If I Was Interviewing Jeff Raikes

I just saw an interview on CNET with Jeff Raikes and it seemed to lack even a slight whiff of journalistic integrity.  I saw a recent commentary about News.com being more of a press release tool and really saw it in this piece.  So here's my version where I'm adding my own set of follow on questions and challenges that seem, well, appropriate based on his answers.  My contributions are bold and preceded by [Scott Johnson].  You have to scroll down a bit to get to them and I did leave the CNET interviewer's comments in place just to illustrate the difference in tone.  I think I'm fair although I do call him on issues (i.e. Office isn't a resource hog.  Yeah right).

==> Read Story <==

 

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Rant Of the Day: About DNS

From Apokalyptik:

And why every Admin should have a basic understanding of how the internet works

Domain name resolution, or DNS, is fundamental to the way we live our lives in this day and age. It’s the cornerstone of modern communications, and a marvelous example of the fact that something good never dies. It’s also a prime candidate for the number one example of the fact that people are perfectly content with being completely oblivious to the technologies that drive their lives. I find that network administrators today understand more about high level networking functions, while actually understanding less and less about the low level functions and concepts which drive their core technology. It strikes me that this is a serious problem.

[ More ]

As someone who knows full well the importance of DNS, I can't stress the truth of his comments enough.  Recommended.

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Hey !  Andy's Famous: Mozilla Gestures on News.com

My buddy Andy, who's a Mozilla developer and all around user interface guru, is being cited on News.com for his work on adding gestures to Mozilla:

Andy Edmonds, a programmer who helped create the Optimoz project in Mozilla, said the project owes its inspiration to Opera. But he said the project has since branched out in new directions aimed at harnessing specific features in the Mozilla browser, such as tabs, which allow better management of multiple browser windows.

In addition, he said, Optimoz is being extended to other Mozilla-based applications, such as chat and mail, and work has begun on creating a general API (application programming interface) for gestures in Mozilla-based applications.

"We extended our function set well beyond the Opera set early on," he said. "My favorite gesture requires a karate game-like 'finishing move.' By dragging over a set of links and finishing with right-up-left, all of the links will be opened in a new window. There's also Easter egg gestures hidden in the code" that reveal hidden features if users know the correct movements.

The development team is working on a learning component that will assist users as they try to master the mouse gestures vocabulary, Edmonds said. One aspect of this will entail a translucent overlay of command strokes that can be called up and used as a legend. A second, interactive feature could involve a pie-chart menu that opens around the cursor and acts as a guide to direct the mouse movement.

[ More ]

Andy's an all around smart guy, one of the people who implemented the Mozilla Rich Editing support which lets you use Composer to edit your blog entries and a blogger to boot using Radio.  Oh and if you're wondering about using Composer, I did follow through on my pitch for $200 for getting that feature into Mozilla and now I'm no longer dependent on IE's rich edit control.  I'm sure that if you use this and wanted to kick a few bucks over to Andy or Dr. Brain then they'd appreciate it.  Recommended.

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Inbox Buddy Update or 0.901 Released and Taking Direction from UserLand

Well I just uploaded the 0.901 version of Inbox Buddy and here are the changes:

• Interview process on sent items folder or inbox folder with not all items being mail items caused a type mismatch error is now fixed
• Spam filter improved although results may vary by user (and we want to know)
• message added to view install to let them know it's complete

If you have already installed Inbox Buddy then you don't need to run the View Installation again although you will be prompted for it (and we're not clear enough yet on this prompt.  So what have we learned in a few days of time:

• We're starting to get some very good feedback in terms of feature ideas.  Thanks!
• Installation of views is an issue.  This isn't a real surprise unfortunately.  We rely heavily on Microsoft Outlook Views
• We've build a debug version of the View Installer and if you are having installation issues, let me know and I'll get it to you.
• Don't jump the gun.  Literally within an hour or two of uploading the 1st release to the site and posting about it on my blog, Brian, the lead software engineer, asked me "When are you uploading it to download.com and telling search engines and such?"  "Whoa Big Fella" was pretty much my response.  I've never seen a product survive contact with a customer yet and Inbox Buddy was no exception.  I know where he's coming from but I'd rather take it bit by bit and make sure that things are (minimum) installing perfectly.  It's always tempting to broaden your audience as quickly as possible but given that there is a real cost both to reputation and energy (doing technical support is labor intensive) if you do it too soon.  I guess I knew this but this was one of those cases where being right is a mixed blessing. 
• We don't properly support installing our Views into IMAP style mailboxes since Outlook doesn't properly tell us that multiple PST files are active.  We're working on it. 
• We need to move our FAQ into a database for display after download of a Getting Started section.
• We need to implement a web based tour walking users through a "Now What" guided tour after they download.

