Matt Croydon::Postneo

Year: 2003

  • Weblog APIs

    Go read Sam Ruby’s post about weblog APIs:

    Why do I say it is dramatically simpler?  Let’s propose a challenge.  In the spirit of the BDG to SOAP 1.1 which exposed all of the machinery of SOAP, I’d like to request that proponents of either the Blogger API or the MetaWeblog API produce a similar BDG for their protocols, and would like to request that it include the first item from the Radio Weblog Post Module example.  I’ll start by providing a sample for RESTLogPost.

    Any takers?

    Has anybody implemented any clients or servers with the Blogger2 API?  I read the specs and the arguments back and forth after the specs were released, but I’m not quite sure if things were resolved.

    I personally like (and have more experience with) the metaWeblogAPI since it has support for stuff like titles and anything else you want to drag out from the RSS2.0 spec.

    So what else do you have up your sleeve, Sam?  Your RestLogPost sample leaves me wanting more.  🙂

  • SPOT

    Thanks to Steve “Furrygoat” Makofsky for a pointer to Microsoft’s press release on expensive smart watches with SPOT (Smart Personal Object Technology).  I’d love an RSS aggregator on my wrist, that would be geeky-cool.  It’s interesting that Fossil, one of the initial manufacturers, is hedging its bets: it released a palm-based wrist PDA just a few months ago.

    If you go to their Tech page, you can see Microsoft technology on the left and Palm technology on the right.  Freaky.

  • Microsoft .NET Connected

    Phil Wainewright:

    How long before some version of Linux earns the “Microsoft .NET Connected” badge? That day may be closer than anyone expects — I predict it will be in the first half of 2004.

    Bold prediction.  I’d love to see it happen.

  • Blogger Pro Does Not Play Nice With Safari

    Dave Hyatt on Safari:

    Blogger, if you’re listening, you can treat us just like Mozilla. We will work. What do you think I used to post blogs on the Mac before you started blocking it? 🙂

  • OutBlog 0.1 Released

    Ingo has released OutBlog:

    Let’s spread the word: Version 0.1 of my highly anticipated (well, at least by the two people who read this weblog) Outlook and Exchange 2000 powered weblog toolkit OutBlog has been released. More information (and a sample blog & download package including source code) is available at http://OutBlog.IngoRammer.com.

    Amazing, Ingo.  Wickedly amazing.

  • Dave Winer @ Harvard

    Dave Winer:

    It’s true, it’s true. I’ve been offered a fellowship at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, and have, of course, accepted.

    Hmm, I see a special weblog edition of Celebrity Deathmatch coming on: Winer vs. Lessig (or Harvard vs. Stanford).

  • Vulcan Mini-PC

    Erik pointed to a blurb at Gizmodo about the Mini-PC:

    Mini-PCA new half-size laptop that weighs less than a pound and is just one inch thick from Vulcan, a company owned by that other Microsoft billionaire, Paul Allen. The Mini-PC will run Windows XP, and have integrated WiFi, a 5.8-inch screen, a 20GB hard drive, and a built-in mini-keyboard.

    I’m enthusiasticly RSS-subscribed, by the way.

  • Weblogger Manifesto

    You might notice a difference in tone between posts done at work and those done at home or on the road.  Most of my posts right now between 10am and 7pm are done at work from a computer on the sales counter of a mom and pop camera store.  It pays the bills and I enjoy most of it (except passport and immigration pictures).

    I have recently noticed that posts done at work have a rather urgent (curt?) tone to them.  I type them quite quickly between customers or during slow periods.  I try to find and correct typos, but this weblog is 100% spellcheck free.  I’m not exactly happy about it, but my blogging on the go doesn’t afford me a spell checker.  (Mental note: find a light weight BloggerAPI/MetaweblogAPI client with a spell checker)

    My posts from home or out and about after work tend to be composed with a little more care.  Project updates and random hackery tend to happen at home.  I tend to roll out of bend and fire up my aggregator in the morning.  My first volley of posts tends to be pre-caffeine.  I usually fix typos that I catch (my built-in spell checker sucks though) and occasionally enrich a previous post with an update or correction.  I try my best to make an update or change obvious, but every once in awhile they might not be.  Every once in awhile I will tweak a post a few times just after publishing, but that probably won’t impact any readers.

    As a pseudo-resolution, I’ve been trying to write more original content for the blog this year.  I recognize that I’m a better linker than writer, but I have definately enjoyed writing a few longer mini-pieces so far this year.  They’re still flying low under the radar, but as I write more, the quality of my work will improve. Perhaps I’ll jog another weblogger’s brain and they’ll take it to the next level.  That would be awesome.

    I’m a big picture guy and I take pride in broadening the big picture of others.

  • Minolta-Konica Merger Update

    I spoke with my Konica sales rep this afternoon and have some more information on the merger.  Aparently Konica did not notify any of its reps or employees before announcing the merger.  Speculation within the company is that Minolta with retain the camera brand while the Konica brand will focus on film, paper, chemisty, and digital supplies.

    It looks like the merger has more to do with office and business machines with the photo side as an afterthought.

    CNN reports:

    The companies aim to cut 4,000 jobs by 2005, from their combined work force of 38,500. The companies also hope to trim 50 billion yen ($418 million) in costs a year.

    My sales rep tells me that Konica has a slight majority in the merger, which is most likely a very good thing.  Traditionally, Konica has been a much more responsive company on many levels including repairs, retail, and to the dealer.  Their engineering is well done, their cameras outperform and outlast some of the bigger manufacturers.  They don’t have a vast line of digital cameras, but the ones they make (except for that crappy 2 megapixel one) are feature packed and of high quality.

