Friday, May 14, 2004In a first for CNN, viewers can log on to CNN.com and participate in live polling and trivia synched to Crossfire's broadcast. "We're excited that Crossfire is again blazing a new trail, becoming the first truly interactive political program in history," said Sam Feist, senior EP of CNN's political programming. The application is powered by GoldPocket and sponsored by Xerox.
I was designing content and tools for sceanrios like this over 10 years ago. Remember the Orlando trials?
Well I can't believe it took so long, but we're finally getting there!
Well - if Chris Pirillo likes Blogware - then I guess it's a hit!
Congrats to Ross and team!
I've been through just about every major blog option out there - MT, Blogger, GreyMatter, Radio UserLand, LiveJournal, etc. I must say, even though the template structure within Lockergnome.net is complex, this system is quite simple (at the same time). For novices, there's virtually no learning curve. Though it's difficult for me to pinpoint my favorite option, the "Edit This Entry" link is surprisingly handy! The photoblog integration with e-mail posting capabilities works well, too. Code purists won't appreciate the legacy tags, but (perhaps) one day, I'll spend more time tweaking more than just the outward appearance of this thing. Color me sold.
[Chris Pirillo]
longhorn loses WinFS. perhaps microsoft will never actually get to Cairo [anil dash's daily links]
I gotta say I'm a little bummed that WinFS ain't happening for another little while. Does that mean that media, messages and people/groups aren't first order objects?
I hope Scoble will let us know.
It's a shame 'cause ever since Dave Winer explained to me the power of having your own hierarchical object database on your desktop - I've not looked back.
Only forwards.
Zope can do that now, but I was sure looking forward to Longhorn with it - as well.
And finally I end this marathon blogging session with another one of our PeepAgg team members - Chris Schmidt.
Chris did the FOAF module for LiveJournal and is now working on getting PeepAgg into Drupal.
:-)
Here's his post....
ApacheBench testing of XML Parsing. So, I've been working on a project called PeopleAggregator, and we've been talking about integrating with a lot of different platforms, among them Drupal. (For the record, this is completely unrelated to the MT stuff that went on today. I may write on that later, but really, everyone else has said what I would in a million different ways.) Anyway, we were talking about RAP and how it's too bulky and slow to work for what we need.
So, we got a guy on the team - Joel De Gan, who's working on the PeoplesDNS project for us, and he offered to write us a parser. This is going to be a replacement for RAP, for those of us who can't deal with the slowness of RAP.
Now, I don't know much about RAP. And I don't know much about PHP, or parsing XML, or really anything - I pick up the bits I need to know as I go along. So I'm just kind of standing on the sidelines, but today, I got a demo of what Joel's parser can do.
LiveJournal FOAF files are typically big. Mine is no exception - over 100 friends, random contact data, etc. All in all, a 40KB document about me. I want to parse this data. So I attempt to using both RAP and Joel's parser.
To alleviate network traffic conditions, I copy the file I want locally. To simulate the action of opening a file and reading it, I did keep it on the webserver, so I will admit there may be some kind of bias in that, but I used the exact same method to open the file in both cases (fopen) so I don't think that's an issue that would cause any major difference. I also disabled all printed output.
Anyway, I used this file to check the parsers. Using ab (apache benchmarking utility - fetches a page a bunch of times and tells you how long it took). Using a 50 request check, I got averages on the two parsing utilities:
Joel De Gan's XML parser, parses data into a multileveled array as displayed at http://crschmidt.net/parse/parse.ph
Requests per second: 11.25 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request: 88.92 [ms] (mean)
Time per request: 88.92 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
(Full Stats)
RAP, parses into RDF models. (source, + RAP. The parser isn't actually here):
Requests per second: 1.35 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request: 739.82 [ms] (mean)
Time per request: 739.82 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
(Full Stats)
So, we've got a parser that to a guy like me seems simpler to use (advanced data structures are part of the limited experience I did get from LiveJournal), is lightweight (one file, as opposed to 256 in RAP), and faster by an order of magnitude.
That, to me, sounds like a winner. Props to Joel for his great work. His next step is to implement OWL capabilities into RDF parsing, and that's going to kick even more ass. As Eric said at one point about this: "Be still my beating heart." By crschmidt@livejournal.com. [Christopher Schmidt]
Sean Alexander is back blogging and tells us how to develop applications for the Windows Media Center.
