October 31, 2004
Google Desktop for Mac!
Google has announced plans to release it s Google Desktop software for the mac, although no date has currently been set. Google Desktop allows users to search through their emails, files, documents, chat messages on their home computers much like good searches through the Internets content. This is essentially bringing the power of search engines to your desktop. Currently Google Desktop is only available for windows machines as it needs to hook into the operating system to search for the required files and to bring this capability to the Mac will required a complete overhaul to Google Desktop.
It is very curious why Google is going to provide Google Desktop for the mac as Apple's new operating system codenamed Tiger, due early 2005, contains a similar technology called Spotlight. So if the mac is going to already have a powerful searching capability built right into the operating system why is Google going to go ahead and still provide their own tool? Maybe Google has a much bigger plan to bring more and more of their Internet based tools like news, GMail, Image searches to the desktop so that your complete working environment is actually Google Desktop. For now though you can only download Google Desktop for windows but stay tuned for more interesting developments.
Links
REUTERS Article
Google Desktop
Apple's Spotlight
October 29, 2004
Actual Example of a “Rich” Web Client
One of my friends and colleagues (Matthew Phillips) has sent me a link to a page about an application that has been written using Mozilla's XUL. As I have previously written XUL is the XML markup language used by the Mozilla-based Browsers (Mozilla and Firefox) to render the user interface. This site talks about using XUL to develop a “rich” web application to search for products on Amazon.com. You can run the rich client as either an extension or online (like a web page). I believe this type of rich client is the future for all web-based applications that require a centrally managed application repository while retaining highly interactive client-side capabilities.
Have a go for yourself. (You will need to install Firefox or Mozilla)
Links
MAB Rich Client
Download Firefox
Download Mozilla
October 28, 2004
Scrollable CSS Table with Fixed Header
Found this good CSS table that keeps the header roll fixed while the rest of the table can scroll within the page. The table itself is defined in HTML using the table, tr and td tags and then uses Cascading Style Sheets to make the rows scroll while the header does not move. The author has even be able to make it all work on basically all browsers.
Links
CSS Scrollable Table with Fixed Header Example
October 27, 2004
iPod Photo
Well amazingly enough the rumours about an iPod with a colour screen were actually true. Apple has today released the new iPod Photo that contains a colour screen and can display photos. To help get the photos onto the new iPod Apple has also released version 4.7 of iTunes that understands the iPod photo so that you can transfer your photos from iPhoto to you iPod Photo. A new Dock is included and contains cables to connect it up to your TV so that you can display your photos on your TV. When playing music it will display the album art as stored in iTunes. And now you can play the built-in solitaire card game in colour. All this with an amazing 12 hour battery life, way to go Apple.
Links
iPod Photo Page
iTunes 4.7 Page
October 26, 2004
TV Guide Application Icon
As alluded to in previous blog entries I am building a new OSX TV guide application that will connect to a live web service feed to get TV guide information so that I can cache and display TV Guide information quickly and easily on my mac. Development of this program has only just started and I have started working on creating the site to provide news and forums for the application. So far I have created a potential icon for the application (see right). If you have any comments on this icon please add them to the comments section of this blog. I will be working on the site for this application soon. Updates about the TV Guide application will be posted to this blog until I have the new TV Guide site running with its own blog.
Photoshop Tutorials
I am currently creating the icon for my new TV Guide Program (still to be named, ideas anyone?). While looking around for a few photoshop tutorials on how to do something specific I came across this great site. This site contains lots of great quick photoshop tutorials that shows you how to create numerous visually appealing effects. For all you budding graphic design people out there remember that less can be more.
Links
WebDogPro Site
October 25, 2004
More information when using WSMakeStubs
I have finally been able to get my program to send and receive XML data using Document-style web services using the WSMakeStubs generated code. My previous article describes a few bugs in the generated output from WSMakeStubs but I have also found that it tries to return the wrong object which is null. Trying to use null objects is very hard so I went digging to find out what was wrong. What I found out was that the stubs was getting the XML SOAP response message fine but it was trying to return an object from the result dictionary called “parameters” that did not exist. Once I ended up finding this it was an easy fix to just change the return statement in all the resultValue methods in the WS[name_of_service].m file. for instance change:
return [[super getResultDictionary] objectForKey: @“parameter”];
to:
return [[super getResultDictionary] objectForKey: @“/Result”];
I found this out by adding a few debug logging statements to the gotResults method in the WSGeneratedObj.m file. The debug statement used was:
NSLog(@“RESULT: %@”, [fResult allKeys]);
Hope this helps others out there.
