New iPod Shuffle

Apple has released iPod Shuffle. It's smaller than a pack of gum and is available in 512MB and 1G. The footnote on Apple's website says:

Do not eat iPod shuffle.

Analyzing IIS logs offline

I'm currently using Webalizer provided by my web hoster to analyze IIS logs of one of my sites but my logs accumulate fast, forcing me to move them from the remote server to my desktop. This means I can't do analysis on a wider time range on the server side. Thus, I need an offline solution, preferably easy to set up and intuitive to use.

Some googling around revealed that there's a nice lightweight Windows-based freeware analyzer, useful for analyzing web logs offline. It's called WebLog Expert Lite (WEL) and it comes with a Windows installer! :-) WEL supports IIS and Apache logs and can read GZ and ZIP compressed log. Multiple analysis profiles can be configured to analyze downloaded logs from different websites. The log reports are in HTML format incorporating nice graphical charts. Because the reports reside locally, paging through the reports is fast!

WilsonORMapper v3.1

Paul Wilson has released version 3.1 of his much evangelized O/R mapper. Read his blog post here.

Bird's eye view of CMMI

It's the monthly MIND gathering again and this time the topic of highlight was CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration). It's time well-spent as the speaker gave a gripping two-hour presentation.

Software development expertise: Demand

I was thinking of a way to gauge the current demand for expertise in various software development skills and what simpler way than to do a keyword search in a leading online job recruitment website in Malaysia using the site's own search engine. Here's what I found:

c - 137 (note however, it covers c, c++ and c# due to search engine limitations)
java -131
oracle - 114
sql server - 81
asp - 76
html - 70
xml - 70
visual basic - 60
.net - 58
j2ee - 54
vb - 54
javascript - 44
asp.net - 43
jsp - 40
php - 34
perl - 33
mysql - 32
db2 - 28
crystal reports - 27
vb.net - 27
sdlc - 25
uml - 19
web services - 15
struts - 14
ejb - 12
weblogic - 12
com - 11 (covers com+ as well)
delphi - 11
servlet - 10
xsl - 9
xslt - 8
dcom - 7
rpg - 5
soap - 5
python - 4
extreme programming - 3
msmq - 3
rational rose - 3
rup - 3
ado - 2
mts - 2
ado.net - 1
corba - 1
msf - 1
soa - 0
windows forms - 0
winforms - 0
c# - (?) .......it can't handle "#" ....duh!
c++ - (?) ......it can't handle "++" either

I must point out that this method of measuring demand are at best crude. For example, the results returned for Oracle and SQL Server cover not only those hiring software development expertise but also DBAs. Moreover, some employers may imply requiring a certain skillset but did not list the skills explicitly in their requirements. So, I leave it to your interpretation!