Matt Croydon::Postneo

Year: 2005

  • Open Message Queueing: The Next Big Web Services Thing?

    Slashdot links to an eWeek article detailing the plans of John Davies at JPMorgan Chase & Co to release an open source message queueing system. Amazon already has its Simple Queue Service. Codehaus has its ActiveMQ. There is a lot of room in the marketplace for queues of varying openness and closedness. I’d love to see several queueing systems thrive, especially if they end up being as open as it looks like they may be.

  • Open Source PBXes

    The most interesting article (to me) in the Jan 31 edition of InfoWorld was one titled Open Source PBXes: Free Flexibility. I’ve been tracking a few open source PBX and softphone projects for awhile now. After reading the PBX article I thought I’d take another look.

    The InfoWorld article looks at Asterisk by Digium and SIPxchange by Pingtel. Asterisk is probably the most well known open source PBX package and can run quite well in its open source form. Pingtel has a much more corporate feel. Its core, sipX, is open source, but it appears that that to do anything useful you need commercial extensions from Pingtel. I can’t fault Pingtel for that either. A company has got to make a buck somehow, and some open source is better than no open source at all, I think. There appears to be a nice community growing up around sipX at SIPfoundry.org.

    If I had to choose one open source product over the other, I’d probably have to go with Asterisk, as it handles many protocols (SIP, H.323, MGCP, IAX, SCCP) while SIPxchange/sipX focuses exclusively on SIP. The commercial SIPxchange is probably going to be the easiest to administer with its graphical user interface for confiuration and management. On the other hand, if you have a linux guru on staff you should be able to pull off an Asterisk configuration without too much trouble.

    Most (if not all) PBX systems require some sort of hardware to interface with your external lines and internal network. These open source alternatives are no different, although the processing power requirements are very low. InfoWorld tested out these PBX systems on surplus Pentium desktop systems and they performed just fine. You’ll need some sort of hardware to hook in to your phone lines and phone system, but open source PBX software running on modest hardware can quite proably reduce the costs of your PBX.

    Update: I really should have dug a little deeper, as I forgot to mention GNU Bayonne, which has probably been around longer than most. Erik also pointed me to Voicetronix, which looks like a good place for hardware as well as open source PBX software.

  • Freshmeat\’s Revamped RSS Feeds Rock!

    Freshmeat offeres several XML feeds of new project releases as well as an RDF representation of its software map and all releases. Until recently the Freshmeat RSS feed that I was subscribed to was a no-nonsense short list of projects with new releases. To view information about a particular release, I just CTRL-clicked on the project name to get more information in a new FireFox tab.

    That has obviously changed recently. I’m pretty sure that the barebones feed has gone away, and I’ve now been redirected to fm-releases-global.xml. Here’s a quick list of available feeds:

    The release feeds are RSS 2.0 generated by PyRSS2Gen and are just beutiful. The new feeds provide most of the critical information that I would want to know about a new release: project name, branch, version, project description, changes for this version, and a screenshot if available. That totally rocks! Here’s an example from a release that hit my aggregator this morning:

    Title: gnormalize 0.12 (Default branch)

    Link: http://freshmeat.net/releases/186939/

    Description:

    Screenshotgnormalize is a graphical front end to normalize. It decodes the MP3/OGG files to wave, then normalizes the wave and re-encodes it to MP3/OGG. It can also convert audio format between MP3 and OGG, change the encoding and ID3 tag properties of final normalized files.

    Changes:
    This release can now convert audio format between MP3 and OGG.

    Thanks, freshmeat. You’ve totally made my morning!

  • Research and Development

    I was joking with a friend about Fortran Server Pages and how silly that would be the other day. A quick google search didn’t reveal anything, although it did unearth some Fortran CGI from the FCC (with source code). While investigating further, I found myself arriving at the R&D sections of a few different companies. I thought I’d collect my findings for you:

    This isn’t an exhaustive list by any means, but there are a lot of amazing research projects, downloadable software, and amazing papers on the other end of those links. If you have some free time, you should look around a few of them.

