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November 30, 2003
Social Software - it's the network stupid!
The events of the past few days and the great responses I have received, brought back some thoughts I've had about the social impact of the Internet for a while now. Ok, so now the hype is to give the baby a name and call it "Social Software" - a software (or platform) that is capable of connecting people, basically. But step back for a moment.
The first time I realized that the Internet was a social network was back in 1996. Long before LinkedIn or Friendster. In June of that year my daughter was born and in order to allow my parents (who were living in the UK at the time) to see their granddaughter, I rushed out and bought a black-and-white hand-scanner and stuck the photos onto my homepage. 5 days later my father passed away - but thanks to the Internet he was able to see his granddaughter at least. The Internet allowed us to socially interconnect - even then.
Since then I have been fortunate enough to meet and become friends with many people around the globe - thanks to the Internet. Be it through email, irc or weblogs. So, when my mother was hospitalized earlier this year I knew I could contact Andrew and in the case that I would need someone close I could count on him. In just the same way Scott emailed me and offered to help out with things in Hamburg. All through the social power of the net. People from the US and Canada emailed me and people from France or Switzerland left comments. Friends.
So, it's not the software or the platform that gives the Internet it's social characteristic - it's the network itself - and the way we use it. So use it!.
Posted by Matthew at 09:33 PM | Comments (0)
Why play Coldplay?
It seems that everyone and his cat is using the opening bars of Coldplay's "In my Place" as background music nowadays. I hear it on the radio and on the TV. Why?
Posted by Matthew at 08:39 PM | Comments (0)
November 29, 2003
Famous last words
Last night I wrote the entry below this one. Little did I know that at about the same time my wife was being admitted to a hospital in Hamburg with a broken knee. So, now my stint as "Mr Mom" will not come to an end tomorrow as planned. It now looks as though I have a few more weeks ahead of me. It's going to be an interesting experience. For all of us.
Posted by Matthew at 09:50 PM | Comments (4)
November 28, 2003
Day 3
Just a word of thanks to all those who have inquired about my well-being (you know who you are). Day 3 is nearly over and today went relatively smoothly. Not a lot on - just guitar lessons this afternoon followed by a large bribe of McDonalds and a DVD. No reports from teachers I need to react too and thankfully my wife left a plan of dates, times, locations and respective child (i.e. I knew it was my daughter I had to take to guitar lessons this afternoon at 14:45). Easy to get mixed up with 3. I'm joking Mum.
Posted by Matthew at 09:12 PM | Comments (1)
Business 2.0 for the rest of us
Interested in reading up on the latest nerd business news? Interested in what went on in O'Reilly's Camp Foo? Is Business2.0 your type of magazine?
Do you live in the US? Very good. Do you live outside the US (and Canada)? Then move along please. For someone in the US a subscription to Business 2.0 will set you back a whopping 4.99$. For that sum you get access to the website and 6 printed versions of the magazine thrown in.
But if you happen to live - say - in Europe then you'll have to fork out 59$ for a years subscription of the magazine. There is no option to just subscribe to the website. And this from a magazine that is "up there" with the nerds. Yeah right.
But we can do something - go here and add your signature!
Update: Added the link above to the 4.99$ subscription.
Posted by Matthew at 04:37 PM | Comments (3)
Links in my feeds
If you've subscribed to a "feed" version of this site and are missing the links inside the postings, then make sure you've subscribed to the RDF version. The RSS 2.0 feed doesn't supply the links - which is probably something that can be fixed. Note to self.
Posted by Matthew at 11:40 AM | Comments (0)
Evanescence weather
Dull, wet, dreary November morning. At last Evanescence have released "My Immortal" as a single here in Germany. Fitting.
Posted by Matthew at 08:20 AM | Comments (0)
November 27, 2003
Dark clouds over Germany
A couple of pieces of bad economic news here today. First off, the joint chip production plant, being built near Frankfurt/Oder by a group of investors including Intel, the Emirate of Dubai and the state of Brandenburg, looks as though it will not be completed. The investors have not provided enough of the calculated 1.3 billion Euros funding and the company formed for the purpose of building the plant will be liquidated. A blow to the region, with an estimated over 1000 new jobs not materializing.
Also today, another chapter in the never ending saga of the German toll collecting project. According to reports circulating, the toll collection "technology" will not be functional before August 2004 - at the earliest. However this date may not be relevant at all, as the German government can withdraw from the contract on the 15th of December - this year. That would leave Germany with a lot of non-functional toll-collecting bridges built over the autobahns. Due to the missing income (i.e. no "toll money") it now looks as though the German government will have to put many planned infrastructure projects on hold. This would include new roads due to be built for the Soccer WorldCup in 2006.
