. .

tv

Understanding the Value

October 1, 2010 6:41:29.611

Some TV Execs don't like Apple's new rental model:

"How can you justify renting your first-run TV shows individually for 99 cents an episode and thereby jeopardize the sale of the same shows as a series to branded networks that pay hundreds of millions of dollars and make those shows available to loyal viewers for free?" Bewkes recently asked, joining the now growing chorus of executives to decry the new scheme. Jeff Zucker recently said he thought Apple's 99-cent rentals "devalue" the content, while Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman said the rental model was "not good."

You have to consider how people use media though. Consider music, where 99 cents is now the agreed upon standard for purchasing. How many times will I listen to a song I like? Who knows, but it's a lot. People will go back to the same song over and over again over time.

TV shows aren't like that. With rare exceptions, individual episodes are a "one and done" thing. Which means this: to the end consumer of media, the typical tv episode has a lower value than most songs. Since songs have arrived at an agreed upon value of 99 cents, that's providing a ceiling on the value of tv shows.

Now, you can argue about production costs and such, but that doesn't really matter to the end buyer. It matters a lot to the producers, of course - which argues for fewer people in the value extraction chain, I think. Over time, I expect online sales to start whittling away the plethora of middle men who add cost - but no real value - to the creation of tv (and movies). I wouldn't be surprised to see tv shows go the way of video games: you buy a few episodes, and then subscribe to a "feed" for DLC. The entire model for show distribution and production would have to change for that to happen, and I think that's what the execs quoted above fear most. In that world, they have no place at the feeding trough.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Smalltalk Posts Archive

October 1, 2010 7:23:08.337

I set up a month by month link archive for the Smalltalk oriented posts I've made here - you can trawl through that here.

posted by James Robertson

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Smalltalk Daily 10/01/10: Using Google Calendar Feeds

October 1, 2010 8:40:50.025

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at using the client authentication to Google we built to retrieve an Atom feed of calendar events. The code I'm demonstrating is in the public store repository under the name GCal-Example - the usage in the screencast is below. To skip to the video, click here.


"get the request token - cl is the calendar service"
gAuth := AuthRequest 
	requestTokenFor: 'cl' 
	user: username
	password: password
	clientName: 'Cincom-VisualWorks-771'.

"get the response as XML"
request := EventRangeRequest
					from: (Timestamp readFrom: '09/01/10 0:00:00' readStream)
					to: (Timestamp readFrom: '10/01/10 0:00:00' readStream).
response := ServiceRequest
					makeRequestWith: gAuth
					requestPrepObject: request.
xml := response contents.

"save the results as a file for addition to any RSS/Atom aware tool"
file := 'calFeed.xml' asFilename writeStream.
file nextPutAll: xml.
file close.

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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cincom

Cincom Smalltalk Server Outage

October 1, 2010 11:42:25.135

The cincomsmalltalk server seems to be having a problem right now - our IT guys are looking into it. When I have more information, I'll update this post. Sorry for the inconvenience!

Update, 12:30 PM: The server is back online.

posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Smalltalk Solutions 2011 Venue Announced

October 1, 2010 13:15:28.959

Smalltalk Solutions

The conference venue has been announced - visit the official STIC page for all the details!

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posted by James Robertson

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web

New Image Format?

October 2, 2010 12:43:09.206

Google is trying to push a new image format - WebP:

Images on the web in this format — which CNET reports will be officially announced later today — will have smaller file sizes, load faster and relieve a lot of overclocked networks. They won’t necessarily look better — WebP images are as “glossy” as JPEGs — but the files might be around 40% smaller than JPEG files.

I see inertia as the sticking point here. All of the tools people use to save images (I use Preview on the Mac for most of that, because it's "good enough" for the stuff I post) - will have to support the new format. Before they do that, the various developers of these tools will have to see a compelling need. Then, the various users of those tools will have to upgrade or update.

Given all that, I see inertia being a real problem.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

A Mentoring Course on Smalltalk - Reviewed

October 2, 2010 12:45:45.916

Sean DeNegris likes Andres' Smalltalk mentoring book:

This is the best programming book I’ve ever read and I’ve read them all in C, C++, Ruby, and Smalltalk.

Follow the link for the rest of his review.

