Blogs
My feed
By Rick JelliffeNovember 14, 2009
A couple of people have asked again this week for the RSS feed address for my blog. Here is is: I believe you can get the individual feeds for other bloggers on OReilly sites using the same URL and the...
Schematron and time: complex event processing?
By Rick JelliffeNovember 14, 2009
I have been thinking a little bit about whether Schematron's pattern approach could be applied to complex event processing where the input is a stream of discrete XML documents, for example each one being a reading from a set of...
It's in the Bag! The Apple Tablet Computing Device
By Mark SigalNovember 13, 2009
In the past 25 years, the 'personal' computing revolution has evolved from tethered (desktop) to luggable (portable) to joined-at-the-hip (mobile). The author argues that the next wave of computing will extend this level of personal attachment to the bag-carrying consumer (think: purses, backpacks and briefcases) when Apple releases it’s much rumored Tablet Computing Device. Read more
How to run a creative business
By RJ OwenNovember 13, 2009
Since moving into a quasi-management role at my current employer, I've spent a lot of time thinking about the best way to continue fostering creativity and innovation while growing. It's a tough challenge - one that many companies get wrong and one that many people suffer because of. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings summarizes the situation and Netflix's response in this amazing slide deck. I consider it a must read for anyone who's involved in running a growing business. The Netflix approach is that sort of sheer genius that makes things so clear, concise, obvious, and simple that it seems easy, and you wonder why everyone isn't doing this. Hint: nothing valuable is ever easy.
Four short links: 13 November 2009
By Nat TorkingtonNovember 13, 2009
Open Source Enters The World of Atoms -- an academic statistical analysis of open design. We indicated that, in open design communities, tangible objects can be developed in very similar fashion to software; one could even say that people treat a design as source code to a physical object and change the object via changing the source. Why I...
BigShot Camera Educates with DIY
By Kyle DentNovember 13, 2009
Shree Nayar, chair of Computer Science at the Columbia University has created BigShot, a digital camera kit for kids from eight years old and up to construct their own digital cameras. The purpose of the camera is primarily education, and testing indicates that it does a good job at that, but it also takes honest-to-goodness photos just like grown-up, pre-assembled adult versions.
Taking a Detour: E-readers A Soap Box
By William StanekNovember 12, 2009
William Stanek here, taking a slight detour in our continuing e-reader discussion. When it comes to favorite technologies, call me a zealot because I probably am. I'm not afraid to proclaim that I love technology that works, and I think...
RIA Radio Episode 2 - Jonnie Hallman
By Garth BraithwaiteNovember 12, 2009
Jonnie Hallman (Destroy Today) joins us to talk about his new position at Adobe on the XDCE team and his involvement with the MAX Twitter app. We also were able to hear the back story to DestroyFlickr and DestroyTwitter, and some news about upcoming features.
Four short links: 12 November 2009
By Nat TorkingtonNovember 12, 2009
Fat Free CRM -- open source (Affero GPL) Ruby on Rails CRM system. Bixo -- open source data mining toolkit that runs as a series of pipes on top of Hadoop. Built on Cascading workflow system for Hadoop that hides MapReduce. (via kdnuggets) Andy Kessler's Keynote at Defrag Stank (Pete Warden) -- I'm sorry to hear it, because I...
Quarantined Conferences: Claustrophobic Technophiles or Attentive Audiences?
By Mark DrapeauNovember 11, 2009
Loren Feldman. 1938 Media. Audience Conference. That’s about as much of a summary as you’ll find about the Audience Conference held in New York last Friday. That’s because there were no open laptops allowed during the performances. There was also no Wi-Fi, no video streaming, no tweeting, and no blogging. Something akin to omertà joined the members of the Audience...
Counting Unique Users in Real-time with Streaming Databases
By Ben LoricaNovember 11, 2009
As the web increasingly becomes real-time, marketers and publishers need analytic tools that can produce real-time reports. As an example, the basic task of calculating the number of unique users is typically done in batch mode (e.g. daily) and in many cases using a random sample from the relevant log files. If unique user counts can be accurately computed in...
"Eager Loading" in Actionscript 3
By Amy BlankenshipNovember 11, 2009
Last week, I wrote about the Lazy Loading design pattern. There's not much written about its opposite, Eager Loading, in ActionScript 3. The reason for this is simple–true eager loading can't be done in AS3 itself, it has to be...
