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Tuesday, December 23, 2003 |
SlimBrowser - free tab browser add-on for IE. (SOURCE:Tabbed browser with popup killer via Jon Husband's Wirearchy)- Looks good, but I'd rather use Mozilla if I need a tabbed browser. Still, there are times when only IE Windows will do (because of bad IE specific code) and it's better to have a tabbed IE than the regular boring 'not to be enhanced until Longhorn' IE.
QUOTE SlimBrowser is a tabbed multiple-site browser. It incorporates a large collection of powerful features like built-in popup killer, skinned window frame, form filler, site group, quick-search, auto login, hidden sites, built-in commands and scripting, online translation, script error suppression, blacklist / whitelist filtering, URL Alias. It brings you convenient and comfortable browsing.
UNQUOTE [Roland Tanglao's Weblog] 
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Winamp 5.0.
This sounds coolio - can't wait to check it out. I'm getting more and mor einto my past, digging through my old archive s- setting up streaming MP3s - so folks can here what I USED to be - an electronic composer. Hopefully by tonight my Laszlo MP3 player will be propagated with my own music.
For now - here's a report on AOL's new WinAmp 5.0.... from Leonard Lin......
Winamp 5.0 is out now, and it kicks much ass. It's everything WinAMP 3 should have been. I'm really digging their media library. Does everything you'd think it should, and leaves the goddamn playlist alone. So, where's the rendezvous enabled mac version?
(Best of all, it really is 2+3 in the sense that it apparently supports old plugins (runs my Audioscrobbler plugin automagically) and supports WinAMP 2 and 3 skins. Kudos Nullsoft) [random($foo)] [Marc's Voice]
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Softcore Chinese flower girl photos -- on Xinhua.  Bruce Sterling muses aloud, "Holy macaroni. Why is the official news agency of the People's Republic of China posting a whole bunch of nude body-painting? Have they lost all their little gray Mao suits over at Xinhua? What gives? A couple of these pics are Veruschka Lehndorff art-shots from the mid-1980s. Some official Chinese web-guy has been collecting these things. What could this be about?" Link
[Boing Boing Blog]
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Indie Games Finalists.. So the finalists for the Independent Games Festival have been announced:
Open Category
acmi {{park}}
Anito: Defend A Land Enraged
Bontãgo
Facade
Fashion Cents
Fuzzee Teevee
Savage: The Battle for Newerth
Spartan
Starshatter
Take Command: 1861 The Civil War
Web/Downloadable
AlphaQUEUE
Beesly's Buzzwords
Billiard Boxing
Chomp! Chomp! Safari
Dr. Blob's Organism
Dungeon Scroll
Gish
Oasis
Space Station Manager
Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates
I'm not familiar with most of these games, but a couple of comments spring to mind. First, I'm dubious about the inclusion of Savage; yes, it was developed without funding from an established publisher, but S2 Games is well capitalized, and has always planned on self-publishing. It was a conventional, big-budget game development project, and certainly stretches the definition of "independent game".
Dr. Blob's Organism is a zippy little arcade-style game with a gameplay style I hadn't seen before, along with the curiously organic graphics Digital Eel has used previously in Plasmaworm. This is the first time, I believe, that Zdim and Fingers have made it to the IGF, and good for them.
Oasis is from "Mahk" LeBlanc and Anrew Leker (who's been a digital game developer since the 90s, but I met as the designer of Skyrealms of Jorune, one of the most beautiful and most obscure of tabletop RPGs). It's quite addictive; it has much of the feel of a German boardgame, coupled with a curiously fluid animated combat system that is reminiscent of the "thousands of sprites" games from the Indie Games Jam 0. Of course, LeBlanc took part in that, so he might be adapting the code.
I'll have to talk about the Games Jam in more detail at a later date. [Games * Design * Art * Culture]
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Why machines should Fear.
 Coolio - gotta go read this...
Post: Don Norman in Jan. Scientific American. Hey! I just sat down to read through my January 2004 Scientific American, and there was Don Norman with an article relevant to this week's discussion. Luckily it also available on-line here. Side note: notice how much Norman's pose looks like Darwin. Coincidence? Anyway... in the article he states that decision-making in humans is dependent on both cognition and affective (emotional) reasoning. Thus machines should have emotions (i.e. be programmed with affective models) to help them learn and act. From the article: "I'm not saying that we should try to copy human emotions," Norman elaborates. "But machines should have emotions... [OK/Cancel]
 Thanks Tom - for the pointer!
[Marc's Voice]
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Laszlo and Earthlink.
