Machineware, Web Application Development

NBC has ruined the Olympics

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 16:32:33 +0000

I have to say I agree with Russell Beattie's assessment of NBC's coverage of the Olympics. I thought the coverage of the Winter Games two years ago was great but NBC has really screwed up the Summer Games.

The Olympics are supposed to be a worldwide event and a point of national pride, but NBC has hijacked the games completely and totally, providing little actual quality coverage, funneling viewers to a single channel in order for them choke down their incessant commercials as a way of not just making back their money, or simply profiting, but as a way of maximizing profits from their monopoly on the broadcast rights. What should be a privilege for a national broadcaster has been turned into an extortion racket, holding the Olympics hostage with all of us paying the ransom.

NBC has ruined the Olympics

Intel's Larrabee products are more than gaming chips

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 15:52:31 +0000

Ars has a really interesting article on Intel's Larrabee GPU products. They are initially to be sold as gaming GPU's but they are in fact programmable co-processor cores (think of them as Pentium chips on a graphics card) with their own operating system. The fact that Larrabee has its own operating system and is programmable means that the host operating system will be able to dispatch jobs other than 3D to the GPU.

Intel disclosed a ton of new Larrabee information in a briefing on Friday. Here are the highlights on one of the company's most aggressive architecture changes ever.
Larrabee: Intel's biggest leap since the Pentium Pro

What this means is that eventually the host operating system (i.e. Windows XP or Mac OSX) will be able to use these powerful video cards to offload specialized tasks. I think it also means that eventually the CPU (central processing unit) and GPU (graphics processing unit) will merge and become one massive super powerful unit.

OPML Reading Lists Added to the RSS Reader

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 19:22:00 +0000

The OPML fetch and parse code has been in the RSS crawler for some time but the user interface was spotty. Today I cleaned it up and rolled it into the beta.

Ajax Single Page Feed Reader & Blog Editor

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 18:28:18 +0000

The title really describes what Interspring is. It's a single page web application that combines a solid feed reader with a solid blog editor (and blogging engine). I've written it so that it works on all major browsers (even IE 6...ick). If you'd be interested in testing the application please let me know.

PHP RSS & Atom MySQL Storage based Feed Parser

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 18:24:34 +0000

In the process of writing Interspring I had to develop a MySQL backed rss (and atom) feed processor and storage infrastructure. After much work and frustration I'm happy to say that the feed fetch/parse/store backend of Interspring has be running uninterupted for over 6 months. I think that after I normalize the MySQL tables and pretty up the code a bit I will release it as an open source product. If anyone is interesting in testing and or using it...please drop me a line here.

More spam during the olympics

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 18:35:55 +0000

Ouch...it's not like spammers need a reason to send more email.

Symantec says that online scammers are going to use Beijing's 2008 Summer Olympics to lure unsuspecting victims into fraudulent online schemes

The Spam Olympics

If you get any email over the next 60 to 90 days the has a subject line (you're not using the preview pane are you?) that has anything to do with the Olympics....just delete it.

Screwing Up the Web Experience

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 15:59:18 +0000

Dare Obasanjo on his Carnage4Life blog has a great entry on what some companies are doing to screw up the web experience. I'll let you read the details on his site but number 4 in his list really hit home for me. Many times I've been searching for a solutions to some obscure IT issue and after seemingly discovering a link to a possible solution I discover that I must "register" to see the page that was in the search engine result list. I think this is a creepy thing to do (letting the search engines "see" the information without registration but forcing real humans to register to view the info), but Dare expresses it much better than I do:

Forums that Require Registration Showing Up in Search Results : Every once in a while I do a Web search for a programming problem and a couple of links to Experts Exchange end up in the results. What is truly annoying about this site is that the excerpt on the search result page makes it seem as though the answer to your question is one click away but when you click through you are greeted with âAll comments and solutions are available to Premium Service Members onlyâ. I thought search engines had rules about banning sites with that sort of obnoxious behavior?

A List of Companies Working Hard to Screw Up My Web Experience

Dare works for Microsoft....I wish he would use some of his influence to help improve Microsoft's websites...