Windows Media Center is sorta like what you get when you combine a Tivo with a PC.
For instance, check out Greg Reinacker's NewsGator for Windows Media Center (on Sean's blog).
[Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger]
It's actually pretty easy and straight forward to support the WMC. It could well prove to be the platform that finally merged PCs and TVs.
UPDATED If Google is going to push the Atom syndication method going forward, there is a huge opportunity here for Microsoft and Yahoo. They should support all major RSS/syndication formats including Atom, RSS 2.0 and earlier (also forked) versions of RSS. The marketplace can only do its magic when there's lots of choice. UPDATE: Dave Winer responds: "Choice in software is what matters, not choice in formats."
This is actually a very astute intelligent thing Dan is saying.
Throughout the history of our industry key blunders have then opened up opportunities to others. Not sure if Google supporting Atom is that level of a blunder, but it sure as hell does open up the door for Yahoo and Microsoft.
No user wants to worry about choices.
They just want the shit to work, and if that means having to support multiple fromats - whatever.
Just make the shit work - please.
Can you imagine all these Google users trying to track their mail lists - and plugging the list Atom feed into their aggregators?
Hah! - #&^%#%&#$%^#^$
I don't think it's gonna work.
Ooooops.
As much as I love the Atom folks for moving the world forward, RSS 2.0 is not going away - so not supporting it is about as stupid as - as - as - Bush thinking he could start a war and get away with it.
Now we all know why Google is doing that. But it would have been nice to support the past as well as push the future. Trying to force users or aggregator developers to do something is stupid. Why not just peel off a few million $$$$ and PAY developers to support Atom?
That way you don't have to play old school manipulative poltiics - which is what they're doing.
I thought Google as a progressive, smart company? Then why are they acting so stupid?
IRC Junkie reports of PieSpy 0.4.0:
Those who like toys, or are interested in social networks will like this bot. It is a “social network bot“ which renders diagrams that show the social structure of a channel.
“I’ve just released PieSpy version 0.4.0” PieSpy coder Paul Mutton said to IRCJunkie. “It will probably never reach 1.0, as
that’s just the way I version things :)”
This new version contains the tracking of nick changes, “which was the most popular feature request” , and faster rendering of the images showing the social networks.
“You can now apply different weightings to each of the heuristics that are used to infer relationships and the source code has been refactored so it is now very easy to make your own inference heuristics” , Paul adds.
You can find PieSpy here.
O’Reilly will release a book shortly by Paul Mutton, “IRC Hacks, 100 Industrial-Strength Tips & Tools”.
This fits in well with the hecklebot and dashboard - two other kind of botty IRcy thingies.
Ev announces that Google is beta-testing the ability for users to create their own groups (fighting Yahoo on another front).
I just went in and created a group for the nascent Citizens Media Association hatched at Bloggercon. Nothing there so go say things...
How weird is it that Google would have both this featuire and Orkut. Maybe somebody should tell them it's the same thing - just different features of the same app. This is what happens when you build a company on one feature.
Why isn't this Orkut?
Mail to the Future is back! [101-365]
Now I hate to brag - but 5 years ago Dave Winer (who was my BEST friend at the time) invented this ingenius protocol named XML-RPC.
I immediately grokked that it was the perfect technology to DECOUPLE the front-end from the back end. So we built a 'broadband' version of his Mail to the Future service (MTTF) which I was convinced everyone woudl grok, see our genius and hire us.
HAH!
So five years later folks are starting to grok rich media platforms, our 1UP.com is built with Laszlo, and guess what? We've decoupled the front-end from the back-end and are using XML-RPC to do it.
Curse of the visionary problem - again. 5 years too early - again.
Here's some comparative screen shots - as proof.
==========
| Monday, March 01, 1999 |
Marc Canter and his team at Broadband Mechanics have been working on a high fidelity user interface for Mail to the Future. Here are some thumbnails that illustrate the differences between a plain Netscape 2.0-compatible HTML interface and a high-bandwidth DHTML interface:
HTML Broadband
This is a window into some new power, a window that's visible in any browser. Later in the week we'll open up a live demo of the new stuff, which will only be usable in MSIE 5.0b2/Win. (Which unfortunately, due to a lawsuit, if you don't already have it, you'll have to wait until March 18. Call Bill Gates, not me or Marc.) [scripting news]
Of all the bitching and moaning and responding to the SixApart MT 3.0 pricing, I'm choosing my friend Robert Scoble's post. It says it all for me.