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posted by James Robertson

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Twitter via xAuth: Working

October 2, 2010 13:35:09.003

I still need to integrate the work I've done with my blog tools, but I have Twitter access working from Smalltalk again. To do that, I had to build an xAuth interface. That wasn't hard, although it took a bit of research on my part to properly construct the authentication header. In any event, I posted the package OAuth to the public store repository. The OAuth implementation is not complete, but the simpler xAuth one is. To use it, you have to get keys from the service (like Twitter) that you want to integrate with. Then, you get your token:


auth := XAuthenticator fromSettings: (OAuth.Settings fromFile: 'twitterOAuth.ini').
tokenObject := auth executeXAuthAccessTokenRequest.

With the token retrieved, you should be able to do the following to update Twitter:


postCollection add: 'status' -> 'Testing xAuth to Twitter from Smalltalk'.
auth 
	executeXAuthCallFor: postCollection 
	with: tokenObject 
	to: 'http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/update.json'

Now, Twitter doesn't want you to fetch a new token for each session; they want to get one, save it, and then use that (pretty much forever). So, I created a simple package - MiniXAuthTwit - that makes this simple. When it makes a token request, it'll store that token in a binary file (xAuthTokens.bos), and look for it before attempting to do a tweet. To use that package, all you do is:


MiniTwitPoster tweet: 'This is my tweet'

I started plugging this into my blog posting tools a bit ago, but never got around to finishing that. Looks like that's my next project :)

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Smalltalk in Stockholm

October 2, 2010 16:52:17.000

A lively evening of Smalltalk and other dynamic languages is coming to Stockholm, Sweden on October 19th:

Cincom (Julian Fitzell, Tim Matthews), DevoTeam Quaint (Björn Eiderbäck) and TPG Objektfabriken (Göran Krampe) joined forces and invite you to an evening full of presentations and informal exchange around dynamic languages.
Topics will comprise “Dynamic languages on mobile platforms” (Mikael Kindborg, MoSync), “Web development with Seaside” (Julian Fitzell, Cincom) as well as a series of mini presentations highlighting cool aspects of each language the entire agenda will be published shortly. To ensure your seat at this free-of-charge event, please sign up here:

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posted by James Robertson

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books

Whither Books?

October 3, 2010 6:46:59.000

I think Seth Godin is on to something. He's written a dozen books, but he's quoted in an interview saying this:

“I’ve decided not to publish any more books in the traditional way. 12 for 12 and I’m done. I like the people, but I can’t abide the long wait, the filters, the big push at launch, the nudging to get people to go to a store they don’t usually visit to buy something they don’t usually buy, to get them to pay for an idea in a form that’s hard to spread … I really don’t think the process is worth the effort that it now takes to make it work. I can reach 10 or 50 times as many people electronically. No, it’s not ‘better’, but it’s different. So while I’m not sure what format my writing will take, I’m not planning on it being the 1907 version of hardcover publishing any longer.”

That sounds about right to me. iTunes (and the various streaming models like Pandora) have completely disintermediated music. It's possible for an artist to sell music without the huge number of middle men now; I think the same thing is about to happen with books. That's terrifying to the publishers of course, but the RIAA wasn't (and still isn't, for that matter) happy either. Technology is going to drive more people in the direction that Godin is taking.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Smalltalk in France

October 3, 2010 11:02:11.130

There are four Smalltalk presentations at the Open Source Developers's Conference in Paris , October 9-10. Check out the schedule listing those talks - one of them will be Julian Fitzell talking about Seaside.

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posted by James Robertson

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news

Gadgets to the Rescue

October 3, 2010 12:08:11.847

This story from Chile - about how the miners trapped there are getting physical and moral support via a lifeline of small gadgets and other items - is really fascinating.

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posted by James Robertson

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audio

Industry Misinterpretations 208: Smalltalk TV

October 3, 2010 12:22:12.997

This week's podcast is a coversation with Chris Cunnington, the guy behind Smalltalk TV. Chris has been doing a (mostly weekly) screencast series on Squeak for awhile now; this is of interest to me because of my work on Smalltalk Daily. We talked some about tools and techniques, and about what our goals have been for doing the screencasts. You can get to Chris' YouTube page for The Smalltalk Medicine Show here.

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.. Interested in Cincom Smalltalk? Why not download it now and try it out yourself? 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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smalltalk

Glamour on Seaside

October 3, 2010 17:10:19.000

Tudor Girba has announced Glamour on Seaside:

We are happy to announce the first version of Glamour on Seaside. This work was carried out by Andrei Vasile Chis and was sponsored by ESUG. The project offers a Seaside-based rendering of Glamour browsers. In other words, once you have a browser in Glamour, you can now simply display it on the web.

