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news

Paywalls and Readers

January 17, 2010 23:45:40.318

I see the Times is leaning in a paywall direction again:

After a year of sometimes fraught debate inside the paper, the choice for some time has been between a Wall Street Journal-type pay wall and the metered system adopted by the Financial Times, in which readers can sample a certain number of free articles before being asked to subscribe. The Times seems to have settled on the metered system.

While I understand the need to make money, I'm just not sure this is going to work for them. The problem for the Times is that they desperately want to preserve their existing business model in an environment that will support a lot fewer employees nad overhead. Then there's the loss of influence problem - I ran across this commeneary from Ann Althouse:

For me, reading on line is tied to blogging. I'm not going to spend my time reading sites that I can't blog, and I'm not going to blog and link to sites that you can't read without paying.

Now, I'm a very small player, so the loss of links from me won't mean much, but I feel the same way. During the baseball season, I've often linked to stories about the Yankees (and the pennant races in general) in the Times. With this change? I can't link to stories that are going to be invisible to most people either,

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posted by James Robertson

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audio

Industry Misinterpretations 171: Xtreams

January 17, 2010 11:33:18.548

This week Michael and I spoke to Martin Kobetic - he's one of Michael's fellow Smalltalk engineers here at Cincom. The two of them have been working on Xtreams as a side project for awhile now; Xtreams is a "Streams library reboot", applying the lessons learned from the existing Smalltalk streams library after the many years of use across domains they weren't originally designed (for instance, network protocol work).

There's a bit of crackling in the audio whenever Martin talks, that I couldn't do a whole lot to get rid of. It's a bit annoying, but it's all easily audible.

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.

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 or Ning - 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!

posted by James Robertson

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stupidity

Moron Alert

January 16, 2010 18:59:12.695

The stupidity is getting harder to keep up with:

A San Diego school vice-principal saw an 11-year-old's home science project (a motion detector made out of an empty Gatorade bottle and some electronics), decided it was a bomb, wet himself, put the school on lockdown, had the bomb-squad come out to destroy X-ray the student's invention and search his parents' home, and then magnanimously decided not to discipline the kid (though he did recommend that the child and his parents get counselling to help them overcome their anti-social science behavior).

I have a better idea: fire the idiot vice principal, congratulate the student for trying to build a cool science project, and send the entire staff at that school back to grade school. Or let them and the students swap places.

Seriously, what the heck is wrong with the staff there? Based on the reporting, it looks like the vice principal is listed here. After someone fetches him clean underwear, can they also hand him a remedial education course?

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posted by James Robertson

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games

Immersive Gaming: DragonAge Origins

January 16, 2010 17:26:30.991

Ever since Christmas, my daughter and I have been spending a lot of time with EA's Dragon Age: Origins. It's a pretty immersive RPG we have on the XBox. The kid is positively obsessed with the game, and - I must say - I've spent a fair amount of time with it as well. I liked Modern Warfare 2 and Gears of War 2 well enough, but this is a much bigger game. I'm not even all that far into it - I'm dealing with the last battle in the tower of the magi right now. Speaking of which, I think the XBox is calling me...

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posted by James Robertson

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general

The Wages of Procrastination

January 16, 2010 11:34:54.431

On of our car's has to get its emissions checked, and the deadline (before a fine) is Tuesday. So, I went down to the station this morning... only to discover that they are closed today and Monday for Martin Luther King observance.

Well, this is what I get for putting things off to the last minute, I guess...

posted by James Robertson

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books

A Storm of Swords

January 16, 2010 1:03:37.696

All I can say is - wow! George Martin keeps his story moving, and keeps throwing curve balls at me. I was pretty well stunned by the final paragraph of the book A Storm of Swords . I've ordered the next book, and I'm hoping that he gets the next few books out as soon as he can.

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posted by James Robertson

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cincom

New Smalltalk Website

January 15, 2010 16:08:21.195

The Smalltalk website at Cincom has been refreshed - if you have feedback, you can email me, or drop a comment here.

Also, if you find the old version of the site more familiar, you can get there via cincomsmalltalk.com/developers.

posted by James Robertson

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games

The Wii Soars

January 15, 2010 15:57:04.482

I guess that price drop to $199 helped Nintendo move units:

According to The NPD Group (via Wired), Nintendo moved 3.81 million Wii consoles in North America last month. That's 1.66 million more units than December 2008, and the record for most consoles sold in a single month. No surprise, then, that the games industry had a record month overall, besting December 2008 by 4 percent.