Earthlink Personal Start Page. Here's another catch-up post - to some big wins that Laszlo has been up to. It's been frustrating as hell not to be able to let everyone know this....
Laszlo has a BUNCH of killer demos on their site now, Earthlink and Yahoo wins - and a BUNCH more coming. Take that Macromedia!
They're already up to a 2.0 version of their system and are the folks who actually invented this sort of 'rich media platform'. Macromedia meanwhile, has a copycat technology (called Flex), that won't ship for six months and - well they're Macromedia, one of the most despised companies around. If I were you - I'd go learn Laszlo - right now!
"The consumer's online experience reigns" says Mike Lunsford of EarthLink. EarthLink is offering its nearly one million broadband customers a new Personal Start Page (PSP) enhanced for high speed that ensures that data is continuously updated and displayed in real-time. It is awesome to see this in practice.
You need to be an Earthlink broadband subscriber to really see it in action, but I've captured some screen shots to give you a peek inside. There are nine different options for people to choose, ranging from pratical to dramatic. Each provides access to the same data and has a moderately configurable layout.
My favorite are the panoramic views. You can scroll to the right and the left for 360 degree panorama. In addition to text displays, there is ambient data in the scenery. Without reading the text you can see that the market was up and I had new mail when I took the screen shots around 8pm this evening.
"EarthLink chose Laszlo Systems for its ability to deliver an outstanding personalized user interface and also because the Laszlo Presentation Server standards-based, XML-native platform easily fits within EarthLink's systems and workflow, allowing EarthLink's developers to use their existing skill sets. As a result, developers are able to integrate information from several live content providers, easily update and maintain code, and collaborate across teams." (read more in the press release) [Sarah Allen's Weblog] [Marc's Voice]
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Great science fiction radio plays, open licensed and free for downloading. My pal hugh Spenser is a hell of a science fiction writer, and he's got a passion for the golden age of science fiction radio dramas. He wrote a six-part series of radio plays about the early days of science fiction fandom, which were produced by the wonderful Shoestring Theater and aired last summer on NPR. Hugh and Shoestring have released all six epiisodes as MP3s under a Creative Commons license that allows for the noncommercial redistribution -- give them a listen, they're way boss.
Amazing Struggles Episode 1, 28.8MB MP3 Link
Amazing Struggles Episode 2, 29MB MP3 Link
Amazing Struggles Episode 3, 29.4MB MP3 Link
Astonishing Failures Episode 1, 30.1MB MP3 Link
Astonishing Failures Episode 2, 31.2MB MP3 Link
Astonishing Failures Episode 3, 30MB MP3 Link [Boing Boing Blog]
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Teddy: mind-blowing 3D package.  Teddy is a spookily cool 3D modelling package that automatically extrudes your 2D line-drawings into three-dimensional, rotatable objects. It runs in a Java applet and is mindbogglingly easy to use. The forms that it creates have a kind of organic roughness that is utterly unlike the 3D objects I've created with other 3D packages. 32MB AVI Link (via KoKoRo)
[Boing Boing Blog]
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Atom 0.3 snapshot. Atom 0.3 is out. Here's what's new. (520 words) [dive into mark]
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How can blogging be adapted to companies with a 'need to know' culture?. (SOURCE:The Ferryman: Blogging, wikis, jazz communities and Industry too)- A company with a 'need to know' internal culture is going to lose in the long run. In the long run, companies will be as transparent internally as legally possible; external transparency will increase too.
QUOTE
Together we discussed developments in blogging from the business perspective. I asked how could blogging be adapted to a corporate culture that follows the "need to know" principle. And if we introduce moderation and access levels how is the blogging phenomena affected? How does such a resulting blogosphere turn out and how will companies embrace it? Stuart indicated that there would be a movement towards collaborative blogging, wikis integrated into KM systems and there would be an increasing role for integrated VOIP tools, such as Skype. Markus emphasised that companies may insist on more controls and moderation in areas such as salesforce management and that the exercise has to be more than just individual publishing. Stuart elaborated on how wikis could be used for group-shared conversations of new ideas, with moderated blogging used for publishing more broadly across the company. And so our conversation continued...
UNQUOTE [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
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Usability is a just a much a part of software development as programming. (SOURCE:Six Log: Software Development and Usability)- Amen! Software development includes usability just as much as programming. Unusable software is well, unusable! And unusable software will not be used and therefore will not be improved. This is obvious to everybody except developers it seems.
QUOTE
From the article:
So Ben, a software developer, built a program that gave Mena everything she was looking for.
