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Cloud computing perspectives and questions at the World Economic Forum

By Andy Oram
July 9, 2009

The World Economic Forum started a research project at Davos 2009 concerning cloud computing. I've put up a discussion forum as a wiki.

Google Chrome - growing up too fast?

By Damien Stolarz
July 9, 2009

These poor web browsers are always saddled with unreasonable expectations. Seems like the moment a new web browser is born, it's proud parents and family tell it "someday you'll grow up to unseat Microsoft..."

Jono Bacon on the Value of Good Communities

By James Turner
July 9, 2009

Ubuntu has enjoyed fantastic success over the past few years, becoming one of the dominant Linux distributions, and the distribution of choice for netbooks. Jono Bacon's job is to make sure that that success continues, by keeping the huge Ubuntu developer community happy and productive. We caught up with Jono in advance of his appearance at OSCON, the O'Reilly Open Source Convention, and he was more than happy to talk about the efforts underway to not only improve the Ubuntu community, but also bring together other communities, such as Gnome and KDE, to help them work better together. Jono officially works for Canonical, a company founded by South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth for the promotion of Ubuntu and other free software projects.

Four short links: 9 July 2009

By Nat Torkington
July 8, 2009

Ten Rules That Govern Groups -- valuable lessons for all who would create or use social software, each backed up with pointers to the social science study about that lesson. Groups breed competition: While co-operation within group members is generally not so much of a problem, co-operation between groups can be hellish. People may be individually co-operative, but once...

Embarrassment of Riches: Managing a Mountain of iPhone Apps

By Sara Peyton
July 8, 2009

Guest blogger Josh Clark, the author of Best iPhone Apps: The Guide for Discriminating Downloaders, offers his tips for managing a mountain of iPhone apps. "A healthy collection of iPhone apps calls for an equally healthy hygiene regimen for your iPhone," says Josh. "Here are a few pointers for keeping your apps tidy and your data safe."

Keep Your iPhone Shipshape

By Sara Peyton
July 8, 2009

If you're considering purchasing an iPhone, planning on developing applications for one, or if you prefer troubleshooting and maintaining your iPhone (rather than taking it to the Apple Store for a tuneup), you'll want to check out the new book...

The Learner's Journey in Practice

By Brian Sawyer
July 8, 2009

Earlier this year, while Michael Milton was in the early stages of developing Head First Data Analysis (publishing later this month), we brought him to Cambridge to meet with the Head First editorial team for a focused training session. Our...

Four short links: 8 July 2009

By Nat Torkington
July 8, 2009

Stop Whining About Facebook's Redesign (Slate) -- How can I be so sure that you'll learn to like the redesign? Because you did the last two times Facebook did it. The conclusion is that sites don't say why they're redesigning, and that causes the resistance. C# and CLI under the Community Promise (Miguel de Icaza) -- Microsoft have announced...

Open Gov Is a Dialogue, Not a Monologue

By John Geraci
July 8, 2009

At last week's Personal Democracy Forum I had a conversation with someone working for a city (I won't say which city), who was tasked with opening up that city's data. We were talking about the Apps for Democracy contests held recently in Washington D.C., and he explained his feeling about them: "There were some interesting apps in there, but...

Postfix Postscreen to Increase Your SPF (Spam Protection Factor)

By Kyle Dent
July 7, 2009

Postfix is about to add a new tool to the anti-spam arsenal called "postscreen" for now, but the name is likely to change before it goes into a production release. Among other things postscreen detects when a client starts talking before it's supposed to. It's a daemon that accepts connections ahead of the current SMTP daemon and provides various types of filtering based on the client connection.

Gmail's Labels Now More Like Folders: A Good Thing?

By Rich Rosen
July 7, 2009

Gmail had a great idea: replacing the limitations of hierarchical folders with the flexibility of labels. Now they are promoting the notion that they've "improved" Gmail by making labels work more like folders. How is that an improvement?

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bot

By Mark Drapeau
July 7, 2009

Web technologies often allow you to scale things that weren't scalable before. Unfortunately, that list of scalable things includes spam. From unsolicited phone calls to unwanted emails to unnecessary tweets, it can seem like we're getting progressively overloaded with information we don't necessarily want. One group blamed for the increase in online spam are Twitter bots - Twitter accounts...

