Blogging Roller

Found via Arjun: The My Yahoo RSS module appeared briefly yesterday on the Choose Content page under Personal Information Management with the name "Blogs", but it seems to have disappeared now. Here is a screenshot of the config page for the module:

The Roller backend is all interfaces. We have one implementation of the backend that uses Castor-JDO for persistence and we have another that uses Hibernate. It would be fun to try to create an implementation that uses the Blojsom file-store. The WeblogManager interface could probably be implemented using Blojsom, but what about the BookmarkManager and the NewfeedManager? Maybe those could be implemented by using OPML files.

Another excellent new Java blog on FreeRoller, this one by Merrick Schincariol. His entry on JAXB caught my attention. After waiting years for JAXB, I guess it is finally time to see how it stacks up against Castor-XML. Merrick likes it.

Winer's amazing new app that will cause people's brains to explode is just weblog search? I must admit, I'm a little disappointed.

In case you've missed it, Cameron Purdy has been benchmarking Java vs. .NET all week. Developers I talk to seem to take it for granted that .NET is faster than Java. Cameron's benchmarks tell a different story, though as Cameron admits "the author of the test can easily determine the outcome."

Patrick Peak continues his explorations of Struts, Webwork, and Spring. For me, comparing different technologies is the fast-track to understanding the technologies.

I know others have mentioned this before but, where are the Sun weblogs? Microsoft bloggers abound and now blogs are starting to show up on MSDN. Hey Sun, I'll help up Roller, no charge. Just fly me out to JavaONE and we'll discuss this further.

InternetWeek: IBM Preps DB2-Based Integration Software, New Dev Tools. Here are a couple of excerpts:

The new RAD tool is a model-driven development approach for developers unfamiliar with J2EE. One solution provider said the tool potentially could compete with WebSphere Studio, but Schurr said it is aimed at developers without Java expertise and is not specifically intended for skilled J2EE developers, which are the target customers for WebSphere Studio.

Man, that sounds like a tough problem: bringing model-driven architecture to novice J2EE developers without Java experience. Hows does that work? Don't you have to write some code at some point?

The new tools tend to confirm what every Microsoft-centric development shop that uses Rational fears: New and improved products will be Java-centric/exclusive and will first be available for WebSphere, then maybe available for Visual Studio .Net

That's why Microsoft and IBM battled it out for Rational. What is the upgrade path for those customers now? Does Microsoft do UML anymore? I can't seem to find any recent info on UML or MS Visual Modeler on their site.

I really enjoyed Sam Ruby's talk on SOAP at the Triangle JUG meeting tonight. Sam has a special skill for breaking things down to fundamental, easy-to-understand, thought-units, and then putting them back together and showing how the pieces fit together to do interesting things. Using this approach, Sam showed the audience that SOAP does not have to be complex and can be understood using the same view-source approach that we all used to learn HTML. He also took some shots at SOAP's dim-witted half-brother (those were not Sam's words) XML-RPC, but that flew right past the crowd because, frankly, outside of the meta-blogging clique, XML-RPC is just the fork that fizzled.

I'll be honest with you: I don't remember why I used the title "Only 5 Java-based databases?" Too much hefeweizen, maybe? I did not mean to spark controversy, but I like the results. Eric follows up by listing 7 more Java-based databases: QED, tinySQL, Daffodil DB, JDataStore, XL2, JDBM, and Jsdbm.

There were a number of positive stories in the Raleigh News and Observer over the last couple of days. Here are the ones that caught my eye:

SAS software revenue up 18.6%

Cary-based SAS hired several hundred new employees last year and retrained its sales staff to sell software packages aimed at specific business problems. Davis differentiates the new sales strategy by calling it "solutions sales" vs. "tools sales." [...] Currently, SAS is in the position to buy other software companies and is looking at several opportunities, Davis said. "There are a lot of good players that have been creamed by the market."

Wireless technology company Inphonics aquires Avesair of Cary.

InPhonic, which acquired Cary-based GadgetSpace in December 2001, has effectively swallowed four Triangle wireless start-ups. GadgetSpace merged with Ericsson spin-off BrightPod weeks before its acquisition by InPhonic. Avesair, for which InPhonic paid a so-far undisclosed amount of stock, merged with Morrisville wireless start-up WindWire last year. [...] "InPhonic is one of the few companies I know who is able to cobble [together] all these companies and not just buy empty desks," said Roger Entner, a wireless technology analyst for The Yankee Group research firm. "They actually use the intellectual property and keep the people."

Computer chip maker Infineon adds 400 new jobs.

North Carolina won the expansion after promising the company $9.5 million in economic incentives, making it the first beneficiary of a grant program enacted by the legislature last year. [...] Under terms of its deal with the state, the company has to meet a series of benchmarks to reap the rewards of the grant. For example, it must add 110 jobs by the end of this year and must sustain new positions for 11 years. [...] As part of the pact, Infineon also promised to invest at least $8 million during two years in the Cary office.

