Any organization that develops software has a lot of software around that could be potentially reused. Reusing software is of course a good thing. Serendipity, accidentally coming across useful code is a highly underestimated way for reusing software. To increase the change of software being reused like that is making all source-code searchable. So how do you make all the source-code in your organization searchable, just like open-source but without open-sourcing all your software? A few weeks ago I came across OpenGrok, a web-application that allows you to that: making all your organization’s code searchable. Installation was pretty easy. OpenGrok is a java-webapplication, packaged as a war-file (WebARchive), a standard way of packaging webapplications in Java. There’s a script to install the webapplication in a few popular application servers, such as Apache Tomcat.

I decided to install on Tomcat. Installation was almost a breeze. Only minor challenge was the deploy script wasn’t yet ready for Tomcat 8, but that was fixed easily. After that I indexed some of my source-code I had developed over time, and my I could search my code! Using various query I could find various classes, types that were present in my code. Queries aren’t as advanced as what sites like OpenHub offer, let alone what you can do in Hoogle. Nevertheless, it’s better than having all your code locked up in source-repositories.

Read more

Bitcoin’s only some weird digital money, interesting to cypherpunks only? With nearly all financial institutions investigating or investing in Bitcoin-related technologies I guess the answer is obvious. But does Bitcoin have any value to you, if you’re not into the banking? Certainly: a lot of innovative products work on top of Bitcoin or use the blockchain in another way. In this article I’ll list some recognizable problems, from Bicycle-renting to digitally signing documents to selling the electricity your windmill has generated to your neighbor, and solutions on the blockchain.

Read more