Links
Previous WSMakeStubs Post
October 24, 2004
WSMakeStubs Bug
I just spent the best half of a day trying to figure out how to use web services in Apple's Cocoa environment using the WSMakeStubs utility. WSMakeStubs takes a WSDL file and creates all the stub code required so “in theory” you can just use this stub code to make web service calls. Well this would be true if it was implemented correctly. I found that everytime I tried to use it I would get the following message appear on the log output:
in _parseFault
After a while of pulling my hair out I found this great discussion thread that identifies a problem with the WSMakeStubs program which is easily fixed by changing a few lines in the generated code.
Well I am no longer getting the “in _parseFault” message, on to the next bug :)
Links
Post on CocoaBuilder.com about WSMakeStubs bug
CocoaBuilder.com Site
Brie VS Camembert Cheese
While programming today on my new TVGuide for OSX I felt a little hungry so my wife and I nipped down to the local shops to get some food. We ended up deciding on cheese to fill our tummies. While looking at the shelves of cheese we choose to go with a Brie cheese, but wait, there is also Camembert. This got us thinking about what is actually the difference between the two cheeses, this is how our little experiment started.
Purchasing a Brie and Camembert from the same brand name we went home to try and see if we could taste the difference. RESULT: “no observable taste or visual difference”, therefore it was time to hit Google to try and find out what the difference was. After an exhaustive search of the Internet, 3 minutes later, we came to the conclusion that there is actually NO difference other than that originally 260 years ago when Brie and Camembert were first created it came from two different regions in France, Brie and Camembert. This leads to the names, also as these cheeses were from two different regions there would have been a slight difference in taste because they would have different cows and grasses to feed the cows, which can influence the flavour of cheese. However many of the Brie and Camembert we eat today do not come from Brie and Camembert so really it is all a marketing scam so they can sell the same product twice. No longer can they fool us, the jig is up.
Gmail Address Import from Apple Address Book
Want to import your Apple Address book into Google's Gmail service? Here is a great blog article that contains a simple Perl script that converts VCard files (what Address book exports) into a CSV list with the name and email of your contacts. It is extremely easy to use:
- Download the script from here.
- Open Apple Address Book.
- Select all your contacts.
- Drag contacts to your desktop. This will create a file called “vCards.vcf”.
- Open the Apple Terminal application (found in /Applications/Utilities directory).
- Change the directory to your desktop (“cd Desktop”).
- Type “perl parsevcf ./vCards.vcf ./gmail.csv” (this assumes that the script you downloaded in step 1 and the Address Book vCards file are in the same directory).
- This will create a new file called gmail.csv on your Desktop that you can now upload to Gmail.
Links
Gmail Perl Script Conversion Blog
October 23, 2004
Metadata: Dublin Core Metadata Initiative
Metadata is poorly used on the Internet and most intranets to describe objects (normally web pages). I have used and accessed metadata for numerous implementations and systems, and have come across elements that contained the name “DC” before an element like “title” or “description” and have never really thought about what it was for or what it stood for. While researching information about a recent article about DITA I found a reference to the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI). The DCMI is trying to provide better metadata standards for ALL resources that are interoperable. This means the “DC” actually stands for “Dublin Core” and means that the element conforms to the Dublin Core standard. For a complete Dublin Core Definition see the following example for the Dublin Core home page:
<?xml version=“1.0”?>
<rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf=“http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#” xmlns:dc=“http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/”>
<rdf:Description rdf:about=“http://dublincore.org/”>
<dc:title>Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) Home Page</dc:title>
<dc:description>The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative is an open forum engaged in the development of interoperable online metadata standards that support a broad range of purposes and business models. DCMI's activities include consensus-driven working groups, global conferences and workshops, standards liaison, and educational efforts to promote widespread acceptance of metadata standards and practices.</dc:description>
<dc:date>2004-10-05</dc:date>
<dc:format>text/html</dc:format>
<dc:language>en</dc:language>
<dc:contributor>Dublin Core Metadata Initiative</dc:contributor>
</rdf:Description>
</rdf:RDF>
This example is an XML/RDF instantiation of the Dublin Core definition. As you can see Dublin Core defines the “Description”, “Date”, “Format”, etc. elements that describe the contents of the document. By using this worldwide accepted standard you can describe a document so that any search engine, Internet spider or content management system can use this metadata.
