. .

gadgets

Would iPhone Owners Switch?

May 13, 2010 19:07:32.000

John Gruber writes about a possible Verizon iPhone, and says in the middle of the piece:

If Verizon had the iPhone, surely many current AT&T customers would switch.

Well, not so much. At least not immediately. Why? The current iPhone won't work on the Verizon network. Then, unless Apple shipped a tri-band phone (2g, CDMA, and GSM), the Verizon iPhone - like most Verizon phones - would be a brick if you traveled overseas.

This is one of those "grass is always greener" things. Personally, I wouldn't switch unless it was a tri-band phone, and even then, I'd have to be convinced by better plans. Unlike so many other people, I simply haven't run into the supposedly lousy ATT network. For me, it's been as reliable as Verizon was.

Now, I'm not everyone, and certainly verizon would sell a bunch of iPhones. However, most of that would be to new people, at least initially. There would be some loud switchers to be sure, but in numbers? Hard to say.

Hat tip Rob Fahrni

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Squeakfest in July

May 13, 2010 17:16:40.000

Spotted in Planet Squeak

The official Squeakfest website is now live and ready for you to propose a presentation, workshop, or panel: http://squeakfest.org. The dates for Squeakfest USA in Wilmington NC are July 26, 27, 28. The theme for this year's conference will be "Etoys in the STEM classroom."

Sounds like fun - follow the link for full details.

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posted by James Robertson

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management

Sun's Culture: Going

May 13, 2010 14:13:13.000

I'd say that this is a pretty clear sign that Oracle intends to quash a lot of Sun's old culture and make it more sales oriented - a quote from Ellison:

The underlying engineering teams are so good, but the direction they got was so astonishingly bad that even they couldn't succeed," said Ellison. "Really great blogs do not take the place of great microprocessors. Great blogs do not replace great software. Lots and lots of blogs does not replace lots and lots of sales.

That's a pretty hard jab at old "give it away and make it up in volume" Schwartz there. It's really too bad they had to pay that idiot off as part of the acquisition; based on his management skills, he should have been paying Oracle...

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posted by James Robertson

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tutorial

Setting Up Store for SQLite

May 13, 2010 13:30:18.459

One of the hurdles to using version control with Cincom Smalltalk has been the requirement that you set up a relational database - Oracle, SQLServer (etc) are fairly complex beasts. Even PostgreSQL, which is free, can be difficult to set up. Recently, however, it became possible to use SQLite as the back end for Store - and nothing could be easier than using that - it's a simple file based database. If you're on Windows you might have to visit the website and install SQLite, but that's a simple matter of pushing a dll or two onto your system - you can set up databases on the fly.

For Store itself, here are the steps - first, open the parcel manager and load the appropriate support:

Next, just type the following code into a workspace and execute it:


Store.DbRegistry installDatabaseTables.

You'll be prompted a few times; first is a login. For this, the username and password don't really matter; just put in anything. Be sure to pick SQLite3Connection from the drop down though:

Next, fill in the same name you used above for the repository:

For the next two prompts, just let them default:

That's it for installation. Now pull down the Store menu and connect to your new repository:

And that's it - notice the name in the lower corner of the launcher - you're up and running!

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posted by James Robertson

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itNews

Adobe Vs. Apple

May 13, 2010 11:47:40.000

It's not just Adobe's evangelist calling Apple out on their anti-Flash stance now - the company has started running ads on the subject:

Ironically, the ad itself (as opposed to the image above) is Flash, so you won't actually see it if you're using an iPhone or iPad (and on Engadget's site, the iPhone gets the mobil version of the site without the ad anyway). That kind of speaks to the difficulty Adobe faces - a large part of their target audience will never see this campaign.

In any event, it does illustrate this: Adobe isn't backing off on this. There have been plenty of "Flash on Android" bits of news as well, so the "Open Platform vs. Apple" thing that happened with PC's and Macs could be repeating itself. On the other hand, I think Apple is in a much stronger position now than they were then, and the trendlines for Flash are running against Adobe. We'll see.