Open Source is Infiltrating the Enterprise

By James Turner
July 7, 2009

There's a persistent perception that open source software is being ignored in the enterprise, that they fear it and it ends up being more costly to deploy than proprietary solutions. That's certainly the perception that some major software vendors would like you to have. But it's Jeffrey Hammond's job to dispel those perceptions, at least when they aren't accurate. As an analyst for Forrester Research, Hammond covers the world of software development as well as Web 2.0 and rich internet applications, so he sees how open source is being used on a daily basis. He'll be speaking at OSCON, O'Reilly's Open Source Conference, talking about the true cost of using open source, and he gave us a sample of what's going on in the enterprise at the moment.

Search Friends Component

By Mirza Hatipovic
July 6, 2009

Welcome back to the series. In the previous articles we discussed topics like publishing of news, sending notifications to specific friends etc. The articles covered topics that are not only bound to the user interface in the facebook application development. This time, we are going to play around with the already existing (but complex) MultiFriend component. The component from the article 11 was quite good, but it really had the potential to be a kick ass component for facebook. There were things I wanted to implement, but was not able to because the whole article covered the basic construction of the component.

Four short links: 7 July 2009

By Nat Torkington
July 6, 2009

Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them -- Tests done since 1933 show that people who talk about their intentions are less likely to make them happen. Announcing your plans to others satisfies your self-identity just enough that you’re less motivated to do the hard work needed. I have noticed this myself. It must be balanced...

What Ebook Resellers Should Learn from Scribd

By Andrew Savikas
July 6, 2009

Scribd made a splash when they opened up a "Scribd Store" for selling view and download access to documents. Their terms (80% to the document publisher) are quite generous,...

Clean Energy Ties to Technology

By Sarah Sorensen
July 6, 2009

In my last blog, I discussed the U.S. Clean Energy and Security Act that passed the House and is now up for debate in the Senate. Legislation of this kind is key to understanding future technology trends and requirements, particularly...

New Poll: Does the 'Hacker Ethic' Harm Today's Developers?

By Rich Tretola
July 6, 2009

Recently slashdot ran a story http://slashdot.org/story/09/06/29/1816226/Does-the-Hacker-Ethic-Harm- that concluded with the following statement and question: "'American software development managers often complain that Indian programmers are too literal-minded, but perhaps Americans have swung the pendulum too far in the other direction. In...

Dear Congresswoman DeGette: A Question Regarding Your Intolerance Of New Ideas

By M. David Peterson
July 6, 2009

Inspiring. Thought-provoking. Invigorating. Life-changing. These are just a few of the words we've heard used to describe the Aspen Ideas Festival, the action-packed, weeklong exploration of some of the most important ideas and pressing issues we face presented by the Aspen Institute and The Atlantic magazine. So begins the overview for the Aspen Ideas Festival, a yearly event devoted to the promotion of ideas -- new or old -- related to "some of the most important ideas and pressing issues we face" as a society. Ideas related to some of the most important ideas and pressing issues? You would think that such a bill would garner some serious attention. And given the lineup of speakers, certainly respect from someone representing the good people of Colorado's 1st Congressional District, right?

Replacing BNF with RELAX NG in standards?

By Rick Jelliffe
July 6, 2009

The trouble with ABNF and EBNF is that there is not the kind of ubiquitous, free tools around to support them that XML has.

Freemium Services and the Economics of Social Networking

By George Reese
July 5, 2009

Social networking sites face a unique economic challenge when it comes to monetizing the value they create. Any attempt to capture a piece of the value they create inevitably damages that value.

PyMOTW: abc - abstract base classes

By Doug Hellmann
July 5, 2009

Define and use abstract base classes for API checks in your code using the abc module.

Poll Results: What's Your Favorite Sci-Fi Movie of All Time?

By Rich Tretola
July 5, 2009

After much controversy and some late additions to the selection list, our audience has chosen The Matrix and Blade Runner as their favorite Sci-Fi movies. To see the full results please click here. If you missed out, you can still cast your vote.

