Blogging Roller

Sam Ruby has been writing about using a planet-style aggregator to create a feed of what's hot among a community of bloggers (see MeMeme and MeMeme 2.0) -- not the big wide noisy blogosphere. Like meme-trackers TechMeme and TailRank, Sam's code is based on the idea that an entry that mentions a link is a vote for that link, but unlike those sites only blogs included one planet can cast votes. Cool idea and it seems to produce good results. I'll have to consider it for the next rev of PlanetTool (the RSS and Atom in Action example (one of the Blogapps) that I use to generate my Triangle Bloggers site).

It's that time again...
 
For details, check the Raleigh bloggers wiki.

• Open Source Unleashed: What's new with GlassFish?
  "There will be a spike in interest in Java EE 5 capabilities and GlassFish will be primed for a significant surge in community participation as well as adoption rates."
• Java SE 6 Release Contents (JSR 270): Public Review
  "Here's a quick summary of the major changes since the Early Draft Review"
• Removing features from Java SE
  Mark Reinhold outlines a new process for removing features from the Java platform
• NetBeans Hacks (Part 1)
  Growing collection of Netbeans hacks just topped 100
• Scriptlets
  "A Scriptlet is a Java applet written in JavaScript."

David Czarnecki: Red Cog is a social software development and support business. Red Cog will offer paid development and support contracts for blojsom and other projects such as del.icio.us Java, Akismet Java, Simpy Java, and future projects. In the past few months, I've had interest in paid development and support for blojsom from a number of companies. And ... well ... why not get paid to further develop and support your software?

Congrats David. That's great news for Blojsom fans everywhere.

As far as I know, nobody is offering paid support for Roller (yet).

Joe Gregorio has written a very interesting article that explores, with simple Python examples, some of the Python (and Ruby) language features that are missing from the Java language. As a Java fan I have to point out that, while those features are missing from the Java language, they are not missing from the Java platform. You can get all those goodies from Jython and JRuby and Groovy, which all run via Java VM.

Feed reading readers won't notice or necessarily care, but I've put a new set of templates in place here at Blogging Roller, giving the blog a whole new look and feel. The templates use the new Roller 3.0 model and macros, plus a modified static width and centered layout from Glish.com. I've also updated my archives, links and about pages.

We deployed Roller 3.0 to blogs.sun.com last week and over the weekend I deployed it on this site as well. There are still a couple of "issues" that need to be addressed before we package up Apache Roller 3.0-RC1 (incubating). If you click around the site, you may notice a couple of style and layout clitches -- I'm working on fixing those.

One of the new features of Roller 3.0 is a completely redesigned URL scheme. As a result of that my blog URL, feed URLs and permalinks have changed.

New bog URL:
   http://rollerweblogger.org/roller

New feed URLs:
   http://rollerweblogger.org/roller/feed/entries/atom

Old URLs are still suppored by they're redirected (HTTP 301) to the new scheme, so those of you who subscribe to Blogging Roller won't have to unsub and resub -- your feed readers should do that for you.

For more information on Roller 3.0:

• Roller project site - Current home of Roller
  
• What's New in Roller 3.0 - overview of new features
• Roller User Guide (PDF) - updated to cover new features
• Roller Template Guide (PDF) - complete reference to templates and macros
• Blogapps Server 1.0.2 - Easy to install demo server, now includes Roller 3.0

• Between the Lines: Inside Amazon's EC2
  [EC2] will bring more attention to utility computing and "cloud" computing, and transparent, metered pricing.
• Solaris Triggers Sun Server Market Share Growth (PDF)
  Quotes from press and numbers from IDC Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker
• RSSTeam Blog: IE7 RC1 (for XP) released
  "Windows RSS Platform that ships with IE7 is API-complete"
• Jonathan Schwartz: Explaining Sun's Share Gains
  I've been counseled [to avoid] saying "we spanked the market"
• RSSBus - Turn anything into a feed
  List of operations / feed sources supported by RSSBus out-of-the-box
• James Dickens: Is Linux being left behind
  "Who knows maybe it wont be long before Apple adandons BSD and moves to Solaris..."

Somebody's running the Roller 3.0 codebase in production. I think this is the first time that blogs.sun.com updated before rollerweblogger.org did.


I'm working on putting together a release candidate (RC1) today, so we can get Apache Roller 3.0 (incubating) out the door. Want to know more about Roller 3.0? There's a What's New page, the User Guide (PDF) has been updated, there's a new Template Guide (PDF) and Installation Guide changes are in the works.

