Blogging Roller

A couple of bloggers at BSC have asked about Performancing for Firefox, so I've been trying to get it working with Roller. Since Roller is not on Performancing's  list of Blogging Service options, I tried "custom blog," specified "MetaWeblog API," and entered my blog server settings. No dice. So, I turned on Roller debugging and watched what Performancing is sending over the wire. Here's what Performancing sends for the MetaWeblog API newPost() method:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<methodCall>
  <methodName>metaWeblog.newPost</methodName>
  <params>
    <param> <value> <string>t</string> </value> </param>
    <param> <value> <string>t</string> </value> </param>
    <param> <value> <string>p</string> </value> </param>
    <param> <value> <string>:</string> </value> </param>
    <param> <value> <string>/</string> </value> </param>
    <param> <value> <string>/</string> </value> </param>
    <param> <value> <string>l</string> </value> </param>
    <param> <value> <string>o</string> </value> </param>
    <param> <value> <string>c</string> </value> </param>
    <param> <value> <string>a</string> </value> </param>
    <param> <value> <string>l</string> </value> </param>
    <param> <value> <string>h</string> </value> </param>
    <param> <value> <string>o</string> </value> </param>
    <param> <value> <string>s</string> </value> </param>
    <param> <value> <string>t</string> </value> </param>
    <param> <value> <string>:</string> </value> </param>
    <param> <value> <string>8</string> </value> </param>
    <param> <value> <string>0</string> </value> </param>
    <param> <value> <string>8</string> </value> </param>
    <param> <value> <string>0</string> </value> </param>
    <param> <value> <string>/</string> </value> </param>
    <param> <value> <string>r</string> </value> </param>
    <param> <value> <string>o</string> </value> </param>
    <param> <value> <string>l</string> </value> </param>
    <param> <value> <string>l</string> </value> </param>
    <param> <value> <string>e</string> </value> </param>
    <param> <value> <string>r</string> </value> </param>
    <param> <value> <string>/</string> </value> </param>
    <param> <value> <string>x</string> </value> </param>
    <param> <value> <string>m</string> </value> </param>
    <param> <value> <string>l</string> </value> </param>
    <param> <value> <string>r</string> </value> </param>
    <param> <value> <string>p</string> </value> </param>
    <param> <value> <string>c</string> </value> </param>
  </params>
</methodCall>

My post had the title "test" and the content "test" and as you can see, neither of those words appears in the XML above. Obviously something is horribly broken. I've offered to help the Peformancing folks get Roller support going, but I'm not sure I can really do anything to help. Looks like the problem is on their side.

Assuming that Performancing's other options (Blogger.com, WordPress.com, TypePad.com, LiveJournal.com and MSN Spaces) work fine, this is pretty depressing. Plain old unadorned MetaWeblog API is the one that's broken, the one that's tested last and the one nobody cares about. Is that really true? Did the Performancing developers really have to write custom code for each and every blog server?

Tags: topic:[Performancing], topic:[MetaWeblog API], topic:[XML-RPC], topic:[Blog client]

I spent Saturday rewriting the second half of my search/monitoring chapter and then Sunday and Monday I spent updating my C# examples. I also built, ran and tested all of the example code for the book and committed a number of fixes to the Blogapps CVS. And finally, I sent the whole Part II bundle back to Manning for typesetting and proofreading. The end is near!

I had been using Visual Studio C# 2003 but since that's almost three years old now, I moved everything over to Visual Studio 2005 and .Net 2.0. Moving to .Net 2.0 was pretty easy. I downloaded Visual Studio C# 2005 Express Edition and that worked fine for almost all of my examples, but not for my one ASP.NET example. I had to download Visual Web Designer 2005 Express Edition to get that working. Both of those IDEs are free at least for the next year. You can get them here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express. Nobody pays for IDEs anymore, not even Micro$ofties.

Lots of good feedback on my blog search service comparison. Everybody except Google and Yahoo wrote in with corrections and additions and in response I've updated the matrix.

As usual, Josh has the details.

Part II of my book is back from the dev and copy editors and I'm spending this weekend correcting and updating the chapters so they can be sent off to the type-setter. Most of the changes appear to be small, but the chapter on searching and monitoring blogs is in serious need of update.

