Push Button Paradise

Nice write-up comparing 3 XForms Engines (two of which are on my top ten list). At the end, this article brings out an excellent point. Diversity.

The diversity of XForms engines out there is amazing. Server-side, zero-install, application, applet, Flash, commercial, open source... Part of it is just timing--toolkits, browsers, extensions and such technologies are now advanced enough to make it easy to roll out wonderful new things. But it's more than just timing.

It also fits with my Christensenian view of things. XForms is serving a broader value network than classic forms. It's appealing to people in new ways, and rapidly improving. If that trend continues, there's a collision course involved.

Clayton Christensen suggests that to deal with a potentially disruptive innovation, one should spin off a smaller sub-organization with suitably different success criteria. This is essentially what Mozilla has done. I wonder if other browsers will follow suit? Well, hint, hint, I'm available for consulting. I'm busy, but I'd make room for this.

Tags: browsers, innovation, xforms -m

The OASIS IPR policies are unfolding in a way that reminds me of a similar situation recently at the W3C, except OASIS isn't getting nearly as riled.

There's a letter signed by a bunch of open source folks. (But where is Linus's signature?)

It comes down to this: should a standards body have the option to produce work under so-called Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory (RAND) terms?

Larger companies tend to favor RAND when they are the ones holding the underlying rights, and they've already won half the battle, just by virtue of the name. RAND is certainly not "non-discriminatory" towards libre implementations, and "reasonable" is thereby questionable too. (The "and" part of the name is, in contrast, perfectly accurate.)

I can't see myself getting too worked up over this. For one, OASIS has been RAND-capable for at least five years; there are maybe two sprecifications that are under RAND terms. Interested participants have the job of making sure that important standards get chartered as Royalty-Free. If participants can't do that, then the results won't be worth giving a hoot about. I believe this has happened for some WS-garbage specs, but don't quote me on that.

So I feel no compulsion about bending to the needs of huge corporations, but I understand how OASIS might feel that way. Whether OASIS has a RAND track or not, it's not going to make much difference, so settle down, folks. The battle is in making people understand the real issues.

Tags: OASIS, RAND, RF -m

In this week's XML-Deviant, I lead off with a Thomas Edison quote: "Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration." You might note that the quote seems to reach the opposite conclusion as the article. Here's why.

First, on the quotes: the deal here is just like the lead-off to each chapter in XForms Essentials. Sometimes funny, sometimes serious, somtimes profound, somtimes playfully misquoted--there's something here for everyone.

In this specific case, the world has changed quite a lot since Edison's day. (For one, people now use "percent" instead of "per cent".) When Edison swiped the idea of an incandescent light bulb (one per cent), he had to spend an enormous amount of effort (ninety-nine per cent) on trial-and-error getting the right substance for the filament that wouldn't burn out quickly. That's what it took to make a commercially viable product.

Today, much of the invention around is isn't physical things, but software. Information. we have massively powerful browsers on every desktop. Nobody knows how much these applications are capable of, especially when you combine all the different features.

We have bad memories left over from the generation-four browsers. Limitations everywhere. Once we start realizing what's not impossible, we start doing it. If I wanted to produce a neat sound bite, I'd say today is "ninety-nine percent inspiration, and one percent perspiration", but that's not accurate either.

Writing full applications is, and always will be, tough. Using a browser as a platform has some nice aspects, enough so that if I was planning a cross-platform application today, the browser would be my top option. Before Google Maps, I wouldn't have said so.

Tags: google, browsers, genius, inspiration -m

Did you know the default configuration of Firefox includes dictionary access via the location bar? Try typing "dict innovation" without the quotes. It's possible to customize this, to great effect.

First, bookmark this link to a web. thesaurus. Note that "%s" has replaced the actual word we are using for the query. Go into Bookmarks -> Manage Bookmarks, bring up properties for that URL you just saved, and add a keyword of "thes", again without any quotes. Now you can do instant searches from your location bar ("thes vanquish"), and you don't even have to remember how to spell "thesaurus".

Tags: firefox, keywords, thesaurus -m

I'm doing some research in How to Win Friends and Influence People, and I noticed that if you invert the book's suggestions, you get a nice little set of anti-patterns for human relations...

Part 1: Fundamental techniques in "handling" people:

[1] Always criticize, condemn, and complain.

