. .

gadgets

Be Reasonable, Do it My Way

April 20, 2010 22:41:01.923

That's the shorter version of this post by Jeremy Dillworth. As I said earlier today, Scratch being booted off the iPhone OS is an unintended consequence of the new policy. And as to this:

While it would obviously be more convenient if Apple allowed Scratch to run on the iPad as it does on other platforms, that approach is a non-start because of Apple's developer agreement. John McIntosh (author of the iPad/iPhone version of Scratch) should have known that before he even started tinkering with a version of Scratch for the iPad.

Except.... John had a few apps approved, and they only got booted under the new policy. Emphasis on new.

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posted by James Robertson

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gadgets

There's Always an Unintended Consequence

April 20, 2010 16:23:42.754

When Apple banned "meta platforms" from the iPad/iPhone recently, I don't think they expected to get a raspberry from educators and Alan Kay - but that's what ended up happening:

Jobs this month personally mailed an iPad to Kay, who praised Apple’s tablet as “fantastically good” for drawing, painting and typing. But Kay declined to give his full evaluation of the iPad to Wired.com until his question of whether Scratch or Etoys, another educational programming language Kay developed for kids, would be usable on the device.

This is a consequence of Scratch being pulled from the app store, which itself was collateral damage from Apple's war on Flash. Now they've ended up in bad place, because they are getting bad PR from sympathetic people (children and educators). If they carve out an exception for Scratch, on the other hand, the rule starts looking even more obviously aimed at Adobe - "If that's ok, why not this?"

I suppose they could go with "meta platforms are ok for educational apps", but that will end up looking silly, too. When they created this rule as a way of targeting Adobe/Flash, I bet they thought they were being pretty clever. Now the chickens are coming home to roost.

It's not just Wired that's noticed, either - the NY Times' Gadget blog has the story, too.

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posted by James Robertson

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social media

We didn't need another Twitter

April 20, 2010 12:37:31.867

At least that's my take away from this news:

Facebook just announced via its Facebook profile that the ultra-lightweight version of its website, Facebook Lite, is no more.

Facebook has some Twitter-like features, but I don't think people go there for the same reason they go to Twitter. facebook is "deeper"; Twitter is more lightweight, and pretty much about "what's happening now". It's not about which is better; they're different, that's all.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Using Array Binding with Oracle and ObjectStudio 8: Video

April 20, 2010 9:55:07.782

Today's screencast looks at using Array binding with Oracle and ObjectStudio 8. If you're looking for a particular topic, you can find it with the Media Search application on our site. Here's the script used in the screencast:


"Array binding and Array fetching example."

"Some databases allow client control over the number of rows that will be physically transferred between the server and the client
in one logical bind or fetch. Using array binding and array fetching can greatly improve the performance of many applications by 
trading buffer space for time (network traffic)."


"The following Workspace examples will show the performance improvements 
when using array binding and array fetching in OS8."

"Logon to the Oracle Server."
ObjectStudio.OracleDatabase logOnServer: #'OracleDB' user: #'username' password: #'pwd' alias: #'OracleDB'.

"Get the Oracle database instance."
db := ObjectStudio.Database accessName: #'OracleDB'.

"Drop the test table if existed."
db execSql: 'DROP TABLE TESTTABLE'.

"Create a test table."
db execSql: 'CREATE TABLE TESTTABLE(
	NUMMER int ,
	BEMERKUNG varchar2 (30)
)'.

"Set the number of recrods being inserted."
loopCount := 1000.

"The SQL used to do inerst."
sql := 'INSERT INTO TESTTABLE VALUES (?, ?)'.

"Insert: not using array binding."
insertTime1 := [

	1 to: loopCount do: [ :i|
         db execSql: sql vars: (Array with: i with: 'test').
	].			
] millisecondsToRun.

"Print out the miliseconds spent."
('Insert without using array binding: ' + insertTime1) out.

