NixMashup for January 25, 2015

Tech Trends for 2015

I like the year-end for articles like this one which either look back or look forward in tech. This article lists 25 disruptive technology trends for 2015 according to Brian Solis. A few good bits here, like #16, Crowd capitalization accelerates disruption everywhere, and #19, The Sharing Economy is really about renting or borrowing.

#trends

Technologies Startups Use

Interesting survey analyzing AngelList data reported by startups on the technology they use. Non-scientific, but an overview of the technologies currently in play for front-end, databases, mobile OS, hosting, search and API integration.

#career, #windowstolinux

The Martian

If you enjoy reading NixMashups then you’ll probably love The Martian by Andy Weir. Lots of tech without taking away from the story. The link will get you to the Amazon product listing. Here’s a bonus link to an interview with Mr. Weir and some of the back story of the book, like how it started out as a blog and found its way to Amazon only because his readers asked him for it.

#fun

An Important Solar Tweet Pic

This is a simple tweet containing an image with a mind-blowing fact about the energy of the sun and what we have the potential to do with that energy.

#solar, #cleanenergy

Maintaining a Clean Ubuntu System

Lots of good information here on the tools and utilities available to keep your Ubuntu systems clean. Areas covered are partial and orphaned packages, disk usage, cache, temp files, cookies and other files to protect privacy, and of course, Ubuntu Tweak.

#linux, #ubuntu, #linuxutilities

LibreOffice Viewer for Android

Here’s another item for our WindowsToLinux category, with LibreOffice Viewer now available for Android. I used it on my Samsung S5, testing it on Calc and Writer files stored on my Spider Oak cloud drive and they displayed beautifully.

#windowstolinux, #linux, #android

Modern Java

A very lengthy Part 1 from Voxxed looking at the current state of Java with its diversity and newest capabilities. Good introduction to Gradle is included. The author covers the three major IDEs for Java and apparently isn’t an Eclipse fan. Other sections include documentation tools, writing succinct code, concurrency, actors, pluggable types, and other fancy Java terminology in action.

#java, #coding

Just Add Jsoup

Good example on using the URLConnection class in Java. I was thinking how easy it would be to add Jsoup with a URLConnection object for HTML parsing for extracting image thumbnails or what have you.

#java, #coding

New Saudi Desalination Plant In The Works

The world’s largest desalination plant is to be built in Saudi Arabia. Will be powered by solar, of course. The article includes a video which you’ll have to watch on YouTube but it’s a fascinating look at the sophisticated technology required to get the salt out of seawater. Billions and billions of tubes, for starters.

#desalination, #solar, #youtube

Car Technologies of the Near Future

A Forbes reporter sums up his conclusions from attending CES and the Detroit auto show with his top 10 advanced car technologies we’ll see in the next 5 years. Autonomous vehicles, though not fully autonomous. Driver override systems, biometric vehicle access (just when I’m getting comfortable with a key-less fob startup), comprehensive vehicle tracking and more.

#trends, #futuretech