I'm sure this is something most of our users would realize is incorrect, considering the level of influence Mena obviously has on the product and with our users. But it's an idea that has been repeated enough that I think this is as good an opportunity as any to bring it up: Movable Type (and TypePad) is, and has always been, jointly developed by Mena and me, and she is every bit as much a "software developer" as I am.
Maybe I'm overanalyzing it, but I think that it shows a general misconception about what software development is. I know that if I had solely developed Movable Type, it would have been completely unusable. The trouble is that "usability" and "architecture" are fuzzy terms that can't be very well quantified or judged, whereas "programming" is not. As a consequence of this, it's much easier to see "programming" as driving a product than "usability" or "architecture", but in reality, a poorly-designed product is just as unusable as a buggy one.
The thing is, I think one of the reasons that Movable Type is so popular is because the product combines element from both Mena and me. And I don't know if it's a female-male combination or if it's just the combination of our personalities, and frankly it really doesn't matter. But of the articles that do focus on us, I'm still waiting for the article that goes beyond "they're so cute" or "Ben created Movable Type", and tries to get at something core to software development: what factors contribute to creating a great product?
UNQUOTE [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
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New Shockwave goodie from Flying Puppet: white vibes.  I love what Nicolas Clauss does with Flash Shockwave. Always imaginative, elegant, understated, and in this case, vertigo-inducing.
"interactive sound paintings,a work on pixel as texture, a nods at the cd-rom Alphabet. Four years after dropping the brushes,a virtual come back to painting."
Link
[Boing Boing Blog]
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B is for Bukkake. Susannah "Invisible Cowgirl" Breslin and illustrator Anthony Ventura are about halfway through a collaborative graphic book called Fetish Alphabet. Check out letter B, now online at ordomag:
 It was a matter of mathematics. Outside, 100 men were waiting. She could hear them laughing, and hooting, and pounding on the door. Inside, one of her was waiting. She was down on her knees on the cement floor of a soundstage in Porn Valley. Soon, the men would come in and form an unknown number of concentric circles around her. With her eyes closed, she would count them, as they came forward to her, one-by-one. For the next 120 minutes, she would think about the things in her life that were of value to her. Her boyfriend who was back at home. The sunset where she grew up near the Mojave Desert. The sight of a dozen Maple Glaze Donuts at Krispy Kreme. Eventually, it would all come to an end. The P.A. with one hand would help her to her feet. The men would walk out the back door, where they would be given $50. She would walk out the front door, where she would be given $500.
Link [Boing Boing Blog]
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Friendster or Foester? Conspiracy Art of Mark Lombardi. Village Voice piece on the "conspiracy art" of Mark Lombardi -- and what it tells us about real-world and virtual-world social networks:
 Much is being made lately of the FBI's phone call to the Whitney Museum in the immediate aftermath of the 9-11 attacks requesting access to Mark Lombardi's drawing BCCI, ICIC & FAB (1996-2000). This piece, the last work the artist made before he was found dead in his studio in March 2000, an apparent suicide at age 49, represents the tangled web of power and influence that comprised the largest banking scandal in history—in which an impenetrable network of holding companies, affiliates, subsidiaries, and banks-within-banks laundered billions of dollars while supporting terrorism, arms and drug trafficking, and prostitution. The names of Saddam Hussein and George H.W. Bush, among many other high- and low-profile world figures, are connected by a network of delicate, yet potently insinuating, pencil lines. The FBI agent who called was informed that the work was on view in the museum's galleries, where he was welcome to see it during it during regular museum hours. A visit to the current Mark Lombardi exhibition at the Drawing Center (35 Wooster Street, through December 18) by an affiliate of the Homeland Security Agency has also raised eyebrows in the art world.
In cyberspace, the architectural parallel to Lombardi's work is not to be found in the utilitarian, "drill-down" salt mine of the Defense Department's TIA, but in the burgeoning blackberry-bush tangle of Friendster.com. For the one or two of you who still don't know, Friendster is an online network in which members can connect to friends, as well as to friends' friends, friends' friends' friends, and so on. As a result of having 32 friends in my immediate network, I am automatically linked to a larger network of 441,710 individuals. I can search this database by gender, age, locale, and interest. Unlike some more purposeful sites, such as the business network LinkedIn, or any of the many cruising spots online, Friendster is notably open-ended. In addition to identifying oneself as looking for a "friend," or a "serious relationship," one can also present oneself as "just here to help." It is in part this indirectness that suggests a parallel to Lombardi's indeterminate fields of "influence."
Link (thanks claytonjamescutebutt) Update: this web page has interpretations of some of Lombardi's drawings. Thanks, Jane! [Boing Boing Blog]
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Source Control for One, Part Two.
