Webmonkey: Get Started With the Yahoo HTTP Geocoder API
Yahoo! User Interface Blog: Patterns for Designing a Reputation System and more at their Design Pattern Library.
Tag Archives: programming
Morning Exercise Video Watching
Douglas Adam’s Hyperland, via North Is Up.
Waxy.org: “The Machine that Changed the World
Must read history of the Internet
In Vanity Fair.
Building a DSL with Groovy and Spring
SpringSource: Spring Dynamic Language Support and a Groovy DSL.
Useful.
The Web is not an OS
Tim Bray: Not an OS:
…I: It’s About People Not Technology
…II: It’s About Information Not Technology
…III: It’s About Business Not Technology
…IV: Nobody Uses the OS Anyhow
…V: It’s Platforms That Matter
…VI: And Anyhow, It’s Not Like an OS
And previously Jeremy Zawodny: There is no Web Operating System (or WebOS):
…Computers need operating systems but networks don’t (not at the OSI layers I’m interested in, at least). A Web Operating System is a myth propagated by people who either don’t understand the Web, don’t understand operating systems, or both.
…The web is a marketplace of services, just like the “real world” is. Everyone is free to choose from all the available services when building or doing whatever it is they do. The web just happens to be a far more efficient marketplace than the real world for many things. And it happens to run on computers that each need an operating system.
…The web is open and decentralized. Everything is one click away. Remember that.
Mashups are not toys. They’re a good illustration of this point… a hint of the future.
Read both.
Aquamacs – I am home
If you like Emacs, and are looking for version that plays well in OS-X land, it looks like Aquamacs is what you want.
As an aside, following the instructions here, to download and install MIT Scheme, will get you ready to self study Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. Eli Bendersky blogged his effort to read the book.
If you’re concerned about learning Lisp to use Emacs, you don’t have to. But if you care to dip in, defmacro’s The Nature of Lisp is a good read.
If you’re looking for Python support, check out this write up (M-x run-python just worked out of the box – nice Aquamacs!).
There are many versions of Emacs available for OS-X beyond Aquamacs and the one that Apple bundles. You can find them on the EmacsWiki. The CarbonEmacsPackage is a popular choice, so is Emacs App. I’ll probably end up experimenting a bit with them both.
There is a great set of Emacs tutorials at IBM’s developerWorks.
Emacs’s Org-mode might be the answer to my note taking needs.
Beyond the Browser
Arpit Mathur, our Flash wiz at CIM, has posted a nifty summary of different approaches being taken to extend the browser’s capabilities to the desktop.
To the list, let me add a few more desktop development platforms, that are network leveraging:
Firefox, irregardless of Prism, is already a capable sometimes-connected desktop application environment (witness Songbird – an open source project I might dig into, because I am just unhappy with the state of current mp3 players). However, Prism sure does seem interesting and worth keeping an eye on.
And while Arpit did cover the Flash side of things (Air), I love contemplating Flex+Python or Flex+Java approaches. Bruce Eckel’s article in Artima on the subject maps to the way I think. There is a lot of re-use and maintenance problems you solve when you layer an application that way.
An earlier project I worked on was a communications application that utilized a Flash UI hosted in a C# application. It worked intriguingly well.
Top 3 resources for migrating to the latest Movable Type templates
I’m going to be migrating to the latest and greatest Movable Type templates soon and wanted to collect the best resources I could find. Here are three:
How to upgrade to Movable Type 4 full templates (MT4) – Robert Green’s DIY
Upgrading Your MT3 Templates to Movable Type 4.0 | Movable Type Docs
Movable Tweak: Movable Type 3 vs. Movable Type 4: A Modular Site Approach
(ah, I used ‘top n-number’ in a post!)
lang:groovy – extend your Spring app with scripting
The Spring Framework offers many ways to ease application development and maintenance, but one that gets my interest really going is its dynamic language support.
codehaus: Dynamic language beans in Spring
codehaus: Groovy and JMX
raible designs: Using Dynamic Languages with Spring with Rod Johnson and Guillaume LaForge
organic thoughts: Spring Meets Groovy!
“the 110 AC outlet”
There’s a good piece in the NYTimes on cloud computing for the uninitiated: Cloud Computing: So You Don’t Have to Stand Still
Traditional companies are also beginning to adapt their computing infrastructure to the cloud. Reuven Cohen is founder and chief technologist at Enomaly, a software firm in Etobicoke, Ontario, that helps companies do just that. While most of its clients are technology businesses, Mr. Cohen says Enomaly is working with a New York-based bank that uses cloud computing to develop and test applications. He says that another customer is a large media business that uses the cloud to process video.
He sees this kind of need-driven use as a “fundamental change in how we manage technology.”
In fact, cloud computing is poised to do for technology what the electrical grid did for power, says Nicholas Carr, author of “The Big Switch,” which compares the rise of the cloud to the rise of electric utilities. The electrical grid streamlined operations for companies; when every home had cheap power and outlets, “you had incredible innovation in how to put all that cheap power to use,” Mr. Carr says. He thinks that cloud computing will prompt a similar cycle over the next decade.
There are practical problems that could turn the cloud into a thunderhead. The technology is still emerging: Amazon’s Simple Storage Service (S3) went offline for a couple of hours in February.
Peter O’Kelly, an analyst at the Burton Group, a technology research firm, says he thinks that many established companies will not save money by moving to the cloud. And Alistair Croll, a partner at Bitcurrent, a consulting firm that specializes in Web and cloud technologies, says companies will not be able to put data willy-nilly into the cloud because of security concerns.
At the same time, Mr. Croll says the cloud is here to stay. “The Web has become the interface” for computing, “the 110 AC outlet,” he says. That is a fundamental shift that could power a new cycle of technological innovation.