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smalltalk

Instantiations Changes

August 4, 2010 21:20:25.452

Huge Smalltalk business news: Google acquired the Java/Eclipse business from Instantiations, and Instantiations is now a Smalltalk focused company. Quote from the site:

The new Instantiations will focus entirely on Smalltalk and remains fully committed to supporting and evolving the products we all know and love!

Big changes in the Smalltalk world...

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posted by James Robertson

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webVelocity

iPhone Style Apps with WebVelocity

August 4, 2010 20:53:03.056

Michael has built a web demo using WebVelocity - database and scaffolding - that looks like an iPhone app:

Recently I was asked to make a demo application that makes a standard WebVelocity application using scaffolding with active record look and work on the iPhone. There are three tricks to making a web page look like a native iPhone app: 1) colours, 2) orientation detection, 3) animations. In this demo I show off #1 and #2 and leave #3 for any adventurous jQuery users out there.

Follow the link for the video - it's pretty cool.

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posted by James Robertson

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web

Wave Sets Beneath the Sea

August 4, 2010 18:50:16.552

I never thought Google Wave was useful - and according to TechCrunch, I'm not alone:

Maybe it was just ahead of its time. Or maybe there were just too many features to ever allow it to be defined properly, but Google is saying today that they are going to stop any further development of Google Wave.

That's death for a web service. The problem was always simple: Things like Skype worked just as well or better, and already existed. Wave was a solution in search of a problem.

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posted by James Robertson

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gadgets

Approaching Hard Drive Limits?

August 4, 2010 16:30:20.506

Samsung has announced a new drive that's pretty close to what the current limits of magnetic drive tech can do:

Samsung announced new hard drives today that feature an aereal density that was questioned just four years ago and we are now approaching densities that are believed to be the limit for the current recording technology. Is it finally time to ditch traditional magnetic recording methods and transition to heat assisted recording?

From the consumer end, these don't look new - they are shipping 1.5 tb and 2.0 tb drives. But:

However, the 2.0 TB model now includes only 3 disks instead of four, which means that the storage capacity has been increased by 33% to 667 GB.

I wonder whether SSD drives will ramp up to the point where these physical limitations don't really matter, or whether there's still life in the classic spinning disk...

posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Not Heading to ESUG

August 4, 2010 11:25:14.195

Sadly, I won't be going to ESUG this year - so the videos I normally shot at the conference won't be appearing, either here or over at my Cincom blog. I'll be following the action remotely via Twitter, Facebook, and whatever other links I turn up, of course. Hope everyone there has a good time, and I'll miss catching up with you.

If anyone has raw video after the conference they would like to have me host, let me know - I have a DropBox account, and that would be a simple way to get stuff to me.

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posted by James Robertson

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Macintosh

The Joys of iMovie

August 4, 2010 11:19:13.405

I love the way Apple updates things. I have iMovie '09, and I was getting ready to put together a montage video from Camp Smalltalk London. I have a bunch of stuff that was processed by QuickTime and.... iMovie has no idea what it is. A quick check of Google shows me that lots of people have hit this - and one solution is to export into the .dv format.

What I want to know is, what kind of idiot at Apple decided that standard export formats from QuickTime ("Export For Web") aren't recognized by iMovie?

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalkDaily

Smalltalk Daily 08/04/10: WebVelocity 1.1 Overview

August 4, 2010 10:07:24.378

Today's Smalltalk Daily continues the UI overview of the WebVelocity startup interface - to see the first part, go here. If you can't see the embedded video directly, you can go directly to YouTube for it. Click on the viewer below to watch it now:

You can follow the Smalltalk channel on YouTube for all the "Smalltalk Daily" videos. You can also check out the videos on Vimeo, where the quality is higher, or over on Facebook, if you are a member.

You can download the video directly here. If you need the video in a Windows Media format, then download that here. If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Daily"?

