O'Reilly News & Commentary

@RIARadio Lost Episode: Michael Plank, Jesse Freeman, and FDT

Notice this episode was recorded at the end of 2009 and was lost. Although a few references are a bit dated it is a fantastic episode. Since this is being released late at no fault of FDT please make...

Making Data Work: Practical Applications of Data Science - An Online Conference, 9 June 2010

This online conference brings together four experts on data and data analysis to show you how data is used in successful enterprises, what kinds of tools you use to work with the data, how do you use visual techniques to provide insight into what the data is saying, and present those conclusions to others. If data is the key to success in the 21st century, and if the businesses that thrive are the ones who understand how to use their data effectively, you can't afford to miss this event. Register now and save 40%. Use code MD10RDX.

What is data science? - Analysis: The future belongs to the companies and people that turn data into products.

The future belongs to the companies who figure out how to collect and use data successfully. In this in-depth piece, O'Reilly editor Mike Loukides examines the unique skills and opportunities that flow from data science.

Making community health information as useful as weather data - Open health data from Health and Human Services is driving more than 20 new apps.

The chief technology office of Health and Human Services, Todd Park, is fond of using the National Ocean and Oceanographic Association as a metaphor for the innovation that may be unlocked through releasing public data. NOAA data underpins Weather.com and nearly every commercial meteorological service in the United States. Park has been working closely with other government officials and the technology community to create a framework for government to act as a platform through the Community Health Data Initiative.

Four short links: 2 June 2010 - WikiLeaks Ethics, Education Business Opportunities, Corewar Updated, Watch Google IO

Wikileaks Launched on Stolen Documents (Wired) -- Wired claims the first set of documents was obtained by running a Tor node that users connected to ("exit node") and saving the plaintext that was sent to the users, without their knowledge. Reminds me of the adage that nothing big in Silicon Valley starts without being some degree of evil first:...

Announcing: Flex on Java eXchange

Skills Matter is organizing the first annual Flex on Java eXchange in London on June 16th. This highly interactive, intimate event will feature Tomas Lin, who will give a talk on Grails with Flex... Spring BlazeDS project Lead Jeremy Grelle will fly over from the US to give the opening keynote on Spring and Flex integration with BlazeDS. There will also be a talk by Christophe Herreman on the Spring ActionScript framework and a talk by Jens Halm on the Parsley framework. Adobe is sending expert Michael Chaize over to talk about Flex/Java communications... You can find the full conference programme here: https://skillsmatter.com/event/java-jee/flex-on-java-exchange-2010/wd-938

Australian Government procurement policy on Open Standard document formats - Open Source and Open Standards: Chicken and Egg or Apples and Oranges?

Over the last few years I have linked to various national government policies on Open Source software and procurement policies. But I see I omitted us in Australia. So here is what I can find, from 2005: Guide to Open...

5 Things I Learned from Flixel

Advanced Flash Tactics or AFTs are techniques that come from deep within the Flash Art Of War, the oldest Flash military treatise in the world. In this AFT I will go over - 5 Things I Learned from Flixel....

Flex 4 / PHP Data-Centric Photo Transfers

Have you ever-wondered why you mostly see Flex client example code where the photo display galleries are rendered using the ActionScript 3 (AS 3) Loader.load (request:URLRequest, context:LoaderContext=null) class.method? There’s another way to render photos in a Flex client gallery using the AS 3 Loader.loadBytes(bytes:ByteArray, context:LoaderContext=null) that you see used to a lesser degree. Why is this? There are a couple of valid reasons. First, using a URL, whether it is photos included with the Flex client package or remotely from a Web server, making a simple HTTP calls to load the photo is a snap. Second, photo files are stored as bytes of data and not a convenient AS 3 ByteArray data type.

Four short links: 1 June 2010 - Legal XML, Big Social Data, Crowdsourcing Tips, Copyright Balkanization

XML in Legislature/Parliament Environments (Sean McGrath) -- quite detailed background on the use of XML in legislation drafting systems, and the problems caused by convention in that world--page/line number citations, in particular. (Quick gloat: NZ's legislature management system is kick-ass, and soon we'll switch from print authoritative to digital authoritative) Large-Scale Social Media Analysis with Hadoop -- In this...

Initiating the Privacy Arms Race Against Facebook: The AntiSocial Firefox Extension

It is my opinion, that regardless of the platform, the online social space has created a condition where the end users must ultimately collaborate to initiate an ongoing privacy arms race to poison the intelligence collected of them. To promote this sentiment, and to further the cause of research in this field, I'd like to announce the AntiSocial project.

