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news

This Could be Bad

August 31, 2010 6:39:10.928

A volcano in Indonesia is erupting:

Towering clouds of ash are being spewed out of Mount Sinabung in North Sumatra and thousands of villagers living on its slopes have been forced to head to emergency shelters, mosques and churches.

This one hasn't gone up since 1600, so right now, no one knows what to expect. If we got an event like the 1815 Tambora explosion, it could be a real problem. That one gave North America "the year without a summer".

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Smalltalk in India

August 31, 2010 6:43:29.000

There's a Smalltalk User's Group in India now

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Smalltalk Daily 08/31/10: Using File Libraries in WebVelocity 1.1

August 31, 2010 7:51:14.895

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at using File Libraries in WebVelocity 1.1. To jump straight to the video, click here. If you can't see the embedded video directly, you can go directly to YouTube for it. To jump straight to the video, click here.

NoteListUI class


renderPageHeaderOn: html
	" Render page header on html. Subclasses may override to render nothing. "
	self renderPageImageOn: html.
	html space.
	self renderPageTitleOn: html

renderPageImageOn: html
	html image url: NotesFileLibrary / #notesPng

renderPageTitleOn: html
	html heading
		level: 3;
		with: self title

To watch now, click on the viewer below:

You can follow the Smalltalk channel on YouTube for all the "Smalltalk Daily" videos. You can also check out the videos on Vimeo, where the quality is higher, or over on Facebook, if you are a member.

You can download the video directly here. If you need the video in a Windows Media format, then download that here. If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Daily"?

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Browsing a Store Repository

August 31, 2010 10:59:50.000

There have been some updates to the internals of Store in VW 7.1.1 and OS 8.2.1 - the database layer is all Glorp now. Aditionally, the UI has gotten a facelift. When you browsed code in a repository in past releases, you got the ugly (and very outdated) 5i browser. Now you get the RB, although it's in read-only mode. When you start a browse operaton, you'll see this:

Once the package or bundle loads (in this case, a bundle), you'll see this - I've expanded the tree:

Finally, after selecting a class and a method:

The whole experience matches browsing in-image code a lot better now.

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E-Reader Price War Continues

August 31, 2010 11:39:12.222

At the rate prices are dropping, I'm pretty sure we'll see "free, with mandatory ads" fairly soon:

As competition in the e-books device market heats up, Borders is cutting the prices of its leading eReading devices, the Kobo and Aluratek to $129 and $99.99 respectively. The Kobo was previously priced at $149.99 and the Aluratek was priced at $119.99.

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Gmail Jumps Ahead

August 31, 2010 13:26:20.000

Now I really wish my corporate email ran through Google, instead of Exchange - their new priority email thing sounds pretty cool:

Important and Unread emails will include correspondence with people you always respond to right away, as well as emails that include keywords that usually grab your attention. Email sent specifically to you, and not to others as well, will receive preferential placement.

Right now, I manage that same chore via an (ever growing) set of mail rules - mail gets tossed into various folders based on who sent it, or what mailing list it's from, and so on. I'd love to just let someone else do that for me :)

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copyright

Speaking of Overreaction

August 31, 2010 19:10:36.609

The Commerce Secretary sees danger from.... file sharing:

“This isn’t just an issue of right and wrong,” Locke said in a speech at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee, one of the nation’s musical focal points. “This is a fundamental issue of America’s economic competitiveness.”

In a (very small) sense, he's correct about it being an issue of competitiveness. Sadly for him, he's on the wrong side. Adding another layer of rules and bringing back DRM won't stop the large scale pirates, but it will make life miserable for the rest of us.

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tv

Rental TV

September 1, 2010 6:37:33.000

We'll know for sure later today, but this sounds pretty cool - 99 cent TV show rentals through iTunes:

As part of the Apple event Wednesday, News Corp.’s Fox and Walt Disney’s ABC networks are slated to be announced as offering 99-cent rentals of television shows through the iTunes store, according to people familiar with the matter.