"Insert: Using array binding."
insertTime2 := [
|bindArray numArray stringArray |
    numArray := OrderedCollection new.
    stringArray := OrderedCollection new.
	1 to: loopCount do: [ :i|
		numArray add: i.
		stringArray add: 'bla'.
	].			
	bindArray := OrderedCollection with: numArray with: stringArray.
    sql := 'INSERT INTO TESTTABLE VALUES (?, ?)'.
    db execSql: sql vars: bindArray.
] millisecondsToRun.

"Print out the miliseconds spent."
('Insert using array binding: ' + insertTime2) out.

"Set times to repeat."
loopCount := 1.

"Set the SQL to do the fetch."
sql := 'SELECT * from TESTTABLE'.

"Default value of arrayFetchSize is 1."
db setArrayFetchSizeTo: 1.

selectTime1 := [
1 to: loopCount do: [ :i|
        db execSql: sql.
    ].
] millisecondsToRun.

"Print out the miliseconds spent."
('Select with arrayFetchSize= 1: ' + selectTime1) out.	

"Set arrayFetchSize to be 100."	
db setArrayFetchSizeTo: 100.

selectTime2 := [
1 to: loopCount do: [ :i|
    db execSql: sql.
	]
] millisecondsToRun.

"Print out the miliseconds spent."
('Select with arrayFetchSize=100: ' + selectTime2) out.

"Set arrayFetchSize to be 500."	
db setArrayFetchSizeTo: 500.

selectTime3 := [
1 to: loopCount do: [ :i|
    db execSql: sql.
	]
] millisecondsToRun.

"Print out the miliseconds spent."
('Select with and arrayFetchSize=500: ' + selectTime3) out.

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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tv

Another Oops on Our TV

April 20, 2010 7:08:33.491

I'm not sure why, but I find this sort of thing to be very amusing - it cropped up in an ad spot last night:

posted by James Robertson

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gadgets

How Real is that 4G iPhone

April 20, 2010 6:02:23.507

Steve Rubel thinks that Apple wanted that prototype to be found:

It's been reported that Apple allegedly has teams in the company working on prototypes that will never see the light of day. It does so, it's been said, to maintain secrecy and to occasionally throw people off the trail. That's what I think is happening here. If that's not enough, consider this - Apple appears to strive to maintain the news flow after a product is announced yet before it's available. After the iPad was revealed, it's been reported that Apple kept the few that were in the wild chained down to special tables. So this isn't a company that lets important unreleased devices anywhere near the wild... unless, that is, they want someone to find it.

With any other company, I'd laugh and move along. With Apple, he could easily be right.

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posted by James Robertson

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travel

The Way it Wasn't

April 20, 2010 5:52:42.452

You can read plenty of missives about how air travel was once an awesome experience - like many things, it looks like the passage of time has softened the (very) rough edges:

I have a copy of TWA's flight schedule from June 1, 1959. The first jets were being introduced into the fleet, but the vast majority of flights were still on propeller-driven aircraft. There's an ad in the timetable for TWA's low coast-to-coast "excursion fares." Los Angeles to New York was only $168.40 roundtrip, if you traveled Monday through Thursday in Sky Club Coach class. That bargain is roughly equivalent to $1,225 today, before tax.

These fares weren't valid on the fastest aircraft, so you had only two options, neither of which went nonstop. There was the 10:10 a.m. departure from Los Angeles that arrived in New York at 11:41 p.m. that night or the 7:55 p.m. departure that arrived at 10:56 a.m. the next day -- more than 12 hours in the air. This was on a Lockheed Constellation, which, while beautiful, bounced you around in the weather at about 20,000 feet, far below the 35,000 to 40,000 feet you'd cruise at today. Even when the weather was good, that trademark prop vibration left you feeling like you were sitting on a washing machine for hours after you landed.

Sure you say, but at least it was elegant? Well, maybe in first class (and the article doesn't give a price for that). However, back in coach? Just like coach now, you had to bring a box lunch yourself. And bear in mind that a transcontinental flight now, even with one stop, is less than half that time - and you're likely to have some entertainment options, even if it's just seatback power and your own gadgets :)

The "golden age of flying" wasn't quite so golden...

