Author: Stan Shinn

I've long used OpenOffice.org's robust Draw tool (too bad they don't have a better name!). Now comes Inkscape, another cross-platform, free, open source drawing tool with capabilities similar to Illustrator, Freehand, and CorelDraw that uses the W3C standard scalable vector graphics format (SVG). Some supported SVG features include basic shapes, paths, text, markers, clones, alpha blending, transforms, gradients, and grouping. In addition, Inkscape supports Creative Commons meta-data, node-editing, layers, complex path operations, text-on-path, and SVG XML editing. It also imports several formats like EPS, Postscript, JPEG, PNG, BMP, and TIFF and exports PNG as well as multiple vector-based formats.

Which do you like better?

A really cool way to showcase the wide audience which visits your site. gVisit.com shows a map of the last few visitors that came to your site.

How it works...

1. Register your website.
2. Copy and paste a single line of JavaScript to your website. It is easy and doesn't change the way your website works or looks.
3. You will be given your own URL that lets you track the visitors to your website using Google Maps.

People are starting to complain about the quality of Dell's customer service, although not its products. In this recent study, Dell's customer satisfaction is no simply on par with other PC vendors, while Apple has shot to the top of the consumer satisfaction list.

U.S. consumers lambasted Dell Inc. for poor customer service in a survey conducted last quarter, sending the world's largest PC vendor into a virtual tie with the rest of the PC market behind the industry-leading efforts of Apple Computer Inc.

For the second year in a row, Apple received the best rating from PC buyers in the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), said David Van Amburg, general manager of the ACSI. The University of Michigan compiles the ACSI in numerous product categories by randomly calling U.S. residents and surveying their buying habits, he said. Apple received a score of 81, compared to an industry average score of 74, in results released Tuesday. The Cupertino, California, company's focus on product innovation and customer service has won it a cadre of famously loyal customers unlike any other PC vendor, Van Amburg said. Apple also received a score of 81 in 2004. Dell, on the other hand, earned a score of 74, down from a score of 79 the previous year.

Read full article: Study: Dell customer rating plunges, Apple leads pack

It's not quite as nice as the days of double-digit growt, but worldwide IT spending is showing a healthy, steady growth that will be sustained through 2009, IDC predicted Tuesday.

Worldwide IT spending will grow at a compound annual rate of 5.9 percent through the end of 2009 to reach $1.34 trillion, up from $1.06 trillion this year, said Anne Songtao Lu, program manager for IDC's Worldwide Vertical Markets research service. "From an IT industry perspective it's quite good," she said. "There's no longer the double-digit growth they saw before 2000, but this growth rate, for a lot of quite mature technologies, is very healthy."

Read full article at InfoWorld

JBoss, the open source J2EE server, is making commercial inroads: 

JBoss on Tuesday will boost efforts to lure users of commercial application servers to its open source alternative. The JBoss Migration Program being unveiled features an assessment to define a migration strategy, an implementation program, and a subscription to the JBoss Application Server. The implementation program could involve partners such as Hewlett-Packard.

Read more at InfoWorld

PayPal's Invoicing service lets you easily send professional business invoices via email. You can:

•  Send an invoice for goods or services
•  Provide detailed line items by specifying quantity, unit price, item description, shipping details, tax, and currency
•  Generate automatically calculated totals
•  Simply fill out the invoice, review, and send
•  Save up to 10 invoices as templates for future use
•  Use PayPal's Invoicing Templates to prefill invoice fields

Currently it does not (as far as I can tell) support recurring invoices, which is the only drawback that I can see at this point.

When 'reblogging' or quoting from another site in your blog, how much cut and paste can be considered fair use? These links give informative information on this important topic:

• Blog's Blog | Copy paste : Why and Why not ?
• Chat, Copy, Paste, Prison
• Copyright.gov FAQs

PHP remains popular, so much so that vendors are either adding tool support for this language, or fighting against it, touting their alternative wares such as Java or Visual Studio. 

If Java developers are indeed picking-up PHP because - like almost anything else it seems - it is simpler to use than Java, then it will hit the marketing wall of Sun, BEA Systems, Borland, IBM and Oracle who either deliver serious Java development tools or application servers. On C , PHP must largely contend with Microsoft's Goliath-like Visual Studio. Idle curiosity could have accounted for the PHP spike EDC identified two years ago as large numbers of developers planned to evaluate or adopt PHP. When it came to using PHP, though, that's where developers probably turned to their familiar tools. While adoption may be slowing, PHP is not going away. With an estimated 2.5m PHP developers and web sites going up on a daily basis that have been built using PHP, the language is firmly ensconced in computing's landscape. The only question seems to be: how deep can PHP go in business computing?

Read more at The Register.