  • Playing With Y!Q

    After hearing about Y!Q from ZDNet (via Slashdot) I decided to poke around a bit at the technology behind Y!Q. If you break Y!Q down to bare bones, this is what you end up with:

    On Yahoo’s site, the context input is a hidden field, but it’s much more fun to be able to poke at it interactively. The code that drives the popup resides at http://yq.search.yahoo.com/javascript/yq.js, which is well commented with lots of white space, unlike the javascript I’ve seen from Google which tends to be very dense (but quick to send over the line). yq.js is an interesting read, one that I’m still digesting.

    I’ve got to say that the overall effect is quite interesting, and lots of fun to play with. I’ve got a local copy of the above code if you’d like to play along at home.

    More information:

  • Sony PSP Launch Details

    Slashdot just pointed to a Yahoo News article with pricing and launch details for Sony’s PSP.

    The value pack retails for 24,800 Yen, so we’re not getting screwed too bad. I’m still hoping that there will be a barebones version on store shelves for $199, as the 19,800 Yen price point would suggest.

    Mobile gaming geeks (at least the ones that don’t already own a PSP) should set their calendars for March 24, the PSP’s official launch date in the US.

  • Wonderfalls on DVD

    The day has arrived. Wonderfalls, the genius series malined by Fox Tevelision’s inability to discern good from crap, has been released on DVD today. Hopefully you preordered yours but if you didn’t you should be able to run out to your local Best Buy and pick it up for less than $30.

    I can’t say enough about this series. It’s just amazing in a quirky weird can’t quite explain it kind of way. I have most of the series on VCD (the shows that were broadcast plus most of the others in various stages of polish) but can’t wait to add it to my collection. Seriously though, this is probably one of the best telivision series that ever got whacked before its time. I’m so glad that fan response has been so high and that the whole season is making its way to DVD.

  • PyCon DC 2005 or Bust

    PyCon DC 2005

    Over the weekend I signed up for PyCon DC 2005, and I’m looking forward to it already. The earlybird deadline has already passed, but PyCon is still probably one of the best values out there as far as geek conferences go. I’m in the DC area so if anyone is going to be in town and would like to get together, let me know and we’ll figure something out. PyCon week also happens to fall during my spring break, which couldn’t have worked out better.

    See you there!

  • Taco and Podcast Use Case: Killing Time Before Class

    The one thing that has always bugged me about podcasting is that I never seem to have the time for it. There’s a lot of great content out there, but the vast majority of my typical day is spent either at home or at work, with a short 20 minute commute in between. I usually end up listening to WAMU, my local NPR station. If I sleep in just enough I can catch the Marketplace morning report.

    A 20 minute ride each way just doesn’t seem like enough time for listening to a podcast. The other thing that SUCKS is having to download an mp3, burn it to an audio CD, and then pop it in to my CD changer. That’s just too much work, and depending on the lengh of the podcast you’re lucky to fit one or two podcasts on a CD. That burns me up because you can usually hear how low the bitrate is, but raw audio is still raw audio.

    All of that changed on Monday when classes started again. Now not only do I have another 30-40 minutes commute to school from work and home from school, but I’ve got time to kill before class. Because of timing and the fact that I still needed o pick up a book that the campus bookstore didn’t have in stock last week, I arrived on campus well before class. After snagging my book and grabbing a bite to eat I still had a good hour or so to kill.

    Luckily it was 6pm and time for Markplace. I found a seat and whipped out my Taco, tuned the radio to WAMU, and picked up the Asphalt: Urban GT race I had started the day before. It’s situations like this that make me glad that I picked up an original taco used. There are only a handful of mobile phones that also have radio tuners and MP3 players, and I’m very glad that I have one of them.

    Over time my time before class will have to be much more productive, but for now I’ve found a viable use case for podcasting and my taco. Even if I just have the 10 minute walk to and from my car and 20-30 minutes before class, I should still be able to get through a podcast. I will probably have to save up for a larger MMC (my 256meg one is just full) or an iPod shuffle if I want to keep this up, but for now I’ll just try to throw a podcast on a spare 32 meg MMC. Of course I should really tie this together with the universal feed parser, some transcoding, and some scripted bluetooth sending. All in due time.

  • Snakes for the N-Gage Released

    Snakes for the N-Gage is almost go for launch.