Posted by Matthew at 11:32 PM | Comments (0)
The "Good Enough" factor
I've written before that I'm a big fan of VentureBlog. At the moment various weblogs are pointing towards the article on Accelerating Acceleration. However, here is a related post that is also brings up an interesting point.
As the low end of any technology gets better and better, it eventually hits "good enough" and then that aspect of the technology no longer becomes a significant differentiating factor.
Look at how we now take the Internet for granted - it's become ubiquitous - and how that relates to say the mid 90's. In more recent times, "technology" such as XML and to some extent Web Services have been used to differentiate products - but now the technology is just "there". And no longer a "unique selling point".
The original example is that of mobile phones - where we have moved from choosing a model based on standby-time to asking ourselves what the resolution of the integrated camera is. Notice that already, we take it for granted that new phones have cameras. Compare that to how you viewed the mobile phone just a couple of years ago.
Posted by Matthew at 07:51 PM | Comments (0)
Happy Thanksgiving!
And don't eat too much turkey!
Posted by Matthew at 11:39 AM | Comments (0)
November 26, 2003
MobiCon - just a rumor!?
Now here's a rumor: O'Reilly is planning a conference on mobile related themes - MobiCon. How do I know? Because I noticed Rael Dornfest show up on #mobitopia this evening. I bet he's "scouting" the scene. :-). Stay tuned.
Posted by Matthew at 10:54 PM | Comments (0)
Survived Day 1
Ok, so we all survived the first day of me being in charge here (yeah right). Highlight of the afternoon was taking 3 small girls to horse-riding lessons. This resulted in my daughter deciding to give that up for the near future - but that has nothing to do with me, thankfully. Now if I was a horse that had to walk round in circles carrying small horse-mad children - I know what I would try and do. Escape.
Posted by Matthew at 10:47 PM | Comments (0)
Hidden gems
By chance - and due to an email with Andrew - I realized that OmniGraffle was bundled with my Powerbook. It's a great tool for whipping up really nice looking diagrams.
Posted by Matthew at 10:34 PM | Comments (0)
Expose on Windows?
I really like the Exposé functionality in Panther. Is there anything similar available for W2K (for my work pc)?
Posted by Matthew at 12:15 PM | Comments (7)
November 25, 2003
On my own
Ok, so tomorrow my wife takes off for a training that lasts until Sunday. Leaving me to work and take care of the kids in the afternoon and weekend. Now here's the thing: they are of an age that they have lots of different things on - riding, karate, .. and I need to get that all organized. My wife says: "That's what we do all the time - deal with it". Which is like the pilot of a 777 descending on New York in the fog, handing you the controls and saying - "That's what we do all the time - deal with it".
Posted by Matthew at 08:31 PM | Comments (0)
Nokia on Mobile Media
Russ has some comments on how Nokia sees the current state of the mobile market. It's really interesting that they are so interested in mobile weblogging. On the one hand naturally, because it's a selling point for camera phones (even though annotating the pictures is a pain) - but also because I would think that Nokia is looking forward to a time where SMS becomes obsolete. Funny that there isn't much (according to Google) in the way of SMS based blogs. Even though mobiles with cameras are hot sellers - SMS is still the killer app on mobile. But the hosting infrastructure (you would need an SMS gateway etc.) is more difficult to set up. Unless of course you're a mobile operator......
Posted by Matthew at 08:00 AM | Comments (0)
Michael goes weblog
Michael Jackson has started a website/weblog. At the moment it only contains press releases - and I fear it may stay that way. Regardless of the outcome of any trial, I'm sure people will want to hear Michael's own voice on the weblog and not that of some spin-doctor.
Posted by Matthew at 07:57 AM | Comments (0)
November 24, 2003
Community spirit
Sometimes, all it takes is an email like this one to sum it all up (especially the last paragraph). That's what makes the Cocoon community so special.
Posted by Matthew at 09:55 PM | Comments (1)
Photos and presentations from Vienna
Photos from the Cocoon Day that took place in Vienna last week can be found here. Spot me in 2 of them. You can also find the (English) presentations here.
Posted by Matthew at 08:35 PM | Comments (0)
November 23, 2003
The truth is out there
At last I have found a picture from ApacheCon showing that Carsten was there. Not easy to actually spot him.
Posted by Matthew at 08:59 PM | Comments (2)
November 22, 2003
Baker, baker
Armin has been bitten by the baking bug. Next on your list Armin should be Lardy Cake - unless you've tried that already. My father, a native of Swindon, often made this for us. Yummy,
Posted by Matthew at 09:19 PM | Comments (1)
Nemo - found!