TV isn't like music. With songs, I want to listen to stuff I like again. With TV, it's rare that I want to see the same episode again. Once I've seen it, I'm done - so buying an episode, or even a boxed DVD set, just doesn't make that much sense to me. Renting, on the other hand? Sure, especially for an episode I've missed, or for a show I'm wondering about.

Add in an inexpensive set top box, which is also supposed to be part of the plan - and it looks pretty good. Especially with Netflix coming to the AppleTV.

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Smalltalk Daily 09/01/10: WebVelocity 1.1 Debugging

September 1, 2010 8:18:30.441

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at how debugging works in WebVelocity 1.1 It's a bit different than it was in WebVelocity 1.0. If you can't see the embedded video directly, you can go directly to YouTube for it. To watch now, click on the viewer below:

You can follow the Smalltalk channel on YouTube for all the "Smalltalk Daily" videos. You can also check out the videos on Vimeo, where the quality is higher, or over on Facebook, if you are a member.

You can download the video directly here. If you need the video in a Windows Media format, then download that here. If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Daily"?

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itNews

Back to the Future

September 1, 2010 9:42:34.000

The Amiga rides again:

Barry's back, kids! The CEO of Commodore USA just informed us that, in addition to slapping Commodore stickers on various all-in-one PCs, he has acquired the rights to the Amiga name (we only hope that the process went a little smoother this time around). The plan is to sell machines that fully support AROS -- an open source variant of AmigaOS 3.1 that the kids seem to go crazy for.

There's a lot more at Engadget.

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gadgets

Flash on Mobile

September 1, 2010 12:40:04.000

Amidst all of the uproar about whether Apple should support Flash on the iPhone and iPod, I came across Kevin Tofel trying Flash out on his Nexus One. Keeping in mind that he tried it on a fast WiFi connection, the results were less than exciting. If this is what Flash looks like on mobile devices, Steve Jobs has a point.

Looks to me like Adobe has their work cut out for them if they want to have something that approaches usable on small devices.

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gadgets

Target: DS and PSP

September 1, 2010 16:55:13.782

Watching Apple's event today, and seeing the game demo on the iPhone (and then imagining how it would look on my iPad), it dawned on me that the DS (Nintendo) and PSP (Sony) are straight in the crosshairs of this new gaming platform. Serious gamers will stay with consoles or PCs, but the entire "I'm bored, I need to fill a half hour of dead time" market is where the DS and PSP live.

Except that Apple is moving in, with devices that you're more likely to carry around....

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itNews

iTunes 10 Looks Different

September 1, 2010 22:16:26.429

Ok, the new iTunes has an odd UI element - look at the window buttons at the top left:

I don't really have an opinion on it, but it sure is different.

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gadgets

Tablets Heat Up

September 2, 2010 6:40:06.586

The iPad is no longer the only tablet in town - Samsung has launched the Galaxy. I have to admit, the ad (the link takes you to an auto-play video) looks pretty compelling. Tim Bray has some thoughts on the device as well. It looks like the entire mobile space is going to be pretty well defined without Microsoft - they aren't just playing catch up here, they're not even in the game...

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humor

The Empire Might Have Won

September 2, 2010 8:34:59.437

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social media

Ping and Facebook?

September 2, 2010 8:57:52.767

Now I'm confused. Kara Swisher reports that Apple's new Ping service has no interface to Facebook:

And Facebook is nowhere on Ping too. Currently, there is no linking, sharing or participation of any kind with Facebook or Twitter or MySpace either on Ping, which will work only on the iTunes software on computers, iPhones and iPods.

Except... when I signed up yesterday, I immediately got a Facebook Connect prompt, asking me whether I wanted to share with my existing Facebook friends. Today, I can't find any trace of that in Ping. I know I entered my Facebook credentials in and ok'd sharing; did Apple build the support and then turn it off, due to the "onerous terms" that Swisher says Jobs brought up?

It's just weird. I'm not the only one wondering about this. A sharp eyed reporter at SFGate noticed a facebook reference during yesterday's demo.

