May 2002
Fri, 31 May 2002
Jakob Nielsen in WSJ on cell phone annoyances
Career Journal from the Wall Street Journal:
But Ms. Page also thinks owners should mute their machines whenever they can.
I usually set my own cellphone on vibrate, although that's not a perfect solution, either. Some people see red when my phone goes off on a hard tabletop.
Cellphone makers, fully aware of the growing backlash, promise improvements. They're promoting cellphone-courtesy campaigns, hoping users will voluntarily curtail their bad behavior. They're also pushing phones with polyphonic ring tones that use a greater range of frequencies and should be less annoying than the squeaking variety.
Don't bet on it. The new cellphones also play "MIDI" files—scratchy, AM-radio-quality renditions of any sound ever made. The most-downloaded rings in the U.S. include Michael Jackson's "Beat It" and Metallica's "Enter Sandman," according to Openwave Systems, a Redwood City, Calif., wireless software company.
"People just aren't satisfied with the plain ring—now they have to have the collected works of Britney Spears," says Mr. Nielsen, the technology consultant. "Do you want a rock band in your meeting room?"
It gets worse. A Nokia spokesman tells me he was in a meeting recently when a state-of-the-art cellphone suddenly began emitting human screams.
They could have been mine.[WSJ Career Journal]
As a cell-phone owner who doesn't own a land line, and a musician who appreciates fine music and silence but not the computerized bleeps of a cell phone playing Beethoven, I know this story all too well. My solution? Leave the phone on my belt, 24x7, on vibrate. Ignore it most of the time, answer it if it won't interrupt the flow. Do unto others. Please, don't destroy my next fine steak with some Britney Spears rehash. Spare me.
Posted at: 14:43 | permalink
A belated Memorial Day Thank You
On Memorial Day, I wanted to say thank you but megnut said it better than I could've possibly hoped to have done. [megnut]
Posted at: 13:34 | permalink
Kevin Mandia's Book - Incident Repsonse: Investigating Computer Crime
I came across this looking for an old pic of my friend Rick Mandia. Turns out Kevin Mandia, who is Rick's brother, wrote a book last year and didn't even tell me! The book's got some great ratings. I'll have to pick it up. Last time I talked to Kevin was a couple of emails that I traded with him while he was on his blackberry in a cafe in Washington, DC. Kevin played guitar in one of the many bands that I had in high school. Kevin was a phenomenal player. Kevin's got some interesting streaming media pieces on the Chandra Levy case. I miss the brothers Mandia. They were both unique. Haven't met anyone quite like either of them ever since.
Posted at: 08:30 | permalink
Radio can't subscribe to valid RSS in the news aggregrator
If you're an expert in RSS and Radio, could you take a look at this and offer an opinion as to what's wrong? I'm trying to subscribe to http://news.kak.net/backend.php which appears to return valid RSS but Radio doesn't like it. Radio's error messages could really use a technical writer. Sigh.
Posted at: 07:59 | permalink
Big brother is watching
Your Boss May Know Where You Are. A German company releases a Big Brother application. Also: Openwave's two wireless companies ... Vodafone's financial woes ... another hurdle to 3G ... and more.... In this week's Unwired News. By Elisa Batista. [Wired News]
Posted at: 07:38 | permalink
Thu, 30 May 2002
Dave Throckmorton's D'Cipher at Quiet Storm in Pittsburgh next week
If you're in Pittsburgh, Dave Throckmorton's band, D'Cipher is going to be at quiet storm next week. Check it out.
Posted at: 21:23 | permalink
Sam Ruby responds to my Apache Axis post
Sam Ruby says:
Stubless dynamic invocation can be done via WSIF, which is in the process of being incorporated into the Apache code base.[it's just data]
Thanks, Sam! I downloaded WSIF and I'm going to take a look at that tomorrow. I'm very excited by the possibilities.
Posted at: 21:18 | permalink
Climbing nightmares continue after Mt. Rainier disaster
Seven climbers fall into Mount Hood crevasse - Nando Times 05-30-2002.
7 climbers fall in crevasse on Mount Hood - Seattle Post Intelligencer
7 Mount Hood Climbers Fall in Crevasse - LA Times
7 climbers fall in Mount Hood crevasse - San Francisco Chronicle [Google US News]
Posted at: 21:07 | permalink
Wed, 29 May 2002
Pro with blog: Dave Copeland of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
In the spirit of Dave Winer's pros with blogs postings, I came across a local pro with blog today, Dave Copeland, who writes for the Tribune-Review here in Pittsburgh. He's got some interesting thoughts on the intersection of newspapers and the web.
Posted at: 23:30 | permalink
Inexplicable sights and smells
When my wife and I returned home tonight, there was a pungent odor in the air outside that smelled like burning wood. The sky lit up every few seconds with an inexplicable bright flash. I couldn't figure out whether it was heat lightning, a light from the airport near our house, or a thermonuclear blast. Weird.
Posted at: 23:28 | permalink
Presenting The Canadian West
As I was driving to work this morning, I came upon a construction zone and had to stop for the flagman. I gazed out across the pasture to my left and saw several horses frolicking in the sun, grazing on the tall grass. I had started Copland's Billy the Kid playing when I left the house. The scene set by the tone of the music combined with the imagery of the horses in the pasture was surreal. The closest thing that I have to approximating the feeling is probably my images of The Canadian West.
Posted at: 23:25 | permalink
Online banking draws customers
Online Banking Finally Takes Off. With relatively reliable and easy-to-use online systems now available, millions of Americans are doing at least part of their banking on the Internet. By Andrew Ross Sorkin. [New York Times: Technology]
Posted at: 22:53 | permalink
Two climbers succumb to weather on Mount Rainier
I often worried about this when I lived in Redmond and frequented the park. Sigh.
Two climbers perish on Washington's Mount Rainier - Nando Times 05-29-2002.
Two Climbers Dead On Mount Rainier - Guardian, UK
Two Climbers Dead on Mt. Rainier in Wash. State - Reuters [Google US News]
Posted at: 22:48 | permalink
Chris Wenham on solving the virus plague
While studying hacker techniques, security firms have set up machines called “honeypots” that are designed to draw attacks to a place where they can be studied. With only a slight change in their purpose, and a bit of craftyness, these honeypots can be turned into “wild goose chase” machines intended to frustrate hackers. It's just one in a fat bag of psychological tricks that's getting fatter. Unfortunately, wild goose chase machines and other disincentives are beyond the scope of this essay and are the subject of another article to come. So upgrade your anti-virus, don't open that email attachment, ask for proof before you give out your password, and stay tuned.[disenchanted.com]
I too, have seen the myriad warnings regarding klez. Warnings that are from somebody who thinks that I have the klez virus but doesn't realize that klez randomizes the sender from the host's address book. I'm on the verge of taking the advice of my friend Larry Rogers, who works at CERT; building a virtualized system in which the bottom layer is linux, windows runs on VMWare for the stuff that won't work anywhere else, and mail is delivered via Evolution. I've even got my wife ready to make the switch!
Posted at: 22:34 | permalink
Apache Axis looks promising, but not quite ready for prime time
I finally got a chance today to begin playing with Apache Axis today. I used the version that is included in the JBoss 3.0 RC3 distribution. I was able to create a simple test.jws web service and deploy it by dropping it in the axis directory. I was able to hit the web service with an HTTP GET from the browser and axis gave it's default message. However, the instructions for getting WSDL generated, specifically adding ?wsdl or ?WSDL to the end of the URL doesn't work. It returns a standard error, something like resource not found. I guess I could use java2wsdl but it'd be cool if I could get the on-the-fly generation to work as well as GLUE. I'm looking forward to working with this more as it matures. I'd like to convert the stuff that I have implemented here to it and do some more SOAP development using it but it does not appear to be far enough along to compete with GLUE. I also would like to see axis do for the client side of SOAP what they did for the server side with the jws auto-deployment. An automatic client boilerplate generation something along the lines of what GLUE does in it's console:
Java Interface
// generated by GLUE/wsdl2java on Wed May 29 23:58:39 EDT 2002
public interface IRcsProxy
{
String getRanking();
String getReferers( String site, String group );
String getReferersBySite( String site, String group, int width );
String getReferersByPage( String site, String group, String url, int width );
}
Helper Class
// generated by GLUE/wsdl2java on Wed May 29 23:58:39 EDT 2002
import electric.registry.Registry;
import electric.registry.RegistryException;
public class RcsProxyHelper
{
public static IRcsProxy bind() throws RegistryException
{
return bind( "http://www.watsondesign.com/soap/urn:rcsproxy.wsdl" );
}
public static IRcsProxy bind( String url ) throws RegistryException
{
return (IRcsProxy) Registry.bind( url, IRcsProxy.class );
}
}
Posted at: 22:22 | permalink
Metalsite releases new assets auction site
Tonight, my company released it's new assets auction site. Check it out.
Posted at: 22:03 | permalink
Pittsburgh's wireless network marches onward
North Side groups get wireless Internet access. Pittsburgh Business Journal May 29 2002 3:52PM ET [Moreover - Pittsburgh news]
Posted at: 21:34 | permalink
Radio Community Server rankings viewed graphically
Sometimes, a picture is worth a thousand words. There are probably a lot of people looking at the data from the Radio Community Server that can picture this in their heads without much thought. For the rest of us, there's Excel.
What I'd really like to do is take my trusty java compiler and JBoss and write a web app that gets the data and chunks out the chart whenever the RCS server updates. That way, you could just hit a page on my site and see the chart up to the minute instead of this ugly Excel hack. Hmm...
Posted at: 18:31 | permalink
Microcontent News analysis of blogs and traditional media
Blogosphere: the emerging Media Ecosystem [( blogdex : recent )]
Posted at: 07:20 | permalink
Norah Jones - The next big thing
If you haven't heard this girl, check her out. Most notable? She's the daughter of Ravi Shankar. Norah Jones Tops The Charts [eJazzNews.com : Daily Jazz News, Reviews, CD Releases, Jazz Events]
Posted at: 07:13 | permalink
Movable type 2.11 is up and running
Check it out here. Mostly a smooth process, though the usual hiccups with cgi config. Everything's working now except the HTML help throws a 500 internal server error. Other than that, I'm able to post and it looks clean and it loads a lot faster than my Radio blog. That may change once the content gets broader and deeper. Cool!
