Category: Web Services

Clemens Vasters weighs in on the WS-Reliability spec.  I trust his opinions on the subject after seeing the wicked cool things he did with web services in .NET.

Slashdot:

hondo77 writes “In a 7-2 decision, The Supreme Court gave Disney what they wanted. Story just broke, no details yet.” They’re talking about the Eldred case, recently argued before the Supreme Court and mentioned on Slashdot many times. The upshot is that no works produced in the United States after the 1920’s will ever go out of copyright. Opinions: Majority opinion, Stevens’ dissent, Breyer’s dissent.

From what I hear, Lessig did all that he could, though he is down on himself about the case.  I don’t think anyone out there could have done any better:

So I’ve got to go get onto a plane to go to my least favorite city (DC). My inbox is filling with kind emails from friends. Also with a few of a different flavor. It’s my nature to identify most closely with those of the different flavor. David Gossett at the law firm of Mayer Brown wrote Declan, “Larry lost Eldred, 7-2.” Yes, no matter what is said, that is how I will always view this case. The constitutional question is not even close. To have failed to get the Court to see it is my failing.

Rael notes that O’Reilly’s Emerging Technology Conference page has been updated with a list of speakers and talks.  It looks like a good mix of topics.  I don’t think that I’ll be able to afford to go (even with the student discount), but I’m there in an instant if I win the lottery or something.

Congrats to Sam Ruby who will be speaking there.  The speaker list is top shelf.

xmlhack covers recent SVG happenings at the W3C:

The W3C has released the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.1 Specification and Mobile SVG Profiles: SVG Tiny and SVG Basic as Recommendations, along with some much more exciting demos than is typical for the XML world.

Phil Windley spoke about web services in DC today.  I wanted to be there, but I wasn’t able to get out of work.  I’m going to look at his slides and pretend that I was there.

Slashdot bears the sad news: RIP Graffiti.

Today will be a light blogging day.  I’m taking my little sister to see Avril Lavigne this afternoon and after that I’m driving my friend Adam to West Virginia.  He starts school again tomorrow.

It doesn’t look like I have anything interesting to say today.

Reverand Jim is thinking about weblogging best practices as they pertain to updating content.  I tend to link out to external pages for longer standalone content and use an Update: to note changes or updates if they occur recently after the post.  If it’s been awhile (> 1 day) I will usually link back to the update in the present.

My solution sounds like a 1-2-3 hybrid.

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

A 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.

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.

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.

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.

DPReview Reports:

Japan’s Konica Corp. and Minolta Co., two film photography giants struggling for a foothold in the digital era, said today they had agreed on a merger that could propel them into the big league. Konica, the world’s third-largest photo film maker, and Minolta, a leading maker of SLR cameras struggling after poor financial results, already have a mutual supply deal in photocopier machines and a toner joint venture.

Wow.  This isn’t huge, but it’s pretty big.  I’m a little bummed, because Konica is one of the best underdog camera companies around.  They make great products with sharp lenses for less.  Their repair department is responsive, their sales rep for my store is awesome, and their inkjet paper is pretty good too.

I’ve never been similarly impressed with Minolta.  They have good products, don’t get me wrong, but they seem to suffer from some bloat.  They tend to discontinute parts for hugely popular cameras at almost the same time they discontinue the parts themselves.  You can repair an autofocus SLR Canon or Nikon camera that is 10 years old, but you can’t do the same with a Minolta.  Parts just aren’t available.  Their prices are okay, but not great.  Their products are good, but not worth what they charge, IMHO.

This merger could either be A Good Thing or could turn out horribly for Konica.  I hope that it works out.  By the way, Konica’s digital line is doing quite well.  And the blurb says that Minolta is ‘a leading maker of SLR cameras.’  That’s wrong.  Minolta SLRs suck.  (Their digital cameras are okay but overpriced.)  Canon and Nikon are the leading makers of SLR cameras.  Pentaxes are good but geared more toward amateurs.

I apologize for the rant.  I like Minolta stuff, they just piss me off sometimes.  You know you’ve been in the photo industry when you rant about the photo industry on the internet before coffee.

Phil Windley is speaking at the Universal Access Collaboration Expedition workshop #21 on the 14th.  Cool.  I haven’t dug into the depts of the goog, but at the surface, there doesn’t seem to be much info on this.  Is there any way a weblogger like myself might be able to attend?

WebServices.Org has a group of articles about web services in 2003.

Jon Udell:

If you’re creating a Web service that you hope will have a disruptive impact, the lessons are clear. Support HTTP GET-style URLs. Design them carefully, matching de facto standards where they exist. Keep the URLs short, so people can easily understand, modify, and trade them. Establish a blog reputation. Use the blog network to promote the service and enable users of the service to self-organize. It all adds up to a recipe for recombinant growth. [Full story at InfoWorld.com]

Phil Waineright uncovers the web services paradox:

1. They work because they use established, universal standards

   and yet

2. They produce the best results in unanticipated circumstances.

For the record, the Netgear RP614 Cable/DSL Router was extremely easy to install and is quite configurable.  It was on sale with rebates this week.