Chart Construction Kit for the Java™ platform
The JCCKit is a small (< 100Kb) library and a very flexible framework for creating scientific charts and plots.

JCCKit is written for the JDK™ 1.1.8 platform (except of a Graphics2D renderer). Thus, it is suitable for scientific Applets and for PDA's running a PersonalJava™ implementation.

JCCKit : Java Charts

In terms of total broadband users, the US leads the pack with over 60 million broadband subscribers. But second-placed China is fast closing the gap. From 41 million broadband users a year ago, China now has more than 56 million and based on its current growth looks set to over-take America as the world's largest broadband market later this year.

Wow.

Broadband spreads across globe | | Guardian Unlimited Business

ION Venture Forum Callout

The Atlanta CEO Council has just announced a call for companies to present at the ION Venture Forum to be held September 25-26 at the Buckhead Ritz-Carlton in Atlanta.

This is a major investor showcase for emerging technology companies. They are expecting 120 - 150 venture capitalists at the event. I had the opportunity to do a submission for CipherTrust that was accepted and give the company's investor presentation at the event in 2003. It was well worth the time.

If you are looking to raise venture capital in the near future you can apply here. Applications close August 17.

Lance Weatherby blogging about the ION Venture Forum. Be there and be square.

Force_of_Good: ION Venture Forum Callout

Atlanta Seed-Stage Second Office

AS3O is an open coffee group for entrepreneurs, freelancers, renegade venture capitalists, creative types, developers, etc. – anyone who would like to get together outside of the office/house on a laptop – to work. We looked around Atlanta for a community of startups, artists, small businesses, etc., and not finding the exciting, entrepreneurial nexus of our dreams, we figured we’d start one of our own.

Show up, work among others.

Atlanta Seed-Stage Second Office

What is Clearsilver?

Clearsilver is a fast, powerful, and language-neutral HTML template system. In both static content sites and dynamic HTML applications, it provides a separation between presentation code and application logic which makes working with your project easier.

The design of Clearsilver began in 1999, and evolved during its use at onelist.com, egroups.com, and Yahoo! Groups. Today many other projects and websites using it.

ClearSilver

With OmniPlan, you can create logical, manageable project plans with Gantt charts, schedules, summaries, milestones, and critical paths. Break down the tasks needed to make your project a success, optimize resources, and streamline budgets. It's project management made painless.

The Omni Group - Applications - OmniPlan

Software Tools

Programming Web servers with SFS’s libasync might seem at first seem onerous, mainly because it is. As a result, the OKWS team has been developing several generic libasync tools to help programmers. The first is a Python interface to the SFS core and RPC libraries, and a similar integration into OKWS. For more information on how to install Python support, please see our directions for installing OKWS along with Python tools.

A new tool, that is entirely compatible with existing libasync-based code, is tame, which we urge you to read more about. It’s a simple C -level rewriter that makes your event code look more like threaded coded. I.e., you can make a sequence of serial blocking functions within one function body.

okws [OKWS]

If solar is less expensive than the available clean conventional sources then this might make sense. Otherwise, why bother? It's only in situations where you're already near existing daytime conventional capacity and the deployment of solar is much faster/cheaper in the short term than deployment of another clean conventional source that it might make sense. But if solar is expensive and/or time-consuming to deploy (relative to deploying another clean conventional source) then it simply doesn't make sense to use it even if it's only for dealing with peak load.

Forgive me, but you are completely wrong about this. Peak periods are exactly when things like solar really "shine." There are a couple thing you must understand about the interstate electricity grid:

First, is that it is over-designed on purpose. Most major utilities have operating reserves of power generation of between 12 - 18 % of the day's anticipated peak demand. On any given day, the system operator will have tens or hundreds of generation sources that it never dispatches (e.g., uses to produce power), but that are there "just in case." This means that utilities have multiple dispatch solutions in order to meet load (load being a measure of people who want to use electricity).

The second key principle is that utilities select their generation resoures based on a "least-cost dispatch" basis. While in practice, this gets incredibly complicated (and also includes environmental factors), the utility will pick the least expensive generators that can produce enough power to adequately supply the day's demand. In practical terms, this means that the utility will dispatch the dirtiest and most expensive to operate (on an incremental cost basis) generating facilities last.

The third principle is an outgrowth of the first two. On peak demand days (think middle of summer, air conditioners running at full blast, etc.), the number of dispatch options available to the utility decreases further and further as it commits an ever-increasingly greater share of its total generating capacity to meet demand. This means that your nastiest, dirtiest, foulest, most expensive generating facilities are dispatched on such days.

Imagine this scenario. You are Utility X. You have the following five generating facilities at your disposal:

1000 MW nuke.

500 MW cheaper, clean(er) coal.

500 MW slightly less cheap dirty coal.

100 MW incredibly expensive natural gas.

20 MW aging oil burner that spews out more toxics that Paris Hilton on a breathalyzer AND costs more than the GDP of small nations to operate.

Total installed capacity (a fancy term for the total amount of generation): 2110 MW.

Now imagine that hellishly hot day. Demand immediately soars to 1500 MW -- and it's not even 11 am yet. You commit your nuke and your clean coal facility. Now it's 2 pm and demand hits 2000 MW. Throw in the dirty coal. Four pm rolls around and de... [ Read More (0.3k in body) ]

40% Efficiency Solar Cells Developed

Nice titles

Nate over at webgraphics talks about a new feature he'd like to see in Safari: that titles on links should be shown in the rather pretty way that Safari currently shows dragged links:

The Safari browser showing a partially-transparent link summary when dragging a link

That's rather nice, that. Of course, it doesn't need browser support. Try mousing over, or tabbing to, some of the links on this page: you'll see the same effect. It's all done with CSS and a little bit of JavaScript.

Nice tooltip/popup lib in JS/CSS.

Nice titles

Hot deal on RAM!

scaryideas | Extensys: 64k for $1495