BTW I still think Userland doesn't charge enough for Radio. But who's listening to me - I'm just a schmuck software guy -who knows Adam Curry - too.
Dave sticks up for Moveable Type.
Dave Winer: "We gotta eat. No more begging. You want the software, find a way to help companies like Six Apart instead of making them miserable. You've now got the tools to communicate. Use them well. Use them better."
I agree with that. I remember running the books and paying the bills (or attempting to) at UserLand and trying to figure out how I was going to pay the bandwidth bills, the rent on the office, the electricity bill, the phone bill, the mail bill, salaries (Dave Winer, by the way, wasn't getting any salary while I was at UserLand) and, yes, even the W3C (I ended up not paying the W3C in the end cause it was about $5,000 and we didn't have enough money. $5,000 ended up paying our hosting bill for several months).
Believe me, every sale counted, even at $40 each. It's why I picked up the phone before it rang twice. I didn't want to lose a single sale.
I learned a long time ago that there's no such thing as a free lunch. It's something that you should remember when people say "come over here, you can get our software for free." I feel for Moveable Type, though. When you create expectations that your software is free it's hard to change business strategies.
[Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger]Man - I really wanna work with Don Park one day.
Many years ago, I built a voice-based web browser for a client when only other competition was Unwired Planet (now called OpenWave) founded by Alain Rossman whom I worked with at Radius. Interestingly enough, they were both based in Redwood Shores, situated across a lagoon from each other, the same lagoon that passes by my house. One time I even visited my client in a canoe. Now that's the kind of commute I can enjoy.
While Unwired Planet was focused on using the tiny display and the dialpad and ended up with WAP, my client wanted to use all aspects of the phone including speech recognition and generation (aka Text-To-Speech). There was nothing like it so I put together what can best be described as VoiceXML 0.0 and built some PIM-like applications for executives on the go.
It was a fun project and having to call myself hundreds of times a day was an 'interesting' experience. The company then ran out of funding and that was the end of it although patents were snapped up. Last time I heard, Moses Ma bought the dialpad-based browser navigation patent.
After all these years, I am now doing some VoiceXML/CCXML development again. It's a weird feeling seeing what I was working on matured, implemented and available widely. VoiceXML 2.0 is W3C recommendation and CCXML 1.0 is close to completion. There are many VoiceXML vendors and hosting services like Voxeo even offer free developer accounts to build and test telephony applications. All this is so much easier than having to build everything myself.
Still, there are many irksome aspects of VoiceXML and CCXML that leads me to think the spec was developed without the benefit of advices from experienced XML gurus. For example, CCXML has many attributes whose values are expected to be ECMAScript (aka Javascript) fragments which leads to some awkward XML expressions like this:
<assign name="state0" expr="'calling'" />
Note the single quotes inside double quotes. As to why the CCXML WG didn't add an alternate attribute named 'value', I am clueless. What's even more weird is that attribute names provide no hint on whether the value is suppose to be script fragment or textual value. I would have postfixed '_expr' or prefixed 'j' to names of attributes whose value is script fragment.
While I am tempted to fix what's wrong with CCXML before it's finalized, I already have my hands full so this general advice will have to do:
There is more to XML than meets the eye. If you are defining a new XML-based language, you really need to consult some XML gurus to avoid making silly mistakes like these and to avoid pitfalls.
If you don't know any, let me know and I'll recommend a few.
Apple has been granted a patent for its iTunes interface, marking the latest milestone in a path of preposterous interface patents that started with Amazon’s 1-click e-commerce feature. What is Apple protecting? Does the company have serious software rivals in the Mac universe? Is there a developer in the Windows universe that doesn’t consider iTunes to be an undeveloped weakling among desktop media players? Compared to iRiver’s Media Jukebox, MusicMatch, and even the wretched RealPlayer (which is not represented by any interface patents, despite being ten years old), iTunes is an inconsequential plaything.