Defining metadata using Dublin Core is really only one part of the problem, the other problem is that the systems still do not “understand” the meaning of the data defined in the metadata. This understanding is where the concepts behind the semantic web can be applied, although the semantic web concept is still developing therefore is not quite ready for prime time use.
Links
Dublin Core Metadata Initiative Website
DCMI Documentation
Technical Documentation - XML Definitions
I have known about DocBook for quite some time as an XML schema to develop technical (or any) documentation. Recently I have stumbled over the DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture Article) standard, which is an alternative technical documentation definition. Unlike DocBook, DITA is not just for defining a single technical documents but more about the definition of topics that are later linked together. This creates for greater perceived flexibility, however I have not yet tried DITA so I can not comment in detail. For a good overview have a read through the Introduction to DITA article. I also found the FAQ found inside the DITA download to also help in my understanding.
Links
DocBook Website
Introduction to the Darwin Information Typing Architecture Article
Download DITA
“Rich” Web Clients
I am a keen advocate for “Rich” internet clients. By “Rich” I do not mean Java Applets, but web pages that provide a more complete user experience without having to request new pages from the server whenever the user clicks a button or link. There are few different approaches that provide this type of functionality including XUL (Mozilla Platform), Macromedia Flex and traditional JavaScript and DOM. Many web developers do not exploit the powerful capabilities provided with JavaScript and DOM. A recent example of this type of “Rich” client is Google's new Gmail capability that uses JavaScript and DOM to create a very quick and snappy user interface. By using JavaScript Google has been able to only send the basic requests and data transfers rather sending whole page changes back to the client. This of course takes quite a lot more client-side JavaScript development but does create a very powerful user interface. If you are interested in more information about the Gmail Agent API have a look here.
The Mozilla Platform is a more developer friendly approach as you define your application's interface in XUL and then link it together with JavaScript. However this approach requires your users to use a Mozilla-based browser (Mozilla or Firefox).
For the most interactive “Rich” client experience that will work on any browser Macromedia Flex is your product. Flex is based around a similar concept of Mozilla by defining your interface using XML documents and then linking it together with a scripting languages (Macromedia ActionScript). The difference is that Flex's client is built inside the Macromedia Flash player (available on almost every platform and browser), which allows for highly dynamic and pretty user interfaces. Flex is deployed using a J2EE server and can communicate back to the server by making Web Service calls or exchanging Java objects.
Gmail's approach works on all browsers but is technically much harder to implement. Mozilla's approach works well but requires a Mozilla-based browser. Macromedia's approach provides the best of both worlds but is not free and requires extensive server support. So if you are a web application developer please consider one of these options and provide a more advanced experience for your users.
Links
Mozilla Web Site
Firefox Site
Gmail Agent API Article
Macromedia Flex Site
Workflow Patterns Site
Here is a very interesting site about workflow patterns. One very interesting section of the site is a list of standards (including XPDL, BPEL4WS, BPML, WSFL, XLANG, and WSCI) and the features that each support or lack. Another great feature of the site are the flash animations of the different patterns.
Links
Workflow Patterns Site
JBoss Now Includes Business Process Capabilities
JBoss has recently incorporated the open source jBPM project into its J2EE application server renaming the product JBoss jBPM. This expands the JBoss open source J2EE platform to provide business process functionality and support for various workflow definition standards.
Links
InfoWorld Article on JBoss support for BPM
JBoss website
JBoss jBPM website
October 22, 2004
Fighting for the TV Remote?
Fighting for the TV remote in your home? Well get one up on the rest of the other idiot box watches and just turn the TV off on them. With Mitch Altman of San Francisco's invention you can turn off pretty much any TV using the keyring sized gadget. I can just imagine all sorts of ways to annoy people with this gadget including all those TVs in public places like airports, shops and bars. It is also small enough to hide that it was you who turned the TV off :)
Links
ABC News Article
October 21, 2004
Enterprise Agility: ESB, SOA, Web Services
Web Services Pipeline has another great article about web services by Fred Cummins. This article talks about enterprise agility and how Enterprise Services Bus (ESB), Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) and Web Services can help create an agile organisation. The article is a must read for anyone interested in the way web services are heading as it identifies a good list of requirements to support an Agile environment, or really any large web services deployment. The article also goes onto to concisely identify the middleware requirements and the components that create a complete enterprise service environment.