Web Services Made Easy

By Amy Blankenship
July 4, 2009

Lots of RIA's use web services, and one of the more tedious parts of writing a service can be looping through all of the rows in a recordset, adding nodes, setting their attributes, etc. I spend a lot of time trawling...

jQuery FTW (July 4)

By Raymond Camden
July 4, 2009

Simple list of jQuery related links.

Axiis - An Introduction and Tutorial

By Tom Gonzalez
July 3, 2009

This purpose of this article is to introduce developers and data visualization specialists to Axiis, which is an open source data visualization project based on Adobe Flex and Actionscript 3. While you do not have to be an expert in Flex Builder or ActionScript 3, having experience in both will make understanding this tutorial easier. Throughout the article I will assume you are comfortable with the fundamentals of building an application with Flex, and understand some of the primary language constructs embodied within ActionScript 3 and the Flex SDK, primarily MXML and Binding.

Four short links: 6 July 2009

By Nat Torkington
July 3, 2009

Offline Mapping App for iPhone -- carry Open Street Maps maps with you even when you're not in 3G/wifi range. (via Elisabeth) My dentist used an in-office CAD & CNC mill to produce a new tooth for me today (Nat Friedman) -- hello, future! New version of Scratch released -- Scratch is an excellent way to teach kids how...

Four short links: 3 July 2009

By Nat Torkington
July 2, 2009

OECD Factbook -- Flash-built impressive data explorer from OECD. Go to Indicators > Load and, in the words of Ben Goldacre, "prepare for nerdgasm". (via bengoldacre on Twitter) James Boyle is on Twitter -- author of the book The Public Domain. Sewers and Startups (Pete Warden) -- designing to last, reminds me of Saul Griffith's heirloom design riff. When...

Pre-OSCON, Free Webcast Lineup (and a special offer)

By Kathryn Barrett
July 2, 2009

The theme of this year's OSCON is Open for Business. Times are tough, making open source technology a smart choice for staying competitive. It gives you the means to drive down costs while increasing system and staff efficiencies. And OSCON 2009 is where you'll find the latest information on open source and new ways to connect to its community. In anticipation of the conference, we've lined up the following free webcasts featuring OSCON speakers. Drop in on their free, online sessions next week as a preview of this year's event. And take advantage of our special Independence Day discount. Learn more.

Ignite Los Angeles on 7/21! Submit a Talk

By Brady Forrest
July 2, 2009

Ignite is coming to LA! As always speakers will get 20 slides that auto-advance every 15 seconds. We're going to be holding the geek event at Cinespace in Hollywood on 7/21. Submit a talk now. This will be the first Ignite in Los Angeles; it is co-hosted by LA Geek Dinner. The LA G33k dinner was kind enough to...

Calendar Component in ActionScript 3 Part 3

By Tom Barker
July 2, 2009

So far we've seen how to implement the calendar component, and explored the logic inside the Calendar class itself. From here I will show the logic inside of the Day class, and talk about potential ways to expand the...

Twitter Approval Matrix - June 2009

By Mike Hendrickson
July 2, 2009

A quick refresher, the matrix shows four quadrants used to describe trends found on Twitter, or related sites such as hashtag.org, tweestats.com, etc. For this post, I've limited the data and activity to the month of June.

Silex - Open Source RIA

By Mike Slinn
July 2, 2009

SourceForge's FOSS project of the month of June was Silex. From the SourceForge writeup: "Silex is an open source RIA that enables you to build Flash websites for Flash Player 7, 8, 9, and 10. Silex is a new kind...

Patrick Collison Puts the Squeeze on Wikipedia

By James Turner
July 2, 2009

Think about Wikipedia, what some consider the most complete general survey of human knowledge we have at the moment. Now imagine squeezing it down to fit comfortably on an 8GB iPhone. Sound daunting? Well, that's just what Patrick Collison's iPhone application does. App Store purchasers of Collison's open source application can browser and search the full text of Wikipedia when stuck in a plane, or trapped in the middle of nowhere (or as defined by AT&T coverage...) Collison will be presenting a talk on how he did it at OSCON, O'Reilly's Open Source conference at the end of July, and he spent some time talking to me about it recently.

