My latest article, the inappropriately named Show me the code, is now up on XML.com. Inappropriately named since I never get around to the code in the article. An actual implementation will be worked out in future installments. That article is really, really good. Your other columns were good, but this one is just excellent. I'm going to blog on it. Posted by Robert Sayre on 2005-03-05

Jason Scott is archiving all the podcasts. What I learned is the existence of USB2 enclosures, which are very inexpensive, and for which I can imagine all sorts of uses.

Every technology goes through stages as it diffuses into the market. This has been characterized as the Technology Adoption Curve; differing groups of people adopting a technology over time with each having different expectations for the product. What is frequently left out of such discussions is the change in the product itself. That is, Technology Adoption Curves often don't discuss the fact that the underlying technology and the product itself is evolving and improving as time progresses.

I've complained about XLink in the past. I expect to complain about XLink in the future. , In particular about the crippling deficiency that every instance of a simple link needs to specify not only xlink:href, but xlink:type with a value of "simple". I was therefore pleasantly suprised to see a Working Group Note published by the W3C, Extending XLink 1.0, written by the inestimable Norm Walsh. That Working Group Note outlines how XLink could make xlink:type an application-level default, which would fix the above problem.

Apple's marketing is breathtaking. They start with a perfectly good MP3 player, rip out the display so you have no idea which song is playing, lock the thing into permanent shuffle mode and call it a feature. Actually, they go even further and make it the primary selling point, naming it 'shuffle' and topping it off with the tag-line 'Enjoy uncertainty.' You just have to admire their skill. Just imagine what they could do for U.

Things are rather slow these days, or at least I'm feeling particularly lazy. Either way, here's a bunch of little things I've found interesting over the past week or so: DUH, or Dilbert's Ultimate House, via Ole Safes and Safe-Cracking via Bruce Schneier. Google Scholar is now in Beta. To test it out I remembered Tim Bray, in his series on search, had mentioned that Gerald Salton had written most of the basic reference works on text search.

An excellent quasi-rant turned language-mindset-comparison of Java and Python. Which reminded me of how much Python has warped my thinking. I recently implemented a linked list in C. What was the first function I implemented after the obligatory 'add' and 'remove'? Why 'map' of course.

Version 1.0.2 of httpcache is now available. This version incorporates a patch from Beat Bolli, the author of Plagg, that allows you to add request headers.

I have a new column on XML.com called The RESTful Web. The first article just went up today: How to create a REST Protocol. Very good stuff! I was happy to see that it all makes sense to me so far, and mostly what I've been trying to do in coming up with a news aggregator API (over here: http://www.decafbad.com/kwiki/index.cgi?FeedReactorRestApi) Posted by l.m.orchard on 2004-12-02

RFC 3875 was published back in October. Yeah, I'm a little late in picking it up. RFC 3875 is The Common Gateway Interface (CGI) Version 1.1, an informational RFC. Notable for two reasons. The first being that this is the first RFC to deal with CGI. Ever. Which may strike you as odd since CGI is a core piece of technology used every day when building web applications, and has been used since 1993.

To be quite honest, I went into XML 2004 with greatly diminished expectations. After submitting and being accepted to speak I found out that no travel or hotel expenses would be covered by the conference, nor was there even a token honorarium. The on-site situation didn't raise much hope either, parking at the hotel was a hit-and-miss operation as the over priced hotel parking lot was often full, and the wi-fi situation, for a contemporary conference, was scandalous.

The December issue of Linux Journal was among the newest arrivals in the pile of magazines in the cafeteria this week. In his column "Linux for Suits", Doc Searls interviews some of the fine folks at Technorati and talks about some of the infrastructure they use. One of the tools mentioned is memcached, a high-performance, distributed memory object caching system, generic in nature, but intended for use in speeding up dynamic web applications by alleviating database load.

Dan Gilmore: I suspect there's a third America: members of an increasingly radical middle that will become more obvious in the next few years, tolerant of those who are different and aware that the big problems of our times are being ignored -- or made worse -- by those in power today. That third America needs a candidate. Or, maybe, a new party. Related reading on this subject from Chris Nolan

Jon Udell has a new InfoWorld article Under Gmail's hood . (On a side note, check this page to see why you don't put smart quotes in your page titles.) This leads to Johnvey Hwang's more detailed writeup of Gmail internals, which in turn leads to this little gem on XMLHttpRequest, and at the end links to a small tutoral on using JavaScript and HTTP requests to dynamically update SVG documents.

Guess what this is? http://bitflood.org:8080/file?info_hash=D%12%85z%88%AF%22%A7%C4VA1DP%97%A2%89%E9O8 Well, it's a URI, and as a matter of fact it's a plain old HTTP URI. Now that might not be suprising to you, but it sure was suprising to me. You see, this turns out to be a link to a bittorrent of Jon Stewart's appearance on CNN's Crossfire. Why is this suprising? Well, I have it on good authority that if you want to do anything new on the internet then, despite the admonition of the W3C's TAG, and a fairly detailed tutorial to the contrary, you have to come up with a new URI scheme.

New Scientist, in Smart fabrics make for enhanced living, covers the MIT bYOB (buil your own bag) project: Imagine a handbag that warns you if you are about to forget your umbrella or wallet, and which you can later turn into a scarf that displays today's pollution levels. Or how about creating a wall hanging that glows if someone tries to use your home's wireless internet connection? All these bizarre objects could soon be possible thanks to a system of computerised fabric patches developed by engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

William Gibson: In very much the sense that Bush is not actually a Christian, likewise is he nothing remotely conservative. Believing Bush is conservative in any traditional sense is like believing that a Formula One racer with the Perrier logo on its side is full of mineral water.

An updated httpcache.py is now available thanks to some contributions from Kendall Clark. In the process I also created a dedicated project page for httpcache.py.

I talked about Google for the desktop back in May, and now it's arrived. Google Desktop is a desktop search application the seamlessly integrates into your everyday Google searches. It is part seach engine, part indexer, and part web proxy (that's how they interject your local search results into your web search results). This is just like WinFS. Except that it is shipping today. And it just works.

Based on a recommendation from Cory Doctorow I picked up a copy of The Bad Beginning (A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book 1), by Lemony Snicket, under the guise of getting it for my oldest son to read for school. In fact it was primarily for me and it was a great read, taking me only an hour or two to finish the book. I hope my son enjoys it so I can rationalize buying more of the series.