Links
Web Services Pipeline Article
Power Charging Pad
Splashpower is a new device not on the market yet (hopefully 2005) which allows you to charge your mobile devices by simply placing them onto a mouse mat sized pad. It works by using induction to transfer power between the mat and the thin Splashmodule that is attached to the mobile device. This means that you will need to have a Splashmodule for each of your mobile devices, which I believe could be quite expensive. The other question that I have is how are the manufactures going to support all the different types of connectors mobile devices use nowadays. Splashpower will also allow you to charge multiple devices at the same time. This type of device would seriously clean up my desk space as i would no longer need hundreds of different power cords for each of the different devices.
Links
Splashpower Website
Minature Jet Engines to Power Future Mobile Devices
New Scientist has an interesting article about a mob at Georgia Institute of Technology who have created a mini jet engine that works within silicon wafers. These guys have successfully created a small engine that produces enough electricity to power small mobile devices and this is using the research demonstration version. The key benefit of these microengines is that they take up less space than current fuel cell technology that is starting to appear in commercial applications. I am always for devices that can extend the life of my gadgets but what are the environmental issues of these microengines when compared with conventional batteries even though current batteries also contain highly toxic materials.
Links
New Scientist article on Miniature jet engines
October 20, 2004
Tiger Start Kit for Developers
Apple has released information about the Tiger Start Kit for Developers that is providing a years subscription to the ADC Select Member and access to preview versions of OSX Tiger before it is released next year. This is great for all those OSX developers out there. Anyone interested in buying me a copy?
Links
Apple Tiger Start Kit for Developers
OSX Tiger Developer Overview Page
October 19, 2004
CherryOS May Not Be What it Claims
Wired has an interesting article about the new CherryOS that I blogged about previously. According to the Wired article a number of people have accused the CherryOS developers for stealing code from PearPC (open source emulator) that provides very similar functionality. The CherryOS makers claim that they have not done anything of the sort. One of the reasons why the CherryOS site has been down a number of times is because of crackers breaking into the site and maliciously damaging or disrupting the site. The true test to see if CherryOS is unique or not will be clear once it has been officially released and source code is provided to the PearPC developers to check, which will occur in a few days time. From my point of view I do not really care as PearPC has been released as open source under the GPL license that does not preclude the use of code for commercial products, but does retain a few restrictions. What I really worry about is wether CherryOS works better than PearPC and is easier to install and use and therefore worth spending the money on.
Links
Wired Article about CherryOS
October 13, 2004
Flash Anim: Dad's Home
Ok so I do not normally post links to flash animations, but this one is kwirky, fun and ticked my funny bone. No point of pictures the best way is to just watch it yourself.
Links
Dad's Home Flash Animation
MS Office 2004 Service Pack 1 Released
Microsoft has released Service Pack 1 for its Office 2004 software. This is the first major update to the Office 2004 software and it installed with no problems although it take quite sometime to search the hard drive while installing. If you are installing on a mac that contains multiple LARGE hard drives then be ready for a long wait as the installer searches all these drives to find the location of all Microsoft Apps that are installed so it can update them.
Links
Download Office 2004 Service Pack 1
Mac OSX on PC
If you own a PC but really want a Mac then a cheaper way of doing this is to use an emulator on the PC that emulates the PowerPC architecture so that you can run Mac OSX in the emulation environment. PearPC is one such emulation environment that has been around for a while but is still not quite there and has that OpenSource feel to it, otherwise known as hard to install and get working. Another option available is CherryOS that provides a similar emulation environment. I went to the CherryOS website earlier today and I was able to look at a few demonstration videos and screenshots of the emulation environment in action, however I just had a look again and the site seems to be missing all its contents. I can say that it looked quite impressive and looked quite easy to install and get running so might be quite a good option for all those PC users who envy the Mac community (you know who you are). I am guessing that they are just updating their site so have a look for yourself in a couple of days.
