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October 31, 2002
Earthquake
Earthquake in Italy: Many children buried by the earthquake in Italy..It seems a lot closer when you have just had an Italien guest.
Posted by Matthew at 09:50 PM | Comments (0)
Tux-Pan
Linux Pan: Berndes are offering a Tux-Pan. Limited Edition. They are showing their appreciation for Linux (which now runs most of their network) and 5 Euros go to the FSF. What a great idea.
Posted by Matthew at 09:29 PM | Comments (0)
iBook takes over: Moved my
iBook takes over: Moved my weblog over to my iBook for the long weekend. Hopefully this works as designed :). I have to remember that WYSIWYG editing is not supported on OSX IE.
Posted by Matthew at 09:26 PM | Comments (0)
Blogiquette
Blogiquette: Read this and then the comments. At first I thought the same thing as the first person to comment. Then it clicked. It just shows that you do need to be careful choosing what you write. Remember - the world is (may be) reading.
News.OSDir.com: My favorite Canadian has started an open source news site.
Posted by Matthew at 03:41 PM | Comments (0)
GetTogether filling up: Over 70 attendees for
GetTogether filling up: Over 70 attendees for the Outerthought Cocoon gettogether. Registration closes on the 11th of November.
Posted by Matthew at 01:54 PM | Comments (0)
Stormy times: Still not yet
Stormy times: Still not yet back to regular order in the worst-hit storm areas in the UK:
The money machines didn't work either of course.You had to actually enter a bank to get money. Using cash again, instead of plastic was a sobering moment for many as well:-) [via Mum]
Posted by Matthew at 11:55 AM | Comments (0)
Off to Munich
Going away: Today is my last day at work this week before heading down to Munich on Sunday for the W-Jax conference. Hopefully I will be able to update my weblog from there - but WLAN is still not that common at conferences here. So expect sporadic - at best - updates next week.
Posted by Matthew at 10:54 AM | Comments (0)
October 30, 2002
Chicago, Chicago: Frank is preparing
Chicago, Chicago: Frank is preparing his trip to windy city. My sister, who lives in Detroit, reports freezing weather heading that way. Pack some warm clothes Frank!
Posted by Matthew at 05:00 PM | Comments (0)
New book: I received my
New book: I received my copy of the new Cocoon book today. It will be interesting to see the differences to ours...
Posted by Matthew at 04:56 PM | Comments (0)
Moving Cocoon
Moving Cocoon: Something Stefano discussed with us has now made its way onto the list. The plan is to make Cocoon a proper Apache project.
Posted by Matthew at 04:45 PM | Comments (0)
Jacquies Rant Page: "hurray for
Jacquies Rant Page: "hurray for hot water"
Posted by Matthew at 02:51 PM | Comments (0)
The visit
The visit. On Sunday, Stefano Mazzocchi came to visit us here in Paderborn and we had a great time showing him around the computer museum, eating some food (and helping the German beer industry) in one of the local restaurants and talking about Cocoon, open source in general and the price of German trains. On Monday Stefano was kind enough to give a presententation on Cocoon here at S&N and afterwards Carsten and Stefano dug into "blocks". The new new thing coming to Cocoon - "real soon" now. Or so they say.
Actually, Stefano was lucky to get here. Shortly after he arrived, all train services in the region ground to a halt because of the storm.
Posted by Matthew at 02:49 PM | Comments (0)
October 29, 2002
Wardriving
Wardriving in Paderborn: There was a large article on wardriving in the local paper at the weekend. A small company made themselves instantly famous by driving round Paderborn finding open wireless nodes. duh. Actually they took a lawyer with them just to show how lawful they were being. duh. And they are so on the bleeding edge. It makes you sick. Ah well - I didn't take a lawyer with me.
Back Online: Mum is blogging again now that power has returned to her part of the world.
Posted by Matthew at 10:50 AM | Comments (0)
October 28, 2002
Stormy
The day after: The storm that has rocked central Europe has passed this area. Wild days and nights. I have never seen so many uprooted trees before. My journey on bike to work was more like a slalom race. Mum reported (by phone) on electricity outages in her part of the world.