If you want to know more about Glamour, it was one of the 2009 Innovation apps at ESUG - I shot video of the 2009 ESUG talk, and we did a podcast with Tudor about the project earlier this year.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Seaside on Twitter

October 4, 2010 6:08:55.935

There's a Seaside Twitter feed I just noticed - looks like an aggregation feed of Seaside related items.

Update: Fixed the link

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Silicon Squeak

October 4, 2010 6:34:41.045

Torsten reports on Morphie - a new startup providing an interesting form of Seaside hosting using Squeak and "virtual hardware".

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posted by James Robertson

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Smalltalk Daily 10/04/10: Using xAuth

October 4, 2010 6:57:20.585

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at using xAuth to connect to a public web service - in this case, Twitter. The code I used in the screencast is below - to load that code, get the packages OAuth and MinXAuthTwit from the public store repository. To skip to the video, click here..


"the entire conversation with Twitter"
auth := XAuthenticator fromSettings: (OAuth.Settings fromFile: 'twitterOAuth.ini').
accessData := auth executeXAuthAccessTokenRequest.
postCollection := OrderedCollection new.
postCollection add: 'status' -> 'Testing xAuth to Twitter from Smalltalk'.
auth 
	executeXAuthCallFor: postCollection 
	with: accessData 
	to: 'http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/update.json'

"save the results as a file for addition to any RSS/Atom aware tool"
file := 'calFeed.xml' asFilename writeStream.
file nextPutAll: xml.
file close.

"Using the simpler package I published"
MiniTwitPoster tweet: 'Test Tweet from simple interface object'

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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gadgets

Microsoft Gets Back into the Mobile Game

October 4, 2010 9:31:29.665

A lot of people - myself included - thought MS had lost the mobile space, but they are getting their latest entry out ahead of HP (Palm) - so maybe they can challenge for the third space behind Apple and Google:

Steve Ballmer will be the keynote speaker at Microsoft's New York launch event for Windows Phone 7. He'll be joined on stage by AT&T's Ralph de la Vega and when the pep rally is over, we're promised opportunities to finally handle the official incarnations of retail Windows Phones for ourselves.

I've read generally positive reviews for the Windows Phone, so we'll see.

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posted by James Robertson

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sports

Streaming the Playoffs

October 4, 2010 10:36:54.542

With all the time I spend at the gym, this kind of thing sounds pretty cool:

The Postseason.TV package, available for $10, provides access to live video (synced with live broadcast audio) from multiple camera angles for every postseason game.

iPad in hand, I can use the exercise bike at the gym and follow along. Yes, they have TVs, but who knows what channels those will be tuned to - mostly,. it's news, and for the first round, a lot of the games overlap.

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posted by James Robertson

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movies

Direct to NetFlix?

October 4, 2010 17:39:31.000

It looks like the "direct to DVD" space died, which is what has stopped the planned Stargate movies from happening:

The only thing that is blocking the SG-1 movie or the Atlantis movie, the only thing, is the fact that the direct-to-DVD market has gone away. We were very fortunate with Ark of Truth and Continuum to be among the last very successful direct-to-DVD releases before it all stopped happening. The market has changed, and it's still changing, and it's not what it was. And, of course, there have been very big changes at MGM that kind of added to that.

Well, what about "direct to NetFlix and iTunes" as an idea then? It's basically the same space, just updated to modern delivery methods.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Design Principles Behind Smalltalk

October 5, 2010 5:39:17.000

LtU goes back to the archives for the 30th anniversary of Smalltalk:

With Smalltalk-80 nominally turning 30 and PARC turning 40, 2010 is a fitting year to revisit Design Principles Behind Smalltalk by Daniel H. H. Ingalls, known to his German admirers as Daniel Ha-ha Ingalls.

posted by James Robertson

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gadgets

iPads Everywhere

October 5, 2010 6:23:40.848

The iPad has been penetrating the consumer market at a faster clip than the DVD player did when it first launched:

iPad sold three million units in the first 80 days after its April release and its current sales rate is about 4.5 million units per quarter, according to Bernstein Research. This sales rate is blowing past the one million units the iPhone sold in its first quarter and the 350,000 units sold in the first year by the DVD player, the most quickly adopted non-phone electronic product.

My memories are a bit foggy, but I think DVD players started out pretty expensive, whereas the low end iPad is under $500. The article touches on that fact - read the whole thing.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

GemTools for Pharo 1.1

October 5, 2010 6:37:30.000

The Gemstone Community continues to get stuff done:

Thanks to the hard work of Norbert Hartl, GemTools can now be loaded into Pharo 1.1.