Posted at: 00:22 | permalink
Mon, 27 May 2002
Song of the week
A cover of The Doobie Brothers Long Train Runnin' by my band They Might Be Cowboys.
Posted at: 10:13 | permalink
bigempty.com by way of the rebelutionary
I found this by way of the rebelutionary. Tim at bigempty.com says:
This morning I awoke from the dream to face the day. Into consciousness I carried with me an immense feeling of sorrow, loss and disbelief. I imagined, half awake, that I had never felt such a fundamental anguish. [bigempty.com]
And even out of context it seems profound to me. A lot of the writing here is profound, the photography is amazing, and the site design is about as clean as I've seen anywhere. The variety of places this person has lived just astound me. Having found this link via an Aussie site, and being located in the states myself, I'm reminded just how regional the web can be, despite the fact that we think of it as a global phenomenon. There's still a lot of local flavor to link paths and yet the commonality of thoughts, feelings, or ideas is clearly universal. It's mind-boggling.
Posted at: 08:28 | permalink
Sat, 25 May 2002
16 priests in scandal have committed suicide
Study: 16 priests in scandal have committed suicide - USA Today 05-25-2002
16 Priests Commit Suicide Since 1986 - Guardian, UK
Study: 16 priests in abuse cases have committed suicide - USA Today [Google US News]
Posted at: 19:22 | permalink
Java Swing can do HTML display & reasons why Swing apps haven't proliferated
Rebelutionary says:
Swing or DOM - should DHTML replace Swing?
It's easy to embed applets in web pages, but it's almost impossible to show web pages in a Java application.
Ay, there's the rub. Many times could I have built cool Java applications (like a Java rich client version of Radio based on JXTA) but the lack of a Swing HTML display pane has stopped that. Pity. [rebelutionary]
No, displaying HTML in a java application is not impossible. There's at least one way in the JDK: JEditorPane. I use this here in Swingin' Google! Now, I'll be the first person to tell you that displaying HTML in JEditorPane sucks. Sun has done a horrible job keeping this component up to date with the latest web standards. But, as you can see from the screenshots, it's not impossible. In fact, it's surprisingly little code. If Sun really wants to compete with M$, they need to fix horribly broken crap like this. I'm not holding my breath waiting for that to happen. And I have yet to see an open source alternative. There are commercial alternatives but who has the money?
Rebelutionary also says:
In my opinion no, Java GUIs are not dead at all - if anything they're steadily growing and improving (see IDEA for one example of a very fast, Swing based, cross platform application).
It's definitely possible to produce usable softare with Swing. My favorite example is limewire. However, it's very difficult to do it right, both in terms of the external user experience design, and the internal code design. In my mind, this is one of the primary reasons that Swing apps have not proliferated. Underlying that, I believe, is a Sun culture that makes UI work a second class citizen to the highbrow kernel stuff.
Swing suffers from the same problem that VB suffered from for a long time (still?) in that there isn't an easy way to produce a shell application that looks and feels like what most people expect from a Windows app. Thus, you wind up with people writing a lot of GUI that looks like it was designed by a crazed fortran programmer.
The problem with internal code design is that I've seen a lot of people come out of the Microsoft world, namely VB or MFC, where placement of GUI objects within a container is typically static. Exceptions would be something like NSViews from Nanosoft. I don't even know if that's around anymore. Regardless, I've seen a lot of GUI code written by Swing novices in which placement of all the objects in the GUI is static as opposed to being done dynamically with layout management, which IMHO, defeats the purpose of Swing. This leads to two other conclusions. First, typical GUI programmers have real problems learning layout management in Swing. I should know, I taught a group last year consisting of mostly VB programmers that struggled tremendously to think of all of those objects in terms of containership and hierarchy. That's a huge leap for some people. Second, the Java IDEs have only recently begun to improve to the point where the resource editors there can produce marginally useful layout management code. Netbeans ability to allow you to layout in static mode and then switch to grid bag layout and have it do all of the code generation is probably the best example that I've seen.
Posted at: 06:55 | permalink
Charles Miller blogs Bruce Schneier on Microsoft's liability
There's no reason to treat software any differently from other products. Today Firestone can produce a tire with a single systemic flaw and they're liable, but Microsoft can produce an operating system with multiple systemic flaws discovered per week and not be liable. This makes no sense, and it's the primary reason security is so bad today. [Bruce Schneier's April Crypto-Gram] [Charles Miller]
Posted at: 06:29 | permalink
Fri, 24 May 2002
Seize the day - Barney Kessel needs help
I often wonder, if the music business were the utopia that many of us dream about in which artists received benefits directly via a micro payment scheme or the like, wouldn't tragedies like this be a lot easier to deal with? In other words, a simple hyperlink could present the artist's music, visitors are moved to visit the link by his terminal cancer story; maybe you're someone who would never have heard his record had he not wound up in this situation, but you listened and found a bit of humanity in those records, and in doing so his final days were made just a little easier by the payment that he received as a result. I've watched too many people find this fate and it pains me.
Legendary Jazz Guitarist, Barney Kessel Needs Your Help [eJazzNews.com]
Posted at: 08:12 | permalink
BEA, J2EE, open source
Rebelutionary says:
"BEA Systems made a fortune selling software to the elite. Now it's stealing a page from Microsoft: evangelizing to the geeky masses."
I think it's great that BEA has realised that they need to get more love from J2EE developers. Every J2EE developer I know who uses BEA hates it - their managers chose it not them (95% of them would rather choose Orion).
That said, I personally think BEA is going the wrong way in evangelising themselves. VB-like, ultra-easy-to-use development environments are one thing but nowhere near the whole picture. (As an aside, Weblogic Workshop doesn't seem close to VB in functionality from what I can see - it's basically only for web services).
If I were running BEA I'd start a division to contribute to Open Source Java projects. That's the sort of thing that gets developers on your side, and also generates useful code for yourselves. Red Hat gets a lot of mileage out of this, Apple is starting to be appreciated by the Open Source community and even Sun is not so hated anymore because of its contributions to Gnome and StarOffice.
So why does BEA seem to hate Open Source? For that matter, are there any J2EE vendors who contribute to Open Source? (Apart from JBoss - they don't count!)
The answer to that final question is complicated, but it has a lot to do with Sun's J2EE licensing which seemingly works against open source projects, notably enhydra and jboss (the latter of which I'm an an enthusiastic supporter, having suffered with BEA at the hands of some ill-headed executives). See this article for more details.
Posted at: 07:54 | permalink
Research confirms the fine line between genius and madness
STANFORD RESEARCHERS ESTABLISH LINK BETWEEN CREATIVE GENIUS AND MENTAL ILLNESS [( blogdex : recent )]
Posted at: 06:33 | permalink
Macrohard must end
Washtech.com Open-Source Fight Flares At Pentagon [( blogdex : recent )]
Posted at: 06:30 | permalink
Rebelutionary blogs Evan Williams in Fast Company
Niki just pointed me to this article The Revolution Will Be Webified. Good stuff. [rebelutionary]
Posted at: 06:26 | permalink
Thu, 23 May 2002
O'Reilly provides free download of blogging book preview (PDF)
Here's a free download of the upcoming O'Reilly blogging book and also there's a link to send blogging contributions to the book.
Posted at: 17:31 | permalink
Radio, Movable Type, and Email subscriptions
There is no spoon makes a good point that I agree with wholeheartedly:
(Unrelated, but also covered by Watson, is Bloglet a service that allows your readers to subscribe to email notifications of updates to your site. This is something that Moveable Type automates, but Radio seems as if it's not important (asfaik). Kind of surprising, since Radio bills itself as a content management tool rather than a simple blogging tool, while MT seems primarily interested in blog creation and maintenance.) [there is no spoon]
Posted at: 17:16 | permalink
Dave Winer blogs Paul Andrews on weblogs
Paul Andrews: News by the People, for the People. 
[Scripting News]
This is a neat article that reveals some interesting numbers regarding traditional media and the growth of weblogs. In particular, the decline in newspaper sales and the sheer volume of page views that some bloggers get is staggering.
Posted at: 17:11 | permalink
BSCS - Bachelor of Science in Common Sense
If you're like me, you may have an undergraduate degree, but not in computer science (CS). Alternatively, you may not have an undergraduate degree but that doesn't change the fact that you are a gifted individual contributor on programming projects. People like this get a bad rap in the current psychotic interviewing climate. I'm not saying that companies shouldn't hire the brightest people possible, I'm just saying that sometimes a lot of really phenomenal people don't even get to the interview because they don't have 4 letters on their resumes - BSCS (Bachelor of Science in Computer Science). If you count yourself in this group of people, try this:
The next time someone asks you whether you have a BSCS, lie. Say, "why yes, I do have a BSCS, that's a Bachelor of Science in Common Sense." If half the people in this business had a little more of that, they'd need a lot less of this.
Posted at: 16:58 | permalink
Laptop blogging at conferences - one of the best
Dave Winer says:
After talking with Doc this morning, I want a comparative review of laptops for blogging conferences. What's the ideal computer for real-time weblogs? I found the Sony Vaio wasn't really the right laptop. Short-lived battery. Doc says the Apple TiBook is wide, and that makes a big difference. Lots of screen real estate, it spreads out on the lap more easily than a smaller computer. The 802.11b support is dreamy, says Doc, when it comes on it latches on to the strongest signal. No control panels to fuss with?
My vote goes to the IBM Workpad z50. It's cheap, small, light, goes 6-8 hours on one lithium ion battery, runs Windows CE and several unix variants. It can even handle Netscape on X Windows via a wireless card so talking to Radio is no problem! Did I leave anything out? Oh yeah, it handles the IBM Microdrive Compact Flash (CF) card and PCMCIA cards too.
If I were lucky enough to go to a conference that's what I'd be taking.