Posted by Matthew at 08:03 AM | Comments (0)
October 25, 2002
Friday Roundup
Blogging book: Dominic notices the blogging book by Biz. My claim to fame is having being one of the two tech editors on the book. So you should buy it :-)
Outliner: Yesterday I downloaded the OmniOutliner to test drive. I understand that the trial version is limited - but 20 items - come on - that's way too few to do anything serious with. I was going to use it to plan one of my presentations for W-Jax. Today I used good old Powerpoint. Why is there no outliner in there?
Presantations: We submitted 4 presentations for W-Jax and they accepted them all. Now it's only a little over a week away - but finally I have my 3 finished: "REST", "Weblogs" and "The hitchhikers guide to web services". All in German.
Posted by Matthew at 05:20 PM | Comments (0)
October 23, 2002
PIM's away!
Open Source Mitch: I have now started to follow what is going on over here. Very interesting.....Will an open source PIM stand a chance competing against Outlook etc.? I think it may - if they get it right. One of the major advantages of an open source project like this is the ability to integrate new technologies a lot quicker than other products can. At least in theory.
Posted by Matthew at 05:02 PM | Comments (0)
Review
Review: Always good to read a review of our book - not sure about this though. Seems a little.....strange.
Posted by Matthew at 12:09 PM | Comments (0)
Cocoon vs. Microsoft
Cocoon vs. Microsoft: An interesting article on building real-world solutions with Cocoon is evloving over here.
Posted by Matthew at 10:30 AM | Comments (1)
October 18, 2002
JSR168
Portlet JSR: Dominic wonders about the status of the portlet JSR. It is now numbered 168. My well-informed contacts tell me that it will go into community review next month. We will be looking at it closely for integration into the Cocoon portal as soon as anything becomes public.
Posted by Matthew at 05:13 PM | Comments (0)
Mainstream: As Nico notes, weblogging
Mainstream: As Nico notes, weblogging is becoming mainstream. My godchild Leonie also has a weblog! Welcome.
Posted by Matthew at 12:08 PM | Comments (0)
Cocoon portal
Cocoon insight: Dominic is looking for some insight into building Cocoon portals. Here we go. If I read his notes right he wants to build a portal that aggregates RSS feeds. Right? Ok, so here is what you will need to do:
- Install the current Cocoon version (with the portal)
- Configure a pipeline to fetch the RSS (notice I did not say "program")
- Use the provided tools to add the feed as a coplet (portlet)
- Use the provided tools to configure your portal (for say different user groups)
- Change the Stylesheet (XSL) that displays the portal (if you want a different look and feel - and you will).
That's it. There is already a demo portal contained in Cocoon and this demo portal already fetches RSS feeds from various places - so this can be used as a template. You will not need to write any code! You may also like to take a look at this presentation. Or this article.
Posted by Matthew at 09:56 AM | Comments (0)
Adobe again: Tony Collen has
Adobe again: Tony Collen has added some information to yesterday's posting on Adobe offering new products.
Posted by Matthew at 08:53 AM | Comments (0)
Orange juice
Take the test: Introducing the web service orange juice test.
Posted by Matthew at 08:44 AM | Comments (0)
October 17, 2002
Mums blog
And off she goes. My Mum, who is a young 60-something, has a weblog! Welcome!
Posted by Matthew at 04:21 PM | Comments (0)
Cool: Some people just have
Cool: Some people just have cool jobs. Great pics from the ice!!
Posted by Matthew at 01:45 PM | Comments (0)
Jetspeed wins? Dominic wants to
Jetspeed wins? Dominic wants to use Jetspeed to build his RSS portal. I don't think the current version of Jetspeed supports Cocoon any more Dominic. And a shame you couldn't decide to use the Cocoon portal. I would be interested in hearing why.
Posted by Matthew at 12:06 PM | Comments (0)
Cocoon special
Cocoon Special: The new print issue of the German magazine "XML & Web Services Magazin" contains a Cocoon special. In 2 articles (a total of 11 pages) Carsten and I detail the authentication and portal framework in Cocoon.
Posted by Matthew at 11:32 AM | Comments (0)
Adobe goes PDF
Putting the pressure on: MUM - have you started your weblog yet???? Why not??? :).
