Matt Croydon::Postneo

Month: October 2002

  • I wonder if I’m included in the fifteen or so mySubscriptions sources in the RSS Explorer Tool beta or if the script is smart enough to check for your own file.  I’ll assume the latter until I find out otherwise.  🙂

  • Dave Winer:

    A milestone for Uncle Davey today. I released my first beta since May. It’s a brand new piece of software, written with absolutely no cigarettes. Not one. My secret is to keep a jar of Planter’s unsalted peanuts in the kitchen. Whenever I need to pause and think before implementing something I get up and get a handful of peanuts. The little walk is important for some reason. When I come back I eat the peanuts one at a time. It takes about the same amount of time as a cigarette. I used to smoke to set a pace. Now the getting up and peanut eating does the job. Anyway, I’ll link to the beta tomorrow, it’s the RSS Explorer Tool. It’s going to build a new kind of community, and should get more exposure for feeds that aren’t in the top 100.

  • The next Real Time & Embedded Computing Conference will be in Tysons Corner on October 31.  I went to one in Maryland a few months ago, and while there were a lot of sales pitches, there was also quite a bit of good info for free.  There are several sessions on embedded Linux, embedded Windows XP, and some other stuff.  I probably won’t be able to make it, but if you’re in the area, it’s free.

  • Samba 2.2.6 Released

    Release Notes indicate that it is mostly a bugfix.

    This is the latest stable release of Samba and the last planned release of the Samba 2.2. branch. This is the version that all production Samba servers should be running for all current bug-fixes.

    Those crazy kids are also working on a 3.0 version, which is currently in the alpha stage.

    I love the Samba logo and I use Samba everyday.  I should really order a t-shirt.

  • Dave Winer: Beta: RSS Explorer Tool.

    From the RSS Explorer page you can view lists of subscriptions from other Radio users. Each channel or “feed” has a checkbox to the left of its name. If it’s checked, you’re already subscribed. You can choose to subscribe or unsubscribe by clicking on the Subscribe button to the right. To see a different list, choose a name from the popup menu, below, and click on the View button. [via Radio Dev]

  • ITWorld:

    The Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I) said Thursday will add two seats to its board of directors, a move that may help heal a rift between the group and Sun Microsystems Inc.

  • Wired News:

    Conference organizer IDG World Expo gleefully announced on Thursday that Macworld Expo is returning to Boston, its traditional home. But Apple rained on the parade, saying it will not be taking part.

    I wonder how this will impact their product release cycles.  I have gone to a few satellite downlinks from MWNY, and they seem to have at least some new products for MWNY and MWSF.

  • Developer.Apple.Com: Using SOAP with PHP. [via Brent Simmons]

  • OnJava has an article about WSIL (Web Service Inspection Language) which generated some buzz from the sources I read via RSS.

  • Dane Carlson:

    No more tears: “Onions that taste as good as the original but do not have you weeping over the chopping board are now a possibility, say Japanese researchers.”

    I saw this fly by the LED display at the MVA (Maryland’s equivalent of a Department of Motor Vehicles).  It was one of the few items that scrolled across in newsticker fashion that didn’t involve fatalaties.

  • John Robb:

    I really actually like Wired’s new redesign.  My only problem is that for some reason it takes 40-80 seconds to load.  Apparently, nobody else is getting this problem.  Any ideas?

    I love the redesign!  It feels like a weblog.

  • FeedParser:

    feedParser was created due to the lack of a good, flexable, classed based RSS feed parser for PHP. It has been built as a class and currently handles RSS 0.91, RSS 0.92, RSS 0.93, RSS 1.0, and RSS 2.0 feeds. For channels it grabs the title, description, link, and creator. For items it grabs the title, description, link, and date. It also provides a form of the date converted into the local timezone to facilitate cronological sorting of items. The dates are provided in UNIX timestamp format for easy manipulation by other PHP functions.

    It requires xmlParser:

    xmlParser was created due to the lack of a good, namespace aware XML parser for PHP. It is written as a PHP class. It functions as it is, however, many more features are planned. This class is still in the development phase. As it functions now, it will accept XML data as a string and present it as a struct.