The "How, What, Why" framework for Experience Design

Lately I've been looking closer at the way people use things as part of usability studies I'm doing in my job. One of the best things that has came out of this work is a new framework (for me) of thinking about how users interact with content. I believe this is fairly similar to other things I've read in the field usability, but as I've never heard this type of framework formalized before I'd like to present it briefly here. We're calling this the "How, What, Why" framework, for reasons that will become quite obvious in a moment if they aren't already.

Four short links: 31 May 2010 - Data and Context, Twitpic Hot or Not, Failing to Save Journalism, Flash in Javascript

Transparency is Not Enough (danah boyd) -- we need people to not just have access to the data, but have access to the context surrounding the data. A very thoughtful talk from Gov 2.0 Expo about meaningful data release. Feed6 -- the latest from Rohit Khare is a sort of a "hot or not" for pictures posted to Twitter....

Pass the EventDispatcher, Please

One advantage of being married to someone who does similar work, but with different tools, is that I can run ideas for my next post past Steve and look for places where my explanation doesn't make sense from the...

Putting Online Privacy in Perspective

When I wrote last week about Facebook privacy flap, I was speaking out of the frustration that many technologists with a sense of perspective feel when we see uninformed media hysteria about the impact of new technology. (How many of you remember all the scare stories about the risks of using a credit card online from back in the mid-1990s,...

TDD Myths

While Extreme Programming remains a valuable template for project success, the decade of its adoption also saw the rise of many dilutions and derivatives. This post debunks some common myths about TDD.

Comparing Files in Eclipse

To compare two files in Eclipse, first select them in the Flex Navigator with control-click.  Now right-click on one of the files, and the following context menu will appear.Select Compare With / Each Other.  A file comparison window will open.You...

EGovernment at the Legislature - From Emerald Isle to Emerald Slippers

Sean McGrath is writing a series around the design issues for KLISS (Kansas Legislative Information Services System) which his company is doing.

California: There's an app for that - The state of California will partner with Microsoft, Google and Programmable Web to run an apps contest this summer.

Can California's budget-stricken government be improved through citizen engagement and civic developers? If a new application contest that launches this week bears digital fruit, there just might be an app for that. The state of California will partner with Microsoft, Google and Programmable Web to run an apps contest this summer. For those keeping score, that means two of the...

Ghost Phone - A MAKE Magazine Weekend Project Video

Make a creepy ghost phone that brings back the sounds of the dead. Thanks to Greg MacLaurin for the original article in MAKE Volume 16.

Effective Data Destruction Practices, Presented by Ben Rothke - A Free Live Webcast - June 8 @ 10am PT

Changes in data storage technologies, new Federal and State data privacy regulations and other factors have created an urgent need to have effective electronic records destruction practices. This session will detail the specifics of these changes and how organizations can protect themselves from huge financial liabilities. Having a defined data destruction strategy not only ensures a greener environment, but also ensures that the terabytes of stored data on the hardware are completely and permanently deleted. This session will discuss: legally compliant electronic records destruction policy; effective data destruction methods; degaussing, dismantling and refining; documentation and reporting; hardware and software vendors. Register for this webcast now.  Upcoming Webcasts: High Dynamic Range Imaging and Adobe Photoshop CS5 Presented by Jack HowardJune 11 @ 10am PT First Steps with Arduino Presented by Brian JepsonJune 16 @ 10am PT Check out our Webcast page for on-demand videos of past webcasts and more upcoming live events.

Free O'Reilly Book Samplers - Topics include: iPad, Flex 4, JavaScript, Programming the Mobile Web, and more

Check out our free PDF book samplers from these new and upcoming books: iPad: The Missing Manual Buying a Home: The Missing Manual Flex 4 Cookbook High Performance JavaScript Developing Large Web Applications Java: The Good Parts Programming the Mobile Web C# 4.0 in a Nutshell View a complete list of book samplers.

Data and simplicity can build the government platform - Aneesh Chopra and Tim O'Reilly on government as a platform, open data and more.

Tim O'Reilly and Aneesh Chopra, Federal Chief Technology Officer, had a wide-ranging discussion at this week's Gov 2.0 Expo in Washington D.C. Here's archived video and a breakdown of key insights from their chat.

