Tuesday, August 06, 2002

Amazon RSS - books delivered to your news aggregator!. Quote: "Another Amazon Web Services experiment. The idea is this: say you're interested in books about weblogs. Wouldn't it be nice to have an RSS feed for all weblog-related books at Amazon, so that when new books became available you'd know about them? Thanks to the magic of web pipelines (Amazon >> XML over HTTP >> XSLT >> ASP >> RSS >> Your News Aggregator), it's become a pretty trivial thing to put together." Comment: Hmm. Idea percolating... Faculty need to enter their book order information each semester. Form asks for ISBN.  Use ISBN to get the rest of the data from Amazon.  If we didn't have a bookstore contract, I'd then link to Amazon using a college associate ID. As it is, then keep data in database and notify bookstore of new request (e-mail? web interface?).  Bookstore should really have its own online system for this, mind you. Then marry database to course listing so that courses include book and syllabus info (separate system). [Serious Instructional Technology] 11:35:23 PM    comment []

WinForms over the Web. WinForms Over the Web. I did a talk at the local Portland Area .NET User's Group [1] on zero-setup deployment of WinForms applications over the web, including versioning, caching, optimization, debugging and security. This talk is also an excerpt from DevelopMentor's Essential WinForms course [2], which I highly recommend (although I'm hardly unbiased : ). [1] http://www.padnug.org [2] http://develop.com/dm/course.asp?id=131 [sellsbrothers.com: Windows Developer News] This is great stuff Chris, as I was just having a discussion with Paresh Suthar the other day on web based applications and their advantages. Paresh had a concern about the lack of richness in web or IE interfaces compared to WinForms. I see a lot of IT clients though where the zero client install (nothing to install locally, no registry settings( and having one browser interface is much easier for IT staff to deploy and support. The richness of WebForms is quite appealing as well, however not as good as WinForms. This seems like a good combination (WinForms over the Web)  to address the issues while still keeping the versioning, fast deployment, etc of the web model ( I think). [Sam Gentile: Sams .NET Stuff] 11:31:58 PM    comment []

Tim Ewald's Spoutlet. My friend, the author of Transactional COM+ and the editor of the XML/Web Services section on MSDN online, has an RSS feed. [sellsbrothers.com: Windows Developer News] [System.Error.Emit] 11:27:56 PM    comment []

RSS for Acquisitions A new and rather interesting .... RSS for Acquisitions A new and rather interesting RSS application is the notification service of Amazon. Using a news aggregator, the link http://www.yaywastaken.com/amazon/amazon-rss.asp?keywords=???? will deliver a list of books. Just replace ???? with the keyword of interest. This could be useful in acquisitions on keeping up on a current topic. For more details see Amazon RSS - books delivered to your news aggregator! A poor title IMHO, it does not deliver books, only information about books. get_comment_link(79890504) Add a comment [Catalogablog] 11:16:21 PM    comment []

A paperless college?. Who Needs Paper? Not Iowa College. One Midwestern community college is nixing the paper and working toward an all-digital campus, all the time. The school has no library or books and depends almost entirely on e-textbooks and online resources. By Katie Dean. [Wired News] I am not sure if this is innovative or insane. A college with no books and no library? [Mac Net Journal] 11:15:35 PM    comment []

posted by kmel August 6 8:13 AM | 0 comments. You've heard of clip art, but have you experienced the wonder of clip copy? Webloggers with writer's block, take note: you can shill for hundreds of corporations, gov't. agencies, and nonprofits by posting a free and copyright-free "feature release" provided by Napsnet (North American Precis Syndicate). Just some of the delightful headlines that can be yours: "The Blinz Is Back!," "Debunking Myths About Incontinence," "How to Avoid Lawnmower Mishaps," "A Career In Roofing Is No Pie-In-The Sky Idea," and "Pet 'Scooting' Could Indicate Tapeworm." For you warbloggers, there's even some propaganda! [MetaFilter] 11:14:43 PM    comment []

