Month: April 2003

Gizmodo:

In-depth look at the Zaurus C700, Sharp’s new Linux-based PDA, which with its 640×480 screen that swivels around to reveal a tiny keyboard, looks a little like a mini-laptop. Sadly, these still haven’t been introduced into the American market, but there are a few places that will import them from Japan.

I’d like to give a quick shout out to Laurie, Steve, Phil, and David over at DSS (US Defense Security Service).  I have a feeling that it’s as innocent as a link to Trunk Monkey being forwarded around.  Having a spike in hits from *.nipr.mil made me sweat for a few minutes though.

I’ve also had a person from the Naval Education and Training Command poking around for Python information.  I can be proud of that one.

Buzz over at Sci-Fi Hi-Fi notes that the version of Ant (1.5.2) that ships with Eclipse 2.1 has the zip/jar bug.  Here’s his list of steps to fix the situation:

1. Download Ant 1.5.3.
2. Copy the contents of plugins/org.apache.ant_1.5.2 to plugins/org.apache.ant_1.5.3.
3. Replace ant.jar and optional.jar at plugins/org.apache.ant_1.5.3 with the Jars from the newer distribution.
4. Change the version number in plugins/org.apache.ant_1.5.3/plugin.xml to 1.5.3.
5. Trash plugins/org.apache.ant_1.5.2.

Thanks for the hot tip, Buzz.  I’ll take care of this on my copy of Eclipse tonight.

Ingo:

Wouldn’t the world be a better place if we could use SOAP, WSDL, WS-*, without angle brackets?

Yes?

I’m finally downloading Eclipse 2.1.

I stopped by ISPCon for an hour or so this afternoon.  I wasn’t able to attend any of the conference sessions, but it looked like there was lots and lots to be learned there.  The exhibit hall was fairly small, but there were some goodies hidden in there.

I could see two major themes among the trade show booths.  There were many things that you would expect at an ISP conference: wholesale dialup, backbone sales, high end hardware, and high end software.  There were two newer areas that seemed to steal all of the buzz: spam killing and wireless.

Here is a quick list of vendors selling anti-spam or anti-popup software:

• Vanquish (Slogan: Make Spammers Pay)
• Spamtrap from Down Under
• Stopzilla, whose website unfortunately feels like a popup ad

If seemed that by far the most buzzworthy booth was that of YDI Wireless.  They’re a Northern Virginia company that specializes in wireless cool stuff.

You can see their WIPOP, an industrial WiFi access point.  It absolutely rocked.  The product summary says it all:

The YDI exclusive WIPOP-in-a-Box™ is a complete 802.11b two- or three-channel WIPOP system in a heavy-duty outdoor waterproof enclosure. All that is needed is YDI antennas, coax cables, and AC power.

In addition to their higher end industrial stuff, they also make midrange (~$500 list) indoor access points as well as access points built in to a flat antenna.

I should also note that they also have a selection of midrange to top end 2.4GHz antennas.

RadioLan also seems to specialize in wireless network gear.  There was a lot of talk about wireless broadband in the air.

I used Pocketwarrior on my @migo handheld to sniff out various WiFi signals.  There were signals from YDI, Hotspotzz, a Linksys access point, and a few others.  I was able to change my SSID a few times and was able to get intermittent connectivity on my Pocket PC device.  I picked up a weak signal from somewhere at the Inner Harbor briefly, but it fell off the radar quickly.  I was able to do some basic browsing, but I ran into a JSP error (JSP error pages are ugly) a few times while trying to leech a connection from Hotspotzz.

All in all it was an interesting show.  If I had the time and money, I would have definately attended some of the conference sessions.  Most of the gear and software demonstrated was high high end.  I would have liked to see some lower end and midrange stuff that mom and pop ISPs/webhosts would be interested in.

test using pocketblog.

Jason Kottke has the big MovableType-related annoucement from ETCon:

Ben, Mena, and Anil announce TypePad:

TypePad is an upcoming hosted service providing powerful tools for creating full-featured weblogs. Built in response to the needs of webloggers, online diarists and writers, TypePad harnesses the power of Six Apart’s popular Movable Type personal publishing system into a turnkey service, suitable for beginners and experts alike.

Think of it with Blog*Spot, except with MT handling the content management bit. Drooooool….

Ben Hammersly also wrote about the announcement for The Guardian.

Everybody needs a weblogging package, even people who program in Ruby (not the intertwingly kind).