There is one thing I forgot to mention in my blurb last night about source control for single developers.
Background:
There are two basic models for how a developer interacts with a source control repository:
"checkout-edit-checkin": A working copy of the repository files is maintained on the client machine, and the files are marked as "read-only" when they are retrieved. The developer uses the Check Out operation to get a copy of the file which she intends to edit, and that file is then changed to be writable. When the edits are complete, the file is checked in and the working file is once again marked read-only. VSS works this way.
"edit-merge-commit": Once again, the client machine has a working copy of the repository files, but those working files are left in a writable state. When the developer is ready to edit a file, she doesn't need to do anything to let the source control tool know about it. Just edit the file as if source control were not involved. When it's time to checkin those changes, the tool will notice which files have changed and be ready to commit those changes to the repository. It may be necessary to perform a merge if somebody else has modified the file in the meantime. CVS works this way.
Shameless plug for my product:
SourceGear Vault supports either of these models, depending on the option settings. By default, Vault uses the "checkout-edit-checkin" model, for consistency with VSS. But it's easy to switch into what we call "CVS mode".
The thing I forgot to say:
The cool thing to notice is that when using source control all by yourself, the "edit-merge-commit" style degenerates to simply "edit-commit". If you're thinking source control for a single developer is just too much of a pain to be worth the trouble, you might try using a tool that supports "edit-merge-commit". Source control can be very unintrusive when working that way. [Eric.Weblog()]
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Single User Source Control.
Many people have asked us for a single-user SourceGear Vault license at a very-low-cost. We've always thought this was a good idea, but we never got around to implementing it until today. The Single User Edition of Vault is now available at a cost of $49.
It's amazing the speed at which things move in 2003. This afternoon we made the necessary entries in our online store, so the product was available for purchase at that time, even though our company website had not been appropriately updated yet. Within about an hour, somebody noticed the new item in our store's catalog and posted a note to the Vault mailing list. Marc LaFleur caught that note and proceeded to write a blog entry. Long story short, about 8 hours after its availability, I'm finally blogging about the Single User Edition now, and it's already old news. :-)
Julia Lerman suggested that I might write a brief explanation of why anyone would want to use source control alone anyway. She raises a good point -- source control is usually explained as a way of keeping developers from stepping on each others' toes. Why would anyone want to use source control on a team of one?
The first answer is simply to admit that for a solo developer, source control actually isn't all that compelling. If it were, we could charge a heckuva lot more than 49 bucks for it. :-)
For any team of two or more people, I can credibly argue the benefits of a good source control tool. And as the team gets even larger, source control evolves from "beneficial" to "compelling" to "necessary" and finally to "you are a complete bozo if you don't use it".
But with just one lonely coder (we almost called this product the "Lonely Coder Edition"), the benefits of source control are a bit less important. Nonetheless, lots of people do use a source control tool when working alone. I'm sure this is partially because it's tough to get out of the habit once you've made source control a part of your normal workflow. But when I use a source control tool all by myself, here are the benefits that I find still apply:
It's an undo mechanism. Whenever I get to a good stopping point in my code, I checkin my changes to the repository. From that point on, I can be less careful. I can try coding some crazy new idea and when it doesn't work, I just revert my working folder to my last checkin point.
It's a historical archive. Sometimes I want to Undo much further back. My repository history contains a full copy of every version I have ever checked in. If I ever need to go back and find something I once had, it's there.
It's a reference point for diff. A source control tool can easily show a diff of all the changes I've made since my last checkin.
It's a backup. When I regularly checkin my work, I always know that there are two copies of it. If my *&^%#@! laptop hard drive dies again, my code is still safe in the repository.
It's a journal of my progress. When I do my regular checkins, I write a comment explaining what I was doing. These comments serve as a log or a journal, explaining the motivation behind every change I have ever made.
It's a server. Sometimes I'm coding on different computers. The repository becomes my central server. I can go anywhere I want and I can still get to my code.
Some will observe that all of these benefits are available through other means. That's true. Like I said, source control for a single user isn't truly compelling for most people. Speaking just for myself, I use source control because I like it, and I thought folks might be interested in hearing why. [Eric.Weblog()]
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AbiWord Gets Some Well-Deserved Attention. Salon's Andrew Leonard looks at the AbiWord phenomenon and has some useful comments about Open Source and M$ alternatives along the way. AbiWord up. Booms come and busts go, but open-source developers keep improving the alternatives to Microsoft's "standards." [Salon.com] [Eclecticity: Dan Shafer's Web Log]
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© Copyright 2004 William J. Maya.
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