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Smalltalk Daily 09/02/10: Loading Network Client Support

September 2, 2010 9:40:55.314

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at loading the network clients support (http, ftp, etc) into Cincom Smalltalk - VW 7.7.1 and OS 8.2.1. If you can't see the embedded video directly, you can go directly to YouTube for it. To watch now, click on the viewer below:

You can follow the Smalltalk channel on YouTube for all the "Smalltalk Daily" videos. You can also check out the videos on Vimeo, where the quality is higher, or over on Facebook, if you are a member.

You can download the video directly here. If you need the video in a Windows Media format, then download that here. If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Daily"?

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Network Simulation in Smalltalk

September 2, 2010 11:45:41.409

Bernard Pottier sent me an update on the network simulation stuff I saw last year at ESUG:

a simulation for a bus encountering networks of wireless sensors that could be installed on bus stop, and computing on the fly on these networks (bounding box)
a similar simulation for a virtual boat reproducing the Azenor navigation in a distribution of sensors along the shore.

It's a pretty cool project, with the CUDA integration done by one of Bernard's students, Thibault Failler. Cool stuff!

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gadgets

Mobile Data Plans

September 2, 2010 12:47:57.000

I turned on a month of mobile data for my iPad, and - much to my surprise - I find I'm using it beyond my vacation last week. Now I'm pondering what to do about it going forward - and this story in PC World popped up:

To be clear, jumping on the portable hotspot bandwagon won't relieve you of the obligation to have a data plan for smartphones with the major wireless providers. However, rather than paying $25 for 2Gb of data on the iPhone, plus $20 for the privilege of tethering a laptop to that connection, and an additional $25 for 2Gb of data on the iPad, AT&T subscribers can opt for the minimal $15 data plan for 200Mb on the iPhone, and instead spend $40 per month with Virgin Mobile for unlimited data on a portable hotspot that can be shared among all three platforms--and then some.

Portable hotspots have been around for awhile, but I've never really felt the need for one. Now that I'm considering how I use the iPad, I have to start thinking about it. IT would be another thing to carry, but honestly - when I travel, I carry a lot of stuff anyway. Far from liberating me from my laptop, the iPad has simply become another thing I bring. It's not a laptop replacement - in device terms, it's kind of analogous to a "third place".

Anyway, I'm going to have to consider the whole data plan thing.

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social media

Ping and Facebook

September 2, 2010 21:47:21.976

I wasn't imagining things - Ping is connected to Facebook, it's just that Apple has pulled the iTunes-side UI out. I just went to my Facebook account and saw this:

Which is exactly what TechCrunch is reporting:

When I first loaded iTunes 10 yesterday and started up Ping, connecting with Facebook was the first thing I did to find friends. At first, I will say that it didn’t work. I hit the Connect button, entered my credentials, and nothing happened. But I tried again and it worked perfectly. I found a handful of Facebook friends who had just started using Ping as well and connected with them.

So I guess Apple and Facebook are still talking about stuff...

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Smalltalk Solutions 2011: Vegas

September 2, 2010 22:34:18.543

Smalltalk Solutions is back in 2011 - March 13-16 in Las Vegas, Nevada. A call for participation will be going out soon - you can look for updates here, and on the STIC site.

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Smalltalk Daily 09/03/10: 32 Bit VisualWorks on 64 Bit Linux

September 3, 2010 9:17:32.209

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at running 32 bit VisualWorks on a 64 bit Linux installation. To get it working, you need to install the 32 bit libs, which typically aren't installed in the base 64 bit distro. If you can't see the embedded video directly, you can go directly to YouTube for it. I also did a write up of what's covered in this screencast here. To watch now, click on the viewer below:

You can follow the Smalltalk channel on YouTube for all the "Smalltalk Daily" videos. You can also check out the videos on Vimeo, where the quality is higher, or over on Facebook, if you are a member.