I like the XBox, but the Wii is still very cool. Apparemtly, lots of other people think the same thing

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posted by James Robertson

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DRM

Feel the Stupid at the RIAA

January 15, 2010 15:50:43.332

Our good friends at the RIAA are back, trying to help us:

ISPs should have authority to block subscribers from sharing music and other files without permission of the copyright owner, the RIAA said. "ISPs are in a unique position to limit online theft," the RIAA said in its comments. "They control the facilities over which infringement takes place and are singularly positioned to address it at the source. Without ISP participation, it is extremely difficult to develop an effective prevention approach."

Right, and we can trust that no false positives would crop up, and that no innocent people would get caught up in this. Just like with their "sue the world" strategery...

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posted by James Robertson

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web

Getting to the Meat

January 15, 2010 9:26:18.420

I have a question - you can either email me, or leave comments if you want to answer it :) When you go to a site, and see an an offer to watch a video, or read a document (assume for the sake of argument that it's about something of interest to you) - how do you react to a mandatory form? Do you:

  • Bail on the content, even though it sounds interesting
  • Fill in the form, but with bogus information
  • Fill in the form

I know how I react, but I'm curious as to how other people see this.

posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Searchlight

January 15, 2010 8:39:12.677

Searchlight is a new search tool for Cincom Smalltalk - instead of separating senders/implementors, it unifies results for them. Inspired by Apple's Spotlight, it's a new take on finding things in Smalltalk - learn more about it below:

You can download the video directly 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 in the Wild

January 15, 2010 6:52:19.271

Joachim Tuchel has a few more examples of real world Seaside usage.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Smalltalk in Seattle, next Thursday

January 15, 2010 6:49:38.901

The Cincom Smalltalk team will be coming to Seattle for a one day event on Thursday the 21st - you can register here (free). You can get more details over on the Cincom Smalltalk Events Page- the event will run from 9 AM to 1 PM

Smalltalk Technology Series

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posted by James Robertson

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general

Haiti - Just Wow

January 15, 2010 6:31:39.201

This series of before/after satellite photos of various parts of Port au Prince makes it clear just how much damage the earthquake did. If the "after" shots were black and white, you might think they were WWII era photos of some European city that got bombed a lot...

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posted by James Robertson

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podcasting

Podcast on Xtreams at 9 PM EST

January 14, 2010 20:56:43.604

Listen live at 9PM EST here

Update: It was a great show, we had a lot of fun and really got into Xtreams. It'll be out as per usual on Sunday!

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posted by James Robertson

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service

Sears... I Should Know Better

January 14, 2010 17:03:25.859

You know, I should really know better than to buy anything that involves a service visit from Sears. After all, there's all of this history.

Sigh. We bought a new dishwasher last week, because ours has been doing a terrible job, even after a repair recently. installation was scheduled today between 2 and 5. That's fine; I work out of the house, so there wasn't any issue that way. However....

it's now 5:01 PM, and nothing. I called the local number, and got their "closed for the day" answering machine (that's the contractor, not Sears). So I called Sears. That was moving along untill they tried to transfer me, at which point they dropped the call. So, it's back to the phone.

I wonder how long this saga will last?

Update: The installers showed up at 5:30 with the new dishwasher, and it's going in now. So the main question is, how frakking hard would a short "we'll be late" phone call have been?

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posted by James Robertson

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tv

Is Zucker This Dumb?

January 14, 2010 15:59:26.430

I find this whole Leno/Conan thing terribly amusing. The entire contretemps was set into motion years ago by Zucker himself, when he promised the Tonight Show to Conan. Then, he let Conan find out about the "bring Leno back to 11:35" move via media reports. Now, he's "talking tough":

But now the NBCU chief has been talking tough during the negotiations with Team Conan. To counter O'Brien's principled public statement which the late night host issued this week, Zucker "is threatening to ice Conan", according to his reps. "Zucker said, 'I'll keep you off the air for 3 1/2 years.' Which doesn't have a chance in hell of happening.

I've written about Zucker before; he might well be the dumbest man in the TV business. He's certainly a living example of the "Peter Principle" in action...