Posted at: 16:38 | permalink
Teacher displays porn during exam
Where were these teachers when I was in school? ;-> BBC News | EDUCATION | Teacher displays porn during exam (5.5 points). [( blogdex : recent )]
Posted at: 05:41 | permalink
Netflix IPO yields $82.5 million
Offering of Netflix Brings in $82.5 Million. Netflix sold 5.5 million shares of stock Wednesday at an initial offering price of $15 a share, the high end of a target range of $13 to $15, to gross $82.5 million. By The New York Times. [New York Times: Business]
Let's hope they survive.
Posted at: 05:31 | permalink
Netscape 7.0 Preview Release 1
After ignoring most of what's gone on with Netscape since 4.7, I may actually have to take a look at this: Netscape 7.0 [( blogdex : recent )]
Posted at: 05:22 | permalink
Unabomber's manifesto deconstructed
I think a fair bit of what Chris Wenham's referring to here with regard to the unabomber can be summed up by reading Thomas Szasz. Once again, a well-written article by Chris that makes some curious new points about the manifesto.
Posted at: 05:16 | permalink
Wed, 22 May 2002
Priest pleads guilty to distributing date-rape drug
Illinois priest, five others plead guilty to distributing 'date-rape' drug - SJ Mercury 05-22-2002.
Priest pleads guilty in date-rape drug case - Miami Herald
Update: Priest pleads guilty in date-rape drug case - Chicago Tribune [Google US News]
Posted at: 23:04 | permalink
Disturbing, deeply disturbing
3,000 dogs killed: Track worker charged - San Francisco Chronicle 05-22-2002. Thousands of Racing Dogs Found Dead - Washington Post
Canine Killing Grounds - CBS
Greyhound deaths - USA Today
'Dachau for dogs' found - Atlanta Journal Constitution [Google US News]
Posted at: 23:01 | permalink
Adam Curry on activeRenderer from Marc Barrot
Wow, stop the presses! I'm not doing anything else until I get the activeRenderer code working on my blog! This is too cool.
It Worked! [Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog]
Posted at: 06:18 | permalink
Golden Gate bridge may charge walkers and cyclists
This seems incomprehensible to me since California needs to encourage people to walk and bicycle. I'll be surprised if the increased car toll doesn't go through.
Golden Gate Bridge May Charge Walkers - Salt Lake Tribune 05-22-2002
Walkers, bicyclists may be charged to cross the Golden Gate Bridge - SJ Mercury
It may cost $1 to cross Golden Gate. - Atlanta Journal Constitution
Dawning of a $5 Golden Gate toll? - San Francisco Chronicle [Google US News]
Posted at: 06:06 | permalink
Tue, 21 May 2002
Dave Winer on Marc Barrot's expandable blog node structure
I think they're onto something here:
Marc Barrot has the kind of weblog I want. One where you can see seven days at a time, but only today's posts are expanded. Screen shot. It's been quite a while since I've had such weblog envy.
Posted at: 22:54 | permalink
More on Pittsburgh wireless
Pittsburgh Launches Large, Free, Public WiFi Network [Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters]
It's funny, slashdot and cnet have coverage of the pittsburgh wireless story several days after I blogged it.
Posted at: 22:44 | permalink
Darwinism in business
Chris Wenham:
Forces of Nature. The giants of retail crush the little guys with little more than a reflex. America's corporate Grand Masters are like forces of nature, causing pipsqueeks in their path to die from the sum of their own mistakes. [Disenchanted]
My favorite quote:
“If you want to beat Bobby Fischer, don't play chess,” claims Rob Glaser, the CEO of RealNetworks, a company that hasn't yet been killed by its competitor, Microsoft. His method is to keep re-inventing his business plan (changing the game) until his constipation let up and he finally squeezed $1 million of profit out of $47 million in revenues. Glaser's strategy, however, is more like a frightened flight. If Microsoft forces him to jump from revenue plan to revenue plan, he'll eventually run out of lily pads.
Posted at: 22:38 | permalink
Copy your Sony CD with Sharpies
If you're goofy enough to buy Celine Dion's record, and you want to copy it, there's always this method. I was howling.
Posted at: 14:17 | permalink
Google's new features
Dave Winer on Google's new features:
More Google: Glossary, Sets, Voice Search, Keyboard Shortcuts. [Scripting News]
Posted at: 07:28 | permalink
Investigation of Computer Associates executive compensation scheme
Somehow the world knew that Charles Wang, Sanjay Kumar, and Russ Artzt compensation couldn't possibly be right.
Posted at: 07:25 | permalink
Mon, 20 May 2002
Audi A4 Avant 1.8T Quattro
Picked up my new 2002 Audi A4 Avant 1.8T Quattro tonight at Sewickley Car Store. Pics are not very good but you can see a few details. This is Amulet Red. Better pics to follow when the sun comes up! The unwashed masses would refer to this as a station wagon. Insiders put it like this: "The D pillars make for a stiffer performance car." Saying the car has ESP is well, true.
Posted at: 23:15 | permalink
Dave Winer blogs Slashdot on Alan Cox
Alan Cox, one of the leads of Linux: "Things like XML-RPC, SOAP and the stuff on top of them are designed to 'interwork through firewalls'. A better phrase would be 'go through the firewall like a knife through butter in a way that prevents the companies involved monitoring the activity.'"
My favorite quote:
I know I'm getting older too. There comes that certain point in life when you actually find things like furniture catalogues interesting. As a friend summed it up "I have found in me the urge to buy power tools".
Posted at: 12:27 | permalink
Sun, 19 May 2002
Joe Gregorio responds to my .net question
Joe says:
Sorry, I guess that wasn't very clear. Here's a list of the things fixed in SP1 and here is a link on how to obtain it.
Thanks, Joe!
Posted at: 22:03 | permalink
Song of the week
An old favorite Done in the studio by Dunne, Hankle, Watson, and Weibel.
Posted at: 21:58 | permalink
Image of the week
Duck in wishing pond at the aquarium, Vancouver, BC, circa 1999.
Posted at: 21:39 | permalink
More on backlinks from Robert Seymour
Robert Seymour continues the backlink story. This is one of the best ones that I've seen on the subject.
Posted at: 21:27 | permalink
Orchard strikes a chord with DecafBad
This article really struck a nerve with me. LM Orchard says, "Now I feel cloistered in over here at my company and I don't know if my employer necessarily sees a value in me attending things like this." I'm in the church on that one and I'll take it a step further: my employer sees no value in me attending things like this. "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation", said Thoreau. That would be me. Blogging has definitely brought me closer to the people and places where I once found solace, but that's like dragging a carrot in front of a hare. Would you like the red pill or the blue pill? Where does it all lead? Can the relationships that develop on the web ever be real or are they destined to be as transient as the homeless guy in a box under the bridge?
Orchard goes on: "This is starting to sound like spoiled geek whining. It isn't that I want the company sugar-daddy to fly me to Milan every month-- I just start feeling a bit isolated and claustrophobic working with the same few dozen people, only a tiny handful of whom are actually technically-minded, week in and week out. So it's nice to feel a part of a wider community of like- or at least relatedly-minded people who are passionate about this stuff." And I resemble that remark. It disturbs me. Many of my co-workers would probably relay such stories about me. And that disturbs me. It's all too disturbing. Deeply disturbing. Why can't I just go back to 1997-1998 and stay there forever, when life was bliss? Why is it so hard to find (create?) that stimulating work environment again?
Finally, he says, "I want to hang out more with my fellow rock bangers." Somebody please, lead me to the rock bangers. I'm ready and waiting.
Posted at: 21:10 | permalink
BMW's new Mini Cooper S
I came across one of these while traversing Shadyside for lunch last week. The cool factor is off the map. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first example of a retro-car from a non-US manufacturer. Chrysler's probably the biggest purveyor of this kind of product with it's Prowler and PT Cruiser. [car.kak.net]
Posted at: 20:44 | permalink
More on Stephen Wolfram's book - A New Kind of Science
I came by this article by way of Ugo Cei's Be Blogging. To say the article is infinitely quotable is a mild understatement. For instance:
- The big idea is that the algorithm is mightier than the equation.
- She finds it humorous that when she told her boss she'd be busy on Super Bowl Sunday, he asked, "What's that?"
I haven't read the book so I can't make any vast conclusions about it but this article is fascinating. If the book's half that fascinating it would be worth the time to read the 1200+ pages. What I wonder is whether Bill Gates is reading this on his next vacation?
Posted at: 20:39 | permalink
Everything's imperceptibly connected
There is no spoon says:
Although I haven't read it yet, this subject matter sounds very closely related to that of Small Pieces Loosely Joined. Both books seem to be taking the network millions of people have become familiar with as a network (the Internet) as a sort of metaphor for the way our lives work. In Weaving the Web, Tim Berners-Lee says he originally envisioned the Net as a way to connect anything with anything. That's a cool vision, but these books sound like they have an even better one: Everything already is connected—the Web just helps us see the connections. [there is no spoon]
This makes me wonder if the connections he's referring to are metaphysical ones. It's kind of a weird application of Jung's synchronicity. If you and I arrive at the same idea simultaneously, what does that mean? Did we both plug into the same universal stream of consciousness? Clearly, the blog world allows us to race to the moment of disclosure. Sometimes this occurs with such frequency that the origins of a thought or idea are obscured. Hmm...
Posted at: 20:17 | permalink
Dan Rather Condemns US Media
There is no spoon on Dan Rather's condemnation of the US War coverage:
Rather II. No surprise here: the British press has published a much more complete account of Dan Rather's recent BBC interview in which he condemned the U.S. media for it's abysmal performance since 9-11. It even made DayPop. A choice (and especially incisive) bit: The White House was to blame for its failure to provide adequate information about the war, Rather said. "There has never been an American war, small or large, in which access has been so limited as this one. "Limiting access, limiting information to cover the backsides of those who are in charge of the war, is extremely dangerous and cannot and should not be accepted. And I am sorry to say that, up to and including the moment of this interview, that overwhelmingly it has been accepted by the American people. And the current administration revels in that, they relish that, and they take refuge in that." [there is no spoon]
Posted at: 19:56 | permalink
Ugo Cei notes Sybase is shipping with Cocoon
Sybase ships with Cocoon. From Sybase. Looks like it's still Cocoon 1, though. [Be Blogging]
I'm not sure whether my old friends from Computer Associates have made it clear which of their products are shipping with Cocoon, but I know there's at least one of them using it. I helped the intern responsible for getting it running in 1999.