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posted by James Robertson

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webVelocity

WebVelocity 1.1 Code Layout

August 3, 2010 21:15:56.328

I'll be doing screencasts of the new 1.1 release of WebVelocity over the next couple of weeks - here's a screenshot of the new UI, showing the way code is laid out:

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posted by James Robertson

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gadgets

Verizon Spins Reality

August 3, 2010 20:59:29.642

Look Mom, no tethering for Droid users:

Motorola Droid users better not get too excited by Android 2.2, also known as “Froyo.” While Verizon Wireless is set to push out the latest version of the Android operating system to Droid users starting this week, two key features will be missing: tethering and Wi-Fi hot spot capability. Verizon says the Droid won’t get these two features, which are built into the Android 2.2 OS, because the device’s hardware isn’t capable of supporting it.

AT&T sed to spin similar stories about the iPhone; now they just throw bandwidth limits at us. Verizon will probably go through the same BS progression.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Comparing Versions

August 3, 2010 16:37:24.038

One of the cool new things in VW 7.7.1 is the comparison tool. In a BottomFeeder development image, here's the result of comparing the most recent version of a package to an older one:

Here's one of the changes opened up, with the changed segement highlighted:

Now, if the various things on the screen for this tool don't seem clear, just hit the help button on the top at the right:

posted by James Robertson

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gadgets

Another Reason a 2GB Limit is Absurd

August 3, 2010 12:08:46.371

Take a look at how much data gets used by FaceTime over 3G:

As you will see, if you do the math, a 5 minute FaceTime call with lots of movement used 14.7 MB of data. -- That's about 3 MB per minute

Add in some streaming video on the go, and you'll blow through your 2 GB cap pretty fast. Gosh forbid you try that overseas, where the charges can really add up :)

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posted by James Robertson

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web

Looking for Non-Existant Problems to Solve

August 3, 2010 10:30:32.096

Sometimes, the network neutrality advocates baffle me. Take today's post from David Weinberger, where he says (in part - follow the link for his entire post):

It’s time for Genachowski to stand firm and act at the FCC. He has a vision for the Internet as a place where small voices speak and where new ideas get a fair chance. He understands the Internet as a potentially transformative force in culture, business, education, and democracy.

I just don't see the supposed problem. Anyone can get a free or cheap site - blog or otherwise. People with some technical skills can get inexpensive hosting (like the one I use here) and run whatever kind of server they feel like. This one runs on Smalltalk, because that's what I like.

How about Video and Audio? Well, there are more solutions in that direction than I can count. YouTube, Vimeo, Mevio all come to mind immediately, as does Facebook. Photos? Flickr and a ton of other services.

Given all that, what the heck is the problem that requires some kind of forceful response from a government agency? A "small voice" can be heard much more easily now than at any time in history. The main impediement isn't scarcity; it's actually finding a niche where you can stand out from the huge crowd.

I just can't figure out what Weinberger wants the FCC to do, because I can't see the problem he's clearly agitated about.

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posted by James Robertson

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general

Wages of an Older Car

August 3, 2010 10:14:45.346

While I generally like having a car that's fully paid off, there are downsides to a 21 year old car: periodically, things break. I took my daughter out for a driving lesson on Sunday, and two exciting things happened: someone else driving out of the parking lot hit a light pole, so we had to run up and call 911. Just about simultaneously, the car started making a lot more noise. Driving yesterday, I noticed that there was also some kind of clunking sound coming from underneath, so I suspected that part of the exhaust system is loose.

So, this morning I drove the car down to the local gas station and walked home. I appreciated the cloudiness, because that made it possible for me to read a book on my iPad as I walked the 2 miles home. Now I just have to wait to find out what the damage comes to :/

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalkDaily

Smalltalk Daily 08/03/10: Introducing WebVelocity 1.1

August 3, 2010 8:07:39.560

Today's Smalltalk Daily does a brief overview of WebVelocity 1.1. If you can't see the embedded video directly, you can go directly to YouTube for it. Click on the viewer below to watch it now:

You can follow the Smalltalk channel on YouTube for all the "Smalltalk Daily" videos. You can also check out the videos on Vimeo, where the quality is higher, or over on Facebook, if you are a member.

