I had some help making my first YouTube submission. The boys in the family rallied around a “how-to” project.
We had to make an oar (or paddle) for a cub scout skit coming up.
[tags]youtube, video, how-to, howto, paddle, oar[/tags]
Monthly Archive for February, 2007
There are a number of AOL blogs. What I find interesting is the various platforms each one picks. For individual employees, I simply note what they use to see if it is something I might look at (these are smart and clue-full people after). Obviously AOL has a couple of blogging platforms internally (AOL Journal and Blogsmith come to mind).
But this blog caught my eye: http://www.discoverfullviewblog.com/ To promote a major area of AOL (search), they are using Blogger, a property of Google. Since Google “enhances” AOL Search, that might seem fine, but I would have assumed the blog would be hosted on another platform. Something closer to AOL. Perhaps this is just proof of openness?
Maybe this is really someone’s personal blog and I misunderstood it as more “official AOL.”
BTW, What would happen if AOL bought Wordpress?
[tags]aol, google, blogger, wordpress, dogfood[/tags]
Over on the ADO.NET team blog, they talk about Entity Data Models…
The intent with ADO.NET is more ambitious: We view the ORM problem as just one of a number of services we want to build on the database. Other services include reporting, synchronization, backup, and so on. In order to cover all of these services, we have designed a data model that is similar to the object-oriented idiom that programmers use, while remaining independent of any particular programming language or programming platform. This data model is the Entity Data Model (EDM).
This is all good stuff. I like annotations, but I also like this model approach. So much so I fell in love with it 10 years ago with NeXT’s Enterprise Objects Framework (EOF). I was amazed at how this article read just like a description of how EOModels work.
Perhaps this is me discovering something MS has been doing for many years, but not over a decade. One day I hope CoreData brings back multiuser support. Perhaps even with fully supported Ruby and Python binding (which will be near free in Leopard?).
[tags]eof, object+models, ado.net, coredata[/tags]
A few weeks ago, Google’s personalized home page enhanced the display of RSS feeds. Normally just the title of the post is shown, and you have to click thru to the site to read the whole thing. They added a way to “open” a quick snippet of the entry, including the main link of the story.
For sites like Techmeme, I end up at Techmeme and 90+% of the time, I just click to the original story. Techmeme guides me to interesting stories, but requires a quick pitstop at their site.
The addition of the “+” enabled me to go direct to the page of interest, and bypass Techmeme. Today I noticed that the Techmeme feed doesn’t have the plusses. Other feeds still do.
Is it fair to assume that Techmeme complained? Probably. This plus probably dropped their traffic a bit. I now miss the feature, not because I hated going to Techmeme, but because I will miss the extra productivity (the pitstop usually adds 10-20 seconds each time).
[UPDATE: In the comments, Gabe says Techmeme didn't complain, and is fine with the sidestep. Good for Techmeme.]
[UPDATE 2: The "+" is back. This return to normal. A technical glitch somewhere, or a quick change/change back? Who cares, I have my short-cut back]
[tags]google, techmeme[/tags]
While I use my Mac a lot and prefer it generally, for some reason I’ve never used it much for IM. Perhaps it is because it sits on my desk and most of my IM is work related, so I use Trillian on my work laptop.
But with all the high fives and back slapping around the 1.0 release of Adium, I thought I’d give it a try. And you know what? It is pretty darn nice. I like it. And I switched the icon set to use the Reddit alien dude and that makes it even nicer.
So a pat on the back and a big Thanks to the Adium team. Good Work!
[tags]im, macosx, application, adium, reddit[/tags]
Recently I read about MacFUSE. A port (or equiv support) to Mac OS X of FUSE, which lets file systems run in userspace. That is a fair bit of techno-speak. What “business problem” does it solve?
It lets me easily access my (fairly locked down) server as easily as any other shared server on my local network. This enables me to edit files on the server (using some great Mac tools) as if the files were local. Take MacFUSE, sprinkle sshfs on top and away you go.