You can download the video directly here. If you need the video in a Windows Media format, then download that here. If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Daily"?

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SqueakDBX Moves Forward

September 3, 2010 9:47:52.879

The folks behind SqueakDBX - a high level database interface for Squeak - have pushed out version 1.2:

Hi folks. We are realeasing SqueakDBX 1.2, just an small release. For those who doesn't know, SqueakDBX is a database driver to connect to most of the existing databases. For more details, please read www.squeakdbx.org

Follow the link for more details.

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gadgets

iPads Selling Like Hotcakes

September 3, 2010 15:54:35.000

iPad sales are pretty impressive, and Apple is ramping up production to keep pace with demand:

Apple (AAPL) has ramped up production of the device to meet it, but there’s work left to do yet. Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty says Apple recently doubled its monthly iPad builds to two million.

I'm using mine quite a bit - it's a great reading device, and it's a good way to have internet access when I'm out and about.

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smalltalk

Seaside on Cherokee

September 3, 2010 18:13:39.566

Spotted in Pharocasts:

  • Learn how to install Cherokee Web Server on Ubuntu Linux through Launchpad
  • configure Cherokee to serve static files for a Seaside application
  • start an headless Seaside image

Between Smalltalk TV, PharoCasts, and the Smalltalk Daily work I do, there's a ton of video tutorial content for Smalltalk out there now.

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smalltalk

XAuth Progress

September 4, 2010 1:06:09.099

I finally figured out what I've been doing wrong with the base access token requests - you have to toss an ampersand at the end of the consumer secret. Small thing, but it was the dumb thing I was forgetting. Now I'm looking at making API calls, and that looks kind of painful - you have to embed the API call into the xAuth signature, and the arguments for that need to be sorted. Which makes the whole thing way more painful than it needs to be.

Anyway, if I have time over the weekend, I think I'll have this working against Twitter.

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music

Hate for iTunes?

September 4, 2010 9:35:57.402

I'm sure that underneath the hood, iTunes is a mess - any application as old as iTunes, with the number of features that have been added over time, is highly unlikely to be clean. Having said that, I'm always a bit confused by this kind of thing:

The ugly duckling of the iFamily, this program is hard to understand, hard to use, inelegant, and ill-behaved—in short, the very opposite of most other Apple products. I dread booting it up every day, yet I can’t sidestep it.

Hmm. I rarely restart iTunes - for the most part, it sits on my iMac, not bothering anyone, sharing music out to my home network. When I do have to fire it up, I don't notice it taking any longer to start than (insert any browser here).

As to the UI? Well, I'm sure a UI expert could riff on it, but it seems easy enough to navigate to me. I've never had an issue pondering the differences between the music. podcast, and video displays, for instance.

It's a fairly common meme though, the "iTunes sucks" thing. LIke a said, I'm sure that the developers responsible for it would like to start fresh - based on the age and feature set alone. But from the standpoint of the end user, I just don't see the problem. The biggest issue I have with iTunes isn't really with iTunes itself, it's with the need to do direct connection synching. At the very least, I should be able to synch wirelessly.

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smalltalk

xAuth is Now Working for Me

September 4, 2010 11:44:15.315

The good news: I got xAuth working against Twitter this morning - my mistake was stupid - you have to double encode things, and I wasn't doing that. So that's good. The bad news?

This server (and the one over at Cincom) is running on VW 7.6. My first try at backporting ran into a number of small problems, so I've decided to take the other route: updating the servers to 7.7.1. It's probably a good idea anyway :)

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blog

Now On To the Server

September 4, 2010 13:22:37.450

Well, the next step is to upgrade the server. I've tested a VW 7.7.1 based version locally, and it looks ok - now I have to upload the new release to this server, get the configurations done, and have at it. However, I think that can wait for a bit; it's a holiday weekend, and I need to go kill something on the XBox :)

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sports

The Way It Should Be

September 5, 2010 2:18:34.793

Here's what I like to see at this time of year:

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games

Duke Nukem?