  • Yet Another Reason to Attend PyCon DC 2005

    Here is one more reason to attend PyCon 2005:

    #16. Python for Series 60

    Erik Smartt / Nokia

    UPDATE 2005-01-04:

    A presentation where the Product Manager and one of the engineers do a joint presentation to quickly introduce and demonstrate the port, then cover the technical issues of porting and developing extensions

    In addition to the planned presentation, it would be great to get together a Series 60 Python BoF session or some time in the open space for further meets, greets, and hacking. What do you think? Let us know in the wiki.

  • The Taco Lives: N-Gage Spam

    For all the naysayers out there, I present proof that the taco is not dead. I mean really, if someone out there is sending spam featuring an N-Gage QD alongside a Nintendo DS, it can’t possibly be “dead” can it?

  • Emerging Gift-Giving Technology

    It has arrived. I’m referring to the Apple Store gift card that was arranged rather quickly days before Russ’ birthday. Looking back at it, I’m pretty amazed that a group of friends scattered throughout the world with a common love of mobile technology brought together by a guy named Russ was able to pull it off.

    To tell you the truth it would not have been possible without the use of traditional and non-traditional technology:

    • IRC: Much of the organization took place using IRC in #mobitopia and various backchannels and private messages. IRC was probably the most-used technology in getting things organized. Because we’re a bunch of mobile geeks, much of the IRCing was done on the run using WirelessIRC.
    • Wiki: Once we realized that more than a few people were going to be involed, I put up a wiki page on one of my secondary or tertiary wikis. The wiki page was called DonTTellRuss. This was crucial in keeping track of who had pledged, who had confirmed, and who had paid, as well as keeping general information about the status of the project.
    • Email: While email is a little old skool, it did play a role in bringing everyone together once the ad-hoc organization was complete. Email is still “old reliable” even though it’s not as timely or reliable as it used to be.
    • Transcontinental and Transatlantic SMS: International SMS messaging is one of those things that I’m glad “just works” most of the time. SMS messages were especially useful in keeping in touch with TomH who’s not an IRC regular. Costs associated with this were negligable: 15 cents or so for a SMS to the UK.
    • Paypal: Though I have misigivngs about PayPal and some of their draconian practices, it’s just the only way to move a little bit of cash worldwide in an instant. We would not have been able to pull this off if we were not able to pool money from Germany, the UK, Sweden, and America together in a timely manner. I love their emails: “You’ve got Cash!”
    • Jabber/Instant Messaging: This was especially useful in keeping everyone in touch during organization when we were at work and couldn’t be on IRC. Some of us used a Jabber gateway to Yahoo! and IRC. I used Gaim on windows to keep in touch wtih Martin via Yahoo! and others via AIM.
    • Next Day Shipping: We take it for granted, but getting everything organized around the world in a matter of days would not have been possible if we were not able to pick up a gift card in Virginia on Wednesday and have it arrive in San Francisco on Thursday. The original plan was to send it US Postal next day (so it could have been shoved in Russ’ mailbox), but we got a few inches of snow in DC and traffic was so bad that if I had waited to get to a post office in Maryland it would have been closed. It went FedEx and unfortunately arrived while Russ was at work. No worries though, because he got it Friday before the crucial Mac min purchase.
    • Voice on Mobiles: Believe it or not we do occasionally use our mobile phones to make voice calls. This was particularly useful in keeping in touch with Erik while he and I were on the road.

    Thanks again to everyone who participated. I’m glad that I was able to help facilitate the efforts of a bunch of mobile geeks in getting the guy that brought us together a birthday present.

  • WHFS Resurrected on 105.7: Good or Bad?

    I received the following email tonight:

    Dear Matthew,

    Last Wednesday, January 12th, at 12 noon WHFS signed off the air…

    YOU protested, YOU called, and YOU wanted HFS back! Well, someone heard you…

    Listen tonight at 7 PM to LIVE 105.7 Baltimore to witness the return of The Legendary HFS. Thank you, because without YOU this never could have happened.

    I’m not sure how I feel about this. I feel like I’ve been played. WHFS, a station sucking and going down in flames suddenly goes off the air without notice. Loyal fans and people who remember it from 20 years ago are pissed. Immediately the morning show returns to its roots on WJFK. Then, a week or so later, it’s announced that WHFS is back, this time on 105.7, a station that Infinity hasn’t been sure what to do with for some time now. The new HFS will share the air with Howard stern and Don and Mike

    It just feels so… rehearsed.