Took the kids to the movies today. Finding Nemo. And yes - it has just come to the cinemas here in Germany (it's already out on DVD in the US). Anyway a fun film and recommended for the whole family. However I do think Bruce should have had a larger role :-).
Posted by Matthew at 09:13 PM | Comments (0)
Le Switch
Andrew is in the process of blooging his switching experience. I'm sure he won't regret it. On a side note - I have just upgraded our iBook and Powerbook to Panther - without any problems. The Mail application is certainly faster and Exposé is a great help. Apart from that I've not noticed much difference in my PB. My wife has noticed a speed up on the iBook though.
Posted by Matthew at 08:57 PM | Comments (0)
November 21, 2003
RSS Technician wanted
Yeah right - apply here. via Sam.
Posted by Matthew at 10:12 PM | Comments (0)
LinkedIn - missing link?
After spending some time sorting out my LinkedIn entry and working out what the site actually provides, I find that - although an interesting concept - there is at least one thing missing I would like:
Allow me to add a "I have an idea" type entry that then people within a certain number of connections can see and comment on. And then be able to search on that - as in "find people with ideas on Open Source within 3 connections from me" At the moment - and assuming I have this killer idea for the next new thing - I am forced to contact people individually - which somehow would put me off. Allowing people to find my idea would seem more in line with the social software meme.
Posted by Matthew at 08:29 PM | Comments (0)
November 20, 2003
Fly me to the sky
Now here's the thing. Those planes that fly you from here to there are expensive. Really expensive. Millions of dollars. So how come they can only afford PA systems that my son could build with his electronic hobby kit? The quality is terrible - and hopefully I'll never have to actually understand what the crew is trying to tell me.
Posted by Matthew at 04:20 PM | Comments (0)
November 18, 2003
Hello Vienna
Arrived in Vienna already. Getting up early is not my idea of fun. Now we are setting up everything for the Cocoon day.
Update: The first half is over and I did my Introducing Cocoon presentation. There are about 60 people here - a mixture of students and business people. A solid batch of presentations with little time for discussions which is a pity - but the attendants are getting a good compact overview.
Later: Winding down here in Vienna. Quite a few interesting presentations this afternoon: Flow, Cocoon portals, integration of SAP using Web3, WebDAV. In all there was a nice mix of theory and actual use cases being presented.
Posted by Matthew at 08:24 AM | Comments (0)
November 17, 2003
Vienna calling
Tomorrow I'm off to Vienna to speak at the Austrian Cocoon Day. I'll be doing the "introducing Cocoon" bit and also speaking on the portal. My flight leaves Dortmund at 6am and this means I need to get up at 3:15. Ugh. Hopefully there will be Wifi and I can blog some impressions. Last word is that there are over 70 people registered - which is a great turnout. Back Wednesday evening.
Posted by Matthew at 07:58 PM | Comments (0)
Socially speaking
So there I was with Frank having invited me into LinkedIn some time ago. I just didn't really look at this type of thing then. However I'm starting to read more and more about social software and figured it's something to look into. First step was to spam (and I apologize for that) some of my contacts already in LinkedIn and get them to "connect" to me. What happens is that the contacts get an email requesting them to do so - and the way that works smells slightly of spam. Anyway, at least some of them actually did so and this now increases the size of my network. Now what?
Posted by Matthew at 07:54 PM | Comments (0)
ApacheCon for the rest of us
In case you are not at ApacheCon (like moi) then tune into #apachecon on IRC. It makes you feel slightly "there" at least.
Posted by Matthew at 06:24 PM | Comments (0)
Miguel on the PDC
Miguel de Icaza writes up his thoughts on the Microsoft "Longhorn" PDC (via news.oreillynet.com).
Posted by Matthew at 03:56 PM | Comments (0)
November 16, 2003
Leaving Las Vegas (not yet)
Of course they are just arriving in Las Vegas for ApacheCon, but I couldn't think of a better title. Anyway, now it's my turn to be jealous as people like Carsten, Steven, Stefano, Ovidiu and Gianugo descend on Vegas for a week of Apache Goodness and ... well.. fun I suppose. Have fun guys and remember me if you strike lucky...please....pretty please....
Posted by Matthew at 08:57 PM | Comments (0)
Ironic history
Back from our weekend outing to Koblenz. Together with Frank and family and Holger and family we stayed in a youth-hostel inside the fortress of Ehrenbreitstein. A fortress looking down onto the Rhine and the city of Koblenz. Now the ironic thing about this fortress is that it cost the equivalent of around 6 million Euros to build and then....was never attacked. How ironic. Anyway - a super youth-hostel and well recommended also for families.
