The FuzzyBlog!
Marketing 101. Consulting 101. PHP Consulting. Random geeky stuff. I Blog Therefore I Am.

Saturday, June 15, 2002

Just a Whole Bunch of Links I've been working pretty much since 2 am Saturday morning so I'm in no way coherent enough to write a decent sentence in an essay but I thought that I could still point to some cool stuff.  Why was I up so early?  Time zone conflicts and waiting for DNS resolution.  When all that failed, I blogged a bit, wrote a Drupal 4 press release and then worked on getting my house ready for sale. Anyway, some links and some random thoughts: http://www.lindows.com/ -- It looks like Lindows may be shipping since you can now order it from Walmart.  Too cool -- Walmart now sells Linux.  I suspect that soon you'll be able to get Sun workstations from K-Mart. http://www.iaslash.org/ -- Really cool site focused on Information Architecture.  Great content. http://www.lycoris.com/ -- Very nice looking Linux distribution (that's also called "distro").  And they had a just really nice order form if you click on Store.  I opted to download it and it was even fast!  Hopefully tomorrow I can do the Linux install dance, find out it fails on my hardware, scratch my head, look confused and then try www.freebsd.org/ Looking for what's hot or new so you can get a job in it?  Try this Slash discussion.  There is actually a pretty high signal to noise ratio. Review of a Great Book: The Tipping Point.  Eszter has the qualifications to actually comment on it (she's a sociologist and that's really what the book is about). I can't remember if I linked to this once before but it's too funny.  I guess the moral is never, ever get really good grades. Free BSD Stuff.  In the continual quest for stability in hosting platforms, I'm starting to looking closely at FreeBSD: FreeBSD and OS X Ported Software for Free BSD: http://www.freshports.org/ There's now a print magazine for FreeBSD!: http://magazine.daemonnews.org/ .  Go figure. A good source of FreeBSD info: http://www.daemonnews.org/ I have no idea if these guys are good or not but they offer colocation of FreeBSD boxes cheap: http://www.johncompanies.com/collocation/ And, of course, it all starts here: http://www.freebsd.org/ WHY YOU NEVER WANT TO USE WINDOWS IN A COMMERCIAL DATA CENTER: Even if you own your own copy of Windows 2000 Server, a commercial data center provider like www.rackspace.com makes you buy it AGAIN!  I went over this at length with RackSpace on Friday so I know this is true.  And, even better, you pay for it monthly FOREVER (i.e. it's an addition to your monthly bill every month, every year).  That just sucks.  Since I'm looking heavily at Frontier and the very, very cool IdeaTools, that bothers the smack out of me.  When I asked if RackSpace offered the new OS X servers, he said "Well we have a new Microsoft focus at www.intensive.com".  Sigh.  Apple would you please call RackSpace and get them to offer the new OS X server?  RackSpace is a great company (pricey but great) but it would be nice if they had something besides Intel hardware for Frontier users. Hard drives just keep getting bigger: IBM Millipede Very, very cool search approach: http://boolistic.com/index.html 9:12:01 PM  Google It!  comment []   IM Me About This

Drupal 4: From Release to Deployment: 2 Hours or So... CMS upgrade: Drupal v.4. I've upgraded the Drupal cms from the CVS version to the stable version 4. Please bear with me as I get some things back in order. Thanks to everyone on the Drupal team for a kick-ass blog app. -m [ia/ - news for information architects] You just have to love the Open Source world.  This never happens in the proprietary world.  It's just too cool. 7:20:45 PM  Google It!  comment []   IM Me About This

Great Recommendations if You Are Looking for a Job "I see lots of growth in Web services and entertainment. There are lots of companies transitioning to membership based models now, and that generates a lot of work to build those subscription systems and management tools. I just hired four new developers at my company, so I will give you some pointers for actually getting in the door once you have found a company to interview for:" http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=34244&;cid=3708516 (This guy makes sense, if you are out of work then seriously think about his recommendations).  #s 2, 3, 4 are outstanding.  7:11:44 PM  Google It!  comment []   IM Me About This

That Press Release Example Take a look below.  I just finished it a while ago and Kjartan said it was good to go.  So here it is.  I did make one change from my guidelines -- I eliminated the phone numbers for contact info since this is an open source product and these raise the question of who would answer the call. 4:13:54 PM  Google It!  comment []   IM Me About This

