Gay marriage: the database engineering perspective

Gay marriage: the database engineering perspective is a rather old article on how gay marriage (and other types of marriages) can affect technology, but somehow I missed it for all these years.

It’s interesting from a variety of perspectives – technical, social, and cultural.  It’s also somewhat tongue in cheek, yet insightful and thought-provoking.  Irrelevant of your views on the subject, I recommend this read.  Where else will you find 14 database schema designs trying to solve the same problem.

The legal ramifications of what I’m about to describe are unguessable. I have no idea what rights a civil union like the ones which would be possible below would have, nor do I have any idea what kind of transhuman universe would require so complex a system. This is the marriage database schema to take us up to the thirty-first century, people.

If databases are that difficult to adjust, I can’t even imagine the effort needed for humans…

The 20 best wireframe tools

 

Creative Bloq lists 20 best wireframe tools.  The selection varies from free, through cheap, to expensive, and covers web-based, desktop, and mobile solutions.  Quite handy for those of us not involved in web design on a daily basis, but needing a sketch / mockup / wireframe tool once in a while.

The list includes the following:

  1. Wireframe.cc
  2. Moqups
  3. UXPin
  4. Fluid UI
  5. Balsamiq Mockups
  6. Axure
  7. Pidoco
  8. Visio (surprise, surprise)
  9. InDesign CC
  10. Photoshop CC (no surprise)
  11. Photoshare
  12. Penultimate
  13. Pencil Project
  14. OmniGraffle
  15. Gliffy
  16. MockFlow
  17. Frame Box
  18. FlairBuilder
  19. Justinmind
  20. HotGloo

Update (May 22, 2017): Also, have a look at this list of mockup tools.

Google Open Source Website

Google announced its new Open Source website:

Today, we’re launching opensource.google.com, a new website for Google Open Source that ties together all of our initiatives with information on how we use, release, and support open source.

This new site showcases the breadth and depth of our love for open source. It will contain the expected things: our programs, organizations we support, and a comprehensive list of open source projects we’ve released. But it also contains something unexpected: a look under the hood at how we “do” open source.

The site currently features over 2,000 open source projects that Google has released and contributes to.

Hellenic Bank Open API

Oh. My. God.  The future is here.  Hellenic Bank is (finally!) introducing an API.  Not sure yet what exactly one would be able to do with it, but even if it’s just to check an account balance, it’s progress already.

I vaguely remember being part of the effort to convince Hellenic Bank (or any Cyprus bank for that matter) to provide an API to my then employer … erm … about 10 years ago.  The effort was beyond describable at the time.  But I knew the day would come, and it’s finally here.

These are probably the biggest technology news since the time PrimeTel became an ISP with its own submarine cables.