Adobe goes PDF: I read this morning on Heise (German) about Adobe introducing a new range of products "for big business". Looks like they will be bringing out a "Forms Server", an "Output Server", a "Workflow Server" and a "Document Server" - all designed to make PDF ubiquitous. And each server with a separate price tag I would assume. If I didn't know better - from the limited description - I would say they could be using Cocoon (or a Cocoon based solution) for all that.
Posted by Matthew at 09:15 AM | Comments (0)
October 16, 2002
Cluetrain 96
Cluetrain Thesis nr. 96: On Microsoft pulling their switch ad:
"Beware the internet. We fact check your ass." [Ben].
Posted by Matthew at 04:23 PM | Comments (0)
Another WS definition
Web Service definition: I am musing over a presentation on web services for an upcoming conference and I wanted to start off with a simple definition of a web service that will be expanded on in the presentation. What do you think of this:
I am a web service if...
- You can ask me what I am capable of
- You can ask me for a description of myself
- I can understand you - regardless of your mother tongue
- You can find out where I am
- You can get to me
The answers then being (respectively): WSDL, XML Schema, SOAP, WSIL/UDDI, HTTP. And yes I do know that there is a lot more to a WS than just these points. That's the point of the presentation :).
Posted by Matthew at 01:55 PM | Comments (0)
Happy Birthday Christopher! 8 today.
Happy Birthday Christopher! 8 today.
Posted by Matthew at 10:00 AM | Comments (0)
Will the real HP please stand up
HP or not HP: A 16 year old German boy has received a nice letter from Hewlett Packard. The boy runs the German website HP-World.de. He offers turorials and information on building your own homepage (HP). Now HP doesn't seem to like this and as kindly asked the young boy to give up the domain. [via Heise]
Actually there was absolutely no kindness about the whole thing. HP got a lawer to write the letter. Now that lawer wants the 16 year old to give up the domain and pay expenses: 1151 €. The 16 year old has already provided a redirect to the HPWorld.com site.
This sort of thing is currently happening a lot here in Germany - with whole gangs of lawyers writing nasty letters if they think your domain conflicts with any trademark etc.
Posted by Matthew at 09:55 AM | Comments (0)
Open Source and contracting
Open Source and contracting work: Ovidiu comments on my remarks from yesterday and provides an insight into the state of things in San Francisco.
Disturbing news. Germany is always behind the US on IT cycles and so one can assume that the amount of contracting work will drop even further here in the next few years. Many German companies are already scaling back on the number of external consultants they have. After all they need to feed their own first. Ovidiu also says:
And a great opportunity for companies that can provide open-source services. Introducing open-source to companies that have traditionally had everything tailor-made for them is an interesting (to say the least) experience. I think one of the largest impacts is the way the role of supplier and customer is altered. It is my experience that once a company has decided to go the open-source way then this relationship changes to become a more level affair. And this is really necessary. Markets are conversations (to really beat a cliché). And they work both ways. More here. |
Posted by Matthew at 09:03 AM | Comments (0)
October 15, 2002
Cocoon and more
Ask Dad: Frank points to this. I need more...PLEASE!
German book: Our 2nd book this year is available for pre-order on Amazon.de. Carsten and I contributed the chapter on Cocoon.
Speaking of Cocoon: A thread has started here on porting Cocoon to .Net.
Posted by Matthew at 02:17 PM | Comments (0)
Open Source: Busy this week,
Open Source: Busy this week, but took some time to read through this (thanks Steven). The most interesting quote is this:
Internet communications and Open Source is changing all the software engineering processes, like the press changed th intellectual production processes a while ago. Pure in-house or contracted developments are disapearing from the market, and integration on top of Open Source is leading/will lead the way in the future.
I am not surre that contracted development is disapearing, but there is certainly more emphasis being put on integration using open source. Which suits me fine. Because that is what we do.
Posted by Matthew at 02:06 PM | Comments (0)
October 14, 2002
Moving on
Christopher says: My son, who will turn 8 on Wednesday, said this morning: "Turning 8 means I'm half-way through childhood".
