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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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posted by James Robertson

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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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posted by James Robertson

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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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posted by James Robertson

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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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posted by James Robertson

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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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posted by James Robertson

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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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posted by James Robertson

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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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posted by James Robertson

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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 :)

posted by James Robertson

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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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posted by James Robertson

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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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posted by James Robertson

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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...

posted by James Robertson

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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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posted by James Robertson

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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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posted by James Robertson

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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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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalkDaily

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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posted by James Robertson

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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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posted by James Robertson

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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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posted by James Robertson

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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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posted by James Robertson

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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....

posted by James Robertson

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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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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalkDaily

Smalltalk Daily 09/08/10: Scripting and HTTP

September 8, 2010 6:30:04.500

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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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

The VSE Kerfuffle

September 8, 2010 7:01:34.528

I'm not going to make an official statement about VSE here - I will note, however, that an awful lot has been written about this long moribund product recently. One of the best things I've seen is Joachim's essay on the subject.

If you are a VSE user, there are good options out there. Cincom, for instance, has a Windows 7 certified Smalltalk product (ObjectStudio) for you to consider. VSE was a Windows 95 logo certified product "back in the day" - what better way to stay current than to move on to the only Windows 7 certified Smalltalk environment?

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posted by James Robertson

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games

Witch Hunt

September 8, 2010 11:27:48.000

I finished the new Dragon Age: Origins DLC last night (later than I should have; I'm pretty tired now). It was short, but provides an obvious bridge towards the changes that are coming in Dragon Age 2. The ending of the DLC depends heavily on how you've played your character, and how true to that character you decide that you want to play it. The one I imported was in a romance with Morrigan, so I couldn't see my way clear to ending it with a confrontation. That looks like it sets up one possible encounter between Hawke and the warden in the sequel - things could go very differently if you decide to force a confrontation.

I do have to agree with my daughter though - it looks like Witch Hunt would be more interesting if you bring in a Dalish elf, because the setup is dependent on the origin story from that background. So.... Tonight I'll be off creating another character :)

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Randal's New Smalltalk Digs

September 8, 2010 13:51:18.000

Randal Schwartz has moved his Smalltalk blog over from Vox to Posterous - along with all of the existing content. You can subscribe here.

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posted by James Robertson

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games

Lair of the Shadow Broker

September 8, 2010 16:39:36.000

There's a good review of the new DLC for Mass Effect 2 on the Escapist site, but here's my complaint about Lair of the Shadow Broker (at least on the XBox) - it's got bugs.

Here's what I mean. At the beginning, after the car chase mentioned in the review, you end up on a roof fighting a few waves of mercs. The fight is fine, except for one small problem: I ran this twice, and both times, the mercs stopped coming, the game stayed in combat mode, and I couldn't progress past the roof. It was bad enough that I just put the game down (which is too bad; I really liked Mass Effect 2 ).

My daughter says she's waiting for a patch before she even bothers with it. I think that's where I am, too.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalkDaily

Smalltalk Daily 09/09/10: Deploying Applications in WebVelocity 1.1

September 9, 2010 10:57:23.580

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at how you deploy applications using WebVelocity 1.1. 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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posted by James Robertson

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development

Perception is Reality

September 9, 2010 11:08:36.538

Interesting times in software development - the Oracle suit against Google is bringing things like this up:

I have assumed that Oracle's Java licensing push is going to kill off Java. I had always thought that Java was free to use and that was part of the appeal. If that is not true, then we need to find something that is free to use.

I saw that float by in my Facebook news feed. Now, what's the reality in terms of Java and usage? I don't know, I haven't paid much attention to the suit. However, how the suit is being perceived is possibly more important - it will impact the choices shops make when they decide to start new projects. The longer that suit drags on, the more it will make some people wonder, I think.

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posted by James Robertson

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humor

Get Your Cobol On

September 9, 2010 11:58:40.578

Well, the website is interesting, I'll give it that. I feel like I need a modem and a BBS to visit it though....

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Seaside on Pharo How To

September 9, 2010 14:28:03.000

Jan van de Sandt has put together a nice "how to" walkthrough - building a deployable Seaside image on Pharo.

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posted by James Robertson

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gadgets

JailBreak Cat and Mouse Games

September 9, 2010 16:31:18.000

It's like "Spy vs Spy", with the iPhone as the target:

The exploit in the boot ROM of iOS devices was first announced by iPhone Dev-Team member pod2g. It was soon confirmed by other hackers, who said that because the exploit targets such a low-level part of the operating system, Apple won't be able to stop jailbreakers without making significant hardware changes.

I wonder what Steve Jobs threw against the wall when he was told about this...

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posted by James Robertson

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gadgets

Apple Caves on Dev Tools

September 9, 2010 19:37:00.135

I'm not sure why this happened now - pressure from Android, the continuing levels of bad PR, threatened legal action - but Apple has caved in on development tools for IOS:

All development tools - including Adobe Flash CS5 - are now allowed, as long as they do not download any code. Apple claims this will give developers the flexibility they need, while at the same time preserving the security of the iOS.

In the wider development space, this means Flash - Adobe can dust off whatever work they had for IOS, and ship it (whether it works any better than this remains an open question, of course). It's also good news for Smalltalkers. The work John McIntosh has done to get a Squeak port to IOS is alive again, and Scratch might have a chance at approval - although the ban on downloading executable code might still be a problem there.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Aida/Web 6.1 Released

September 10, 2010 6:57:09.000

Spotted in comp.lang.smalltalk Google Group

I'm proud to announce the new version of Aida/Web Application server and Web framework, currently prepared for Squeak/Pharo and VisualWorks.

follow the link for more details.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalkDaily

Smalltalk Daily 9/10/10: Creating HTTP POSTs

September 10, 2010 7:32:13.781

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at doing Http POST and GET requests in Cincom Smalltalk - VisualWorks or ObjectStudio. The examples I used are below; they hit a simple servlet I have on a test server in my office. To skip to the video now, click here.