The big winner in all this? CBS and Letterman. The more Zucker does, the bigger they win, I think.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

The Niall Ross ESUG 2009 Report

January 14, 2010 15:26:04.310

ESUG 2009

Here's Niall Ross' typically thorough report from ESUG 2009.

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posted by James Robertson

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news

Gray Market Readers in the App Store

January 14, 2010 14:49:25.952

Spotted in Engadget

Here's an interesting little new media legal dilemma for you: apparently there are several paid apps in the iPhone App Store that bill themselves as "readers" for publications like the New York Times, CNET, and the BBC, but aren't actually licensed or official in anyway -- they're just pulling RSS feeds. That means people paying for an app like The New York Times Mobile Reader aren't actually getting an app from the Times -- and, perhaps more importantly, the Times isn't getting anything from anyone. Seems like Apple should probably just shut these apps down, but that's the interesting part: all these apps are pretty much just custom-built feed readers, and you can generally access all of the same content using Safari.

I noticed this because the idea of a "Smalltalk Daily" reader like the ones discussed above seemed like a good idea, and a friend of mine built a proof of concept that I like. White label is one thing; this gray label thing is the sort of thing you would think the app store approval process would weed out.

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posted by James Robertson

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podcasting

Xtreams - Live Tonight on justin.tv

January 14, 2010 14:31:48.952

We'll be broadcasting the next podcast tonight at 9 PM EST on justin.tv - it's going to cover the new Xtreams work that Michael and Martin Kobetic (fellow Cincom Smalltalker) have been working on.

See you then! It'll be posted for download on Sunday, as per usual. You can get more of a feel for what Xtreams is all about by loading the bundle from the public store - and by checking out video from Martin's recent presentation on it.

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posted by James Robertson

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humor

iVictrola

January 14, 2010 13:10:41.858

Ok, this is just funny:

posted by James Robertson

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travel

WiFi On the Rails

January 14, 2010 11:23:50.053

Spotted in Engadget

Now, a very few of those lines are getting even more appealing with Amtrak announcing that Acela lines between Boston, New York, and Washington will be receiving WiFi upgrades in March. That the service will be free is great news -- that the word "initially" is inserted before the word "free" isn't so very great

So the next time I have to head to NYC, it looks like I'll be able to stay online. Cool!

posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Password Field Properties

January 14, 2010 9:30:03.162

When you specify the type of an input field as "Password", the "Read Only" setting becomes a problem in VisualWorks 7.7. Today's screencast looks at that, given that the two worked in VisualWorks 7.6

You can download the video directly 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

Google to the Rescue

January 14, 2010 6:58:14.155

Yesterday, my iPhone suddenly started playing the same song over and over, even though it was on shuffle. I could manually proceed it, but by itself, it repeated. I put it in recovery mode after an attempt to reboot it ended in a lockup, but it retained the same setting. I had looked under iPod prefs and seen nothing, so I was starting to get frustrated.

As per usual though, I should have turned to the web first. A quick search showed me this, and - sure enough - the little loop button under the the time showed "repeat 1". I hadn't even noticed that there was a setting there before :)

I have no idea how that setting got turned on, but I suspect I did it accidentally. At least I know it's there now.

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posted by James Robertson

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travel

Travel Security and Unintended Consequences

January 14, 2010 6:27:13.495

I hadn't thought of this, but it makes a lot of sense:

As for not having luggage, many people (including me) ship it via Fedex ahead of time. [More...] United Airlines has an easy feature on their website where for $79., Fedex will come to your house or office, pick up your suitcase and deliver it to your hotel or other place in the destination city. Considering the airlines charge $25.00 or more to check the bag, and the requirement that you have to check it 45 minutes ahead of departure, the extra $50 is well worth it.

I try hard not to have to check anything, but some people have issues carrying heavy things - like, say, a person with knee or hip trouble. I can see it being well worth the time of someone with minor health issues to just ship everything to their destination.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Come See us in Seattle

January 13, 2010 23:21:35.109

Smalltalk Conference

Next week (on the 21st) we'll be at the Crowne Plaza in Seattle, Washington, 9 AM to 1 PM. You can register for the event (free) here. We'll be covering cool stuff in VisualWorks, ObjectStudio, and WebVelocity, so come on out to see what the Smalltalk team has been up to!

