Year: 2003

My copy of Loosely Coupled has started its trek across the country.  Thus begins the tradition of stalking (er, tracking) of my shipment as it meanders about.

Every time I track a shipment from the UPS or FedEx website, I wish that there were an official SOAP or XML-RPC interface to the data.  An open-to-the-public interface directly to the data.  I found two SOAP interfaces from xmethods: FedEx Tracker [WSDL] and UPS Online Tracking Web Service [WSDL].  These are both third party implementations that no doubt take in your information, call out to the UPS/FedEx www tracking page, parse what comes back, and send it back to you.

I’d really like to point a client directly to some WSDL at either fedex.com or ups.com.  Until that happens, tracking packages via web services is just there for the “cool” factor.

From the PHP QA Team:

PHP 4.3.2RC2 has been released. This is the second release candidate and should have no critical problems/bugs. Nevertheless, please download and test it as much as possible on real-life applications to uncover any remaining issues.

Chris Sells is at it again, this time with The Applied XML DevCon, tentatively scheduled for July 10-11 somewhere near Portland.

Update:

It looks like Chris will be keepin’ it real, even after taking the red pill:

BTW, just because I’m a Microsoft employee now, doesn’t mean that I plan on taking away what’s great about the DevCon, including cross-industry and cross-platform coverage. The only thing that’s different it’s that I’ve found a sponsor willing to pick up more of the cost (like my pay for the rest of the year : ). What that means is that I hope to keep costs at or below their traditional DevCon levels while adding some things we’ve never had before, like wireless access during the sessions to drive your blog readers mad w/ envy.

Via NewsForge, ServerWatch took a look at the $7,389 Pogo Linux StorageWare 3800:

The Pogo Linux StorageWare 3800 has the usual basics: a dual processor Xeon Super Micro X5DP8-GL motherboard with up to eight GB of RAM, a 40G boot disk, Red Hat Linux 8.0, two built-in 10/100 Ethernet connections, and dual power supplies in a 3u chassis. But it also has something unusual — in addition to the boot drive, the 3800 has eight 203.9G ATA hard drives attached to a 3Ware RAID controller in a RAID5 configuration, with a formatted capacity of a little over 1.2 terabytes (1.4 TB raw).

Gizmodo notes that Apple’s new iPods are thinner but not come in 15 and 30GB models.

MacCentral also reports on the release of iTurnes 4 and Quicktime 6.2.

The Apple Music Store is now open.

Scoble had a laugh out loud exit interview.

• Ev and others think wikis are ugly. (This sounds like a challenge)
• Kerneltrap notes that NetBSD 1.6.1 is out.
• RARS (Robot Auto Racing Simulator) 0.91 is out.  This version adds the ability to go head to head with the ‘bots.
• James Robertson points to today’s Dilbert.  Heh.

I ordered up Doug Kaye’s new book from NerdBooks this afternoon.  I can’t wait to sink my teeth into it.

Dave Winer:

In progress: Trackback in the UserLand Environment.

Thank you!  It looks like an implementation for Manila will ship first, with Radio support coming later.

Guido on Sourceforge:

Python 2.3b1 was released today (April 25th). Download it from python.org/2.3/. Final release expected in two months!

Perhaps now would be the time to start playing.

PCLinuxOnline:

An interview with an anonymous Mozilla developer put forward the idea that the names “Firebird” and “Thunderbird” were for internal use only. This has since been verified by Mozilla developer Christopher Blizzard. The Mozilla Application Suite will continue to be known as “Seamonkey” internally. The new Web browser and e-mail client will be known as “Mozilla Firebird” and “Mozilla Thunderbird” respectively until the 1.4 release, after which they will become “Mozilla Browser” and “Mozilla Mail”.

The interview is worth reading.  It seems to show that there is even a little confusion in the Mozilla development community.  It looks like things are on track to become less confusing in the long run, but I don’t quite buy the excuse of “it’s just an intermal project name.”

Overheard outside a courtroom:

“He couldn’t outrun the helicopter.”

Diego pushed out the beta of Spaces today, now under the company name of clevercactus.  Congrats, Diego.  It’s been awhile since I’ve had a chance to fiddle around with Spaces, but my early early alpha experience was quite enjoyable.

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.

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