Matt Croydon::Postneo

Month: January 2003

  • Chmod a+rwx /internet

    Dan Gillmor:

    The Internet is Read-Write, not Read-Only.

  • mod_rendezvous

    Will Cox points to mod_rendezvous by Eric Christopher Seidel.  It adds Rendezvous support to Apache 1.3.x under OSX 10.2 or greater.  I really can’t wait to post an entry about a cross-platform mod_rendezvous.

  • Open Source OPML Directories?

    Dave thinks we should write directories in OPML and publish them on the web.  I wonder if there is any software out there set up to publish directories using OPML in a hosted (php/perl/python/jsp/asp etc) environment, preferably released as open source.  I’ll look around later this afternoon.  I’ve taken a look at an open source OPML module for Python.  To get your head around the module, the source for Straw, an RSS aggregator for Gnome2 should help. 

    I’m not sure if there are similar modules or classes available for perl (didn’t see any at CPAN) or PHP, but there might be.  It would take at least these (free/open source) building blocks for OPML-based directories to take off.  I see that I can do OPML directories in Radio as well as Manila, but not everyone owns that software.

    I keep invoking my imaginary free time, but I’ll try my best to look into it.

    Further Thoughts: I think it would be really cool to take a blosxom approach.  Just drop your .opml files to a directory on your web host and the cgi will take care of the rest.  Of course it would probably be easier (for me) to take a command-line approach, but producing dynamic directories by dropping .opml files would be so sexy.

    Also check out Rick’s implementation.

  • Sympathy

    My thoughts go out to everyone who was on the plane that crashed in North Carolina this morning, their families and friends.  Unfortunately the same thoughts go out to the people killed in the Turkish Airlines crash and those effected by it.

  • Questions about X11

    Matt Raible has some questions about Apple’s X11 release:

    So now that Apple has released a beta of it’s X11 X Window System, I have a question for you? Do you use this? I downloaded and installed XDarwin, but have never used it (similar experience to OpenOffice. What can I do with X11? Can I run Gnome using X11? Do I have a use for it at all?

  • jrobb.userland.com/switch

    John Robb:

    OK.  That’s it.  My next computer is going to be an Apple.  After 18 years on a PC, I am ready to call it quits.  Windows is waaaay too much of a hassle for me to maintain.

  • Confessions of a Mozillian

    Excellent!  Dave Hyatt, a member of the Safari team has a weblog and responds to Mark’s post on rendering quirks.  RSS subscribed, baby!

  • My Browser Has No Tabs

    Ask:

    I just sent a bug report to Apple for Safari: “No tabs. I can’t open a new window in a new tab. Where are my tabs? I can’t figure out to surf the web without tabs. Please give me my tabs back. Can I have my tabs? Please don’t make such a cool browser but forget the tabs. Please put the tabs back in. In closing, I would like to add that it would be very nice if Safari could get tabs.”

    There’s one way to address the issue.

  • OSX and KDE/Qt

    So Apple is using KHTML for its rendering engine.on Safari.  This begs the question: How easy is it to port KDE/Qt Apps to native OSX?  It obviously can’t be too hard or Apple wouldn’t have done it.  Have they secretly ported the KDE/Qt architecture to OSX in order to make their lives easier?  How does Project Builder handle a KDE/Qt-style app?  I’m rather ignorant on the subject, but I’m extremely curious.  If you post about it in your weblog, email me a pointer on the off chance that you’re not on my blogroll.

  • Apple Big Picture

    How will releasing Safari for OSX effect the Apple-Microsoft relationship?

  • New AlBooks and Wireless Question

    Here’s a question for the wireless tech heads in the crowd: How are the new Aluminum Powerbooks going to perform in the wireless Airport (802.11b)/Airport Extreme (802.11g) category?  I know that the ibooks do quite well with Airport but the titanium in the TiBook decreases performance significantly.

    Will anyone be on the show floor tomorrow to check it out or ask the question?  That might be a deal maker or breaker for some people.

  • Apple Roundup

    Aaron has a buncha cool Apple pointers.

    Wi-Fi Networking News has the low-down on Apple’s Airport Extreme.  I like the idea that if a particular 802.11g chip is not compatabile with another particular 802.11g chip, they can just revert back to 802.11b and talk, albeit slower.

    RIP HomeRF.  I have a feeling 802.11a will not be far behind…

    The Big and Small commercial rules.

  • Up The Ante

    Cool.  It looks like the bar has been raised at weblogs.com:

    The high-water mark is 1418 weblogs, on 1/7/2003; 12:11:11 PM.

  • But How Does It Render?

    Mark reviews Safari from a web content provider’s standpoint.  I agree with his summary:

    The browser does not support tabbed browsing. I will never use it except for testing.

  • Paolo’s New Powerbook

    Paolo:

    Of course, I’m posting this from the newly installed new Apple’s browser: Safari. Hmmm… where is my wysiwyg editor? Oh, well. A very interesting keynote, now I know how my next portable looks like.

  • MWSF Keynote

    I hope Steve has something up his sleeve, I’m overly impressed so far.  I do like this tidbit from Macrumors‘ notes:

    85 mil people live within 15 miles of an Apple Store

    I don’t really care about the iStuff.  I just want to see some hardware.  Is that wrong?

    Ooh, a high speed web browser.  Safari.  Cool.