Update: I have to say, I like the headline at TechCrunch on this:

Adobe, You Brought An Advertisement To A Gun Fight

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itNews

No Streaming for You

May 13, 2010 9:05:07.000

The one thing you can say about the big ISPs is this: they seem to have no clue how people would like to use their services. Witness Rogers in Canada talking about their data plans for the iPad:

Rogers says the tablets are a new category of product and "it's too early to say if customers will use more or less data than they do for the iPhone," but the company remains optimistic that the 250MB/5GB plans "will be more than enough for virtually all of our customers."

Right... you take a vacation with your iPad, stream a movie or two using 3G - and bam, you've used up all your bandwidth for that month. It's willfull ignorance. They do say they don't intend to charge for overage, instead "rolling you into a new month". Which is an overage charge called something else.

Mind you, it's not the pay as you go part I think is silly - it's the "5GB is all you'll ever need" thing. Why not offer a few higher use plans?

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smalltalk

Seaside Tutorial Part 2: Video

May 13, 2010 8:31:22.577

Today's Smalltalk Daily is part 2 of our updated Seaside tutorial, for VW 7.7/OS 8.2 and Seaside 3.0. The tutorial home page is here. Today we look at building our first components in Seaside, and getting the application to display in a browser. To download the domain model being used, click here. Click on the viewer below to watch it now:

You can download the video directly here. If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Daily"?

posted by James Robertson

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itNews

No Open WiFi For You

May 13, 2010 6:54:27.577

This sounds pretty extreme to me:

Germany's top criminal court ruled Wednesday that Internet users need to secure their private wireless connections by password to prevent unauthorized people from using their Web access to illegally download data.

I know that I've used open WiFi while traveling before - it's a simple way to share a connection. The penalties sound ridiculous - over $100 "if a third party takes advantage of their unprotected WLAN connection to illegally download music or other files"

So... the German equivalents of the RIAA and MPAA have managed to make life more difficult for normal people. As they usually do.

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social media

Good Luck With That

May 12, 2010 14:31:04.000

I linked to this story about an attempt to create a "distributed Facebook" earlier, but I was making a different point about privacy. When I really got into the article, I noticed this:

As they describe it, the Diaspora* software will let users set up their own personal servers, called seeds, create their own hubs and fully control the information they share. Mr. Sofaer says that centralized networks like Facebook are not necessary.

Umm, sure. First, your ISP probably forbids you from running a server of that nature (nevermind whether it should be that way; it is). Second, setting up your own VPS, while easier than it once was, is not for the faint of heart. I documented my efforts here; unless they plan to ship a preconfigured VM for deployment (complete with Apache configuration), then this will catch fire with a handful of tinkerers, and no one else.

What makes Facebook work is that it's simple. This effort might be some things, but simple won't be one of them.

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games

Games and Stability

May 12, 2010 13:11:59.000

One of the things I always disliked about running games on Windows was what happened to the OS - it tended to get unstable after running a game (and sometimes while running a game). I've learned this week that the problem isn't limited to Windows.

Last night I was playing Dragon Age on my Mac, while running the normal number of apps I have up (a scarily large number, I'll admit). The game locked up, and locked the Mac up with it. After a power switch reboot, I tried again - and watched the same thing happen.

So.... I ran DragonAge without any of the other things I normally run, and things were better. This is why I like console gaming :)

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smalltalk

Dynamic Languages in Tokyo

May 12, 2010 11:00:49.000

The S3 Conference (self sustaining systems) has issued a call for papers for the conference, to be held September 27-28 in Tokyo:

The Workshop on Self-sustaining Systems (S3) is a forum for discussion of topics relating to computer systems and languages that are able to bootstrap, implement, modify, and maintain themselves. One property of these systems is that their implementation is based on small but powerful abstractions; examples include (amongst others) Squeak/Smalltalk, COLA, Klein/Self, PyPy/Python, Rubinius/Ruby, and Lisp. Such systems are the engines of their own replacement, giving researchers and developers great power to experiment with, and explore future directions from within, their own small language kernels.

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social media

Mountains and Molehills

May 12, 2010 8:55:11.000

Is Facebook overplaying its hand with respect to privacy? There are certainly a lot of people who think so; Jason Calacanis has a long missive up on it, and the Times has a story about a startup dedicated to creating a social media site that "cares about privacy".