Links
CherryOS Website
PearPC Website
October 12, 2004
Colour iPod Rumors Grow
I have seen a rumor growing that Apple is to release a new iPod with a 60gig hard drive and a brand spanking new colour screen. The rumors also identify that it can link up with iPhoto so that it can display photos on its colour screen. As to whether this is true of not is still to be seen, but it will be an interesting item to see. I normally do not blog these types of rumors and leave it up to the rumor sites but I have seen this rumor on too many different sites and RSS feeds to not take notice.
Links
Google Search on “color ipod”
MacRumour Site
October 10, 2004
BluePhoneElite: OSX Bluetooth Phone App
I have used a number of different bluetooth applications that can connect to my Ericsson T39 mobile phone but BluePhoneElite is one of the best for connecting with a mobile phone. BluePhoneElite will automatically connect to you mobile phone and unlike other similar programs can actually display your phone signal strength and battery levels. It also contains a very good SMS management interface that can display the actual contents of your phone (both the phone and SIM card). This SMS management interface allows you to manipulate the SMS messages saved on the phone. This is great for me as the Ericsson's T39 phone interface is very slow and cumbersome so using this software I can quickly view or delete messages stored in the phone. If you want to see screenshots of the application running then continue reading.
BluePhoneElite Menu
BluePhoneElite SMS Manager
BluePhoneElite Preference Pane - General
BluePhoneElite Preference Pane - Phones
BluePhoneElite Preference Pane - Calls
BluePhoneElite Preference Pane - SMS
BluePhoneElite Preference Pane - Proximity
BluePhoneElite Preference Pane - Customise
Links
BluePhoneElite Website
VersionTracker Site for BluePhoneElite
October 09, 2004
GMail and OSX
Are you using GMail and Apple OSX well then this is for you. GMailStatus is a little program that appears in your menu bar and checks your GMail account for new messages and displays the unread amount. To make it even better GMailStatus also supports Growl notifications, which I blogged about earlier. Now for the best stuff, screenshots:
GMailStatus Menu Item
GMailStatus Preferences
GMailStatus Preferences
October 08, 2004
Apache Pluto 1.0.1-rc1 Released
The Apache guys have released a release candidate of Apache Pluto. Pluto is an implementation of the JSR-168 specification that defines an API to be used for the development of portlets to be deployed into a complete Portal implementation. Before JSR-168 each of the portal implementers had the own methods to develop portlets and provide access to personalisation and presentation features. Pluto is not a complete Portal implementation but it does provide the APIs required for the portlet development.
Links
Pluto Home Page
October 07, 2004
Podcasting and iPodder
You may or may not have heard about podcasting and the program iPodder. For those who have not, podcasting is the concept of using RSS feeds to subscribe to articles that link to audio files instead of the normal textual information. This creates a list of audio files that users can subscribe to easily by saving the URL of the RSS feed. Then using a program like iPodder you can link these podcasts with your iTunes so that the audio are automatically uploaded to your iPod. That is podcasting in a nutshell, so why is this so interesting? Podcasting is starting a new way of potentially reading/listening to news, articles or sharing music. It has not caught on yet and therefore there are only a few podcasts available. Content developers are also realising just how hard it is to create audio-based news articles when compared to traditional text. I am surprised the no-one has create it yet but why is there not a text to speech converter included in this equation so that any RSS feed can be converted to a podcast feed. It will be interesting to see where this goes in the future.
Links
iPodder.org
Podcast.net
Australian Maps and Directions in Apple Address Book
Stephen Withers has released a couple of scripts on VersionTracker that allows Australians to display the mapping location of Australian addresses from directly data contained in Address Book linked to whereis.com.au. There are also scripts for connecting Microsoft Entourage with Whereis. This is a great little script filling a gap for Australians using Address Book, good work. There are two versions of the scripts, one for displaying the map of the selected location and the other to display the directions to the location. The directions script uses your own personal address card to determine the starting location. Check it outside for yourself with the links below.
To install just copy the scripts into your [home directory]/library/Address Book Plug-ins/ and then restart Address Book.