    Keynote, a presentation application.  Cute.  Well, if it’s good enough for a Steve Jobs MacWorld keynote…

    Ooh.  I want a 17″ Powerbook.  1″ Thick.  1440×900.  Anodized aluminum.  Good specs, though at $3299 it’s a little out of my price range.

    Maybe the new smaller 12″ powerbook will be for me.  1024×768, 867MHz G4, and good all around specs for $1799.   That sounds more like it.

    I’m down with Airport Extreme (802.11g).  54Mbps and backwards compatability works for me.  And a base station will cost $199.  Not too shabby considering a 802.11b access point is $99 on sale.

    I like the tech on the powerbooks.  I’m worried that I’m still going to be waiting for the other shoe to drop when Steve is done.  No matter how cool the stuff that they announce is, I keep expecting more.

    That’s it for the keynote.  I’m left wanting more, but I’m quite happy with the hardware announced today.  Keep up the good work, Apple.

    I’m going to be in the market for a laptop in the semi-near future, and I might have to take a close look at the 12″ powerbook.

  • XML-RPC and RSS (.NET)

    Dave Winer pointed to a few excellent things this morning:

    • Charles Cook updated XML-RPC for .Net. [This is a great little library]
    • Sumod has an RSS aggregator for .Net. [Cool, check out the screenshots]

  • Konica and Minolta to Merge

    DPReview Reports:

    Japan’s Konica Corp. and Minolta Co., two film photography giants struggling for a foothold in the digital era, said today they had agreed on a merger that could propel them into the big league. Konica, the world’s third-largest photo film maker, and Minolta, a leading maker of SLR cameras struggling after poor financial results, already have a mutual supply deal in photocopier machines and a toner joint venture.

    Wow.  This isn’t huge, but it’s pretty big.  I’m a little bummed, because Konica is one of the best underdog camera companies around.  They make great products with sharp lenses for less.  Their repair department is responsive, their sales rep for my store is awesome, and their inkjet paper is pretty good too.

    I’ve never been similarly impressed with Minolta.  They have good products, don’t get me wrong, but they seem to suffer from some bloat.  They tend to discontinute parts for hugely popular cameras at almost the same time they discontinue the parts themselves.  You can repair an autofocus SLR Canon or Nikon camera that is 10 years old, but you can’t do the same with a Minolta.  Parts just aren’t available.  Their prices are okay, but not great.  Their products are good, but not worth what they charge, IMHO.

    This merger could either be A Good Thing or could turn out horribly for Konica.  I hope that it works out.  By the way, Konica’s digital line is doing quite well.  And the blurb says that Minolta is ‘a leading maker of SLR cameras.’  That’s wrong.  Minolta SLRs suck.  (Their digital cameras are okay but overpriced.)  Canon and Nikon are the leading makers of SLR cameras.  Pentaxes are good but geared more toward amateurs.

    I apologize for the rant.  I like Minolta stuff, they just piss me off sometimes.  You know you’ve been in the photo industry when you rant about the photo industry on the internet before coffee.

  • Mobile p2p

    I had some pretty interesting thoughts this evening while making a peanut butter and jelly sandwitch. I’m not quite sure how it started, but I like where it ended up.

    What happens at the intersection of internet-ready mobile phones and peer to peer networks?  Of course when the two technologies meet, whatever you end up wtih will be fully buzzword compliant.  I’m trying to see past the buzz.  Bear with me for a minute.

    Cellular phones are finally beginning to have a decent bit of power, a real operating system, they are java-enabled, wap-enabled, and mms-enabled.  Bandwith is still an issue but it is improving all the time.  What if several peer to peer networks were developed to solve specific problems.  Let’s take a peer to peer geographic-specific network.  Everyone with a phone that is connected to the network is constantly broadcasting their location, and everyone recieves information about phones with in an n feet/mile/meter/kilometer range.  You can query a phone within your radius, request a chat, meetup, collaboration, game, prank, or anything else you can imagine.

    The only problem that I see to a system like this is bandwidth.  Peer to peer networks are notorious bandwidth hogs.  The thing I love about wireless/mobile p2p networks is that developers wound be required to write tight protocols and code to work on these limited devices.  Another thing I was thinking about was the possibility of involving servers or gateways in this mobile p2p network.  I’m pretty sure that with JXTA you can have different classes of nodes.  It shouldn’t be too hard to set up server/proxy/gateway nodes and end user nodes.  The phone deals with the gateway which broadcasts lots of bandwith and filters out anything beyond the radius specified by the phone.

    The great thing is you could have a ton of different p2p networks that do things other than share music.  You could share resources available to your phone, collections of user-taken photographs, expert information about a perticular location or topic, or anything else you can conjure up.

    I see the advantages of a mobile mob of p2p networks outweighing the costs of building the infrastructure.  I have a feeling that much of the work could be done for cheap and much of the load handled by broadband connections at home.  How would that be for disruptive?

    I think that this rant was probably triggered by the stuff that Russ said earlier today, so thanks Russ!  I definately don’t have the time to tackle a project like this right now, but I’m going to throw it on the back burner and let it simmer.  Any thoughts?

  • NTP

    Glenn Graham has a good overview of NTP at O’Reillynet:

    If your server doesn’t keep accurate time, your log files are useless in the event of an incident that requires log-dependent information, including security breaches. E-mail servers and other clients depend on accurate time to relay, send, and receive data. What good is the date stamp contained in an e-mail if the server that passed that information is inaccurate? These programs all must be timed precisely to within 1/100 of a second.