You can download the video directly here. If you need the video in a Windows Media format, then download that here. If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Daily"?

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posted by James Robertson

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games

Finished ME2 on Insanity

August 2, 2010 23:00:26.932

I finished Mass Effect 2 on "Insanity" this evening - the funny part is that the final boss battle was not the hardest part. I used the Cain to knock the Reaper larva down 25 percent, and finished it off with a combination of warp, incinerate, and the sub machine gun.

Heck, even the collectors and Harbinger weren't that tough. The two missions that gave me the most trouble were Grunt's loyalty mission and the Reaper IFF mission.

Why were they the hardest ones? On the IFF mission, the stupid Husks. On Insanity, they have armor. That makes shockwave nearly useless, because you first have to pound the armor down. The only way I got through the IFF mission was by using the particle beam and warp to knock armor down, and then having Jack bounce them. Even using that tactic, it took me a few tries to really get it down.

Why Grunt's mission, you ask? A similar problem - Verrens with armor. Like Husks, they swarm, and if you can't just toss Shockwave at them, they surround you fast if you don't hit them early.

Anyway, it was cool to get the Insanity achievement at the end of that. There's a downside though; now I need a new game to occupy me :)

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Seafox for Seaside

August 2, 2010 22:15:14.626

Joachim wrote about Seafox again - it's an interesting idea: a Firefox plugin (look in the lower right corner of the browser for the icon) that examines the page you're on and drops Seaside code into the browser window for it.

It's a neat idea, but I have two caveats after having given it a brief try:

  • The methods it generates are huge - if you use this, be prepared for some serious refactoring :)
  • Given the wide range of pages out there, YMMV with the results. In my initial attempts, I ran into results that didn't work out

Now, before I end up sounding too negative, it's an 0.1 release, and it's absurd to expect such a thing to handle every web page out there. It's a cool idea, and could give you a nice start from a designer's proposed page layout.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalkDaily

Smalltalk Daily 08/02/10: SUnit to SUnitToo

August 2, 2010 11:06:43.851

Today's Smalltalk Daily shows you how to move to the SUnitToo tools without having to migrate all of your existing SUnit tests. If you can't see the embedded video directly, you can go directly to YouTube for it. Click on the viewer below to watch it now:

You can follow the Smalltalk channel on YouTube for all the "Smalltalk Daily" videos. You can also check out the videos on Vimeo, where the quality is higher, or over on Facebook, if you are a member.

You can download the video directly here. If you need the video in a Windows Media format, then download that here. If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Daily"?

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posted by James Robertson

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news

More Wasted Money

August 2, 2010 8:28:21.679

Spotted in Engadget:

On Friday, during a visit from President Obama to its Detroit-Hamtramck plant, GM announced some good news for all the Volt fans out there. Production from 2011 to 2012 for the electric vehicle -- originally slated at around 30,000 units -- has been boosted to a projected 45,000 units, a 50 percent increase.

This is insane. The Volt seats four people (the back seat isn't a bucket, as the battery takes up too much space). The cost for one of these is going to be around $41k. So - who in their right mind would buy a car for that kind of money, when a comparable gas powered vehicle runs $15k or less?

I say this as someone who drives so little (under 5000 miles per year) that - in theory - a limited range vehicle might make some sense. However, I don't have an extra $30k to throw at a car for self esteem purposes, and I really doubt that there's a huge number of people who do...

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posted by James Robertson

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gadgets

Pay With Your Phone

August 2, 2010 8:22:14.489

Engadget reports that the future of cardless payments might be coming soon - the major mobile players are getting together on it:

Bloomberg reports that AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile are about to test the NFC payment waters with pilot schemes in Atlanta and three other cities, potentially aided by partnerships with Discover Financial Services and British bankers Barclays Plc. This would require all-new readers for merchants and embedded NFC chips in phones, but we reckon plenty of people might be happy to pay a small premium to streamline their lives that little bit more and leave the plastic behind.

