Year: 2003

Keith points out that Phoenix and Minotaur are to be renamed Firebird and Thunderbird.

He had the same thought I did: Firebird is already a database.  In fact, if you search for Firebird on Google, guess what database is on the top?  Yep.

Netcraft has posted a list of the fastest growing hosting providers out there.  Here’s an observation they have about the fastest growers:

The top of the table shows that fast growth in the hosting industry is closely linked to providing good value at a low price. 1&1 and Host Europe both offer extremely cheap shared hosting packages, while Rackshack has more or less defined the market for low-cost dedicated servers. Colt is often amongst the cheapest quotes for bandwidth in the cities in which it operates.

The top spot goes to 1&1 Internet AG, sporting 812 servers at the end of ’01 and 7,203 at the end of ’02.  The runner up was Rackshack, with 1,208 servers at the end of ’01 and 7,356 at the end of ’02.

That’s a lot of servers.

Ask:

Apple released a new Safari public beta today. With tabs and speed improvements. The tabs are a bit slicker than they were in the leaked beta versions, so go and get it already.

The latest variation over the Apple Tablet rumor is a 15″ tablet with no battery. That seems pretty weird.

Update: Mark Pilgrim has all of the CSS info on the new Safari release.

BitTorrent Files for Slashdot Effect Victims is a great resource for things that are both bandwidth intensive and hard to download.  They currently have the Red Hat 9 ISOs, Animatrix 3, Matrix Reloaded trailer, and some others.

I just wanted to clarify something.  I jumped the gun on publishing the RSS ICBM module.  It was really just an implementation of an idea that was completely Kenneth‘s.  As a matter of fact, I wouldn’t be as excited as I am about geolocation without talking to Kenneth over email and IM, and believe me, I’m really excited.

It’s this excitement that I think motivated me to get the module out there.  It’s one of those things that I did just before going to bed, and looking back, I totally should have slept on it.

I violated the trust of someone that I’ve just begun to get to know, and someone that I’ve been thinking of as a friend ever since I started reading his weblog.  I’m sorry about that.  I messed up.

The spec is out there, it’d be great if it becomes used, though so far very few people seem interested.  I don’t think that it would be right to remove it, I think that violates some kind of weblog ethics, but I will if that’s what is best.

However, I am going to stop posting about it, and will set it aside until Kenneth and I can talk.

Here’s a template for doing a geolocated RSS 2.0 feed with MovableType.  Works for me with MT 2.63.

Man, now that I’ve linked to the testbed at home, I feel obligated to keep the server up and keep the links permanent.

*Sigh*

Yep. All it took was modifying a stock rss 0.91 head. It’s working on my blosxom testblog right now. The geolocated RSS 2.0 feed is here. Feel free to validate it. The modified head is here.

You can download the Geolocated RSS 2.0 flavour pack here.  Change the coordinates to yours and enjoy.

This flavour pack is tested to work fine with Blosxom 1.2 and is based on the RSS 0.91 flavour that I snagged from Brutalhugs.

Geolocating an RSS 2.0 feed in MovableType is rediculously easy.  I’ll try to go over the steps quickly in hopes that I’ll do a more detailed job for end-user-types in the future.

1. Create an RSS 2.0 feed if you haven’t done so.  This can be done by clicking on templates from your main blog view.
• Click on the RSS 0.91 Index template.
• Copy the template body
• Go back to the template view and click create new index template
• Give it a name (RSS 2.0 Index) output file (rss2.xml or similar) and paste everything into the template body.
• Change rss version=”0.91″ to rss version=”2.0″.
• Save.
2. Add the ICBM namespace to your <rss> item like so: <rss version=”2.0″ xmlns:icbm=”http://postneo.com/icbm“>
3. Somewhere below <channel> but before <MTEntries lastn=”x”>, add the following:
• <icbm:latitude>yourLatitude</icbm:latitude>
• <icbm:longitude>yourLongitude</icbm:longitude>
4. Save.  Redbuild.  Party.  Your RSS 2.0 feed is now geolocated. at the <channel> level.

You can use GeoURL’s resources section to find out your lat/long.  You should probably also have the HTML version of your weblog listed with GeoURL.

As far as examples go, check out the geolocated RSS 2.0 feed for my movable type testblog.  I assure you that the feed validates as RSS.  Right now the testblog is running on a Linux development box, so don’t be suprised about any outages.

That’s it for now, enjoy.

Larry O’Brien:

Thinking in C# no longer available for download. As you may know, one of the aspects of this project was that draft versions of the text had been available for download. Surprisingly, I’ve been told in no uncertain terms that some of the other parties involved feel that the “last draft” (the text as it stands today) should not (in fact, must not) be available in any form. In my opinion, that’s a gratuitous disservice to the community — every word in the text is either available for free download in another text or was written by me. The text that I do have rights to (a divvying-up that will take place via lawyers, unfortunately) will be available again as soon as the rights situation is cleared up. To receive an email notification of this and other C# and .NET training products, please sign up on my mailing list.

