Day: June 7, 2003

Gizmodo notes the release of Minola’s Dimage Xt:

Steve’s Digicams on Minolta’s update of the Dimage Xi, the Dimage Xt. The Xt is slightly smaller and lighter than the Xi, but has the same resolution (3.2 megapixels) and the same 3x optical zoom lens.

Actually, the zoom lens is still 3x zoom, but under the hood it’s slightly different.  Both cameras have 9 elements in 8 groups, but the Xi (older model) has 5 aspheric elements while the Xt (newer model) only has 3.

I don’t know if this will translate into a visible difference in quality, but I would assume that more aspherical elements would be preferable to less.

Also note that the previous version sometimes had light falloff on the corners, I don’t know about the new one though

Doug Kaye:

Just uploaded a terrific audio interview with Eric Newcomer (CTO of IONA) to the IT Conversations site. Stream or download this complete Transactions 101 from the guy who literally wrote the book: ACID, TP monitors, asynchronous messaging, loose coupling, SOAP, RPC vs. document models, orchestration, and the state and future of standards. (This is a preview. The site goes live on Monday.)

You can find more at Doug’s IT Conversations.  I’m about 90% through Loosely Coupled but I’ve been distracted and had to put work in front of play.  I hope to finish the book (which I have already learned a ton from) soon and post my thoughts on it.

Ingo has been playing with the latest new SOAP thing from Microsoft:

Within the previous weeks, I’ve been working with a future product from Microsoft. It was one of the coolest things I’ve seen in a long time. The only drawback was that I just couldn’t tell anyone as I’ve still been under NDA. Can you imagine how it feels, when you are part of a small group which has seen the best thing since sliced bread and you just want to shout it out but you aren’t allowed to?

I can’t wait until the rest of the world is allowed to play too!

Via freshmeat, RSS Mix Tape:

RSS Mix Tape reads items from specified RSS feeds and displays them in a list. Selected posts can be categorized and commented on, and an RSS feed is generated for each category. It also supports LiveJournal input whether or not you are a paid user.

In short, RSS In, RSS Out.

It runs with Python, PyQT, PyKDE, and xmlbase.  Of course, OPML would probably be the format of choice for containing a list of feeds, though I understand the want for RIRO (RSS in, RSS out).  I don’t know how easy it would be to have the commentary in OPML.

If anyone has an RSS mix tape feed that they update fairly frequently, I wouldn’t mind checking that out.

I found this article last night via the java.sun.com RSS feed:

Implementing an end-to-end J2ME application is no small feat, and the architecture and development of such a system can be quite complicated. This article uses Sun’s Java Blueprints showcase application, Java Smart Ticket, to show you how to design and implement a complex, end-to-end application based on MIDP and J2EE. We will discuss the design patterns, architecture, and implementation tricks used to create the application.

Matt Raible noted the release of Eclipse 3.0 M1 yesterday.  Get it here.

I’ve always been more than impressed with the stability of the milestone releases.  I was waiting for a 3.0 milestone before I upgraded, and here it is.  Thanks again to the Eclipse team, y’all ROCK!

Jeremy points out many RSS feeds are available for the Yahoo Buzz index.

I’m also glad to see that he enjoyed 2 Fast 2 Furious.

Here’s a quote from the back cover of my freshly purchased copy of The Animatrix:

This DVD willl not work in a CD-ROM drive and the DVD-ROM features are not available on Apple Macintosh.

That’s kind of a bummer for Mac-based Matrix heads.  DVD-ROM content usually sucks anyway, so hopefully you’re not missing out on too much.

A special note to the RIAA and MPAA:

I saw The Animatrix before Reloaded came out thanks to peer to peer file sharing technology.  Last night I purchased The Animatrix because of p2p.  You gained a sale, you didn’t loose one.  I wasn’t quite sure if it was worth purchasing based on the four quicktime shorts that are on the net.  I saw the whole thing and knew that I had to have it.  Stuff like this happens more often than your statistics show.

That is all.