Interesting podcast on email

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 20:21:55 +0000

I think that improved filtering and some sort of RSS/Email hybrid will allow us to trust our email reading software more. Right now, it's like the wild wild west out there.

Daily e-mail volume is now at 210 billion a day worldwide and increasing. The burden of managing all that e-mail has prompted a backlash. From declaring "e-mail bankruptcy" to e-mail-free days, many Americans are tuning out and turning off.

Make It Stop! Crushed by Too Many E-Mails

I hadn't heard of email free friday's before. It's not a bad idea....but why just one day?

Search engine optimization tips from Google's Cutts

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 15:43:25 +0000

USA today has an pretty good overview of some of the things that websites can do to improve their search engine visibility.

USATODAY.com - Achieving visibility in Google's search rankings can be a mystery. To help solve the riddle, USA TODAY sat down with Google's Matt Cutts, an engineer and active blogger, who has five easy tips on how to "optimize" your site so Google and the rest of the world can find it.

Google's Cutts: Good directions drive traffic to your website (USATODAY.com)

It's interesting that number 4 on the list is to create a blog and post often.

Slate on how we read online

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 15:38:22 +0000

Slate has an interesting article on how we read text online. If you've never read anything about this interesting topic (or even if you have) this is a good primer.

How we read online.

It's interesting that he mentions that Jakob Neilson (a web usability guru who I sometimes agree with) doesn't like blogging. I hate the name "blogging" but I've found that it is a viable information distribution mechanism and is probably here to stay (but can we agree on another name for it...please).

Very handy anti-spyware application included with Google Pack

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 15:51:24 +0000

Since it's release i've been doubtful that Google's package of software applications (Google Pack....which is for Windows only) has anything worthwhile. All of the applications are available seperately so I didn't see the point.

I still don't see the point but while researching how to remove a particularly stubborn piece of adware (a trojan downloader) I stubled accross the special version of Spyware Doctor which is included in Google's Pack. Yahoo's adware/spyware product (which is really Computer Associates adware product) included with their toolbar found the dowloader and said it removed it but the downloader was still there.

I downloaded Google's Pack installer and selected to only install Spyware Doctor (which seems like a limited/special version). I then ran a scan and it detected a removed the trojan.

Spyware Doctor also includes some sort of real time scanning that I haven't had time to fully evaluate. If you have adware/spyware issues I recommended that you give Google Pack and Spyware Doctor a try.

Good tips on RSS Reading

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 16:45:53 +0000

The Read/Write blog has a good piece on RSS reading that is worth checking out. One thing I don't really agree with the the whole river of news view that many RSS readers offer. I like my RSS feeds broken down into channels so that I can easily see the source of what I'm reading.

Some feed readers require that you click through all of one feed's items at a time. Others allow you to see whatever individual items are most recent, regardless of what source feed they came from. This is the prefered method of most news bloggers - but it could serve you well too.

There's no way to read every item in every feed you've subscribed to, so after reading what's most important - try switching to what's most recent!

Try reading those items in order of appearance, until you don't want to read them any more. Then stop. Maybe mark all as ready, maybe don't worry about it. Life's too short to worry about it, aren't you glad you read what you were able to find the time to read?
Seven Tips for Making the Most of Your RSS Reader

I think that eventually RSS readers will evolve into information collection and display applications but that's a subject for another post.

App Engine sounds cool but...no PHP initially

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 16:09:49 +0000

Google's App Engine sounds like a great way to deploy highly scalable web applications. Initially, however, you can only use Python to develop the applications.

One current limitation is a requirement that applications be written in Python, a popular scripting language for building modern web apps (Ruby and PHP are among others widely used). Google says that Python is just the first supported language, and that the entire infrastructure is designed to be language neutral. Googleâs initial focus on Python makes sense because they use Python internally as their scripting language (and they hired Python creator Guido van Rossum in 2005).

Google Jumps Head First Into Web Services With Google App Engine

It will be interesting to see if Google does allow App Engine to use PHP or Ruby. I'm not sure but I would guess that both are more widely used for web applications than Python.

