Year: 2003

Brent has released a new version of his Cocoa XML-RPC implementation.  It’s BSD’d open source.  If you are using XML-RPC on the OSX platform, you should probably look at Brent’s code over Apple’s WebServicesCore:

At this writing (7 March 2003) the implementation of XML-RPC in Apple’s WebServicesCore has a crashing bug. Whenever a method response contains an empty element, there’s a crash.

Scott Johnson is the man.  He has put together Roogle, which indexes RSS feeds and makes them searchable.

Very cool indeed.  I’d also like to nominate Scott for disclaimer of the year:

This page is not sponsored by Google, affiliated with Google and will probably get me in trouble.

Via InfoWorld:

Good Guy Hacker Adrian Lamo got ahold of us a few weeks ago to let us know of a few security holes he found. We checked through the logs and none of them appear to have been used before Adrian found them. We have fixed the security issues and Blogger is better for it. Adrian rocks for not only finding the problem but also for letting us know about them so other people won’t be affected. Thank you, Adrian.

Dave Winer:

World of Ends is a Cluetrainish manifesto by Searls and Weinberger. Of course what they write is right. The Internet is not complex and it resists being made complex.

That reminds me, I’ve managed to loose my copy of Cluetrain before I had a chance to read it.  It’s probably buried somewhere.  Either that, or I left it in Boston.

How can this be applied to the web services universe?

Rogers Cadenhead:

I’m writing this post using FM RadioStation, a new Windows application that provides a different user interface for Radio UserLand (screen shot). It can be used to publish a weblog, read RSS news feeds, and browse the Web (using a built-in version of Internet Explorer 6).

I saw the announcement pass by radio-dev either early this morning or late last night, the two seem a little blurred.  It looks like this puppy has a lot of potential.  A few people have had various problems with it, but remember, it’s a preview release.

System requirements:

Requires IE 6 being installed and seems to like systems with more than 128 MB RAM.

Well of course, we all like systems with more than 128MB of RAM.  It sounds a little bulky, but look at all those tabs!  Cool.

Local radio station WTOP reports that sons of Osama Bin Laden have been captured in Pakistan.

I’m really only posting it here because I wasn’t able to find any news reports on the net yet.

The traditional web is still too slow on breaking news.

Update: I’m going to leave this here, but it looks like so far, the US is not confirming this story.

Erik pointed out a good overview of IBM’s Wireless Toolkit.

To take this to its logical conclusion, Nokia’s Developer Forum points to kXML-RPC, a J2ME XML-RPC implementation which looks really lightweight.  Of course, you could always use kSOAP if you really wanted to.

Brain: Pinky, are you pondering what I’m pondering?
Pinky: Uh, I think so, but how are we going to fit a SOAP stack AND a monkey in a cel phone?

Speaking of burnout, I might have to remove the AP feeds.  I’m suffering from information overload.

Here’s your next-gen aggregator: an aggregator that automatically trawls your RSS feeds and generates a ‘front page’ ala news.google.com.  You can drill down into sections, but the content that you are going to be most interested in will be ‘above the fold.’

The aggregator might goof a little in the beginning.  After you’ve trained it, it’ll be able to sniff out content that you are interested in better than you can.  I’ll bet that every once in awhile it will give you a list of new sources that you might want to keep track of.  Or perhaps, it will add those sources, a few at a time, and remove them if you don’t seem interested.

The revolution will be aggregated.

InfoWorld confirms:

“I think we’re suffering from standards burnout,” and Suttor.

What next then?

“In the future, the Web is going to escape the browser, and I think that’s going to be a very good thing,” Suttor said.

Are more planes falling out of the sky than before, or am I just more aware of them now?

Current RSS feed count: 244.

If a tree falls in the woods and a weblogger is nearby, I’ll probably hear about it.

Dave “Tabbed” Hyatt:

I’ve seen a lot of comments in various Mac forums where people have claimed that “Dave Hyatt said he doesn’t like tabbed browsing!” or “Dave Hyatt hates tabbed browsing!”. I find these posts perplexing, because I never said any such thing, and of course the opposite is true. I love tabbed browsing. I implemented tabbrowser in the Mozilla trunk. I implemented tabbed browsing in Chimera. I implemented the version used in Phoenix. Given how many times I’ve implemented it, I’m amazed that people would think that I am not a tabbed browsing devotee.

Cool trivia.  Check out the rest of the post to see UI decisions for tabbed browsing.

John Burkhardt:

I can’t say it any better than Paresh.  I wish all who were let go yesterday the very best.  I’m experiencing a bit of survivor’s guilt today.  Behind the headlines we have to remember that there are real people and families, hopes and dreams.  If anyone is looking to hire some of the best and brightest folks in the business, be on the look out for resumes with Groove Networks on them.

This is exactly what I was trying to express yesterday.  Thanks, John.

WiFi News:

I believe we can call today the day the dike broke. Why the UK suddenly went from a few hundred installed and a few thousand committed to tens of thousands in the works and several thousand up in the next months is anyone’s guess. There goes that tipping point.

Doug Kaye points this out:

Don Box: Too Many Specs. The co-inventor of SOAP (now a Microsoft engineer) had harsh words this week for vendors contributing to the plethora of web-services specifications, and advised developers to read less of them and get on with writing applications.

Yes.  I agree 100%.  The WS-* specs seem to make things more confusing, more complicated, work against each other, and generally muck things up.  I’ll bet that they don’t actually solve the problems that they set out to solve for most people.

Jenny, the awesome Shifted Librarian:

We’ve decided that Andy Rhinehart is channeling my RSS feed. On his way in to work this morning at our favorite Spartanburg newspaper, he thought up a way to syndicate Associated Press headlines. So put your hands together for the Spartanburg Herald-Journal’s AP National and AP World RSS feeds!

Yes!  Subscribed, subscribed.

It’d be really nice if we could get this information straight from the AP though.  I mean we are all independent reporters.

MacSlash:

Apple has introduced an updated Power Mac. The relevant specs: dual G4/1.42, upgraded DDR 333 RAM, and FireWire 800, with pricing between $1499 and $3799. From the site: “The new Power Mac G4 combines rock solid engineering reflective of the full-throttle Xserve architecture with new technologies for massively enhanced output and connectivity. And it’s a digital media powerhouse that delivers tremendous value across the line, with dual processor performance starting at just $1999”

Gizmodo:

Wait a second. So Sony Ericsson’s widely anticipated P800 smartphone is about to go on sale in Bulgaria, but it’s still weeks away from being available in the US?

That’s messed up.  I protest.  I’d settle for a Nokia 7650 or something similar though.  Something?  Anything?

Clarance Westberg:

I got a new vehicle yesterday, it was time my 93 GMC safari had a 150,000 miles and went 1 repair bill over the line. I got a Blue 2003 Honda Element. I really like this thing, I don’t usually name my vehicles but I am this time. I am going to call it the Tardis because of it’s looks and the fact that it is bigger on the inside than the outside.

I really like this boxy pseudo-SUV.  It looks a little weird at some angles, but I’m sure it rocks.  Enjoy, Clarance.

Steve “Furrygoat” Makofsky:

Looks like gotdotnet.com has posted several QuickStart Tutorial’s for the .NET Compact Framework.

Gobs of information here.  Gobs.