I guess my take on all this is a big bag of "so what?" Social media sites exist to share data; if you put something up that you don't want shared, then you're mostly just fooling yourself. Posit some site that has some perfect set of privacy rules. You put up a set of photos that you only share with a core group of friends. Well. If even one of those people copies one of those photos and emails it, then the privacy controls stop mattering, don't they?

All of this is much ado about less than nothing, IMHO. If you put it on a website of any kind, you should expect that it could get shared, period. All the controls in the world won't stop "copy" followed by "email". Once you realize that, you realize just how little this entire conversation matters.

posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Seaside Tutorial (1): Video

May 12, 2010 8:27:16.404

Today's Smalltalk Daily is part 1 of our updated Seaside tutorial, for VW 7.7/OS 8.2 and Seaside 3.0. The tutorial home page is here. To download the domain model being used, click here. Click on the viewer below to watch it now:

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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humor

Extra Social

May 12, 2010 6:38:07.063

What happens when you delete your Facebook account :)

posted by James Robertson

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general

It's That Time in the Ownership Cycle

May 11, 2010 17:48:19.398

We've had issues with dishwashers in the past, but now I think it's just a "time in the house" thing. We had to have the furnace repaired in March; today we had the washer repaired, and tomorrow there's a bit of dryer maintenance. Thank goodness we don't have the roof issues our neighbor has had though - every time it gets windy, I find bits of their shingles in my yard...

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gadgets

Payments for Everyone

May 11, 2010 13:36:54.000

This is pretty cool:

With Square, anyone can accept credit or debit card payments by downloading the app and plugging a little plastic cube into the headphone jack of an iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, or Android phone.

That's not only disruptive; for people who can meet to arrange payment, it pulls action away from sites like EBay. I'm not sure how widespread this will become; you still need the card swiper gadget. Things will really change if and when you can use your phone directly, without additional gizmos...

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smalltalk

Powering Forward with Smalltalk

May 11, 2010 11:53:52.000

I like this tweet:

A developer with 0 knowledge of Seaside can get momentum much faster than some with 0 knowledge of Rails. Smalltalk is simpler.

I've felt that way - about the gaining momentum, that is - with every web framework I've ever used in Smalltalk. When I started with VisualWave back in the 90's, it was easy to move ahead - I recall taking to it very quickly. When I built the blog server that runs this site, it was the first application I had really done with the Web Toolkit - and again, it was very, very eays to get going.

Seaside, especially with WebVelocity, has been a similar experience. I was able to build a small application that had Ajax functionality and a database as a back end very quickly - and when I started, I really didn't know much about Seaside.

The common factor here: Smalltalk. Sure, I know Smalltalk well at this point, and that gives me a leg up - but I think Smalltalk is just simpler. The exploratory nature of the system just makes life simpler. When I don't understand something, I don't pound my head on the table - I just let it break and ponder the objects in the debugger. There, with all the application state live, things become clear pretty quickly. That's the thing Seaside really brings to the party, by the way - Smalltalk level debugging for the web. It's a powerful thing.

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smalltalk

Reconciling Store Packages

May 11, 2010 8:47:35.834

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at how to reconcile two Store packages. Click on the viewer below to watch it now:

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

Headed the Wrong Way

May 11, 2010 8:05:01.000

I'd call this an understatement (the context is the proposed nationwide ISP filter in Australia):

"The Western international community do seem to be condemning the net filter," he said. "However, we get translations of Chinese newspapers that point to Australia as an example of positive censorship. From our point of view, when China is pointing to you in their local state-run newspapers as a positive example on the issue of censorship in Australia, surely something's going wrong."

That should be a huge flashing neon sign labelled "you're doing it wrong"...

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humor

Tech Hoarding

May 11, 2010 6:50:55.326

I have to admit, I do this sort of thing too: hold onto old gadget gear long past its due date. Do I really think I'll ever need the old Zip drives I have in a box somewhere? And, like the story I linked to, I have two drawers of stuff in my office (and a few boxes in the basement). The 1997 era laptops will probably never be booted again, either :)

The scary part is that some of those cables are still in their original shrinkwrap...

