February 28, 2005
Growl 0.6 Released
Growl 0.6 has been released with a whole load of new notification styles. Growl is developer notification system that allows any OSX developer to use a system wide notification rather than having all the developer produce a million crappy notification widgets. By having a single notification system allows for messages to cooperate rather than conflict and potentially overlap and get in the way. There are already quite a few applications that support growl (see growl site for complete list).
Links
Growl Home Page
Application List supporting Growl
February 26, 2005
Mac Media Projects
Since the release of the Apple Mac Mini there have been a large mac community wanting to use their new Mac Minis as the central hub to their multimedia home centre. Two notable projects are CenterStage and iTheater. Both projects are planning on creating a product that will allow you to connect a mac up to your TV and watch TV, videos, photos, DVDs, etc. all from an easy to use interface. I have subscribed to the RSS feeds from both and will be watching them very closely. Both seem to be developed along the same timelines. iTheatre is hoping to release a first version in a week or so (good luck to them). No downloads available yet ... stay tuned.
Links
CenterStage Home Page
iTheater Home Page
February 24, 2005
Heavy-weight Thin Clients
Here is another article in the series of articles that I have posted about using Javascript, CSS and XHTML to create a more responsive web-based application. This article is better than most as it describes the environment and technologies used much better than others and also contains a quick analysis of why this approach is good. The author seems to refer to something called Ajax, which I believe is what he calls this approach to web development. The confusing aspect is that it talks about Ajax as though it is something that you can download and program to. Nevertheless it is still a good article that discusses the technologies and why you would use this approach to web development.
Links
Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applications
February 19, 2005
The Ultimate Office Chair
I have used a few different office chairs over my career including kneel chairs but this has got to be the ultimate.
Links
Ambience Dore Office Chair
Top 100 Gadgets of All Time
Here is a great article with a whole list of gadgets that have been created over the past 100 or so years. Includes such items as the Sony Walkman and the Swiss Army Knife. Each item has a short blurb with the history of the item. It is a great trip down memory lane.
Links
Top 100 Gadgets of All Time
February 12, 2005
JSR 207: Business Processes in Java
The Java Community Process has a new specification request called JSR 207. The specification page defines the specification request as:
“The specification will define metadata, interfaces, and a runtime model that enable business processes to be easily and rapidly implemented using the Java language and deployed in J2EETM containers. Process Definition for Java will provide a functional foundation upon which J2EE programmers can implement business processes. This foundation will support tasks commonly encountered when programming business processes, for example parallel execution and asynchronous messaging, while leveraging the programming constructs of Java. As such, the foundation can also be used to build Java implementations of business process initiatives such as BPEL4WS, WSCI, and W3C Choreography.”
I will try and monitor this specification and provide any updates as it develops.
Links
JSR 207 Specification Request
Mac: Two Finger Scrolling
The new powerbooks recently released by Apple have a new feature, trackpad scrolling. This is great but all us who have a powerbook pre 2005 this feature is out of reach... or is it. Here is an article that describes how to apply the same driver to pre 2005 powerbooks. I have applied this to my powerbook that was purchased late 2004 running 10.3.8 with no problems whatsoever. This patch will not work on all laptops, to check enter the following into your terminal application:
ioreg -l | grep “W Enhanced Trackpad”
The output of this command should be '“W Enhanced Trackpad” = 1'. If you do not get this it means that your trackpad is not compatible or you are running the SideTrack utility.
If you do get the right output then go to this this page and download the altered driver and follow the simple instructions.
To install the driver once downloaded you use the following commands to change the ownership on the driver, unload the existing driver and then load the new driver:
sudo chown -R root:wheel ./AppleADBMouse.kext
sudo kextunload -b com.apple.driver.AppleADBMouse && \
sudo kextload ./AppleADBMouse.kext
I must warn you that you are using terminal to modify the state of the mouse driver so please be careful and follow the instructions carefully.
UPDATE - There is an installer now and is called iScroll2
Links
Two Finger Scrolling with pre-2005 Powerbooks and iBooks
IBM Web Tools for Eclipse
IBM has released their initial release of J2EE development tools for eclipse free to the public. This is a subset of the tools found in IBMs new Rational Application Developer 6.0 tool suite (also built on top of eclipse).
Be ready to download lots of things for this as there are about 5 different support packages that need to be installed for the toolkit to work within Eclipse. In addition to these there is also a large number of third-party support downloads so be ready for quite a large download if you do not have these files already. There must be an easier way to install this plugin.