Four short links: 28 May 2010 - Understanding a Shuffle, Bias, Open Source a Success in Malaysia, and Guardian APIs

The Intuition Behind the Fisher-Yates Shuffle -- this is a simple algorithm to randomize a list of things, but most people are initially puzzled that it is more efficient than a naive shuffling algorithm. This is a nice explanation of the logic behind it. Wikipedia and Inherent Open Source Bias -- a specific case of what I think of...

Writing Beyond Tech: Introducing Ripple Reader and Recorded "Bugville" Books

Last fall, all 15 of the original Bugville Critters books were released in a special "e" format for the beta of the Ripple Reader. Just recently, the Ripple team officially launched their Reader. If you are a parent with young...

Tim Berners-Lee on Data.gov.uk, open linked data and open standards - Gov 2.0 Expo Keynote Video and Exclusive Interview

Can you explain open linked data using a bag of chips? Tim Berners-Lee did precisely that yesterday in his keynote at the Gov 2.0 Expo. After the jump, you can watch an exclusive interview with Berners-Lee exploring open linked data, how governments' open data efforts should be judged, and more.

Four short links: 27 May 2010 - Big Dumps, 3D Printing Atom Movers, Faceted Browsing, and Useful Math

Socorro: Mozilla's Crash Reporting System (Laura Thomson) -- We receive on our peak day each week 2.5 million crash reports, and process 15% of those, for a total of 50 GB. In total, we receive around 320Gb each day. Moving to a Hadoop-based system in the future, as they're limited by database and filesystem storage. DIY Atomic Force Microscopy...

Letting The Data Tell Its Own Story

In this post, I have decided to focus upon one of my favorite topics, data visualization. It all started when an old friend from high school posted a link indicating that this past January and April were the hotest ever recorded, according to a NASA data set. I want to avoid the political discussions associated with this topic, and rather allow the data to tell its own story through visualization using Adobe Flex. You could stare at a grid of data for hours, and never see the trends or intricacies that become obvious once you put the data into a visual format.

Venture capitalists do it. Why shouldn't philanthropists do it, too?

Our problems in education are too intense, funding is too thin and time too precious to take on duplicative efforts. We need to apply some of the same discriminating standards in our philanthropic Edu2.0 projects that we use in for-profit ones.

Tim O'Reilly & Aneesh Chopra Discussion at Gov 2.0 Expo 2010

The Network Continues to Support Sustainability

The use of ICT to tackle climate issues is growing in sophistication, as well as the methods for tracking and measuring their effectiveness...

7 reasons to write in ActionScript

There seemed to be some disagreement about my previous post on InsideRIA about moving your Flex Components from MXML to an ActionScript only base. The article was intended to teach readers about the Flex Component lifecycle; but backed into...

@RIARadio Episode 15: Flex 4 Cookbook

Joshua Noble and Todd Anderson, Senior Software Engineer for Infrared5, join us to discuss the Flex 4 Cookbook and other projects they are currently working on.

Crisis Commons releases open source oil spill reporting

The new iPhone and Android apps will allow organizations responding to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico to report on the go. "The cool thing about the app is that the photos and information will be open to anyone to use," said Heather Blanchard, co-founder of Crisis Commons.

Four short links: 26 May 2010 - Reading Outlook in Open Source, Android Tablets, Websocket Editing, Jabber for Node.js

PSTSDK -- Apache-licensed code from Microsoft to read Outlook files. Covered by Microsoft's Open Specification Promise not to assert related patents against users of this library. Cheap Android Tablet -- not multitouch, but only $136. Good for hacking with in the meantime. (via Hacker News) Real-Time Collaborative Editing with Websockets, node.js, and Redis -- uses Chrome's websockets alternative to...

Flash And The City Recap

Flash And The City is over and I had an amazing time. This conference was special for many reasons so I thought I would share some of the highlights from this conference and talk about why it is so important to the Flash community.

Happening Now: Gov 2.0 Expo - The IT Event for 21st Century Government

Gov 2.0 Expo is now underway in Washington, DC. Don't miss the News & Coverage, including photo, speaker slides, and videos. Watch Keynotes live online. Daily Wrap-Ups and Behind-the-Scenes Interviews If you can't make it to the Expo in person, join our live broadcasts from the conference and take part in the conversation. We'll discuss the buzz, analyze announcements, interview special guests, and take your questions from our live chat. Drop into our open webcast room to share in live events throughout the day. Participating is easy. No registration necessary. Just go to: connectsolutions.com/gov2expo

Managing Developer Engagement Part 2

In my last entry I started discussing how to manage developer engagement. In the past this hasn't been an issue for me because my teams were around four or less developers and at that size it's much easier to know...

