Blogging Roller

I remember how freaked-out I was to see the referrer hits start rolling in (pun fully intended) from http://blogs.sun.com/roller. I can't believe it's been four years already. Thanks to Linda for the reminder.

BarCamp RDU 2008 is on!

The date is Saturday August 2, 2008 and, like last year and the year before, the event will be held in Red Hat's offices at the N.C. State University Centennial Campus. Sign-up is already open and the limited space is filling-up quickly, so if you're interested then please go ahead a sign up on the BarCamp RDU wiki.

• Skrocki's Blog: WOOHOO Sun Blogs sees its 100,000th blog post!!!
  Pat Chanezon made the first post, not sure who made the 100,000th
• Mark Fortner: how to publish to Roller via Google Docs
  "Google Docs 'publish' feature allows you to publish a doc as a blog entry."
• Chandra Chan: Using wbloggar 4 with JRoller version 3
  "using the new version of w.bloggar version 4.03"


• Jean-Francois Arcand: Jersey 0.7 released...with a tiny taste of Grizzly Comet Support
  "gives us a couple weeks and we gonna have something really amazing"
• Earthly Powers: Jersey 0.7 released
  "many additions and clarifications to the API" plus Comet support
• NetBeans 6.1 RC2: Let the IDE Do The Web Services Plumbing For You
  "brings support for web services from Google, Amazon, Facebook and others"


• ZDNet: Social networking will be biggest enterprise 2.0 priority by 2013
  "smaller businesses aren’t even considering, while the giants are diving in head first"
• Move Over Lotus Notes, SharePoint is Filling Yer Shoes
  "What Microsoft makes look easy — can quickly become a nightmare in the making"
• Joshua Marinacci: know of any good forum software?
  Comments suggest JForum, LifeRay message board and other Java options


• colmmacc: AWS, AppEngine and the future of data
  coping with the "fallout of using a planet instead of a hard-disk"
• Search Guy: Minion open source search engine from Sun Labs
  search "engine that ships with the Portal Server and Web Server"
• Unit Structures: Introducing Freedom
  "I find myself desperately searching out places where I can be network-free"

The Apache Abdera (incubating) project has released a new version of its Atom parser/generator, client library and all new AtomPub Server Framework. Here's the new feature list:

• A simplified server side framework and API for implementing services.
• Server side filter API for intercepting requests and impl. concerns such as security.
• A collection of pre-bundled AtomPub adapters for JDBC, JCR, filesystems, and CouchDB.
• An improved JSON serialization mechanism.
• New extensions such as OAuth support.
• New StreamWriter interface for fast Atom document serialization
• Improved Unicode performance for IRI implementation
• URI Template Support
• HTML Parser
• Many API improvements and bug fixes!

In related news, there's a proposal to use Abdera for the reference implementation of the OpenSocial REST APIs, which are under development by the Apache Shindig (incubating) project.

I'm making final preparations for my trip to Amsterdam tomorrow for ApacheCon EU. I've been packing my bags with warm clothes and rehearsing my all-new talk Advanced Roller talk. Below are the details including the abstract and an outline of the slide deck.

Advanced Apache Roller

Apache Roller is a popular open source blog server designed to serve the needs of large multi-user blogging sites and typically used by large corporations, universities and government organizations. This session for managers, sysadmins and developers will goes beyond the Roller installation guide and explores the advanced issues of planning and executing a Roller deployment, including deployment architecture and configuration options as well as options for customization and automation.

• Introduction
  • Goals and Agenda
  • Caveats and disclaimers
  • RTFM
• Advanced Installation
  • Installs now easy
  • Perhaps too easy?
  • Using container managed resources
• TIP: customize the default blogroll
• Caching
  • Page and feed caching
  • Built-in cache implementations
  • Roller's four caches
  • Default cache settings
• TIP: choose themes carefully
• Authentication
  • Authentication options
  • But what about CMA?
  • Authentication limitations
  • User management changes coming in 4.1
• TIP: separate themes directory
• Deployment options
  • Deployment architecture: small
  • Deployment architecture: large
  • Sizing
• TIP: check the Roller Support project
• Caching with Memcached
  • Setting up Memcached
  • Configuring Roller Memcached plugin
• TIP: enable debug logging
• Scripting and automation options
  • AtomPub, RAP and calling Roller's Java API
  • Scripting RAP with Groovy
  • Scripting Roller's Java API with Groovy
• TIP: create your own Roller build
• Plugging in new functionality
  • Ten types of Roller plugins
  • Implementing a Page Model
• TIP: create your own Roller themes
• Questions and Answers

My talk is at 3PM Friday, April 11 and I'll post the final slides then.