Posted at: 19:53 | permalink
285 feet from heaven
Everest climb abandoned 285 feet from top - CNN 05-19-2002. Women abandon Everest attempt - CNN
Heartbreak on Everest - USA Today
Female Climbing Team Turns Back - Guardian, UK
All-female climbing team turns back 285 feet shy of summit - San Francisco Chronicle [Google US News]
Posted at: 19:47 | permalink
Robert Seymour nails Infoworld over link policy
Hyperlinks (are supposed to) matter. An InfoWorld article of mine called Hyperlinks Matter appeared online yesterday. As Robert J Seymour points out, the title was ironic in view of InfoWorld's no-links policy: ... [Jon's Radio]
Posted at: 19:44 | permalink
Church hires parole officer to watch priest
Church hires parole officer to watch priest - CNN 05-19-2002. Accused Seattle priest monitored by parole officer - Nando Times
Accused Priest Monitored By Police - Guardian, UK [Google US News]
Posted at: 19:39 | permalink
Just what we need, more speed traps
Traffic crackdown leading up to Memorial Day - CNN 05-19-2002. Pre-holiday, traffic cops cracking down - USA Today
Agencies combine forces to slow speeders - Kansas City Star
Authorities Crack Down On Speeders - Guardian, UK [Google US News]
If the US authorities spent as much time and money educating drivers as they did with reactionary BS like this, we'd have a lot less fatalities and a lot less frustration on our roads.
Posted at: 19:36 | permalink
Improvements in the works at VH1
MTV Wunderkind Is Drafted to Fix VH1. Viacom has brought in Brian Graden, the MTV programming president with an uncanny eye for hit programs, to resurrect VH1. By Jim Rutenberg. [New York Times: Business]
Message to Graden: Think about where VH1 got it's original audience. When I was watching in the late 80's, the variety of music being presented was astounding. Today, VH1 resembles MTV far too much, IMHO, and the mature audience that this article refers to isn't necessary digging that. If VH1 picked up one or two of the best shows from BET Jazz, it would help tremendously. Live from the Knitting Factory comes to mind. Also, a couple of the music oriented shows from Tech TV would be cool; the one that Herbie Hancock hosts, for instance. I remember Herbie doing Rock School way back when and I thought that was some cool television but I can't remember whether that was MTV or VH1. Also, put more artists on Inside Music with less repeats. Same thing for Story Tellers. Oh well, one can only hope.
Posted at: 19:29 | permalink
Sat, 18 May 2002
Bloglet's working with Radio now
Monsur at Bloglet has fixed the parsing problems that I alluded to in an earlier post. You can now see the email subscription feature in the sidebar on my site. This sends an email summary of my posts once per day. Bloglet is a great service. Check it out. Thanks Monsur!
Posted at: 12:39 | permalink
Fri, 17 May 2002
Joe Gregorio - new .net news aggregator called Aggie
Joe Gregorio says:
Announcing Aggie. Release Candidate 1 of Aggie, my news aggregator application is available for download here. Aggie is a .Net based application for reading RSS files, similar to AmphetaDesk or the news aggreator in Radio. Why should you try out Aggie?
Restrictions:
- It is OSI Certified Open Source Software.
- It is a native .Net application.
- It can handle RDF and RSS file versions 0.91, 0.92, 0.93 and 1.0.
- If you are a Radio user you can use Aggie to read your news when you are away from your main computer. Radio publishes your list of news sites into a file called
mySubscriptions.opmlthat is uploaded to your gems directory. Set the channel list tohttp://radio.weblogs.com/NNNNNN/gems/mySubscriptions.opml, where NNNNNNN is your Radio site number.
- If you are an AmphetaDesk user you can try out Aggie easily. It can read and write the AmphetaDesk channels list. You won't need to manually transfer your list of news sites to Aggie. Just set Aggie's channel list to point at the file
myChannels.opmllocated in the data subdirectory where AmphetaDesk is installed.
- Aggie is multi-threaded, making more efficient use of your internet connection and getting the news to you faster.
- Aggie is small: Only a 30K download.
- No embebbed web server. No configuration through web pages. Aggie is a native windowing .Net application, the web browser is just used to view the news.
- Continuous feedback. As Aggie pulls in the news it gives continuous updates on it's progress, informing you of which sites it has visited, which ones are still to be pulled, which sites timed out, and which sites are generating invalid XML.
Installation directions:
- Aggie requires Mozilla 1.0, Netscape Navigator 6.2, or Internet Explorer 6.0. Sorry but Aggie does not currently work with Opera. (This will be fixed in a future release.)
- Since it is a native .Net application you must have the latest version of the Microsoft .Net Framework including the latest service pack installed.
- Download the ZIP file.
- Extract all the files into a directory, something like "C:\Aggie" would make sense.
- Double click on Aggie.exe.
Pleese download and enjoy! Feedback and bug reports are always welcome. [BitWorking]
I'll have to try it. Can't wait. Only thing I need to find out is what .net service pack Joe's referring to?
Posted at: 06:35 | permalink
Pittsburgh goes wireless
Companies plan pilot wireless network Downtown. Pittsburgh Business Journal May 16 2002 5:57PM ET [Moreover - Pittsburgh news]
Posted at: 00:40 | permalink
Need help debugging XML-RPC between bloglet and radio using blogger API
I'm reprinting this post from Monsur at bloglet.com hoping that somebody with expertise in Radio's XML-RPC implementation of the blogger API can help debug it. I'd like to see it work so I can start using the bloglet service with my radio blog. Thanks!
Well, Bloglet's integration with Radio is experiencing some difficulties. The integration works fine; however, some users are having difficulty setting up their XML-RPC server. The documentation is a bit sparse on this topic. I've been playing around with Radio, and here are some tips I've came up with. But at the same time I have a lot of questions, perhaps a kind Radio user out there could answer them, or let me know where to find answers to them:
- I think the XML-RPC server is the same server as your site. If you are hosting radio off your machine, you can find your server here.
- I'm a bit unclear whether XML-RPC works if you upstream your site to another server via FTP. Unless the other server is running Radio, I don't think this is possible. Anyone have any suggestions on how to implement XML-RPC in such a situation?
- There are two site settings you should have checked. On the XML-RPC and SOAP in Radio page, check the first box to enable XML-RPC. If you want to limit XML-RPC only to Bloglet's servers, click the second box, and use 208.215.141.102 as the IP address. On the Blogger API in Radio page, make sure the check box is clicked.
- Some users are reporting luck with setting their weblog id to "home". I thought Radio's XML-RPC server ignored the weblog id field, but I could be wrong. If you know you have your server set up correctly and it still doesn't work, you might want to try this.
Those are the only tips I can find now. If you run a Radio Blog with XML-RPC enabled, let me know how you got it working, and if I'm missing something. In the meantime, I'll let you know if I discover anything.
I told Monsur that with respect to his bullet points:
-
Mine is responding on http://hostname:5335/RPC2. -
I have this configuration and XML-RPC is working. -
I have these checked. -
The reason that I set blogid to home is that the XML-RPC server told me to do that and I've gotten further with that setting than any other.
Mine is dying with a parse error on the return XML from the XML-RPC call. It's gotten past the auth at this point so I figure there's either a bug in the return XML or a bug in bloglet's parse of that XML. Any ideas?
Posted at: 00:20 | permalink
Thu, 16 May 2002
Sam Ruby's not using CocoBlog
Well, I did say it looks like Sam Ruby is using CocoBlog. I was wrong. Ugo mailed to say that was just his development server. Sometimes things are not what they seem. My mistake. This reminds me of the day I found my entire weblog on a server in Seattle. Not sure why.
Posted at: 16:34 | permalink
More on backlinks from drop.org
Drop.org - Backlinks and annotations: has the future already happened?. Essay and ensuing discussion on backlinking and annotation [Disenchanted's Recent Referers]
Posted at: 14:40 | permalink
Xopus supporting mozilla real soon now
Ugo Cei says:
News from Xopus. Just got this from Lon Boonen of Q42, makers of the wonderful Xopus browser based in-place wysiwyg XML editor (reprinted with permission): [Be Blogging]
I had traded mails with Lon last week. Great guy. Indeed, this is going to be awesome. Open source wysiwyg in the browser and it supports mozilla. RSN. I can't wait. I just hope I can get CocoBlog running once Ugo has it integrated.
Posted at: 07:04 | permalink
Boston College leader says church erred on abuses
Boston College Leader Says Church Erred on Abuses. The Rev. William P. Leahy, the president of Boston College said the Catholic church "badly mishandled" the cases of pedophile priests. By Pam Belluck. [New York Times: NYT HomePage]
Posted at: 00:29 | permalink
Wed, 15 May 2002
New Coke, Cherry Coke, Coke Classic, Vanilla Coke, Cocaine
Mark Pilgrim says:
Back in the day. Ellen Kim: Just-arrived Vanilla Coke has a taste that says, well, vanilla.
Vanilla is prevalent ... It coats that delightful, battery-acid kick Coke is known for. ... The Coke aftertaste is there, but by then it's too little, too late.Is this what it's come to? We miss the classic taste of battery acid? Will we be waxing nostalgic to our grandchildren about original Coke (not to be confused with New Coke, Cherry Coke, or Coke Classic, mind you) and how it had that great battery acid taste that just hit your mouth and made your lips twinge in excitement? And nowadays all you can find is this vanillaed-down stuff that teases you with the battery acid taste, but boy you know it's nothin' like what we had, back in the day... It's possible that I had a point once, but I'm pretty sure I've lost it by now. [dive into mark]
Mark, I think the point is that Coke would taste a lot better if it still contained cocaine.