Four short links: 11 November 2009
By Nat TorkingtonNovember 11, 2009
ParticipateDB -- database of online tools for public participation. Closed alpha now, with 32 tools and 15 projects in the database. (via Sara Winge) DataTO -- like data.gov, but it's where users request data sets. (In this case, from the Toronto municipal government) Go -- new language from Bell Labs and Unix central figures Rob Pike and Ken Thompson,...
Adam Bosworth on picking standards - Rare nerdy technical post
By Rick JelliffeNovember 11, 2009
I enjoyed Adam Bosworth's Talking to DC. But don't his points apply to most software/interface specifications, without being doctrinaire? What is the difference between his Standards work best when they are focused and, say, Agile's YAGNI?...
Leaked Draft of EU Interop Framework
By Rick JelliffeNovember 11, 2009
A Dutch website has what is claimed to be a leaked late draft in English of European Interoperability Framework for European Public Services (EIF) Version 2.0
Converting to Electronic Health Records: fits and starts
By Andy OramNovember 10, 2009
Data and communications are critical contributors to health care. I recently attended an event covering efforts in my state to promote Electronic Health Records, and what we can do to move faster.
QOW: What would you build?
By Rich TretolaNovember 10, 2009
Question of the week: Time to dream a little. If you had an unlimited budget and unlimited resources what application would you build and why would you build it? Please leave comments....
Four short links: 10 November 2009
By Nat TorkingtonNovember 10, 2009
A children’s toy inspires a cheap, easy production method for high-tech diagnostic chips -- microfluidic chips (with tiny liquid-filled channels) can cost $100k and more. Michelle Khine used the Shrinky Dinks childrens' toy to make her own. "I thought if I could print out the [designs] at a certain resolution and then make them shrink, I could make channels...
The CMMI in 2500 words or less
By Ed WillisNovember 10, 2009
This article provides a brief introduction to the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) that aims to cover most of the ground, if at a fairly shallow depth. The CMMI is a process-based model that sketches out a comprehensive picture of development. It builds on that to define a method for developing organization standard processes and for keeping them relevant. Those processes are leveraged to ultimately deploy statistical process control to improve organizational performance. The model is supported by a standard method for assessing an organization, SCAMPI appraisals. My hope is that after reading this article, the reader will be able to make an informed decision on whether or not digging into the CMMI further is warranted. Note that the notion of the "organization" in the CMMI allows for smaller groups within a company to be the focus of CMMI-based process improvement - so you don't have to wait for your whole company to get on board to get started.
Why the Adobe/RIM announcement is important
By RJ OwenNovember 9, 2009
Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen was at RIM's annual BlackBerry developer convention today with some exciting news about the ways that Adobe and RIM are working together to bring great experiences to the BlackBerry. In this entry we'll discuss what the announcement contained and why it's important to you.
E-Readers Up Close: Getting to know the Sony Readers, Part 2
By William StanekNovember 9, 2009
William Stanek here, continuing with the in-depth look at e-readers and e-books. In my earlier blog entries, I introduced EPDs, discussed how the technology works, and delved briefly into ways they're being used. Now, I'm examining the Sony Reader as...
5 Tips For Flash Unit Testing
By Jesse FreemanNovember 9, 2009
Advanced Flash Tactics or AFTs are techniques that come from deep within the Flash Art Of War, the oldest Flash military treatise in the world. In this AFT I will go over - 5 Tips for Unit Testing. Unit Testing and Test Driven Development are a hot topics in the Flash community lately, especially on Twitter. A few weeks ago, after realizing how complex my F*CSS library was getting, I decided to go back and write FlexUnit test for the library in a hope to use TDD moving forward. Lets quickly talk about what TDD is:
Four short links: 9 November 2009
By Nat TorkingtonNovember 9, 2009
A Battery-Free Implantable Neural Sensor (MIT Tech Review) -- Electrical engineers at the University of Washington have developed an implantable neural sensing chip that needs less power. Uses RFID's induction technology which means the power source can be up to a meter away. Proof of concept was implanted in a moth to sense central nervous system activity. New Microsoft...
Unlikely Group Working Happily Together To Solve Patent Problem
By Carl MalamudNovember 8, 2009
While the first reaction to a government announcement "Synopsis for Public Data Dissemination Sole Source Contract to Google, Inc." might be one of horror, this is actually part of an effort by an unlikely coalition to solve a problem government hasn't figured out how to solve itself.
