Saturday, January 31, 2004

Kaye Trammel: Protecting Your Secret Blog. [Scripting News] 10:47:15 PM

More fun with queries. I should probably get a life, but instead I can't stop myself from writing more new queries against my growing database of well-formed blog content. Here are some queries that find the following things in the last few days' worth of my inbound RSS feeds: ... [Jon's Radio] 10:21:36 AM

MindFortress 'knowledge base' software debuts. Web Information Solutions Inc. has released MindFortress v1.0, which it describes as a "multimedia knowledge base app" designed for Mac OS X. The software can be used for purposes ranging from password or serial number storage to an image database and more. [MacCentral] 10:19:39 AM

Software Architect Bootcamp, Second Edition. The completely updated "field manual" for becoming a better software architect! The crucial skills you need to survive and thrive as an enterprise software architect! Fully updated for the latest techniques-from lightweight methods and architectural layers to Model-Driven Architecture and UML 2.0! In this book, Raphael Malveau and Thomas J. Mowbray share up-to-the-minute insights and practical solutions for all the key challenges of building enterprise software systems with objects, components, and Internet technologies. You’ll master today’s best technical and business practices for the entire project lifecycle as you discover how to avoid crucial pitfalls and costly errors. Coverage includes: Choosing the right architectural model for your project Executing heavyweight and lightweight approaches to software architecture Understanding the architectural issues associated with open source development Managing complexity, scalability, reliability, security, latency, and flexibility Making the most of abstraction, refactoring, and architectural prototyping Leveraging proven design patterns and anti-patterns Effective prototyping, business-case development, and project leadership Coordinating smoothly with project managers and teams Managing your own career as a software architect With hands-on exercises, real-life war stories, and a take-no-prisoners attitude, Software Architect Bootcamp, Second Edition, won’t just help you become a great software architect: it’ll help you become a true technical leader of your organization. [Safari Tech Books Online] 10:17:27 AM

Those little orange XML icons are everywhere. How much will people think you suck if your site doesn't have one? Syndicate your content today or be the target of jokes at your next party and http://www.uberasp.net/getarticle.aspx?id=17">building an RSS feed made simple explains how. [Lockergnome's RSS Resource] 10:13:25 AM

Depending on which version you're looking at, RSS can stand for Rich Site Summary, RDF Site Summaries, or Really Simple Syndication. It's an XML language that—used in combination with specialized software packages called RSS aggregators or news aggregators—allows a user to subscribe to a web site or section of a web site and receive quick summaries when that site is updated. Read What Is RSS? [Lockergnome's RSS Resource] 10:13:01 AM

While only tangentially related to MobileWhack's usual fare, I thought this of interest enough to our readers to give a shout out to "Hardware Hacking Projects for Geeks", the start of a cool new project-based hacking series from O'Reilly. From How to Hack a Toaster to building Cubicle Intrusion Detection Systems, Hardware Hacking Projects for Geeks offers an array of inventive customized electronics projects for the geek who can't help looking at a gadget and wondering how it might be "upgraded." Beginning with basic hacks, tools, and techniques for those who may not have a background in electronics, the book covers the tools of the hardware hacking trade and basic soldering techniques. Clear step-by-step instructions allow even those with no formal electronics- or hardware-engineering skills to hack real hardware in very clever ways. You'll find a Table of Contents [PDF] and some samples on the O'Reilly site. Editor's note: In the interest of full disclosure, it should be noted that I am an editor at O'Reilly. Buy from Amazon | Discuss this story [MobileWhack] 10:11:31 AM