[2] Be sure not to say anything that might be interpreted as a compliment.

[3] It's all about what you want, not what the other person wants.

Part 2: Six ways to make people hate you:

[1] Become genuinely interested in yourself.

[2] Scowl.

[3] Remember that a person's name is the most forgettable word in any language.

[4] Talk early and often. Encourage others to listen to you.

[5] If it's interesting to you, it must be interesting to others too.

[6] Make sure the other person knows that you're more important then them.

Part 3: Coerce people to your way of thinking

[1] The only way to get the best of an argument is to win it.

[2] Point out cases where the other person isn't respecting your opinion.

[3] If you are ever wrong, lie about it.

[4] Criticize first, ask questions later.

[5] Get the other person saying "Yes, sir!" immediately.

[6] Let the other person do most of the listening.

[7] Let the other person feel the idea is yours.

[8] Try to honestly see things from your own point of view.

[9] Clearly explain why the other person's dreams and desires are bunk.

[10] Appeal to base motives.

[11] Become melodramatic.

[12] Threaten.

Tags: antipatterns, HR -m

Here's a potential browser component that could help eliminate phishing attacks, and even give TRUSTe something useful to do.

Most everyone agrees that International Domain Names (IDN) are good, but need to be implemented carefully, since someone could register a domain name that looks exactly like, say "paypal.com" or "amazon.com" but is really a distinct name, and thus trick people into giving away their passwords and other info. Here's a solution that could be implemented by TRUSTe or a similar service.

Since they already have a list of known-legit domain names, pack up the list in a compressed, encrypted format and make it a browser add-on. (This avoids the privacy issue of an centralized URL-access-trail left every time you visit certain sites) Maybe even better, an email-client add-on. When an email comes in with a URL link in it, check the domain name against the database. If it's not there, put up an obvious warning, with a link to an online version of the database in case a double-check is desired. Have the list auto-update every n days.

The number of domain names that are popular enough for phishers to target is probably not too big, perhaps under 10,000 domains. This shouldn't be a huge hit for bandwidth or local storage. The TRUSTe list, for example, has about 1300.

Problems: OK, TRUSTe is probably a bad place to start. For one, they're missing more than a few popular phishing targets, like amazon and wamu. For another, I'm not convinced that they are able to keep bad guys off their list. What if a larger and more useful organization ran this database? Would you trust it if it came from Google? The UN? OASIS? The Wikimedia Foundation?

The other problem is that if something like this caught on, combined malware + phishing attacks would start to target the local database and/or plugin, to either disable it or slip in new values. These sorts of things will happen no matter what, I'm afraid, so it's the standard arms race much like we already have.

Tags: phishing, antiphishing, IDN -m

For something that I do quite a lot of, writing is amazingly excruciating.

Lots of writers have to struggle with their huge tracts of text, pulling in the reins to keep themselves from spouting on for pages in what really ought to be a few paragraphs. Revising is hard. Cutting is painful.

More often, though, I seem to have the opposite problem. Armed with a good idea and an hour or four to work on it, I'll come out with only 500 words to my satisfaction. I have to practically brainwash myself to forget about what I already know and assume, and go over the text a second, third, fourth time to fill it out to where it makes sense to people that don't happen to be me. It's draining.

But I keep coming back for more.

Tags: writing -m

On my web site, and in my RSS feed, I keep a list of "what I'm reading", which is usually five or six things at a time.

I was talking to someone on IRC the other day who said he hadn't read a paper book in years. This left me mildly stunned, as I go through paper books about once a week, averaging out the small stuff with the larger projects.

I have to admit, for TAOCP and the Dragon Book it's been a while, with little distractions of late like: quitting my day job, starting a company, writing the new column, etc. Getting through heavier books like that really is a project, and it takes project management skills, which includes juggling priorities as needed.

I also, sadly, abandoned reading How Tomcat Works midstream. This is an excellent book, but my environment changed such that my immediate need for that kind of background information went away, at least temporarily. On the other hand, I'm starting a fresh pass through GEB. Wish me well. :)

The FedEx man is here. He has six more volumes for me.

Tags: GEB, TAOCP, reading -m

If you look over on xml.com, you'll find that the XML-Deviant column has started up again, and somehow I convinced the powers that be to give me a shot at writing it.

