Published by ugo on March 10, 2005
in apple.
Mac Feng Shui: “A woman walks into a beautifully appointed loft-style apartment, complete with a minature Japanese garden. Clearly, the Feng Shui level of this place is high. Then she unpacks a Windows-style PC and attempts to place it somewhere in the room that doesn’t decrease its Feng Shui. Using time-lapse photography, you see that wherever she places the PC, it sticks out like a sore thumb and destroys the elegance of the room. Ultimately, she packs up the PC and sends it away. Next, you see her unpack an Apple iMac and place it on a glass desk in the room. Instantly, it fits harmoniously in with the environment, increasing its Feng Shui quotient and bringing a peaceful smile to the woman’s face.”
I’ll be the last one to fall for fads such as Feng Shui, but when I’m going to refurnish my home office room (pretty soon, I hope), it will feature a G5 iMac placed upon a crystal table for sure. I’m also thinking about a Stokke chair. Is that Feng Shui enough?
Published by ugo on March 9, 2005
in web.
The Blah-Blah Blog: Inaugural blah-blah blog: “Contrary to the belief of spiral-eyed blog believers, blogging +is+ a fad. It will fade. Check with me in ten years, and then we can determine if blogging has survived the classic PC industry cycle of emerge/fad/fade. Can you say 'Netscape'? Sure you can.”
Of course it's a fad. It will fade into the background, metamorphose into something else, or disappear. In ten years, maybe less. No doubt about that.
So what? Much of what we do today is a fad. Does this mean that we should give up blogging? Should we stop using it as an alternative news source and rely entirely on “real journalism”, whatever that means? Should we give up trying to build a social network through blogging?
But in the end,who cares if I'm still blogging and reading blogs in ten years? I hope to be rich and sipping a drink under the Caribbean sun in ten years, not spending nights attached to a laptop 
Published by ugo on March 9, 2005
in apple.
MacDevCenter.com: Getting Things Done with Your Mac: “I need something very simple, with extremely long battery life, resistant to damage by excitable two-year-olds, and easy to synchronize with the rest of my workflow.”
That's something I too started doing some time ago. But as you can see here, I went for the luxury version, with Moleskine notebook and MontBlanc pen ;).
(Via 43 Folders.)
Published by ugo on March 8, 2005
in devel.
The Blah-Blah Blog: Microsoft MVPs revolt: “By killing off classic VB, Microsoft abandoned millions of developers (some 18 million, of which an estimated 6 million are professionals) who invested countless man-years building, debugging, and perfecting tens of millions of Visual Basic apps.”
It's perfectly understandable why VB developers are up in arms against Microsoft's .NET strategy. VB.NET is not Visual Basic. It's just C# without the curly braces. Once again, I will resort to quoting Joel Spolsky on this matter (“argumentum ad autoritatem” I can hear somebody complaining, but what the heck):
Which makes me wonder a bit about .NET's cross-language strategy. The idea is, choose any language you want, there are zillions, and they all work the same way.
VB.NET and C#.NET are virtually identical except for tiny syntactic differences. And other languages that want to be part of the .NET world need to support at least a core set of features and types or they won't be able to Play Well With Others. But how do I develop a UNIX command line utility in .NET? How do I develop a tiny Windows EXE in less than 16K in .NET?
It seems like .NET gives us a “choice” of languages precisely where we couldn't care less about it — in the syntax.
(Via Scoble.)
Sorry to interrupt the usual flow of geeky topics, but I just finished watching the UEFA Champions League football (soccer if you prefer) match between Chelsea and Barcelona and it was awesome! Six goals, of which one, by Ronaldinho, simply extraordinary.
We’ll se if Juventus and Real Madrid can offer a similarly entertaining show tomorrow.
Update: here’s the video of Ronaldinho’s goal (5MB).
Published by ugo on March 8, 2005
in devel.
Geert Bevin: “It's a shame, I really had huge expectations about Laszlo and even tried to sell it to a customer. I'm glad that project was cancelled or I would be in deep trouble.”
I too had a brief experience with Laszlo a few months ago. I walked away with the impression that it was a nice system for simple, graphically pleasing applets to put as gadgets on a web page. But as soon as you wanted to push the envelope, you'd end up like Truman Burbank: against a wall.
I was recounting this experience to one of my colleagues a couple of days ago, while we were discussing options for porting some legacy applications to the web. I was pushing for an Ajax type of solution, whereas he suggested that we explore Laszlo. I think I will have to email him a copy of Geert's post to strengthen my point.
(Via Matt.)
Published by ugo on March 8, 2005
in apple.
Sony preps iPod Shuffle 'killer' | The Register: “Sony will next month ship its 'iPod Shuffle killer', a compact Flash-based music player with up to 1GB of storage.
What distinguishes the Sony product - apart from the distinctly disposable lighter styling - is the integration of an OLED read-out into the player's casing. The device doesn't have a screen as such - track details, the time and tuner station information - appear on the surface of the player.”
In the last hour or so I've been having fun trying to come up with a decent design for the Source.zone website. Here's what I've come up with so far (click on the image to enlarge it):
I have to thank:
All the above mentioned works should be in the Public Domain or covered by a Creative Commons license. Let me know if this is not the case.
It's just a first attempt and needs some more work, but if you want to comment on it, please do.
I had a couple comments from readers who found some of my posts syndicated on javablogs.com which had nothing whatsoever to do with Java. OK, folks, you're right.
So, I changed my javablogs syndication settings so that only posts from the devel category will be fetched. I won't promise that the devel category will exclusively be dedicated to Java, but mostly it will be, directly or tangentially.
I'm sitting on the sofa looking at Peter Gabriel's Growing Up Live DVD. “What a show!”
