Reactions to story from Niall Kennedy's Weblog

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  Google App Engine for developers

  http://simonwillison.net/2008/Apr/10/google/
  36 days ago in Simon Willison’s Weblog · Authority: 71

  Google App Engine for developers. Best in-depth coverage so far, from Niall Kennedy. I didnt know that Guido had worked on the Django compatibility layer.
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  Links for Wed 7 May 2008

  http://joseph.randomnetworks.com/archives/2008/05/08/links-f...
  8 days ago in Joseph Scott’s Blog · Authority: 179

  SimpleTest - Unit Testing for PHP - Another unit test framework for PHP. Tags: php simpletest unittest Camera Hacks: Turn Your Point-and-Shoot into a Super-Camera - I've got an SD1000, I might give this a try. Tags: camera canon chdk hack howto mod_mem_cache - Apache HTTP Server - When did Apache get memcache support for mod_cache? Tags: apache memcache mod_mem_cache Thwarting comment spam | jenseng.com - The idea is to change the URL for submitting your comments at some level of frequency. Tags: spam RegExr: Online Regular Expression Testing Tool - Another web based RegEx tool. The UI on this one looks much better than the others I've seen. Tags: regex regexr webgrind - Google Code - Web based PHP + XDebug profiler writen in PHP5. Tags: php webgrind xdebug macvim - Google Code - This looks like a pretty good GUI version of Vim for Mac OS X. Tags: macosx macvim vim WordPress Quick Start Guide < WordPress Codex - Good run through on getting up to speed with WordPress, with lots of links to other topic specific resources. Tags: documentation wordpress JSSh - a TCP/IP JavaScript Shell Server for Mozilla - Telnet into your web browser. I wonder what new tricks people will come up for this. Tags: extension firefox javascript jssh mozilla shell telnet A Horse Called Paul Revere - a set on Flickr - Some where out there is a really big Beastie Boys fan with way too much time on his hands. Tags: beastieboys humor music paulrevere BeatDeadHorse.gif (GIF Image, 300×232 pixels) - Just in case you needed a visual for this particular phrase Tags: horse image Welcome | AppDrop - Uses the Google SDK for App Engine to use Amazon EC2 instead. Tags: amazon appdrop aws ec2 gae google googleappengine Exclusive: Google App Engine ported to Amazon’s EC2 - Waxy.org - This is interesting, I'm curious to see how this plays out in the long term Tags: amazon appdrop aws ec2 gae google googleappengine The 2 Hours After the WordPress 5 Minute Install | Postcards From My Life - Cal's list of things he does after WordPress is installed. Tags: calevans wordpress Amazon Web Services Blog: Storage Space, The Final Frontier - Storage for EC2 that doesn't disappear. I'm curious to see what the actual performance will be like. Tags: amazon aws ec2 storage Color Hunter - Another color scheme generator Tags: color colorhunter Google App Engine for developers - Niall Kennedy's over view of Google App Engine, the good and the bad. Tags: gae google googleappengine Video on Flickr? < Flickr Blog - Flickr launches their video service. Tags: flickr video The Mike Wallace Interview - Collection of interviews by Mike Wallace from the late 1950s. Tags: history interview mikewallace news themikewallaceinterview tv video TimThumb PHP Script Released » Darren Hoyt Dot Com - Be able to adjust image size on the server, on the fly is very handy. Tags: image php resize thumbnail timthump Google Email Uploader - If only this had come out last year. Tags: gmail import Mail a brick to junk mailers using paid postage - Creative tips with dealing with spammers and bulk mailers - I get so much junk mail I'm tempted to try this out. Tags: junkmail Stored Function to generate Sequences | MySQL Performance Blog - You could combine this with an INSERT trigger and get even more auto_increment like functionality. Tags: database mysql sequence Flickr Services > Encoding - Just in case you weren't sure what encoding the Flickr API uses. Tags: api flickr utf8 CSS Compatibility and Internet Explorer - Huge table of CSS features for IE. Tags: css ie json-xml-rpc - Google Code - Looks like an XML-RPC to JSON bridge, handy for XHR/AJAX. Tags: javascript json json-xml-rpc php xmlrpc wiki:xmlrpc [DokuWiki] - DokuWIki docs on their XML-RPC API Tags: dokuwiki wiki xmlrpc JSPWiki: Wiki RPC Interface 2 - Didn't know that there was an XML-RPC API for Wikis. I wonder how wide spread it is. Tags: api wiki wikirpc xmlrpc AlternateIdea: A strftime for Prototype - Would be easy enough to remove the Prototype specific bits to have a strftime for plain Javascript. Tags: date javascript strftime time Student Application Deadline Extended - Google Summer of Code Announce | Google Groups - New deadline for GSoC 2008 student applications is 7 April 2008. Tags: gsoc Mike Davidson - Goodbye Movable Type, Hello WordPress - Another neat WordPress logo. Tags: logo wordpress
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  Notable Thoughts : Lessons For Entrepreneurs

