Matt Croydon::Postneo

Year: 2002

  • LaNewsFactory: A phjp-based news system and forum system that does not rely on MySQL.  This is good stuff for people using bargain basement web hosting that does not give them access to MySQL.

  • Emergic points to an InfoWorld article about SAP’s new mySAP CRM.  This is cool, but as I’m reading the article, I roll over the many links in the article.  They all link to stories or metastories at InfoWorld.  I know that they need to do that to make money, keep the user trapped, get more ad impressions, but it stinks at the same time.  I guess it is in contrast with weblog entries that I read more of that tend to hand out external links with pleasure.

    I’m just an external link snob then.

  • Slashdot: Linux may be outpacing Mac on the desktop.  I don’t know if the article referenced is authoritative or not.  The author, Nick Selby seems to be a travel writer, aviation writer, and tech writer on loan to the International Herald Tribune.  From the article:

    Dan Kusnetzky, an analyst for International Data Corp., said Linux had a 3.9 percent share of desktops worldwide, outpacing Macintosh’s 3.1 percent.

    The article doesn’t quote whose bum these figures were pulled from.  A Macworld article from July of this year pegs Apple’s market share at 3.48 percent.  A recent BBC article pegs it at 5%.  I’m not saying that this author is wrong, I’d like to see the market share of both Mac and Linux higher than the figures quoted.  I think it will be hard to find hard numbers out there that aren’t skewed by the mac vs. pc mentality.

    As a sidenote, the International Herald Tribune article left me looking for the scrollbar, but instead I had to find the ‘next page’ button on the bottom right.  I don’t feel too good about this interface, it didn’t feel right.  After playing a bit, the interface on the bottom right is kinda slick.  It allows you to resize text on the fly and change between a single column and multiple column format on the fly also.  I definately like that part of it, but I think that this type of interface still needs a little work.

  • Powerbook Duo/Picture Frame: How to turn obsolete hardware into that digital picture frame that sells for too much at the store. [via Slashdot]

  • VeryQuickWiki: A simple yet functional JSP-based wiki.

  • Brainsplat: A PHP/MySQL journal program:

    BrainSplat was originally conceived to scratch my itch for a journal program that I could use to replace LiveJournal.
    It is a simple blogging program that has support for comments. The recent additions is a client interface and a forum like code for formatting BSPHPCode. The reason I made my own was simply because all the scripts I found were generally made for multiple users. And thus, I made my own. I started originally in Perl, but I found that PHP makes a much better interface for these type of programs.

  • Learn Logic with Beavis and Butthead [Blogdex Gem of the Day]:

    Fallacy of Accident

    Assuming that a generalisation will hold in every case.

    Butthead: They must be cool, they’re from Seattle.

  • Brent Simmons: “It’s weird because you need coffee first before you have the energy to make the coffee.”

  • Russell Beattie:

    This is very cool. Okay, I’m going to very clear on my opinions about this. Blunt, actually. If you have control over your *nix mail server and you’re NOT using Spam Assasin, then you’re a fucking moron. ’nuff said.

    His post also references my post from earlier this morning, creating a nice little circle to and from Jeremy Zawodney’s blog. To illustrate:

    [Jeremy Zawodney] -> [me] -> [Russell Beattie] -> [Jeremy Zawodney]

  • Dan Gillmor: 10 Choices that were critical to the Net’s success. My personal (geeky) fave:

    5) The National Science Foundation (NSF) funds the University of California-Berkeley, to put TCP/IP into the Unix operating system originally developed by AT&T. Berkeley thereby created a full but low-cost network operating system, along with a full suite of network applications, that computer start-up companies flocked to use in their boxes. It was, says Bradner, “a way to get into the networking game without spending a lot of money.” So it spread fast.

  • Bruce Perens: “I am no longer with Hewlett-Packard” [CNet and Newsforge and Slashdot report]

  • Sam Ruby: His new essay is a quick intro to XML namespaces.

  • CNet: Eclipse will be getting an update later this month. It will also work on more platforms than before:

    Eclipse next week is sprucing up its software framework with more operating system and language support, said Duffy Fron, a program manager at IBM’s software group. Version 2 of the Eclipse framework will now support Solaris, HP-UX, AIX and QNX operating systems, he said. Eclipse previously supported Windows and Linux.

    It has been a while since I looked at Eclipse, but each time I’ve loaded it up it is easier and quicker.  Of course, the first time I tried it, it was completely unusable, but it was definately useful and helpful the last time I checked it out a few months ago.  I’ll have to give it another try when the update comes out.  The new version will also support Java, C, C++, C#, and Cobol. Rock on!

  • BBC Tech: Medieval: Total War rocks.  I just saw it on the shelf yesterday, it looks like a wicked game. The website has some previews and info.

  • WebServices.Org: An overview of the Web Services One Conference.

    The Web Services One Conference, held in the Boston World Trade Center from August 26-30, focused on the needs of Enterprise developers and offered a variety of tracks such as Java Programming, Enterprise Architectures, Web Services Standards, and more.

  • DPReview: Kodak is recalling all DC5000 digital cameras between serial numbers 01800001 and 11700825. From the recall notice:

    Kodak has received 12 reports, including six in the U.S., of consumers who experienced an electrical shock while changing batteries, or installing or removing the memory card or USB cable. There have been no reports of serious injury.

  • MyOrgBook: A php/mysql GPL’d project. “Some features include multi-user login, lost password emailer, contacts, todo list manager/scheduler, calendar, profile changer. MyOrgBook allows you to edit everything.”

  • Neatest. Site Stats. Evar!

    I was looking at my site stats for yesterday earlier this morning and this pie chart (generated by wusage) popped up.  #1 is my home machine of course, but this was the first time that I saw so many sites represented accessing my weblog.  Usually the top three or four are displayed, then everything else is lumped in with ‘other.’ The amusing thing is that each of sites 2 through 24 had 15-20 accesses, probably my RSS feed and probably about once an hour.  It looks darn pretty though!

  • Crossbar: an open-source Java web reporting app, now has a JIRA site. [via rebelutionary]

  • OSNews: Minimalist linux distros for people who need to recover data.

    When the desktop arrived, it would not boot. It took me a little bit too long to figure out that the primary IDE controller on the motherboard was damaged. I had to get on with my work, so my mission was to rescue my data from that computer. My resources: one Windows 98 computer (at my temporary summer home) that I bought at Tiger Direct a long time ago for only $500, connected to the Internet at roughly 48 Kbps; one Red Hat Linux computer that won’t boot; and one Windows 2000 laptop. The Linux box had 3 hard drives in it. One contained the operating system and applications (13 GB), another contained all my data (100 GB, but not full), and the third was small and I used it exclusively for the swap file. Because my data disk was formatted with ext2, I couldn’t just plug it into the Windows computer. I needed something that will read ext2.