If you can't see the embedded video directly, you can go directly to YouTube for it.


"Do a simple GET"
response := HttpClient new get: 'http://victoria:8011/blog/servlet/TestBlogServlet'

"Do a POST request for a site that should be there"
postData := OrderedCollection with: 'blog' -> 'blog'.
client := HttpClient new.
request := HttpRequest method: 'POST' url: 'http://victoria:8011/blog/servlet/TestBlogServlet'.
request formData: postData.
client executeRequest: request.

"Do a POST request for a site that should not be there"
postData := OrderedCollection with: 'blog' -> 'foo'.
client := HttpClient new.
request := HttpRequest method: 'POST' url: 'http://victoria:8011/blog/servlet/TestBlogServlet'.
request formData: postData.
client executeRequest: request.

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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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Invitation to Smalltalks 2010

September 10, 2010 12:54:00.237

Andres Valloud has extended a nifty invitation to Smalltalks 2010 in Argentina:

Smalltalks 2010

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posted by James Robertson

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itNews

Flash and IOS

September 10, 2010 14:38:56.000

I think I see what's going on with Flash and IOS - in this story about Apple's about face, note ths paragraph:

Other cross-platform compiler makers had had no such trouble, even during the monthslong stretch when the now-obsolete Apple policy had supposedly been in effect. Both Appcelerator and Unity Technologies, which sell iOS programming tools, stressed on Thursday that developers using their compilers had been able to get ported programs into the App Store since April.

The article also points out that nothing has changed vis-a-vis Flash in the browser; this simply allows Adobe's cross compiler to work. So developers can ship Flash based apps for IOS, but they still can't post Flash video and have it work - because the latter involves downloading code to the browser, which is still a no-no unless said code is Javascript.

My guess then is that Apple realized that they had a stickly legal issue - they were approving other cross compilers, while shoving Adobe up against a wall. That was going to lead to more than just bad PR; eventually, there would have been some kind of legal blowback.

At the end of the day, there's less here than meets the eyes for end users. Flash content is still inaccessible from IOS devices, so the great "Flash vs. HTML 5" battle will rage on....

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posted by James Robertson

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history

1922 In Color

September 10, 2010 17:38:45.914

This is pretty cool - a Kodak film test from 1922 - in color.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

LaunchPad Updates

September 10, 2010 19:12:39.088

The engineers are enhancing the LaunchPad (I did a screencast on that here) - here's a snippet from an email to our development list:

For those of you who are using the VisualWorks Projects desktop shortcut, Applet or shell script, the LaunchPad application has been enhanced to create/manage an image signature file so that we can determine the particular VW installation that was used to create your Project image. The image signature file is specific to the current user, and will be created the first time a new Project is created by the LaunchPad from the current build. Each entry in the file (using the example in the comments in the file header) contains the image signature, the installed VisualWorks location, and (following a separator) the image version string. The first time a new Project is created for a new release/build the new signature entry will be appended to the file. If you re-install VisualWorks in a new location, or if/when you need to install multiple RC candidate builds (which all have the same image signature) :-) the LaunchPad will comment out the old entry and append a new correct one.

posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Dynamic Languages in Toronto

September 11, 2010 6:25:45.000

The Toronto Smalltalk user's group is going to hear about some interesting Javascript work:

From Adam Spitz: Avocado is an (as yet unfinished) programming environment for JavaScript, built on top of Dan Ingalls' Lively Kernel, intended to bring some of the principles of Smalltalk (liveness, simplicity) and Self (directness, even more simplicity) to standard web browsers. JSQuiche, the first real application built with Avocado, is a code-organization tool, intended to let javaScript programmers browse through their objects at runtime and organize them using categories, comments, and poses.

The meeting will be on Monday, September 13; follow the link for full details

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posted by James Robertson

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itNews

Bloglines Dies

September 11, 2010 9:33:06.000

The entire dedicated RSS reader space is dying:

But people no longer seem to be abandoning certain readers for others—or for other ways to access those same feeds. Instead, they appear to be abandoning RSS readers as a way to read the news altogether. Hitwise, for instance, tells us that visits to Google Reader are down 27 percent year-over-year, while visits to Bloglines are down 71 percent year-over-year.

The main reason I still work with BottomFeeder is that it's tied in with my blog server, and works for how I post to my site. I have no illusions about the wider space :)

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posted by James Robertson

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itNews

Software Patents - Harmful to Meaningless

September 11, 2010 10:29:06.458

I like this take on the patent system from Slashdot:

The backlog of patents is almost 730K. And the Commerce Department under the Obama administration wants the average down to 20 months. How does this happen? Only if everyone closes their eyes and pretends. It's time to take drastic action, like ending software patents. As it is, by the time companies get a software patent, there's little value to them because, after six years, the industry has already moved on.

At the very least, any patent should require a working version of what's being patented - so that utterly absurd things like the Paul Allen suits are impossible.

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posted by James Robertson

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gadgets

Tardis Drive

September 11, 2010 17:50:26.000

This is just cool:

tardis drive

Funny comment from Michael when I showed him the link - "so your data disappears on you years at a time and comes back looking different? no thanks!"

posted by James Robertson

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