Month: November 2002

Chris Sells notes that Visual Studio .NET 2003 (a.k.a. Everett) Final Beta is available to MSDN subscribers.

This one stumped me for awhile.  I had been able to install and run Apache Axis 1.0 (under Tomcat 4.1.12) on my Red Hat 7.3 testbed.  The server and examples ran just fine, but I was not able to use Axis to build a client.  No big deal, as this was before I had done a lot of reading on Axis and web services in general, and before the Web Services DevCon.

After upgrading all of my Red Hat boxen to 8.0 (one desktop for fun and one stripped down server for test), happyaxis gave me a 500 internal service error.  I tried installing on both boxes, thinking that I had done something incorrectly.  Neither installation worked.  This evening I decided to reinstall Red Hat 7.3 on my testbed, and now happyaxis no longer throws a 500 internal service error, and is quite happy.  I am currently installing some optional components, but everything seems to be running just fine on the server side.

This was quite aggrivating.  It worked just fine under 7.3.  I upgraded to 8.0 and pulled my hair out trying to make the damn thing work.  Turns out it wasn’t me, it was my distro.  Has anyone else been able to run Axis 1.0 on Red Hat 8.0?  If so, let me know.

O’Reilly’s ONDotnet:

One of the benefits of using a windowing system is the ability to drag and drop objects from one window to another. Such is the functionality that we have taken for granted when using Microsoft Windows. Though it seems such a trivial task, not much has been written about how to implement drag and drop in your Windows application. In this article I will discuss how you can use Windows forms using the .NET Framework to develop applications that support drag and drop operations.

[via Phillip Pearson, who got it from Rick the techno-weenie]

Gregor Rothfuss has put his masters thesis online at Advogato:

I recently completed my masters thesis A Framework for Open Source Projects (1.5MB PDF). By announcing it here, I hope it can be useful for someone. Feedback welcome.

I consider the thesis to be a 1.0 document, and plan to update / extend it as I learn more. The goal of my thesis was to establish a framework to support open source project participants and leaders. Im aware that each project is different, but I still believe that there are some common themes that reappear in most projects. Im trying to work these out, and to offer help for the most common problems encountered. So, if you think I’m full of it, or have corrections / addendums, send them my way.

I’m definately going to check this out as soon as I get a chance.

This is a very cool applet that I stumbled upon a few weeks ago.  I was trapped in my room, my radio does not get local American) football coverage, and I wanted to check on the local team.  I headed over to NFL.COM, and popped up something that said ‘Gameday Live!’  Lo and behold, it gives my near-realtime updates, play by play, stats, field position, other scores, and all kinds of good stuff.  I had stumbled upon a similar system last season while trying to check out a baseball game, but it looks like MLB.COM has made that service for-pay.

My hats go off to the team that put this Applet and the supporting infrastructure together.  I also thank whomever is reponsible for keeping this app ad-supported.  The Washington Redskins are currently on top of the Giants 17-10.  Now back to your regularly schedule techblog…

Anil Dash:

It’s time for the microcontent client.

Also Phil Wolff’s summary is good.  Also check out his ideas on a converged client.

XMLHack: SOAP Web Services: built on a contradiction?

Rael has implemented an idea by Steven Johnson.

Give it a whirl (you’ll need a Google Web API developer’s key) or download the source for your mutating and spindling pleasure.

From a later post:

Steven Johnson has a 0.34% googleshare of “Emergence”
Slime Mold has a 0.04% googleshare of “Emergence”

I think this fits in the category of “proof of concept” web services application, but it’s cool nonetheless.

NewsForge reports:

Story at ZDNet: Cash-strapped, and looking for new options, IT managers are warming to open-source content management products. Customizable and free, open-source is becoming serious competition to the “big iron” CMS vendors like Interwoven and Vignette.

Slashdot reports that SVG 1.1 is out as a recomendation, as well as Mobile SVG.

Brent Simmons:

I’ve got the basics of weblog editing in NetNewsWire pro working—I’ve been using a Manila site initially, since Manila supports both the Blogger and MetaWeblog APIs.

Great stuff, Brent.  Another reason I wish that I had a box running OSX…

NewsForge reports:

It’s a rather undisputed fact that Windows is the top operating system around (as far as numbers of user go). Most people will also agree that MacOS is the in a distant second, and recently Linux has been gaining MacOS to gain the third place spot and a shot a second. For the number four desktop operating system, the choice isn’t very clear. Story at Junetech.com

TheServerSide:

A new article on Java World does a good job covering the XML and Web Services support provided by the J2EE 1.4 specification (currently in proposed final draft 2 stage). “Developers frustrated by the observation that J2EE seems to grow more complicated with every revision will appreciate the simplicity and familiarity of J2EE 1.4’s Web services programming model.”

Read Sun boosts enterprise Java.

Incorporating Rendezvous into Your Cocoa Applications, Part 2 by Mike Beam is now online at O’Reillynet.

Today we’ll build the Rendezvous service publisher and browser, and in the next column I’ll show you how to give the application the ability to talk to other instances of the application on a network.

OpenBSD Journal has a roundup of webmail solutions, including Squirrelmail, IMP, Aeromail, and TWIG.

Infoworld:

While Web services’ dynamic nature will make management a higher priority than some client/server technologies, the focus on managing solely the Web service layer will invite some pioneers into the management market. Gartner says Web services brokers and network vendors will provide most of the early management tools as the need grows and the market matures.

I’m going to the premiere of Washington Interns Gone Bad tonight at Art-O-Matic.  My older sister, pictured in this Washington Post article, has a role in the low budget movie.  The production even has a weblog.  Rock!

In local news, a parking garage under construction partially collapsed a few miles away from where I work.  The Washington Post reports:

Two people are dead in the partial collapse of a parking garage being built in Rockville.

Montgomery County Fire spokesman Pete Piringer said another person is missing, while a fourth has been pulled to safety and taken to Suburban Hospital.

More as it happens. [Mapquest location of collapse] [Google News roundup]

Greg pointed this out:

Just found Flock—a J2EE RSS Aggregator (similar to Amphetadesk). I will give it a try, I definitely need one of these things. And it’s Java after all…

CNET:

IBM on Friday unveiled a set of programming tools specifically designed to bring Web services to mobile devices.

The new Web Services Toolkit for Mobile Devices (WSTK) provides developers with tools and Java-based runtime software for building Web services applications that can be accessed on three mobile devices: Windows CE-based Pocket PCs, Palm devices and BlackBerry handhelds from Research In Motion.

It’s not Java, but I’ve got pocketsoap on my PocketPC 2002 PDA, and it kicks much ass.  I’ll probably give it a whirl though.

I’ve been looking into developing for the Sharp Zarus lately.  It looks like my options are dealing with a minimalistic QT environment (I’ve never done any *nix GUI programming) or work with the equivalent of Java Applets on the Zarus.  I have a feeling that I might not be satisfied with the level of control and robustness of the Java solution.

Who knows?