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Smalltalk Superpowers

January 13, 2010 21:21:09.048

Travis Griggs is talking about Smalltalk Superpowers again - lightweight classes, specifically - in order to solve a problem involving VisualWorks LookPolicy classes. Check it out - it's interesting stuff.

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posted by James Robertson

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tv

When to Stop

January 13, 2010 16:56:43.290

A sixth season of Supernatural? This year, the Winchester boys are fighting Lucifer. How the heck do they top that?

Let the story end, just like Buffy should have ended after season 5...

posted by James Robertson

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marketing

Marketing To Lose

January 13, 2010 16:52:20.060

I love this approach to marketing:

So, you crafted a campaign to drive people to submit your form, but they did not? That's ok. Within Eloqua, you can easily set up a follow up email to target people who landed on a specific page, but did not submit a form.

Here's a better thought: How about you don't bother people who expressed no interest? How about you don't require the form, and just offer the information? This whole concept of "lead generation" is just wrong headed. If you want potential customers to know something, let them know. If the information is actually useful, and you have a product/service that solves a related problem, they'll come back to you.

When you get treated this way at the car dealer shop, does it fill you with joy? What makes marketing people think it will make anyone happy?

Update: When I described this to my wife, and asked her how that kind of followup would feel, she said "I'd feel stalked"

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posted by James Robertson

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gadgets

Netflix and the Wii

January 13, 2010 14:56:21.951

Now, you might wonder why I care about this - having Netflix streaming on the Wii, when I already have the Xbox. Well, it's like this:

  • The XBox requires a cabled network connection
  • We have an exercise bike in one of our upstairs bedrooms
  • The Wii uses WiFi
  • My wife uses the bike quite a bit, since she has knee troubles

What this will do is make it easier for us to consume Netflix material wherever we want to, which is cool.

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posted by James Robertson

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gadgets

iPhones and Verizon

January 13, 2010 12:12:18.585

Spotted in Rob Fahrni:

How long will it be before we can buy an iPhone on other networks? Will it be available on all networks? It'll be interesting to see the sales numbers for iPhone when it does open up.

I'm not convinced that the iPhone will come to Verizon before the next generation (converged with GSM) network rolls out. Why? Well, Apple would have to go with CDMA, which is useful in North America, and pretty much nowhere else. I can tell you that I wouldn't jump to Verizon if they had the phone, because I've had enough of carrying a useless brick overseas.

Now, they could make it a tri-band phone, I suppose, and have it work overseas - but that just adds to the potential expense. I rather expect that Verizon won't see the iPhone for awhile.

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posted by James Robertson

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itNews

Let Slip the Dogs of Name Calling

January 13, 2010 12:01:49.675

The video linked here is making the rounds, and being used to promote the idea that "HP must be racist" - because the face tracking software on the unit in question doesn't seem to track a black guy in front of it.

I rather suspect that HP just did all of their testing with lighter skinned people, or in much better lighted rooms, or both. So blame them for incomplete testing and sloppiness, sure. But racism? Be serious.

posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Using Active Record in Glorp

January 13, 2010 10:36:04.608

With the release of OS 8.2 and VW 7.7, Glorp is not only a supported O/R library - it has ActiveRecord support as well. Today's screencast looks at using it withing VW.

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

Solving the Wrong Problem

January 13, 2010 10:27:13.898

James Governor notes that Google's latest announcement, allowing you to shove any kind of file into Google Docs for storage, isn't solving a useful problem. There is a problem worth solving, just not the one they are on about:

Tools for automatic file migration and syncing between multiple folders and devices? Now *that* is a use case. See DropBox, Evernote, Mozy, SugarSync etc. I want Google to offer me the Synchronised Web, not a USB stick replacement.

Exactly. While I've seen some sales people who run around without laptops (and then have their email auto-respond that they are traveling and "away from email"), that's a shrinking population - and, to be honest, not the most clueful one - the sort of person who does that isn't a great candidate for Google's use case, IMHO...

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Sometimes it's a Slow Start

January 13, 2010 9:56:42.605

I spent the morning working on a demo I'm building for the upcoming roadshow events - which is why "Smalltalk Daily" isn't up yet. It should pop up within the hour.