But only one competitor matters, and this patent is no doubt shielding iTunes from the thieving designs of Microsoft, which, as every Neptunian knows, attained world domination the last time it raided Apple’s interface.
Just remember who Apple is the next time you open up your PowerBook. This is not to say that Micrsoft aren't stone cold bastards either - but that doesn't make Apple the good guys.
Earlier this week, a video of eleven UFOs caught on tape by Mexican Air Force pilots was released by the country's Defense Department.
According to the Associated Press report, "the lights were filmed on March 5 by pilots using infrared equipment. They appeared to be flying at an altitude of about 3,500 meters (11,480 feet), and allegedly surrounded the Air Force jet as it conducted routine anti-drug trafficking vigilance in Campeche. Only three of the objects showed up on the plane's radar."
Yesterday, a follow-up AP report quoted a nuclear scientist from the National Autonomous University who believes "the bright blurs could have been caused by electrical flashes emitted spontaneously by the atmosphere." Meanwhile, the Mexican Defense Secretary says the jury is still out on what appears on the tape.
I want to believe. Link
[Boing Boing]
The Ziff booth were I stood for two days was kitty cat corner from the CNet/Gamespot booth - which is our biggest competitor.
Then along comes Shelby Bonnie - the CEO of CNet - who I've known for 12 years. Adam Curry and I did the pilot for CNet - way back when (thank to Fred Davis) and we reminisced on old times.
But I knew why Shelby was there. He wanted to figure out what 1UP.com had - that Gamespot doesn't!
We also talked about MP3.com and.... well let's just say..... Shelby's a great guy, but......
I ran into lots of other old buddies at E3 too. Stewart Alsop, Dick Lehrberg, Tim Mott.....
The joys of E3. Booth babes, goofy input devices and competitive ballroom dancing games compete for attention at the trade show. The booth babes win. [CNET News.com]
Back to techy issues. RAP is a FOAF parser in php which we're using for the PeopleAggregator.
OOOps - until we started building bigger stuff (the PeoplesDNS) and it broke. The folks at Drupal also didn't want an inefficient piece of software in their builds, so....
Joel De Gan is writing a new one. Optimized, kick ass, open source.
:-)
Here's his post!
Real programmers don't RAP. (I am going to apologize in advance for all tongue-in-cheek remarks in the following.. I just can't help myself this morning)
Real programmers don't RAP
Besides the obvious lack of rhythm and soundtrack.. We just don't have scantily clad women following us around who like to be called bitch, we also don't own a copy of that bass track that the rappers are so fond of and is used in every rap song.
Anyway..
Chris wrote a good review for real-life programming and attempts to use the RAP RDF parser for work in the real world here. I would like it stated that I have no issue with RAP (besides the fact that I don't live in a ghetto so it just does not speak to me) but there is that old addage of trying to make everyone happy and ending up not making anyone happy.
Why do something so complex when it can be done simply? I think it is an application that is proof of why modular programming is such a good thing. Does it 'really' need to be that big? I can understand that for those monster medical RDF's it might be the perfect thing, I get that and by all means use it for that, but for parsing simple RDF files it just does not stack up.
These guys had scalability issues with RAP, the reality in trying to use it "they were being called 'bitch' and getting slapped around". So we took some code cobbled together from comments posted on php.net, a little hacking around by me and have them a small (very small) single file parser that can do the job in a tenth of the time. When dealing with hundreds of thousands of files, that is kind of important as the latency adds up and becomes apparent to an application very fast.
Not too mention, it took me a little less than twenty minutes from start to finish to have them something workable here is the proof (05:58:20-06:14:39) from the new #pa logging bot I set up.
Anyway in summary; programmers have no music talent, we generally don't have scantily clad women doing the 'booty dance' around us and RAP is not suited well for parsing FOAF because it suffers from bloat and for small apps and small (i.e. < 40k) RDF files it is overkill.
One note, we do share one thing with rappers.. I have known a lot of programmers who are obsessed with guns and who blow huge amounts of money on really dumb stuff..
Anyway, enjoy..[peoplesdns - dns style lookups in peoplespace]
I spent allot of money in the 90's, but not on dumb stuff. I was investing in DLAs.