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posted by James Robertson

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BottomFeeder

New BottomFeeder Development Build

April 19, 2010 14:29:14.673

BottomFeeder

I've pushed up another VW 7.7 build of BottomFeeder - I've been running it myself for a couple of weeks now, so I feel pretty good about it. Give it a try, and let me know about any issues.

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posted by James Robertson

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general

It's the Little Things

April 19, 2010 12:34:58.512

I've been slightly irked at my Mac for weeks now, and I finally realized what's been bothering me - the mouse. Awhile ago, I spilled coffee on the mouse. While it recovered, it didn't recover completely - it was missing clicks from time to time, and that just led to ongoing annoyance that I couldn't quite put my finger on.

It came to me last night playing Dragon Age (which I downloaded for the Mac over the weekend). While missing a mouse click while writing code or blogging is annoying, in game play, it just smacks you in the face. So this morning I ran out and bought a new mouse, and wow - I'm not annoyed at the machine anymore.

It's amazing how your state of mind can be affected by small stuff that you don't even consciously register.

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posted by James Robertson

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gadgets

Gizmodo Finds the Next Gen iPhone?

April 19, 2010 11:34:48.217

Looks like Gizmodo got lucky:

It was found lost in a bar in Redwood City, camouflaged to look like an iPhone 3GS. We got it. We disassembled it. It's the real thing, and here are all the details.

Later they quote John Gruber (Daring Fireball):

So I called around, and I now believe this is an actual unit from Apple — a unit Apple is very interested in getting back.

It's always a good idea to be wary of Apple rumors, but this one looks more solid.

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posted by James Robertson

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humor

Where's Joe?

April 19, 2010 8:17:57.698

Where's Joe when we finally need him?

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Attaching Files to a Store Bundle: Video

April 19, 2010 8:08:29.838

Today's screencast looks at attaching files to a store bundle. If you're looking for a particular topic, you can find it with the Media Search application on our site.

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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DRM

How Not to Do DRM

April 19, 2010 6:53:07.551

I'm not a big fan of DRM period, but it really seems like Ubisoft brought the stupid to their implementation:

More than three weeks after the release of The Settlers 7, with the controversial 'always on-line' DRM, a lot of people still can't connect to Ubisoft's DRM servers. The forum threads where people can post if they are unable to connect keep growing daily. One reason for the lack of fixes or responses from support seems to be that the people responsible were on vacation during the Easter holiday, despite the promise of 24/7 monitoring of the servers

If your plan is to require a "phone home" by the software, then you have to make sure that someone is there to, you know, answer the phone :)

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Across Smalltalks: Industry Misinterpretations 184

April 18, 2010 22:56:22.206

This week we spoke to Julian Fitzell about cross dialect Smalltalk work - focusing largely on Grease and Slime, but wandering afield from there as well. It's another two part podcast - come back next week for the conclusion.

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!

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posted by James Robertson

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science

Video Conferences and Ships?

April 18, 2010 14:58:37.304

If this speculation holds up, travel to and from northern Europe could be disrupted regularly for awhile:

"Volcanic activity on Iceland appears to follow a periodicity of around 50 to 80 years. The increase in activity over the past 10 years suggests we might be entering a more active phase with more eruptions," says Thorvaldur Thordarson, an expert on Icelandic volcanoes at the University of Edinburgh, UK. By contrast, the latter half of the 20th century was unusually quiet.

Video conferencing will pick up some of that slack, but face to face meetings will still be required for some things, never mind tourism. "May you live in interesting times", indeed...

