Day: September 3, 2002

EtherApe: An open-source *nix traffic visualizer.

What the hell is a permalink anyway?  Dave clues us in.  But who is going to define link rot?

Xopus: Wow!

Xopus is a browser based in-place wysiwyg XML editor. Xopus allows users to edit their XML data in an intuitive word processor alike way.

Xopus allows common users to edit complex XML documents without knowing anything about XML without even realising they are editing XML.

Xopus uses XSLT stylesheets to transform the XML to user presentable HTML. The user can edit this HTML like he or she is editing HTML in a wysiwyg HTML editor or a word processor. All changes are stored in the XML.

Xopus uses an XML Schema to preserve the XML validity. Xopus does not allow the user to create invalid XML.

Xopus works inside Internet Explorer 5.5 and up on Windows and Mozilla 1.0 and up on all platforms.

There is a demo with an impressive screenshot.  This could be big. [via Sam Ruby]

Antville: Another weblog host/community. Most of the weblogs are not in English, although there are a few. It appears to be based on Helma, another open-source app-server. Each weblog looks like it can have categories and sports everyone’s favorite little orange button with those three letters on it. Here’s a blurb from the antville homepage:

antville is an open source project aimed to the development of an “easy to maintain and use” weblog-hosting system. it’s not limited to just one weblog, it can easily host up to several hundred or thousand weblogs (the number of weblogs is more limited by the site owners choice and server power than software limitations).

I think it is important to note that I stumbled upon this community by clicking on a link from the weblogs.com top 100.

CNet: HP unveils cheaper (yet still overpriced) servers.

The Unix/RISC 2405 server starts at $4,795, and comes with one 650MHz processor, two 18GB hard drives and 512MB of memory. The 5405 starts at $29,026, and comes with two 650MHz processors, 4GB of memory and 72GB of disk room. It can accomodate up to four processors.

The 7405 starts at $50,595, and comes with two 650MHz processors, 4GB of memory and 146GB of disk space. It can accomodate up to eight processors.

It seems to me that I could build a freaking megacluster of AMD or Intel machines with at least double the specs of the 7405 for a fraction of the price.  The 2405 does seem like a nice entry-level RISC based server, through, and probably worth the $4,795 they want for it.  I’ll take two.

CherryPy: Freshmeat Gem of the Day (FMGOTD).  It’s not quite a content management system, not quite an application server, and not quite a compiler.  From the website:

CherryPy is a Python-based tool for developing dynamic web sites. It uses many powerful concepts together, which makes it unique in its approach to web site development. It is available under the GPL license.

CherryPy sits between an application server and a compiler. You write source files, compile them with CherryPy and CherryPy generates an executable containing everything to run the web site (including an HTTP server)

I’ve been thumbing through the tutorial and it looks decently simple and potentially powerful.  I can’t see it becoming insanely popular, but it looks like a great nice solution which will definately make someone’s life out there easier.