Let me know if you have any ideas, suggestions, or comments. Tell all your friends! I figure there's some pent-up demand for this sort of thing, so this issue is fairly news and summary-heavy. As we go on, I plan to move into more analysis.

Another thing I've floated recently is an XML Puzzler, posted to xml-dev. Problem is, the first one was way too easy. So if you have any puzzlers you can share, let me know. Anything is fair game as long as it is XML-Related and capable of sustaining some amount of discussion.

Tags: xml, xml-dev -m

I love OS X, but it has an annoying bug. Every once in a while, the clock in the upper-right stops updating, with the "beach ball" cursor when you hover in that spot. Also, Activity Monitor shows a hung "SystemUIServer"

Update: iTunes was pretty thoroughly hung too, to the point that even kill -9 wouldn't affect it. But unplugging an iPod over FireWire unstuck everything.

Tags: OSX, bugs -m

I've been having some Vonage issues lately, namely outbound calling not working. Fortunately, nothing so dire as Brian Dear's experience. Now, I read this.

If competitors can blithely kill all your packets, that would seem a far-reaching set of problems. There's "no current law or regulation prohibiting such techniques" either. Maybe this is why I still have a land line, despite SBC being a horrible company to do business with.

Tags: vonage, voip -m

I did lots of writing over the weekend, and that means hacking old tools to work better.

Tags: gnosis -m

In the spirit of the Orwell essay, here's some more examples of improving English by translating it to, well, English. Link: http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/translations.html .

Tags: writing, english -m

This is a small taste of good things to come from Mozilla-land. Allen Beaufour has released an XForms tool that allows a developer to view the current instance data, including dynamic updates. Link: http://www.beaufour.dk/xforms .

Because Moz is such a good development platform, I expect to see many more such tools and helpers.

Tags: xforms, mozilla, firefox -m

The previous version of this article is the most commented-on thing I've done so far at xml.com. I'm happy to update it for 2005, with lots of important changes. If you read all the way through to the end, there's an xml.com exclusive scoooop...

The nForms engine, by the incomparable Ben Nolan, is available as GPL free-as-in-freedom software, currently on my hard drive. I'd love to hear your thoughts on what to do with that technology.

Tags: xforms, xml.com, GPL -m

A brief dissertation, bordering on a rant, about cyberspace plot devices.

Stories about "virtual reality" and similar technology are riddled with techno-loopholes where people can get "stuck in the system". From Neuromancer to The Matrix, from Tad Williams to the X-Files, folks are getting constantly getting trapped inside computers. Apparently these universes don't have test-driven development. Or class-action lawyers.

My hypothesis is that writers do this to "raise the stakes". If your fictional Super Mario character dies, nobody gives a flip. But in the. cruel world of fiction, we care whether flesh and blood characters die as long as they are interesting in some way. Pure avatars aren't very interesting relative to the person behind them and don't generate enough tension.

Or do they? I say it has to be possible. By way of mental experiment, think about what real-world computer interfaces will be like in, say, 20 years. Certainly some kind of immersive interfaces will be possible by then. (If you disagree, use 50 years, or 100. Whatever.) If it's possible to write techno-thrillers against what's basically today's technology, it's possible with today+20 years technology.

Does anyone have any pointers for contemporary authors pulling this off?

Tags: fiction, cyberpunk -m

My XForms tutorial has been accepted. I'll be in Amsterdam for XTech on May 24-27. There is a huge amount of activity in the forms space right now, so I'm excited to be where the action is.

Here's the abstract for Up and Running with XForms:

Put XForms to immediate use with this practical, hands-on tutorial. Topics include selecting the right XForms tools, using XForms in popular browsers and office suites, XForms fundamentals, and troubleshooting.

Prerequisites: Prior experience with XML and XHTML will be helpful.

Tags: xforms, xtech, tutorial, amsterdam -m

If you tried out the advice posted here last week, you got down to a sparkly clean inbox. But did you keep it up?

It's all too easy to slip back into old habits. Take a few minutes today--right now--and tidy things up a bit. You'll feel better.

Now, I have a problem following my own advice. For some reason, Thunderbird has apparently lost the capability to drag-n-drop messages, which is seriously impacting my ability to organize stuff. I'm searching for a solution/workaround. In the meantime, if you know of one, please let me know.