This is very good news for the eleven wordsters in the audience.

This must be APP week because Elias Torres just released an implementation of the Atom protocol for the popular PHP-based Wordpress blog server. The implemenation is not quite complete, but it looks like a good start.

Looks like Google is getting ready to roll out Atom Publishing Protocol (APP) support for Blogger.com. There are instructions for using the new API, a Java client and a C# client at code.google.com. I'm eager to test my APP  blog client library against Blogger.com, but I'm not sure the service is available yet because I haven't had any luck with URLs listed in the examples. Update: I've just confirmed via wget that it's online.

Tags: topic:[Atom], topic:[APP], topic:[blogger.com], topic:[Java], topic:[C#]

We're off on our annual weekend trip to the NC mountains and our friend's house overlooking the New River. In past years we've gone canoeing, hiking in the Grayson Highlands and picking lots of blackberries. This year we're going to bicycle down the Virginia Creeper Trail, which I've been told is 17 miles long, all downill and passes through some beautiful scenery.

Just a reminder. I'll be speaking at that Charlotte Java User Group on Monday and giving my Beyond Blogging talk about RSS and Atom feeds and the Atom protocol. Complete info is on the Charlotte JUG blog.

ConvergeSouth is an unconference-style event focusing on blogs, podcasts and online creativity in Greenboro, NC. I attended the first one last year and I'd love to return, but on October 14, I'll still be in Austin, TX. I'm taking a couple of days off after ApacheCon there. But you oughta go. Here's the registration link. The Scobles are going to be there.

• Pacific Gas & Electric rebates for Sun servers
  "Replace an older server with [a CoolThreads server] and you'll get a rebate of $700-$1000 from PG&E"
• Yes, we are really going to open source the JDK
  "don’t be shy about letting us know what you think"
• MSDN Library now free
  Free IDEs and now free MSDN? What's next, OSS Windows?
• A Little Surprise For Israeli Readers Using Windows
  Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadenijad now has his very own blog....
• Introducing Windows Live Writer
  "desktop application that makes it easier to compose compelling blog posts"

• Mac OS X Leopard dev goodies
  New features, which include an RSS/Atom parser, generator and feed store
• Ted Neward » The Vietnam of Computer Science
  "analysis of Object/Relational Mapping--and its relationship to the Second South Indochina War"
• netzooid » Woodstox 3.0 Release
  Dan: "a StAX implementation and undoubtedly the best XML parser around"
• Paul Querna » Rails is insecure
  Paul: "I am glad I am not responsible for any important websites powered by Rails" 
• Daniel Spiewak » SWT running on Swing
  Christopher Deckers has implemented 72% of SWT using Swing 
• Mark Woodman » Hacking Feeds: Malware Javascript in RSS and Atom
  "potential vulnerabilities in web-based RSS readers"
  
• Mark Woodman » Hacking RSS: The Threat is Real
  Mark is making his malicious RSS test scripts available to the community
• James Snell » Attack Delivery TestSuite
  James has expanded the Holderness suite to 1397 tests for Atom 1.0
• Sam Ruby » Attack Delivery TestSuite
  Sam will commit James Holderness' 85 tests to the Universal Feed Parser
  

My TriNUG talk seemed to go really well tonight. I didn't see anybody sleeping and nobody threw any sharp things at me. I added some extra slides of interest to .NET developers, but I was still finished with time enough for a short Atom protocol demonstration using curl as client and Roller as server. The slides (in PDF format) are here: TriNUG-Aug2006-BeyondBlogging.pdf.

Just a reminder. I'll be speaking at the Triangle .NET User Group tomorrow night and giving essentially the same presentation that I gave at the Triangle XML conference last (plus corrections suggested by Sam Ruby and a couple more slides about .NET feed tools).

• Elias Torres on SPARQL
  A podcast overview of the Semantic Web, RDF and SPARQL
• Apple Warns Conference Attendees on Blogging
  "Suing bloggers and posting 'talk to the hand' style notices are not the way to go."
• Open source won't doom traditional enterprise software
  
• Open source vs. traditional enterprise software, part II
  
• DTrace rides the Leopard
  Jim's round up of posts about DTrace in Mac OS/X
• Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life - Niall Kennedy Leaving Microsoft
  Some of what Niall wrote "is inaccurate and based on speculation"
• Leaving Microsoft
  Niall: "I didn't want to sit around doing little to nothing"