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smalltalk

Demonstration Bleg

May 10, 2010 16:35:18.074

As anyone who reads my blog knows, I produce a ton of short videos - one per day, in fact. I've been aiming those pretty solidly at a technical audience - people who would like to know more about developing in Smalltalk, and need help with the system/libraries.

Another question comes to mind though: what kind of demonstration do you think works to really show off what's cool about Smalltalk? Meaning - how it can help you, as a developer, be more productive. What suggestions do you have for me in that area - something that could be covered in 5 minutes or less in a screencast or video, preferably.

Thanks! You can leave a comment, or email me.

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itNews

WiGig - Cut the Cord Coming?

May 10, 2010 11:45:41.000

The upside of this new proposed Wireless standard:

At a speed of 7 gigabits per second, WiGig can easily handle the transfer of high-def video. That positions it as a replacement for wired HDMI connections or optical audio cables.

The downside - range. It sounds like it's mostly for same room transfers, not same building. Still - that would be pretty darn handy for things like Netflix, and make "out of the box" setup a ton easier.

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smalltalk

Smalltalk in Stuttgart

May 10, 2010 10:26:00.000

posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Overriding a Class Definition: Video

May 10, 2010 9:02:12.074

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at how tooverride a class definition, and save that definition into your own package. To learn about overriding methods, or adding extension methods, see this screencast. Click on the viewer below to watch it now:

You can download the video directly here. If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Daily"?

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itNews

The Next Domain Rush

May 10, 2010 7:22:14.846

If you do business in laces that use non-latin alphabets, then you have a new brand protection issue on your hands - non-latin domains went live this weekend. http://موقع.وزارة-الأتصالات.مصر/, for instance. Try putting that in your browser - it should actually work, although I have no idea how to read any of it :)

posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Scratching the iPad Itch Part 2 - Podcast

May 9, 2010 9:16:05.090

This week's podcast is part 2 of our conversation with John Maloney and John McIntosh about Scratch. In this segment, we delved into the issues surrounding Scratch's removal from the app store - suffice to say, it wasn't the new policies they ran afoul of, it was the existing ones (using an interpreter, having downloadable, executable content for the application itself).

It was a fun talk, and things sound somewhat hopeful with respect to the app store - listen to the podcast to find out what I mean by that! To get Scratch now, visit the website and become one of the millions who've created an uploaded a project.

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 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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advertising

What Does This Mean for the Ad Model?

May 8, 2010 17:08:38.957

I've had my doubts about the viability of a purely ad driven model, and I'm wondering whether the layoffs at Digg are a marker for that problem:

This morning we faced the difficult task of reducing our team by about 10%. This was an emotional and rough morning for everyone involved. Laying off dedicated and hard working individuals is extremely difficult, but we tried our best to treat everyone with the utmost respect and support.

It could mean plenty of other things as well; if they plan to go public soon-ish, or get acquired, that could also be the culprit - companies sometimes do strange things in the run up to that stuff. Back at ParcPlace in the mid 90's, we started turning down consulting work in order to make the percentage of revenue from product sales higher - because the lawyers taking the company public strongly urged management to do that. Weird stuff, never made sense to me - I kind of figured that money was all green regardless of where it came from :)

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DRM

DRM Gone Wild

May 8, 2010 15:26:18.531

And you thought you owned your own equipment:

Hollywood will soon have the power to remotely disable the analog outputs on your set-top box, under a decision by federal regulators on Friday intended to prevent home recording of new movie releases.

This is supposedly to allow releases of movies to cable while they are still in theaters, but - you know they won't stop there. Also, this is the FCC, so I have a question for all of you net neutrality fanboys: exactly why do you want to put internet rules under the FCC? What makes you think that you'll get responsible management with this sort of thing happening? Yes, I mean people like David Weinberger, who are practically salivating at the prospect of FCC rules over the net.

If that does happen, I expect a "shocked" reaction when the net becomes a shadow of its former self. For the children and copyright holders, of course.