Since ssh is the only service I always enable, this saves me a bunch of hassle trying to get some other file sharing system (like SAMBA, NFS, WebDAV, etc) setup (and secured).
Most excellent.
Back in January, I wrote about how I was shifting my telco/net connections. Well, I spoke too soon. It turns out I’m 15,000ft from the CO (as the wire runs) and that is too far for 768Kbs SDSL. They even came out and measured the various tolerances. Just wouldn’t work.
So at present, my network connection remains the same. Not sure what options I have, so I’ll sit tight. One small possibility is ADSL, which might work to give me a little more bandwidth in one direction, but they limit the number of static IP addressed you can get to 5. So I’ll need to talk with them about that.
Speaking of telecom, I finally bought a second patch panel for my little rack, and punched down all of the wires running into the closet. Not I just need to buy a bunch of connectors and terminate the 25 or so wires in the house that still dangle from holes in the wall.
Wi-Fi Networking News: Washington Post Says Open Wi-Fi Attracts Criminals:
“No, it’s more like having an endless pot of coffee that you’re willing to let anyone pour a cup from, even though you’re paying for the electricity. The coffee is essentially free, because you’re paying a fixed amount for unlimited java. The ‘front door wide open’ argument applies when you intend to close your network and fail to;”
I found this a useful analogy. I currently have an open wireless network at home. I’ve benefitted too many times not to give a little back.
[tags]open, wifi, network, analogy[/tags]
Yahoo rolled out “Pipes.” The is some buzz here, and for good reason. For a geek, especially an older one, one of the most elegant (easy with power) solutions for assembly of components is the Unix pipe concept. If you know a few basic tools that know how to manipulate streams of data, you can move mountains with relative ease. And making a special purpose tool to play in this world is trivial.
Jeremy Zawodny chimes in (including many links to examples and other posts. Brady Forrest over at O’Reilly also has a nice overview. Of course, Tim O’Reilly himself has something to say.
So Yahoo did a few great things with this idea. First, it is using RSS. This is powerful in how well understood and ubiquitous RSS is. Second, and most importantly, they are calling it “Pipes.” It conveys the concept to a legion of people who already understand the concept.
I haven’t used it yet, but at the 50,000 ft level, this looks very good, and from one of the big boys. It will be interesting to see how Microsoft responds with their Live Bookmark functionality the were demoing and talking about last year.
I’ll also be interested to see how this comes to the enterprise. With the growing number of “outside the firewall” places people are starting to put data, security and trust are going to be key. Today almost all “private” RSS feeds assume security through obscurity (some large unique part of a URL). That won’t last long. Identity is key, as is trust. But they have to be simple enough to roll into the likes of Yahoo Pipes.
[tags]yahoo, pipe, rss, development[/tags]
Over the past 3-5 years, the word “agile” has become so common it starts to lose meaning. While ‘agile development’ is perhaps more defined, ‘agile’ and ‘agility’ are used by vendors all of the time. BEA used it 4+ years ago. I don’t know when Microsoft started using it (but they have bigger ads). Others do also.
The goals of ‘agility’ when talking about IT are important, but perhaps we are missing something. What I hear more often is that we need systems that are pliable. The basis of the system is fine, but it needs to be molded and sculpted to meet the needs of the here and now. We don’t need rigid systems that need to be dismantled and rebuilt to accommodate change, we need pliable systems that accommodate a certain amount of change easily.
I was reading a guest article by Naomi Bloom titled “It’s all about the models” over on deal architect. You want to get things right the first time, but you can only do that if it is really your third time (you’ve ‘been there, done that’). But times change, so even when ‘done right’ you know you will need to change. The more pliable a system is, the happier and more effective(?) the people using the system will be. A key in my mind is that the shaping is done by the end consumer if at all possible, or at least the ‘power user.’
[tags]agile, pliable, systems, development[/tags]