Posted at: 18:18 | permalink
Rodale joins the shallow moron pool
Another Run to a Deep-Link Suit. Ya know, I used to actually subscribe and read Bicycling on occasion. Not anymore. Rodale will go the way of the dinosaur AFAIC. Some people just don't get it. [( blogdex : recent )]
Posted at: 16:50 | permalink
Xbox gets affordable
Microsoft Slashing XBox Price. Microsoft is cutting the U.S. price of its Xbox video game console from $299 to $199, mirroring a move announced a day earlier by console kingpin Sony for its Playstation 2. By The Associated Press. [New York Times: Technology]
Cool. Now I can afford one. Off I go to get new toys! I agree with Alan Cooper, UI guys should be playing games, that's where a lot of the interesting UI work's going on.
Posted at: 16:30 | permalink
Napster - Shawn Fanning's legacy
The Day the Napster Died. Napster, the company that changed the way people use their computers, is no more. But what it accomplished in its short, brilliant life will likely influence how people use the Web for years to come. That is Shawn Fanning's legacy. By Brad King. [Wired News]
Posted at: 16:03 | permalink
Transient failures or why I hate the internet
If you were trying to reach this website (weblog, blog) in the last 24 hours, you were probably greeted with all manner of DNS failures. I apologize. There was a routing error somewhere around Chicago that prevented traffic from round-tripping to my site depending on the request. I'm not sure of the procedure for handling those problems. I used to see circular routes in Chicago all the time when I lived in Redmond and had a VPN connection to Boston up all day and night. I sometimes think that Chicago just has a defective cloud or the internet routes there are roughly equivalent to flying in and out of O'Hare with it's criss-cross landings. Yikes. The site should be stable now. Both fingers crossed.
Posted at: 15:55 | permalink
Tue, 14 May 2002
Sam Ruby on software's slippery slope
Sam Ruby referring to my point about the slippery slope in software:
Agreed. Some call this progressive disclosure. It is the basis for much of the appeal of scripting languages. It also is how I like to write, particularly the BDG2WSDL, and GI2SOAP. [It's Just Data]
Sam demonstrates the point rather nicely with his articles. I'd seen the links a thousand times but never took time to look. Both are excellent - must read. I had not heard of the term progressive disclosure, but I've now committed it to memory. Thanks Sam. Unfortunately, at least for me, the appeal of scripting languages has more to do with their syntactical allegiance than anything else. That is, for instance, why I'd be drawn to PHP for it's similarity to C, but loath usertalk for what I believe Dave has called algol-like qualities.
Posted at: 08:47 | permalink
Mon, 13 May 2002
Will the blogs kill old media?
Steven Levy writing for NewsWeek via MSNBC:
Already we’re seeing some of the more popular practitioners sell out entirely to the Big Guys. Last week pioneer journo-blogger Mickey Kaus rocked the Blogosphere by announcing that Microsoft-owned Slate had snapped up his one-man shop Kausfiles lock, stock and software. My old NEWSWEEK colleague Kaus had hinted as much to me a few days before the announcement but wouldn’t give the details. “Sorry,” he told me, “but I promised the exclusive to InstaPundit.” And why not? InstaPundit’s Reynolds is an insider now.[NewsWeek via MSNBC]
This is an interesting article that expands on the previous stories we've seen about blogs in big media. It also includes a video interview with Steven Levy.
Posted at: 19:32 | permalink
The voice of reason
There is another virus going around today, though, that's much more serious. I call it the "I Hate You" virus. It's spread on the Internet and by satellite TV. It infects people's minds with the most vile ideas, and it can't be combated by just downloading a software program. It can be reversed only with education, exchanges, diplomacy and human interaction — stuff you have to upload the old-fashioned way, one on one. Let's hope it's not too late. [NY Times]
Posted at: 17:26 | permalink
Dave Winer illuminates the cultural shift on the internet
DaveNet: Monoculture, an Artifact of the 20th Century? [Scripting News]
This article resonated with me for a number of reasons not the least of which was that I started publishing song of the week and image of the week this morning. As a musician and a photographer, I could sit in my house waiting for someone to discover my work or I can put out a bit at a time; see if there is any interest. Reaching a global audience like that was impossible just 10 years ago. Reaching an audience like that via syndication was impossible 5 years ago. But I can make my recordings and photographs and I don't have to be Van Halen or Galen Rowell to discover an audience, no matter how small. And that's profound.
Posted at: 17:21 | permalink
Jon Udell on tacit knowledge and software usability
Jon Udell:
Tacit knowledge and software usability As technologists, we hold all sorts of knowledge that is tacit. We ourselves don't realize that we possess it, and we don't realize that others (most others) don't. Radio does a remarkable job of delivering an out-of-the-box experience that doesn't depend on too much tacit knowledge. When you try to go further, you're on a slippery slope, but this is true of all software. [Jon's Radio]
Jon makes some excellent points here that reflect my own views. One way to conceive of the very best software is to imagine that the slippery slope Jon refers to is least slippery. That is, in the best software, advanced usage does not throw you into the bowels of hell the minute you start to explore beyond the surface but rather gradually reveals itself over time, in bite-size chunks.
Posted at: 16:57 | permalink
Link Hype joins the blogdex, daypop, RCS fray
Linkhype.com [Disenchanted's Recent Referers]
Posted at: 16:45 | permalink
Lands' End bigger than I thought
Sears to Buy Lands' End for $1.9 Billion. Sears, Roebuck and Co. said it agreed to buy Lands' End for about $1.9 billion in a bid to revive its apparel business. By Reuters. [New York Times: NYT HomePage]
Posted at: 16:33 | permalink
Commodes cleaner than computers
This doesn't surprise me but it's still disturbing. Deeply disturbing. Workstations 'Dirtier Than Toilets' [Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters]
Posted at: 16:31 | permalink
Software and cars don't mix
NY Times:
If you've wondered what a car from
Microsoft might be like, the 7 offers a clue. You half expect it to ask, "Where do you want to go today?" Dazed by a Technical Knockout. The BMW 745i is a remarkable car with so many genuine technical advancements that it is surely the world's most advanced sedan. By James G. Cobb. [New York Times: Technology]
The BMW brand is running so strong that we now refer to the BMW 7 Series as merely, the 7. Reminds me of the way that everybody referred to I-5 in Seattle as the 5. That must cause some real confusion when you go into a BMW dealer in Seattle to buy a 5 Series. "I'd like to buy the 5." You wanna buy what? A highway?
Posted at: 16:27 | permalink
Wired mangles the PC noise story
PCs: For Whom the Decibels Toll. Add this to the list of complaints against personal computers: The noise they make annoys some people to no end. But it's not like noise is going to affect purchasing decisions. Or is it? By Joanna Glasner. [Wired News]
This article is noteworthy for one reason - it demonstrates how severely pros can mangle the facts to produce articles lacking context. First, Apple itself has been talking about it's quiet, fan-less designs for over 2 years. Last, there are some pros that noticed the story almost 2 years ago. This article understates the fact that Apple has lead the market with this design. The fact that the Intel PC world is just now taking notice is telling to the extent that it demonstrates the reactionary product design stance that Intel derivative products are taking with noise reduction.
Posted at: 08:49 | permalink
Ugo Cei's got an updated CocoBlog
CocoBlog 0.0.2 released. I just uploaded a new relase of CocoBlog here. [Be Blogging]
Posted at: 07:53 | permalink
Song of the week
This is a cover of Pat Metheny's Travels done by my fusion band: Dunne, Hankle, Watson, and Weibel. For those not familiar with Metheny, this tune features a lot of soft acoustic guitar and plenty of Americana - more folk than jazz. Check out the beautiful electric guitar solo near the end.
Posted at: 00:16 | permalink
Sun, 12 May 2002
New Referer System - javascript and perl cgi to the rescue
Jon Udell says:
Stephen Downes' referral system. I'm experimenting (at the bottom of this page) with a referral system kindly offered by Stephen Downes. As Stephen points out, if you'd prefer not to send him your referral data, you can host his backend script yourself, for reasons of privacy or guaranteed reliability. ... [Jon's Radio]
This system appears to have the same benefits that the RESTful SOAP approach has; that is, it's available anywhere to anybody. This one takes it a step further since it's not dependent on Radio or the Radio Community Server. I'll have to give it a try. Nice work Stephen!
Posted at: 23:48 | permalink
Biodiesel
If this were available in my area, I'd be headed out tomorrow to buy a diesel.
Biodiesel: A Fuel That Starts Low on the Food Chain. A refined concoction of soybean oil and recycled restaurant grease, more scientifically known as biodiesel, may be the key to reducing reliance on gasoline. By Erik Baard. [New York Times: Business]
Posted at: 09:38 | permalink
Einstein's 1,427 Page FBI File
This is revealing if for no other reason than to reveal just how deep the anti-communist culture was in the US during that time.
Einstein's 1,427-Page F.B.I. File [Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters]
Posted at: 09:25 | permalink
Sat, 11 May 2002
Dave Winer nails the software-gardening analogy
Dave Winer says:
Software, done properly, is more like gardening than it is like warfare. Plant a seed, nurture it, show other people how to plant seeds, encourage them to plant them in your ground, always be thankful, and split the profits. [Scripting News]
Exactly. This is precisely how I viewed my building RCS Proxy. Chris Wenham planted the seed. Others nurtured it. In the process, these guys showed me how to plant the seeds, and by virtue of the fact that Dave brought Userland back from the dead when their servers were dying, he encouraged me to plant them in Userland's ground (Radio and RCS). I'm now getting mail from around the world from folks trying the web service. And none of them are arguing about whether the service should be RESTful or RPC-like. They're just using it. And that's the way it should be.
Posted at: 14:28 | permalink
sunBow - a Cocoon IDE
Matthew Langham announces the future availability of an IDE for Cocoon. Judging from the screenshots, it appears to be based on Eclipse. [beblogging.com]
This is really exciting to me if for no other reason than I remember discussing the market opportunity for a cocoon IDE with a friend of mine in the late 1999, early 2000 timeframe. Now that someone has done it, I'll have to take a look. Ultramod!