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posted by James Robertson

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stupidity

Moron Alert

January 12, 2010 21:10:25.112

I love this kind of thing:

A group of Santa Fe residents recently attempted to get all public Wi-Fi hotspots in the city banned by arguing that the APs irritated their supposed "electromagnetic allergies."

How he's managed to survive with all the TV and radio signals in the air is anybody's guess. One can only hope that these idiots don't find a judge stupid enough to play ball with them...

posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

More Seaside

January 12, 2010 20:50:12.698

The Pharo-cast blog has a seaside video up - going through the canonical blog example. I did a whole tutorial series on that :)

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posted by James Robertson

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movies

Pretty Soon for a Reboot

January 12, 2010 12:12:51.377

SpiderMan is getting the reboot treatment instead of a 4th flick:

Mike Fleming and Nikki Finke have just confirmed that Sony Pictures decided today to reboot the Spider-Man franchise after franchise director Sam Raimi pulled out of Spider-Man 4 because he felt he couldn't make its summer release date and keep the film's creative integrity. This means that Raimi and the cast including star Tobey Maguire are out. There will be no Spider-Man 4. Instead, Mike Fleming is told, the studio will focus on a Summer 2012 reboot from a script by Jamie Vanderbilt with a new director and a new cast.

Of course, "Batman" has been rebooted a nearly infinite number of times now, so I shouldn't be surprised :)

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posted by James Robertson

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culture

Over the Net Radio

January 12, 2010 8:32:38.377

Spotted in Doc Searls Weblog:

The system isn't one. It's all very ad hoc and not very reliable. Nobody yet has the right formula to reconcile their own costs and programming with the barely-known users and usages out there. How many streams should they support? Should they stream at 128kb and be audible only over ethernet and good broadband land connecitons? Should they stream in lo-fi at 24kb or 32kb so they stay audible on iPhones over 3G connections after those go away and the connection drops down to GPRS? (That's my recommendation, generally.) Should they have multiple streams? (I also recommend that.) For radio on the Net (which also includes podcasting and on-demand), there isn't enough common usage yet, much less common wisdom about how to serve it on the supply side. It's like AM radio in 1924. The difference is that much more of it is outside regulatory control. The rules that matter are copyright more than engineering. Ever notice how little popular (or even known) music is on podcast? Thank the DMCA for that one.

I don't follow this field like Searls does, but I can certainly note that I listen to a whole lot less radio. I tend to have one of three things on, whether I'm in my home office or the car:

  • iTunes
  • Pandora
  • AM Radio (I periodically listen to talk radio to get an idea as to what the outrage of the day is)

The thing I spent most of my younger years with - music radio - I almost never have that on. As Searls says though, things are in a very ad-hoc state right now, and they haven't settled down into anything like what they'll look like in, say, 10 years. Getting rid of the DMCA would help a lot, but I don't expect that to happen. Too bad, really; the whole shape of the future is constrained by that stupidity.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Brace Constructor Syntax in VW or OS

January 12, 2010 8:15:54.207

If you're trying to port code from Squeak or Pharo to VisualWorks and/or ObjectStudio, one thing you may have run across is the Brace Constructor syntax for arrays. i.e., instead of:.


array := Array 
			with: 3+4
			with: Date today.

You get:


array := {3+4. Date today}.

Today's screencast looks at adding support for that syntax to VW and OS:

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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advertising

Speaking of Augmented Reality...

January 12, 2010 6:24:32.403

Soon, you could see ads in Google maps that never existed in the real world:

This patent, which was originally filed on July 7, 2008, describes a new system for promoting ads in online mapping applications. In this patent, Google describes how it plans to identify buildings, posters, signs and billboards in these images and give advertisers the ability to replace these images with more up-to-date ads. In addition, Google also seems to plan an advertising auction for unclaimed properties.

This is the kind of technology that could have some hilarious end resuts. FailBlog should do very well off this :)

posted by James Robertson

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law

Office and Word Disappear from Stores

January 12, 2010 6:18:11.183

I really thought that Microsoft was going to settle with i4i after they were given a hard date to comply with, but no - they've pulled Office instead:

Microsoft Corp. has pulled almost every version of Office from its own online store to comply with a court order requiring it to remove custom XML technology from its popular Word software starting today.