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smalltalk

Comparing Seaside and Ruby on Rails

May 7, 2010 18:16:08.786

Over the last few years, there’s been a lot of development effort going into web frameworks - increasingly in non-Java languages. In the early 2000’s, it looked like web development was going to be mostly Java/Java beans based, with a few “fringe” technologies competing at the margins. It didn’t really work out that way though; Java was just too hard to work with for most people. Over time, the web has become dominated by code written in Perl, Python, and Ruby (using Ruby on Rails).

Smalltalk has seen some of that resurgence as well with Seaside. Unlike previous web efforts in Smalltalk, Seaside is open, and works in every single major Smalltalk dialect - and it’s actively supported by the major commercial players (Cincom, Gemstone, Instantiations).

Ruby on Rails has been touted as a simpler route to web development - if you watch this long screencast exploring various web tools, it’s clear that using RoR is much more productive than the other alternatives explored by the screencaster. One thing that screencast didn’t look at was Seaside, which is too bad - because Seaside is optimized for writing Web Applications, and removes a lot of the “housekeeping” you have to do, even in Ruby on Rails. To see that for yourself, take a look at the Seaside version (using Cincom’s WebVelocity) used in that screencast.

Let’s break down some of the advantages Seaside has over Ruby on Rails into a set of bullet points. This isn’t to say that Ruby on Rails is terrible; the large user base argues otherwise. Rather, it’s to point out a few things about Smalltalk and Seaside that users of Ruby on Rails (and other web frameworks) simply may not be aware of:

  • Interactive Development. One of the things RoR is known for is interactive development. Make a change, refresh the browser, try again. Smalltalk has always brought that level of interactivity to development, and Seaside takes it one better - instead of a full reload, you can do exploratory development with partial iterations. Build what you understand, let the application break, and use the Smalltalk debugger. You may not fully “get” that statement without seeing it; here’s a screencast illustrating it.
  • Beyond Active Record. You can use Active Record for database connectivity in both RoR and Seaside, but that only takes you so far. Sometimes (especially with existing data models) you have to go “off the rails”. With RoR, you’re on your own there. With Seaside, you have the full power of Glorp - an open source object/relational mapper that is available across all the major Smalltalk dialects.
  • Speed. While Ruby is highly productive (for the same reasons that Smalltalk is), it’s not fast. Smalltalk, on the other hand, has been under active development for over 3 decades. The virtual machine technology behind Smalltalk is fast, and second to none in the field.
  • Connected to the Enterprise. Need to deal with enterprise libraries using industry standards like WS*? Smalltalk gets you access to the enterprise - and full support from commercial vendors. When you really need a fix now, that means you can get a real person on the phone.
  • Mature Development Tools and Libraries. Smalltalk has been around for over three decades - the class libraries supporting it are tested and stable, and the development tools are world class. Things like unit testing and refactoring were invented in Smalltalk - why not try the environment that spawned the entire TDD process?

Still not convinced? That’s fine - see for yourself. Download Smalltalk now from the Cincom Smalltalk website and give Seaside a test drive. Check out the “Smalltalk Daily” video tutorials to get started - we have a basic Seaside tutorial and a WebVelocity specific section for you.

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books

We Are Doomed: Review

May 7, 2010 14:23:22.000

I read a cheery book recently - John Derbyshire's "We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism ". It's an interesting read - whether you agree with the author's politics or not, it's hard to argue with some of his pessimism.

If I had to categorize him, I'd say that he falls on the libertarian-ish end of conservatism. I tend to fall in that direction, so there's a lot in the book I agree with, but - your mileage may vary, of course. It's a short read, so you won't need to invest a ton of time on it. If nothing else, have a look at his section on education. Based on my daughter's tour through the local school system, I'm not quite as pessimistic as he is, but it's close. You want to get depressed? Next time your teenage kid has a few friends around, pull a bill out of your wallet (any bill, including a $1), and ask the lot of them to identify whoever is on it. If you haven't tried this before, prepare to be astonished.

Anyway, it is a polemic - if you don't agree with the author's viewpoint, you may well be infuriated by the book. It's not an angry book though, so if you bring an open mind to it, you'll at least see where people you don't necessarily agree with are coming from. In that light, I recommend the book.