Posted at: 10:30 | permalink
Xopus open source web site
Here's the Xopus open source web site for those who may not have seen it. This is the XML/XSLT WYSIWYG editor in the browser technology that I've talked about previously.
Posted at: 10:18 | permalink
RIAA distribution and promotion monopolies
This article makes some interesting points about web radio rates. [winterspeak.com]
Posted at: 09:40 | permalink
Fri, 10 May 2002
Microsoft's web services strategy
Read this after fabulous italian dinner with friends. Must-read News.Com piece on MS's Web services strategy. [Scripting News]
Posted at: 18:33 | permalink
Steven Johnson on blogs
CommonMe: Salon, Steven Johnson: Use the blog, Luke [CommonMe]
I have Steven Johnson's book about interface culture. His stuff is highly insightful and this article's no exception.
Posted at: 18:30 | permalink
George W. - the comedian
This is old but still funny as hell. It's a poem composed entirely of actual quotes from George W Bush. The quotes have been arranged by Washington Post writer Richard Thompson.
MAKE THE PIE HIGHER
by George W. Bush
I think we all agree
The past is over.
This is still a dangerous world.
It's a world of madmen and uncertainty
And potential mental losses.
Rarely is the question asked
Is our children learning?
Will the highways of the Internet
Become more few?
How many hands have I shaked?
They misunderestimate me.
I am a pitbull on the pant leg of opportunity.
I know that the human being
And the fish can coexist.
Families is where our nation finds hope
Where our wings take dream.
Put food on your family!
Knock down the tollbooth!
Vulcanize Society!
Make the pie higher!
Make the pie higher!
Major league.
Posted at: 18:25 | permalink
Oliver Willis - the relationship between blogs and books
This piece by Oliver Willis makes some fascinating conclusions for potential authors. I agree wholeheartedly with his conclusions and have been promoting this idea to several writer friends of mine for sometime. Maybe they'll start listening now. [oliverwillis.com]
Posted at: 18:15 | permalink
Thu, 09 May 2002
Sam Ruby says never say impossible
Sam Ruby comments on the dynamic vs. static nature of Radio:
DavidWatson: It's impossible to have up-to-the-minute-data with regard to the page unless the script executes at page-load-time and that requires scripting a dynamic page via asp, jsp, php, etc. Never say impossible. DiveIntoMark publishes statistics and linkbacks hourly. Radio has a scheduler.addTask. [Sam Ruby]
I'm not sure that I like that solution. I'm assuming that you mean the addTask would publish the page. That may have ancillary effects (RSS?), though my knowledge of Radio is nil in that regard. Anyhow, I already updated my site to use PHP to do the HTTP GET, which gives me referrers up to the minute, or the granularity supported by the RCS server.
Posted at: 09:34 | permalink
Radio - not statically served anymore
Well, I started thinking about the Jon Udell comment, dynamically updated but statically served. And I thought, what options do I have, if I want my site to have up to the minute referrer listings? The obvious choice for me was PHP, since I use apache on linux. So, I sat down and wrote an HTTP GET using PHP:<?php include "Net/HTTP/Client.php"; $http = new Net_HTTP_Client(); $http->Connect( "24.154.119.16", 8080 ) or die( "Connect problem" ); $status = $http->Get( "/soap/urn:rcsproxy/getReferers?site=0102172&group=radio1" ); if( $status != 200 ) die( "Problem : " . $http->getStatusMessage() ); else echo $http->getBody(); $http->Disconnect();?>
Then the problems started. First, I had to get the HTTP Client class from here. I wrote enough code to get the call working and discovered a bug in the client class.
// DNW echo '$this->debug & DBGINDATA :' . $this->debug & DBGINDATA;
I commented out the offending line, which BTW, inserts a zero into the body text. I believe it's missing an if debug line. So the PHP code was working. Then I set about adding the PHP code to my Radio templates and discovered this problem. Sigh. I thought for a moment and decided I'd tell apache to go ahead and parse HTML as PHP. This didn't seem to have any ancillary effects save for the fact that the page loads may slow a bit. I'm curious to try it outside my LAN. Two benefits occur:
- The site referrer listing at the bottom of each page is accurate up to the minute.
- The publish time for Radio went way down since it doesn't block on the call to my getReferers web service.
I'm going to let it run this way for the time being and try and learn a little in the process. Hopefully, the page load times don't turn visitors away.
One thing I learned, yet again, is how horribly awry the Radio template editing can go if it's not perfect. Due to the nature of this change, it was difficult to test since I needed to have the script executing on the server in order to see what was happening at the browser.
I probably need a full-blown staging environment but that seems like overkill right now. I may pursue that shortly though since I totally blew away my site twice this morning with horked up templates. My apologies if you had to suffer through my rather poor use of HTML.
Posted at: 09:24 | permalink
Radio - Dynamically updated but statically served
Jon Udell makes an important point about Radio that I've tried to explain to a few people, but Jon's gift for clear explanations goes along way toward clarifying my point (emphasis added by me):
Since Radio sites are dynamically updated but statically served, the behavior seen at disenchanted and elsewhere—that is, per-item referrals shown after items—ultimately calls for a solution that fetches referral data from the community server, correlates it by referred-to page over time, and then updates the site accordingly. [Jon Udell]
Part of the problem is that Radio executes the scripting language calls embedded in templates at publish-time. I've made this point previously but I'm not sure that it's clear. By comparison, if I make a call to my web service from something like a servlet, the code executes at page-load-time - when the browser requests it on behalf of the user. However, in Radio, that execution occurs when I publish the page. This is an important distinction for people to understand at some point in their mastery of Radio. Not a novice topic per se, but an import point nonetheless. It's impossible to have up-to-the-minute-data with regard to the page unless the script executes at page-load-time and that requires scripting a dynamic page via asp, jsp, php, etc. That's why the referer data listed at the bottom of every page on my site may differ from page to page, because the script in the template executes when I publish the page and there is latency in the time that each page is published.
Posted at: 07:23 | permalink
The space below this page is up for grabs
Chris Wenham on Ghosts of Xanadu:
In the words of one inspired soul, it's disintermediating the web—reducing the role and importance of central agencies. [disenchanted.com]
Wenham never ceases to amaze me and this article takes the backlinking referer analysis a step further. Thanks for the compliment, Chris.
Posted at: 07:08 | permalink
Wed, 08 May 2002
there is no spoon responds with a question
there is no spoon writes:
backlinking back-atcha: David Watson has already responded to my question about how to use his getReferer web service. It sounds pretty simple and I can't wait to try it. Unfortunately, I've got a big project due Friday and I'm going to have to turn Radio off for a couple of days or I'll be in a world of pain. (Radio is like a siren in the Homeric sense (think of the creek/frog scene in "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?")—it's always calling if it's on.) I'll play around with getReferer on Saturday (if all goes well between now and then). David has also explains why getReferer works the way it does. I think I understand the complexity issue, and I think David's solution is a great compromise to do everything he says—it provides an easy-to-use, low-overhead, nearly-universal solution (for Radio users). To automatically show referers by page, rather than by site, you'd need to write separate code for every server, right? And that doesn't seem practical. I agree. At the same time, all Radio-hosted sites run on the same server, right? So the specific, page-level log file parser for the Radio server would take care of a bunch of people, wouldn't it? Just a thought. Note to self: Get Webalizer. [there is no spoon]
No, all radio sites do not run on the same server. There is a server in radio, but that's generally not the one that's serving the web pages to browsers.
Posted at: 17:36 | permalink
David Weinberger talks linkbacks
Jimsblog has a link to a piece by David Weinberger on linkbacks. Link the linker. Heh.
Posted at: 17:13 | permalink
Jim comments on radio backlinking
Jimslog picks up the discussion on radio backlinking. I don't believe what Jim describes is possible in radio, unless perhaps you were serving your site off of the embedded apache inside radio, which I don't believe is a recommended configuration, at least not for sites with much traffic. Radio works with virtually any webserver, which is a virtue, but it's also a liability in this case because it's difficult to solve this problem without having a common scripting language executing in the webserver. There's also the problem of the fact that radio's usertalk scripting language is executed at publish-time not page-load-time in the browser. That basically forces you into a design that's custom-engineered for your webserver and platform as I described below in my response to Sam Ruby.
Posted at: 17:07 | permalink
Against Depression, A Sugar Pill is Hard to Beat
Washington Post has picked up on the story [( blogdex : recent )]
Posted at: 08:02 | permalink
RCS Proxy on xmethods.com
RCS Proxy is now listed on xmethods.com. This may be helpful for those who'd like to browse the interface using their WSDL analyzer or RPC Profiler.
Posted at: 07:57 | permalink
CocoBlog keeps on rollin'
Ugo Cei informs me that Ham Journalism is Tony Collen, whose Radio blog is here.
Posted at: 02:03 | permalink
Tue, 07 May 2002
Sam Ruby further explores Mark Pilgrim's referer code
Sam Ruby states:
Mark described his implementation here. The key addition was to actually fetch and parse the pages identified in the referrer logs. [Sam Ruby]
Exactly. I had actually studied this as well as Chris Wenham's code. The problem is that there's a whole lot of code involved here that is web-server or platform specific. Confession: In a former life, I worked on web server usage analysis software. I know how difficult it is to write that log file parser that works across 18 flavors of unix, windows, and macintosh AND handle the fact that the log file formats differ and can change on the fly. When we sit down to write it for ourselves, we take very little of that into account, if any. Any attempt at doing that in a generic way would be a huge undertaking. Thus, the only way to provide that deep context, such as Chris Wenham described to me, is to state that this solution only works with web server X on platform Y with blog Z. And that's why the rate of proliferation on these things has been slow. There are a lot of folks that might like to try it but aren't skilled at perl or the various hackery that's required to get this stuff running. I'd like to make it easier for the masses, at least in the simple case.
My approach was to provide a solution that did not solve all the world's problems, had low implementation cost (being that the implementation cost is subtracted from my sleeping hours ;->), but provided utility that is at least in the ballpark in terms of providing something similar to what Pilgrim, Wenham, and Orchard have achieved.
