Angus Thinks…

The people at 280 North have released the The Cappuccino framework as open source. The Cappuccino framework is the system that powers the 280 slides web app, which is sort of Keynote in a browser.

I’ve been playing around with the framework today a bit and it looks really great. The interesting thing is how many AppKit features have made it across. It wasn’t hard to modify the sample app to use a CPURLConnection object to fetch data asynchronously and then display it in a suitable text view.

My test app for this btw was an ajax clock. I built a simple php script that displays the output of the php date method and then used ajax calls to update the clock in the browser. It’s not exactly useful but it worked really quite nicely and the coding is relatively easy too.

I’m now wondering what else can be built using these tools, because it seems a really nice way of doing web apps (if you have a desktop software background)

I’m very impressed.

It’s been a little while since I wrote about the release of SQLEditor so it’s time to write about what’s been happening with SQLEditor since then.

SQLEditor 1.4.1.b2 (available now)

There is a new bug fix release of SQLEditor available in beta right now. If the “Check for beta versions” box in the preferences window is checked then you’ll get the offer of the upgrade to 1.4.1b2.

This is a minor bug fix release that fixes a few bugs that have been reported since the 1.4 release

SQLEditor 1.4.1b3 (available soon)

This release is going to fix a stupid bug that makes the file type selection in the export as image box not work correctly. The file types got mixed up in the code so the labels don’t match the output. It missed the b2 release, but it will be corrected in beta 3

SQLEditor 1.5

This is the next big release of SQLEditor. It’s going to have an entirely new SQL parser (written in ANTLR 3) and a major rewrite of the codebase (which moves almost all of the Java code to C or Objective C)

The new parser replaces to the old Java based parser (written in Javacc) with a new one that runs entirely in C and Objective C. Although I have found JavaCC to be an excellent tool, this replacement reduces the amount of Java code in the application substantially.

Plugins

The new code will also offer a much better api for plugins. The current api, which isn’t public, is used for the Rails import and export, but it’s annoying to work with, because the architecture wasn’t really built for it. The new codebase is much better for writing plugins.

JDBC / JNI Library for Cocoa

SQLEditor 1.5 also uses a new Java JNI and JDBC library for Cocoa which I’m hoping to be able to make Open Source soon. It allows you to access a database using JDBC rather than ODBC. This may not be as efficient, but it’s much easier to install drivers. If you would like to try these new libraries in your own application please send me an email and I’ll send you some code to try out. The final libraries are probably going to be BSD licensed, but it’s still being worked out exactly how it will work.

Media Temple are running a beta programme for virtualized Mac OS X server hosting (Using Parallels Server)

This sounds really interesting, it would be nice to be able to rent a Mac OS X box and run services on it.

It might even be useful for things like running a build system or even as a testing server.

The question is how much will it cost. That isn’t entirely clear yet, apparently because they’re not entirely sure how much each instance will need in the way of resources.

How it compares to SliceHost and Bytemark will remain to be seen.

(It must surely be more expensive, but how much more?)

They spotted water on Mars!

Colonising now seems a step closer …

MarsPhoenix Twitter

(via Boing Boing)

Because I can never remember where this list is kept:

UK Film Distributors’ Association Film Release Schedule

George Lucas in Love

A parody on the origins of the star wars story…

Wired has an interesting article about Engineers without borders, a group that is trying to develop cheap technology solutions for developing parts of the world. The latest idea is a low cost wind turbine to generate electricity for lighting.
Best of all the design is intended to be produced by local manufacturers in the destination country, so it encourages local industry too.

Wired: Engineers Without Borders Bring Tech to Villages Without Power

I happened to come across this:

Chocolate Russian Roulette [cybercandy uk]

You get a tray with 12 pieces of chocolate. 11 of them are praline filled milk chocolate bullets, the 12 contains a real chilli pepper.

Work started on the new acid test almost as soon as the IE developer team posted notification that IE8 passes Acid2

Well, if you read the article and comments, it’s not perfectly correct. But it’s kind of funny as a quote.

CSSInfo

Since it wasn’t obvious to me where this document was, here is a link to a Microsoft page describing Windows XP services with descriptions.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/guidance/serversecurity/tcg/tcgch07n.mspx

There is also a similar document for Windows 2000

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb742605.aspx

Interesting blog post talking about how Adobe plans to improve Photoshop, which is obviously an application with a large number of very committed users.

John Nack is talking about task orientated user interfaces, which in theory is what Microsoft was trying to get to with clippy. Unfortunately since everyone seems to dispise clippy; Brushy the talking airbrush (signature quote: “Hey, pardner, looks you’re tryin’ to retouch a photo!”) is definitely NOT going to happen. (It’s just a joke in one of the comments).