Now that I've met Joel I can safely say that open source does work. This MT 3.0 is gonna bring the issues to the front burner. And the PeoplesDNS (as the perfect complement to the PeopleAggregator) will also gateway and bridge between every digital ID system out there.
What was I doing at E3? What does digital lifestyle aggregation have to do with videogames - you ask? Where's the money for blogging and social networking? And my favorite question: "what's a DLA (digital lifestyle aggregator)?"
Well sports fans - we can now say "there's a there there." Well not completely there, and not necessarily running and up all the time, but that's life. We got 1M hits on Weds alone - and our poor servers are still sniffling.
We're doing lots of new stuff with 1UP.com - which I'll be highlighting and talking about over the next few months.
Putting social networking into a context - is probably the most important thing. Giving Groups (Tribes, Clubs, whatever) a group voice is also cool. Contests, a PeoplePlace, points for everything you do, matching gamers to each other, 11K game DB, and most importantly 1,000,000s of gamers all getting to know each other.
I came up with this line: "Gamers and Games - people come first"
If you go to 1UP.com today - it's still the old site - which is an aggregation of all the 6 Ziff videogame mags. But there are links to the new, upcoming 1UP.com - which you can currently get to here.
If you can get in. Apparently there was this show, and it caused a little bit of attention and our brand new system is having problems dealing with 100,000s of new vistors showing up - all - today.
You should have such problems!
Booth babes
Second to the videowalls were the booth babes. They were everywhere. We even had two different sets of booth babes.
And everyone was snapping shots of them - as this photo shows.
Sex sells.
You vant videowalls, we got videowalls
E3 had the most amazing collection of videowalls I have ever seen in my life. By far, the most, best usage, most exicting, aural and visual sensual experience that my humble body has ever experienced.
More on that later - for now - trust me - it was over the top.
I'm sorry I mised Xeni at E3 - it was her kind of show.
I invited her to the Ziff party Weds night - so at least I did my duty. Doc too!
Justin was there - he jumped into the pool. Ben Ceverney too!
Xeni on NPR -- Death, Sex, and E3. Today on the National Public Radio program "Day to Day," I report back from the E3 gaming convention taking place in Los Angeles. Porn-themed video games, first-person combat shooters with real-life resonance, and a live tactical urban assault demonstration by the US Army -- complete with copters, guns, and terrified pedestrians -- to promote the latest edition of its online computer game/recruiting tool, "America's Army: OVERMATCH."
And on Wired News, these photos I shot at the convention this week.
Link to Day to Day home, Link to archived audio for today's show, which will be available after 12PM PT. [Boing Boing]
While evereyone else was out partying last night (Acteva also had a party) I was working to change the world - bringing DLAs to the masses.
More on my efforts later.
But for now - congrats to Ev and Jason. I wonder if Orkut was there?
Last night I attended the Blogger relaunch party at SF’ 26Mix. It was a pretty cool bash - and I mean the food, the music and the locale were pretty trendy. What struck me was the names and faces from the past, those who had become party regulars were all in full force. Jay Shellen, Evan Williams and a whole bunch of Blogger gang were in attendance, and so were the folks behind Craigslist, Newsmonster, Feedster and of course the queen of valley gossip, Chris Nolan. James and James of AmIhotornot were in attendance as well.
It reminded me of the parties in 1999 when the dotcom madness was in full swing. Lately I have been getting more of these party invites and there seems to be a certain buzz, back in the air. The rentals in San Francisco are inching up slowly, the traffic on Highway 101 is turning into a weebit of a nightmare, and even magazines are trotting out some familiar names. My magazine for instance has a story on Mary “Queen of the Net” Meeker, Nick Denton of Gawker Media. and a couple of others. Wired is having a NextFest. What makes it more like 1999, is the fact that a whole lot of journalists are talking about “blogging” as their salvation (which may or may not be true!) and quitting their jobs to do something with “blogs.” Back in the day, they were talking about web as their escape key. I think the hype machine around blogs is in high gear, and while it might make some like Rafat Ali or Nick Denton very rich, there is little or no hope for many of us.
In short, it smells and feels like 1999. Let the party begin - free vodka and canapes, hell I am not complaining.
[Om Malik on Broadband]Laszlo at E3
Too tired to blog - details tomorrow
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