    Unfortunately I don’t share the same enthusiasm for Minolta.  I’ve never seen a sales rep from Minolta (and I’ve been working photo retail for seven years now).  Their products are good but not great.  They should discontinue their line of SLRs, as nobody takes them seriously.  They are quite bad about discontinuing parts for their cameras.  I will say that I’m completely satisfied with my Minolta Autometer IVF, which I’ve been using since I was a kid.

    I really hope that the Konica Way prevails.

    Disclaimer: I don’t think any NDAs were violated in my conversation this afternoon, but my apologies if there were.

  • News Aggregators

    Ernie the Attorney:

    My News Aggregator is like CNN, except I have my own selection of reporters out there in the field.  Adam Curry reports from the Netherlands, Chris Cloud is my travel advisor, and Jenny is my librarian.  I have lot’s of other sources.  The subscriptions are cheap.  Why not get yourself a news aggregator?  You deserve it.  It’s changed my life even more than TiVo.

    For what it’s wroth, Ernie, Greplaw, and Lessig are my dream team of lawyers.  I scan 245 news sources [OPML] entirely too often.

  • WS-Reliability

    WebServices.Org covers yet another spec for the WS- bucket: WS-Reliability:

    The purpose of WS-Reliability is to address reliable messaging requirements, which become critical, for example, when using Web Services in B2B applications. SOAP [SOAP1.1] over HTTP [RFC2616] is not sufficient when an application-level messaging protocol must also address reliability and security. While security is getting traction in the development of Web Services standards, reliability is not. This specification is intended as an initial proposal for defining reliability in the conte xt of current Web Services standards. The specification borrows from previous work in messaging and transport protocols, e.g., SOAP, and the ebXML Message Service [ebMS]. It proposes appropriate modifications to apply this work to Web Services.

    Grab the spec from your choice of vendors.

  • Creating a Web Application with Ant and Tomcat 4

    Paul Wood has put together an article for O’Reillynet that looks like it may be that perfect length: long enough and in depth enough without being too much for an online article.  Here’s the lead in:

    I have decided to use Tomcat 4 Servlet/JSP Container technologies to implement a Web application. This still leaves many options, and choosing between the various available technologies is not easy. For this article, I have chosen to keep it simple and use Java Server Pages (JSPs) in combination with Java classes.

  • Rick’s OPML Directory

    Rick (codemonkey that he is) sent me an email in response to my post titled “Open Source OPML Directories?”  He has a working OPML directory renderer on his site that is powered by PHP, Javascript, JSRS and is backed by a database.

    It also renders with some pretty wicked DHTML.  Maybe if we poke him enough he might release his code under a CYA open source license of some sort.

  • (Airport Extreme)^2

    Wi-Fi Networking News has some more dirt on Apple’s Airport Extreme (802.11g).  Glenn Fleishman has deduced that the chip manufacturer is Boradcom.  Hopefully the base station firmware will be upgradable to interop with other chipsets.  I like this part:

    The new Apple Extreme Base Station supports access point and bridge mode simultaneously. Deploying several base stations is now a simple solution for smaller networks that need more client access is different places.

    I also like the option for adding an external antenna.  That’s what I’d do.

  • Chmod a+rwx /internet

    Dan Gillmor:

    The Internet is Read-Write, not Read-Only.

  • mod_rendezvous

    Will Cox points to mod_rendezvous by Eric Christopher Seidel.  It adds Rendezvous support to Apache 1.3.x under OSX 10.2 or greater.  I really can’t wait to post an entry about a cross-platform mod_rendezvous.

  • Open Source OPML Directories?

    Dave thinks we should write directories in OPML and publish them on the web.  I wonder if there is any software out there set up to publish directories using OPML in a hosted (php/perl/python/jsp/asp etc) environment, preferably released as open source.  I’ll look around later this afternoon.  I’ve taken a look at an open source OPML module for Python.  To get your head around the module, the source for Straw, an RSS aggregator for Gnome2 should help. 

    I’m not sure if there are similar modules or classes available for perl (didn’t see any at CPAN) or PHP, but there might be.  It would take at least these (free/open source) building blocks for OPML-based directories to take off.  I see that I can do OPML directories in Radio as well as Manila, but not everyone owns that software.

    I keep invoking my imaginary free time, but I’ll try my best to look into it.

    Further Thoughts: I think it would be really cool to take a blosxom approach.  Just drop your .opml files to a directory on your web host and the cgi will take care of the rest.  Of course it would probably be easier (for me) to take a command-line approach, but producing dynamic directories by dropping .opml files would be so sexy.

    Also check out Rick’s implementation.

  • Sympathy

    My thoughts go out to everyone who was on the plane that crashed in North Carolina this morning, their families and friends.  Unfortunately the same thoughts go out to the people killed in the Turkish Airlines crash and those effected by it.

  • Questions about X11

    Matt Raible has some questions about Apple’s X11 release:

    So now that Apple has released a beta of it’s X11 X Window System, I have a question for you? Do you use this? I downloaded and installed XDarwin, but have never used it (similar experience to OpenOffice. What can I do with X11? Can I run Gnome using X11? Do I have a use for it at all?

  • jrobb.userland.com/switch

    John Robb:

    OK.  That’s it.  My next computer is going to be an Apple.  After 18 years on a PC, I am ready to call it quits.  Windows is waaaay too much of a hassle for me to maintain.