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New user? Sunday, March 10, 2002
Michael Fraase on RCS
ARTS & FARCES internet: More on RCS
I read Michael's first thoughts about RCS, and now the one above, and I've come to a conclusion:
Michael doesn't grasp the concept of Desktop Websites, or RCS, as UserLand is trying to promote them. Maybe it's because the labels aren't all that great. Desktop Websites are really Desktop Web Applications. Desktop Websites are something else, which I explain below.
Radio's web-based interface (the "web application") for doing weblogging and newsreading are all running locally on your computer (desktop or laptop). But Radio publishes your work to a different server! The web site itself isn't on your local machine. Now, it CAN be, if you want it to be, and you need to know when that makes sense.
If you're a nomadic laptop user it doesn't make much sense to host your content on your laptop unless you are your entire audience. If you're on a desktop machine with a random internal IP address, that might not make sense unless you can address your machine by its name, which, in most corporate environments, you can. If you're hosting your own content, that's a desktop website. It's also called "Personal Web Sharing" on Windows and Mac.
And this is also the whole point of RCS... giving the nomad a place to publish internally (or publicly) that doesn't require a sysadmin to screw with Apache, IIS, file sharing or any of that stuff that makes it a hard sell because IT will whine about having to actually do something for their users instead of do something to make their own lives easier. (I really hate those kinds of IT departments)
And of course if you're on an internal network with a fixed IP address, serving your own web site has very few drawbacks. Backup might be the only one, since a lot of places don't back up their desktop machines. But then it's easy to use RCS or use FTP upstreaming or WebDAV upstreaming or file system upstreaming to a shared folder.
Radio is not Manila or Conversant. Those systems have lots of features that Radio doesn't. But they're centralized power and lifting the hood to make changes there is more difficult, sometimes more expensive, and often riskier. Don't get me wrong, I love Conversant, and plan to use it more and more, but each tool has its sweet spot.
Where Radio should shine is in any organization that values information, knowledge, and doesn't already have Manila or Conversant in place, or does but has nomadic workers who need something less centralized. Getting Radio to integrate with Manila and Conversant is going to increase its value in a big way, and I've been working on the latter in my spare time. I think UserLand would be cannabalizing itself if it didn't do the same for Manila.
I frankly don't care much for the statistical features of RCS, but the ability to see what's updated, and watch those sites as well as their RSS feeds is going to totally and absolutely kick ass for any organized group of people, or any group of people that wants to be more organized.
It's not a hit and a miss. It's not even a hit yet, since it's not out. First impressions are going to matter big time here, and part of that is understanding what and who it's for and where it doesn't make sense. Michael's discussion is helping that come to light.
Don't fight the neurons
Here's the problem with the term "Desktop Website". It's an oxymoron!
From an end-user's point of view, if something is on their desktop, it is not on the web. Their desktop isn't on the web, their other applications aren't on the web. If they use it locally on their machine, it's an Application or a Program.
Yahoo! is a website, because it's on the web.
Radio is not a website, because it's on your desktop. Radio is an application. It's a little weird, because you use it from your browser, which is where other web things are accessed, so it's a web application. But it's not on the web, so it's actually a desktop application But wait, it's not like your other desktop applications like Word and WinAmp, it's run in a web browser, so it's a Desktop Web Application.
There is a distinct different from a Desktop Web Application, and "running a website" or "having a web server" on your local machine. Applications are programs that run on your machine, and servers are things that vend content to other people.
In fact, Radio even makes this distinction! There are two sides to Radio... it's Desktop Web Application server, and its Web Server.
The Desktop Web Application runs on port 5535. The Web Server runs on port 80*.
(*or 8080, if your OS' Personal Web Sharing is already running on port 80)
I say, don't fight the neurons of the people who have 20 years of experience running desktop applications and 10 years experience accesing websites. Keep the terminology distinct and clear, and everyone will understand what it is.
Thank you.
It's time to look outward again
I was chatting on AIM with a long time friend of mine who lives in Alberta, Canada, Brian MacKay. We were talking about weblogging and he mentioned what I had said about NATO last week, and that tangent led to him sharing this URL with me..
Patriotism: Too Much Of A Good Thing
I'm not suggesting all Americans are bumptious, but, I've always respected Andy Rooney because he tells it like he sees it and doesn't care if his viewers will like it or not. I try to be the same way. But since I'm Canadian I'll at least apologize if I just offended you. LOL!