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posted by James Robertson

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news

When it Rains it Pours, Volcano Edition

April 18, 2010 10:04:18.464

What Next in Iceland? If past trends repeat themselves, we could be in for a real whopper:

The eruptions of the comparatively small Eyjafjallajökull glacier volcano in Iceland have historically preceded massive eruptions by the more feared Mount Katla. Experts are concerned that the present volcanic eruption could trigger activity at Mount Katla, which is potentially much more dangerous. Its last major eruption was in 1918. Icelandic volcanologists consider it plausible that Katla may erupt, and that is why they are monitoring Katla very closely right now. There are eruption channels between Eyjafjallajökull and Katla and magma could shoot into the Katla volcano. Katla might only need a nudge. Effects of Katla's eruption would put the present air travel chaos in the shade, inflicting much greater economic losses upon Europe.

Say what you will about man's impact on the environment; when Mother Nature gets going, she can really put us in our place...

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posted by James Robertson

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games

Ok, I am Obsessed

April 18, 2010 0:48:05.090

I'm downloading DragonAge for Mac (the deluxe pack). Yes, I think it's fair to call this an obsession now :)

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Squeak 4.1 is out

April 18, 2010 0:33:55.620

Spotted in Planet Squeak

Squeak 4.1 combines the license change occurring in the 4.0 release with the development work that has been going on while the relicensing process took place. Much of the work in this release has been focused on fundamental improvements. Major achievements are the integration of Cog's closure implementation, the improved UI look and feel, the new anti-aliased fonts, the core library improvements, and the modularity advances.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Progress on Xtreams

April 17, 2010 0:48:50.015

Michael Lucas-Smith has an update on what's going on with the Xtreams code.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Simplest Way to Start with Store

April 16, 2010 15:48:36.188

I had a question come in this afternoon, about how to get going with Store>. Originally, it required you to use a fairly "heavy" rdbms, like Oracle or SQLServer. later, Bruce Badger provided support for using PostgreSQL, which eliminated the need for client libraries. However, that still required a relatively difficult setup. There are easier options:

Mind you, those solutions are only suitable for personal use; for team use, you still want one of the bigger databases. However, this should get you started :)

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posted by James Robertson

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culture

The New Puritanism

April 16, 2010 9:15:13.067

The puritan ethic never really died; it just migrated away from its religious moorings and morphed into a more free floating idea of punishing the notion that "somewhere, someone is having a good time". Consider Apple's app store policies in that light:

According to a Dec. 21 e-mail reprinted by Neiman, Apple rejected his app because it “contains content that ridicules public figures and is in violation of Section 3.3.14 from the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement which states: Applications may be rejected if they contain content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, sounds, etc.) that in Apple’s reasonable judgment may be found objectionable, for example, materials that may be considered obscene, pornographic, or defamatory

The ban in question is a cartoonist who ran afoul of the policy with satiracal content; a few European publications have run afoul of the nudity bans. It makes me wonder whether Apple will start considering "the great firewall of Cupertino", to protect us while we use Safari on these devices...

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

A Time Tracker in WebVelocity: Video

April 16, 2010 8:54:23.191

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at a simple Time Tracker application in WebVelocity - 4 methods, with 2 additional "prettifying" ones. This was inspired after I watched the video here, comparing various web app development frameworks. No Smalltalk comparison, so I thought I'd add one. You can see the simpler "Hello World" example as well. If you're looking for a particular topic, you can find it with the Media Search application on our site.

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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social media

One Less Social Network

April 15, 2010 22:49:15.349

Looks like I won't be using Ning much longer:

Just a month after Gina Bianchini, co-founder of build-a-social-network service Ning, departed the company, it's cutting 40 percent of its staff and axing its free, ad-supported service.

I don't object, and I'm ok with the idea that they need to focus on a working business model - it's just that for my needs, facebook and YouTube work just fine :)

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development

Apple's New Policy has Consequences

April 15, 2010 22:24:13.839

Apple's new policy hit Scratch (a Squeak based instructional tool for teaching kids about programming. I saw an email from John McIntosh about it this morning, and now Lambda the Ultimate has noticed:

If the general idea wasn't enough to make you mad, or if you wrote it off as being purely an Apple/Adobe spat, this ought to cut a bit closer to LtU's heart... Apple removes Scratch from iPad/iPhone/iTouch. My wife has taught a couple of classes using Scratch with young kids, and to see the pride they feel at their creations is a marvelous thing. I think restricting their ability to share that feeling is really reprehensible. And the damage done to the programmers of tomorrow? Hard to say

Make chimes in on a similar note.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Pharo Hits 1.0 MIlestone

April 15, 2010 21:09:28.584

The Pharo project has reached 1.0 - congratulations to them!