So now it's April 2003 and I'm hearing that .NET is dead--that Microsoft will continue downplaying both the name .NET and the technologies behind it. You can find hints all around that this ".NOT" strategy might be happening right now.

Sounds like something Carlos would say, and that is where I picked up this story, but the quote is from Paul Thurott, a windows advocate and news editor for Windows and .NET Magazine. Sounds ominous, but I think there is really nothing to worry about here for .NET developers. Microsoft might be ditching the .NET brand and marketing campaign, so what? Microsoft goes through branding campaigns like they go through database access technologies.

Maybe Microsoft realizes that spending money on marketing development tools does not drive sales in operating systems, office applications, gaming, wireless, or other markets where customers don't know a compiler from a Throbmaster 9000. Maybe they'll replace their whole developer relations department and marketing division with a Robert Scoble-edited dev-blog. Wouldn't that be fun? Or, maybe Microsoft believes that they've already won the marketing battle against the fractured Java/J2EE community and vendors. I mean, look at the push-back Werner is getting from his clients.

De-emphasizing the .NET brand and marketing campaign does not change the fact that the .NET framework, the CLR, and C# are the future for Windows developers.

Eric Foster-Johnson lists the Java databases: McKoi SQL, HSQLSB, Axion, PointBase, Cloudscape, Ozone, Apache Xindice, and eXist.

Joi Ito on the Creative Commons licenses: So what does this mean to Joe CC user? When you are about to post a picture or a quote that is questionable from a free speech or fair use perspective, be prepared to defend yourself.

It is a cold and rainy weekend here. This is a perfect time for doing Roller development or reading those chapters I'm supposed to be reviewing, but I just can't get motivated. When I sit down at my computer, the only thing I want to do is to explore. Look for new weblogs, sources of info, etc. I went through my blogroll and did some reorganizaton, I signed up for Blogshares and explored blogs from the valuation angle and, as a result, I added a bunch of new blogs to my RSS news reader. I added the aggregated DotNewWeblogs.com feed, the aggregated Artima feeds, some Corante feeds, a bunch of FreeRoller bloggers (I can't wait for 0.9.7 with the aggregated site feed feature), and a couple of employment related blogs (The Job Blog and Hiring Technical People).

Wedding day best wishes to <a href= "http://diveintomark.org/archives/2003/05/17/the_big_day.html">Mark and Dora.

Well, this was inevitable. (Background: Technorati API released.)

Remember that whole not-taking-on-new-projects thing? Well, somebody else said that, not me. Which, honestly, is obvious to those who read that other RTP blogger.

Open source, Apache-licensed. Share and enjoy.

;-)

After looking at Mark Pilgrim's PyTechnorati and seeing how little Python code is needed to wrap the Technorati API (one file with 171 lines, not including the header comments), I developed a case of language envy. I decided to see what I could do with Java, JDOM, XPath, and a couple of inner classes. Technorati.java is the result (get the project here: technoratj.zip). My wrapper is about the same size as PyTechnorati, but it does not handle HTTP proxies as Mark's does (is there a FancyURLOpener for Java?). Seeing PyTechnorati also inspired me to revisit Jython. Here is how you'd use technoratj from Jython:

Jython 2.1 on java1.4.1_01 (JIT: null)
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> from org.roller.technorati import Technorati
>>> technorati = Technorati("YOUR_KEY")
>>> cosmos = technorati.getLinkCosmos("http://rollerweblogger.org/page/roller")
>>> cosmos.weblog.name
'Blogging Roller'
>>> cosmos.weblog.rssurl
'http://www.rollerweblogger.org/rss/roller'
>>> cosmos.weblog.inboundblogs
33
>>> cosmos.weblog.inboundlinks
44
>>> for blog in cosmos.weblogs:
...     print blog.name
...
BlogAtom
Erik's Weblog
Feelings and Thoughts
Quidnunc
Hacking Log 3.0: America's Blog
...

Note: I had to provide an EntityResolver and my own copy of the technorati.dtd because Technorati results sometimes contain mdash entities and mdash is not in Dave Sifry's DTD. The Technorati API can return malformed XML (I've seen ampersands in name and excerpt elements) and this is a problem for my wrapper. Is the Python MiniDOM more lenient about these issues?

Via The Server-Side: Babeldoc, an open source, flexible, and dynamically reconfigurable XML pipeline processor that can be used for EAI and B2B projects.

Jon Udell on appropriate use of J2EE/EJB. I like the article, but I don't think he makes it clear enough that J2EE != EJB.

Dominic is watching as the Dot-Net guys, or as Andy would say the "borg drones," rediscover the new world of MVC, O/R mapping, and related patterns.