Posted by Matthew at 07:26 PM | Comments (0)
November 14, 2003
Long weekend
Getting ready for a long weekend loafing around away from the computer. Back on Sunday or Monday.
Posted by Matthew at 09:52 AM | Comments (0)
Linus receives subpoena
Linus receives a subpoena. Several Open Source / Free Software figures such as Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallmann have received subpoenas as part of the ongoing lawsuit between SCO and IBM. SCO is claiming that IBM contaminated Linux by illegally incorporating trade secrets inherited from Unix.
Posted by Matthew at 08:30 AM | Comments (0)
November 13, 2003
Making History and LOAF Interop
Bertrand remarks on the historic relevance of today's LOAF activities. He's quite correct. Today is the day you "had to be there". Just like the first moon landing, the first vote for a woman, the first Eurovision Song Contest or the first time two software components were able to communicate over the wire via web-services. The first results of the LOAF Interop tests are also in.
Posted by Matthew at 08:05 PM | Comments (0)
Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) using Cocoon
An article on EAI with Cocoon 2.1 on xml.com.
Posted by Matthew at 02:30 PM | Comments (0)
Open source site for portlet sharing
Several portal vendors have started a site to share portlets built on the JSR 168 specification.
Posted by Matthew at 01:51 PM | Comments (0)
We need LOAF!
In an unprecedented move that rocked the social software world today, several Internet gurus have released LOAF into the wild. Check here, here and here. It is expected that knowledge of LOAF will soon be requested on every IT CV. Already several tool vendors are reporting their support for LOAF in upcoming versions.
Update: Check here for an image showing just how ubiquitous LOAF already is. Check here for loads of LOAF links.
More Updates: A WordBasic LOAF is here.
Posted by Matthew at 11:31 AM | Comments (4)
T-Online in bid for AOL?
According to an article in today's German Süddeutsche Zeitung, T-Online is in talks with Time Warner to take over AOL. One model suggests that T-Online will take over 70 percent of AOL. The rest will remain with Time Warner. The asking price would seem to be around 1 billion dollars.
Posted by Matthew at 10:44 AM | Comments (0)
November 12, 2003
Going to Vienna
I'll be in Vienna next week and if you're interested in chatting about Cocoon, Weblogs, Wikis, Open Source in Europe or just life in general then drop me an email.
Posted by Matthew at 08:13 PM | Comments (0)
November 11, 2003
Pulling a Russ
We coined a new meme today on #mobitopia: "To pull a Russ". It refers to the moment when you are distracted away from really important stuff when some shiny (but unimportant) thing catches your eye.
Posted by Matthew at 08:56 PM | Comments (0)
You have mail
The Apache Geronimo project (or more exactly the ASF) received a letter from the lawyers of the JBoss Group PLC. The lawyers are asking the ASF to examine (and deal with) code similarities between the two projects. Regardless of whether the allegations are true or not - this first skirmish already shows what may be up the road.
Posted by Matthew at 03:05 PM | Comments (0)
November 10, 2003
ETech 2004 details
Information on the 2004 O'Reilly emerging tech conference is here. Plenty of interesting sessions and speakers. And what do you know - Russ is "featured" on the front page. Wow. Now you're famous Russ :-).
Posted by Matthew at 09:45 PM | Comments (1)
November 08, 2003
Erik goes Lucene
Erik officially mentions that he is writing a book on Lucene in Action. Sure to be a best-seller!
Posted by Matthew at 07:49 PM | Comments (0)
November 07, 2003
EuroSource launched
News and views (more of the latter) on the Open Source scene in Europe. Check it out.
Posted by Matthew at 11:35 PM | Comments (0)
Swiss Cocoon meetup
A gettogether of Cocoon fans located in Switzerland is being planned.
Posted by Matthew at 06:31 PM | Comments (0)
November 06, 2003
JSF Impressions - update
Well the first person to put me right on my JSF blog was Kito Mann, author of JSF in Action. Wow. He points out that there is a Grid Renderer in JSF that will do an HTML TABLE. Thanks for correcting that Kito.