Links
Version Tracker Site
Stephen Withers Script Site
IBM WebSphere 6 Announced
IBM has announced that its new version of WebSphere Application Server Version 6 will be available in December 2004. This is a key release from my point of view as this will be the first release of IBMs J2EE application server to support the J2EE 1.4 standards and of most importance includes Web Services as standard. In the previous J2EE standard Web Services were not included as a core technology, therefore each handled Web Services differently. This created a nightmare when moving code between J2EE servers implemented by different vendors. A pre release of WebSphere Application Server Version 6 has been available to developers for quite some time on the IBM website and is still available if you want to try it out before the official release in December.
Links
IBM Website
The Register Article on WebSphere 6
ZDNet Article on WebSphere 6
CNet Article on WebSphere 6
IBM WebSphere Developer Pre-release Download
Bruce Schneier: New Blog
Bruce Schneier, one of the worlds most respected security expert,s has set up his own blog on security related subjects. This supplements his current email newsletters and an RSS feed that he had been sending out for some time. Now that he has released his blog the RSS feed has changed to contain the information posted in his blog so you can receive his articles as soon as they are created. If you are interested in security (physical and software) or are involved in the development of applications Bruce Schneier is a must read. See the links list at the bottom of this entry for more information about the blog or subscribing to Bruce's RSS feeds.
Links
Bruce Schneier's Blog
Bruce Schneier RSS Feed (Full Articles) - RSS 1.0
Bruce Schneier RSS Feed (Except Only) - RSS 2.0
Bruce Schneier Email Subscription
October 06, 2004
RFID'ied City
Are you big fan of RFID tags? Well everyone out there seems to be, kind of strange when all RFID tags are small patches that contain a small amount of data that can be accessed via Radio Frequency communication. So why all the excitement of RFID, not sure, I believe it is just one of those fads that people have caught onto. There is nothing really special about RFID technology, what makes RFID interesting though are all the concepts and ideas that people are thinking of to use the RFID technology. One such idea is the sticking of RFID tags all around Kobe, Japan. The idea behind this is that you can walk around the city and using an RFID reader (supposedly in a future mobile phone) and read information about the area that you are in, or sign that you are reading. This is a bit like a mobile tourist guide that is aware of your surroundings. It is ideas like these which makes RFID interesting not the technology itself.
Links
RFID City Article from Engadget
Treo and Microsoft Exchange Unite
Great news according to engadget article palmOne has signed a deal with the Microsoft Exchange group to improve the support between the treo devices and Microsoft Exchange servers. Why this is so great is that most work environments are dominated by Microsoft and use Microsoft Exchange for their email servers (like my work).
One point that I am worried about is that palm will make this as one method to slowly move over to the Microsoft mobile environment, which I really hope does not happen. PalmOS is much cleaner and more elegant (read better designed and faster) operating system for mobile devices and it would be great big disappointment to see the better software die.
Links
Engadget Article
October 05, 2004
Apache Project Agila
Apache has a new incubator project called Agila that is a donation from Gluecode. Agila is a lightweight Business Process Management (BPM) service. This is yet one more step closer to the Apache Foundation having a complete middleware stack to rival the larger software companies like IBM, BEA or Microsoft.
Links
Apache Agila
Gluecode Website
October 04, 2004
Web Services vs REST
Jim Webber has a great article on WebServices.org about Web Services and REST and that these two architectures are converging. REST is all about defining a set of uniform APIs for accessing and manipulating data over HTTP, while Web Services is about the use of SOAP, WSDL and UDDI to allow for system communication. Jim Webber argues that originally Web Services was just the extension of similar technologies like CORBA but now it is evolving and allowing for more REST-like architectures that are more open and loosely coupled. If you are interested in web services and the direction they are heading then this article is a very good read.
Links
REST in Peach? - Article by Jim Webber
WebServices.org Site
Semantic Web Description
I have started to look into the Semantic Web concepts (as that is all it is at the moment) and what it will mean to web development. In this search for information and understanding I have found a good article that describes what is meant by “Semantic Web”. As I learn a little more about this area I will feed this information into this blog. You can also view my Semantic Web articles by using the categories listen on the left side of my blog home page.
Nvu Mozilla-based HTML Editor
Mozilla is not just a great browser/email/news client but it also provides a good application development platform. For example Firefox has been developed using the Mozilla platform and Gecko layout engine. Another great application is Nvu, which is a graphical web page editor to rival programs like Macromedia Dreamweaver and Microsoft Frontpage. Even though Nvu is only up to version 0.50 (due out this week) it already provides quite some capability and it will be interesting to see this program grow. The current version of Nvu is quite yet good enough for me to throw away Dreamweaver but it is definitely on the right track.
