Matt Croydon::Postneo

Category: Web Services

  • Come on Ride the D-BUS (hey), Ride it (woo woo!)

    The February 2005 issue of Linux Journal contains a gem of an article by Robert Love called Get on the D-BUS. I didn’t notice it until I was trawling through the ACM Digital Library while working on a paper for my computer organization class. All tangents aside it’s a great article and anyone who uses Linux on the desktop should check it out, as I think that you’re going to see D-BUS do a lot of heavy lifting over the next few years.

    I’d strongly suggest reading the LJ article for a full definition, but to summarize: D-BUS is an interprocess communications system that is (or soon will be) used in both Gnome and KDE environments. It allows apps to send and receive messages to and from each other in a happy object-oriented easy-as-it-should-be way. The Gnome Mono codemonkeys are using it with Beagle, and probably other apps. There’s a D-BUS package and several apps that use it backed in to Hoary. There’s even a Security Enhanced DBUS built in to Security Enhanced Linux.

    The APIs and the software are under constant development, but there are already working libraries for C, Glib, and (yes I checked) even python. Here’s example-client.py (edited slightly to fit in my layout):

    #!/usr/bin/env python
import dbus
bus = dbus.SessionBus()
remote_service = bus.get_service("org.designfu.SampleService")
remote_object = remote_service.get_object("/SomeObject",
     "org.designfu.SampleInterface")
hello_reply_list = remote_object.HelloWorld("Hello!")
hello_reply_tuple = remote_object.GetTuple()
hello_reply_dict = remote_object.GetDict()
print (hello_reply_list)
print str(hello_reply_tuple)
print str(hello_reply_dict)

    It looks like D-BUS (or DBUS if you would prefer to abbreviate it that way) is going to be adopted in both the Gnome and KDE camps, which is A Good Thing. I think that it is going to lead to better interaction with applications on the desktop. I imagine a sexy Growl workalike telling me about all kinds of things that I may or may not want to know in a cute and unobtrustive way. As the technology is adopted, I see apps talking to one another and reacting to one another more and more. I see apps and frameworks taking advantage of external web services flowing over DBUS.

    Keep an eye on this list of apps that use D-BUS expand quickly.

  • Yahoo! Web Services!

    I guess that explains why Jeremy has been so quiet about work lately. While wait for my tea to brew, take a look at Jeremy’s list of required reading, including the Yahoo! Search Developers Network and the O’Reillynet article on the subject.

    Rock on.

  • Just Browsing: Books that Caught my Eye

    As a break from classwork last night my wife and I headed to the local Borders to do a little book browsing. I didn’t pick anything up, but several titles caught my eye. Here are the books that I would have picked up if money were no issue and there were a few extra hours in each day:

    • Novell Certified Linux Engineer (Novell CLE) Study Guide: I almost went for a cert with the previous SUSE cert system. I also remembered that I’m a Java Certifieid Programmer and would do more Java certs if I had the time. I really wish that there were a J2ME cert book out there that I could study in my downtime.
    • Secure Architectures with OpenBSD: This looked like a meaty book with lots of information on hardening the already paranoid OpenBSD as well as ways to use it without making stupid mistakes.
    • Managing Security with Snort and IDS: There aren’t enough yellow O’Reilly books. Snort has intrigued me for some time and I’d love to read up on it someday.
    • Advanced Unix Programming: I’ve never been a really low-level guy, but I’ve had a newfound respect for plumbing since I’ve been shoving 0’s and 1’s around this semester. This looks like a great reference for low-ish level programming in a Unix (or Unix-like) environment.
    • Knoppix Hacks: I swear, if you leave two Hacks books alone for 20 minutes they’ll mate and have offspring. There really are a lot of things you can do with Knoppix.
    • Essential Mathematics for Games and Interactive Applications : A Programmer’s Guide: This one was showcased a little bit and gets down to the nitty gritty of stuff that you need to do in order to know your stuff. I’m always amazed at how much you need to know about whatever subject you’re coding for.
    • XML Hacks: What did I tell you? There’s another. A bunch of tricks with XML from cool but useless to wow.
    • Python Programming Patterns: I don’t think I’ve seen enterprise-grade patterns using Python before. This looks like a good book for those looking for an excuse to use Python in the workplace.
    • Moleskine by Kikkerland: Some great small notebooks and stuff. They could be great for jotting down notes before they can make their way to my wiki.

    It was great to get out and graze at the bookstore a bit. It has been awhile since I’ve done so. Of course I have a similar number of tech books already on the shelf that I haven’t had a chance to read, but I always want more.

    What books have you looked at lately? I was bummed not to find Mono: A Developer’s Notebook on the shelf, but considering that there were several there last time, I think that’s a good sign.

  • Lock Down Your Aerials: The 2005 Brit Awards

    The Brits were taped yesterday and are airing tonight on ITV. Since Comcast doesn’t carry ITV (only the watered down BBC America), I was elated to find that BBC News took notes on the winners. I was glad to see that Mike Skinner (aka The Streets) picked up the British male solo artist award. I loved his debut Original Pirate Material. His newest, A Grand Don’t Come for Free is best listened to from cover to cover, as it all fits together in a well-told story. Both albums have enjoyed heavy rotation in my car CD player as well as at home on the computers. They’re really top notch work.

    Other hilights from the awards are that Franz Ferdinand didn’t dominate quite as much as was expected. I think there’s a bit more hype for them then they deserve. Other big winners include Keane and Joss Stone. The Scissor Sisters sadly dominated the international category. I’ve heard most of their album and I guess I just don’t get it.

    Congrats to the winners, including my underdog favourite The Streets.

  • 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.

  • 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:

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Hang In There

    I can’t tell you how good it is to hear from Brian Buck. I can’t tell you how long I’ve been reading his blog, but to me it feels like we go way back. Hang in there man!