Posted by Matthew at 11:46 AM | Comments (0)
October 11, 2002
Errors - what errors? There
Errors - what errors? There is now an errata page online for the Cocoon book.
Posted by Matthew at 01:30 PM | Comments (0)
This page contains known errata
This page contains known errata from the first printing of the book. If you have anything to add then please send me an email.
Page 77, Listing 4.7
The entry for the file generator in the <map:generators> section of the sitemap should read:
<map:generator name="file" ...>
The same is true on pages 81, 82 Listings 4.9, 4.10, 4.11
Page 112, Listing 4.37
The pipeline fragment showing the resource-exists action contains an error. Here is the correct version - the change is in the src of the generator nested inside the resource-exists action:
<map:act type="resource-exists">
<map:parameter name="url" value="{1}.xml"/>
<!-- It's available -->
<map:generate src="{../1}.xml"/>
...
</map:act>
Page 117/118, Listing 4.43
The pipeline fragment for the download server contains an error. Here is the correct version - the change is in the src of the reader nested inside the resource-exists action:
<map:act type="resource-exists">
<map:parameter name="url" value="download/{file}"/>
<map:read src="download/{../file}"/>
</map:act>
Page 155, Figure 6.5
The first line should read:
<map:action-set name="myactionset">
And in the second box, typographic quotation marks are used instead of ".
Page 214, Listing 8.4
The first finally clause in the listing should read:
finally {
selector.release( generator );
}
Page 249, Text
The paragraph should read (changes marked):
Cocoon already provides some abstract classes from which your little action can inherit:
AbstractAction and the ComposerAction. AbstractAction already implements the Loggable interface. ComposerAction extends AbstractAction by also implementing the Composable interface.Page 278, Listing 9.17
The recycle() method should contain an additional super.recycle() as the last statement.
Page 300, Text
The last sentence should read:
<?xml-logicsheet href="logicsheet.xsl"?>
Posted by Matthew at 12:35 PM | Comments (0)
October 10, 2002
The Scobleizer Weblog: "Oh, great,
The Scobleizer Weblog: "Oh, great, I found out that Shelly, our PR godess, reads my weblog. I guess I can't talk about her now, huh?". My boss reads mine.........
Posted by Matthew at 11:42 AM | Comments (0)
Clogging
Clogging: Robert Scoble notices my Clogging article and starts the clog: protocol. (Thanks Frank).
Update: Expanded the theme.
Posted by Matthew at 11:41 AM | Comments (0)
October 09, 2002
New Book
New book: Now we can make it official. Carsten and I have contributed to a German book centered around Apache frameworks (including Cocoon)!!
Posted by Matthew at 12:25 PM | Comments (0)
Humor
Barney not found: Check out this MS knowledge base article and this one for a fun start to your day. (via Mark)
Posted by Matthew at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)
Desktop RSS aggregator: Ugo is
Desktop RSS aggregator: Ugo is looking for an RSS aggregator that can run on his desktop.
I want to have a single news aggregator for all the sites I routinely read, not just Java blogs, and I want it on my desktop or at least on a server very near me.
There are plenty around Ugo: NetNewsWire on the Mac, AmphetaDesk on various platforms, of course Radio also has an aggregator as well.
Posted by Matthew at 09:22 AM | Comments (0)
Belgium focus: Steven expands on
Belgium focus: Steven expands on why he is getting involved in the FOSSBEL initiative
I'm involved in this thing to represent the more liberal BSD-/Apache-style open source developers...
Go for it.
Posted by Matthew at 08:59 AM | Comments (0)
RSS Portal
RSS Portal: Dominic is looking at Cocoon as a way of building an RSS portal. Dominic, the current 2.1-dev version of Cocoon contains everything you need. The demo portal included already aggregates RSS feeds. Bing.
Posted by Matthew at 08:55 AM | Comments (1)
Clogging
Calendar Blogging: Clogging. Worship my dentist appointment.