Links
IBM Web Tools for Eclipse Page
February 04, 2005
Street Level Photos of Businesses in the US Yellow Pages
A9 has implemented a very cool feature in their online yellow pages directory, street level photos. They have attached cameras and GPS units to cars and then driving around the streets of the US so that they can put street level photos of all the businesses listed in the directory. This allows users to browse through a street of businesses so that you can easily find the business when you actually go there. This is the type of feature that I love as I like to know all the details before I get there so with this I could actually get the address information, GPS location, street map to get there and now a photo of the street. What is next virtually walk up and down the streets using VRML or other virtual reality technology?
Links
Page that Describes how A9 Did it
Sample Search Page
New Feedburner RSS Feed
I have added a new RSS feed provided by FeedBurner to my site. This reduces the load on my site and also maintains some statistics for me so please use rather than the direct RSS feeds.
Separating Data, Style and Behavior on Web Pages
One of my favorite sites A List Apart has another great article about using JavaScript on web pages. This article identifies a potential way to separate your XHTML data that contains the content and semantic pages structure, CSS presentation data, and JavaScript behaviours. The described solution is to get JavaScript to attach its own behaviours to XHTML elements by manipulating the page's DOM.
For example with the following XHTML form:
<textarea class=“large” maxlength=“300” required=“true”> </textarea>
You could add this JavaScript to validate the form without having to embed the JavaScript within the XHTML.
function validateForm()
{
var x = document.forms[0].elements;
for (var i=0;i<x.length;i++)
{
if (x[i].getAttribute('required') && !x[i].value)
// notify user of error
}
}
var x = document.getElementsByTagName('textarea');
for (var i=0;i<x.length;i++)
{
if (x[i].getAttribute('maxlength'))
x[i].onkeypress = checkLength;
}
function checkLength()
{
var max = this.getAttribute('maxlength');
if (this.value.length > max)
// notify user of error
}For a better understanding have a read of the article.
Links
February 03, 2005
xNAL: Name and Address Standard
I really do think that the number of XML standards out there is completely overwhelming, but on the other hand extremely relevant and required. Although I would like to see a little more convergence between some of the similar standards. xNAL is a OASIS developed standard that is to define the data requirements for address and naming information.
xNal is broken up into two standards:
- xNL: Name language
- xAL: Address language
Links
xNAL Report on OASIS Cover Pages
XForms Beta Release
Mozilla Foundation has announced the beta release of XForms 1.0 Recommendation. XForms is a new XML standard being developed by the members of the Mozilla Foundation to define web forms that are mode extensible and greater functionality than the current HTML forms.
Links
XForms 1.0 Beta Press Release
Mozilla XForms Home Page
W3C XForms 1.0 Recommendation
W3C XForms Test Suite
Rainbow: Old Childrens TV Show
This is absolutely wonderful. Rainbow is an old TV Show for kids. Apparently according this this website this video is from the original script. However, it is completely full of innuendo and completely hilarious to any adult out there who understands the references. Please note although not explicit the content may offend some sensitive people out there.
Links
February 01, 2005
JSON: JavaScript Object Notation - Lightweight Data Inter-change Format
I have been given a link to JSON (JavaScript Object Notation), which is a project to create a data interchange format that is as language independent as XML but not as heavy in the bandwidth and parsing requirements. JSON is based on the JavaScript Programming Language and has bindings in the following programming languages:
- C
- C#
- Java
- JavaScript
- Objective CAML
- PHP
- ML
- Ruby
Here is a sample JSON message:
{
"glossary": {
"title": "example glossary",
"GlossDiv": {
"title": "S",
"GlossList": [{
"ID": "SGML",
"SortAs": "SGML",
"GlossTerm": "Standard Generalized Markup Language",
"Acronym": "SGML",
"Abbrev": "ISO 8879:1986",
"GlossDef": "A meta-markup language, used to create markup languages such as DocBook.",
"GlossSeeAlso": ["GML", "XML", "markup"]}]}}}
The same text expressed as XML:
<!DOCTYPE glossary PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook V3.1//EN">
<glossary><title>example glossary</title>
<GlossDiv><title>S</title>
<GlossList>
<GlossEntry ID="SGML" SortAs="SGML">
<GlossTerm>Standard Generalized Markup Language</GlossTerm>
<Acronym>SGML</Acronym>
<Abbrev>ISO 8879:1986</Abbrev>
<GlossDef>
<para>A meta-markup language, used to create markup languages such as DocBook.</para>
<GlossSeeAlso OtherTerm="GML">
<GlossSeeAlso OtherTerm="XML">
</GlossDef>
<GlossSee OtherTerm="markup">
</GlossEntry>
...
</GlossList>
</GlossDiv>
</glossary>
Links
JSON Home Page