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posted by James Robertson

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audio

Industry Misinterpretations 199: A Cog in the Machine (2)

August 1, 2010 20:02:14.367

This week's podcast is part 2 of our interview with Eliot Miranda, about his Cog VM for Squeak. If you haven't heard part 1, you can go get that here.

To listen now, you can either download the mp3 edition, or the AAC edition. The AAC edition comes with chapter markers. You can subscribe to either edition of the podcast directly in iTunes; just search for Smalltalk and look in the Podcast results. You can subscribe to the mp3 edition directly using this feed, or the AAC edition using this feed using any podcatching software. You can also download the podcast in ogg format.

To listen immediately, use the player below:

If you like the music we use, please visit Josh Woodward's site. We use the song Effortless for our intro/outro music. I'm sure he'd appreciate your support!

If you have feedback, send it to smalltalkpodcasts@cincom.com - or visit us on Facebook 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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smalltalk

HTML to Seaside

August 1, 2010 17:12:05.212

Spotted in Planet Squeak

Nick released Seafox.xpi - a small plugin for Firefox that translates a websites HTML into the appopropriate seaside methods.

I'd have to look before I judged the effort, but it sounds interesting.

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posted by James Robertson

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security

Nasty Security Bug in Windows

August 1, 2010 14:19:41.871

Microsoft is rushing out a patch for a really nasty bug - one that targets link files and desktop shortcuts. It can be triggered via documents, file browsing, and apparently, web browsing. So: Microsoft is rushing out a patch:

The company said it is satisfied with the quality of the "out-of-band" update -- Microsoft's term for a patch that falls outside the usual monthly delivery schedule -- but also acknowledged that it has tracked an upswing in attacks.

I could feel smug on my mac, but I think I'm with Steve Gibson on this one - he said on the last "Security Now" podcast that Mac OS and Linux likely have equally bad flaws lying around, it's just that the installed base isn't big enough to warrant a search by the bad actors. Security by obscurity, I guess :)

posted by James Robertson

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marketing

Is Your Detergeant Stalking You?

August 1, 2010 13:34:37.642

In Brazil, it might be :)

posted by James Robertson

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podcasting

Eliot Part 2

July 31, 2010 11:41:30.108

I'll be releasing part 2 of our podcast with Eliot Miranda tomorrow - to get part 1, head over here. Next week, we'll have a short interview I recorded with Alejandro Reimondo and Frank Lesser at Camp Smalltalk London.

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posted by James Robertson

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books

Android's Dream

July 31, 2010 10:43:26.361

I just finished reading John Scalzi's The Android's Dream - after reading some of his other books, I knew he was a funny author, but this book was hilarious. It's semi-serious science fiction, but with tons of laughs tossed in as well. Heck, how many books start out with a diplomatic incident caused by device enhanced farting?

I can't really go into much detail about the book without giving important stuff away, but suffice to say that Scalzi created a serious world with an absurd set of premises that all work really well together. Between a technology backed religion, genetic engineering, and software hacking, there's a lot going on in this story.

I enjoyed it a lot, and if you liked anything else by Scalzi - like Old Man's War - you'll like this. A lot of people compare Scalzi's style to Heinlein, and I think they're right.

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posted by James Robertson

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gadgets

Android Vs. iPhone

July 30, 2010 22:16:07.954

Katherine Noyes at PC World thinks the mobile future belongs to Android:

A hallmark of Apple's approach has always been putting users in a "walled garden" whereby they are "protected" from having to deal with the computer's nuts and bolts directly. Hand-in-hand with that approach comes restrictiveness; users are only allowed to do things that Apple has decided to let them do, just as they can only buy applications that have been preapproved. Apple insists on controlling the whole ecosystem.