PyMOTW: sys, Part 5: Tracing Your Program As It Runs
By Doug HellmannNovember 8, 2009
There are two ways to inject code to watch your Python program run: tracing and profiling. They are similar, but intended for different purposes and so have different constraints. The easiest, but least efficient, way to monitor your program is through a trace hook, which can be used for writing a debugger, code coverage monitoring, or many other purposes.
E-Readers Up Close: Getting to know the Sony Readers, Part 1
By William StanekNovember 7, 2009
William Stanek here, taking an up close look at e-readers. First up, the Sony e-readers. Sony unveiled its first reader device in January 2006 and the device became available in early 2007. The Sony Reader, like all currently available e-readers,...
Michael Tamblyn's TOC Frankfurt presentation (actually a dramatic recreation thereof)
By Andrew SavikasNovember 7, 2009
via blip.tv Shortcovers' Michael Tamblyn was kind enough to record his talk and slides from last month's TOC Frankfurt Conference. I got a lot of great hallway feedback about...
Three Paradoxes of the Internet Age - Part Three
By Joshua-Michele RossNovember 7, 2009
The myth of personal empowerment takes root amidst a massive loss of personal control. Social technologies are cloaked in a rhetoric of liberation (customers are in control, the internet fosters democracy, social technologies propagate truth etc.) that tend to obscure the fact that never before have we handed so much personal information over in exchange for so little in...
William Patry delivering Frey Lecture in Intellectual Property Law at Duke
By Andrew SavikasNovember 7, 2009
via ustream.tv Google Senior Copyright Counsel Bill Patry, who will be one of our keynote speakers at TOC 2010, delivered a great lecture at Duke last month dissecting the...
The Minds Behind Some of the Most Addictive Games Around
By James TurnerNovember 6, 2009
The gaming industry tends to focus on the high end products, first person shooters that crank out a bazillion polygons a seconds and RPGs with spend more time developing the plot in cut scenes than in actual gameplay. But for every person playing Borderlands, there are scores playing casual games like Bejeweled and Zuma. PopCap Games has been at the forefront of casual game development, with a catalog that includes bestselling titles like Peggle and Plants vs Zombies, in addition to the two previously mentioned. I recently had a chance to talk to Jason Kapalka, one of the founders and the creative director of PopCap. We discussed the evolution of PopCap, how the casual gaming industry differs from mainstream gaming, and the challenges of creating games that can be engaging, without being frustrating.
RIA Radio MAX Interviews - Chuck Freedman, Mike Chambers, Craig Goodman, and Greg Wilson
By Garth BraithwaiteNovember 6, 2009
At Adobe MAX, the RIA Radio crew sat down with Chuck Freedman, Mike Chambers, Craig Goodman, and Greg Wilson.
Four short links: 6 November 2009
By Nat TorkingtonNovember 6, 2009
Red Laser -- "impossibly accurate barcode scanning". Uses Google Product Search to identify products that you scan using the camera on the phone. I remember Rael and I talking to Jeff Bezos about this years ago, before camphones had the resolution to decode barcodes. The future is here and it's $1.99 on the App Store ... (via Ed Corkery...
Tactical and strategic XML design
By Rick JelliffeNovember 6, 2009
So I guess when we look at a system's architecture, the first thing we can do is ask 'Is this XML here being used strategically or tactically?' A strategic use might be, for example, to allow long-term archiving; a tactical use might be XML in AJAX (where using JSON would be another tactic.) If the answer is tactical, then we can ask 'Is it implemented in a way that allows flexible rearrangement, when a different tactic becomes appropriate?'
Flex 101: Creating an Interactive Chart
By Andrew TriceNovember 6, 2009
In this post, we will walk through the steps to create an interactive chart with a Google-Finance-esque interaction.
Barcode Scanner Support for Flex
By Jan PoehlandNovember 5, 2009
I recently came across an interesting problem when we had to access barcode scanners from Flex applications. The scanners came in different models but all were connected to the computer via serial port or USB (Serial2USB). Now, how do you...
eSeminar: Flash Mobile development opportunities on different platforms and new tools
By Alessandro PaceNovember 5, 2009
The Boston Adobe Mobile and Devices User Group is holding an eSeminar on Friday 13th November at 12 PM EST. Speaker for this eSeminar is Mark Doherty from Adobe, we will have the opportunity to know more information about Flash...
Qwitter: Accessible Twitter client (uses TTS) (via @doctorow)
By Andrew SavikasNovember 5, 2009
Just make sure not to follow anyone who's a member of the Author's Guild ... "The Qwitter client enables blind individuals to interface with the Twitter service globally, regardless of...