Drupal 4 Ships Key new features include: Blogger API Support, an Integrated Taxonomy and Distributed Authentication ANTWERP, Belgium / The Internet at Large. -- June 15, 2002 -- Taking a major step into the enterprise class content management market, The Drupal Project today announced Drupal 4, a substantially enhanced version of the Drupal open source content management platform.  Drupal 4 includes both significant new features as well as a dramatic architectural shift into a fully modular, easily customizable system.  Thanks to this architecture, Drupal is now really a platform for any type of web application as users can easily extend it and modify it to better fit their needs. Drupal Provides a Robust, Modular Architecture for Content Management Since its start in December of 2000, Drupal has evolved from a simple content platform into a full fledged, modular architecture platform for web applications.  Among the new features in Drupal 4 are: Blogger API support allowing Drupal to both be posted to and post with the Blogger API Automatic notification to www.weblogs.com of changes to a user's blog An integrated multi-level, multi-attribute taxonomy Enhanced Change tracking Significantly improved theme system Next generation distributed authentication based on XML-RPC allows users to be identified with existing Drupal logins (even across sites) or Jabber or Yahoo logins OPML support for generating XML based outlines via an optional module Full support for XHTML Content Versioning Support Improved News Aggregator and enhanced RSS Support A large number of additional changes -- please see the official Change Log "With close to 100 major sites running Drupal, I anticipate our 4 release being widely adopted.  Not only are there substantial new features but Drupal's innovative caching system has been greatly enhanced providing even better performance than ever before.  I'd like to take this opportunity to extend my thanks to the whole Drupal developer community.  With developers from all parts of Europe and the U.S., Drupal is really an international open source project. " says Kjartan Mannes, one of the Team Leads for the Drupal 4 release. About Drupal Since its start in December of 2000, Drupal has grown into an industrial strength content management solution that can be applied to a variety of different websites including blogs, portals and more.  Drupal is written PHP version 4 and supports a variety of back end databases including MySQL, Postgres SQL and Oracle. More information on Drupal is available from the main Drupal developer site, www.drupal.org and the Drupal community forum at www.drop.org.  For a complete list of features, please see the official change log. Drupal is the English pronunciation for the Dutch word 'druppel' which stands for 'drop'. Drupal is a content management/discussion engine suitable to setup or build a content driven or community driven website. We aim towards easy installation, excessive configuration and fine-grained maintenance capabilities. Due to its modular design Drupal is flexible and easy to adapt or extend. Drupal is written using PHP. The source code is available under terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). Mission statement To develop a leading edge open-source content management system that implements the latest thinking in community publishing, knowledge management, and software design. We value flexibility, simplicity, and utility in our product; teamwork, innovation, and openness in our community; and modularity, extensibility and maintainability in our code. PR Contacts for Press and Analysts: Kjartan Mannes, one of the Team Leads Email: kjartan@drupal.org Yahoo IM: kjartanmannes If a U.S. contact is needed, please feel free to contact sjohnson@fuzzygroup.com, Yahoo and AOL IM: fuzzygroup. Credits: Press release written by J. Scott Johnson & Gretchen Cahaly, The FuzzyGroup, Inc.  http://www.fuzzygroup.com/. 4:07:37 PM  Google It!  comment []   IM Me About This

I Radioized Someone Again Why does someone buy Radio?  Apparently I did it.  Too funny.  I also got my buddy Ray Hunter to start blogging too.  And he's a Radio user also. 4:06:39 AM  Google It!  comment []   IM Me About This

RackSpace Revisited Long time readers may recall that I had an issue with RackSpace just a few months ago.  I'm now thinking of going back.  I had a great conversation yesterday with a Michael Burke who was tremendously helpful.  He did a great job of trying to get me back since I am having problems with my current provider (more on that later today I suspect).  I've never had a problem with RackSpace technically at all.  They are just excellent.  Recommended. 3:44:34 AM  Google It!  comment []   IM Me About This

Marketing 101: Your First Press Release "Press Release".  This sounds much, much more scary than it really is.  Writing a press release is actually pretty simple.  In this essay we are going to illustrate the process, give examples and then conclude in a 2nd part with a sample press release (this conclusion will be later today).  The first part, how to write a press release, is all done. ==> Read Story <==   3:40:35 AM  Google It!  comment []   IM Me About This