False PositivesCuban folk musician José Aquiles is performing at Toronto’s Brazilian-inspired Caju Restaurant (Queen & Shaw in the West Queen West part) on August 4st. Tell them False Positives sent you.
Having heard José Aquiles at the Free times Cafe last Thursday along side his son, and Jazz Pianist, Davide Virelles (hinted about here), we are looking forwarded to more.
del.icio.us Tags: music toronto ; Technorati Tags: music toronto
So says the Journal of CmdrTaco, via Waxy, but still the icky old HTML.
Kelly McManus reviews Cory Doctorow’s “Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town” in the The Globe and Mail Book section :
The novel presents some of Doctorow’s most striking insights into the cultural implications of new technologies, making it his best work to date.
…
Doctorow suggests that the notions of high and low tech, archaic and advanced, have less to do with the technologies we create than with the ways that we use them.
Having recently finished Cory’s novel myself, reading it on my pda, and buying a signed and sealed copy from Baka, I found that Cory has improved in his story telling and in crafting the characters in its - mostly - Kensington Market (Toronto) setting. Although maybe not as meaty as “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom” or “East Standard Tribe” for bright and shiny ideas, it is better structured (paced?) that the extended short story of “Down and Out” and stronger characters than “Eastern Standard”.
I’m looking forward to his next novel.
Over on IBM Developer Works is an article on Migrate apps from Internet Explorer to Mozilla. Lots of useful information, evey if its too late for me….
Is Mozilla / FireFox important? Should you care Yes.
Given FireFox’s increasing market share amongst the average user ( ~ 9% and much much high in the pointed head population), it’s large download rate (curenttly 75 million in 8 1/2 months), and the stagnation of IE 6 (released Oct 2001!), and the - finally - pending release of a IE 7 beat (soon-ish? (see IE Blog).
If your web application only work in Internet Explorer, you might be tempted to say “Don’t care” or “Our users only use IE”. But, will your application work with IE 7. Does it work for people using Mac OS X (which has a different version of IE)?
How many users, customers or partners are you prepared to annoy?
Mozilla (of which FireFox is the web browser part of the Mozilla effort) it made the conscious decision to support W3C, and other, standards when ever possible. As a result, Mozilla is not fully backwards-compatible with Netscape Navigator 4.x and Microsoft Internet Explorer legacy code.
IE7 is expected to have Better Standards support (improved CSS, Transparent PNG support, XHTML, etc), although MS is known for its flexible ideas of what is a “Standard”.
The IBM article covers topics such as : General cross-browser coding tips; Differences between Mozilla and Internet Explorer (Tooltips and Entities); DOM; JavaScript; CSS; Quirks versus standards mode; Event differences; Rich text editing; XML; XSLT differences.
July 28th Update : speak of the devil….the IE 7 beta is out, although not as a public release:
Contrary to some expectations, Microsoft says Internet Explorer 7 Beta 1 will not be publicly available for download. Only invited beta testers and Microsoft TechNet subscribers will be provided access to the bits. The company did not say whether a public beta would follow, and has no timeline for a final IE7 release.
details from the Internet Explorer 7 Beta 1 Technical Overview, claims wrt CSS :
Internet Explorer 7 is prioritizing compliance to CSS standards by first implementing the features that developers have said are most important to them. As a result, in Internet Explorer 7 beta 1 Microsoft has addressed some of the major inconsistencies that can cause Web developers problems producing rich, interactive Web pages.
and says it addresses the IE 6 Peekaboo Bug and the Guillotine Bug. Also limited support for Alpha Channel Transparency to PNG graphics has been added. Very, Very, little in general standards support (CSS/DOM/etc) at this point. Disappointing. Within a week I would expect more detailed reviews on the this aspect of the beta. Most of the changes relate to improving the underlying security architecture (badly needed). Its also looking like MS will sacrifice Standards for Backwards complatiblity (”It’s not a Bug it’s a Feature”).
Position is Everything looks like a amazing source of CSS and information on CSS problems.
Aug 1 Update: in the IEBLog : Standards and CSS in IE confirms where we are at and where they are going. Good, but not good enough….
and GMSV says “Our browser’s plenty smart; it just suffers from test anxiety”, and more about MS faliure to even attempt to pass the Acid2 test and other standard they have publicly committed to supporting.
I asked this below , but it’s really a big enough point to ask on it’s own.
First AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) made it possible to build much more dynamic web application. , then GreaseMonkey made it possible to do custom re-writing on web sites (and prototyping concepts / extensions), now Konfabulator / Yahoo! Widgets brings widgets to the desktop/TvTop/PhoneTop.
