Blogs

The Skill of Interviewing Part 1

At my office we are currently standardizing our interviewing process. This got me thinking about the subject in general, and so I thought I would share some things that I've learned over the years from being on both sides of...

SourceMate Beta Review

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 - SourceMate. SourceMate is a new plugin...

QOW: What is thw worst code you have ever seen?

Recently, I was discussing some developer horror stories with some co-workers. Kevin Schmidt was telling me about a suport/enhancement contract from a major company that he had to walk away from because he just couldn't deal with the code he...

Why Mobile Will Win: eReaders are Sustaining, Mobile is Disruptive

In one of the comments to Friday's speculation post about The Tablet, Scott Lewis sums up one of the most common objections to the viability of smartphone-based reading: 3.5" screen......

Four short links: 23 January 2010

WikiLeaks Fundraising -- PayPal has frozen WikiLeaks' assets. Interesting: they need $600k/yr to run. The Great Australian Internet Blackout -- online protest to raise awareness about the Great Firewall of Australia. HTML5 Video: Problems Ahead -- YouTube and Vimeo won't support a free codec (file format). The web is undeniably better for Mozilla having entered the browser market, and...

Organizing Your Images

The start of a new year is always a time to think about change and improvement. One common resolution is to get more organized. In this age of digital media it is even more critical that we keep track of our digital assets. Lightroom has many features to help you organize your images. Organization can come in many forms and at many levels. You can organize your images at the drive level (by using a system of folders, subfolders, and file naming conventions) and/or at the metadata level in Lightroom. You must first decide what organizational workflow fits for you. There are many websites and books devoted to this topic. You should do a little research before embarking on this adventure. The best website I can recommend to you to delve deeply into industry standard organization practice is dpBestFlow.org from the American Society of Media Photographers and funded by the Library of Congress. The site is full of suggestions and videos. Get ready to spend some time there!

jQuery: the new J in AJAX! - Who knows?

Looking back at 2009, the most significant technological innovation in our office was the adoption of jQuery. Basically, our web developers now don't say "We can do that in JavaScript!" but instead say "We can do that in jQuery!" jQuery...

Schematron at 10 - My FOSS implementation of ISO Schematron now released

Late last year, Schematron turned 10. Over the last 10 years, Schematron has been one of those projects where there have only been nice people involved and good memories. No empires have been built and no corporations have used it...

How I use Social Media: Part 1--Twitter

Back when my husband was still my fiancé, he told me he didn't see much point in having a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA). That Christmas, I bought him one. Once he realized that a PDA was more than just an...

Understanding C#: Why make things private?

Andrew Stellman is the author of Head First C# and other books from O'Reilly. A reader on the Head First C# forum posted a question. It's actually a really good question, one that a lot of developers ask once they...

The Differences between Usability and User Experience

The rapid growth of RIA technology into the lives of every day people just a few years ago has carried both the usability and user experience industries to a new high in popularity. The success of software (particularly on the web) has driven both of these terms into our vernacular, and yet they are still often confused or thought to be synonymous. This post is meant to help those new to the field or unfamiliar with the intricacies of design to understand the differences between the terms.

The Unicorns are Here, They're Just Not Evenly Distributed Yet

I really didn't want to do another post about The Tablet. But then I saw this piece from Fortune (via @jafurtado -- does he ever sleep?) and this sentence drove...

CrisisCamps and the Pattern of Disaster Technology Innovation

Over the past three years I have been working to bridge gaps between the tech community & traditional emergency management organizations.  I've focused on helping technologists adapt technologies to support humanitarian missions, often in response to a disaster.  After Hurricane Katrina, Mikel Maron and I discovered a pattern for successful innovation during and after disasters.  Understanding this pattern is crucial to "Serving Those...

Episode 4: Jesse Freeman

Jesse Freeman (theFlashBum) joins us to talk about F*CSS, Flex 4 performance, Flash for iPhone, ActionScript Frameworks, and upcoming conferences. Leif Wells, Zach Stepek, and Stacey Mulcahey joined us as the panel of experts. Listen to this week's podcast...

2009 O'Reilly Ebook Revenue up 104%

During the past 18 months we've seen a dramatic shift in customer preference from print to digital when looking at sales from oreilly.com, which is a substantial sales channel for...

Four short links: 22 January 2010

notmuch -- commandline tagging and fast search for a mailbox, regardless of which mail client you use. Processing for Android -- pre-release versions of a Processing for Android devices. Mobile visual programming makes for interesting possibilities. Binary Body Double: Microsoft Reveals the Science Behind Project Natal for Xbox 360 -- machine learning to recognize poses and render in the...

iPhoning His Way To Retirement

My friend Eugene Lin wanted some iPhone App Store money. So he made one iPhone app that was eventually accepted, then another that was rejected and then he found a hit with the racy Peek-a-boo. Along the way he learned the ins and outs of the App Store approva process and made quite a lot of money in Japan....