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gadgets

Apple's Vision

May 7, 2010 11:17:58.000

This is the kind of usage pattern Apple hopes to see:

All the PCs and laptops are basically not being used. All the Macs are not being used. All have been powered off. Everyone in the family is waiting for their turn at the iPad.
...
I don't think I'll be buying any more desktops going forward. I don't think I'll even be buying any more laptops going forward.

The big thing that a lot of tech folks don't get is that we aren't the target audience here. Apple built this for everyone else - the part they cast us in was "developer".

I know this much - since my wife got ahold of her iPad, her Windows PC has been sitting unused. She still uses her Macbook, but it looks like the iPad is getting more use. I still need a laptop, but I accept the fact that I'm an outlier in this :)

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tv

Someone Buy Mark Cuban an XBox

May 7, 2010 11:00:04.123

Mark Cuban thinks that Video on Demand will beat things like NetFlix because it's so much simpler:

You know what is AMAZING about VOD ? It gives you thousands of choices and its already connected to your TV. It just works. You don’t have to buy another box. You don’t have to figure out how to connect it to your TV. You don’t have to stream from another device over your WIFI network and get all confused about how to pull video from the internet. It just works. That’s what you want when you unbox that great big flat screen TV. You want it to work…. like a TV. Easily. Quickly.
...
I just don’t understand why media pundits think that people are going to want to turn those BRAND SPANKING NEW HDTVs into PC monitors watching internet quality video. It’s a hassle. There is nothing that works out of the box.

Apparently, Mr. Cuban has never seen an XBox. Or a Wii. Or a PS3. You plug those in the same way you plug in a DVD player or cable box, hook up to the net (far simpler now than it was a few years ago, and something anyone can do), and bam - you have access to streaming media. No PC or laptop, no conversion cables, just a few clicks on your controller.

Cuban is arguing against a strawman that doesn't exist. I'll agree that it's a pain to hook a laptop up to a TV (for my Macbook Pro, I need a DVI to HDMI cable, plus a Y cable for audio). But... that's not the route that's winning. Wake me when Cuban tunes into 2010 instead of 2003.

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web

Where is the Web Going

May 7, 2010 9:02:10.000

Tim Bray has an interesting post up on where the web is headed, and he starts off with this as one of his points:

The HTML specification process is controversy-laden , immensely ambitious, and is attempting to boil at least one ocean. There is no guarantee of success, no matter how you choose to measure it.

I'd suggest reading the whole piece. This assertion in the middle deserves some thought though:

The discovery, in the early Web browsers, that reasonably-typeset text which embedded simple forms and hyperlinks, and came equipped with a “Back” button, hit the biggest 80/20 point ever in the history of User Interfaces, couldn’t have been predicted by anybody; but it’s as true today as ever.

That was certainly true once; it's getting to be less true all the time. A ton of the apps I use don't work with the back button well (or at all) - Gmail being one of them. The dividing line between "web app" and "app" has been blurring for some time, and it's getting more blurry as time goes by. I expect HTML5 (or whatever comes down the pike) to continue that trend

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smalltalk

Seaside Debugging: Video

May 7, 2010 8:15:18.640

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at how debugging works for web applications built in Seaside. The cool thing - it works just like debugging for any other Smalltalk app. Click on the viewer below to watch it now:

You can download the video directly here. If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Daily"?

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smalltalk

Smalltalk in Toronto

May 7, 2010 7:48:51.000

The Toronto STUG has an interesting meeting coming up on May 10:

The agenda for the next meeting of the Toronto Smalltalk User Group, on Monday, May 10, includes:
  • which Smalltalk to use for an OO course?
  • demo of a Self-like programming environment for JavaScript (on top of Dan Ingalls' Lively Kernel)
  • demo of the Teleplace app in Cobalt, the 3D virtual world that is taking over for Croquet

Meetings start at 6:30 and are hosted by Ryerson University. 245 Church Street

They're a great group - mark this one down in your calendar!