Catharsis... ahhhh
Dictionary.com: catharsis
Brian told me of a story he read about the motivations webloggers have for blogging. One of them was catharsis. I totally agree with that.
(Brian's going to try to find that story so I can link to it... right? ;-))
I did noticed that www.catharsis.org is a weblog.
9|11 on CBC
I just finished watching 9|11 on CBS. Not sure what to say, except, has it been 6 months already?
I don't know whether to be happy or sad that my boy was born after September 11, 2001. Happy because he didn't have to be alive when that was happening, or sad because he never knew the world before it turned on a dime.
Happy. Happy 100%, but not because of that stupid reason. Happy because life continues and he's living loving proof. We have to pick up where we left off and continue to strive for the best world possible for the generations to follow.
Love your fellow man.
Saturday, March 9, 2002
New and Updated Apple Docs
Inside WebObjects: Developing SMIL Presentations
George W. Bush: go away!
BBC News: US 'has nuclear hit list'
This just makes me sick to my stomach. It's just horrible in every imaginable way.
I remember back in 1983-84, I learnd about nuclear war for the first time. I saw pictures and videos of the concequences. I remember laying in bed at night worried that it was basically eminent, that it could happen any day, and that I should just enjoy the rest of my life because I wasn't sure how long it was going to last before I had to suffer nuclear winter and death soon thereafter.
Eventually I grew out of that fear. The end of the Cold War certainly helped. But now, here we are nearly 20 years later, and I have to worry about it again.
What is wrong with George W Bush? This guy is just as maniacal and evil as all those other fuckers out there! What kind of lunatic makes these bold threats? I can't believe how badly this fucking moron has screwed up the world in the short time he's been in power. At the rate things are spiralling downwards, we'll be lucky to make it to 2004.
UNIX's 'look' command
| I was embarassed yesterday when I found out about the 'look' command. If you don't know about it, feel free to join the crowd.
At work yesterday, I asked Johnie how to spell "cognizant". Everything I tried was coming out incorrect according to the spell-checker, and it wasn't offering me the correct spelling. Five seconds later... "c-o-g-n-i-z-a-n-t", said Johnie. Then he showed me how he did it. At a UNIX prompt, type:
look cogni
|
Welcome to Darwin! [localhost:~] jim% look cogni cognisable cognisance cognition cognitional cognitive cognitively cognitum cognizability cognizable cognizableness cognizably cognizance cognizant cognize cognizee cognizer cognizor [localhost:~] jim% |
D'OH! Apparently this has been a part of UNIX environments for about 20 years. How could I have missed this? Oh well... the good news is Johnie's a UNIX shell maniac, and I'll surely learn lots more from him. :-)
Fink tutorial
via Brent's mac.scripting.com site, a tutorial on setting up and using Fink to acquire, install and manage open source UNIX software on Mac OS X.
OSXGuide.com: Installing Open Source Software on OS X With Fink
3DOSX Download
3DOSX is incredible. Totally worth the download, and some fun play time. However, at this point, I wouldn't say it's totally worth using. ;-) It's clearly just starting, and is very cool, but not nearly functional enough yet.
The good news is Nicholas Riley is among the people working on it. That means it's bound to kick ass as long as he's still involved. :-)
Ha! I posted this and noticed Nicholas responded to my earlier post about Fink just a few minutes ago, to warn me (and you) that there are errors in the tutorial. Thanks!
Nat on Optimized Object Generation
Mulle kybernetiK: Optimized Object Generation
This is the fifth installment of the "How to optimize in Objective-C" series. But remember folks... optimize when you have a performance problem, not before.
Jabber in Radio/Frontier
Jeremy Bowers announced jabber.root on Wednesday. Somehow, I missed this. Check it out!
RE: UNIX's 'look' command
Sam DeVore likes that look command and made a nice Radio macro for it so you can use it on your Radio web site.
Cool! 3 lines of code including the declaration. Frontier on OS X kicks ass.
My Cute Kids
I just published a photo album with iPhoto:
Awwww... aren't they cute? :-) (I miss them so!)
