Day: December 10, 2002

Matt Raible:

Erik gives us the heads up on a new W3C Proposal: an XML Encryption, Decription Standards.

I think that I’ve finally stopped trying to type his last name Riable.  Stupid fingers, do what I say!

Greg also classifies me:

Amen to that! I’d add Dominic Da Silva here, he’s more focused on Java itself, and Matt Croydon with a really broad coverage of geek stuff.

Sweet.  Thanks!

Greg wants to post to his blog via his Palm PDA.  I haven’t seen any XML-RPC implementations for PalmOS, but that doesn’t mean that writing an oversimplified implementation (enough to use the blogger API/metaWeblog API) wouldn’t be impossible.

And yes, Greg, I did think about using Java.  I didn’t have the energy to hunt down bleeding edge classes for struts-wml, and I figured if I was going to half-ass it, I might as well use Perl.  🙂  I’m actually torn between extending the perl program or trying to get struts-wml to play nice with my server.  We shall see.

Slashdot discusses a turn-key linux audio solution on top of Debian.

Mono News:

Mike Kestner announced Gtk# 0.6. This new release includes many new features and bug fixes, and is the perfect companion to the Mono 0.17 release.

Johannes has contributed a Windows-ready package of Mono 0.17, and its available from our download page.

Alp Toker has Debian packages

Legacy:

‘According to META Group, more than 90% of large organizations will utilize host access products that externalize legacy applications via Web services by 2007.’

JetBlue:

Yahoo.com article investigates JetBlue Airways Corp use of Web services. ‘JetBlue uses Web services to continuously update its computerized flight manuals for pilots, for instance, and run some aspects of its online store.’

Reverend Jim asks why you’re not using PEAR for PHP.  He suggested:

lynx -source http://go-pear.org | php

Alas, I need to upgrade my install of PHP before I can play with this.  It looks like PEAR is a long way from CPAN as far as maturity and ease of use goes, but heck, it’s a start.

Rob Fahrni:

I decided to use PowerBlog as my client to my various blogs, Blogger and Radio UserLand based. Guess what, it works like a charm! I just hooked it into my Radio site in about two minutes and created a post. Very impressive. This stuff just works, XML-RPC+Blogger API+Radio+PowerBlog, WOW! Jon, Dave, Evan…. you guys ROCK!

PHP.net:

The news of PHP.net is available now in RSS 1.0 format via our new news.rss file. You can add this file to any news reader or portal site to get the latest official PHP news. We strongly recommend you to cache the contents locally on your side, as the newsfeed is updated daily. The RSS file is available on every mirror site.

Okay.  Total cost of ownership for 1 year on a Sidekick: $99 (after rebates) + ($40 x 12) = $579.  That’s for one year, unlimited internet access.  I have a feeling that T-Mobile would want to renegotiate a new 1-year agreement with you at the end of the year, or you would have to pay for your internet.  That’s not as easy to justify, though I’m trying.

Will Cox doesn’t like that phone numbers are not portable.  I have a Sprint PCS number (since I was a senior in High School) and I’m not letting go of it anytime soon, even though Sprint can suck sometimes.  The sad thing is, I was trying to justify keeping my Sprint number and using the Sidekick for internet…

Hiptop Nation clues me in to Amazon’s T-Mobile Sidekick deal.  You get the Sidekick + Camera for $249 – $50 T-Mobile mail in rebate – $100 Amazon mail in rebate == $99.  Plans are $40/mo.  That’s almost attractive enough…

I set up freshmeat and sourceforge pages for WAPBlog this morning.  Now the key is not letting the project stagnate.  Any major improvements will probably have to wait, as finals and projects come first.

You know you’re a geek when you take a break from coding by coding something else that’s easier and fun/interesting.

OSDir has an interview with Tim Perdue, who recently released GForge:

Tim Perdue was one of the founding architects of SourceForge, the open source project management and website, hosting thousands of projects and home to over 500,000 developers. Tim is also known for having built both GeoCrawler and PHPBuilder. OSDir asks Tim about his days at SourceForge, what happened behind the scenes, and his latest project, GForge, a scaled down and enhanced version of Alexandria, the code that VA closed to sell as proprietary.

Mark Pilgrim was that close.

Steve Makofsky (Furrygoat):

Interesting find up on Microsoft Research’s website: The Conferencing Experience Project. ConferenceXP integrates recent advances in high performance audio, video and network technologies to seamlessly connect multiple distant participants in a rich immersive environment for distance conferencing, instruction and collaboration.

CNet:

Rather than continue to let the thousands of PCs in its stores sit largely unused, Gateway plans to announce Tuesday a project that will let companies tap into those PCs for large computing projects.

The PC maker is teaming with distributed-computing start-up United Devices to sell the combined computing power of its PCs to companies on a per-hour basis. Gateway plans to charge 15 cents per PC per hour to companies that want to marshal the computational resources of the latest Gateway desktops.

Potentially cool application.  I’m sure that they won’t be running SETI or trying to break crypto, but they’d have a good bit of computing power at their disposal.

Graham Glass benchmarked Electric XML (J# CLR & Java JVM) vs. MSXML (C#) and found that Electric XML Java came out on top.

Michael Radwin has jury duty:

José took about 15 minutes of questions. People asked everything from “What happens if I run my own business and it’s a financial hardship?” to “Do we need permission to use the restroom?” to “Do you know if there are any phone jacks in this room so we can dial out for Internet access?”

What is going to happen when the lawyers find out that he has a weblog.  “Sir, can you define the term ‘weblog’?”

Chris Sells is looking for papers for his first PhoneCon:

The conference format is 8 conference calls over 8 weeks. Each conference call will be 90 minutes long with a 60 minute talk and 30 minutes for q&a/discussion. The call will require attendees to queue with questions, so it won’t be chaos. Also, each attendee will be able to log into a WebEx (or some such) session to see the slides and demos as the speaker talks. The number of attendees will be limited to 100 this first time around (gotta work out the kinks), but I think the idea of a series of conference talks you can watch w/o the expense or time required to travel has merits, i.e. attendees only pay for the content and not the travel and speakers get paid for their talks, but don’t have to leave home.

The topic of the first “PhoneCon” will be intermediate to advanced WinForms. Anyone interested or that knows someone interested in giving a talk over the phone in their PJs, please send me abstracts. Thanks!

Cool idea.  Email Chris at the link above if you’ve got what he’s looking for.  I’m just waiting for the sign-up email.