Web based email being blocked by realtime black hole lists

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 14:09:46 +0000

It seems that several of the large web based email services are being blocked by realtime blackhole lists. This article only mentions gmail but I've noticed it with Yahoo! mail as well.

Over the past month, major anti-spam vendors have had to apply scrutiny to Gmail in a way they haven't had to before, and the result is reduced delivery performance and sometimes outright blocking of Gmail.

Read More...

Gmail being throttled, blocked by some anti-spam vendors

I've had to make adjustments to mail servers to allow legitimate mail to pass but a larger volume of spam is passed as well.

Should Mac Users Run Antivirus Software?

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 14:45:04 +0000

I can't tell you how often I get this question. Matter of fact I just told someone last week that they didn't need to get any antivirus software for their new MacBook.

adamengst sends in an article from TidBITS in which Macintosh security expert Rich Mogull explains why he doesn't use antivirus software on the Mac, and why most Mac users shouldn't bother with it either. The article also touches on the question of when an increasing Mac market share might tip it over an inflection point into more active attention from malware writers. (Last month Apple had 14% of PC sales, but 25% of dollar value.)
Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Should Mac Users Run Antivirus Software?

Most computer users are at greater risk of adware/spyware infections than viral infections anyway (many viral infections are trojans downloaders which are a huge problem). No matter what operating system you use or what browser you use the best defensive action you can take is to pay attention to what is actually going on. Many adware/spyware installers will trick you into installing them and then you'll be trying to get rid of them (sometimes successfully) for days.

At this point Mac users don't have to worry much about these adware installer but as the Mac OS increases marketshare and user base it will impossible for the bad guys to ignore.

The REAL Reason We Use Linux

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 18:25:21 +0000

Describing any operating system as fun may seem an odd thing for those not enamoured with technology. However, Linux is fun because of the huge amount of customization that is possible.

Vlad Dolezal writes "We tell people we use Linux because it's secure. Or because it's free, because it's customizable, because it has excellent community support... But all of that is just marketing BS. We tell that to non-Linux users because they wouldn't understand the REAL reason." The answer to his question probably won't surprise you.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The REAL Reason We Use Linux

I feel that once a programmer becomes familiar with the Linux/Unix environment that the constraints of other environments become painful.

Metadata is what?

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 15:12:40 +0000

On a few occasions when discussing search engine optimization with clients I've mentioned the fact that I think page title and page heading are metadata. "Metadata being what?" is typically the response I get. Then I try to define metadata without using the word "data." Try it...it's hard. When I read this quote today I realized I had been approaching the description from the wrong angle:

On the general concept of metadata, Steve Yegge: "Metadata is any kind of description or model of something else. The comments in your code are just a a natural-language description of the computation. What makes metadata meta-data is that it's not strictly necessary. If I have a dog with some pedigree paperwork, and I lose the paperwork, I still have a perfectly valid dog."

Woof!

Quote of the Month

Additional types of metadata will be used by search engines and other information aggregators in the future to improve search results. Google already uses metadata (page titles and page headings) to help improve search results. Metadata like geocoding will allow search engines to group search results around an area (Google already does this with Google Local but I'm not exactly sure how they get their geographic information, I think they are creating their own metadata by examining a postal or mailing address on the site).

Digital Elite?

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 18:51:40 +0000

Interesting post on Read/Write web about how the information economy is making certain employees in business very hard (and expensive) to replace.

But still, it is now becoming more costly for the companies. Because of the increasing amount of information processing done by individuals and the uniqueness of each, getting replacements up to speed is more costly. Retaining and motivating the digital elite should be recognized as a high priority for any company.

Are YOU Replaceable?

I'm not sure I agree with the digital elite moniker but it's a good read. Another unintended consequence of the information technology revolution?

What is web design?

Wed, 21 Nov 2007 20:54:00 +0000

What makes a web site good. You know it when you see it but it is very hard to relate to other people. Jeffery Zeldman has a great piece on web design that everyone should read.