Here it is: rb.log 1.0.1:

rb.log is a full-featured weblogger written in Ruby. It features file uploads, comments, blog- rolling, side-bar editing, bookmarklets, the Blogger API, searching, RSS syndication, and archives. It also performs well on slower machines by regenerating static pages after posts are made.

Slashdot doesn’t get it.  It’s not that this is news or anything.  They linked to an interview with Firebird (database) project admin Ann Harrison.  CmdrTaco‘s interpretation:

As always, a small group of users are being real asses about the whole thing. Yay.

Yeah.  They’re pissed off.  They just got their name hijacked by the Mozilla project.  They’ve got name recognition.  If you had asked me what Firebird is three months ago, I would have told you that it was an open source database derived from Borland’s Interbase.

At this point I’d be more likely to sigh loudly and walk away.

Disclaimer: Slashdot has rocked my world over the years.  They’re not perfect; I realize this.  I used to get all of my tech/geek news from Slashdot.  Nowadays I usually read it firsthand or secondhand (from blog linkage) before it is slashdotted.  I also use and love Mozilla and Phoenix.  I just wish that they had done a little bit of reasearch and seen this prominent open source project with the name Firebird before choosing the name.

I’ve noticed that the signal to noise ratio of a few comment feeds that I monitor have been getting out of hand recently.

It’s a shame.

Sam Ruby has been pouring out thoughts on RSS today:

• RSS Namespace Proposal
• RSS: It’s Not Just for Syndication Anymore
• Ghosts of RSS Past

These entries read either as an essay that looks like a series of posts or a series of posts that look like an essay.

Definately check out the comments in these entries.  Lots of stuff is happening there.

The thought of using Photoshop on Linux is quite appealing.

<drool/>

Infoworld notes that Opteron has lots of support from hardware and software vendors.

I’ll be heading up to Baltimore tomorrow morning to attend one day of ISPCon.  I only have the free exhibits pass, but I’ll do my best to report back here tomorrow afternoon/evening.  Hopefully I’ll find some way to run into Scott Mace and/or Doug Kaye.  I’ve been reading both of their blogs for quite some time.

ISPCon also gets props for having a wiki, and a wiki entry for each session.

Linux Magazine via NewsForge:

Why are we so jazzed about this box? Newisys and AMD have managed to fit twin Opteron processors, up to 16 GB of RAM (yes, sixteen gigabytes), an Ultra320 SCSI disk system with 2 drive bays, a CD-ROM drive, a floppy drive, twin Gigabit Ethernet ports, and an integrated systems management card (think web-based Compaq Insight Manager on steroids, running its own dedicated PowerPC embedded Linux machine) all in a 1U rackmount machine. And the thing practically makes no noise and gives off no heat whatsoever.

I’ll take two.

My portfolio sucks (dave diluted his shares), so I need to claim my blog.  Blogshares could really use a stock split rather than just creating new shares.  This brought down my portfolio from well over $1200 to less than $300.

What goes up must come down.

Congrats to Chris Sells, who has taken the red pill.

Microsoft has been on a buying spree lately, and they’ve been investing wisely.

Lockergnome:

Blogger, which was recently acquired by Google, is launching a new version of its interface. Existing users can now create new blogs in the new system, and you will be able to migrate your existing blogs in about a week’s time. The New Blogger web site has more.

Check out the Dano FAQ and Release Notes for more info.

Here’s an informative comment from Mark in Sam Ruby‘s blog, emphasis mine:

Despite the coherent look and feel of my site, it is controlled by a ragtag collection of half a dozen different systems.  I have several separate Movable Type weblogs site up, one for the main weblog, one for the projects, one for the 100.  The photo galleries are generated by a homegrown script.  The Safari CSS hacks pages are generated by another.  The main Safari page is handcoded.  There is no one CMS available that does everything I want to do on my site; I use a best-of-breed approach and glue the pieces together myself.

I recently redesigned my entire site.  I don’t know if you saw the previous version, but it was very minimalist layout, with the big Orb O’ Zen on the side.  No section-specific colored headers, no tabs.  Search box at the very bottom of the page.  About the only thing the designs had in common was the breadcrumbs along the top.

You know how many files I changed during my redesign?  One: my CSS file.  My markup didn’t change at all.  I have 4000 pages of clean HTML markup, generated by half a dozen separate systems, and I didn’t have to touch a single one of them.

If you think tables are simpler, use them.  Enjoy your redesign.