In Defense of Social Media (At Least Some Of It)

By Joshua-Michele Ross
July 2, 2009

Scott Berkun just posted a great rant titled, Calling Bullshit on Social Media. I suggest everyone read it. Berkun raises good points - and I agree the hype around social media warrants taking a critical look. Despite being in general agreement, there are a few areas I can't abide, starting with this statement: social media is a stupid term. Is...

"Being wrong is a feature, not a bug"

By Andrew Savikas
July 1, 2009

A thoughtful piece from Michael Nielsen on the disruption of the scientific publishing industry includes a lot that's very relevant to other publishers and media companies. For example: In...

Star Date 2387: Is This Thing On?

By David Battino
July 1, 2009

In an amusing press release, Blue Microphones reports that the new Star Trek movie is crawling with its Mouse microphones. Here's a photo of one apparently recording the young Captain Kirk. Somehow I imagined it would look different.

iPhone workshop frequently asked question: Key Value Coding error

By Elisabeth Robson
July 1, 2009

One of the most common questions from the iPhone workshops we held recently is: "What is key value coding and why the heck am I getting this error?"

Velocity and the Bottom Line

By Steve Souders
July 1, 2009

Velocity 2009 took place last week in San Jose, with Jesse Robbins and I serving as co-chairs. Back in November 2008, while we were planning Velocity, I said I wanted to highlight "best practices in performance and operations that improve the user experience as well as the company's bottom line." Much of my work focuses on the how of improving...

TOC Coming to Frankfurt

By Andrew Savikas
July 1, 2009

I've had the opportunity to speak with quite a few of my industry colleagues in Europe during the past year, and it became increasingly obvious there was an opportunity to...

Four short links: 1 July 2009

By Nat Torkington
July 1, 2009

The Onyas -- New Zealand web design awards launch, from the people behind Webstock and Full Code Press. The name comes from "good on ya", the highest praise that traditionally taciturn New Zealanders are allowed by law to give. The Year of Business Metrics: Don't make your users run away! -- wrapup of the Velocity conference. AOL: Users who...

Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g Launched!

By David A. Chappell
July 1, 2009

Today is the day we officially launch Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g. Fusion Middleware 11gR1 is the result of a herculean effort that is 3+ years in the making.

Everyblock's Code is Open-Sourced

By Brady Forrest
July 1, 2009

The code for Adrian Holovaty's Everyblock has been released. The open-sourcing of the site's system were apart of the Knight News Challenge Program. Everyblock is very impressive site that aggregates and geocodes local data -- news, crime, fire, restaraunt inspections and reviews - and then lets users define their interests down to the block-level. Adrian made the announcement on...

Tibco PageBus: an event framework for JavaScript

By RJ Owen
July 1, 2009

Tibco PageBus is a free event framework for JavaScript. In this entry I discuss the merits of PageBus, how to implement it, and show a quick example demo I built integrating some HTML, PageBus, and a very simple Flash component.

Tibco PageBus: an event framework for JavaScript

By RJ Owen
July 1, 2009

The Hacker Ethic - Harming Developers?

By Jim Stogdill
July 1, 2009

Is the hacker ethic harming developers? We don't think so, but maybe the idea resonates a little bit?

The US Online Job Market Was (still) Down Big In June 2009

By Ben Lorica
July 1, 2009

Updating my post from early June, the U.S. online job market† still hasn't shown signs of recovering from steady declines that began in September of last year. Compared to the same period last year, there were 50% less job postings in June 2009. An alternate view highlights the start of the downward trend, as well as the smaller than expected...

jQuery Example - Using cookies to save draft information

By Raymond Camden
July 1, 2009

An example of using jQuery to store draft information in cookies.

LCDS 3.0 Available on Adobe Labs

By Andrew Trice
July 1, 2009

Kind of old news (only a week), but Adobe recently released a beta version of LCDS 3.0 on Adobe Labs. Read on to get more information about LCDS 3.0...

Four short links: 2 July 2009

By Nat Torkington
June 30, 2009

UNESCO book: Open Educational Resources -- UNESCO's first openly licensed publication, a collection of papers and reports in the area of Open Educational Resources. (via glynmoody on Twitter) ETSI 2.0 -- Paul Downey ventures into the belly of the telco beast and gives them both barrels. The whole thing is great--his talk was one of the best overviews of...

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