That might be a problem if there were anything really missing from that garden; the reality is, there isn't. The other reality is simpler: with computers, a significant minority of users wants to tweak and hack. Phones, on the other hand, are end consumer devices. Just as there aren't many people who want to hack TV's, there aren't that many who want to hack phones.

I just don't see the controlled nature of the app store being a problem anytime soon - and I'm not at all sure that Google can compete with the user experience that Apple brings to the game.

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posted by James Robertson

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webVelocity

WebVelocity 1.1: Cloud Ready

July 30, 2010 20:46:38.550

Michael just announced WebVelocity 1.1 - you can read his entire post for more details, but this bit sets the mood:

We started off chasing the tail of Ruby on Rails but at this point it's futile to compare ourselves to them too. Ruby has never believed in tools — we do, in a big way. Can you imagine writing code in a web browser, running it in a second tab to see how it works, discovering a bug and debugging with edit and continue in your main tab and then having the second tab instantly finish loading as if nothing had ever gone wrong? ... now can you imagine that you don't know how to fix the bug, so you just send the bug over to a friend working on his laptop at a coffee shop and having him fix it in moments?

We'll have an open download available shortly; in the meantime, we have two screencasts:

I'll be redoing all the WebVelocity 1.0 screencasts over the next little while as well.

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posted by James Robertson

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web

We Are Where We Would Have Been

July 30, 2010 12:59:19.554

Rudolf van der Berg explains how so many telecom execs get things wrong - they point at Apple (iTunes) and Google (YouTube) as "bandwidth hogs", without seeing the bigger reality:

The main reason this viewpoint irritates me is; they complain about their underinvestment in their network. They then point at two companies who are very visible, but don't really matter in the equation. If Apple hadn't existed, someone else would have come with a bandwidth hogging device in a matter of 0-2 years. If Youtube hadn't existed, Dailymotion and Facebook would have existed and would have delivered the goods. What I mean to say is that user behaviour wouldn't have changed and somewhere between 2010 and 2013 we would have hit the exact same limit as now.

Demand and technology met - had Apple and/or Google missed the boat, someone else would have caught it. The piper laying companies just keep under-guessing on how much pipe they'll need, and then they look around for someone to blame. It's a good article; read the whole thing.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalkDaily

Smalltalk Daily 07/30/10: Saving Debugger Probes

July 30, 2010 9:59:29.421

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at how to save and reload debugger probes without saving an entire image. If you can't see the embedded video directly, you can go directly to YouTube for it. Click on the viewer below to watch it now:

You can follow the Smalltalk channel on YouTube for all the "Smalltalk Daily" videos. You can also check out the videos on Vimeo, where the quality is higher, or over on Facebook, if you are a member.

You can download the video directly here. If you need the video in a Windows Media format, then download that here. If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Daily"?

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Reddit Style in 10 Classes

July 30, 2010 9:24:01.441

Check out Sven van Caekenberghe's Smalltalk tutorial - using Seaside and Glorp - to implement a Reddit style site in 10 classes. Using a service like the one I have here (Slicehost), going from this tutorial to deployment would be pretty easy.

This is a tutorial showing how to implement a small but non-trivial web application in Smalltalk using Seaside, Glorp and PostgreSQL. Reddit, is web application where users can post interesting links that get voted up or down. The idea is that the 'best' links end up with the most points automatically. Many other websites exist in the area of social bookmarking, like Delicious, Digg and Hacker News.

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posted by James Robertson

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gadgets

Recession, or Apple?

July 30, 2010 8:43:16.000

I think a combination of factors is hurting Nintendo's DS sales:

  • The slow economy
  • The saturation of the market
  • The onslaught from Apple with the Touch and iPhone

It'll be tough for Nintendo to get back into the handheld game.

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posted by James Robertson

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gadgets

Everything You Need to Know About Windows Tablets

July 30, 2010 6:38:06.000

I think this paragraph from a Cnet story about Microsoft's efforts in the tablet space says it all:

But he added that Microsoft has a lot of software knowledge and intellectual property from the decade it has spent in the tablet business.