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posted by James Robertson

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humor

Overheard

April 15, 2010 20:53:31.489

I liked this - I saw it float by in the Smalltalk IRC Channel:

"I have changed the terms of the deal.... pray I do not change it further" -- Darth Jobs

Heh

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posted by James Robertson

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podcasting

Live at Noon Today

April 15, 2010 8:19:18.313

We'll be doing the podcast at noon eastern today, with Julian Fitzell. The topic? The ins and outs of cross dialect Smalltalk development - what to do, what not to do. Join us on justin.tv!

Update: We are running late, due to some timezone confusion...

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smalltalk

Hello World in WebVelocity: Video

April 15, 2010 8:03:29.343

Today's screencast looks at a simple "Hello World" app in WebVelocity. If you're looking for a particular topic, you can find it with the Media Search application on our site.

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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development

Java Slide?

April 15, 2010 7:07:07.388

Interesting comments about Java from Josh Bloch, Google's Java architect - he says that there's no real direction, and licensing issues are starting to cause problems:

The problems around Java that Bloch mentioned largely predate Oracle's acquisition of Sun Microsystems, which oversaw the Java development process, and Bloch called on Oracle to step up as the prime steward of the language and associated platform software."Oracle should take the lead of Java once again," he said.

Over the last few years, Sun had been busy trying to find some way to make money - it doesn't surprise me that a money pit like Java development took a back seat. What will be interesting is Oracle's take. Oracle is profitable, and can afford to do whatever they want with Java - but just how much money do they want to shovel in that direction?

Oracle isn't without challenges of their own, with the rise of acceptable OSS databases - including MySQL, which they own (insofar as anyone can "own" a fully GPL product). I wouldn't be at all surprised to see continued drift, because I just don't know that Java's direction is all that crucial to Oracle's immediate future.

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gadgets

Not a Good Point

April 15, 2010 6:57:21.124

I have to part with Andres on this one:

Sigh. Just because things look cool, it doesn't make them good. For example, somehow it's a good thing to carry 1000 books in our pockets. What's the point, since we cannot meaningfully deal with even 5 serious books at a time? Moreover, 25% of Americans don't read books at all, and the rest reads about 1 book a month. Are Kindles or iPads worth so much just to read 1 book a month?

This all depends on where you sit. For instance, if you sit on a plane a lot, being able to carryv a lot of books on one small device is a huge win. Years ago, on a trip to Australia, I weighed myself down terribly with a bunch of books for the long flight. On another trip there, I bought a large book in Australia, and then had to figure out how to fit it in my bag for the flight home.

Now, does everyone travel regularly? No, but that's certainly one target for whom such devices make a lot of sense. We bought one recently, because my wife wanted to be able to read the same book upstairs and downstairs. Simple, you think - just cart the book, right? Except, with her knees, she doesn't like to carry stuff up and down. The iPad is small enough for her to handle more easily - and the Kindle app for the iPad and Mac synchs her reading position between the two devices quite nicely.

Ultimately, what makes or breaks any gadget is whether it makes the users happy. It's early days for the iPad, so we don't have a solid idea. Give it a few months, and I think we'll know a lot more - like whether the new restrictions on development irritate enough developers that the irritation flows down to users.

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posted by James Robertson

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development

Just Say No to Waterfall Languages

April 14, 2010 21:41:57.185

I love this from Anders Janmyr:

Anyone, who has worked seriously with a modern dynamically typed language like Ruby or Smalltalk, know that they are more productive. Working with waterfall languages after working with agile languages is just painful. (Thanks to Andreas Ronge for coining the term Waterfall Language.)