    Update: DCRTV liks to a Radio and Records article with more information. whfs.com now points to this radio AOL page.

    I still feel played, but I have to admit I’m excited too. On one hand I feel like the WHFS brand is getting whored around and beaten to death. On the other, I’m glad to have HFS back.

  • Pycon 2005 Preliminary Program Announced!

    This gem showed up in my inbox tonight:

    You will be happy to know that the PyCon Program Committee, after lengthy deliberations, has now finalized the program for PyCon DC 2005. I can tell you that the decision-making was very difficult, as the standard of submissions was even higher than last year.

    The preliminary schedule is online.

    It looks like a great collection of stuff this year. I’m going to do my best to make it there and will try to organize a Python for Series 60 BoF or open session. I hope to see everyone there this year!

  • Apple Dropped the Ball on the iPod Shuffle

    On Monday after work I headed over to my local CompUSA to look for a new CPU fan for one of my boxes. After finding what I was looking for, I did the customary sweep around the store. CompUSA tends to be a bit behind the curve when it comes to new Apple products, so after a quick glance at the Aplle corner I moved on.

    I passed by the mp3 player section and was shocked when I walked around the corner and saw three little green boxes on the shelf.

    CompUSA had the iPod Shuffle in stock! That was quick. They didn’t have a display for it, but if you knew what an iPod shuffle was, there were three of them sitting on the shelf.

    That’s what bothered me so much when I found myself in the Apple Store at Tysons Corner, Virginia yesterday. I was expecting to see a small display of iPod Shuffle’s even if they didn’t have any in stock. I also expected to see a Mac mini or two on display, even though they won’t be available for purchase until Saturday.

    But they had neither.

    How long has it been since Steve’s keynote? Nine, ten days? There’s just no excuse for the Apple Store to still have “give an iPod” plastered all over the store. The holidays are over. Steve has made a pretty big bet that the Shuffle and the mini are going to be the next Big Things. Where would you expect to find that Apple product that was announced last week that will be out next week? The Apple Store, right? I mean isn’t that the whole point of having Apple stores? A sort of exclusivity and one stop shopping that you can’t find anywhere else.

    In that case, Apple has dropped the ball completely.

    Really.

    Of all the places on the planet I expected to be able to play with an iPod shuffle this week, I thought it would be the Apple Store. If I wanted to pick one up, the first place I would check would be an Apple Store.

    But aparently I was wrong.

  • All Your OpenOffice Base are Belong to Us

    Speaking of OpenOffice.org, I recently checked out a pre-2.0 snapshot and was suprised to see something called “Base” show up in my OOo menu.

    After scratching my head for a few minutes, I concluded that Base 2.0 must be the Access workalike that will debut in OOo 2.0. Sure enough, it is. Reading though the Base 2.0 page is quite fasinating. It looks like there were some licensing issues at first, but I’m really glad to see HSQLDB powering an open source database for the masses.

    I’ve got to admit that I was completely unaware of Base 1.0. It looks like it is more of a database access library to be used within OOo than a standalone application. I’ve only poked around Base 2.0 a little bit, but from what I can tell it’s an ample Access workalike at the very least, and hopefully will be a platform that do much more. In the future I would love Base 2.0 to support other database backends, though the reasoning for going with HSQLDB makes sense.

    My hat is off to the OpenOffice.org team!

  • Why OS X Needs a Native OpenOffice Port

    MacMerc pointed to a status update on the native OSX port of OpenOffice.org:

    It’s been over a year and a half since this page was last updated, and as of recent memory, all engineering for OpenOffice.org Mac OS X has been focused on X11 graphics, that is, OpenOffice.org Mac OS X (X11). Without significant contributions of time and talent this will most likely remain the case.

    No engineering work has been performed on Quartz or Aqua development within the OpenOffice.org project since mid 2003. For the last year and a half all engineering work focusing on a native Mac OS X OpenOffice.org version has been concentrated in the NeoOffice/J project, using a combination of Java and Carbon technologies to replace X11.

    This is a bit of a bummer for Mac OS X users. I can’t tell you how valuable it is to have a clean and solid office suite with good data interchange that runs on Win32, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, and Mac (using X11). The problem with requiring OS X users to have X11 installed is that most don’t. Of course the hardcore geeky OS X users know of Apple’s X11, XonX, and fink. Unfortunately the people that should really see this amazing suite: the non-technical masses, aren’t going to see it en masse until it’s a point and click native install.