OpenSAML - an Open Source Security Assertion Markup Language implementation. The spec seems to be primarily implemented using SOAP (see this PDF file). [Serious Instructional Technology] 11:13:51 PM    comment []

'Nother Programming Competition. Looks like Chris isn't the only person holding a programming competition at the end of August: the 5th IFCP Programming Contest runs August 30-September 2. The target OS for this competition is Linux on Intel, I wonder if one could enter both competitions at the same time using C# on Mono? Prizes for the IFCP competition range up to $1000 in hard cash & free ICFP conference passes, plus kudos for the language used. It would be amusing to have C# declared "the programming tool of choice for discriminating hackers", wouldn't it? ;-) [Peter Drayton's Radio Weblog] 11:12:53 PM    comment []

PayPal Warning: Make your password GOOD.... Beware your password on PayPal. Low End Mac publisher Dan Knight offers a chilling example of the security shortcomings of using PayPal in Hijacked on PayPal. PayPal, a convenient way to exchange funds, an easy way to be robbed. I continue to use PayPal at this point to receive funds for Mac Net Journal, but this kind of story makes me wonder about the wisdom of that decision. I may reconsider... [Mac Net Journal] "To the rest of you: Pick very obscure, very hard to guess passwords. Don't pick a dictionary word or part of your email address. Include numbers plus upper and lower case letters. (My regular password does all of this, but PayPal didn't think it was long enough, so I came up with a longer one that turned out to be less secure. Sigh.) Convenient as the PayPal service is, they've made it too convenient for thieves to break into accounts. Once I clear up this mess, I plan on closing down my PayPal accounts. I can live with this level of risk." Okay, to a certain degree: d'uh! Nothing online is secure if you use a non-secure password. On the other hand, many services have the annoying habit of telling you that your password is not secure enough (usually because of length), even when it actually is, which leads to frustrated changing of passwords to less secure forms that are longer. [C.K. Sample, III: my iPod Blog] 11:11:04 PM    comment []

Code some cool .NET app and go see the COOL Mr. Sells. Win a Free Pass to the Web Services DevCon. Spend a Day With .NET coding something cool, send it to submission@sellsbrothers.com and the winner wins a free pass to the Web Services DevCon! Other prizes include a year subscription to MSDN Universal, a signed box copy of VS.NET and a half-day consulting. Follow the link for details. [sellsbrothers.com: Windows Developer News] Chris did say he wanted me to tell people "he was cool" on the blog (in our email exchange) so I found a way to squeeze it here-)) [Sam Gentile's Radio Weblog] 11:04:52 PM    comment []

BitWorking: Blogging with .NET [Wrinkled Paper] 10:45:09 PM    comment []

Well, I feel so much safer now. 2" GI Joe rifle confiscated at LAX. The British tabloid The Sun reports that security guards at LAX confiscated a two-inch plastic GI Joe rifle from a seven-year-old's toy action figure. I feel safer. Security chiefs at Los Angeles airport said: “We have instructions to confiscate anything that looks like a weapon or a replica. “If GI Joe was carrying a replica then it had to be taken from him.” Link Discuss (via MeFi) [Boing Boing Blog] The continuing efforts to eliminate judgment from human processes scares me no end. [McGee's Musings] 6:52:36 PM    comment []

The Richness of the Web. I read a lot of .NET mailing lists, and it seems like a very predominant theme these days is people asking how to make their browser app richer, and act less like a browser app. To these people I want to say: Learn Windows Forms. Go read things like Chris Sells' description of zero-install deployment of Windows Forms apps over the web. You'll probably be a lot happier when you stop treating the browser like an application development platform. Let's stop deluding ourselves: the web browser is a shitty tool for application development. It's a huge time-sucking pain in the ass that is being bent to do things it was never intended to do. Use the right tools! Link   Discuss [The .NET Guy] 6:46:39 PM    comment []