The powers that be at MS are either overly prideful, or very convinced that they are correct, because this is a really expensive move for them...

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posted by James Robertson

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tv

Heroes - About 1/4 as Many Characters Needed

January 11, 2010 21:34:57.487

Heroes used to be good - season 1, when the cast was a reasonable sized ensemble. Since then, the writers seem to have been working with the theory that "more characters are better!"

Many, many more characters. So many characters that we get to spend tiny bits of time on each plot thread - so little that we can't really maintain much interest in any of them.

Kill half of them, and maybe the show will have meaning again....

posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Just in Time Resourcing with SUnit

January 11, 2010 19:26:59.398

Here's Niall Ross, talking about new features of SUnit at ESUG 2009, held in Brest, France last summer. You can grab a copy of Niall's slides here(PDF). To watch, click on the viewer below:

If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Videos"?

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Pharo Screencasts

January 11, 2010 18:05:11.926

Looks like a new video site devoted to Pharo has popped up - the videos are all Vimeo embeds, so there's no feed for iTunes, but you can watch over there.

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posted by James Robertson

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standards

Is HD DVD Making a Comeback?

January 11, 2010 17:33:50.273

Engadget reports an HD DVD (not Blu-Ray) player from a Chinese manufacturer. I thought HD DVD was dead?

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Smalltalk is Coming to You

January 11, 2010 13:51:21.749

I'll be heading out to do some roadshows with the Smalltalk team at Cincom - we'll be in Seattle, Toronto, and Baltimore:

register now
Date Location Time
January 21, Seattle, Washington Crowne Plaza of Seattle
Corner of 6th and Seneca
9 AM - 1 PM
January 26, Toronto, Ontario Hilton Garden Inn Toronto City Centre
200 Dundas Street East
9 AM - 1 PM
January 28, Baltimore, MD TBD 9 AM - 1 PM

You can register to let us know you're coming - it's free. We'll have plenty to say about the new releases of ObjectStudio and VisualWorks, as well as WebVelocity. See you there!

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posted by James Robertson

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general

Off to the Races

January 11, 2010 13:22:47.959

No sooner had we decided to get a new dishwasher (arriving Thursday) than my wife's car decided that it needed a new tire - fortunately, she was only 3 or so miles from the house when that became obvious. If it's not one thing, it's another....

posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Using ActiveX Components in VisualWorks

January 11, 2010 13:02:30.409

Today we take a look at a new feature in VW 7.7: Embedding ActiveX components (on Windows, obviously) into VisualWorks windows.

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

Flash Coming to the iPhone

January 11, 2010 9:24:03.458

Well, Flash is sort of coming to the iPhone. But, it's enough to start a small tidal wave. TechCrunch reports:

Adobe is going to bring its 2 million Flash developers to the iPhone, with or without Apple's blessing. As it announced in October, the next version of its Flash developer tools, Creative Suite 5 (currently in private beta), will include a "Packager for iPhone" apps which will automatically convert any Flash app into an iPhone app. So while Flash apps won't run on the iPhone, any Flash app can easily be converted into an iPhone app. (Microsoft is taking a similar approach with Silverlight). This is a bigger deal than many people appreciate.

For good or ill, Flash is the standard video format on the web. HTML5 may change that over time, but not soon. For the forseeable future, Flash is pretty much where it's at if you want to hit the majority of browser users. More importantly (and this is what Apple feared early on) - it'll "flood the zone" with potential iPhone developers:

Once Adobe publicly releases CS5, Flash apps and video still won't run on the iPhone. But those 2 million developers will be able to keep working with Adobe tools and simply turn them into iPhone apps automatically. In contrast, there are only an estimated 125,000 or so iPhone developers.

Heck, I have the Flash SDK on my Mac inside Eclipse. I have the Glare code that hooks that up to VisualWorks. That means that with a fair amount of ease, I could probably package up a "Smalltalk Daily" app for the iPhone that drove itself off a VW back end once this comes out.