Screenshot of Nvu Editing My Home Page
Links
Nvu Home Page
Macromedia Dreamweaver Page
Open Source CMS
From a recent article that I read I found an interesting link to opensourcecms.com that provides trial implementation of many Open Source Content Management Systems (CMS) available on the Internet today. This site allows for anyone to play around with the different implementations to see which systems can support you needs without having to go through the pain of installing each software product individually. The site also provides forums and a good set of links to blogs and sites about CMS.
Links
www.opensourcecms.com
Making Better Open Source Systems
Jeffrey Veen has a good article that talks about ways to improve Open Source Content Management Systems (CMS) although many of the comments made in this article could actually be applied to many Open Source developments, not just CMS. So if you are one of those Open Source developers this article is a MUST READ and take all these comments on board.
I can not stress that the easy to use installer point that Jeffrey makes is extremely important, because if it is hard to use you will lose half your audience. Do not think that you are too good for installers and that you only want to cater for the elite programmers. Even a hard core programmer likes a good installer that is going to allow them to spend more time working on their core projects.
Another big problem with a majority of Open Source software is that the interface designs need some serious work. I am not advocating the Apple creates the best software but everyone should have a hard look and see why apple does do so well, it is all because their software interfaces are simple but still provide incredible power and flexibility. Anyone who has designed software knows that creating a good user interface is probably THE hardest thing and is ignored by many developers out there. Instead of a SpreadFirefox.com site we really should have a site SpreadGoodGUI.com to promote better GUI and design in software applications (ps. Support Firefox download it now).
Links
Jeffrey Veen's article on Open Source CMS
Java Server Faces Community
For all you out there who are either using Java Server Faces (JSF) or are starting a new web application project then here is a great site called JSFCentral.com. JSFCentral provides a great user community of developers that keep you up to date on the latest in relation to JSF or can answer any questions that you may have about JSF. For those developers out there who do not know what JSF is:
JavaServer Faces technology simplifies building user interfaces for JavaServer applications. - Sun JSF Page
A previous framework called Struts started the concept and ideas that you now see in JSF and even supports the JSF APIs in its current implementation. You can also see the use of JSF and Struts in many J2EE implementations including BEA WebLogic and Oracle JDeveloper.
Links
http://www.jsfcentral.com/
Sun Java Server Faces Area
Apache Struts Home Page
The Big Debate: Are macs faster than PCs
I love it when people start discussing which are better, macs or PCs, but here is another article that discusses which is better based on performance. Overall I believe that there is not much difference between the two platforms and it really comes down to personal preference and what you feel more comfortable with. However trying to find out what you are more comfortable with is hard if you have not used both platforms to make a true comparison. The biggest deciding factor most of the time is what software you currently own and if the applications that you use all the time are also available on the mac (or a good equivalent). Have a read of a previous article that I wrote about the differences.
Links
Article about Mac vs PC performance
Previous article on Mac vs PC
NewsTicker: RSS Feed Ticker
NewsTicker is a great little program that displays you RSS feeds in a ticker at the top of the screen (see the screenshot to the right - click for larger version). It is a pretty simple program, which I like. Some of the great features it has are:
- Change the ticker font.
- Choose the colour for the font and background.
- Change the speed of the ticker's scroll speed.
- Can change the level of display (above/below other windows or as a normal window).
There are a few features that I would like to see in future versions:
- Ability to remove RSS feeds once they are clicked (read) or using a modifier key to mark as read without opening the page.
- Display the contents of the article (from the RSS feed) when you mouse over an entry. This could be displayed in a popup window so that it does not get in the way.
- Ability to customise the colour of the link once read rather than just using a darker colour.
- Drag RSS feed URLs to the ticker to add new feeds.
- Have the ticker disappear when there is no news to display.
So now you must think that I hate this program, not correct. I believe that this is quite a good program and I am surprised that we have not seen other ticker style RSS feeds with the minor additions identified above I believe that this will be a great program to monitor news and other feed-based information.