  • /me is back.

    It’s been a long couple of months and I apologize for the hiatus. It’s a long story for another day, but lets put it this way, I’m back! I’ve moved from Radio Userland to WordPress. I promise that I’ll share my (semi-painful and procrastination-ridden) migration process in due time.

    The .css that is currently driving the site is Dots by Alex King, which I’m currently tweaking. I’ve still got some random bits that I need to find and url rewrite to fit the new engine, but I’ve done my best to keep the old permalinks. If you find something that’s whacky, please drop me a line at matt at the domain ooiio.com. Thanks!

  • Asphalt: Urban GT

    All About N-Gage have the dirt on a game that looks like it has a lot of potential: Asphalt: Urban GT. I can’t say that I’ve played much more than some FIFA and other random stuff on the N-Gage, but a good racer can add a lot of value to a gaming platform.  Of course I’m still waiting to see if Call of Duty rocks as much as it should.

  • The Design of Sites

    In addition to picking up a book for the fall semester, I ordered The Design of Sites (subtitle: Patterns, Principles, and Processes for Crafting a Customer-Centered Web Experience) from Bookpool last week. I’m still reading through the first chapter in my spare time, but this looks like a good read. Common sense seems to be a major component of a lot of the observations so far, but they’re definitely on the right track. This could definitely be a textbook for an upper level college class on usability and site design.  I guess I’ll take that as a good sign.

    I apologize for the light updates this month, August seems to be pretty much a wash. I’m getting organized for the new semester and should hopefully be able to bring this weblog back in to the workflow. I’ve also been suffering without a news aggregator for the past few weeks. That is something I need to fix immediately before I go insane.

    Back to work!

  • A Little Bit of Jill Sobule in Ashlee Simpson

    I had MTV on in the background this morning as obscure Olympic coverage on Bravo and MSNBC was a bit lacking. Among the videos that flew by was an Ashlee Simpson video, which I’m sure isn’t new but it was new to me. I kept thinking one thing over and over while listening to the video for “Pieces of Me”: Jill Sobule.

    Jill Sobule is an obscure almost-mainstream pop/folk girl whose big hit was “I kissed a girl” and also sung “Supermodel” on the Clueless soundtrack. She’s a pretty amazing artist and the stuff that has never hit the airwaves is so much better. I’ve got all but one of her albums and have seen her a few times at little coffee houses and college campuses.

    I haven’t heard Ashlee Simpson’s entire album, but a few snippets remind me a lot of Sobule, while overall she’s got a sound quite her own.

  • Business2: O’Reilly and Textbooks

    If Tim O’Reilly is doing it, you can be sure that it’s probably a few years ahead of its time. In that case, in a few years I should expect that most of not all college professors will be rolling their own textbooks from a vast catalogue of content.

    I’m a college student, and I’ve had to pay for my fair share of really expensive textbooks that have either sucked beyond repair or that I’ve just not used. That said, I hope that someday my textbook comes from SafariU.

    The full article at Business 2.0 is going to be behind the paying subscriber firewall for another month or so, but it’s an excellent read. (When I subscribed it cost me all of a buck an issue.)

    When in doubt, follow the alpha geeks.

  • Amazon Web Services 4.0

    Amazon has unveiled a beta version of their web servies.  The beta allows access to more categories, boasts improved search capabilities, and a lot more.  I don’t see anything earth shattering here, but there are a lot of little improvements all over the place.  Feel free to sign up for the beta and play around.

  • Charlie

    I can tell you from personal experience that Hurricane Charlie is causing all kinds of problems with our air travel system.  Flights to a better part of Florida are bein delayed or canceled, and the effects of that can be felt on the other side of the country.  Needless to say it’s going to be a late night at the airport tonight.

  • Ebay Nibbles on Craigslist

    Slashdot brings news that Ebay has picked up a stake in Craigslist.  I really hope that this doesn’t impact the awesome atmosphere at Craigslist.  I’ve snagged quite a few deals from Craigslist over the past year or so and am quite greatful for it.  I hope that it continues on in its community-friendly rocking classified ad form.

  • mOlympics

    Yesterday Russ unveiled his mOlympics site yesterday.  I wish that I had been able to dedicate more time to help Russ out, though I’m glad that he was able to stay up late and pound out the code.  Spreat the word!  mOlympics is a great site to catch up on news from the Olympics.  I’ve found myself checking it out quite a bit over the past day or so in my downtime.  It’s a great shift from my usual poke around the BBC News WAP site (which can get stale if I visit it too much).

    So go check it out (especially on a modern mobile), I think you’ll like it.

  • Motorola A780: A Killer Phone Lurking?

    PhoneScoop has some play time at MotoSummer 2004.  They took a look at the A780 and I think they see as much potential in it as I do.  The A780 isn’t the sexy RAZR V3, but it’s the smartest of a new crop of phones from them.  I that that is has the serious potential to be the next really big thing.

    One of the things that I like about the design is that it’s both a one-handed and a two-handed phone.  It’s sort of like an oldschool Treo but small enough to actually fit in your pocket.  It’s one handed when all you need is a phone.  It’s a candybar phone actually when used one-handed.  When you need some smarter features, pop open the flip and you’ve got a QVGA touch screen ready to rock.

    I have a feeling that Moto is going to cripple developers and only allow them access to the phone through MIDP 2.0 with a bunch of extra JSRs and APIs.  That is dissapointing, but it’s the “safe” decision that probably makes carriers and Moto themselves a lot less nervous.  I can hear the tech support call now: “what does core dump mean?”

    I hope that Moto puts up some developer info or releases an SDK at Motocoder pretty soon.  I’m pretty sure that there are a bunch of developers out there who are chomping at the bit to code for and learn about this phone.