Initially we were doing question and answer by email but I've moved that to our [ Discussion Forums ] after looking at how UserLand handles things.  This way people can see what problems others are having.  Clearly this is a good thing but I'm a wee bit out of practice since the last real "software product" I shipped was back in late 98.  I'm currently still posting stuff people have emailed to me so if you see messages posted by you then that's why.  No email addresses are posted of course.

Thank you very much to the people who've given us feedback like John, Kjartan, 347, Matt and others.

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A Reminder about PHPCon and Discounts on It

I just wanted to point out that PHPCon is now just a few weeks away (October 24 - 25) and I'll be there talking on security and programming practices for PHP.  I asked Monica (my contact) about discounts for readers of this blog and she indicated that their discount structure is as follows:

• Non profits
• Students
• Groups -- if you can get a group of people together then discounts are available.

So if you can get a group together then contact Monica at mktgevents dot com.  I did confirm that everyone who attends will be getting the first issue of the new PHP Journal (which looks damn good and since Jeremy is involved, I know will be good).  For more on PHPCon:

  

And here's the "official text" in it's unvarnished, unmangled by me format (if you are wondering why I'm not listed, simple -- I'm running behind getting my abstracts in):

PHPCon 2002 Early Bird Discount Deadline Approaching

Don't miss a great event! If you eat, sleep, and breathe web development -- if you have your hands in PHP everyday -- we have what you need. Register by October 11, 2002 and save $100.

PHPCon 2002
The Clarion Hotel SFO
Millbrae, California
October 24-25, 2002
www.php-con.com

No other conference in the US is placing PHP front and center as the language for solving web problems like PHPCon. PHPCon 2002 is the gathering for PHP developers, giving PHP the exposure it deserves as the leading choice for web programming.

Our program features the leaders of the PHP community; from companies running huge PHP applications to the core developers of PHP 4. There is no better way to find out how you can use PHP today and where it will be tomorrow.

PHPCon 2002 offers attendees a comprehensive, practical technical program
featuring:

• Keynote by Rasmus Lerdorf, Inventor of PHP
• Three Technical tracks including Enterprise PHP, Applications Development, and XML/CMS.
• Best Practices from gurus and greats such as Dirk Elmendorf of Rackspace, Introduction to SOAP for PHP with Shane Caraveo, ActiveState, Reading the PHP Source with Zak Greant, MySQL Community Advocate, and High Performance PHP: Profiling and Benchmarking Techniques with George Schlossnagle, OmniTI
• Opportunities to meet and mingle with peers, gurus, and greats in
  a relaxed, congenial setting.

Log on to www.php-con.com and check out the program and speakers.

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Hey !  I Can Find that Blog on the Radio

I wrote that title with the deepest apologies to REM.  Sorry guys but it seemed the perfect lead in to letting folks know that if you listen to AnchorDesk's David Coursey on CNET Radio, I'll be interviewed about O'Reilly's Essential Blogging on next Wednesday, 10/9, at 12:00 pm PST.  You can find it at CNET Radio.   The real topic is Essential Blogging but I suspect that it will also cover basic blogging questions (and why to blog) and comments on tools.

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Question from a Reader: IDE's for PHP?

Once upon a time I was petrified ...  Ooops.  Bad music flashback for a second.  Anyway, once upon a time I was a big fan of IDEs or "Integrated Development Environments" and then I hit the web.  All of a sudden what felt oh so right for building Windows applications just doesn't feel right.  So I went back to VI and TTY style debugging and I've pretty much never looked back.  But that's just me.  Lots of people still like IDEs so when Apokalyptik sent me this:

Got any recommendations for a PHP IDE for building database apps?

A few thoughts came readily to mind:

• Maguma -- which now has a $100 version (ok $95 euros)
• PHPEdit -- an open source IDE

The one comment that also comes to mind as I look at these IDEs is that none of them seem to support SCP for file uploading.  They are all based on FTP and that doesn't feel strong enough from a security perspective anymore.  But, then again, I'm a security wonk so feel free to ignore me on this one.  Both are feature rich and seem to be pretty good (but I'm not a heavy user so it's more from a dabbler's perspective).

