The next edition of Toronto’s popular DemoCamp will be held on Monday, February 25, 2008 at the Toronto Board of Trade.  You can find more details on the registration page.

You can find all the details here.

There’s been a bit a of brouhaha in the database blogosphere following a comparison that was made between the MapReduce framework and modern relational database management systems.

In this post on the Database Column blog, authors David J. DeWitt and Michael Stonebraker argued, among other things, that MapReduce was "a giant step backward in the programming paradigm for large-scale data instensive applications."

The debate continued with many thoughtful comments added to the original post.

On January 25th, David and Michael responded to many of the comments with another post.

If one of your New Year’s resolutions is to get organized, then I recommend David Allen’s Getting Things Done book. 

If you’d like to get a taste of the concepts without opening your wallet, check out this video of David Allen speaking to Google employees.

I’ve been using Windows Live Writer for a few months now.  It is the best Windows-based blog composition application that I’ve used.  It works great with Wordpress and, apparently, also supports other blogging platforms like Blogger, TypePad, LiveJournal, etc.  Best of all, it is free.

A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon a Toronto start-up called Realosophy.

Their web site provides comprehensive profiles of Toronto neighbourhoods and tips for home buyers.

Each profile is an attractive "mashup" that offers information on housing prices, sales, styles, and taxes as well as performance reports for the local schools.  They also include a directory of nearby entertainment, health, and shopping services that are plotted on a embedded Google Map.

A few weeks ago, the DB2 Monitoring Console was released.  The monitoring console is “a light weight, web based console for DB2 for Linux, UNIX and Windows.  It is also a set of building blocks for rapidly developing your own console or PHP Web-based application.”

It has been released under the Apache License and is hosted at SourceForge.  To learn more, visit: http://sourceforge.net/projects/db2mc

A panel at the Onion News Network discusses what animals should be doing to advance animal rights.

DB2 Viper 2 is out of beta and now available as DB2 9.5 for Linux, UNIX, and Windows.  The What’s New guide provides a complete list of all the new features. If you’d rather take a test drive, download DB2 9.5 now.

PS.  If you’re looking for a version of DB2 for Linux, UNIX, and Windows that is free to develop, deploy, and distribute, check out DB2 Express-C.

Are you an avid web surfer or news junkie?  Are you using RSS news feeds?  If not, then check out the video.

RSS in Plain English

I’ve been subscribing to RSS news feeds for a long time.   It’s easy, saves a lot of time, and automatically keeps me up-to-date on Jeff’s crazy ideas, Finn’s latest photos, and other important news.

Personally, I prefer web-based readers like Bloglines or Google Reader.  That way I can check-in from work or at home.