The world of blog search has changed a lot recently. When I wrote the chapter last year, Technorati, Feedster and Pubsub we the whole story. Now Google is coming on strong, Yahoo is experimenting and who knows what Microsoft is doing. So I decided to try comparing the features of what appear (to me at least) to be the leading blog search engines. My new list is Google, Yahoo, Technorati, Feedster, Pubsub and IceRocket. I'm not totally sure Yahoo belongs here, News Search appears to be pretty weak, but I'm going to leave them in because they're a big name. Note that Microsoft is not in the list (if they have blog search, I can't find it). Here's my blog search feature comparison matrix so far:



Are any of those features unclear or require explanation? Let's see. I probably shouldn't have listed "Ads in results newsfeed" as a feature, it's really more of a bug.  "Web interface to search" is only there because Pubsub doesn't have it -- you can't get search results on the Pubsub site, you must subscribe via newsfeed reader. I think the rest are self-explanatory.

And here is a list of the blog search services with links:

• Google BlogSearch
• Yahoo News Search (with blogs)
• Technorati
• Feedster
• Pubsub (more of a notification service than a search engine)
• IceRocket (should get extra points for Blog Trends)

If you have a correction, question or think I've left out something important, please let me know. Comments are open.

Update I: Feedster appears to be having problems these days. The Feedster API docs are not available, I get 404s for the Feedster API and the developer wiki. Link search and subscribe to search features are temporarily disabled because, the site says "Our Chief Scientist is bringing you something new in January!"

Update II: After receiving feedback from Mark Cuban of IceRocket, Greg Gershman of BlogDigger, Ian Kallen of Technorati, Steven Cohen of Pubsub and  Allen Graham of Feedster. I've updated my matrix. Cuban and Cohen sent in some corrections. Greg asked that I include BlogDigger and BlogPulse, so I did. I also added in a row for Open Search support. Both Kallen and Graham wrote in to tell of cool new features coming soon, but nothing new for the matrix right now.

Tags: topic:[Search],topic:[RSS],topic:[Atom],topic:[Blog Search],topic:[Yahoo],topic:[Google],topic:[Technorati],topic:[Feedster],topic:[IceRocket],topic:[Pubsub]

With temps in the upper 60s in Raleigh for the past couple of weeks, warm enough for my traditional geek t-shirt, shorts and berks uniform, I'm starting to wonder if we're going to miss winter entirely this year.

• Python in Netbeans screenshot
  Who says Netbeans is only for Java? (and it's not Jython)
• The Stevenote - it didn't work
  Ted is kind of disappointed in the new Intel-based MacBook Pro
• MacBook Pro compared to other laptops
  How it stacks up against Powerbook G4 and Acer Travelmate 8200
• RESTful Web Services with JAX-WS
  It would be cool to see a WADL for Atom protocol
• MetaWeblogAPI for MSN spaces
  Reminder: I need to test the RSS and Atom in Action examples against MSN spaces

I didn't believe it would happen so soon. Apple has released an Intel based laptop and is accepting orders now for deliveries in February. I really want one, but I'm going to wait and see how Raible and Dion like theirs before I buy one for myself. 

I'm a little late blogging this, but PodcasterCon 2006 was great (and I'm not even a podcaster). Brian Russell did a great job of putting together a totally uncommercial unconference and I thoroughly enjoyed the three sessions I attended on advanced podcasting, podcasting as a teaching/learning strategy and hacking RSS.

My favorite session was definitely podcasting as a teaching/learning strategy, where session leader David Warlick got the whole room involved in collaborating via wiki and podcast tools to build a detailed outline of the problem space.

Scott Johnson, formerly of Feedster, lead the hacking RSS session, which turned out to be only a dozen people and focused on feed advertising and metrics. Scott wouldn't say a thing about his new venture (Ookles?).