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posted by James Robertson

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tv

The Coming Death of the Broadcast TV Model

January 11, 2010 6:46:34.713

I watch the way my daughter consumes video, and I realize that the broadcast model is on its last legs. I'm sure there are people in her age group (high school) who watch a fair amount of TV, but here's what I see:

  • Lots of iTunes usage
  • Interest in Streaming (we just got Netflix)
  • Virtually no "channel surfing" or regular watching. What watching there is, is via the DVR

The broadcast model is being shaken up now. Over the next decade, I think it's going to shrink dramatically, to be replaced by more of an on-demand model. No one under twenty really expects to have to wait for anything they want to see. Heck, I've gotten to that point myself...

posted by James Robertson

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culture

Let's Pull out a Few Old Chestnuts

January 11, 2010 6:31:14.143

Every few months you find a hand wringing article about "the next generation" and how they are being influenced by technology. Sure enough, I ran across the Times fretting about the impact of IM and social networking on the younger set:

"I worry that young people won't be able to summon the capacity to focus and concentrate when they need to," said Vicky Rideout, a vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation, which will release a sweeping survey on the technology and media habits of children and teenagers this month.

Way back in the late 60's and early 70's, this researcher's predecessors were fretting that TV was doing the same thing to my generation. Later on, video games were doing it. The symptoms never change, just the technology being ranted at.

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posted by James Robertson

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tv

Soon, it will be a Pamphlet

January 10, 2010 20:59:50.097

Spotted in SCI FI Wire

Remember NBC's proposed sci-fi series Day One? First it was a show. Then it was a one-season show. Then it was a miniseries. Now, it's just a TV movie, said Angela Bromstad, president of prime-time entertainment at NBC and Universal Media Studios.

Wow. I have to wonder whether it will air at all :)

posted by James Robertson

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general

How Far We've Come

January 10, 2010 20:41:20.717

Spotted in Instapundit

The real irony of this disc is that the amount of memory you can write to it (1.44 MB, if memory — heh serves) isn’t enough to store the jpeg of the picture of it which came out of my camera (1.49 MB). That’s progress for you.

"Back in the Day", we booted an entire OS from floppies that held even less data :)

posted by James Robertson

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audio

Industry Misinterpretations 170: The State of Smalltalk

January 10, 2010 20:15:46.947

Here's our first podcast of 2010 - and we take a wide angle view of the various Smalltalk implementations out there. There's a lot more Smalltalk out there than you might think - go here for the notes we used for the podcast, with links to the implementations we spoke about:

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.

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 or Ning - 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!

VisualWorks: 7.7
ObjectStudio: 8.2
http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com

Squeak: Version 3.10
http://squeak.org
Recent Split to create Pharo
Recent changes in the contribution model
Still embroiled in the license issue
"consensus" model
leads to forks (Cuis, Pharo, others)
new VMs coming?

Pharo: 1.0 RC1
http://www.pharo-project.org/home
Clean MIT License
Lots of forward motion
Seaside home
"benevolent dictator" model

CUIS Smalltalk: version 2.0
http://www.jvuletich.org/Cuis/Index.html
Squeak Fork
intended to be smaller, cleaner, lighter

GNU ST: Version 3.1
http://smalltalk.gnu.org/
Mostly Paolo Bonzini
GPL, GNU project
file based (but going to an image)
concentrating on bringing in libraries from other Smalltalks
Runs best on Linux, often has issues elsewhere (as per our podcast)
VisualGST for GST - bring modern GUI tools to GST

Smalltalk/X: Version
http://www.exept.de/en/products/smalltalk-x/stx-overview
inline C, static compilation possible
can build DLLs and executables w/o image
x86 (Windows, Linux, Solaris FreeBSD) and Sparc
Can provide oter platforms on request
Free for most uses, they do sell commercial licenses and support/consulting
license: http://live.exept.de/doc/online/english/LICENCE_STX.html

VA Smalltalk: Version 8.0.1
http://instantiations.com/VAST/prod/vast.html
Now offers an NC/Academic version
Bringing in Seaside (no continuation support)
integrated the entire Instantiations suite of add on tools, giving product facelift

Dolphin Smalltalk: Version 6
http://www.object-arts.com/content/navigation/home.html
Community (free) and Commercial (cheap) versions
COM DLL and windows exe possible
Weird schism
  Dolphin NG (Lesser Software)
  Andy Bower's more recent statements about bringing Dolphin back
General sales model difficulty for niche products sold this way

Gemstone/S: Version 2.4
http://www.gemstone.com/products/gemstone
64 bit, probably first commercial 64 bit Smalltalk
OO DBMS
GLASS, most recent efforts in Smalltalk here
MagLev - Ruby in Gemstone/S