  http://blogs.inspions.net/2008/04/23/notable-thoughts-lesson...
  23 days ago in Thought Garage · Authority: 19

  “A thought which does not result in an action is nothing much, and an action which does not proceed from a thought is nothing at all” - Anonymous. Few notable thoughts that are worth sharing and spreading. Are you sure you want to be in San Francisco? If San Francisco, the Bay area, and Sillicon Valley aren’t good places to start a web business of the 3P variety, where is? Well, I’d say just about any place but. Basecamp came from Chicago/Copenhagen, FogBugz from New York, Campaign Monitor from Australia, Shopify from Ottawa, Freshbooks from Toronto, Blinksale from Texas, and there are tons of other applications of the same ilk that come from all over the world. The silent majority It’s easy for people to think that the interaction they witness on the web is a complete reflection of the world in general. Often it’s quite the contrary. Will eBay Hang Up on Skype? The Financial Times thinks so. The British paper quotes eBay’s CEO John Donahoe as saying the online auction firm will test Skype for “synergies” this year and if those synergies aren’t strong, reassess the division. eBay purchased Skype in 2005 with a potential payout of $4.1 billion. However, last year eBay wrote down the value of the acquisition by $1.4 billion, essentially admitting it overpaid. In the HuddleChat Debacle, a Lesson for Web 2.0 Startups As open source takes hold — in the form of software, platforms and even the development environment itself — the ability to imitate will only increase. In such an environment, the only meaningful defense for Web 2.0 app developers and startups is their ability to build a community in large numbers. The data of a community is the only defense, and perhaps the only real value, in a Web 2.0 company. And unless they can achieve this quickly, many Web 2.0 apps/startups are going to meander into mediocrity, only to see their ideas inspire larger players to roll out their own versions of their apps. Google App Engine for developers On Monday Google launched Google App Engine, a hosted dynamic runtime environment for Python web applications inside Google’s geo-distributed architecture. Google App Engine is the latest in a series of Google-hosted application environments and the first publicly-available dynamic runtime and storage environment based on large-scale propriety computing systems. Why do we plan up front? Uncertainty. It’s the same reason why so many people balk when we tell them to throw their functional spec out the window. I care so much about the design and feel and function of my condo-to-be that I can’t stand the uncertainty of not knowing how it will turn out. I want to know NOW so I can stop worrying about it. And of course, it’s impossible to really know what the best design will be without actually building the real thing step by step. But still, I don’t want to wait for such realities. And so I plan, and I plan, and I plan. Plans are a strategy against uncertainty. The problem is, they only make you certain of your imagination.
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  permanent link to this entry

  http://the.taoofmac.com/space/blog/2008/04/11/1416#ten-years...
  34 days ago in The Tao of Mac - HomePage · Authority: 140