Apple spent a long time making sure that what they were going to push out was optimized for the form factor; Microsoft spent a decade pushing the existing Windows OS onto smaller devices. Maybe they get it now, but I have my doubts.

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posted by James Robertson

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humor

Phone Security

July 30, 2010 0:03:33.882

Joy of Tech is awesome

posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Still Wrestling with OAuth and VW

July 29, 2010 9:23:38.439

I'm still trying to get things going with VisualWorks and OAuth - I just realized that the timestamp needed to be in terms of GMT, not whatever my local time is. Makes perfect sense, just hadn't thought about it.

I'm still getting a 401 back from Twitter though; it's likely that my Authorization header isn't structured correctly. I'll have to take a very close look at it, after the next conference call. Later today I'll publish what I have to the public store, in the hope that maybe someone else can tell me what stupid thing I'm doing wrong :)

Update: I just replicated what I have to the public store. If you're inclined to help out, you'll need your own set of keys from an OAuth based system. Look for the OAuth package.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalkDaily

Smalltalk Daily 07/29/10: Updating the Debugger's Inspectors

July 29, 2010 8:42:55.103

Today's Smalltalk Daily llooks at a package that adds code completion to VisualWorks and ObjectStudio. It's contributed code, so it could do more than it does - but it's a nice add on all the same. If you can't see the embedded video directly, you can go directly to YouTube for it. Click on the viewer below to watch it now:

You can follow the Smalltalk channel on YouTube for all the "Smalltalk Daily" videos. You can also check out the videos on Vimeo, where the quality is higher, or over on Facebook, if you are a member.

You can download the video directly here. If you need the video in a Windows Media format, then download that here. If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Daily"?

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

A Smalltalk Thread Pool

July 29, 2010 8:22:25.663

Ramon Leon talks about his implementation of a thread pool for Smalltalk (in the context of a Seaside app):

I had a search result page in Seaside that launched about 10 background threads for every page render and then the page would poll for the results of those computations, collect up any results found, and AJAX them into the page. Each one needs to run in its own thread because any one of them may hang up and take upwards of 30 seconds to finish its work even though the average time would be under a second. I don't want all the results being stalled waiting for the one slow result, so it made sense to have each on its own thread. This worked for quite a while with nothing but simple forking, but eventually, the load rose to the point that I needed a thread pool so I could limit the number of threads actually doing the work to a reasonable amount. So, let's write a thread pool.

It's easy to think that threads in Smalltalk are "free" - they are green threads, so what the heck - let's use more! However, you will (as Ramon writes) eventually hit a wall. I ran into one in BottomFeeder years ago, for slightly different reasons.

In BottomFeeder, I fork a Smalltalk process for each http request during an update loop. I subscribe to over 200 feeds, so that can amount to a lot of threads simultaneously clamoring for bandwidth. On my (fast) home connection, this was never a problem. However, back in the early 2000's, I was still running into dialup on the road at times, and even now, I periodically run into very slow Wifi. On slow connections, forking off that many processes just hurts more than it helps - so I wrote a thread pool into Bf.

What I should have done is what Ramon did - write a more general solution instead of burying it inside an app. However, it does show that this is something you might need, especially in the modern world of frequently (or always) connected apps.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

AidaWeb on Pharo

July 29, 2010 7:46:43.607

Smalltalkers have more choices than ever in terms of platform (dialect) and framework - AidaWeb now runs on Pharo (it already supported Cincom Smalltalk and Squeak). From Janko in the Pharo mailing list:

I just made Aida ready on new and wonderful Pharo 1.1. and now Aida installs and run nicelly and even side by side with Seaside. You can even run both on the same Swazoo web server, which is also included.