The slides are available here:

http://people.apache.org/~snoopdave/presentations/advanced-roller-aceu2008.pdf

Fred Stutzman: Most of us are not internet celebrities, but the social software we use assumes we are (or want to be). It's time to rethink this, to build closets and spaces for whispering into social software.

Here's a concept that I've been using to help me both in my blog writing and to filter all the incoming feeds, tweets, photo sharing and social bookmarking items that come in via my feed reader: my A list. It's not made up of famous folks and big blog names like Scoble or Winer or Arrington. My A list is made up of people that I know or work with and that I believe are following me in some way, reading my blog, subscribing to my tweets or working with me on a project. I've got a folder in my feed reader and my A list is always the one I read first. Sometimes I don't get much farther than than before hitting the mark all read button. And when I do blog, that folder helps remind my of who I'm writing for. "A" stands for audience.

• cgwalters - A software tsunami
  "OpenJDK is finally changing that. Now, you can write a library using Java, it can be sensibly integrated with Free operating systems"
• Countdown for IBM Project Zero | Reg Developer
  "bringing the feedback typical of an open source project without any of the obligations to give the resulting technology back to the community."
• Soviet-era JCP needs change, concedes top commissar | Reg Developer
  Patrick Curran has reached a firm conclusion on his organization: "We have to change," he said. "No more smoke-filled rooms."
• Glynn Foster: Why Our Governance Doesn’t Work
  "There’s no substitute to JFDI - or improving our governance model so that it doesn’t get in the way of suitably motivated people who want to contribute."


• Skype Journal: Skype and the Social Network Stack
  "We need a new stack to sort out social media's plumbing"
• An Open Letter to American Express ~ Chris Pirillo
  "You know, for all the buzz that FaceBook gets… I get far more value out of Twitter."
• buddypress - Google Code
  "suite of plugins that will completely transform a vanilla installation of Wordpress MU into a fully functional social network platform"


• App Platform Strategies Blog: Looking for SOA success stories
  "SOA is not working in most organizations"
• OLPC News: Negroponte Says XP on XO in 60 Days
  "the end of a dream".
• Atlassian Dev Blog - Maven in our development process. Part 4.
  "Maven users need training."

It's not a new runtime or a component model or some bastardized chunk of code yanked from the guts of the wombeast, it's just Netbeans 6.1 beta, the latest revision of a good solid and Jolt award winning IDE.

So I'm here telling you to download it, install it, try it out and blog about it because the Netbeans team really wants and, in fact, needs your feedback. Plus, you could even win some money.

I can't win since I'm a Sun employee, but I downloaded 6.1-beta today and started using it for development. I put it through its paces with some heavy refactoring work without single crash, a stack-trace or any of the usual things a beta brings. Of course, YMMV. I did see a weird-ass anomaly in the Mac OS X activity monitor.

I asked for Google Summer of Code (GSOC) ideas for Roller a couple of days ago. Below are links to the proposals I thought were good enough to volunteer as possible mentor for and to submit. The deadline is tomorrow, so you've still got time to suggest additions to the list.

• Roller OpenID: Open ID support for Roller blog server, for user accounts and comments
• Roller Mobile: Mobile interface for Roller blog server
• Roller Activities: Simple Social Networking for Roller blog server, Twitter-like activities
• Roller Abdera: Abdera-based AtomPub implementation for Roller blog server
• AtomPub Export: AtomPub Export for Roller blog server, export all!
• Roller Shindig: Google Gadget support in Roller blog server themes via Shindig
• Roller Photo Gallery: Better photo and file upload features in Roller blog server

Here's the full list of Apache GSOC proposals.

Henry Yandel: I continue to grapple with the concept of how to treat users of Open Source projects. Should you be cruel, or kind?

It sounds like a dumb question - rude hackers who rip users apart for daring to ask a question in a not perfect way are just arseholes who need to get off their high horse. Right?

I’m not convinced. And I’m someone who usually over worries about being polite. Mostly because the voice inside my head is, I suspect, the kind of stormtrooper who after the Death Star blows up for the second time, will be found out of uniform at the Rebel party selling little burgers of ‘forest meat - mind the blaster marks on the fur’. Read more...