  Ten Years Later Created on Apr 11, 14:16 by Rui Carmo, not updated since. personal, lifestyle, parenting, privacy, home Here’s what I was most likely to be doing at 2AM for the past ten years or so, aside from reading and other more mundane activities: 1998 playing QuakeWorld over 14.4kbps dial-up 1999 blogging, well before most of the idiots jumped on the bandwagon 2000 playing Quake III Arena over 56Kbps dial-up and coding my own blog platform 2001 photoblogging and moblogging, before it became fashionable (we even had an SMS gateway that worked pretty much like Twitter) 2002 migrating my blog to a wiki, before most people even got what a bliki was (most still don’t) 2003 patching PhpWiki or reading work e-mail via early 3G cards (way before the official launch) 2004 working on IMS before it became fashionable or trying to use Ubuntu (both equally unrewarding in many ways, although IMS did inspire my Blue Packet spoof) 2005 working late on umpteen projects I took on due to general chaos 2006 sleeping to get my health back 2007 hacking away at Yaki during occasional bouts of insomnia, but mostly sleeping 2008 mixing formula, burping the kid, and most likely not sleeping Yep, you read that right: over the past few weeks, I’ve become a parent. It wasn’t exactly a surprise. Well, at least not for me – the kid might have a different view on this, but he isn’t very articulate yet. Being a pretty private person, I was loathe to even mention the fact, but the cat’s pretty much out of the bag now – I think that the tipping point came when Amazon UK started suggesting kids’ stuff to me when I visit (although, to be fair, that has probably been going on since I ordered Where’s My Cow?). The whole thing has been a learning experience (and it hasn’t been easy, especially given the ongoing home renovation), but the most puzzling aspects have been the reactions from my friends and co-workers. People who “get” me said “congrats” and didn’t make a fuss1. People who don’t have been unbelievable pains in the proverbial posterior and showered me with calls and requests for photos. Which reminds me, I understand that there are idiotic Internet traditions to comply with, so here’s the obligatory photo (or as much of one as I will ever post online for occasional gawkers): You’ll have to take my word for it that this is actually him and not a balled-up sock or something. And I think that is as much exposure as he’ll ever get until he is old enough to manage his own identity and privacy – or until somehow my better judgement is overwhelmed by the kid’s cuteness (whatever comes first). Either way, I fully don’t expect becoming the kind of parent that splashes their firstborn’s photo onto a mug – I tend to look at the people who do that in askew, for fear that they will extract a complete photo album from their wallet and annoy me with tales of their kids’ first steps, regularity of bodily functions, and suchlike. And since most of that stuff happens online these days (with people spamming everyone with links to photo galleries of their mewling infants), I should also probably point out that I loathe the kind of exposure that results from it2. So here is my first tyrannical parenting resolution: As far as I’m concerned, the kid will never have a public photo gallery. Or, come to think of it, not even a Facebook account (if only because the Web 2.0 bubble will likely burst and the company will tank before he’s of age), although I’m pretty convinced he could Twitter with the best right now (at least considering the intellectual content of the average twit I get these days3). And, for the record, I hope his life doesn’t end up revolving around technology, and we won’t press him to take it up4. Still, I was helpless to avoid utterly stupid and moronic “so you’re going to get a new mini-Mac” comments from people who utterly don’t get: Me. Apple product nomenclature. That the computers I use aren’t synonymous with who I am (or, more to the point, with whom the kid will turn out to be). So please don’t. Finally, an update on the logistics of the thing: the kid did arrive on time, but the contractor who’s handling our flat renovation has royally screwed up the timeline, and the time off I had scheduled for handling everything (kid, moving back in, and a dozen other things) has pretty much gone out the window – the only good thing is that I’ve spent more time with the kid than originally planned. I can put up with sleep deprivation, diapers, liquid catering, and essence de poo (they’re not much worse than some of the stuff I’ve had to put up with at work), but I cannot abide idiocy in any form5. That said, I’m going to see if I can get some sleep now. — 1 Although a few did add “see you in a couple of years”, which was a poignant touch – to have people book their agendas so far in advance for us shows true friendship is eternal. 2 Which, by extension, also means that I pretty much loathe the Internet in general these days. 3 The amount of inane spam I get from Twitter has recently prompted a thorough culling of my friends list. Please don’t take it personally if you’re shut out. 4 But if he does take after his parents, I will probably draw the line at allowing him to use Linux, because, you know, I don’t want him turning into a freetard – or $DIVINITY forbid, learning Perl. 5 There’s an entire post lurking here regarding 90% of my gear being in storage, our being temporarily living with family and having people flying in from Germany especially for helping us manage things who cannot re-schedule their trip, but I’ll save that for another day. Google App Engine for developers

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