The Watering Hole - There But For the Grace of the FSM...

When it comes to recovering from natural disasters, the track record in the US isn't all that wonderful either...

Four short links: 21 January 2010

DD-WRT -- replacement firmware for cheap wireless router boxes that add new functionality like wireless bridging and quality-of-service controls (so Skype doesn't break up while you're web-browsing). Not a new thing, but worth remembering that it exists. Brain Dump of Real Time Web and WebSocket -- long primer on the different technology for real-time web apps. Conclusion is that...

Parameterized conditionals and versions within a single schema document - In praise of plain old macro-processing...

What we can see there are three separate requirements: Conditional type assignment: it can change depending on the version Parameterized type assignment: it changes based on out-of-band information, not data in the schema or instance Declarations that are not needed are marked, so that it is possible to generate each clean version simply; useful for other utilities too As far as I can tell, XSD conditionals only allow the first of these, and its conditionals are run-time not compile time.

Flex 101: Flexing Mouse Cursors

You probably already knew that you have the ability to customize mouse cursors in Flex. Did you also know that you can make them animated and interactive, completely with ActionScript? In this post, we will have some fun exploring techniques and playing around with mouse cursors.

Haiti: Tradui, Translation App for Android and (almost) iPhone

Crisis Commons and Crisis Mappers have become major technology and data contributors to the Haiti Relief Effort. Many technologists and geohackers are donating hundreds of hours to common projects. This past weekend saw the release of a mapping app for the iPhone (with expedited App Store approval). Now there is a second app waiting for Apple's app store approval....

IntelliJ Idea 9 For Flash Dev Overview

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 - Using IntelliJ Idea 9 For Flash...

Inside the E Wars: Interesting News Continues in the Publisphere

Several interesting media and reading studies released recently. First, Book Industry Study Group released a comprehensive report on ebooks titled Consumer Attitudes toward E-Book Reading (https://ow.ly/WUYw). This is a major study with many contributors and sponsors, but mostly based on...

Bashing together Method References

The ActionScript compiler generates SWFs (Flash applications) by compiling source code for classes that you write and linking in classes from SWCs (libraries) that are referenced by your code. Classes that are not referenced are not included in the SWFI...

Ten Reasons Why You Should Sign up for TOC 2010 Right Now

In no particular order, here's ten links/reasons you should sign up right now for TOC 2010: "A Conversation with Tim O'Reilly & Ray Kurzweil" Arianna Huffington is one of the...

Four short links: 20 January 2010

Governmental Open Source Software Policies: Brazil Experience (World Bank) -- the slides give the gist, and the range of places in which open source is being used in Brazil is quite staggering: digital TV middleware, sewage management systems, local government management systems. (via lhawthorn on Twitter) Bucardo -- PostgreSQL master/slave replication system. (via Selena Deckelmann) Learning from 10 Years...

Dasein Cloud and the vCloud API

Dasein Cloud has introduced support for VMware's vCloud API. Because it is so different from other cloud APIs, the vCloud implementation for Dasein Cloud provides an excellent example of how Dasein Cloud is able to provide a rich experience for each cloud it supports without sacrificing abstraction.

Microsoft patents Schematron? - Put on your nappies...

But yes, I do feel outraged when what I consider obvious ideas and uses of Schematron (or XML or SGML)—the kinds of uses I intended to be enabled for the public benefit—are granted to US corporations as monopoly rights. Even if it is just defensive, it sucks. What kind of dumb cycle have we gotten ourselves into?

Why the Apple/Publisher News isn't Really News

The interwebs are abuzz over reports that Apple has been in talks with the "big 6" publishers to make their content available on the mythical (and purportedly forthcoming) Apple...

Our Future World: Freedom (and Daemon)

I just read FreedomTM the second and latest book in the Daniel Suarez's Daemon series. It was a fun, thought-provoking read and I recommend it to any technologist or sci-fi junkie (it would also make a nice Christmas gift for your favorite conspiracy theorist). This review will focus primarily on the technology of FreedomTM, but I recommend that you...

Google's Fall Out With China - Making a Stand for Free Speech

Time and time again, China has tested the digital world, trying to stifle its free information flow and control the resources that are open to its people. There are a long list of methods China has employed to clamp down on access...