John Nack on Adobe Photoshop: Photoshop, as seen through Johnny Cash

This looks really cool: IT World: Nissan adds a robot helper to its concept car

It’s a concept electric car which has a small robot on the dashboard that offers directions and tries to keep the driver cheerful.

Got a package this morning delivered by DHL and an interesting thing happened.

I recognised the delivery person and the delivery person recognised me. Which was nice.

I think they must work a particular route, because the same woman tends to deliver most of my (DHL) packages.

I get tired of filling in captcha fields on forms.

Wouldn’t it be handy if there was a facility in web browsers to fill them in automatically.

This says it all really.

(Though saying that there are still some smart shows on tv. I just wanted to link to that page)

I’ve been watching educational stuff on the internet recently.

One of the things that I really like is Google Tech Talks on Google Video.

These are talks given at Google on different subjects and many are now available online.

Amongst the really good ones I’ve seen:

• Inbox Zero - Merlin Mann - How to handle lots of email
  
• Everything is Miscellaneous - David Weinberger - tagging vs organization

(And there are lots of others, these are just ones I could find the links to easily!)

I’ve been reading stuff recently about creating native (non-java) mobile phone apps.

The key thing is application signing.

In an attempt to prevent viruses and malicious code from being run on mobile devices, the major platforms require that applications are signed using a cryptographic key before being distributed. The two platforms have different requirements, but this signing process is expensive and difficult in both cases.

Things range from really hard (if you have time and money) to almost impossible (if you lack either time or money).
Windows Mobile:

“I can’t emphasise enough, just how bad the current code-signing mechanisms are in WM5 / Smartphone”

[At WindowsMobile Team Blog]

Symbian

“Having your application, which you’ve slaved over and spent countless hours perfecting, stuck in the signing process for over a month is unacceptable.”
[At SymbianGuru]

Apple iPhone

Apple of course don’t publicly allow any 3rd apps to run on the iPhone. However by comparison it seems simplicity itself to run whatever you like using unofficial methods.

Java

Java application aren’t native. But to fully access all of the features without warnings requires a code signing certificate too.

Code Signing Certificates

Code signing certificates are very expensive. Often costing several hundred dollars. Which is ok if you charge several hundred dollars per copy, or you sell thousands of units. But it’s really bad if you charge nothing and give away the source code. It’s also bad if you are a very small company trying to sell relatively cheap software.

I think that if I own a device I should be able to do what I want with it (within the limit of the law).
Buying something and then being told that I can’t run my choice of applications on it seems really bad.
Charging people who want to give away stuff is bad too.

It looks like I won’t be buying Symbian for my next mobile phone.

I love the idea of the OpenMoko platform, an open source mobile phone. It uses linux as the operating system built on a fairly open hardware platform. (Some of the drivers are closed source, apparently due to licensing restrictions)

You can buy a developer unit right now, although the list of currently incomplete features should (rightly) discourage all but the most enthusiastic.

http://www.openmoko.com/

I think when the software is more complete that this could be a great mobile phone. The idea of having almost total control over the operation of a mobile phone seems like a very clever idea.

Some ideas that came to me:

• Use the onboard GPS to perform actions when in particular locations (automatically forward calls to my home number when I’m at home for instance, or automatically switch off the phone when I’m at the cinema. Possibly  use different answer phone messages when in different places)
• Simplified user interfaces with more active assistance for people who only want a basic phone
• A system that uses the location system to look up things on google maps. (like nearby restaurants that are open and have good reviews)
• games that use the physical location as part of the gameplay. (Like a treasure hunt maybe?)
• More advanced actions when people call (like bringing up events that they are connected with, or documents they’ve sent)

These are just some ideas I thought up as I was writing this, there are probably other better ideas around. Some of these ideas have been done, but I think that the openmoko scheme has a number of advantages over other hardware.
I really want one

Although I will probably wait until the software stabilises and they add a camera. The current plans include a new hardware revision in the Autumn (with wifi) and then more models next year.

I really hate the abbreviation “ICT”. Somehow every time I hear it I get slightly annoyed with it.

Fortunately it looks like other people don’t like it either.
ICT which stands for Information and Communication Technology is usually the phrase used by the public sector in the UK to talk about computers and telephones.

The good news though, is that Register readers don’t like it either. 88% of responders in a web poll wanted it banned. (57% said yes without conditions, 31% wanted it banned but with the condition of more Paris Hilton stories)

If I’m really lucky perhaps this abbreviation can be removed from usage altogether.

“I would argue that the fact that there are 100,000 people in China who are paid to play the boring parts of World of Warcraft is evidence of serious flaws in the game’s design.”

Brandon Berg
[link] (in the comments)

This is in response to an article condemning MMORPG gold farmers.