Choice is good - you can now run a Smalltalk server built on a commercial grade web framework (AidaWeb or Seaside), using a standard database solution - Glorp - and have that server move pretty seamlessly between the various Smalltalk dialects.

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posted by James Robertson

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development

It's not just iPhones

July 29, 2010 7:42:04.847

Tim Bray would like more choices for development on the Android platform:

And finally, as a citizen primarily of the Web, I can’t help but notice that in recent years, its interesting bits (Facebook, Wikipedia, Twitter, 37 Signals, Ravelry) are largely not being built in Java. I know first-hand that there is a substantial community of really first-rate programmers, people I admire, who for one reason or another just don’t want to deal with Java; and I’d like some of them to become Android developers.

It's interesting that Apple's policies (limiting development to the C family plus Javascript) have gotten so much attention - but the situation on Android isn't that different at the moment. Sure, it's not due to any Google policy, but the end impact works out the same way. Becoming a first class citizen on these devices just isn't that easy without help from the platform vendor.

Bray thinks things will start opening up by 2011; we'll see. I think it's going to be hard for outside developers to keep up with the platform as it changes and evolves...

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posted by James Robertson

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DRM

It's the False Positives, Stupid

July 29, 2010 7:34:37.617

This is why I dislike DRM so much - it doesn't hit pirates at all, but it periodically slaps legitimate users in the face:

Valve, the company responsible for the game Modern Warfare 2, recently issued an apology to over 12,000 legitimate MW2 users who were accidentally banned from getting their first-person shooter on by the company’s DRM implementation.

The pirates manage to get around these issues easily enough; cracked games pop up on the net on or before the official release date. Which means that DRM fails miserably for the task it supposedly exists for. However, it sure does manage to irritate the crap out of legitimate users on an ongoing basis.

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posted by James Robertson

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gadgets

Sunbathing iPads?

July 28, 2010 10:31:57.071

I wonder about the lawsuit claiming that iPads should work better (i.e., not overheat) in the sun - take this rationale from PC World:

This may actually be a very real problem, especially since the iPad is designed for e-book reading and casual computing--a very plausible time to use your iPad would be outside or at the beach.

There's one huge problem with that theory - go out in the sun and just try to read on the iPad. For good or ill, the LCD screen is just not an optimal solution for outdoor reading. Heck, the recent beach ads that Amazon is running for the Kindle play off of that reality.

Maybe the iPad shouldn't overheat as quickly as some claim it does in the sun, but seriously - you aren't going to be using it in the sun anyway.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalkDaily

Smalltalk Daily 07/28/10: Auto Complete

July 28, 2010 9:14:53.695

Today's Smalltalk Daily llooks at a package that adds code completion to VisualWorks and ObjectStudio. It's contributed code, so it could do more than it does - but it's a nice add on all the same. If you can't see the embedded video directly, you can go directly to YouTube for it. Click on the viewer below to watch it now:

You can follow the Smalltalk channel on YouTube for all the "Smalltalk Daily" videos. You can also check out the videos on Vimeo, where the quality is higher, or over on Facebook, if you are a member.

You can download the video directly here. If you need the video in a Windows Media format, then download that here. If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Daily"?

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posted by James Robertson

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culture

Do I Get a Membership Card?

July 28, 2010 8:29:02.629

Apparently, we're (my wife and I, that is) members of the selfish elites - and no one even gave us membership cards:

It’s not exactly official, but should also surprise no one: According to a new study the psychological profile of iPad owners can be summed up as “selfish elites” while have-not critics are “independent geeks.

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posted by James Robertson

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tv

The Future of TV

July 28, 2010 8:25:47.899

Netflix is available on every major computing system - Macs, Windows, iPads - and on all the gaming systems - Wii, Xbox, and PS3. I think the on-demand thing is going to end up doing a lot of damage to pay per view on cable, and it's also going to change the way shows get created. The whole "weekly fix" thing is going to be harder to pull off as time goes by, and more and more people get sucked into the immediate gratification thing...

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posted by James Robertson

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