Bringing e-Books to Africa and the Middle East

In the United States, Western Europe and Asia, e-Books are becoming a major player, especially now that e-Readers like the Kindle and Nook are available. But people living in the Arabic speaking world or Africa haven't been invited to the dance. Two of the keynote speakers at the upcoming Tools of Change conference are working to improve access to e-Books in these areas: Arthur Attwell in South Africa and Ramy Habeeb in Egypt. We talked to each of them about how e-Books are important in their area of the world, and the challenges that they are facing.

Getting Free with GraniteDS

Following the two articles Getting Real with LCDS 3 by Justin Shacklette, this article demonstrates the GraniteDS open-source alternative and compares the solutions from the developer point of view.

The Watering Hole: Getting Their Priorities Straight

Food, water and shelter? I wish we had an app for that...

Four short links: 19 January 2010

Stack Overflow Data Dump -- all public data in Stack Overflow, Server Fault, and Super User. OpenBTS -- an open-source Unix application that uses the Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) to present a GSM air interface ("Um") to standard GSM handset and uses the Asterisk software PBX to connect calls. Portable mobile phone basestation that routes calls over the...

XML grandfathers change - Triumph has a hundred fathers

Maybe XML's current job is just to provide a good-enough basis for the next big thing?

Four short links: 18 January 2010

On How Google Wave Surprisingly Changed My Life -- mandated in his small company that non-critical emails be turned into waves instead. Saw: more resolutions to arguments, less rehash of old territory, conversation gained structure and could be referred to afterwards, remote employees able to participate even when timezones prevented real-time. I've been looking for the use case that...

What have we forgotten about UX?

Maybe I'm not very smart (don't answer that!). Possibly it's because I got my Graphic Design degree almost 20 years ago. Or maybe it's because most of what I've learned about UX design is geared toward eLearning, where the...

Joomla 101: Setting up Site Search

One of the many reasons to use Joomla is the built-in search functionality. It's a great way to help your users find information on your site. And setting it up only take a few steps: 1) Choose a module position...

Manifold Learning, Calculus & Friendship, and Other Math Links

One of the largest gatherings of mathematicians, the joint meetings of the AMS/MAA/SIAM, took place last week in San Francisco. Knowing that there were going to be over 6,000 pure and applied mathematicians at Moscone West, I took some time off from work and attended several sessions. Below are a few (somewhat technical) highlights. (It's the only conference I've attended...

Haiti: OSM and Sat Imagery for Free iPhone App

Crisis Mappers from around the world have been working around the clock to create maps and other tools for relief workers in Haiti. The earthquake caused tremendous damage to the road network and updated maps are necessary to enable food and volunteers to traverse the island. The volunteer-driven Open Street Map project has become a central data source for...

Roger Magoulas on Big Data

From Google to Walmart, managing vast information flows is becoming central to how you run an effective business. Beyond the technical developments that are allowing for new possibilities in managing Big Data there are also new roles emerging within companies large and small; data scientists, visualization specialists etc. In this second of two videos Roger discusses some exemplars in the...

The Watering Hole - Keeping Things in Perspective

Please put on your 3D glasses NOW.

What types of statistical analysis do scientists use most often?

Over the past few decades, statisticians have developed some very sophisticated modeling techniques for finding patterns in data sets. Today, I stumbled on a great analysis of what statistical methods academic bioinformatics researchers use most frequently. It turns out that they rely mostly on simple methods.

Flex 101: Creating a Performance Comparison Chart

Yet again, I've been inspired by others' creations on the web. In this post, we will walk through the steps to create a custom stock comparison chart similar to the ones used in Google Finance, in Flex using a mx:DataGrid.

Four short links: 15 January 2010

The Open Laboratory -- collection of the best science writing on blogs from the last year. For more, see an interview with the author. Part of a growing trend where online comes first and feeds offline. (via sciblogs) Nat Friedman Leaving Novell -- one of the original Ximian founders, with interests in many directions and the coding chops to...

Innovation Battles Investment as FCC Road Show Returns to Cambridge

Yesterday's FCC panel show that innovation and investment are not always companions on the Internet. An in-depth look at the current state of the debate over competition and network neutrality.

Social Media for Social Good - Observations on Haiti

The network has been a key witness and participant in the event itself - within minutes, and I mean literally minutes, photos and news of the devastation were posted online. Simultaneously, calls for aid went out and philanthropic organizations began mobilizing the response. Again, within minutes, organizations were sending out information to first responders and aid workers to coordinate their efforts...

Collecting, Aggregating, and Analyzing Data Exhaust

Next week, O'Reilly's Research Director Roger Magoulas, will lead an exciting panel discussion on Big Data†. The focus will be on the piles of data that companies have been collecting, and are just beginning to analyze: The internet and social media create a mountain of random, unstructured, and at times ephemeral data by-products, which may appear to be trash. Yet,...