Later, I went to dinner at Carolina Brewery with a big crowd of mostly out-of-town folks from the conference. Here the list (lifted from Ryan's entry): Greg Cangialosi (The Trend Junkie), Josh Staiger (joshstaiger.org), Derrick Oien (Intercasting Corp, Rabble), Dave Chekan (Libsyn), The other Dave (Libsyn), Hoopes (Libsyn), Chris MacDonald (indiefeed), Rob Greenlee (Melodeo, Mobilcast) and Will Raymond (Concerned Citizen). And after dinner, at Fuse, I met Greg Gallant and Aaron Quint, the guys behind Venture Voice.

I've got a brain full of new knowledge and a folder full of new podcast subscriptions, so thanks again Brian.

Dion Almer: Sun: hire a couple of people to work on JRuby so Rails can run on the JVM. Or, fund Groovy to finish the job, or.... do something!

This comment on Dion's post is interesting too:

Mikael Gueck: Please Sun, do about Python and Ruby exactly what you did about VB - concentrate on building actually useful tools. Pandering to bored programmers is not a viable long term strategy, it's not like the current fad will last any longer than any of the previous ones.

I'm not sure that pandering to bored programmers (developing "crippety crap," as the Drunk and Retired guys might say) is a bad strategy as there are probably a lot of them out there, but I do agree that Groovy, Jython and JRuby are very important efforts.

I've been exchanging emails with a developer who has integrated my old Relay-IRC chat client into his gaming web site. The guy doesn't understand the Mozilla Public License and I'm not sure I'm smart enough to explain it to him, but I tried just the same. Along the way, I came up with this.

Dave's dumbed-down explanation of open source licenses.

Here's what you're telling your downstream users when you pick one of the three levels of open source licenses:

• Level 1: Gimme credit (APL, BSD, MIT)
  You can use, modify and redistribute my code in your product but give me credit (actually, modern BSD doesn't even require credit).
  
• Level 2: Gimme fixes (MPL, CDDL, LGPL)
  You can use, modify and redistribute my code in your product but give me the source for any fixes you make to it.
  
• Level 3: Gimme it ALL! (GPL)
  You can use, modify and redistribute my code in your product but give me your entire product's  source code.

What do you think; is it too dumbed-down to be useful?

• Maven repo at Java.Net
  Eduardo notes that Java.Net now has a Maven repo
• eWEEK: 2005 top products include Solaris 10 and Java Studio Creator 2
  "My favorite product of this year is Solaris 10"
• InfoWorld's Most Innovative Server of 2006: Sun Fire T2000
  "winners represent the best products defining and often redefining, the role of IT"
• Meet the Swing Team, Part 1
  Romain Guy's Swing team member slideshow
• Meet the Swing Team, Part 2
  Romain Guy's Swing team member slideshow (continued)
  

Here's an update on recent Roller developments and mailing list activity.

Roller 2.1 was planned for late December 2005. We had it ready to go and deployed it to some production sites but there were a couple of loose ends that prevented an "Apache Roller" release and then the holidays hit. We decided to postpone 2.1 until the end of January and add in the features we had planned for 2.2. The Roller 2.1 release proposal summarizes the new features planned. Pardon the mess, it's still under development.

Roller 2.0.1 is ready for release. It is intended for PostgreSQL users who are upgrading from Roller 1.X and if you're not a PostgreSQL user you can safely ignore it.

In other news...

Elias has updated the Weblog Tags proposal, originally written by Allen, and claims to have a significant chunk of IBM code ready to contribute. Tags may be in sooner rather than later, so we'll have to figure out how to manage that in SVN. Dave Levy has also joined the tags conversation.

I've been corresponding off-list with Craig Russell, who is implementing a JDO backend for Roller. After some questions about getting Netbeans setup to debug the unit tests and about the Roller manager interfaces, he's off and running.

A new contributor on the Roller-dev list, Sean Gilligan, contributed a proposal and a patch for Really Simple Discovery (RSD) and Allen helped get it into the Roller 2.1 codebase.

Migs Paraz, whose Roller-based geo-aggregator I mentioned before, is continung it contribute to the Roller-dev list and is working on enhancing Roller's planet-style aggregator so that new planet groups can be defined for the front page via the UI.

Thats all for now.

My first ebook is Raible's Spring Live. Roller now ships with the Spring jar (but currently only for Acegi), so I figured I should read up on Spring. I'm looking forward to having more time to read it next month.