Posted by Matthew at 09:43 PM | Comments (0)
JSF impressions
One of the interesting sessions I attended at W-Jax was one on Java Server Faces (JSF). From that presentation I have written up some comments below and would be interested in hearing additional ones - in case I got it all wrong (which of course would be the presenter's fault and not mine :-))
First off, JSF and Struts have a lot of overlap. It also seems that each EA (Early Access) version of JSF gets a little bit more like Struts. Seeing as how Craig Maclanahan is both the original author of Struts and the co-spec lead on JSF - this is not surprising. At the same time I've always asked myself the reasoning behind the design of JSF being so similar to that of Struts. And loads of other people are confused by this also. Even though there is a lot of information on this over on the Struts project, I still think there is a massive conflict of interest going on there.
Currently, JSF is at EA 4 - with there being signifcant changes beween each EA version. The guy doing the presentation stated that even migrating a simple application between EA versions is a time-consuming task. Also, it is interesting to note that the JSF expert group formed in May 2001. Sure doesn't look like they are really in a rush to get anything finished does it.
Ok, so enough on the more political side - what exactly does JSF get you? Let's take a look. The following is taken from the JSF page:
Put quite basically, JSF allows you to define layouts in your web pages in a generic way (such as using: "h:form" or "h:graphic_image" to define a form and image respectively ) and then have them rendered to HTML ("h" is the prefix for the HTML Renderkit taglib). Because the UI elements are mapped to corresponding Java classes, you do not need to put Java code into the actual web page (say a JSP) but you can delegate any necessary programming (for example accessing the session context) into separated Java classes instead. The JSF distribution comes with a set of standard classes for basic GUI elements that can be extended as needed. There is however currently no support for more complicated elements like say a TABLE. This means that you will either have to mix JSF tags with regular HTML or write the components that are missing yourself. There is also support for validation, with a standard set of components being provided, but you can also write your own.
JavaServer Faces technology includes:
A set of APIs for: representing UI components and managing their state, handling events and input validation, defining page navigation, and supporting internationalization and accessibility.
A JavaServer Pages (JSP) custom tag library for expressing a JavaServer Faces interface within a JSP page.
Here is an example showing the use of validation and also the mapping of the actual control content into a bean. validate_stringrange is a standard validator that is provided.
<h:input_text id="middleInitial" size="1" maxLength="1" valueRef="CustomerBean.middleInitial" >
<f:validate_stringrange minimum="A" maximum="z"/>
</h:input_text>
<h:output_errors clientId="middleInitial"/>
Navigation between pages is handled by configuring an XML file with details on when which page should be called. As I understand it, this is a default handling, meaning you can replace the NavigationHandler and control the flow in Java code (for example).
At the moment, JSF only includes a RenderKit (i.e. the rendering part) for HTML 4.01. No sign of multi-channel there at the moment. Even if there was a RenderKit for say XHTML - then I have no idea how you would be able to easily switch the renderer dependent on say the user agent.
Looking at JSF it's easy to see how say a toolkit vendor would like the approach as it would allow them to integrate JSF development into products like JBuilder. Define the JSF tag in your JSP, click on the tag and boom you're hacking Java code in the IDE.
Posted by Matthew at 03:59 PM | Comments (2)
November 05, 2003
SuSE and Novell
We heard about this yesterday as it became the "buzz" of the after-sessions party. Actually I was expecting Microsoft to buy SuSE - but that's a different story. Anyways,,,,I think Novell may be onto something. First Ximian - now SuSE.
Posted by Matthew at 09:13 PM | Comments (0)
Back from W-Jax
Just arrived back from W-Jax. There was no WiFI there, so I had no way of blogging or anything else Internet related. The conference was great though. 15 people attended the Cocoon Powerworkshop. Carsten's session on Avalon filled "da house" with over 60 people. My session on blogging and Wikis attracted 30 and Carsten's session on the Cocoon portal drew in over 20 people.
Posted by Matthew at 08:58 PM | Comments (0)
November 02, 2003
Cocoon Training
Sylvain points us to this Cocoon training offering. While I am all for there being more offers of Cocoon training - I was surprised to find the contents of the training mirror our book exactly.
Posted by Matthew at 10:59 AM | Comments (0)
November 01, 2003
Bluejacking
Something to do next week :).
Posted by Matthew at 10:44 PM | Comments (1)
MobiBlogging Allerheiligen
Today is Allerheiligen here in Germany - a day of remembering loved ones that have passed away. If you happen to be catholic (my wife is) then you congregate on the local cemetery. I used the "outing" to mobiblog some pictures. I'm still getting used to this form of blogging. While I like the idea of being able to make pictures available instantly - I don't really think it is "blogging". You can't add links, commenting is difficult - to impossible (even with T9) - so a short title is all I can manage. More like an instant album.
Posted by Matthew at 10:08 PM | Comments (0)