    Both programs are GPL and look like they could form the basis of some advanced projects in a shared hosting environment.  Props go out to Reverand Jim, the author of the two projects.  His weblog is here, his livejournal is here, RSS 1.0 feed is here, while his RSS 0.91/2.0 feed is over there.  Oh yeah, and RSS subscribed.

  • Werner Vogels and his CS students at Cornell are working on a project that could change the way that people collect, report, and view news.  Here’s a snippet from the abstract/intro:

    The NewsWire project is to deliver a peer-to-peer system for collaborative real-time delivery of news items through a publish/subscribe interface. The systems is build using the Mariner system from the Astrolabe tool suite, a versatile tool for ultra-scalable and secure distributed state management. Astrolabe uses epidemic techniques and information aggregation to achieve the scalability and robustness needed.

    It caught my eye at first because it sounds similar to NetNewsWire, but the project has a very high cool factor on its own.  Here’s another snippet I like:

    Our premise is that current push solutions fail to take advantage of the collaborative power of the Internet. The solutions are often proprietary, and employ a one-to-many model where the producer is expected to deliver “personalized” content directly to each of the consumers. The approach clearly has scalability limitations. Yet despite these problems, there has been little activity by publishers of the many real-time news sites to provide a coordinated solution for this problem. We believe that the time has come for an Internet-wide infrastructure for efficient real-time content delivery.

    I have subscribed to Werner Vogels’ RSS feed to keep up with the project and the other stuff that he’s working on/thinking about.  I think I originally found a link to his blog from Peter Drayton.

  • GAUL: More genetic programming fun:

    The Genetic Algorithm Utility Library (or, GAUL for short) is a flexible programming library designed to aid in the development of applications that require the use of genetic algorithms. It provides data structures and functions for handling and manipulation of the data required for a genetic algorithm. Additional stochastic algorithms are provided for comparison to the genetic algorithms. Much of the functionality is also available through a simple S-Lang interface.

    The current primary aims of this project are to produce documentation, examples and test cases for this open-source release of GAUL. Several new features are also planned for GAUL including wrappers to enable its use with programming languages other than C. The open-source release of GAUL is currently not parallelised, however this will become a priority development target.

  • Dave Winer:

    Dan Shafer: “My new favorite sport is Race the Aggregator.”

    It’s a habit that I’m trying hard to break, as I have many more than 27 news sources.  It doesn’t come easily.  I had to write off the time that I was in Boston, there was no way to catch up from that.

  • Kenneth Hunt points out rdesktop, an RDP client (think Terminal Services) for accessing Windows machines remotely.  He also points to the Terminal Services installer for Windows systems.  I’ll admit that I have a copy of it saved in my web-accessable email account so I can install it on any system that I need to.

    I think now is the time for me to point out Putty, my SSH client of choice for the Windows platform.

  • Dane Carlson:

    How to install Pacific Bell DSL internet service if you have Windows XP: “Do not use the SBCIS Installer Disk #2 (yellow cd). Disk #2 cannot be used with the Windows XP Operating System.”

    There is (was) a similar Black Disk of Death for Comcast users.  It does not play well with 2000 or XP from what I recall.

  • KDevelop 3.0 Alpha1 is out.  I wonder how it compares to Eclipse for editing Java on Linux.

    This is a completely rewritten design with tons of new features and a new graphical interface mode. Support for Java, PHP, and Perl projects has been added, as well as many new features.

  • WebServices.Org: Web services challenge at Comdex FALL 2002

    Software vendors will compete on the show floor to build the best Web services based application

    Folsom, CA -October 15th, 2002 – The World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) has agreed to host the first annual Iron Chefs of Web Services Challenge taking place at Comdex Fall on Tuesday November 19th in the Central Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center.

    Five teams will be invited to compete by developing Web Services applications on the show floor. Their work will be judged by a panel of experts selected from the press and analyst community. This is an interactive development session with the software industry’s best programmers. The format will combine the spectacle of performance art with the entertainment value of a live high pressure sporting event.

    Off the top rope…

  • Wallace and Gromit: Soccamatic

    I haven’t had a chance to take a look at the video, but I have mirrored the Quicktime shorts: