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Exploring Hypermedia with Mike Amundsen

The Web’s flexibility has helped it to survive and thrive, pushing well beyond the browser-based universe where it first showed its promise. While I’ve spent most of my time working with the HTML/CSS/JavaScript side, the HTTP side of the original …

A Matter of Semantics

Messages on the Web carry three levels of information: Structure Semantics, Protocol Semantics, and Application Semantics. No matter the implementation style, all three of these are needed for any successful communication between client and server. This threesome (S-P-A) forms the …

Twisted Python: the engine of your Internet

I want to build a web server, a mail server, a BitTorrent client, a DNS server, or an IRC bot—clients and servers for a custom protocol in Python. And I want them to be cross-platform, RFC-compliant, testable, and deployable in …

Four short links: 15 April 2013

Know Your HTTP Posters (GitHub) — A0-posters about the HTTP protocol. Crowdserfing — when a large corp uses crowd-sourced volunteering for its own financial gain, without giving back. It offends my sense of reciprocity as well, but nobody is coerced …

ASP.NET web API rocks

Glenn Block (@gblock) is an O’Reilly author and senior program manager on the Windows Azure Team at Microsoft. We sat down recently to talk about the newly released ASP.NET Web API Framework, which he helped develop, and why it will …

Four short links: 13 June 2012

Warren Buffett Lessons -- nice anthology of quotes, reordered into almost a narrative on different topics. (via Rowan Simpson) Silent Circle -- Phil Zimmermann's new startup, encrypting phone calls for iPhone and Android for $20/month. "I'm not going to apologize for the cost," Zimmermann told CNET, adding that the final price has not been set. "This is not Facebook....

Four short links: 4 April 2012

Typing Club -- lessons to improve your touch-typing, building you up letter by letter to speed and mastery. Like how I learned, only without the typewriters and the bibs and the roomful of girls. It wasn't easy being the only boy in typing class, but somehow I managed. (via EdTech ideas) SQL Injection via HTTP Headers -- excellent introduction...

Four short links: 28 February 2012

Designing RESTful Interfaces (Slideshare) -- extremely good presentation on how to build HTTP APIs. Manipulating History for Fun and Profit -- if you want to make websites that are AJAX-responsive but without breaking the back button or preventing links, read this. Why Textbooks Are So Broken (Salon) -- Let's say a publisher hires a developer for a certain low-bid...

Four short links: 24 February 2012

Excel Cloud Data Analytics (Microsoft Research) -- clever--a cloud analytics backend with Excel as the frontend. Almost every business and finance person I've known has been way more comfortable with Excel than any other tool. (via Dr Data) HTTP Client -- Mac OS X app for inspecting and automating a lot of HTTP. cf the lovely Charles proxy for...

Four short links: 22 August 2011

Cities in Fact and Fiction: An Interview with William Gibson (Scientific American) -- Paris, as much as I love Paris, feels to me as though it's long since been "cooked." Its brand consists of what it is, and that can be embellished but not changed. A lack of availability of inexpensive shop-rentals is one very easily read warning sign...

Four short links: 9 August 2011

DSLR Controller -- Android app that lets you remote-control your DSLR. Much being made of the fact that iOS devices aren't as easy to interface with. For more, see the Wired article. (via BoingBoing) Asymmetric Security Warfare -- I found this nugget buried in this photo shoot talking about the differences between Black Hat and DEFCON conferences: [Mudge, Peiter]...

Four short links: 27 July 2011

ContentFlow -- Javascript library to provide CoverFlow-like behaviour. Twilio Client SDK -- 1/4 cent/minute API-to-API calls, embeddable in browser apps. Postel's Principle Reconsidered (ACM) -- The Robustness Principle was formulated in an Internet of cooperators. The world has changed a lot since then. Everything, even services that you may think you control, is suspect. Excellent explanation of how interoperability...

Four short links: 13 May 2011

Mathematical Intimidation: Driven by the Data (PDF) -- excellent article from Notices of the American Mathematical Society about the flaws in "value-added modelling", the latest fad whereby data about students' results in different classes are analysed to identify the effect of each teacher. People recognize that tests are an imperfect measure of educational success, but when sophisticated mathematics is...

AMF over HTTP in another Multiverse

This silly story is taken from "Flex Data Services, Hibernate and Eclipse." No other part of that book is deliberately silly. I thought it would be fun to post this here.  In the story, produce and food are allegories for data...

The Cherokee Project: Has Apache Finally Met Its Match?

Over the coming weeks I plan to introduce you all to what I believe to be one of the most important open source projects on the planet: The Cherokee Project. Buckle up. The ride won't be without bumps. But it...

Flex 101: RPC Basics

When building Flex applications, it is important to understand how to get data into and out of your applications and remote procedure calls (rpc). In this post, I'll try to shed some light on HTTPService, WebService, and RemoteObject classes and their usage.

Creating Custom SOAP Requests with Ruby and Net::HTTP

Learn to create a custom SOAP request using Ruby and Net::HTTP