Three Paradoxes of the Internet Age - Part Two
By Joshua-Michele RossNovember 5, 2009
Individual perception of increased choice can occur while the overall choice pool is getting smaller This gem from Whimsley makes the point - with extensive statistical modeling supporting the argument - that our algorithm-obsessed, long tail merchants are actually depleting the overall choice pool despite the fact that as individuals we may be experiencing a sense of more choice through...
Four short links: 5 November 2009
By Nat TorkingtonNovember 5, 2009
Heat Maps in R -- We used financial data here because it's easier to access than the airline data, but it's actually a pretty interesting way of looking at a financial time series. Weekend and holiday effects are a bit more obvious, and it's a bit like being able to see the daily, weekly, monthly and yearly closes all...
jQuery and AIR - Moving from web page to application (3)
By Raymond CamdenNovember 5, 2009
The third part of my series on creating a jQuery AIR game - Hangman. In this entry I discuss some architecture changes I made to the JavaScript and some new database support.
The Network By the Numbers
By Sarah SorensenNovember 5, 2009
There are some interesting numbers that I've heard recently that I wanted to highlight to articulate the scale and scope of today's network...
Twitter Approval Matrix - October 2009
By Mike HendricksonNovember 4, 2009
Twitter Approval Matrix - October 2009
"Web-based ePub validator adds Preflight and API" (via @liza)
By Andrew SavikasNovember 4, 2009
From @liza at Threepress:"EpubCheck’s lesser-known companion checks for additional issues like content documents that exceed 300K, which can’t be loaded on the Sony Reader."http://blog.threepress.org/2009/11/04/epub-validator-updates/(ps -- thanks to @liza for making...
Posterous: The Copy-and-Post Revolution in (Micro) Blogging
By Mark SigalNovember 4, 2009
A friend of mine, who has achieved repeated success in high-tech startup land, said that if you want to be successful, focus on segments where <10% of the crowd currently adopts the solution, and by virtue of dramatically simplifying the approach, you can toggle adoption rates to closer to 90%. Enter Posterous, a micro-blogging tool (it's free) that does a few things really well.
So Long iPod, Hello E-Reader
By William StanekNovember 4, 2009
William Stanek here, talking about electronic paper displays (EPDs). In my earlier blog entries, I introduced EPDs, discussed how the technology works, and delved briefly into ways they're being used. Now, I'll dig in and take a closer look at...
Announcing O'Reilly Answers - Clever Hacks. Creative Ideas. Innovative Solutions.
By Allen NorenNovember 4, 2009
We're launching the beta of O'Reilly Answers, and I'm inviting you to be part of it. In brief, O'Reilly Answers is a community site for sharing knowledge, asking questions, and providing answers that brings together our customers, authors, editors, conference speakers, and Foo (Friends of O'Reilly). O'Reilly is at the center of an amazing exchange of knowledge sharing and idea generation, and we want you to join us in changing the world by spreading the knowledge of innovators.
Three Paradoxes of the Internet Age - Part One
By Joshua-Michele RossNovember 4, 2009
In the circles that I travel the Internet is often breathlessly embraced as the herald of all things good; the bringer of increased choice, personal empowerment, social harmony...and the list goes on. And yet, as with any powerful technology, the truth of its consequences eludes such a singular and happy narrative. Here is the first of three paradoxes of the...
Following Lists
By Brian AhierNovember 4, 2009
Guest blogger Brian Ahier is a City Councilor in The Dalles, Oregon, and he works in Information Systems at Mid-Columbia Medical Center. He is passionate about healthcare reform, government 2.0 and health IT. One of the interesting things about the new Lists feature is the expansion of the asymmetrical nature of relationships on Twitter. I use Twitter Lists to control...
Four short links: 4 November 2009
By Nat TorkingtonNovember 3, 2009
ChipHacker -- collaborative FAQ site for electronics hacking. Based on the same StackExchange software as RedMonk's FOSS FAQ for open source software. Democracy Live -- BBC launch searchable coverage of parliamentary discussion, using speech-to-text. One aspect we're particularly proud of is that we've managed to deliver good results for speech-to-text in Welsh, which, we're told, is unique. I think...
Despite recent gains for books, Games still dominate in the App Store (via @dliman)
By Andrew SavikasNovember 3, 2009
O'Reilly's Ben Lorica slices and dices current app trends for iPhone and Android (nice data points on price stabilization too): "While it might be true that the number of Book...
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