Just give Smalltalk a try - make up your own mind :)

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posted by James Robertson

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web

Very Enterprisey

April 14, 2010 14:05:56.814

Maybe Oracle needs to get fewer experts building out their website. I've tried to download their database (I've got valid OTN credentials) with the following results:

  • Chrome (Mac) - general failure to progress past login
  • Firefox (Mac) - initiated a download, saved 0 bytes
  • IE (Windows) - failed to login
  • Safari (Mac) failed to login

And people wonder why alternatives are so popular - at least you can try them out without first sacrificing a few goats...

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posted by James Robertson

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marketing

Bring the Crazy

April 14, 2010 13:01:05.219

Adam Singer notes that some social media marketing is based on utter insanity. Consider this, which he quotes in his post:

Vitrue analyzed Facebook data from its clients — with a combined 41 million fans — and found that most fans yielded an extra impression. That means a marketer posting twice a day can expect about 60 million impressions per month through the news feed.

They use that to value each "fan" at $3.60. You can read Adam's post to get the details - he does a good job of deconstructing the stupid, and there's no real need for me to do more than say "what he said".

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development

Web Development Questions

April 14, 2010 12:56:07.993

I ran across this screencast (long, but worth watching) comparing and contrasting various web development tools - starting from the premise that UI (including front end web development) really, really needs to be interactive and iterative.

I thought it might be useful to take his two test cases - "Hello World" and "Time Tracker" and do them in WebVelocity - a tool that's pretty much right up the alley this guy is looking at. So, tomorrow's screencast will be the "Hello World" app, and I'll have the time tracker example up on Friday or Monday.

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posted by James Robertson

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gadgets

iPad Shortage?

April 14, 2010 10:18:02.743

So is this an actual shortage of iPads, or the kind of clever rationing that Nintendo did with the Wii to make sure that demand was always kept on edge?

Although we have delivered more than 500,000 iPads during its first week, demand is far higher than we predicted and will likely continue to exceed our supply over the next several weeks as more people see and touch an iPad(TM). We have also taken a large number of pre-orders for iPad 3G models for delivery by the end of April.

Apple runs a pretty tight ship, as does Nintendo. I'm guessing that this is a carefully orchestrated marketing plan in action.

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itNews

Flash End Run

April 14, 2010 9:08:00.638

Looks like there may be an end-run solution to the "no flash for you" problem that doesn't involve a client level (iPhone or iPad) solution - RipCode has a cloud based transcoder:

RipCode, Inc., the leader in transactional transcoding, announced today its newest product, the TransAct Transcoder V6 can intercept Adobe Flash-based file or live video requests and convert them to a container, video codec, and audio codec accepted by Apple Inc.’s new iPad all transparently to the end user device and without the need for any pre-transcoding or device-based client.

For that to work on the client, either back end services (like, say, hulu) would have to cooperate, or RipCode would have to build a client that did the redirection through their servers. Since the client would be fully native, it might be hard for Apple to reject it with a straight face (not that they've been stopped by that before). If sites that use flash did the work though, it would all come transparently through the browser.

I wonder whether Adobe will be talking to these guys?

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Twitter from Smalltalk: Video

April 14, 2010 8:30:12.293

Today's screencast looks at using Twitter from Smalltalk. If you're looking for a particular topic, you can find it with the Media Search application on our site.

Here's the script I used in the screencast after loading the Twitter


"create settings file"
settings := TwitterClient.Settings new.
settings username: 'TwitterScreenNameHere'.
settings password: 'TwitterPasswordHere'.
settings saveTo: 'twitter_settings.ini'.

"get an interface"
model := TwitterModel new.

"get friend updates"
latestUpdates := model getFriendsUpdates.

"get Follower updates"
latestFollowers := model getFollowersUpdates.

"get the current trends"
trends := model getCurrentTrends.
daily := model getDailyTrends.
weekly := model getWeeklyTrends.