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Perl and CPAN for the Unknowing

For those who haven't ever done more than a few lines of Perl (and, amazingly, that's most people seemingly), Perl remains this cryptic, bizarre language that often looks rife with "comic book cursing" --- from all the regular expression syntax.  And I'd have to agree with that.  Perl is cryptic but it also has one of the single best assets in the history of programming, CPAN.  CPAN or Comprehensive Perl Archive Network is a giant distributed source code repository where you can find just about anything.  And the only way to illustrate it is to really post my daily CPAN mailing from Pudge.  Here's what was new yesterday. 

New CPAN Distributions for October  1, 2002
posted by pudge on Tuesday October 01, @18:30 (modules)
  Link              |
  * [0]Apache-ASP-2.41 -- Active Server Pages for Apache with mod_perl
  * [1]Apache-iTunes-0.06 -- control iTunes from mod_perl
  * [2]Benchmark-Thread-Size-0.03 -- report size of threads for different
    code approaches
  * [3]CGI-SpeedyCGI-2.21 -- Speed up perl scripts by running them
    persistently.
  * [4]ConfigReader-Simple-1.14 -- Simple configuration file parser
  * [5]Decision-Markov-0.02 -- Markov models for decision analysis
  * [6]EasyTCP-0.16 -- Easily create secure, bandwidth-friendly TCP/IP
    clients and servers
  * [7]Encode-compat-0.03 -- Encode.pm emulation layer
  * [8]Graphics-RGBManipulate-0.01 -- HSV adjustment tool for RGB colours
  * [9]HTML-TagReader-0.12 -- Perl extension module for reading
    html/sgml/xml files by tags.
  * [10]HTTP-Size-0.4 -- Get the byte size of an internet resource
  * [11]Log-Agent-0.303 -- logging agent
  * [12]Log-Dispatch-Jabber-0.2 -- Log messages via Jabber
  * [13]Mac-iTunes-0.7
  * [14]Net-DNAT-0.07 -- Psuedo Layer7 Packet Processer
  * [15]Netscape-Cache-0.45 -- object class for accessing Netscape cache
    files
  * [16]PDF-Report-1.00 -- A wrapper written for PDF::API2
  * [17]PersistentPerl-2.21 -- Speed up perl scripts by running them
    persistently.
  * [18]Petal-0.74 -- Perl Template Attribute Language
  * [19]Scraper-2.26 -- framework for scraping results from search
    engines.
  * [20]Set-IntRange-5.1 -- Sets of Integers
  * [21]Test-Data-0.6 -- test functions for particular variable types
  * [22]Test-Data-0.7 -- test functions for particular variable types
  * [23]Test-Manifest-0.8 -- interact with a t/test_manifest file
  * [24]Test-Prereq-0.07 -- check if Makefile.PL has the right
    pre-requisites
  * [25]Thread-Conveyor-0.13 -- transport of any data-structure between
    threads
  * [26]Thread-Conveyor-Monitored-0.09 -- monitor a belt for specific
    content
  * [27]Thread-Exit-0.04 -- provide thread-local exit(), BEGIN {} and END
    {}
  * [28]Thread-Pool-0.28 -- group of threads for performing similar jobs
  * [29]Thread-Pool-Resolve-0.08 -- resolve logs asynchronously
  * [30]Thread-Rand-0.04 -- repeatable random sequences between threads
  * [31]Thread-Serialize-0.05 -- serialize data-structures between
    threads
  * [32]Thread-Signal-1.06 -- deliver a signal to a thread
  * [33]Thread-Status-0.03 -- report stack status of all running threads
  * [34]Thread-Tie-0.08 -- tie variables into a thread of their own
  * [35]Thread-Use-0.03 -- use a module inside a thread only
  * [36]Tk-DateEntry-1.34 -- Drop down calendar widget for selecting
    dates.
  * [37]dbMan-0.25
  * [38]load-0.02 -- control when subroutines will be loaded
  * [39]load-0.03 -- control when subroutines will be loaded

 That's right -- everything from thread code to PDF creation to database routines to iTunes stuff to an ASP compatible page interpreter written in Perl for Apache so you don't have to run IIS if you don't want to and more.  And that's just one day worh of updates.  I'm certainly not saying that Perl is perfect by any means or that even CPAN is perfect (it's not) but it is a tremendous resource that many folks just aren't aware of.  If you've ever wondered why people are so enthusiastic about Perl, CPAN's a large part of it.

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