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posted by James Robertson

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itNews

Gemstone Acquired Again

May 7, 2010 6:53:04.532

Gemstone has been acquired again - by a big player:

SpringSource, a division of VMware, Inc, and the leader in Java application infrastructure and management, today announced that VMware has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire GemStone Systems, Inc., a privately held provider of enterprise data management solutions based in Beaverton, Oregon

We'll have to wait to see what - if anything - that means for the Smalltalk business there. The focus of the acquisition seems to be Gemfire.

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posted by James Robertson

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development

Inconvenient Questions

May 7, 2010 6:44:23.972

Rob Fahrni asks a question that I haven't seen anyone else ask:

Yesterday, on Twitter, I asked “Can you develop XBox 360, Sony Playstation, or Wii apps using Flash?” There was a reason for that question. I was hoping someone would take the bait, but alas, nobody obliged. Once again I ask, can you develop XBox 360, Sony Playstation, or Wii apps using Flash? I’m fairly confident the answer is “NO.”

Consoles are pretty closed off development environments - but the technorati haven't been up in arms about that the way they have about the iPad/iPhone. I wonder why that is? Rob makes a number of other good points as well - go check his post out.

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posted by James Robertson

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games

Carcassonne for iPhone/iPad

May 6, 2010 15:29:22.000

This is cool news:

How do you feel about walled French cities? Farmers? Roads? Cloisters? If you answered any of those questions with a full-throated rebel yell, then I'll presume you're already familiar with Carcassonne, the tile-based board game in which you lay out farms and cities and populate them. You'll likewise be glad to know that the game's making its way to the iPhone and, eventually, the iPad.

I haven't played recently, but I've invested many a happy hour into that game :)

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Rails to Seaside

May 6, 2010 10:50:54.448

I ran across an interesting post from a guy who's made the move from Rails to Seaside - not because he has anything against Rails, but because he decided that Seaside was a better choice for him. You should really read the whole post - he goes through his learning process (yes, there were and are some hurdles to getting into Smalltalk) - but I really liked this bit:

A real debugger - in reality, most development time is spent editing code, and debugging. Debugging web apps has always been a tough thing. With seaside, it’s really a matter of going to a debugger on a crash, and inspecting the objects. You can edit the objects (and their methods) while they are live. While the system is running. you can also set breakpoints willy nilly, and inspect and edit the system on the fly. It’s hard to describe how alive the system is. You just need to try it.

People underestimate the importance of this a lot. In fact, you can find plenty of developers (including Rubyists) who will tell you that you shouldn't debug at all; tests will do it all for you. What that really means is this: debuggers in other languages are very, very different from what we have in Smalltalk, and when you get into Seaside, it's even more cool:

  • It's not just a debugger - it's a live editor of your code that happens to be debugging a live process
  • In Seaside, you can debug intra-hit

That latter part tends to throw people unless they see it; here's a screencast showing it off in Seaside, and here's another, showing it off in WebVelocity - which moves the entire Smalltalk environment into the browser itself - allowing for a seamless develop/debug/deploy chain. I like to describe it this way: normal debugers let you play the part of forensic pathologist - you get a dead body, and have to figure out what killed it. With Smalltalk, you're a surgeon - the patient is knocked out, but you can patch him up and send him off after you wake him back up.

One thing that I just noticed - I haven't done new versions of those videos in a bit - so I guess I have a couple of screencasts to do in the near future :) When I do that, I'll update this post. Anyway - they show off what I'm on about. Give WebVelocity a try, and see what Smalltalk can do for your Web Apps - it combines ActiveRecord with Seaside, along with the full support of the Cincom Smalltalk team.

Update: The Seaside screencast has been updated

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Debugging Hard Problems

May 6, 2010 8:18:32.927

Sometimes you run flat into a brick wall - you can usually resolve issues with the Smalltalk debugger, but - what if you're having problems at the VM level?

Well, there are two online resources that should give you some tips on getting started:

Have a look - if you need more information, and you're a customer, try Cincom Smalltalk Support

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Create a Block Programmatically: Video

May 6, 2010 7:49:49.022

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at how to create a BlockClosure on the fly, based on user input. This screencast is based on a user request; the actual example is very dangerous! To download the code used, click here. Click on the viewer below to watch it now:

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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