His attempt to define web design:

Web design is the creation of digital environments that facilitate and encourage human activity; reflect or adapt to individual voices and content; and change gracefully over time while always retaining their identity.

Understanding web design

Is one of the best I've heard. He also compares web design to typography and architecture with great effectiveness.

I especially like the part about chaning gracefully over time. This one fact is why content management systems are becoming so important to the web development process.

Intel's Penryn Processors

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 18:54:22 +0000

Today Intel released a slew of new processors that take advantage of a new more-efficient 45nm manufacturing process. The specs for these chips are pretty impressive. The 45nm process along with increased level 2 cache, new SSE4 instructions (instructions for operating on multiple items of data at the same time), and faster front side bus (among other improvements over previous chips) will make for some substantial performance gains over current 65nm chips (less power usage and cooler operation are also important).

Virtualization is one area where these chips should really be beneficial:

One of the key goals of Penryn was to improve virtual machine transition timesâthat is, the time it takes to enter and exit a VM. The net result is a 25-75% improvement in entry/exit times. This is all completely transparent, and requires no change in the VM software itself.

Penryn Arrives: Core 2 Extreme QX9650 Review

Intel is making some great chips lately...it will be difficult for AMD to stay competitive unless they respond quickly.

The last 10%

Sun, 28 Oct 2007 23:04:27 +0000

I just read an interesting post on Sweating the small stuff by one of the developers of Jottit.

Even though Jotit does not use any fancy Ajax techniques any developer who has done cross browser web application development will understand (and feel the pain) of this quote:

And when you start sweating the small stuff, it's frankly incredible just how much of it there is. Even our trivial site is made up of over two dozen different screens. Each one of those screens has to be designed to look and work just right on a wide variety of browsers, with a wide variety of text in them.

In my experience the last 10% of effort are what make applications a pleasure to use .

Google Finance API

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 14:36:11 +0000

Google's finance API looks interesting. Unfortunately it can only be used on Google's properties. I'm sure the providers of this data have some sort of terms of use that prevent Google from making the data available on all sites.

Second, if you're a gadget developer, we've made it a lot easier to make a gadget with market data. We're releasing a gadget API for market data which provides a framework for developers to display stock market information from the American, Nasdaq and New York stock exchanges within a gadget on Google properties. We believe this is the first free gadget API for market data for developers and hope you have fun with it.

API, gadgets, and tabs, oh my!

The API really has only has 1 method that gets financial data (as well as an alternative version that gets quotes for an array of stocks).

Software is hard

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 00:15:00 +0000

This is a great read for anyone who has done any software development. There are some great quotes spinkled throughout.

Talking about a software development schedule more than a year out is like talking about where we go after we die. Everyone has some idea where we'll end up, but those ideas differ wildly, and there's a lack of solid evidence to support any of them.

Software is Hard

OS X SSH dropping the connection to the server?

Sat, 15 Sep 2007 17:33:28 +0000

I upgraded to a new router about 6 months ago and since then my ssh sessions would timeout after about 10 minutes of inactivity with the message:

Read from remote host xxx.com : Operation timed out

I did a little research and it turns out that others have had this problem with some routers. The fix involves changing the ClientAliveInterval setting in the sshd configuration file. Read about it here.

How to remove lots of files in a directory (Linux)

Fri, 14 Sep 2007 23:17:31 +0000

SpamAssasin uses a directory to store messages that it thinks are spam. After awhile this directory will be full of thousands (depending on the traffic through your mail server) of files. When I tried to delete these files using the command rm * -f I got the message:

too many arguments

I was able to get around this error by using:

ls | xargs rm

The reason this works is because, well that's what xargs was designed to do (quoting from Linux in a Nutshell):

Execute command (with any initial arguments), but read remaining arguments from standard input instead of specifying them directly. xargs passes these arguments in several bundles to command, allowing command to process more arguments than it could normally handle at once. The arguments are typically a long list of filenames (generated by ls or find, for example) that get passed to xargs via a pipe.

This has come in handy a few times.