The Laszlo Platform, which is kinda like Macromedia Flex, was just released as open source (under the Common Public License).
I’d looked at Laszlo Platform a while back, and it was pretty cool, offering dashboard-like stuff, sorta like Macromedia Central meets Sherlock meets Konfabulator. Kinda cool for dynamically generated flash content and widgets.
Open Source announcement here, and thoughts from the company’s CTO here.
It’s kind of like Flex, but without coughing up $12K per CPU on the server. Might come in handy for a Pachy 2.5 (or 3.0) authoring interface…
Thanks to Matt Raible for the link.
The Laszlo Platform, which is kinda like Macromedia Flex, was just released as open source (under the Common Public License).
I’d looked at Laszlo Platform a while back, and it was pretty cool, offering dashboard-like stuff, sorta like Macromedia Central meets Sherlock meets Konfabulator. Kinda cool for dynamically generated flash content and widgets.
Open Source announcement here, and thoughts from the company’s CTO here.
It’s kind of like Flex, but without coughing up $12K per CPU on the server. Might come in handy for a Pachy 2.5 (or 3.0) authoring interface…
Thanks to Matt Raible for the link.
I’ve got a couple of outboard brains. This weblog is one of them, but I also use an app on my PowerBook to store stuff that I don’t necessary want Google to find (passwords, source code snippets that don’t make sense out of context, list of the members of the Illuminati, etc…)
I’d been using DevonThink PE as that “private outboard brain”. It works really well, and handles all kinds of file formats (as well as web pages). I just switched to Notational Velocity, though. At first I didn’t get it. I thought NV was a gimmicky app that I wouldn’t find useful. However, after a bit of use, it’s turned into a LaunchBar/Quiicksilver for data. One part wiki, one part fulltext index, one part note taker. Very cool.
NV doesn’t do other file formats – it’s just the text, ma’am. But you know what, that’s ok… I thought I’d be using the multiple file formats of DevonThink a lot, but 99% of my notes were text anyway (with a few web pages in there, which could just as well have been converted to text)…
Just beware the somewhat disturbing photo on the NV website. Damien is apparently back, and he’s writing really cool software…
I’ve got a couple of outboard brains. This weblog is one of them, but I also use an app on my PowerBook to store stuff that I don’t necessary want Google to find (passwords, source code snippets that don’t make sense out of context, list of the members of the Illuminati, etc…)
I’d been using DevonThink PE as that “private outboard brain”. It works really well, and handles all kinds of file formats (as well as web pages). I just switched to Notational Velocity, though. At first I didn’t get it. I thought NV was a gimmicky app that I wouldn’t find useful. However, after a bit of use, it’s turned into a LaunchBar/Quiicksilver for data. One part wiki, one part fulltext index, one part note taker. Very cool.
NV doesn’t do other file formats – it’s just the text, ma’am. But you know what, that’s ok… I thought I’d be using the multiple file formats of DevonThink a lot, but 99% of my notes were text anyway (with a few web pages in there, which could just as well have been converted to text)…
Just beware the somewhat disturbing photo on the NV website. Damien is apparently back, and he’s writing really cool software…
Last time I tried a standalone posting app, it was Ecto, which didn’t like Wordpress too much.
This time, I’m trying MarsEdit, and have applied a patch to the Wordpress XMLRPC connection by Johann Richard at ‘Take the Red Pill‘. This patch may behave better with Ecto, as well…
I’m pretty impressed with MarsEdit. Looks like Ranchero is doing an awesome job at avoiding bloat, producing excellent task-oriented applications.
Last time I tried a standalone posting app, it was Ecto, which didn’t like WordPress too much.
This time, I’m trying MarsEdit, and have applied a patch to the WordPress XMLRPC connection by Johann Richard at ‘Take the Red Pill‘. This patch may behave better with Ecto, as well…
I’m pretty impressed with MarsEdit. Looks like Ranchero is doing an awesome job at avoiding bloat, producing excellent task-oriented applications.
Great. I just buy a license for Shrook because I didn’t like some of the things missing from NetNewsWire Pro. Now, Ranchero Software released a public beta of NNW 2.0 and the thing rocks!
It’s got the flag-and-archive posts feature I liked from Shrook. It’s got the smart folders I liked from Shrook (and iTunes, etc…) and a bunch of other stuff. I just re-imported my 247-strong blogroll into it, and will be trying it out for a while. It’s MUCH more responsive than Shrook… That may be reason enough to change. NNW 2 doesn’t have the “distributed checking” feature that Shrook has, but that actually failed or got in the way as often as it helped (but when it works, it’s pretty cool…)
Great. I just buy a license for Shrook because I didn’t like some of the things missing from NetNewsWire Pro. Now, Ranchero Software released a public beta of NNW 2.0 and the thing rocks!