Flex 4 / PHP Data-Centric Solutions

Flash Builder provides server-side remoting technology supporting ASP.Net, J2EE, HTTP/REST and SOAP Web services, PHP, BlazeDS, ColdFusion, and LiveCycle Data Services for streaming data to and from a Flex 4 client. This article exclusively covers the PHP server-side remoting technology principally with Zend's PHP ZendFramework web application server. New RIA client and PHP sever development opportunities are emerging using the newly released Flash Builder 4 (Flex 4) IDE linked the recent additions to the Zend Framework PHP Web application server for messaging via Adobe Message Format 3 (AMF 3) serial data streams.

Facebook Open Graph: A new take on semantic web - Facebook's Open Graph is both an important step and one that still needs work.

In this guest post, Alex Iskold places Facebook's Open Graph Initiative within the context of past data-linking efforts. There's work to be done -- particularly on the "openness" front -- but this effort represents an important step toward weaving the the web of people and things.

Four short links: 25 May 2010 - European Economic Crisis, Scaling Guardian API, Cheerful Pessimism, and Science Mapping

Lending Merry-Go-Round -- these guys have been Australia's sharpest satire for years, filling the role of the Daily Show. Here they ask some strong questions about the state of Europe's economies ... (via jdub on Twitter) What's Powering the Guardian's Content API -- Scala and Solr/Lucene on EC2 is the short answer. The long answer reveals the details of...

The iPad and immersive computing - Multitasking on the iPad could prove to be a limitation, not an asset.

The iPad apps and features that Marc Hedlund most looks forward to are those that make immersive computing experience more ubiquitous and useful.

37signals' "Profitable and Proud"

I love the idea of this new blog series from 37signals, "Profitable and Proud." The first post covers Campaign Monitor, a mailing list service. Having used Campaign Monitor for several companies, I can attest that it's a fantastic service with extremely responsive employees -- like 37signals. The 37s are obviously furthering their point that venture capital isn't needed, and isn't...

Live from Gov 2.0 Expo in Washington, DC - Join our live broadcasts from the conference

Gov 2.0 Expo is the IT event for 21st century government. If you can't make it to the Expo in person, join our live broadcasts from the conference and take part in the conversation. We'll discuss the buzz, analyze announcements, interview special guests, and take your questions from our live chat. Drop into our open webcast room to share in live events throughout the day. Participating is easy. No registration necessary. Just go to: connectsolutions.com/gov2expo

Google vs Apple: Google Doesn't Need To Win

Google does not have to dominate the smartphone business; they just have to make sure that there's an environment in which the business of selling ads thrives. While Apple wants to dominate smartphones, Google undeniably dominates online ad sales--and they clearly see ad placement on mobile as a huge opportunity. Conversely, failure to dominate mobile ad sales would be disastrous. At best, it would limit their potential; at worst, if we're heading for the end of the "desktop/laptop era", it could seriously threaten their core business.

AIR On Android Overview

At GoogleIO Adobe announced that Flash Player 10.1 and AIR for Android will be released for Android 2.2. However that wasn’t the only thing they announce. As of the 20th anyone can download the AIR Prerelease and begin testing...

What does Government 2.0 look like? - Mark Drapeau offers a visual breakdown of the Gov 2.0 components.

The most important thing I learned in grad school was very simple: "Draw the picture." (Thanks Tony.) By that my advisor meant that it's often hard or impossible to describe a complex system in words alone. And consequently, if you can't draw a picture of what you're trying to explain, you probably don't understand it. Drawing pictures of complex systems...

Four short links: 24 May 2010 - Google Docs APIs, Wikileaks Founder Profile, DNA Hacking, and Abusing the Numbers

Google Documents API -- permissions, revisions, search, export, upload, and file. Somehow I had missed that this existed. Profile of Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange (Sydney Morning Herald) -- he draws no salary, is constantly on the move, lived for a while in a compound in Nairobi with other NGOs, and cowrote the rubberhose filesystem which offers deniable encryption. OpenPCR...

2 Years Later: Droppin' Malware on Your OSX, Carpet Bomb Style (and Then Some!)

2 years later from my original disclosure, the Carpet Bomb vulnerability on OSX remains un-patched.

Refactoring with Mat?

So, I lied last week when I said I wouldn't talk about the architecture of the example file I revamped to work with Maté. On further consideration, I thought it might be useful to go over it briefly, if only...