A new tip in IBM's developerWorks shows you how to monitor application usage, system attributes, and user activity to more effectively use the power-management systems of your Linux laptop or desktop computer.

Recent developerWorks articles include An introduction to XML User Interface Language (XUL) development about building desktop apps with the XUL runtime environment under Firefox 3.0. 

This is a tutorial in which you start to program in XUL, learn about some tools to help you develop XUL apps, and assemble an XUL-based blog editor as you enhance your Web development skills to build desktop apps with XUL.

There's also Build Java EE applications with IBM Rational Application Developer and WebSphere Application Server about creating an end-to-end Java EE application to build a JPA entity, a session bean that calls the JPA, a servlet that invokes the session bean, and a Web page that calls the servlet.

Another tutorial is Install and configure an enterprise-level Web server about integrating the IBM HTTP Server in modern enterprise environments or as a stand-alone web server.

This tutorial explains why IBM HTTP Server, a key component of IBM WebSphere Application Server, is also an excellent choice as a stand-alone Web server because of its standard configuration and seamless upgrade path for evolving enterprise Web environments.

And how about Wicket: A simplified framework for building and testing dynamic Web pages? No, it won't assist the Australian cricket team, much as they seem to need help after yesterday's defeat by India in the 4th test match.

Wicket is an object-oriented approach to developing dynamic Web-based UI applications. Because Wicket is pure Java and HTML code, you can leverage your knowledge about Java to write applications based on Wicket, dramatically reducing your development time.

Unlike frameworks based on the Model-View-Controller (MVC) model, such as Struts, Wicket takes away from you the task of handling request/response objects, which is inherent with technologies such as servlets. By taking away this task, Wicket allows you to concentrate on the application's business logic.

The above is all very meaty stuff, but developerWorks has other sorts of handy articles too, some of them not quite so draining on the old grey matter.

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