Posted by Matthew at 08:51 AM | Comments (0)
October 08, 2002
Belgian Waffles
No lobby? On my O'Reilly weblog I talked about there being no real lobby for open source software outside the "Linux arena". Seems as though the Belgians are ahead of us here. (via Steven). I will be interested to see how their discussion on "Free Software" vs. "Open Source" goes. The initiative points to this document and this is stated on their web site:
I personally prefer the term "Free Software". The URL I refer to, describes and lists what is and what is not Free Software, as defined by the FSF.
That referred document has this to say about the Apache licence:
This is a permissive non-copyleft free software license with a few requirements that render it incompatible with the GNU GPL.
We urge you not to use the Apache licenses for software you write. However, there is no reason to avoid running programs that have been released under this license, such as Apache.
So that would seem to currently rule out Apache software for thís Belgian initiative (if you are interested in doing more than just "running" the program). Why does this discussion always surface? It does more harm to the community than it benefits. Especially when we are talking about making open source a success in a commercial environment. Remember those commercial entities you are trying to woo (and compete against) will be watching discussions like that like hawks. Do it right. Please..
Posted by Matthew at 12:18 PM | Comments (0)
Spam - sort of: I've just
Spam - sort of: I've just received the October and November issue of Dr Dobbs in the mail. Why? I haven't filled out any subscription, so I assume it's just advertising. Or is someone trying to tell me something...own up now!
Posted by Matthew at 11:32 AM | Comments (0)
Trinidad calling - and more
Trinidad calling: Dominic Da Silva is reading the Cocoon book. He also lists my weblog in his links. Added.
iCal community: Lots of iCal calenders are being shared around the net - like here. I have been meaning to make up a "MattCal" and provide it for download. The calender would contain dates and stuff I think are interesting and of course any "public appearances" :). Ok, so I get carried away - sometimes.
Show me the money: Microsoft readies new products. Including the Content Mangement Server 2002, which will retail "for $42,000 per processor". (via Dave)
T-Commerce: Doc points to an interesting article from Rickard Linde on "Transparent Commerce" (T-Commerce). Just one quote from it:
You know you've succeded when your customers run the company
A lot of what Rickard writes about comes by "applied cluetrain" tactics. Weblogs are only the beginning.
Posted by Matthew at 08:52 AM | Comments (0)
October 07, 2002
Frank surrenders. Frank makes the
Frank surrenders. Frank makes the switch over to Radio because of RSS. Instead of taking your laptop home, Frank - just backup the \www and the \Data Files directories. You can then put those onto the iBook into an installed version of Radio. Oh yes, that means you would need another licence.
Posted by Matthew at 01:31 PM | Comments (0)
Open Source Visibility
Open Source Visibility. After some time I finally got round to writing something for my other weblog.
Posted by Matthew at 09:09 AM | Comments (0)
October 04, 2002
(found on MacNews).
(found on MacNews).
Posted by Matthew at 12:23 PM | Comments (0)
came travelling
...came travelling: IRC'd with Steve last night. Now that I have DSL all these new applications are there waiting to be used. I've never been a fan of chat-applications before but perhaps this will change.
RSS: Articles on RSS here and here. (via Dave). Here is an interesting quote which fits in with what I am currently working on:
As for the future of RSS, developers are discovering new uses for the technology seemingly everyday. Yahoo is beta-testing a financial news feed. Web enthusiasts have recently figured out how to suck Amazon book titles and Google news headlines into news readers. And other developers are fiddling with ways to import calendar and weather content.
You a'int seen nothing yet....
Posted by Matthew at 09:34 AM | Comments (0)
October 02, 2002
Heli-mania
Heli-Flying: 412 (during lunch-break - boss :-)). Why is it that games like this are so addictive? (via Steven). Brings back good old VIC20 days!
Posted by Matthew at 04:00 PM | Comments (0)
Roadtripping
Look before you leap: Golden business trip rule #1 is to make sure you take the written hotel confirmation with you when you go on a trip. On Monday, I learnt Golden business trip rule #2: Make sure you are in the correct hotel before you show the confirmation at the desk. "Why yes sir, you do have a room confirmed, but not at this hotel". Duh.
Wireless Rules: Last night I connected my PC up to my wireless network at home via the D-Link USB adapter. Now, I can access my PC drive from the iBook via wireless. Great!
Posted by Matthew at 09:09 AM | Comments (0)