Fact is, I have the referers for my site right here and I have the webalizer running out of a chron scheduled PHP script. I could easily use that data for my own site, and I could derive the context that Chris describes, but that would only solve the problem for me. I'd rather take a stab at solving it for a broad class of users and the response from there is no spoon suggests that there's a market for such a beast, even if it's not perfect.
Posted at: 23:11 | permalink
Updating templates with getReferer web service
there is no spoon says:
David Watson comes to the rescue for Radio users who would like to add "autolinking" or automatic "backlinking" to their blogs. He's created a little webservice called "getReferers" that automatically generates a list of links to the sites who are linking to you. It then helpfully puts that list at the end of your page. Allowing your readers to see who is linking to you helps to put your comments in context (which, btw, is what everyone who likes the Instant Outliner concept is so excited about). Thank you, David! One question: Um, where am I supposed to paste your code? Does it go in the homepage template? By the way, I think the way JimsLog handles this referer feature is the best I've seen because it indicates referers by post. This makes context even better because you can quickly and easily jump to those links that are specifically related to an individual post you like. I wonder if this was what Sam Ruby was getting at when he said getReferers does "not appear to be distinguishing between pages which contain specific links to specific articles and pages which simply link to something on your website." Of course, above I just linked to the home page of JimsLog, rather than to a specific post. It doesn't really look like his "auto-backlink" method has a way to account for such general links. The "auto-backlink" method employed at diveintomark is sort of a half-way point between getReferers and what JimsLog is doing. (It seems Disenchanted.com (I'm sorry I keep spelling that wrong) doesn't have this problem because it deals in "stories" or "articles" which are one-per-page rather than the blog's multiple-posts-per-page format.) So, what if I put the getReferers script in my Item template? (I'm guessing it would still call for links to the whole page, not just links to that item, right?) [there is no spoon]
You're welcome. Thanks for trying it! I'll try and respond as best I can. Please let me know if I leave anything out. There's so much complexity in some of this stuff, it's easy to overlook otherwise important bits. Doc writing is hard work! Anyway, here goes...
In Radio, you paste the code into your templates. From my experience, I would suggest that you start by creating a temporary placeholder story. I called mine test. It'll look a little funny since I have the referrers coming out in the footer also but you get the picture. My main point with creating the test story is that it gives you a place to try out the code without destroying your entire site by horking up the templates. I've done that a couple of times because I'm not particularly skilled at editing HTML and so I made a mistake and my blog looked like a bad car accident. You can mess up the test story and it's not going to mess up your site.
So, take the code from the article, create a new story, set it on source mode if you're using the wysiwyg editor and paste the code. Edit your user number in the code and click the post changes button. You should see your referer list come back from my app server shortly. If that works, you can move onto the templates. In my case, I edited two templates, #homeTemplate and #template. I added the code immediately after the body text in each template. Digression: I use CSS templates from Joe Gregorio at BitWorking. These may look quite a bit different from what you're running. Here's what it looks like in my #homeTemplate and #template:
<%bodytext%><% scratchpad.s = tcp.httpClient (server:"www.watsondesign.com", path:"/soap/urn:rcsproxy/getReferers?site=0102172&group=radio1", ctFollowRedirects:"5"); string.httpResultSplit (scratchpad.s) %>
Save your templates and open radio and click Radio/Publish/Entire Website. I believe the bodytext macro should be the same so you might try searching on that in the text of the template. Try making yours look similar to this and you should get similar results. The only issue might be if the formatting of the table isn't right for your blog. I'm passing along whatever formatting I get back from the RCS server.
Finally, you are correct in your analysis of the referer linking issues with regard to Sam Ruby's comments. I'll go further into the issue in response to Sam shortly. It's largely a matter of design constraints. In short, no matter where you include the call to my service, you'll get exactly what the RCS server thinks your referers are, and that's always by site, not by page.
Good luck! Let us know how it goes.
Posted at: 23:06 | permalink
Sam Ruby responds to referers issue
OK, David - I'm helping spread the word. But I must say, what it appears to me is that you have put your referrer logs in context (which is a step forward), but do not appear to be distinguishing between pages which contain specific links to specific articles and pages which simply link to something on your website. [Sam Ruby]
Thanks for shedding some light on the issue, Sam. You are correct, this approach does not provide the same level of context that you see at disenchanted, decafbad, or diveintomark. However, there's a tradeoff between the autolink software being tightly coupled to the particular website implementation, meaning scripting language, log files, etc., and the design working for a broad range of sites, Radio and RCS users in this case. The data at the RCS server is telling us the referers linking to the site, not the page. If there's a way to get referers by page, it's opaque to me. I will say that if the data is available at the RCS server, I'd be glad to enhance my service to return the data in context. Further, if the data isn't available but Userland would like to add or expose it, I'll do the same.
The sites that have implemented this in the most effective way - disenchanted, decafbad, and diveintomark - to the best of my knowledge are all doing it with the local data that their respective web servers provide. That assumes a lot about the web server implementation and is the principal reason why I rejected that approach in this case.
I did intend to discuss this in some detail in my original post but I ran out of steam and was not thinking clearly when I'd been hacking for hours. I often need to revisit these posts and fill in the blanks. My view right now is that if what I did provokes more discussion on the subject, it'll be a good thing. I'd be perfectly happy if somebody came along and explained how to do this without any compromises with Radio and RCS but I don't believe that's trivial given the aforementioned design constraints. Finally, a big tip of the hat to the folks who pioneered this technique. They deserve a huge round of applause.
Posted at: 18:51 | permalink
I am not Dave Winer, but I am listening
There is no spoon comments on all the link back talk and I provide the answer for Radio or RCS users. Sometimes, I don't think anybody can hear me scream. There are linkbacks here! They are easy to use. If not, ask a question. I won't bite. Come and get 'em. BTW, love the blog name. Cool.
Posted at: 16:19 | permalink
getReferers web service works with ctFollowRedirects in Radio now
This update concerns the debugging that Jon Udell was helping me out with on my getReferers web service.
<% scratchpad.s = tcp.httpClient (server:"www.watsondesign.com", path:"/soap/urn:rcsproxy/getReferers?site=0102172&group=radio1", ctFollowRedirects:"5"); string.httpResultSplit (scratchpad.s) %>
The syntax of the ctFollowRedirects parameter was wrong in the sample code for Radio. I have corrected it here and in the article so that you can embed the call with the correct domain name as it is shown here into your Radio code. This has been tested outside of my firewall via Radio as well as through a proxy server.
Thanks Jon!
Posted at: 15:53 | permalink
CocoBlog and Cocoon
Ugo Cei answers my question regarding which version of Cocoon that CocoBlog has been tested with: May 3rd CVS version.
Posted at: 14:24 | permalink
CocoBlog on the move
Looks like Ugo Cei's not the only one with a cocoon blog anymore. Cool.
Posted at: 14:00 | permalink
Cracks in the armor at Oracle
I.B.M. Overtakes Oracle in Total Database Sales. PALO ALTO, (Reuters) - International Business Machines Corp. took the No. 1 spot last year in terms of total new database software sales from long-time leader Oracle Corp., according to a new report from Dataquest, a unit of technology research firm Gartner Inc. By Reuters. [New York Times: Technology]
Posted at: 06:38 | permalink
The relationship between google and weblogs
Jon Udell: Google's bias is a temporary anomaly. Agreed. See also Google 
Blogs. [Sam Ruby]
Posted at: 06:28 | permalink
Mon, 06 May 2002
Jon Udell tries out RCS Proxy
Jon Udell states:
Backlink display in Radio. David Watson has a service that can be used to fetch referral information into Radio pages. "I don't believe it'll work outside my firewall without redirects," writes David. That seems to be true. From outside his firewall, the URL http://www.watsondesign.comsoap/urn:rcsproxy/getReferers?site=0100887&;group=radio1 works in my browser, but not by way of a Frontier tcp.httpClient call. When I use the redirect reported by my browser, though—i.e. scratchpad.s = tcp.httpClient (server: "24.154.119.166:8080", path: "/soap/urn:rcsproxy/getReferers?site=0100887&group=radio1")—it does work. [Jon's Radio]
UPDATE: The ctFollowRedirects parameter is working now. I had the syntax wrong in the original post. My apologies. You can use the fully qualified domain now as it should be. The full story is here.
Posted at: 14:07 | permalink
Ugo Cei releases CocoBlog
Ugo Cei's blogging tool, CocoBlog, which is based on Cocoon, was released today. Unfortunately, Ugo doesn't mention what version of Cocoon it runs with. I'm sure he was like me and very tired when he finally released the thing. I'm going to send him mail now and ask.
CocoBlog 0.0.1 Released!. Announcing the first public release of CocoBlog. [Be Blogging]
Posted at: 12:43 | permalink
LSU Law student sued by LSU Law School
NY Times: "Welcome to Our Law School, Young Man. We'll See You in Court." [NY Times]
This kid's got an interesting problem. His personal site comes under fire.
Posted at: 12:40 | permalink
The register gets Mandrake 8.2 all wrong
The Register: Mandrake 8.2 first look. Mandrake 8.2 is a ... disaster.
[diveintomark]
Unfortunately, Mark elevates this bullshit on the register by reprinting it. Maybe Mark's goal was to make it known to people like me. The fact that a trade rag like the register allows this garbage to be printed suggests to me that they got their editors from the National Enquirer. Thomas Greene obviously has an axe to grind. I've been running Mandrake 8.2 comfortably here since it came out and have had none of the issues that Greene describes. I also believe there's a certain irony in the fact that I thought Mandrake 8.1 sucked and Greene thinks it was terrific. I went from 8.0 to 8.2 since I had so many problems with 8.1. A few points:
- Most of the distributions have gotten horribly complex. Complexity leads to bugs. Ask Microsoft.
- The software reflects the sociology of the team that built it. What do you think the sociology is like inside mandrake right now when they're begging for money on a daily basis?
