...more recent posts
Another talk (.pdf here) about future unicode support in PHP. Nobody is making firm timeframe claims but this one says what I've heard before: maybe this year.
Unicode support will allow for PHP web apps to fully deal with non western characters. This seems pretty crucial if PHP is going to stay relevant. It's a hard problem though.
Looks like Amazon is adding author blogs linked from their bookstore pages:
The entries were part of a new program called Amazon Connect, begun late last month to enhance the connections between authors and their fans - and to sell more books - with author blogs and extended personal profile pages on the company's online bookstore site.This is the obvious commercial use of blogs. Forging relationships with people. These relationships then feed back positively into what you are trying to accomplish (changing people's minds, making money, etc...) I can't tell you how many people I have tried to talk into blogging who just can't get past the "but how will I make money off my blog?" stage. But you shouldn't think about it as a revenue generator; instead it's more like a cheaper and potentially much more effective way to advertise. It baffles me that it took Amazon this long.
And what the heck is Apple doing? They have the iTunes music store - by far the most popular way to buy music on line - and yet they let MySpace.com completely eat their lunch in the music community space. I don't get it. I think they really missed on that one.
Computer history folk music, or too much time on their hands? Maybe both. Every OS Sucks. Mildly funny if you are a geek of a certain age.
A-ha! Or, I mean, AHAH. Keith Devens describes:
The idea is, it's basically Ajax, but instead of grabbing arbitrary XML and processing it on the client-side with Javascript or XSLT and inserting things into the DOM, you just grab bits of (X)HTML from the server and inject them directly into your page. So, the client side does much less logic and merely needs to say "replace the content in the element with this ID with the (X)HTML at this USlightly longer discussion here: AJAX vs. AHAH.
This makes a lot of sense to me. Since most AJAX applications (webpages?) seem to be constructed in such a way that the client (the javascript on the web page) and server parts are both under the control of the same designers, you don't really need the layer of abstraction provided by XML (over just pulling the blobs out of a database and wrapping them in HTML.) If the server didn't know how the client would format the data then the XML steps would be necessary. But does this ever happen with in AJAX setups? I like the simplicity of AHAH.
M.I.T. has put many video lectures on line under an open Creative Commons license (I think the plan is to put *everything* on line for free, but I don't know how close they are to that goal.) Here's one that looks interesting to me: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs - Video Lectures by Hal Abelson and Gerald Jay Sussman:
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs has been MIT's introductory pre-professional computer science subject since 1981. It emphasizes the role of computer languages as vehicles for expressing knowledge and it presents basic principles of abstraction and modularity, together with essential techniques for designing and implementing computer languages. This course has had a worldwide impact on computer science curricula over the past two decades. The accompanying textbook by Hal Abelson, Gerald Jay Sussman, and Julie Sussman is available for purchase from the MIT Press, which also provides a freely available on-line version of the complete textbook.
These twenty video lectures by Hal Abelson and Gerald Jay Sussman are a complete presentation of the course, given in July 1986 for Hewlett-Packard employees, and professionally produced by Hewlett-Packard Television. The videos have been used extensively in corporate training at Hewlett-Packard and other companies, as well as at several universities and in MIT short courses for industry.
Oh yeah, almost forgot. I saw a Nokia 770 last night for the first time. Even better in person than I thought it would be. Very polished looking and feeling device. Much smaller than you might think with a very nice bright screen (overall much smaller than, say, a PSP but with almost as big of a screen.) Not sure what to call it though. Web tablet? I guess that's it. Touch screen, WiFi, and it runs Linux. Geeks seem very intrigued but I wonder who else would buy such a thing?
I guess if you had a desktop computer in a home office situation but then also wanted to surf the web and check email while not in the office (which I guess for most people pretty much means while watching tv,) then this would definitely be something to look at.
I just wish they could somehow get a keyboard attached without making it any larger or less elegant. But that's just me. I'm pretty keyboard-centric.
Anyway, I was interested before and now that I've seen it I am even more intrigued. I hope this is a product they continue to develop.
Long time readers will remember I used to get a little worked up about the issue of Trusted Computing - "they're going to make general purpose computers illegal!" - and although I finally decided, years ago, that it doesn't really matter, I think that conclusion was a little optimistic. It does matter, and this stuff is still happening, and it will be a net loss for everyone if "they" get their way, even if it's nice to have an argument ready for why "we" will eventually win no matter what.
In any case, to revisit the subject, Tim Bray (respected software engineer and now Sun bigwig) takes on the Trusted Computing Group in this interesting article Selling Art:
Increasingly, the products of artists are digital; thus subject to essentially-free copying and sharing. Artists, just like accountants and ambassadors, need to get paid. How best to arrange this?Nice refresher course if nothing else. And it really is still happening. Wikipedia, as usual, has great info on Trusted Computing, and if you're a real glutton, here's +4 rated comments from a recent slashdot thread (actually some good stuff in there,) on Intel's plans to add this technology to their next chipsets which are due real soon now.
Sensible business advice from Gus Mueller: How to become an independent programmer in just 1068 days. Obvious stuff, I guess, but very well put. I think this would be worth reading for anyone thinking about starting a small business - not just computer programmers.
Business 2.0 looks at YouTube:
Everybody wants to be the Flickr of video. One early contender that is gaining momentum is YouTube. All of the hundreds of thousands of short videos clips on the site are shot and uploaded by users....
YouTube serves up an impressive three million video clips every day, and people are uploading 8,000 clips a day. You can share or blog any video on YouTube. Even some advertisers are getting in on the game. The most viewed video is actually a commercial for Nike that shows a Brazilian soccer star practicing some shots on goal. It's been viewed more than one million times.
Interesting notes from David Weinberger on a talk by del.icio.us creator Joshua Schachter at the Berkman Center.