• PodcasterCon this Saturday at UNC-Chapel Hill
  It's not too late to sign up!
• New features added to Servlet 2.5
  Jason Hunter reviews the changes in the Servlet API
• Atom Publishing Protocol framework for Ruby
  Server side framework based on APP draft 6 plus a simple client
• NetBeans Derby Plugin
  Charles points out a cool new Derby plugin for Netbeans

It took a bit longer than I'd expected, but I made it through the Tigers upgrade. I'm now working with J2SE 5.0 Tiger on my Solaris x64 box, my Powerbook and as of a couple of minutes ago, this site is running on  5.0 as well.

I also upgraded my Powerbook from Panther to Mac OS X 10.4.3 Tiger. Along the way I learned that you shouldn't try to use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone to a network mounted drive (it will work, but it's extremely slow) and that I didn't really need to buy iLife (the old versions of iMovie, iDVD and iPhoto continue to work). Migrating to the new Mail.app took all morning, so I'm only now getting to my overflowing mailbox.

I was planning on submitting Chapter 8 of RSS and Atom in Action to Manning today, but Atom protocol draft 7 has appeared. The changes look good and the only really significant one for me is the move from list templates, which allowed indexing into a collection, to next/previous paging as we had in draft 4. I'm going to revise my implementation, Chapter 8 and turn it in on Wednesday. Once that's done, I'll release Blogapps v0.1.

After wrapping up writing last night, I took a break from the book for most of the day with some shopping and some time with our neighbors. Our neighbors across the street, invited us over for some candle lighting, latkas and dreidling -- a very nice way to wrap up the holidays.

One of my non-health related resolutions for 2006 is to switch over to Tiger, by which I mean Mac OS 10.4 Tiger and Java 5.0 Tiger. So I dragged the boys over to CompUSA and bought a LinkSys NSLU2 Network Storage Link and a Maxtor 200GB external USB drive. They didn't have Mac OS X, so I drove over to the Apple store in Durham. I bought both Mac OS Tiger and iLife, because I was warned Tiger doesn't include the Apple software goodies I've been digging recently (iMovie, iDVD and iPhoto, grumble grumble). All and alll, a way too expensive day. Once I use my Carbon Copy Cloner to back up my Powerbook (hmm, is that gonna work with a network mounted drive?), I'll feel comfortable installing the new Mac OS.

Another resolution on my list is to do some 'casting. I'll be making the first non-snapshot release of Blogapps this week, so I'd like to make a couple of screencasts. I've got two ideas in mind. One screencast will walk you through the installation and setup of the Blogapps server (i.e. my Roller/JSPWiki bundle). The other will explain Atom protocol (as it stands today) using the Blogapps server and some command-line utillities I wrote for the Atom protocol chapter. I was quite impressed with what Brian McAllister did with Snapz Pro X in his ApacheCon talk, so I'm thinking that is the package to buy for Mac screencasting. Please pipe-up if you know better.

I've been ignoring the blogs, mailing-lists and just about everything else this week as I worked to finish Chapter 8 Publishing with Atom of RSS and Atom in Action -- the one chapter that's been holding up the whole book. After a quiet and early New Years eve celebration tonight with the family, I've just wrapped the last couple of paragraphs and the book is now chapter complete. I'll be working nights and weekends in January to push the remaining chapters through production, but now it's time to party. The kids are still up (three hours past their bed time) and we're breaking out the sparkling grape juice and some Moscato del Solo for us grownups. So... Happy New Year!!!

• Scoble begs Gates to buy Newsgator
  "Let’s be honest. We’d rebuild NewsGator from scratch anyway"
• RHAT sell signal
  Szulik thinks it's a good time to sell Red Hat shares, he's selling 27% of his stash
• How Java EE was saved
  "Java is just better off with a standards-based technologies"
• Akismet anti-spam service for blogs
  Built-into Wordpress 2.0, available via web service API
• Czarnecki's Java API for Akismet
  Makes it easy to check a comment or trackback against the Akismet antispam service via Java
• Google Reader API
  Niall Kennedy reverse engineers Google's feed API, just as he did Yahoo's