Thursday, July 8, 2010

Thoughts on Diaspora and Distributed Social Networks

[...]Like many people, I read about Diaspora a while back and thought it was a great idea.  It's one of the few open-source projects I could see myself contributing to.  Unfortunately, it's not "open" in the sense that the technical architecture is open to discussion - it will only become open after they define the architecture, good, bad or indifferent*.  So, as any programmer would, I thought, "Okay, I have some ideas on this, so if they don't want my help, I'll just write my own distributed social network.  How hard could it be?"

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Wednesday, May 12, 2010

HTC Incredible Road Test

If you've seen my Twitter feed lately, you probably know I got an HTC Incredible (aka. Droid Incredible).  It's my first smart phone so I have nothing to compare it to.  Which means this road test review will be pretty short:  Everything about the Incredible rocks and everyone should get one.

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Sean/Red said,

I use Windows Media Player to sync media with my Android. Its not perfect though in that it doesn't do bi-directional sync for the songs I purchase from the Amazon MP3 App. There is a minor & manual workaround to easily identify and grab new songs from the device that don't exist on the host media player. Though I've forgotten it off the top of my head.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Choosing an Incredible Verizon Smartphone

So I saw that Verizon Wireless is having a ridiculous promotion on the Palm Pre Plus ($49 with a second phone free) and the Pixi Plus ($29) right now, with a 2-year contract.  Which reminded me that my contract ended last year and I'm long overdue for a new phone.

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Tom said,

First I need to think of something useful to write.. let me know if you have any ideas.

Sean/Red said,

How about a facebook or twitter app?

Tom said,

It kind of already has those.. the new app from Twitter isn't bad actually.

Tom said,

Btw I was wrong.. the official Twitter app doesn't automatically refresh. Seesmic works much better.

Sunday, April 18, 2010

What To Do With An iPad?

I saw an iPad the other day.  It's very slick and stylish, but I don't quite know what I'd do with it (other than show it to people and say, "I have an iPad").

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Saturday, April 3, 2010

NoSQL is Coming

There has been an explosion of talk about "NoSQL" lately (ie. I've seen a few posts about it), and since it is every blogger's obligation to follow the crowd and re-write what everyone else is saying, I shall now present my thoughts on NoSQL.

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Sunday, January 24, 2010

Looking Back at 2009 Goals

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Sunday, November 1, 2009

A Peek at Google Web Toolkit

So I'm looking over this Google Web Toolkit thing since someone around here thinks it's the greatest thing since sliced bread.  I hate to disappoint but it's conceptually the same as the much-hated ASP.NET WebForms - it's a framework to abstract HTML and Javascript away from the programmer.  But instead of .NET and Visual Studio, Google's version is based on Java and Eclipse.

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Tom said,

You sound a little biased. :)

The bundling/spriting/whatever thing *is* cool, but it's not unique to GWT.

Pssst: http://www.asp.net/AJAX/AjaxControlToolkit/Samples/MaskedEdit/MaskedEdit.aspx - it's actually one of the easier AJAX-y things to do in ASP.NET. :)

I'll still take a look at GWT, but I really wish they (Google and/or Microsoft) would stop trying to force everything into HTML+Javascript and develop a whole new way to deliver managed code to a client.

Sean/Red said,

I'd just like to point out, I've been saying that for years. HTML just needs to die.

Sean/Red said,

Ahh clarification: our thinclient as we know it needs to just die :)

Tom said,

I say go back to VT100 terminal emulation! Actually now that I think about it HTML isn't bad as a layout model, it just stinks as a platform for interactive applications.

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Exploring Java Web Development, Part 3

I’m happy to report that I’ve completed resurrecting JWebTrack, the terribly feature-incomplete bug tracking project I did for a Java class oh so long ago.  After building an appropriate database and populating it with some data, the app worked like a charm.

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Sean/red said,

Gwt Gwt Gwt

Tom said,

I looked at the docs.. I'll write up my thoughts on it later. :)

Monday, October 26, 2009

GridView, UpdatePanel and PopupControlExtender

This is a nightmarish combination to deal with in ASP.NET 3.5.  I will attempt to document what I learned today about how to get this combination working.

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Sunday, October 25, 2009

Exploring Java Web Development, Part 2

Day two of reacquainting myself with JSP development, wherein we learn that IDEs are powerful tools but they are not very friendly to newcomers.

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Sean/red said,

Pretty frustrating, huh? It's a little easier once your familiar with the spec. Get a book on JEE 5. It'll help a lot.

Tom said,

The biggest thing that annoys me is not knowing what I'm doing to make things work or not work. :)

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Exploring Java Web Development, Part 1

Out of curiosity and recent disgruntlement with ASP.NET I decided to look into Java web development.  I haven’t done this since around 2002, so of course I’ve forgotten everything I ever knew about it.  Herein I will attempt to document the knowledge I uncover.

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Sean/Red said,

Good, sounds like your ready :)

You should note, that Eclipse is written in Java. Doesn't it look nice? Run fast? Eclipse rocks. Look at my old comments (in a prior post) regarding Eclipse. There are some very nice short-cut-keys :)

Oh, Apache Geronimo is better than GlassFish (IMHO) and installs like Eclipse (extract & execute).

The only problem with Geronimo at the moment, is the Geronimo Eclipse Plug-in (GEP) does not support Galileo, you'll need the prior version of Eclipse (Ganymede). The nighly version of GEP works, but its harder to install and doesn't appear to support EARs.

And yes, there are LOTS of choices for JEE development. Its a double edge sword, imho. Its nice once you get past the learning/entry barrier.

Sean/Red said,

clarification: the nightly version of GEP works for Galileo.

Thursday, October 22, 2009

ASP.NET Can Be Annoying

I’ve been working on a new ASP.NET app at work, which gives me a new opportunity to complain about ASP.NET.

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...3 comments snipped...

Tom+Test said,

What da?

Tom Test said,

Oops, need to adjust url encoding there I guess.

Tom Test said,

I think I fixed the plus sign.

Tom Test said,

Yay!

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Google Wave

Google Wave is all the rage among the digerati:  If you don't have a Google Wave invite, you are a nobody in the industry.  (The super-elite even have more than one account!)  LifeHacker is already running tips and tricks even though nobody can access it.  My opinion on Google Wave?  Don't have it, don't need it, don't want it.

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Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Silverlight 3: Web App Development That Doesn’t Suck?

I’ve had some ideas for a more, let’s say, “animated” web site, but frankly large-scale Javascript development is tiresome and the thought of delving into Adobe Flash or Flex or AIR or whatever they call it now is too depressing to contemplate.  With the release of Silverlight 3, I figured it was a good time to take a hard look at the Silverlight platform to see what it can do.

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Tom said,

Naturally, a day later, I learn that there's no elegant way of displaying richly formatted text in a Silverlight app. Sigh.

Anonymous said,

Enter "Google Web Toolkit", the next best technology to sit on the kludge of web browser. Its actually pretty nifty. Check it out.

Friday, September 25, 2009

Windows Live Writer, Remember Password and Atom Authentication

I was working on an Atom publishing API for my blog, since I want to use more secure authentication than is possible with the MetaWeblog API.  But I had no luck getting Windows Live Writer to authenticate against my API even though it tested out correctly in every other way.  I finally discovered it was a quirk of Windows Live Writer.

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