UPDATE: fixed by reboot. I have yet to encounter an OS that can handle repeated sleep/wakeup cycles.

Tags: productivity hacks, inbox, thunderbird

Details are up: http://www.bfma.org/training/05sfi_program.php These are introductory courses on XML and then XHTML. The two classes go well together.

Here's the abstracts, first for XML for Forms:

You've probably heard about XML, the Extensible Markup Language developed by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium). What is XML? Is it for data or documents? How is it different from plain text? How does XML relate to forms? How can it work for you? This session will gently introduce attendees to XML, providing a basic idea of the parts that make up an XML document, syntax guidelines, and available tools. You'll learn the difference between a "valid" piece of XML and one that's merely "well-formed". The session also briefly surveys the landscape of standards based upon XML, including schema languages, HTML and derivatives, graphics languages, metadata formats, and, of course, forms.

Next, for XHTML 2.0 and XForms:

XHTML is the latest evolution of the HTML language defined by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium). Version 2.0, nearing completion, adds significant new features. In this session, you'll learn what's new in XHTML, and how that affects your web development projects. The major improvement in XHTML comes from the new forms module, taken from XForms, another W3C standard. XHTML 2.0 includes XForms in its entirety. The session will include guidance on evaluating the many XForms engines including browser extensions and office suites, a brief XForms tutorial, and information on the latest tools to make standards-based form authoring even simpler. The session also covers other improvements found throughout the rest of XHTML 2.0, including an improved metadata module and the radically simplified hyperlinking model.

Tags: xml, xhtml -m

Today, the Mozilla Foundation announced the beta release of their XForms implementation, delivered as a click-to-install XPI file. You will need a nightly build or the upcoming Mozilla 1.8 or Firefox 1.1 in order to get XTF, the extension technology that lets new vocabularies easily add themselves to the browser. Announcement and links: http://www.mozilla.org/press/mozilla-2005-02-02.html

Tags: xforms, mozilla, firefox, xpi -m

These tags, like wikiml, are generated from very simple markup, only two characters in fact.

Tags: itds, python, personal productivity -m

For things like email, you need to have a system that works comfortably, and that means simple enough to stick with even in the heat of battle. Here's a gmail-inspired technique that I've successfully implemented on all three of my busy mailboxes. Just imagine yourself, three minutes from now, with an inbox that fits on one screen. This technique is reversable too, so if you end up hating it you can always put things back. But you'll like it. Read on...

First off, a word about mailing lists. If you subsscribe to any, you probably have a whole set of rules just for them, and ideally separate folders. That's all we'll say about lists.

Now, your inbox--how big is it? Many of you probably have hundreds or thousands of messages there, with a mixture of "read" and "unread", depending on the exact rules your email client uses to tick off items.

Create a new folder called "Old stuff", of if you really want it to float to the top of your alphabetized list, "!Old stuff". Create another folder called "30 days".

Hard drive storage is pretty cheap these days, and at the same time searching is getting pretty good, so don't worry about deleting stuff other than obvious junk. Our next job is to move all but a handful of messages into Old Stuff. Move everything over, except 1) recent messages that really are unread, and 2) concrete action items that you'll accomplish in the next day or three. Everything else gets moved.

What about that 30 days folder? Sometimes you run across stuff that you're not sure if you'll need it or not. If in doubt, 30-day it. The rule for that folder is that anything that's in it for more than 30 days gets deleted (or if you're extra paranoid, moved back into Old Stuff. This takes away the fear that paralyzes most people into keeping way too much stuff in the inbox.

So, now you have an inbox that fits on one screen. This is something wonderful in a way that can't be adequately described--you need to experience it. Once you get to that level, it doesn't take much work, say a few minutes at the end of every couple of days, to keep things in shape. You'll be losing fewer messages to the depths, you'll be more productive, and you'll just feel better. You will be prepared for the next step, whether it's a David Allen Getting Things Done process, a Danny O'Brien Life Hacks technique, or whatever you're comfortable with.

The gotcha about tricks like this is that you'll start out strong, but within a week or so start slipping back into old habits. For that, keep reading this blog, and I'll remind you next week, promise. :)

Tags: email, brain attic, gtd -m