Lesser Smalltalk
http://www.lesser-software.com/lswvst.htm
hidden from view - no eval versions, pricing unclear
native for Windows
building compatible VM for VSE, and Dolphin
looks and sounds interesting, with the tight Windows integration

Smalltalk MT: Version 5.6
http://www.objectconnect.com/
Native, Multi-threaded for Windows
Aimed at games development on PCs
Small, fast executables

F-Script: Version 2.0
http://www.fscript.org/
Scripting for OS X, like AppleScript but with ST syntax
built on Cocoa, allows full access to Cocoa objects

Smalltalk SYX: version 0.1.7
http://code.google.com/p/syx/
Windows, Linux, OSX, embedded systems
Small, targeted at building embedded apps

Redline Smalltalk: In Development
http://twitter.com/smalltalkjvm
Smalltalk for the JVM
Nothing available yet; just the Twitter feed and some blog posts

Etoile: Version (in dev)
http://etoileos.com/
Built on GNUStep, an OSS fork of Nextstep (now Cocoa)
Larger project than Smalltalk - going for entire layer to run atop your OS
Smalltalk is a scripting tool in this effort
recently added more ST level tools (workspace)

Strongtalk: version 0.200
http://code.google.com/p/strongtalk/
Fast JIT for Smalltalk, bought by Sun years ago to speed up Java
open sourced in 2008
minimal progress since then, but active mailing list
Works on Windows, Linux

Zoku/Smalltalk: In Development
http://www.smalltalk.org/versions/ZokuSmalltalk.html
research project, Peter William Lount
to support his consulting business?

Sharp Smalltalk: version 1.1
http://www.refactory.com/Software/SharpSmalltalk/
Mostly moribund, seems mostly proof of concept
Smalltalk on .NET
Classes wrap .NET classes

Ambrai Smalltalk: Version: ?
http://www.ambrai.com/
For OS X, but back revs
intended to be native OS X Smalltalk

PIC/Smalltalk
http://www.huv.com/uSeeker/index.html
Smalltalk for embedded use in robots, Jon Hyland's work

VSE: Version 3.10/2000
Moribund, died in 1997
small, fairly fanatical fan base exists and uses it
Windows specific (was win 95 logo certified)

posted by James Robertson

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sports

Is This August Football?

January 10, 2010 14:10:43.886

The way this Ravens/Patriots game started, it looked like it was going to be a complete laugher for the Ravens - 24 unanswered points with 2 turnovers. Then the Ravens returned the favor, and the Pats scored a TD, then went 3 and out after the second turnover. It still looks like the Ravens are in charge, but mostly, it looks like we rewound top August - it's that sloppy.

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posted by James Robertson

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DRM

Content Control

January 10, 2010 9:32:25.011

Whether it's formally DRM or not, any content control system - no matter how well intentioned or well managed - has a future issue. I'll explain what I mean in a moment, but first, here's Engadget explaining the Keychest system Disney is touting at CES:

The easiest way to explain it is with an example and the most obvious to us is iTunes and Comcast. Both companies offer video on demand and use their own DRM to prevent copying. If both participated in KeyChest -- this isn't studio based -- and we bought a movie on iTunes, the next time we hit up Comcast VOD we'd be able to watch the same movie without paying again. The genius of the idea is how simple it is, basically the participantes report your purchases to the KeyChest and query it to see what else you bought.

While the technology was very different, PlaysForSure offered the same advantages - and when MS got tired of it, both their partners and the customers of those partners were left with content that was in limbo. Keychest suffers the same defect. What if companies like those in the example sign up, and, down the road, one or more of them starts to bail out. Over time, as the number of companies left supporting the technology shrinks, the chances of a PlaysForSure limbo result just grows.

The thing the studios (et. al.) need to get through their thick skulls is this: the amount of piracy done by end consumers is trivial. The big problem is the theft on their end (when bootleg copies appear before release, it wasn't some kid with Bittorrent), and the "professional" thieves who create copies from video made off the screen by early viewings. Those holes can be made smaller via better security measures - and they are where the big wins are. All of the efforts on the consumer side just irritate people and make their lives harder, while accomplishing very, very little.

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posted by James Robertson

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