    I totally understand the arcitectural decision for the mainstream OOo release to rely on X11. It’s solid, it’s standard, it’s tested, and it’s going to be around until the end of time. At the same time, Mac users really need a native, sexy port of their own. I’m hoping that NeoOffice/J, with its GPL license and associated political issues, can fill the void. They’re using Java and some other fancy bits to get around the need for an X server. They also seem to be very early in their release cycle, but I’m hoping that NeoOffice matures quickly and becomes that native free office suite that I know that OS X users need.

    Of course right now you’re thinking that with iWork who needs anything else? I guess that’s right as long as you don’t need a spreadsheet or if you don’t have $79 to shell out for iWork, or if you’d rather use an open source product.

  • WHFS 99.1: May You Rest in Peace

    The Washington Post:

    WHFS-FM, the Washington area radio station that was a pioneering purveyor of alternative rock to generations of young music fans, did a programming U-turn yesterday by ditching the genre for a Spanish-language, pop-music format that transforms it into the largest Spanish-language station on the local dial.

    Wow.

    I don’t know what to say.

    Just like that, my radio station of choice when I was younger goes off the air.

    WHFS has had a long history and has changed from a free-form throw it against the wall and see if it sticks format to a much more corporate and competitive format. They got picked up by Infinity Broadcasting somewhere along the way. Even when they had to change to the Clear Channel format to stay competitive, music director Pat Ferrise who has always had an ear for hits has kept things as fresh as possible in the monotinous neometal everything-sounds-the-same world of modern rock.

    I mean honestly, the only place I’ve ever heard anything from The Streets on mainstream radio in the US is when Pat played it during a segment on the latest HFS morning show. Speaking of the morning show, I used to listen to Aq and Kath and then later Lou Brutus. Every once in awhile on weekends I’d catch some random up and coming electronica on Trancemissions.

    Ever since I could remember, HFS has been the underdog station. They were always a little smaller and a little less popular than DC101, the “big” rock station in town. I’ve still got the ticket stubs to HFSTivals of years past that I camped out for, back when it was the big show of the summer. I didn’t realize that their numbers were so bad that it required a complete 180 degree format switch.

    It’s not that HFS didn’t suck. Of course they did. Radio in general in this city (and from what I can tell nationally) sucks. Stations must stick to an extremely tight playlist aimed specifically at their demographic, and under no circumstances shall they deviate at all. You can figure out the programming on any station in the DC area by listening to it for 20 minutes or so.

    Then there’s the Clear Channel factor. They own the “big” rock station, DC101, which sucks too. Not that I don’t listen to Elliot from time to time. But their programming tends to suck just about as much as any major radio station in the area.

    The sad thing is that this format change happened yesterday at noon and I only realized it because it was front page news on the Post. Why’s that? Because I tend not to listen to commercial radio much anymore. I’ve switched from well-tuned morning shows aimed directly at my demographic to listening to WAMU, my local NPR station and CDs while on my way to and from work. I tend to listen to Morning Edition on my commute in and The World or All Things Considered on my way home. I usually listen to CDs or listen to the radio in the mid-afternoon if I’m out and about. Of course that’s contingent on finding a song that doesn’t suck that I haven’t heard a million times.

    I digress.

    I guess that there are a couple of things to be learned from this format change:

    • “Independent” (and by independent I mean non-Clear Channel) radio is dying.
    • Spanish pop is The Next Big Thing. 99.1 El Zol is nudged between two big CC stations: 98.7 WMZQ and “Hot” 99.5. That’s prime time dial space in the DC area.
    • Radio conglomerates like Clear Channel and Infinity Broadcasting will do anything it takes to make a buck and exploit untapped markets.

    I’ll stop rambling now. Now I understand what my father must have felt like when Eddie Gallagher and WWDC/WGAY AM1260 was replaced by “business talk” and later “sports talk” 1260.

    I’ll probably point my HFS button on my car stereo to WRNR, a low powered station with awesome eclectic programming run by some of the old old school WHFS staff. WHFS, may you rest in peace.

  • Mac Mini Peer Pressure

    The Mac mini is a gateway drug. Everybody’s doing it.