It’s got the flag-and-archive posts feature I liked from Shrook. It’s got the smart folders I liked from Shrook (and iTunes, etc…) and a bunch of other stuff. I just re-imported my 247-strong blogroll into it, and will be trying it out for a while. It’s MUCH more responsive than Shrook… That may be reason enough to change. NNW 2 doesn’t have the “distributed checking” feature that Shrook has, but that actually failed or got in the way as often as it helped (but when it works, it’s pretty cool…)
When I implemented an experimental Wiki integration with CAREO, I imagined it would be simplest to just tie a Wiki page to each URL, on demand. By extension, that model could have provided a Wiki page for every URL on the internet.
Wikalong does this for all pages in Firefox – promising to become a public, shared margin for the internet.
I’m not a Firefox user (partial to OmniWeb 5 or Safari) but this sounds very cool. Kind of like a Wikipedia for the web…
UPDATE: Just installed Firefox 1.0, and the Wikalong sidebar. That’s freaking AWESOME! I think it’s probably got some serious room for vandalism – had flashbacks of ThirdVoice – the IE plugin that let you leave notes on pages for others to see. First thing that happened with that one was the defacing of Microsoft’s website – only visible via the plugin. This seems more benign – notes are only in the sidebar, not mingled with page content. This could have some excellent implications for teaching/learning with online stuff… Mods of the Wikalong plugin to use a private or institutional wiki for courses etc… Going to have to look into that…
When I implemented an experimental Wiki integration with CAREO, I imagined it would be simplest to just tie a Wiki page to each URL, on demand. By extension, that model could have provided a Wiki page for every URL on the internet.
Wikalong does this for all pages in Firefox – promising to become a public, shared margin for the internet.
I’m not a Firefox user (partial to OmniWeb 5 or Safari) but this sounds very cool. Kind of like a Wikipedia for the web…
UPDATE: Just installed Firefox 1.0, and the Wikalong sidebar. That’s freaking AWESOME! I think it’s probably got some serious room for vandalism – had flashbacks of ThirdVoice – the IE plugin that let you leave notes on pages for others to see. First thing that happened with that one was the defacing of Microsoft’s website – only visible via the plugin. This seems more benign – notes are only in the sidebar, not mingled with page content. This could have some excellent implications for teaching/learning with online stuff… Mods of the Wikalong plugin to use a private or institutional wiki for courses etc… Going to have to look into that…
Just finished the demo of Myst IV: Revelation. Holy crap. It’s the rich environment of the original Myst, combined with interactivity and live 3D rendering from a high-end first-person-shooter. Wow. You start off on a platform over a lake, and the water is actually moving, with waves and ripples, toward a waterfall, where it accelerates and pours over the edge. And the moon is high over your head (and you can actually look up to see it) complete with atmospheric effects and awesome sound effects (and music by Peter Gabriel). It looks and sounds like the pre-rendered snapshot views of Myst, but it’s all dynamic and live. Amazing.
More info at the “unofficial website” since the “official website” refuses to load for me…
The demo is still a bit rough in places, but I can see this coming in very handy for decompressing during the big APOLLO/Pachyderm haul this fall…
The demo download from the official website kept coming down busted, so I ended up grabbing it via BitTorrent overnight (couldn’t do that from campus, though… damned IT filters…)
Anyway, the game should hit in September. It’s already on the wish list with the family… 😉
This must be the Big Month Of Changes for me… After switching my weblog from Blosxom to Wordpress, I’m also switching RSS readers from NetNewsWire to Shrook 2. I really like the implementation of smart folders in Shrook, and the way it handles column-display of RSS items is pretty sweet.
It’s also got subscription syncing between multiple computers (subscriptions and read items) so that may come in very handy!
Anyway, I’ll probably post another week-in-the-life-of entries in a week or so.
UPDATE: The synchronization feature uses Shrook.com – meaning that you also get a free web interface to your subscriptions. Looks pretty well done, too, but it’s not completely syncing the “read” state of all of my subscriptions. As an aside, Shrook is a bit more efficient than NNW at reading lots of feeds, so I’ve been able to add several new subscriptions without feeling swamped. Nowhere near Scoble‘s confessed 1400 feeds, but I’ve crossed over 200 feeds (217 now, and counting)
This must be the Big Month Of Changes for me… After switching my weblog from Blosxom to WordPress, I’m also switching RSS readers from NetNewsWire to Shrook 2. I really like the implementation of smart folders in Shrook, and the way it handles column-display of RSS items is pretty sweet.