Now - in the spirit of CPAN - there is JSAN: JavaScript Archive Network is a comprehensive resource for Open Source JavaScript libraries and software, via O’Reilly Radar (with some other interesting stuff).
JavaScript has grown in it’s visibility this year, and is more respectable than ever before. (Discuss).
Another step has been taken by The DOM Scripting Task Force (read the press release for background), as detailed in it’s JavaScript Manifesto.
What else needs to be done? What the road block? What’s happening with IE 7 and JavaScript? Are we there yet?
Update : AjaxDeveloper.org kindly notices, and says “maybe”.
In the comments Derek DeVrie makes 2 good points a) good modern samples are hard too find - although JSAN should help in the near future b) that the backend guys/girls and the front end “designers” (who may or my not know css/xhtml but never the templating langauge) get all the respect (and cash), but there is little glory who those who bolt the pretty designs on to the back ends (and MUST know it all xhtml/css/javascript/dom and the templating langauge in use - asp/jsp/php/whatever plus at least some of the back end langauge plus sql… )
del.icio.us Tags: javascript ; Technorati Tags: javascript DOM Ajax web
as reported in the Globetechnology, Yahoo bought Konfabulator which now becomes Yahoo Widgets and made it FREE!
Konfabulator is a JavaScript runtime engine for Windows and Mac OS X that lets you run little files called Widgets that can do pretty much whatever you want them to. Widgets can be alarm clocks, calculators, can tell you your WiFi signal strength, will fetch the latest stock quotes for your preferred symbols, and even give your current local weather.What sets Konfabulator apart from other scripting applications is that it takes full advantage of today’s advanced graphics. This allows Widgets to blend fluidly into your desktop without the constraints of traditional window borders. Toss in some sliding and fading, and these little guys are right at home in Windows XP and Mac OS X.
Why is this important? When Apple released Dashboard Widgets for OS X they “copied” Konfabulator. But Konfabulator worked on both Windows (XP) as well as OS X. unfortunatnly the charged US$19.95 which was very resonable but that meant : a) not trying it tto see if you liked it, b) it was not on very many desktops.
Is 2005 the “Year of Javascript”? First AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), then GreaseMonkey, now Konfabulator! (the The DOM Scripting Task Force is important too!
Minor update: eweeks Peter Coffee comments on : Yahoo Rewrites Script for Web’s Next Act, and notes : Konfabulator acquisition moves content provider into post-browser network-service delivery. (can you say “Widgets for your Phone and / or TIVO”?)
plus : ( previously unnoticed…) the Comic history of Konfabulator, starting at Part 1
del.icio.us Tags: Javascript ; Technorati Tags: Javascript
Via the Big Slash, comes ONLamp.com: Calculating the True Price of Software, which applies arbitrage - looking for price differences between two things that ought to be exactly the same - to warranties and - more to the point - software, and software maintenance.
the conclusions are interesting :
a) that the free and open source software folk have stumbled across the financial engineering insight that a significant portion of the value of software is the embedded “derivatives”–options or warrants–on future maintenance and enhancement.
b) the major difference in worldview between open source advocates and proprietary software license advocates is explainable as a differing opinion on the correct value of the volatility of maintenance and upgrade pricing.
BBC News website is speaking to people whose creativity has been transformed in the digital age. Today they have a profile of Cory Doctorow : BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Digital Citizens: The activist.
Via Reuters.co.uk, USA Lawmakers are considering expanding daylight-saving time by two months to conserve energy (but refused to boost mileage requirements for gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles!) by starting daylight saving time one month earlier to the first Sunday in March and delaying the end of daylight time by one month to the last Sunday in November.
Up here in Northern America (Blue’r than Blue), we are likely to quickly amend our policy to stay in step with our large trading partner (red’er than red).
For back ground here is the wikipdeia entry on Daylight Saving Time. (Note: it’s “Saving” Not “Daylight Savings Time“). And I’ve also posted in the past on this issues, with lots of links to other resources in : Complication in Daylight Saving Time; Global reality: TimeZones+ Daylight Saving Time, is hard; RE: Global reality.
Here is a new issue / question: How many Servers and Desktop will NOT adjust for the new Dates for the DayLight Saving Time change? I wondering about all those Window 2000 and Win NT servers, plus all those Desktops? How big a issue is this going to be for Linux / Unix servers?
Update: My submition was rejected but it’s now on slashdot anyway : One Step Away from Changing Daylight Savings Time
via SlashDot, as reported on Yahoo! News, TiVo will now give advertisers direct access to viewers who are interested in their wares…Consumers can select an option to tell TiVo to release their contact information to an advertiser.
unfortunately it appears to be a pure “please spam me” invitation to the advertiser. No options, refined repsonses, control or protection for the consumer. No options or refined information for the advertiser. So much less than it could be…
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