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posted by James Robertson

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Smalltalk Daily 10/05/10: Integrating with Google Calendar

October 5, 2010 7:45:30.715

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at integrating a feed from Google calendar with the syndication handling code that is used in BottomFeeder. The code I used in the screencast is below - to load that code, get the packages GCal-Example2 and Syndication-Handling from the public store repository. Make sure to load the latest NetworkAppUtilities as well; the version that loads from disk is not the latest version. To skip to the video, click here.


"get the request token"
gAuth := AuthRequest 
	requestTokenFor: 'cl' 
	user: username
	password: password
	clientName: 'Cincom-VisualWorks-771'.

"get the response as XML"
serviceResponse := ServiceRequest
					makeRequestWith: gAuth 
					requestPrepObject: ExampleRequestPrep new.
xml := serviceResponse contents.

"get the feed object"
feed := Constructor getFeedFromStream: xml readStream.

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

Making Smalltalk Use More Cores

October 5, 2010 9:31:07.700

I saw this pass by in one of VisualWorks mailing lists - it's a Cincom customer successfully using multiple cores via multiple images, with a library we call Polycephaly:

We are successfully using Polycephaly in our project. One thing we use it for is to parallelize execution of (time-consuming) unit tests that check code quality. These tests execute at 28% of original time, when using Polycephaly on a quad-core box.

That library is in the preview directory of the distribution (for ObjectStudio as well!) - take a look.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Scratch for Arduino Interview

October 5, 2010 9:46:41.780

The Scratch for Arduino team has a ten minute interview posted:

"We want to explore Scratch for Arduino applications on interactive science museums and art digital centers"

Follow the link for the video - it's in Spanish, btw.

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posted by James Robertson

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esug2010

ESUG Video

October 5, 2010 10:30:05.000

Can't wait for me to get the editing job done on ESUG video? If you want to watch the raw videos as they were shot, they all available here. It's all Flash, so if you're on a mobile device, well, get thee back to a desktop :)

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posted by James Robertson

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sports

Staggering into the Playoffs

October 5, 2010 12:16:16.721

The Yankees didn't exactly march triumphantly into the post-season - they went 9-17 to end the regular season, and have decided on a three man rotation for the Twins:

Because of A.J. Burnett's miserable season, the Yankees will use Sabathia, Andy Pettitte and Phil Hughes in the best-of-five series that opens tomorrow night against the AL Central champion Twins at Target Field in Minneapolis.

Thank goodness they benched Burnett. He has not impressed me as a guy who does well under pressure. With luck, Jeter's bat will wake up now that it's October...

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posted by James Robertson

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gadgets

Mobile Skype

October 5, 2010 12:27:12.000

Engadget Reports that Skype has found its way to Android, but with limits:

Finally, at long last, after so much waiting, Skype has made its debut as a full-fledged Android app. There are no Verizon-related limitations anymore, but Android Police reports that calling through the app is only available via WiFi, you can't use your mobile's data connection -- not yet, anyway.

I wonder how much of a hand the carriers have in that. When Skype first arrived on the iPhone, the same limitation was in place. It was lifted later, but there it is. I can't imagine that Verizon would be cheery about this.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Smalltalk in Ottawa

October 5, 2010 16:24:07.000

David Buck reports on the next Ottawa STUG:

Alan Knight will present his talk on Store from the European Smalltalk User Group, discussing recent developments, possible upcoming work, and demonstrating an extremely rickety prototype of a "Store Server" that can load packages from a server running in the Amazon EC2 cloud in a single round-trip rather than needing to connect directly to the database.

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posted by James Robertson

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games

Finished Red Dead Redemption

October 5, 2010 18:26:58.000

I finally finished the main plot in Red Dead Redemption - without giving anything away, I have to say that I was a bit surprised by the way the game "kept going" after what I thought was the ending. It made sense though, and there's a side quest available for you to tie up the loose ends that are left from the game's "ending".

That's not the end to what you can do in the game by any means, either. Like Fallout 3, the game world is still alive, even though the plot is done. Random encounters still happen, and there are plenty of challenges left to accomplish (not to mention the gamer trophies).

I might work at some of that, or I might shuffle back to my in progress Dragon Age game - while I wait for October 19th and Fallout: New Vegas :)

Now Listening to: Twisted by Katie Melua from: The House

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posted by James Robertson

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games

More Alan Wake

October 5, 2010 22:24:41.211

I've enjoyed Alan Wake, so I'm looking forward to the October 12th release of the next DLC - sadly, it'll also be the last DLC for the game:

'The Writer' will be the second and last downloadable episode for Alan Wake, following on from the well-received 'The Signal', and Remedy has already been vocal in saying it'd like to return for a sequel to the game.

