All right, nofollow is officially gone from here, using the DoFollow plugin. Enjoy. -m
Month: June 2006
My earlier nofollow post is now officially the most-spammed blog posting I’ve ever written. All this despite a moderation system–the spammers are getting zero benefit from all this. Deterrent techniques are not working; there will always be some small percentage of “unprotected” sites that the bad guys are happy to exploit. Adding insult, even after…
Show up at my place Friday evening for the light stuff, Saturday morning for the heavy stuff. -m
From mnot: the return of the Link: headers, last seen in RFC 2068, and a new header, Link-Template, which has me salivating over the possibilities. I wonder, will this lead to better libraries for dealing with HTTP headers? Or at least better developer understanding of the benefits of not just taking whatever Apache or Tomcat…
Hey Podcasters out there…post a picture of your mixer on your blog or favorite photo sharing site. As a bonus, you’ll have a “backup” of your settings for future reference. Give it the tag “mixerpic” so we can all find it later. -m
The Rise and Fall of CORBA, seen at the ACM. To create quality software, the ability to say “no†is usually far more important than the ability to say “yes.†Sound familiar? -m
I don’t know if I hit a glitch in the system or what, but while I was making my periodic browser through the online Apple Store, I noticed a refurb iPod Shuffle for under fourty bucks. I was trying to wait for the next rev, but hey, I have more travel coming up. I tend…
I spend a Pareto portion of my work day in three applications: jEdit, Firefox, and a terminal. I hang around Emacs (and VI)-loving folks all day. Emacs. jEdit. Emacs. jEdit. The tension is palpable. :) Maybe their influence is starting to rub off on me. Here’s what I want: Dear readers, can you provide comments…
A while back, documenting my Windows XP SP 2 horror story, I mused about when Microsoft would have to throw out the code base and start fresh. Now, I see this, with additional commentary from Rick Jelliffe. Hmm. -m
when building REST XML protocols. Kimbro Staken. Good stuff. -m
For a while, I’ve had an iGo Juice 70. They’ve really nailed the “universal” power adapter for notebooks. Input can be 120 volts, 240 volts, 12 volts (auto), or whatever you get on planes. Output is a series of pluggable tips that work well with 8 different models of notebooks, including everything I own. The…
I originally wrote this in the comments, but it’s worth a full entry. If phone companies thought they could get away with it, you’d have this: “I’m sorry, all circuits to Domino’s Pizza are currently busy. Would you like to be connected to our preferred pizza provider instead?” -m
About a year ago, on this blog I started a series called “Patternalia”, examining various patterns in technology and life in the style of a popular Christopher Alexander series. Over the coming weeks and months, I’m going to revive the series, first of all by getting the old entries into WordPress. Everything will be under…
To me, the true power of the web is in mediating conversations between parties that have never met. I consider it a success when a new name posts a comment–and comments have been picking up here. -m
A reader named Jeff asks: are you aware of any way to render an XForm as Swing widgets (or heck, AWT for that matter) from within a Java thick app? Anyone have pointers? Comment here. -m
It’s no secret that Yahoo! has two different photo sites. And two different social bookmarking sites. Until pretty recently I thought this was craziness. But gradually I’ve realized the power of this approach. You take a smaller, hipper embodiment of an idea alongside a mainstream site. The resulting double-threat can’t easily be matched be either…
Lots and lots of blog traffic on Google Spreadsheet, but I haven’t seen anyone make a key point: The underlying message is: full-blown applications in the browser are now real. Many smaller players have been doing things like this for years, just as many smaller player were using Ajax before it had a catchy name….
Python+XPath is a surprisingly powerful combination for doing all kinds of arbitrary validation tasks. I should know. I’ve recently figured out a few things that make it even better. Line numbers in error messages. Libxml2 docs aren’t exactly forthcoming in this area. It’s pretty easy to register an error callback, but maddeningly it doesn’t include…
New features in InfoPath 2007 make me smile Design once to work on browser and client Object model the same across client and server Both things I worked on extensively for Cardiff LiquidOffice in 2003-2004. ‘Cept we had design once and write out to DHTML, PDF, or InfoPath. :) -m
For better or worse. In no particular order. Affordable unlimited data plans Google getting into the operator business Yahoo! getting into the operator business Affordable phones not tied to carriers The iPod phone Development of strong AI (yes I say this about everything) Development of decent agent software Affordable unlimited voice plans Collapse of network…
Part of tech reviewing means dusting off a Windows machine again. I haven’t done more than check email or run Quickbooks online on a Windows machine since I was writing my book in 2003. Remarkably, Windows XP is still the latest desktop OS available. But it needs updates. Checking my update history, I had 37…
Nokia has announced a port of Apache to Symbian, allowing a full web server to run on a phone, with the quote “there really is no reason anymore why webservers could not reside on mobile phones”. Well, there’s battery life… Anyway, would you want to run a server on your phone? What would you use…
Still in development, but I have clearance to blog about a forthcoming Web 2.0 book. So far I haven’t seen a good book that covers all the technical angles of Web 2.0, from designing URL spaces to Ajax to proper use of HTTP. I’m tech reviewing this book, so I have high expectations for it….