The decay of slashdot, Part 1

It breaks my heart when I see stories like this. The first thing that would cross my mind about a website with over a million visitors a day that carries the tagline "News for nerds, stuff that matters", is far from being an obituary for people that, while having their own merit for what they may have done, little have to do with either "news for nerds" or "stuff that matters". I wish my best to the family of the man, but it seems he has lived a long and very productive life and that his time had come. However, I have lost my own brother recently. He was only 25, and while also living a full life and being a very active civil engineer doing his doctorate thesis, the event that took him seems more memorable to a community of geeks than the passing away of the inventor of Doritos. Not because of the horrific situation, but because of the less bad side of that coin being the good that might come from the tribute of a mourning brother wishing to help prevent the same from fate coming to someone else. So, it breaks my heart that Slashdot gladly accepts publishing stories nothing related to what it supposedly stands for, and prefers to reject the publishing of stories helping to spread the word about a potentially lifesaving project to prevent something that could happen to any of them.

New book, maybe?

I've been thinking about writing a new book, this time for people who would like to learn C++ from the beginning. I'm still not sure about going forward with it, and about the details, but it will, without a doubt, already be up to date with the latest revision of C++. My previous book, about good programming practices for C++, has already seen some sales, although not really significant. I'm still unsure if I'm going to merge the subjects of both books or keep them in separate volumes. It will, however, take much more time to release than the first one.

Adsense disabled

For reasons yet to be explained to us, Google has decided to disable Onda Technology's Adsense account. This was one of the sources of income to help with the bills. Because of it, we may have a harder time in the future. For now, it doesn't make a significant difference, as there wasn't yet enough income from it, but with the upcoming website updates and the new information to be published, it would have been an important means to ease the financial burden. I've submitted an appeal, but I'm not very positive about it. I'll stay in touch and let you know if there is any more relevant information.
UPDATE: They reaffirmed the account cancelation without any explanation.

Google+

Since we were already talking about social networks, I thought I could share that today I received an invite to join Google+. I've decided to take it for a spin, see what comes of it and share with you my thoughts. So far it looks to be quite clean and lightweight, very intuitive while also featuring some interesting eye-candy for them masses. Doesn't yet seem to be the typical social networking site clogged with features we'll never use or full of distracting elements. It appears to be something that goes straight to the subject and very focused on what it's designed to do. In the following days I'll report a bit more on this subject.

New project: The Life Bracelet

As some of you already know, my brother Miguel passed away a few days ago, on 25th of May. He was only 25 years old and the details surrounding the accident are yet unknown to us. His lifeless body was found on a public pool which should have been under surveillance. For incomprehensible reasons, no one was watching the pool at the time.

Because of that incident, a new project was created and added to the list of public projects. "The Life Bracelet" is a project to develop and implement a bracelet to monitor life signs of people in sports facilities, amusement parks, nursing homes and hospitals. The bracelet would resemble a small watch and constantly monitor pulse and oxygen saturation, transmitting the data to a central server through specialized access points. Should any problem arise, emergency teams can be dispatched immediately to the site. This way it may be possible to save lives in similar situations and give patients of healthcare institutions much more liberty and independence.

Book launch

My first book, "C++ Programming: Good Principles For Excellent Endings" has now been published.
For a long time I've been asked by numerous people I've worked with to write something like this. I've given some courses on programming best practices before. Eventually, I had the opportunity to do so and I was able to create a simple manual to help beginners getting started with some higher quality software development. This book is part of the internal documentation used at Onda Technology for training new team members. I released this partially reviewed version as an Edition Zero to gather some more input from anyone willing to contribute, so it could be improved for the final version of the first edition. I hope this not only helps a lot of people improve their skills, but also that it will help gather additional funding to support Onda Technology's research and development projects.
This book is about good practices for C++ based projects. The idea is to provide recruits and students, and even current professionals and leaders, with an appropriate manual to further enhance their C++ knowledge. This manual covers a wide range of subjects, not only from the technical point of view, but also topics about social aspects such as hiring, managing employees, working as a team and setting up an appropriate infrastructure. We encourage you to provide us with ideas of topics you would like to see covered in the book or that you believe the future generations of programmers need to be aware of. If you have any ideas, please contact us. This "Edition Zero" is a pre-release version of the final book. It most likely contains errors and requires corrections. With your help, the final result can turn out to be a great product and an indispensable tool for programmers everywhere. From those who buy the Edition Zero of the book and report valid correction suggestions, we will be choosing a few, randomly selected in lottery style, who will be offered the final version of the First Edition of the book. In order to be eligible to enter the contest and receive the gift First Edition, you'll have to provide us with a valid proof of purchase of the Edition Zero. You can acquire your copy here. We are always open to your input and we'll provide you with feedback.
The entire profits from selling this book will be used to fund the research projects being developed at Onda Technology.
You can get your copy here.

Update (06.07.2011):
The book is now available on Amazon both in paperback and Kindle edition.

It is happening

We went forward with it and, now, Onda Technology is a non-profit organization. Bureaucratic details are still being worked on and it seems to be a long process still to take a bit of time. Today we launched the new website, new contents and published preliminary information of the first projects to become public. Check our website for more details. Also, there are more surprises to come.

Changes to come

Onda Technology used to be an embryo for a corporate environment, keeping secretive about its projects and dealing with customers. Being a corporate environment or a company, never served well the purposes for the creation of this institution. Onda Technology was supposed to be a home for research and development instead of blind profiting. Now that's about to change. That's why Onda Technology is now becoming a non-profit R&D institute. Some of our projects which have, so far, been strictly for internal use and developed behind closed doors, are about to be released publicly. This will be a lengthy process, as all of us have other jobs to attend and the preparation process itself is already tedious. We'll also have to take care of the licensing, which, for a lot of reasons, to be explained later, can't be any of the current "standard" licenses. We'll also be releasing documentation and our internal manuals. But the most troublesome part is still all the bureaucracy of officially creating the non-profit Onda Technology Institute.