As you can tell from the links below, I've been goofing around with the Twitter API and JavaFX. The Twitter API looks pretty nice and very easy to use. JavaFX looks cool to this old Swing geek, but I'm a little surprised at the state of the docs and the absence of apps. I expected more after the hyped-up launch last year. Oh, well. The Netbeans plugin is pretty nice. I'll stick with it and maybe I'll be able to squeeze a Twitter Client or at least a Java.net or O'Reilly article out of my late night JavaFX noodlings.

• Twitter API docs
  Documentation for the Twitter API
• org.json Java API docs
  Easy to use JSON library for Java
• Sven Drieling, "JavaFX -- Beispiele"
  Nice set of JavaFX examples, even if you don't know German
• Introduction to JavaFX Script
  Nice introduction to JavaFX in the German version of O'Reilly
• openjfx: downloads
  JavaFX documentation, tutorials downloads, demos, Netbeans plugins, etc.
• Jim Weaver's JavaFX blog
  Jim Weaver is the author of the Apress JavaFX book
• JavaFX Script Language Reference
  Reference for the scripting language, seems kinda spotty, w/lots of TODOs
• F3 Classes
  JavaFX class docs, out of date but I've found them useful

It's still a little chilly around here, but the flowers and trees are starting to bloom.

By my count that's how many Apache members work at Sun. I thought I had a complete count, but Nick Kew's recent post revealed a sixth (see the comments). Here's the list:

• Craig McClanahan
• Craig Russell
• Dave Johnson
• Jim Winstead
• Nick Kew
• Ted Leung

Know of any other Sun employees that are Apache members?

• snellspace.com: Contact!
  "So Google announced it?s Contacts API? based on Atompub of course"
• netzooid: Writing Your First AtomPub Service with Abdera
  "This shows the much simplified server code base in action, so beware - this requires the latest trunk/ code. 0.4.0 should be out soon though"
• Astoria: AtomPub support in the ADO.NET
  "We have been looking for the last few months at adding first-class support for AtomPub to Project Astoria"
• Marc Hadley's Blog: Authentication in Jersey
  "Actions on some resources require authentication and I need access to the name of the authenticated user in the resource method"
• The Aquarium: Jersey 0.6 released
  "the Jersey client API, enhanced JSON suport, and better integration of Jersey with IoC containers"
• Carrot2 - Open Source Search Results Clustering Engine
  "Carrot2 is an Open Source Search Results Clustering Engine. It can automatically organize (cluster) search results into thematic categorie"
• MySQL Forums: Partitioning
  The official discussion forum for those interested in or experimenting with MySQL Partitioning technology
• Partha's Blog: MySQL Table Partitioning
  Nice series of posts on table partitioning in MySQL 5.1
• Simon Phipps: The Adoption-Led Market
  "emerging approach which is rapidly spreading for smaller software projects and in my view is the future of all software acquisition"
• Will Acquia ruin Drupal? | Open Source | ZDNet.com
  "Acquia, a commercial version with all the bells and whistles, including venture capital partners, who’ve put in $7 million."
• JPost.com | BlogCentral
  Jerusalem Post is blogging with Roller!
• triangletweetup wiki
  Triangle Tweetup Attendance & information

The Jerusalem Post is blogging with Apache Roller. (Belated) Congratulations to developer Odelya Glick and the rest of the JPost web team on the site launch.

From the Graphing Social Patterns 2008 conference, a sweet OpenSocial presentation with a nice overview of the emerging standard, status of the Apache Shindig project, details of the Hi5 implementation, some cute pictures of my buddy Pat Chanezon's kids and some very fine art (I think Pat forgot to credit the artist).

It's great to be welcoming new folks to Sun, especially when they're brilliant people like Ted Leung and Nick Kew, both of whom, by the way, are members of the Apache Software Foundation. I met Ted at ApacheCon US 2004 in Vegas and he answered all my questions about the implications of moving Roller to the ASF. And I met Nick at ApacheCon EU 2006 in Dublin and we chatted, over a couple of pints of Guiness, about the perils and pleasures of working from home and other things.

I'm also pretty damn pleased to be part of the MySQL welcoming committee, AKA the SunVisor program, and paired-up with Chuck Bell of MySQL. He's the author of Expert MySQL. I'll be answering his questions about Sun and, I hope, learning a thing or two about MySQL in the process.

Welcome to Sun guys!