I'd be happy to see a sequel, or another game in the same genre. It's a nice change from most of the other games I've played.

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posted by James Robertson

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gadgets

Check Clearing for Everyone

October 6, 2010 6:22:17.177

This is interesting - it makes it far easier for individuals to clear checks into a business account (and safer too, as there's no run to the bank with a bundle of money):

Last week we told you about the upcoming check capture feature in the iPhone PayPal app. This new feature uses your device’s camera to capture checks so they can be deposited into your PayPal account. This feature is similar to the Chase banking app and snaps the front and back of the check you want to deposit.

You wouldn't want to use your iPhone to process a huge number of checks, but this would work for small scale stuff.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Intelligent Load Balancing for Seaside

October 6, 2010 6:33:33.627

Joachim reports on a cool Apache module for Seaside apps (Pharo only at the moment):

How does this actually work? There are two Apache modules involved. mod_advertise sends UDP broadcasts about Apache's location, you might have several on different hosts in the network. mod_cluster_manager allows remote configuration of Apache. Seaside will connect to the advertised Apache instances and tell them where it is (host, port, protocol, urls).

Joachim has an overview of what's been done; the listserv posting by Phillippe Marschall has far more details. Very cool stuff. Setting up a simple round robin load balancer with session affinity has been possible for Smalltalk aps for quite some time, of course - this just goes up to the next level.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

STIC Site Outage

October 6, 2010 6:37:21.217

I've just been informed that the STIC website is offline - due to problems on the physical server that runs the site. It should be back later today.

Update 10:00 AM EDT: The site is back online.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalkDaily

Smalltalk Daily 10/06/10: Debugging Overnight

October 6, 2010 7:57:48.614

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at one of the cool things about the Smalltalk image - you can save your current state completely - including debugging sessions. Have a hard problem to debug, and you don't want to stay late? Just save the image and come back to it later. . 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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itNews

Real World Collides with the Internet

October 6, 2010 12:48:39.880

We usually think of "cyberspace" as its own thing, but it helps to remember that it's run by physical devices in real places. Ben Metcalfe just found that out the hard way - one of the domains they use in the .ly space (Libya) got shut down for political/religious reasons:

The domain was seized by the Libyan domain registry for reasons which seemed to be kept obscure until we escalated the issue. We eventually discovered that the domain has been seized because the content of our website, in their opinion, fell outside of Libyan Islamic/Sharia Law.

It also looks like it's easy to be ignorant of the law/rules in some places around the world:

An additional concern is that the clause being used here pertains to Libyan Islamic Law which appears impossible to find listed in English.

Just remember that your site or domain is running on real hardware somewhere, and if that somewhere isn't under the same legal regime that you live under, you could be in for some unpleasant surprises.

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gadgets

More iPhone on Verizon Rumors

October 6, 2010 15:28:07.191

The WSJ is reporting this one:

Apple Inc. plans to begin mass producing a new iPhone by the end of 2010 that would allow Verizon Wireless to sell the smartphone early next year, said people briefed by Apple. The new iPhone would be similar in design to the iPhone 4 currently sold by AT&T Inc. but would be based on an alternative wireless technology called CDMA used by Verizon, these people said.

Supposedly coming in 2011 - I still have doubts. CDMA doesn't allow for simultaneous voice and data (which would make a Verizon iPhone a downgrade from the current model). Then there's Verizon's VCast store, and their desire to brand everything on their network.

I could be wrong - maybe they've done a deal. If so, I'll bet that it doesn't involve CDMA (at least not exclusively). This story tells us that Verizon is rolling out LTE by the end of 2010 - which would line up nicely with a 2011 rollout.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Micro Squeak

October 7, 2010 6:07:05.056

Torsten reports on some interesting work from John Maloney, highlighted by Eliot Miranda in the Squeak mailing list:

if size matters and you feel like you have to dig into bootstrapping an own Smalltalk system based on Squeak you should have a look at this post from Eliot. There you will find code that will produces a headless 57k image with a few basic classes as a proof of concept. Interesting!

I think the small kernel approach is the way to go.