It’s also got subscription syncing between multiple computers (subscriptions and read items) so that may come in very handy!
Anyway, I’ll probably post another week-in-the-life-of entries in a week or so.
UPDATE: The synchronization feature uses Shrook.com – meaning that you also get a free web interface to your subscriptions. Looks pretty well done, too, but it’s not completely syncing the “read” state of all of my subscriptions. As an aside, Shrook is a bit more efficient than NNW at reading lots of feeds, so I’ve been able to add several new subscriptions without feeling swamped. Nowhere near Scoble‘s confessed 1400 feeds, but I’ve crossed over 200 feeds (217 now, and counting)
Following a post by Scott Leslie mentioning the release of Sakai 1.0 rc1, I figured I’d take a swing at installing it on our shiny new XServe.
Installation was a piece of cake (just be sure to set all of the environment variables, and download/configure the ~/build.properties file so it can find all dependencies for downloading). Once the source was downloaded, it really only took a minute to compile and deploy the application (although I spent much MUCH longer than that twiddling around with configuring the build).
Anyway, it built and deployed just fine on MacOSX Server 10.3.4. I fired up Tomcat, and pointed my browser to the embedded version of Sakai and got an exciting empty template page. Doh.
Now, to try to find some documentation on wtf Sakai “does”, and what needs to be configured to make it do that… 😉
Following a post by Scott Leslie mentioning the release of Sakai 1.0 rc1, I figured I’d take a swing at installing it on our shiny new XServe.
Installation was a piece of cake (just be sure to set all of the environment variables, and download/configure the ~/build.properties file so it can find all dependencies for downloading). Once the source was downloaded, it really only took a minute to compile and deploy the application (although I spent much MUCH longer than that twiddling around with configuring the build).
Anyway, it built and deployed just fine on MacOSX Server 10.3.4. I fired up Tomcat, and pointed my browser to the embedded version of Sakai and got an exciting empty template page. Doh.
Now, to try to find some documentation on wtf Sakai “does”, and what needs to be configured to make it do that… 😉
Not sure if I’ll end up using it as my email address, but dlnorman@gmail.com went live today. At first blush, it looks pretty cool. I’d love to be able to connect via IMAP, but that would probably kill the whole adsense interface that pays for the whole thing…
I know of 2 ways to get a GMail account:
- eBay
- As a registered Blogger user.
I’m cheap, so you can guess which one I used. Only active Blogger accounts are added to the GMail beta. Active is a somewhat arbitrary term, since you only need to have 2 posts in a weblog, with one posted sometime in the last 2 weeks. They can even be something creative like “Testing.” I’m just saying…
Not sure if I’ll end up using it as my email address, but dlnorman@gmail.com went live today. At first blush, it looks pretty cool. I’d love to be able to connect via IMAP, but that would probably kill the whole adsense interface that pays for the whole thing…
I know of 2 ways to get a GMail account:
- eBay
- As a registered Blogger user.
I’m cheap, so you can guess which one I used. Only active Blogger accounts are added to the GMail beta. Active is a somewhat arbitrary term, since you only need to have 2 posts in a weblog, with one posted sometime in the last 2 weeks. They can even be something creative like “Testing.” I’m just saying…
I’ve had SSHPassKey installed for a while now – Bill Bumgarner wrote it back in his CodeFab days (pre-Apple), in order to make ProjectBuilder ask nicely for a CVS password.
I’d forgotten about it for a while (haven’t been using CVS), but I fired it up yesterday and set it to respond to SSH password requests – so I get a nice GUI to ask for it – and better yet, it’s Keychain aware, so I can ignore it after it’s set once.
Now, Blapp can use its “Publish” button, calling rsync to send new posts up to the commons webserver automagically, and it gets the password properly (instead of failing on authentication). Cool!
Thanks, Bill!
I’ve had SSHPassKey installed for a while now – Bill Bumgarner wrote it back in his CodeFab days (pre-Apple), in order to make ProjectBuilder ask nicely for a CVS password.
I’d forgotten about it for a while (haven’t been using CVS), but I fired it up yesterday and set it to respond to SSH password requests – so I get a nice GUI to ask for it – and better yet, it’s Keychain aware, so I can ignore it after it’s set once.
Now, Blapp can use its “Publish” button, calling rsync to send new posts up to the commons webserver automagically, and it gets the password properly (instead of failing on authentication). Cool!
Thanks, Bill!
