Top > Dave's World > Weblog Archive > 2002 > January > 24Previous/Next


Scripting News, the weblog started in 1997 that bootstrapped the blogging revolution.
 
Permanent link to archive for Thursday, January 24, 2002. Thursday, January 24, 2002

Big news if you like coffee mugs.. 

Update to yesterday's mind bomb. Now Radio 8 supports blogger.getUserBlogs, a feature that tool developers need. Makes sense. Also fixed a bug in blogger.getRecentPosts when you requested more items than there are. 

Here's a feature that will make designers happy. You know the permalink icons that are all the same on all Radio sites? Well you can change them now. And yes, you can include them in themes. Another change went in a few minutes ago. The News Aggregator page is now much faster. How did we know how to make it so much faster? The profiler.  

Radio 8.0.2 is ready. When you get a new version, you only need to copy the new app into the Radio UserLand folder, replacing the old one. On 8.0.1 this wasn't clear, and lots of people did fresh installs, with not-great results. We're learning. 

Survey: "It's been almost a couple of weeks since the Scripting News Awards for 2001 were announced. Do you think I should release the vote tallies as some nominees have requested?" 

Dan, now that the dotcom crazyness is over we can get back to business, making technology, and offering it for a reasonable price. Very little technology was created by all the VC and public money that was spent in the 90s. It's easier for technology to stand out now that the incredible racket created by all that money is over. 

Steve Zellers: "The poor shmuck reading this might actually want to know what's going to happen next " 

Eastside Journal: "After selling his own 7-year-old company, DevelopMentor Inc., Box joined Microsoft Jan. 7 as a software architect in the recently created .Net developer and platform evangelism group." 

Sam Ruby collates the opinions of Jon Udell, Simon Fell and James Snell on WSDL. We're starting to get somewhere. Sam et al, I ask that you read this writeup of ALIDL, a project I undertook in March of last year, and totally hit a dead end in Frontier. The same will be true, imho, of all dynamic environments (Python, Perl come to mind). The IDL is an exercise in frustration for those languages, for good reason. We like the dynamic features of our environment, and even if you could persuade us that we made a mistake (very doubtful) the train left the station a decade ago. Any network that these environments are part of will not yield to IDLs. Unless you see something I missed.  

Steve Ivy: "One way to get around this would be to implement a meta-data header for these environments similar to javadoc. I'll use Frontier as an example." 

Evan Williams: "So there you have it. A better description of this weblog I could not give you." 

Today's song: "Baby your mind is a radio." 

Ole and Lena were laying in bed one night when the phone rang, Ole answered it and Lena heard him yell, "Well, how the hell should I know, that's over 2000 miles away!" and he hung up. Lena says "Who was that Ole?" Ole says "The hell if I know, some weirdo wants to know if the coast is clear." 

Two years ago today I was getting ready for Davos. That reminds me, should we put WAP support in Radio 8? 

It's a tough economy. I just saw that Jim Roepcke was laid off the day before his son was born.  

Lots of new Radio 8 themes coming on line. That is so cool. Driving to SF last night I reminded myself that I have to say something about this. Themes are software. Before installing a new theme, please think twice. Be careful. Installing a theme is like opening an enclosure in an email program. Use the same care. When creating a theme, also be careful. Push the boundaries slowly, one inch at a time. Bootstrap. There's always time for version 2. I'm thinking of starting a new mail list for designers working in Radio to discuss these issues, and to get feedback from designers. We already know we need to allow control of the permalink icons. What other features would designers kill for? We want to know. 

I just noticed that XML.Com updated. I wonder if they'll write up the XML Coffee Mug. Probably not. It is XML though.  

Skimming yesterday's Scripting News I see a comment from a law professor saying that AOL must have been quite unhappy with the Microsoft settlement. I wanted to say this. I was quite unhappy with it too. It leaves Web developers at the mercy of Microsoft. Not a great place to be. This medium is the new broadcast system. Imagine if there were one radio receiver manufacturer, not the company that invented radios, not one with any passion or philosophy about what radio is, or what it can be. Assume it's even worse -- radio was a diversion for them. They resent it. "Back to our regularly scheduled program" -- which isn't radio at all. If you were a radio lover would you be happy with a settlement that allowed them to continue to dismantle it? 

NY Times: "The sweeping lawsuit filed on Tuesday by AOL Time Warner on behalf of its Netscape subsidiary against Microsoft reflects AOL's fears that Microsoft, if left unchecked, will use its software to control how AOL's media assets are packaged and delivered over the Internet." 

The Fairvue award nominations are up. Vote for your faves. 

Feature request. Try disagreeing with someone without questioning their integrity. That will get your readers to respect you more because you're showing respect for them. Give them the facts, and your point of view, without making someone else bad. (Or hypocritical, disingenuous, unethical, weak, stupid, or whatever. Save those kinds of allegations for special occasions that warrant such escalation.) 

     

Last update: Thursday, January 24, 2002 at 10:24 PM Eastern.

Dave Winer Mailto icon
 

Click here to view the OPML version of Scripting News.

Morning Coffee Notes, an occasional podcast by Scripting News Editor, Dave Winer.

January 2002
Sun
Mon
Tue
Wed
Thu
Fri
Sat
 
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
 
Dec   Feb


Click here to see an XML representation of the content of this weblog.


          



© Copyright 1997-2005 Dave Winer. The picture at the top of the page may change from time to time. Previous graphics are archived.


Previous/Next