September 5, 2010 8:48:11.000

It's the game that won't die. After officially dying last year, it's back - with a 2011 release date from a real vendor:

After what is arguably the longest, most troubled development in the history of video games, Duke Nukem Forever is finally, really, truly here. It's not being shown secretly, behind-closed-doors at some industry event. Instead, it's at PAX, an event that is, more than any other in this industry, consumer facing, and that tangibility is a big part of Gearbox's reveal.

With so many zigs and zags, I think I still need to take a wait and see attitude...

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audio

Industry Misinterpretations 204: Smalltalk Focus

September 5, 2010 10:05:43.733

This week's podcast is part 1 of a 2 part interview with John O'Keefe, Principal Smalltalk Architect at Instantiations. With the recent news from them - Google buying the Java business, and Instantiations becoming a pure Smalltalk play - we thought a talk with them would be interesting. We weren't wrong - John had a lot of things to say! We'll have part 2 next Sunday.

To listen now, you can either download the mp3 edition, or the AAC edition. The AAC edition comes with chapter markers. You can subscribe to either edition of the podcast directly in iTunes; just search for Smalltalk and look in the Podcast results. You can subscribe to the mp3 edition directly using this feed, or the AAC edition using this feed using any podcatching software. You can also download the podcast in ogg format.

To listen immediately, use the player below:

If you like the music we use, please visit Josh Woodward's site. We use the song Effortless for our intro/outro music. I'm sure he'd appreciate your support!

If you have feedback, send it to smalltalkpodcasts@cincom.com - or visit us on Facebook - you can vote for the Podcast Alley, and subscribe on iTunes. If you enjoy the podcast, pass the word - we would love to have more people hear about Smalltalk!

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general

Summer is Over Edition

September 5, 2010 11:04:01.190

It's Labor Day Weekend here in the US - which means that after today, most outdoor public pools close down, and schools will all be back in session. While it's still summer weather, the slide towards fall and winter has definitely begun.

Here in Maryland, we hope that doesn't mean more of this in a few months :)

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smalltalk

Smalltalk Solutions 2011 on Facebook

September 5, 2010 11:26:26.140

The 2011 Smalltalk Solutions conference has a Facebook page - registration and talk submission information will be forthcoming soon!

Smalltalk Solutions 2011

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blog

Upgrading the Server

September 5, 2010 11:46:56.290

The blog has been a bit unstable this morning - and that's because I'm in the process of updating it from what it was running on - VisualWorks 7.6 - to the latest release, VisualWorks 7.7.1.

I'm finding the same thing that many people encounter when they update - a number of small things that only surface when you actually make the switch. My blog server code has been around since 2002, and it's been updated as I've needed to over time. That means that pieces of it are pretty old though, and every so often one of the older bits surfaces and bites me. This morning, it was an old signal based exception handler that did it to me.

The reason I'm updating? Mostly it has to do with wanting the auto-tweet feature back. I got xAuth working against Twitter yesterday, posted a few test tweets from a workspace, and now I'm just trying to get that wrapped up. I have a party to go to today, so maybe this isn't the brightest timing :)

On the other hand, I have easy access to the VPS from anywhere, and could fire up the 7.6 based sever if I had to. Onward!

Update: Sigh. Not quite yet, apparently. I think I'll leave it on the older version and take a run at it tonight or tomrrow. I don't need to spend the bbq doing sys admin work :)

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general

No More Pastabilities?

September 5, 2010 23:58:44.377

Well this is bad news. One of our favorite restaurants here in Columbia - Strapazza - closed. We hadn't gone there in about a month, and we wanted to order from there throught carryoutmenu.com when we got home from Florida awhile back. We noticed that they weren't one of the options, but just figured they had dropped out of that system. Then today, at the Labor Day party we went to, we found out that the restaurant is closed down.

Very sad news for us - we loved that place. I guess we need to find a new Italian joint near here...

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games

September 7th is a Work Day?