"user query"
args := UserQueryArgs new.
args screen_name: 'jarober'.
model showUser: args.

"get direct messages"
args := StatusListArgs new.
args per_page: 100.
model getDirectMessagesFor: args.

"set status"
model setStatusTo: 'From VisualWorks during today''s screencast'.

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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itNews

Business Via Lawsuit

April 14, 2010 6:48:50.254

IT World thinks that the next step in the "no iFlash for you" saga is a lawsuit. I wonder what ground they'll try to stand on?

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posted by James Robertson

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itNews

I'd like a Pony, Too

April 13, 2010 21:35:39.321

Steve Rubel asks for a Digital Pony from Apple:

Edelman Digital calls on Apple and all companies to support consumer choice to allow consumers to have the same experience they are accustomed to on the desktop. Where once mobile devices were not powerful enough to run rich media technologies, that’s no longer the case. Why ban Flash and WMVs yet support Quicktime and PDF two other standards. It makes no sense.

For good or ill, Apple has decided how they're going to play the game, and it's hardball. I just don't see a hand holding, kumbaya moment coming on between the various internet players.

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posted by James Robertson

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itNews

Where Storage is Headed

April 13, 2010 10:34:54.713

The price is high ($4k), but wow - a 1 TB solid state drive. As prices drop, this should really help laptop and portable device battery life out.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Using a SAX Driver: Video

April 13, 2010 10:05:35.263

Today's screencast looks at creating an RSS feed with a Smalltalk SAX driver. If you're looking for a particular topic, you can find it with the Media Search application on our site.

Here's the script I used to create the RSS Feed - it's using the package FeedWriter from the public store), as per the screencast:


"Using a SAX Driver"
stream := ('rss1.xml' asFilename withEncoding: #'UTF-8') writeStream.
writer := RSS20_SAXWriter new output: stream.

"start the document"
writer prolog.
writer startRSS.
writer startChannel.
writer title: 'My RSS Feed'.
writer link: 'http://www.somesite.com'.
writer description: 'My RSS Feed'.

"Now write an item"
writer startItem.
writer title: 'Test Item'.
writer link: 'http://www.somesite.com/item1'.
writer description: 'test item1'.
writer pubDate: Timestamp now.
writer endItem.

"end the document"
writer endChannel.
writer endRSS.
stream close.


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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Macintosh

Fanboys Unbound

April 13, 2010 7:43:27.568

I have to wonder whether John Gruber has even heard of Firefox, much less ever run it. After all, it's a cross platform tool for multiple operating systems; it must suck, and I'm sure that no one uses it.

And yes, I did note the issue of 3rd party dependence yesterday, but I really don't think Apple had to pull out the nuke to swat this fly.

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posted by James Robertson

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PR

Even More Apple and Adobe

April 13, 2010 7:25:22.057

Simon Owens notes that Apple has been happy to let the PR war over the new TOS for the iPhone/iPad play out in the blogosphere - fed by direct email responses from Steve Jobs. Why would they do that?

Well, because the general public doesn't care that much, and the traditional tech media isn't paying that much attention, either. This keeps the battle where Apple would rather see it - in the tech blogosphere, amongst advocates. Unless the issue boils to the point that developers start leaving the platform (for, say, Android), any damage stays very, very limited this way.

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posted by James Robertson

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development

Objectivity 10 Released

April 13, 2010 5:59:44.078

The choices for database back ends to Smalltalk are pretty open - Objectivity just pushed a new release, and it's had Smalltalk bindings for years.

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posted by James Robertson

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management

This Plan Took Two Years?

April 13, 2010 5:53:39.928

I'm trying to figure out how this revenue plan for Twitter took two years to come up with:

The advertising program, which Twitter calls Promoted Tweets, will show up when Twitter users search for keywords that the advertisers have bought to link to their ads. Later, Twitter plans to show promoted posts in the stream of Twitter posts, based on how relevant they might be to a particular user.

That's "AdWords for Twitter". I hope they didn't stay up late figuring it out.

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posted by James Robertson

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