Links
NewsTicker Home Page
VersionTracker NewsTicker Page
October 02, 2004
SOA is only possible using Web Services
This article on the webservicespipeline.com site talks about another article by William Zentmayer who spouses that Services Oriented Architectures (SOA) are not possible without using web services. William does know that there are other technologies like CORBA that have been around for years that also can provide SOA-like capabilities. The interesting point made though is that web services provide such a low technology entry point and are so simple that any language, platform or system can implement web services allowing for extremely loosely coupled environments required by SOA that William Zentmayer argues that only Web Services can provide a true SOA capability.
Links
Webservicespipeline article
William Zentmayer's First Article
William Zentmayer's Second Article
Stop wasting those keystrokes with typeit4me
I am always looking for ways to speed up how I use my computer and I have just stumbled across typeit4me. typeit4me allows for shortcut text to be entered into any mac application and have it automatically replaced with the complete text. For instance all the instances of the “ typeit4me ” text was entered using typeit4me and the shortcut text of “t4me”. My initial impressions of this program is that it is very easy to use but I am not quite sure how often I will use it. I think that it would be great for people who often write the same text over an over again or use it in instant messaging clients. Give it a go yourself and let me know what you think and the novel ways that you use it (use the comments below).
Links
Typeit4me Web Site
PHPStar: PHP for Mac OSX with everything
PHPStar 3 has been released that contains everything that you need to run PHP on a Apple Mac running OSX. Other installations are available for OSX but this one is unique because it contains ALL the necessary libraries (and ones that you may not use) in an easy to use installer. Oh and the best thing is that it is free.
Links
PHPStar Web Site
WSRP 1.0 Primer Released
I know I have not blogged much lately about the web service standards but I have been pretty busy at work so have not wanted to do research in this area at home. However one important document has been released by OASIS about Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP).
“Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP) is a web services protocol for aggregating content and interactive web applications from remote sources.” - WSRP 1.0 Primer
This document is a primer to describing the concepts and implementation behind the WSRP standard for users who want to learn how to use this standard. The document is a public release and the WSRP team is requesting comments by the 14th October 2004.
Links
WSRP Primer 1.0 (PDF)
OASIS WSRP Technical Committee Page
iPod Rumors: Flash based capability and built-in radio
A couple of rumors have just been placed onto the Internet about Apple's very popular iPod. The first is about the potential that a new version of the iPod line using Solid State flash memory version could be released by December. If they did have a solid state iPod it would allow the Apple designers to create a player that was much smaller in physical size and have a longer battery life but a smaller music storage capacity.
The second rumor is that a future iPod version may contain a radio. This second rumor is based on a recent job advert from the Apple iPod division for a RF Engineer. As the source of this rumor is a little more sketch I would say that this could also mean that a wireless remote or WIFI support could also be inferred by this job advert.
It will be interesting to see where apple goes with the iPod in the future.
Links
Flash-based iPod Rumor
iPod Radio Rumor
October 01, 2004
Using VPN on OSX
I have just been playing around with trying to get a VPN connection working and here are my findings. To start with I had problems just trying to get the VPN connection to authenticate. I ended up find out that what was required was for my home network router to have RIP turned on to allow the network to connect correctly. Well that was the first hassle, the next was that now I was connected it would take down my normal Internet access whenever I connected the VPN. Doing some searching around the internet I found this thread on MacSlash talking about this very problem. The problem is that the default behavior is that when you set up the connection all the data will then be routed over this network connection, not correct if you are using a broadband Internet connection and do not want to go through the VPN connection. Therefore what you need to do is change the default data route. What I ended up using is this set of instructions.
Open a terminal window
cd /usr/sbin
sudo cp pppd pppd.orig
Then create a new file in that same directory called pppd with the following contents:
#!/usr/bin/perl
my @args = @ARGV;
s/^defaultroute/nodefaultroute/ for @args;
exec “/usr/sbin/pppd.orig”, @args;
Save that file and do a:
sudo chmod 755 pppd
Basically what this does is that whenever OS X calls PPPD (the VPN daemon for PPPTP), it'll force the “nodefaultroute” option to be appended to the call.
This MAY cause problems if you use PPP for dialup connections.
To switch back to the original method, just
sudo cp pppd.orig pppd
These instructions work well and I now have a working Internet connection and VPN connection. I hope this helps everyone out there who wants to do the same thing.
Links
MacSlash Article on VPN and Default Routing
