Let’s spread the word: Version 0.1 of my highly anticipated (well, at least by the two people who read this weblog) Outlook and Exchange 2000 powered weblog toolkit OutBlog has been released. More information (and a sample blog & download package including source code) is available at http://OutBlog.IngoRammer.com.
Amazing, Ingo. Wickedly amazing.
It’s true, it’s true. I’ve been offered a fellowship at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, and have, of course, accepted.
Hmm, I see a special weblog edition of Celebrity Deathmatch coming on: Winer vs. Lessig (or Harvard vs. Stanford).
Erik pointed to a blurb at Gizmodo about the Mini-PC:
A new half-size laptop that weighs less than a pound and is just one inch thick from Vulcan, a company owned by that other Microsoft billionaire, Paul Allen. The Mini-PC will run Windows XP, and have integrated WiFi, a 5.8-inch screen, a 20GB hard drive, and a built-in mini-keyboard.
I’m enthusiasticly RSS-subscribed, by the way.
You might notice a difference in tone between posts done at work and those done at home or on the road. Most of my posts right now between 10am and 7pm are done at work from a computer on the sales counter of a mom and pop camera store. It pays the bills and I enjoy most of it (except passport and immigration pictures).
I have recently noticed that posts done at work have a rather urgent (curt?) tone to them. I type them quite quickly between customers or during slow periods. I try to find and correct typos, but this weblog is 100% spellcheck free. I’m not exactly happy about it, but my blogging on the go doesn’t afford me a spell checker. (Mental note: find a light weight BloggerAPI/MetaweblogAPI client with a spell checker)
My posts from home or out and about after work tend to be composed with a little more care. Project updates and random hackery tend to happen at home. I tend to roll out of bend and fire up my aggregator in the morning. My first volley of posts tends to be pre-caffeine. I usually fix typos that I catch (my built-in spell checker sucks though) and occasionally enrich a previous post with an update or correction. I try my best to make an update or change obvious, but every once in awhile they might not be. Every once in awhile I will tweak a post a few times just after publishing, but that probably won’t impact any readers.
As a pseudo-resolution, I’ve been trying to write more original content for the blog this year. I recognize that I’m a better linker than writer, but I have definately enjoyed writing a few longer mini-pieces so far this year. They’re still flying low under the radar, but as I write more, the quality of my work will improve. Perhaps I’ll jog another weblogger’s brain and they’ll take it to the next level. That would be awesome.
I’m a big picture guy and I take pride in broadening the big picture of others.
I spoke with my Konica sales rep this afternoon and have some more information on the merger. Aparently Konica did not notify any of its reps or employees before announcing the merger. Speculation within the company is that Minolta with retain the camera brand while the Konica brand will focus on film, paper, chemisty, and digital supplies.
It looks like the merger has more to do with office and business machines with the photo side as an afterthought.
The companies aim to cut 4,000 jobs by 2005, from their combined work force of 38,500. The companies also hope to trim 50 billion yen ($418 million) in costs a year.
My sales rep tells me that Konica has a slight majority in the merger, which is most likely a very good thing. Traditionally, Konica has been a much more responsive company on many levels including repairs, retail, and to the dealer. Their engineering is well done, their cameras outperform and outlast some of the bigger manufacturers. They don’t have a vast line of digital cameras, but the ones they make (except for that crappy 2 megapixel one) are feature packed and of high quality.
Unfortunately I don’t share the same enthusiasm for Minolta. I’ve never seen a sales rep from Minolta (and I’ve been working photo retail for seven years now). Their products are good but not great. They should discontinue their line of SLRs, as nobody takes them seriously. They are quite bad about discontinuing parts for their cameras. I will say that I’m completely satisfied with my Minolta Autometer IVF, which I’ve been using since I was a kid.
I really hope that the Konica Way prevails.
Disclaimer: I don’t think any NDAs were violated in my conversation this afternoon, but my apologies if there were.
My News Aggregator is like CNN, except I have my own selection of reporters out there in the field. Adam Curry reports from the Netherlands, Chris Cloud is my travel advisor, and Jenny is my librarian. I have lot’s of other sources. The subscriptions are cheap. Why not get yourself a news aggregator? You deserve it. It’s changed my life even more than TiVo.
For what it’s wroth, Ernie, Greplaw, and Lessig are my dream team of lawyers. I scan 245 news sources [OPML] entirely too often.
WebServices.Org covers yet another spec for the WS- bucket: WS-Reliability:
The purpose of WS-Reliability is to address reliable messaging requirements, which become critical, for example, when using Web Services in B2B applications. SOAP [SOAP1.1] over HTTP [RFC2616] is not sufficient when an application-level messaging protocol must also address reliability and security. While security is getting traction in the development of Web Services standards, reliability is not. This specification is intended as an initial proposal for defining reliability in the conte xt of current Web Services standards. The specification borrows from previous work in messaging and transport protocols, e.g., SOAP, and the ebXML Message Service [ebMS]. It proposes appropriate modifications to apply this work to Web Services.
Paul Wood has put together an article for O’Reillynet that looks like it may be that perfect length: long enough and in depth enough without being too much for an online article. Here’s the lead in:
I have decided to use Tomcat 4 Servlet/JSP Container technologies to implement a Web application. This still leaves many options, and choosing between the various available technologies is not easy. For this article, I have chosen to keep it simple and use Java Server Pages (JSPs) in combination with Java classes.