This concert was recorded a couple of years ago in Milan and at the time I was offered a couple of tickets to go and see it. I can't remember why, but for some reason I couldn't accept the offer, an unfortunate event which I now bitterly regret.
Too bad it's 11.30PM, so I can't pump up the volume as much as I'd like.
Filippo: “Anyhow, I promised Ugo a contribution a month ago; this is my first contribution. It briefly covers Marathon, one of the tools we evaluated in our current project for writing non-regression tests.”
(Via Travelling, and not arriving.)
By the way, the correct link to my blog is http://agylen.com/blojsom/blog/.
Published by ugo on March 7, 2005
in web.
Thinking about the recent controversy about Google Toolbar's Autolink feature, and seeing what people are doing with http://greasemonkey.mozdev.org/ and the like, I am starting to wonder whether we, as web authors, should be prepared to relinquish a certain amount of control into the hand of our readers. Not that I think Autolink is a Good Thing™ — I actually tend to side with Dave, Robert and Tim on this issue — but probably the door has already been open to modification of our content by the users for a long time and there's not much we can do about it.
And we ain't seen nothing yet.
Published by ugo on March 7, 2005
in web.
Google AdSense XmlHttpRequest Prediction: “Of course, this isn't a solution. We could then block those div elements based on IDs. So, Google would probably want to randomly create div ids for the content.”
What's this? A war? Are AdSense ads so offensive to you that you'd engage in this sort of arms race to defeat them? Assuming Google would want to run it, I mean, which seems quite hard to believe.
Oh, by the way, I've just clicked on the AdSense ad on your page, the one you probably forgot it's there, since you cannot see it
Following Darren's advice, I switched to putting just summaries in my RSS feeds. Here's hoping that this doesn't piss off too many people reading my blog via an aggregator.
I find that using an aggregator that includes a Web browser, like NetNewsWire, makes reading summarized feeds much more palatable. In any case, if you really want to have the full feed, simply tack “&smm=y” onto the end of the RSS's feed URL.
Ted outlines a possible limitation of web applications, as compared to rich-client applications:
I think that this is also one of the distinguishing points between rich client applications and web applications. Most web apps, like GMail, are building the feature set for the head. That's just good business and engineering sense. But since only Google can extend GMail, there's no way for someone like me, in the tail, to get the functionality that I really need in order to be productive.
Gareth points to greasemonkey as a possible solution. While the general concept is cool, greasemonkey sounds too much like a hack that can break whenever an application vendor changes the structure of the Web UI. What we need is for vendors to provide officially documented hooks where plugin developers can inject DHTML code with some promise of backward compatibility.
Published by ugo on March 7, 2005
in devel.
Here are two articles I just found that do not paint a very bright future for .NET:
Mr. Grimes’ Farewell: “This indicates to me that Microsoft is losing confidence in .NET.”
(Via Slashdot.)
Open-Source Leader Highlights Technologies for Developers to Watch: “J2EE is well-placed to take on Microsoft”
(Via Gavin.)
Some quite informed commentary can also be found on Joel's blog here, here, here and here.
Of course, as soon as someone starts grilling Microsoft's development strategies, there's bound to be some reaction, just like when someone writes that Microsoft is not good at shipping software anymore. Some might say that denial starts setting in, which is not a good sign either, but I guess we'll see.
Personally, I always wanted to know more about .NET, mainly because it's not wise to put all of one's eggs in one basket, but never got around to do it, for lack of time. Now, I'm not so sure I regret it.
“Battersea powers up: After decades of dereliction, London's most famous brownfield site is to be transformed into shops, cinemas and 700 homes. Hugh Pearman of The Sunday Times reports”
Here's your answer, Doc.
You can find a detailed plan at this obnoxious Flash-based website.
Published by ugo on March 4, 2005
in voip.
The Engadget Interview: Niklas Zennström: “SkypeIn will allow phone calls from the traditional phone network in to Skype. We don’t have a specific launch date yet, but hope to offer it sometime this winter.”
Does “this winter” refers to the one that ends on March 21st, 2005? That's just 17 days away. I think he actually meant “next winter”. Anyway, this SkypeIn thing is going to rock!
John Reynolds's Blog: AJaX: Two steps forward… Two steps back?: “So far so good, but when you look at the mechanisms that are currently available to take advantage of AJaX, a boatload of JavaScript embedded in an HTML file, you will probably experience a sickening feeling of deja vu all over again.
AJaX totally blows the idea of seperating presentation markup and code snippets. The result brings back memories of pre-custom tag JSP pages… a little puddle of HTML markup embedded in an ocean of Java code (only this time it's JavaScript).”
I don't think this is the case, actually. You can — and really should — put all your Javascript code (and CSS too) in separate files. Sometimes, most of the HTML in an AJaX application will be generated by the Javascript code, even.
And if you do it properly, you'll use HTML merely to describe the structure of your content. All the presentation issues (including layout) must be handled by CSS.
So, I don't see such a big risk of having a mishmash type of code. But I do think John has a point when he says that we need tools and frameworks. As with any new programming paradigm (there, I've said the dreaded p-word ), you start with manual tools (anyone remember editing C files with vi? ) and IDEs and frameworks start appearing later.
RadTech announces Mini Cocoon, RadPak | MacMinute News: “March 4, 2005 - 03:54 EST RadTech today announced the availability of the Mini Cocoon, a stylish and versatile, semi-rigid clamshell case for iPod mini. A tough, outer clamshell completely encases the iPod mini and a silicone skin allows access to all control elements and ports, providing added protection while nestled in the case, or when used separately apart from the case.”
Sheesh, it's been years that the Cocoon community has been trying to come up with a method to distribute Cocoon as a slim core and a set of optional blocks, instead of the monolithic entity it is now. And to think that these people have it for sale, already, makes you want to break down and cry ;).
(Via Bertrand.)