September 6, 2010 0:21:26.273

How can September 7th be a work day? "Lair of the ShadowBroker" is coming out for Mass Effect 2, and "Witch Hunt" is coming out for Dragon Age. There aren't enough hours in the day :)

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blog

Good News, Bad News

September 6, 2010 2:14:38.205

The Good news? I have the blog working in a 7.7.1 based image. The bad news? It's not auto-tweeting, and I'm not at all sure why. Time for some exciting debugging :)

posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Glorp, SQLLite, and PostgreSQL for All Smalltalks

September 6, 2010 9:51:18.802

It looks like a rough consensus about the database layer is forming across the various Smalltalk dialects, and it's GLORP. We spoke to John O'Keefe about that on the podcast, and today I ran across this post about moving that stuff forward on VA.

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smalltalk

Goran Interviews Dan Ingalls

September 6, 2010 12:56:05.000

Goran has posted an interview he conducted with Dan Ingalls over skype. We've wanted to get Dan on the podcast for eons, but haven't been able to arrange it.

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web

Works, Doesn't Work, What?

September 7, 2010 6:23:09.610

Now I'm just baffled. Last week, I got xAuth working in Smalltalk - I was able to post a few tweets from a VisualWorks workspace. I then pushed the code out to my blog server, and wham, it stopped working. I can't make test tweets from a workspace any longer even, with the same code. Bizarre. It can't be my code; nothing changed. I get "invalid signature" back with every attempt, from code that worked just fine last week.

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Smalltalk Daily 09/07/10: HTTP Authentication

September 7, 2010 7:15:01.897

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at how you use HTTP authentication (Basic, Digest, or NTLM) in Cincom Smalltalk. If you can't see the embedded video directly, you can go directly to YouTube for it. To watch now, click on the viewer below:

You can follow the Smalltalk channel on YouTube for all the "Smalltalk Daily" videos. You can also check out the videos on Vimeo, where the quality is higher, or over on Facebook, if you are a member.

You can download the video directly here. If you need the video in a Windows Media format, then download that here. If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Daily"?

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smalltalk

Seaside and DojoToolkit

September 7, 2010 10:40:33.000

Holger Kleinsorgen has put Seaside and DojoToolkit together:

I've published some packages that help developing applications that use the Dojo Toolkit (http://www.dojotoolkit.org). Dojo is a Javascript library that provides DOM queries and manipulation functions, event handling, Ajax requests, widgets and more.

It's for Squeak now, but it looks like porting it would be simple

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smalltalk

Scratch for Arduino

September 7, 2010 12:48:08.000

We spoke to John Maloney about Scratch awhile back (part 1 here, part 2 here) - now Scratch is available for the Arduino, courtesy of the Citilab folks:

S4A is a Scratch modification that supports simple programming of the Arduino open source hardware platform. It provides new blocks for managing sensors and actuators connected to Arduino. There is also a sensor report board similar to the PicoBoard.

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smalltalk

Illiad 0.9 Released

September 7, 2010 14:09:16.000

Nicolas Petton has released version 0.9 of Illiad - it's out for GNU Smalltalk, and a Pharo port is underway. Illiad is a web development framework - we interviewed Nicholas about it on Industry Misinterpretations awhile back. Want full details - follow the link.

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education

We Don't Know What We Think We Do

September 7, 2010 16:47:41.000

Timeless advice given to stuidents is, well, not so timeless....

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gadgets

More Drive Space For Your iPad

September 7, 2010 21:08:36.011

This is a cool sounding device, but while I was reading it, I was thinking about the old days of DOS hard drives a bazillion partitions:

After you've loaded the HyperDrive with your media, you connect it to your iPad with a USB cable and an Apple iPad Camera Connection Kit. While the Camera Connection Kit traditionally allows you to connect your iPad to SD cards and self-powered USB devices, it also has a disk-size limit of 32GB, which makes it impossible to connect standard USB hard drives. The HyperDrive works around this limit by turning its individual file folders into virtual 32GB drives that are each separately readable by the iPad.

Back to the future!

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