I'm spending a little time with an Abacus Wrist Net watch and Microsoft's MSN Direct service for SPOT-enabled devices. In this, the second installment of an ongoing review, I take a gander at the content, the raison d'etre of these wrist-mounted digital dashboards. While I'm very much enjoying my SPOT watch and playing with integrating glancing into my daily information gathering, the one downfall is the sparsity of content. I'm quite frankly rather surprised they didn't hold the roll-out until they had a full complement of the expected sources and usual suspects on-board. If there's one thing that's critical at this juncture, it's "wow"ing the early adopters with more and richer content than they're expecting. I'm afraid I found just what I expected. Yet still I hold out hope of being "wow"ed in the near future. In that vein -- and hoping the SPOT folks are listening -- I share my impressions, suggestions, and wishes for having this rather intriguing technology and related gizmos deliver on their promise. Must Have More Input Currently MSN Direct features news from only a handful of content providers: AP, Reuters, MSNBC, The Washington Post, Space.com, and some assortment of local news agencies and sites. Absent are the usual suspects and those who quickly jumped on to the Push bandwagon a few years back: NYT, Wired, The BBC, News.com, et al. And there's nary a geek source (forgetting the * Technology channels for a moment) in sight. While they may be targetting business folk, they're shooting themselves in the foot by not providing hot and cold running gadget porn to the early-adopters. Ten Channel Limit I quickly bumped my head against the ten-channel subscription ceiling. Perhaps I'm just glancing more often than is expected (or indeed I should), but I actually find myself waiting for new content to put in an appearance. And MSN Direct doesn't allow you to simply click all of the channel buttons and drink from the fire-hose, such as it is. Slow News on Weekends My first weekened with the watch saw little new content float by. Now I know for a fact that stuff happens on weekends. If the current crop of MSN Direct news sources are geared to Monday through Friday, perhaps they need to find some that work weekends. Or delve into some of the "lesser" stories that didn't make it to the Front Page. Overlap, Overlap, and Overlap There's a substantial amount of overlap, especially in the news flashes. This past weekend saw miriad only-slightly-differently-worded versions of Golden Globe Winner listings and Mars updates. It'd be nice if MSN Direct took a page from the book of Google News which provides a headline for first sighting of a story, grouping subsequent versions underneath as updates. I'd love to be able to subscribe only to the first sightings sometimes and n-levels of updates at other times or on a per-channel basis. AOLish Keywords One drive behind MSN Direct on your wrist is to drive you to the site and route you to the appropriate Microsoft destination property. That being the case, rather than digging through the summaries on my MSN Direct news page trying to match these against the story I just saw on my watch and wanted to follow, something akin to AOL Keywords would be quite an effort-saver. Visit MSN Direct, type in the alphanumeric code associated with a particular summary, and *foom!*, you're there. Save and Delete I sure would like to be able to save a particular item for later investigation (aka visiting on the MSN Direct site) while deleting/hiding others which hold little interest for me. The latter wouldn't be quite as necessary if there were enough incoming news that I didn't keep seeing the same story scrolling by. Wrist Weather Having never managed the conversion from celsius to fahrenheit, even after all these years, I'm finding great sport in matching the temperature as shown on my SPOT watch to how it actually feels outside: "Hmm, so this is what 65 deg. F feels like!" For Weather Channel enthusiasts, SPOT's Weather channel alone may very well be worth the price of admission. (By the way, it's currently 54 deg. F and cloudy.) Stop the Stocks, SPOT The stock market closes every evening and weekend like clockwork. Why then am I fed stock updates 24x7x365? Surely there should be some way to shut off stock reports in the evening, to be resumed in the morning. And the same thing for the weekends -- stock silence market-close Friday through market-open Monday. Spoilers Now this one isn't in any way MSN Direct's fault, but I happened to glance at my watch a few minutes before sitting down to the Golden Globes. Spoiled the whole event for me, knowing already the winners in about every category, gleaned in just a few seconds of thoughtless glancing. Get Local I subscribed to my local news source but didn't actually see anything of local interest. It could have been that they pushed an international or national story which I just assumed was from Reuters or AP. Surely, though, local stories should be local in content, not just in source. Goings On I heard some murmerings of local event information, movie times for the next n hours, and so forth. Now that (assuming reasonable execution) would make this all worth while for me. Movie times are like my Weather Channel. Selected Syndicated Content While MSN Direct probably won't be taking on their own RSS aggregator any time soon, I look forward to being able to pick and choose from my own collection of daily syndicated feeds. Perhaps a hack to MSN Messenger IM me stories from my desktop aggregator? Or a service to do same? While this may at first glance appear to be a list of complaints, I must reiterate that I've been enjoying much of the content already in the offing. But surely you can't be surprised that an info-hound like myself -- and most likely all of you with SPOTted wrists -- wants more, more, more... Buy from Amazon | Discuss this story [MobileWhack] 10:10:49 AM