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posted by James Robertson

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Smalltalk Daily 10/07/10: A Simple Seaside 3.0 Example

October 7, 2010 7:37:09.572

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at the Counter example in Seaside 3.0 - as an example of how to get started with Seaside. 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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esug2010

Xtreams at ESUG 2010

October 7, 2010 8:34:54.770

Here's a video from ESUG 2010, which was held in Barcelona, Spain, the week of September 13, 2010. In this presentation, Cincom's Martin Kobetic talks about the Xtreams library - a modern take on streaming in Smalltalk. You can watch using the embedded player below, or follow the download links at the bottom of the post.

Xtreams at ESUG 2010 from James Robertson on Vimeo.

You can follow the ESUG channel on Vimeo for all the videos from the conference.

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 Videos"? If you would rather subscribe specifically to the ESUG videos, then use this Vimeo feed - which will work in iTunes.

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posted by James Robertson

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social media

Twitter Irritations

October 7, 2010 14:43:56.434

Ever since Twitter went to OAuth it's been nothing but massive irritation (why they couldn't have kept using Basic Auth behind HTTPS is beyond me; I guess the simplest solution was too easy, or something).

Anyway, here's my issue with their service: it's not reliable. I'll send an API request from my code, with the proper credentials, and it'll work. I'll pick the same code up a different day, and it gives me back 401 (Unauthorized) errors. This is maddening.

At this point, I wish Google would acquire Twitter. Authenticated calls to their services never fail, so maybe the injection of some competent systems people into the Twitter service would help.

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posted by James Robertson

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games

Back to the Future

October 7, 2010 19:19:11.127

Now this takes me back:

Enterprising gamers are formatting vintage text-based adventure games such as Zork I, II and III for the Kindle and other dedicated e-readers.

I remember spending many happy hours with Zork....

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Smalltalks 2010 - Powered by Seaside

October 8, 2010 7:17:15.795

The Smalltalks 2010 website is powered by Seaside. Looks good, too!

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalkDaily

Smalltalk Daily 10/08/10: Looking at a Seaside Component

October 8, 2010 7:51:44.605

Today's Smalltalk Daily takes a more detailed look at the Counter example in Seaside. 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

Smalltalk and OO in Spanish

October 8, 2010 9:40:27.441

Norberto Manzanos has launched a new blog that concentrates on OO and Smalltalk - it's a Spanish language blog. He's part of the growing South American Smalltalk contingent.

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posted by James Robertson

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social media

Join Groups You Never Wanted To Be In

October 8, 2010 13:31:40.000

There's been a mini-tempest over the last couple of days - apparently, anyone can add other people to arbitrary Facebook groups. That sounds like nothing more than an annoyance until you realize that there are some pretty unsavory groups out there (take a look at this post from Jason Calacanis, and this one from Michael Arrington - I'm not going to link to the nasty example they have).

The good news? You can drop out of groups easily, after which you can't be added back to that group. The bad news? It's up to you to ensure that you haven't been added to some unsavory group. Why should you care? Well, employers (and potential employers) are now scouring things like Facebook to get a glimpse beyond what shows up in an interview. Membership in some groups could paint a picture you would rather not have painted - especially if being in that group wasn't your choice.

It wouldn't be so hard for Facebook to move this one level back, and just allow people to invite you to groups instead of slamming you into them.

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posted by James Robertson

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sports

Things I like to See

October 8, 2010 16:34:13.000

The Yankees are up 2-0 in the best of 5 series against the Twins - so much for the Twins home field advantage. Of course, keeping the 2004 debacle in mind, it's not time for them to get cocky. Still:

Pettitte turned in a vintage performance with seven smooth innings and Lance Berkman had two big hits in a 5-2 victory by the Yankees over their favorite postseason punching bag on Thursday evening for a 2-0 lead in the best-of-five division series.

Sabathia looked a bit shaky on Wednesday, so I hope he has his good stuff back on Saturday. Wrapping this up in 3 would be a good thing.

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posted by James Robertson

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scifi

BSG in Classic Dungeons and Dragons Terms

October 8, 2010 17:27:42.000

What happens when you map the classic D&D alignment system onto Battlestar Galactica? You get the picture over at Blastr.

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posted by James Robertson

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gadgets

Not Getting It

October 8, 2010 19:46:13.966

Verizon explains how we don't really need simultaneous voice and data on our smart phones:

"I think there are fringe cases where something like that could be important," Mr. Higgins said. "For a vast majority of customers, I don't think it's a terribly important use case."

Sure - the fact that I use this all the time screams edge case to me. This all comes in the context of the supposed CDMA iPhone, which I'm still not sure is real. There's another issue (albeit, not for everyone) with a CDMA iPhone - it would be a brick outside the US....

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posted by James Robertson

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