JSON and CSV files compiled from the latest Olson TZ Database:
   The tz database, also known as the zoneinfo database or Olson database is a collaborative compilation of the world's time zones. This project provides the latest distribution of Olson time zone data in the following formats: •XML •PHP •Ruby •Javascript •JSON •CSV
3. Compressing your JavaScript with Closure Compiler:
   Closure Compiler is actually a JavaScript compiler, but rather than generating machine code like most compilers, it produces valid JavaScript code. It can rewrite JavaScript code in many interesting ways. It can identify constant expressions and replace them with constant values, replacing (15 * 280) + 16 with 4216. By doing this, it cuts 15 characters to 5. More importantly, it gives you the freedom to write your code in a clear and understandable way, and frees you from worrying about the final size of the code. Functions called in only one or two places can be inlined, replacing the function call with the contents of the function body, saving the space needed for the function declaration. Closure Compiler can even tell when two different variables are never used at the same time, letting both share the same name and ensuring that as many variables as possible use very short names for better gzip compression.
4. 15 Great jQuery Plugins For Better Table Manipulation:
   Table is the most difficult object to be styled, due to its browser compatibility and markup. Most of the designers and developers will use div to replace table because it is much more easier to style div than table. But, we still need table in our daily applications, one of the best example is comparison table. This article will share 15 useful jQuery table plugins for you to display, sort, filter and manipulate your data in table.
5. Integrate SexyBookmarks into any HTML page with JavaScript:
   How to integrate Sexy Bookmarks in an ordinary HTML page
6. 13 Useful JavaScript Solutions for Charts and Graphs | Resources:
   Graphs and charts are used to simplify complex data and make it easy to read and understand. So it really wouldn’t make sense if it was difficult to integrate a graph into a website. Thanks to Javascript and a bunch of talented developers, we have at our disposal solutions for easily adding graphs and charts to our web projects. Here are 13 of these, including some written for jQuery and MooTools, that you will find very useful.
7. The Mystery Of CSS Sprites: Techniques, Tools And Tutorials - Smashing ...:
   CSS Sprites are not new. In fact, they are a rather well-established technique and have managed to become common practice in Web development. Of course, CSS sprites are not always necessary, but in some situation they can bring significant advantages and improvements – particularly if you want to reduce your server load. And if you haven’t heard of CSS sprites before, now is probably a good time to learn what they are, how they work and what tools can help you create and use the technique in your projects.
8. Drawing charts in SharePoint and Office Live | Darren's SharePoint and ...:
   In my article I used the List Data Retrieval web service to query an arbitrary list extracting rows of information as XML or an object array. As well as this method, we can also use the GetListItems method of the Lists Web Service to get data from lists and views. Today I’m going to describe how to use this service along with a Flash charting component to build live charts in web parts which are populated directly from data held in lists within your Office Live or SharePoint site.
9. XML/SWF Charts > Introduction:
   XML/SWF Charts is a simple, yet powerful tool to create attractive charts and graphs from XML data. Create an XML source to describe a chart, then pass it to this tool's flash file to generate the chart. The XML source can be prepared manually, or generated dynamically using any scripting language (PHP, ASP, CFML, Perl, etc.) XML/SWF Charts makes the best of both the XML and SWF worlds. XML provides flexible data generation, and Flash provides the best graphic quality.
10. Balsamiq Mockups:
    Online wireframing/mockups tool (demo)

Related:

• See more bookmarks at my personal Delicious.

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