- Bashing Miguel de Icaza and Gnome because Mandrake includes their product is just ridiculous. Gnome rocks! Consumers want choice, particularly in the Linux business. I want choice, and I don't want Thomas Greene dictating my choice of desktop. The more the merrier. What's the problem with competition?
- If he wants to bash StarOffice he should bash Sun. The font problem with Java on Linux is well-documented.
Posted at: 09:57 | permalink
Sun, 05 May 2002
Confusion over Dave Winer's rant
Dave Winer says, "So lighten up guys, enjoy life more, and don't bother fighting battles that you can't win. Make a contribution, do something positive, switch products if you want, but don't try to control what I say. It won't work." [Scripting News]
I'm horribly confused. This would be a lot clearer if I knew who was trying to control what Dave was saying. This whole line of commentary just seemed to come out of left field and the context of left field is still in left field. I'm not in left field and thus, my confusion.
Update: Dave Winer emailed to say that the reason that he doesn't provide too much context is that he doesn't want to give any more attention to the control freaks than they already have and that's good enough for me.
Posted at: 16:07 | permalink
Adam Curry tries RCS Proxy
Adam Curry says, "I haven't been able to get it to work yet, but David Watson is cooking up some backlinking software that utilizes RCS and Radio in combo." First, thanks for the link Adam! Second, where did you have trouble? Does the basic GET work from your browser? I tried it here and got your referer data. The part that might be problematic in Radio is where the ctFollowRedirects parameter defines how many times the tcp.httpClient command is willing to follow redirects. In my case, running inside my firewall, no redirects are necessary. However, I don't believe it'll work outside my firewall without redirects. As a result of my configuration, I am unable to test the redirect parameter so I may have horked it up in the instructions. If somebody can verify this for me, please send email and I'll update the article. Thanks!
Posted at: 08:32 | permalink
Sat, 04 May 2002
getReferers SOAP Web Service (with HTTP GET support) for Radio and RCS users
I have just released an early version of RCS Proxy for Radio and RCS users. This is a SOAP Web Service that demonstrates a couple of neat things: HTTP GET support with SOAP and auto-referer linking for Radio and RCS users. Caveat Emptor.
Posted at: 21:51 | permalink
Fri, 03 May 2002
Sam Ruby finds another gem
C# plugin for Eclipse: This plugin is free and open-source. 
This plugin is only available under Windows, as Microsoft .NET platform only exists under this operating system. Perhaps some of the Mono or Rotor guys should check this out. [Sam Ruby]
Posted at: 13:20 | permalink
Thu, 02 May 2002
GoogleLookup Macro - MS Office VBA & SOAP
I've been talking for a while about how cool it would be if you could just load all of the top google searches simultaneously in the browser. At the same time, I've been thinking about exactly how to accomplish that. I decided tonight that an interesting way to do this would be to hack together a VBA macro that would take whatever text selection that you made in a Microsoft Office application, say Word, for instance, and do the google search and launch all of the results in the browser automatically. This works very nicely in concert with a browser like Opera that uses an MDI parent window with each page in a child window with a tab associated with each child window. With IE, you wind up with a lot of windows. Anyhow, the code's below.
This builds on my original VBScript posting which was hacked by the fine folks at WebJives. The code gets a bit more thorny because of the parse needed to retrieve the URL. Other than that, it's pretty straightforward. I hope this helps to demonstrate what's possible with a little scripting code and the Google SOAP API. It was fun certainly fun to build.
Installation Instructions
- This has been tested on Windows XP and Windows NT running Word XP and Word 2000. YMMV. Thanks to Deepak at WebJives for additional testing and bug corrections. You'll need to have a version of Windows that supports SOAP out of the box like Windows XP or you'll have to grab the MS SOAP Toolkit here. There shouldn't be any funky dependencies with the exception of a recent version of Microsoft Office.
- Copy the code to the clipboard.
- Start Microsoft Word.
- Click Tools/Macro/Macros on the menu bar.
- Type a name for the macro and click the create button (I used the name GoogleLookup below).
- Past the code into the VBA macro editor while taking care that the name of the sub matches what you entered in step 4.
- Find the line that says key="YourKeyGoesHere" and paste your google key into the quotes. You can get a google key here if you don't have one.
- If you use a proxy server, uncomment the three lines to configure the proxy and set the values appropriately.
- Save and exit the VBA macro editor.
- In your document, type some text, highlight a word or two, then click Tools/Macro/Macros from the menu bar, select the macro that you just created, and click the run button. Your browser should launch with the search results displayed for the terms that you highlighted in the document.
- Questions, comments, etc.
I'd be curious to hear of results with various Windows variants, Office applications, and/or browsers.
Enjoy!
Sub GoogleLookup()
'
' GoogleLookup Macro
' Macro created 5/2/2002 by David Watson
'
Dim soapClient, Results, i, key, query, ResultElements, ResultCount
Set soapClient = CreateObject("MSSOAP.SoapClient")
key = "YourGoogleKeyGoesHere" On Error Resume Next
Rem If you are connecting through a proxy server, Keep the following three lines
Rem soapClient.ClientProperty("ServerHTTPRequest") = True
Rem soapClient.ConnectorProperty("ProxyServer") = "your.proxy.com"
Rem soapClient.ConnectorProperty("ProxyPort") = 8080 soapClient.mssoapinit ("http://api.google.com/GoogleSearch.wsdl")
If Err Then
MsgBox Err.Description
MsgBox "Faultstring =" + soapClient.faultString
MsgBox "Faultactor =" + soapClient.faultactor
MsgBox "Faultcode =" + soapClient.faultcode
MsgBox "Detail =" + soapClient.detail
End If
Set Results = soapClient.doGoogleSearch(key, Selection, 0, 10, False, "", False, "", "", "")
If Err Then
MsgBox Err.Description
MsgBox "Faultstring =" + soapClient.faultString
MsgBox "Faultactor =" + soapClient.faultactor
MsgBox "Faultcode =" + soapClient.faultcode
MsgBox "Detail =" + soapClient.detail
Else
For i = 0 To Results.Length - 1
If Results.Item(i).nodeName = "resultElements" Then
First = 0
Last = 1
For j = 1 To 10
First = InStr(Mid(Results.Item(i).nodeTypedValue, 1), "http://")
Last = InStr(Mid(Results.Item(i).nodeTypedValue, First), Chr(10))
tempstr = Mid(Results.Item(i).nodeTypedValue, First, Last)
If Not (tempstr = "") And Not (First = 0) And Not (Last = 0) Then
ActiveDocument.FollowHyperlink (tempstr)
Results.Item(i).nodeTypedValue = Mid(Results.Item(i).nodeTypedValue, First + Last)
Else
Exit For
End If
Next
Exit For
End If
Next
End If
End Sub
Posted at: 23:13 | permalink
Wed, 01 May 2002
Clueless in Dallas
These morons should go back to the printing press. From Dallas Morning News: "If you operate a Web site and wish to link to this Site, you may link only to the home page of the Site and not to any other page or subdomain of us." [Scripting News] Then we've got Wired weighing in on the subject: 1. Site Barks About Deep Link (42.1 points). complaining about deep linking ... Segundo [( blogdex : recent )]
The real irony here is that by linking to the company's policy on deep linking, we are, in fact, in violation of the company's policy on deep linking. It follows then that it's not possible to know the company's policy on deep linking without following a deep link into the policy, unless that policy is clearly stated on the home page. Yikes.
Warning Will Robinson! Run-on sentence: Anyhow, my policy on linking goes like this: You can link to whatever you want on my site, no matter where it is, and I promise, to the best of my ability, not to break your links, because Jakob Nielsen told me so, and I know that Jakob Nielsen's smarter than anybody and everbody at the Dallas Morning News.
Posted at: 22:47 | permalink
Radio desktop website delete button fixed
I figured out what was breaking my Radio desktop website's delete button. I had an embedded button with a form post in the RSS feed. That embedded post seemed to break the post for the delete button. When I removed the button post from the RSS feed, the delete button started working again. Phew! There's definitely some QA work that needs to be done on the desktop website interface. It's become clear to me in the last few days that if you really hammer this thing, it breaks. I guess that's to be expected, but a good QA process with automated test tools and nightly unit and regression tests would help. Oh well, while all's not perfect in userland, at least Dave's admitting it now. Hopefully, a sense of humility emerges and real improvement follows.
Posted at: 20:36 | permalink
Radio macro error on prefs.txt solved
Caveat Emptor. Well, via some blackmagic and a post by Mark Woods, I managed to figure out what was wrong with my Radio putting up the macro error on prefs.txt when I tried to post a new entry. There was a stray double quote in one of my posts. That appears to be a problem with Radio's validation of the post, ie. I shouldn't be able to post garbage that's going to hork up the entire application. It was quite difficult to find because I had posted so much stuff in the last couple of days. It looks like it'll work for the time being but my delete buttons still aren't working. Not sure what the problem is there. I'm still going to investigate movable type though I don't think I'll get to it till the weekend. Sigh.
Posted at: 16:26 | permalink
Asynchronous web services
David A. Chappell: By 2006, more than 40 percent of the standard Web services traffic will be asynchronous. [via Guido Casper] [via Sam Ruby]
Chappell's major conclusion: "In the end, the clear solution is a Web services deployment that's based largely on JMS, yet allows the ability to extend and blend SOAP-over-HTTP with SOAP-over-JMS." Not to beat a dead horse, but Electric's Glue has been running this way for a while. That is, offering easy startup in synchronous mode and full, integrated support for SOAP via JMS in asynchronous mode. My friend Anthony Hinxman, who teaches computer science at Portland State University, had mentioned the guaranteed delivery problem as a serious weakness in the early work that I did with SOAP and XML-RPC. I believe SOAP with JMS behind it answers all of his concerns in that regard.
One of the brilliant product design strategies employed by Glue is that it's so easy to get running out of the box and yet you can layer a lot of sophisticated technology on top of it, at your discretion. They leave the choice up to you, as it should be. If you need SSL and JMS, great, they're there. But if you don't, you don't have to pay the implementation cost required to support these additional features. And that's why I love Glue.
Posted at: 06:13 | permalink