Friday, March 8, 2002
Sputnik
802.11b Networking News has a brief description of Sputnik, which I must say sounds incredibly cool. When I get back to Canada I'll have to dust off an old PC and set it up. :-)
AttSearchEngine
Macrobyte has finally released the AttSearchEngine. It's a tool for Frontier/Radio developers that enables them to index vast amounts of content... structured content... and not just text. If you're into Frontier, or even just indexing or search engine technology, take a look. It's very extensible.
It's what indexes the content on this site and provides its query services.
This release is hot of the heels of the release of Macrobyte's Formz, which simplifies and abstracts the task of creating, managing and rendering web forms.
These foundational tools are stepping stones to the eventual release fo the full Conversant product. Woohoo!
UserLand's Back-Door Sell
DaveNet: Our Back-Door Sell
I was initially super-duper excited about the Radio Community Server. I still am.. but I had a case of sticker shock when I saw "less than $1K per network per year".
It's no coincidence that the Frontier community re-awakened when a lost-cost option to use the platform re-emerged. Things haven't been this active since 5.0.2b20, the last free version of Frontier... when 5.1 was released and it cost $899, the community collapsed.
If RCS is a back door sell, I think it should support the small guys too... especially since they're going to make it run on a $39.95 product. (What's the point of a low barrier to entry if the 2nd barrier is way higher?)
I have no idea what RCS is going to cost. (UserLand's calling the price $XXX right now.) But... (pundit mode on) I recommend UserLand considers graduated pricing based on the size of the community. For a community that's only 5 people, $40 gets them Radio, and ... $XXX/4 gets them RCS. (the size of a small project team). For 20 people, $XXX/2 (a small/medium size department). For unlimited users, $XXX. (a whole company, community)
I've been thinking of which communities of people (and which leaders of those communities) could benefit from RCS, and letting their communities/fans/followers blog together. The list is huge. Those big communities would be wise to get RCS... even $XXX dirt cheap.
If RCS doesn't get graduated pricing, then I'd defend the price by saying it's worth it for the out-of-the-box experience (assuming it's as easy to get up and running as Radio itself is).
BTW, if RCS was $[0-3]XX, I don't think graduated pricing would be an issue at all.
Backup Brain
Tom Negrino, on Backup Brain:
That's baloney. There are people from Canada, Britain, Norway and Germany (at least) fighting alonside the Americans in Operation Anaconda, and they've been there for quite a while previous to that.
I don't know the number of people from Canada, but I know there's at least 750 in Afghanistan, probably over a thousand, and well over 2 thousand in total including the naval forces and other operations.
What an insult. What do you expect NATO to do, start detaining people without charges, bomb the shit out of other countries and start throwing out insults towards other countries like "axis of evil" and "evildoers" at every opportunity?
If the USA isn't happy with NATO, and Americans don't appreciate our help, maybe NATO should just kick the USA out rather than wait for their resignation. We don't need that kind of ally either.
PS: I don't think that should happen, it's just a counter-insult. I've heard American colonels and generals stand up and say how much they appreciate the Canadian involvement, that they're doing a great job and are a major asset.
--
Okay, now I read the article Tom's pointing to and I'm even more insulted. America hasn't even declared WAR on anyone... the idea of military alliances isn't to just go take out whatever political regimes you don't like, unless you want the world to be in a perpetual state of mass war.
And that bullshit about America saving Europe in WWII? Fuck off. (not directed at Tom, directed at the USS Clueless guy -- what an appropriate name) It wasn't until Pearl Harbor that America even gave a shit about WWII... Canada and Britain and the rest of Europe was involved in trying to repel the Nazis for over two years before the Americans came in. To say the war was won only because of the USA is enough to make me want to puke, and to say the war wouldn't have been won without them is just as vitriolic.
Bah.
Virtual PC 5.0.2 is great!
Congratulations and a big thank-you to Connectix for a great VPC5 upgrader. VPC 5.0.2 makes Windows 2000 fly on my PowerBook G3 400. I'm typing this message in IE5/W2K. It feels much faster than it ever did under Mac OS 9... I mean, this is seriously usable. And this is a G3! Imagine the performance on a newish G4? Wow.
Apache XML-RPC for Java 1.1
Apache's XML-RPC client for Java (previously known as Helma XML-RPC) is now at version 1.1. Good stuff. I really need to update my WebObjects/Foundation version... (I mean, really. It's way out of date)