I’ve heard rumors that some people downloaded the draft of Thinking in C# before it was pulled.  This whole thing sucks, IMHO.

I’m looking into implementation details for the ICBM RSS Module.  More to come.

I’ve been thinking about ways that you can use the ICBM RSS module.  Of course, the obvious thing to do is geolocate your RSS feed.  By adding latitude and longitude to the <channel> element, you’re saying that this RSS feed originates from or is about this specific location.  That much is a no brainer, but what else can you do?

A moblogging app that is GPS capable or location-aware could tag each post with the location.  For instance, if I’m blogging from times square about something, the lat/long for times square could be embedded in that post.  Someone like Joi Ito could associate a particular location with a picture posted from his mobile phone.  I could then visualize his RSS feed by location, superimposing his entries on a map.

I’m sure that much more can be done, but for now, it’s lunchtime.

Vnunet (among others) reports:

Earlier this week the software giant quietly announced that it had selected media player developer InterVideo to port its Windows Media technology to Linux for use in consumer electronics such as set-top boxes and personal video recorders.

Now if only Red Hat would support mp3…

Update: Slashdot has the catch:

However, WMP will not be available to normal folks…Microsoft will only allow it to be distributed via set top boxes and the like.

I liked the phrase tipping point much more before it was in common usage by the Pentagon, White House, and media.  It used to be our phrase.

Via Hack The Planet (Happy Birthday!), monotone is a trippy but interesting version control system.  There is a comparison with traditional version control systems, and it’s really different.  It’s a great idea though.  It looks like building monotone is like pulling teeth, so I’d suggest the static binary.

I posted an RFC this evening for an RSS 2.0 module that facilitates geolocating an RSS feed or a specific item in a feed.  It can be applied either to the <channel> level or the <item> level.  I personally think that using it at the <item> level would be really rewarding.  The full details are at the RFC, but here’s a quick sample of usage from within RSS 2.0:

<icbm:latitude>39.02980</icbm:latitude>
<icbm:longitude>-77.07929</icbm:longitude>

I have posted a validating example of an RSS feed using this module.  The idea is an extension of GeoURL and I remember someone saying that they’d like to attach coordinates to a post a few days or a week ago, but I can’t remember who it is.

Now you can.  Head over to the RFC for more information.  Thanks to Kenneth Hunt and that guy that mentioned something like this a few days ago.  Man my memory sucks.

Rob Fahrni points to Mike Sax:

A team at Cornell University is flying unmanned airplanes using Embedded XP, C#, and components from our Sax.net Connected Framework. All the navigational sensors and controls connect to an array of serial ports. While debugging the flight control algorithms, the software interfaces with Microsoft Flight Simulator, for obvious reasons.

Sweet.  Only fly managed unmanned aircraft.

The London Times:

British Airways and Air France today signalled the end of the supersonic era in aviation by announcing that they were retiring their Concorde planes this year.

BA blamed falling passenger levels and rising maintenance costs for the decision to scrap flights.

Both BA and Air France said their Concorde operations would stop at the end of October 2003. Air France’s last transatlantic flight by Concorde will be on May 31.

Scott Mace:

Broadband’s ‘Critical Mass’. 22% of U.S. homes now in the fast lane [Broadbandreports]

Larry O’Brien:

It’s been a rotten couple of months. For reasons that I can’t talk about publicly, the printing of Thinking in C# has been cancelled. I’d love to just rip the parts of the book that are based on Thinking in Java out, throw them in the trash, and publish the 2/3 of the book that I wrote from scratch, but I don’t have the clear legal right to do so and my former co-author is the one who can afford lawyers. I’d love to produce training information on C# and .NET (after all, one Microsoft reviewer said that Thinking in C# was “the definitive text” on certain subjects), but 18 months after starting Thinking in C# I’m flat broke.

The writing of Thinking in C# was one of the greatest experiences of my life. After 14 years of writing for magazines, it was amazing to be able to tackle broad issues, with numerous examples. The publishing of Thinking in C#, though, was probably the worst experience of my professional life…<long rant scribbled because, like I said, I can’t really talk about it>…

Stay tuned to http://www.ThinkingIn.NET/ — I’ll be making some significant changes to the Website in the coming days.

I bought the $5 non-printable PDF several months ago and considered it an amazing bargain at the time.  I was looking forward to purchasing the book in print for reference, but it doesn’t look like that is going to happen.  Luckily you can snag the book in progress that may never be finished here.

Sounds like some nasty stuff must have happened.  I’m sorry that a good book was one of the casualties.