Blogging Roller

I wrote about Shindig before, it's a new open source project to implement the Google OpenSocial APIs. Well, now the official voting to accept the Shindig project into the Apache Incubator is in progress and some interesting details have emerged in the latest version of the proposal. First, as you can see by the initial list of committers in the proposal Google has joined the Shindig effort in force. Second, the proposal says that Shindig will be the reference implementation of the OpenSocial APIs. And third, Shindig will not only include the client-side JavaScript container but also a Java back-end. Brian McAllister has already made some "gnarly" initial client-side container code available, I can't wait to see the Google contribution.

Hadn't heard about this one until today, but Netbeans 6.1 will have plugin support for creating, editing, deploying to Apache HTTPD, running and even debugging PHP projects. Check out the details and screenshots on the Phantom Reference blog.

Here's a sceenshot from the Netbeans Wiki page on PHP:

After going missing in NB 5.5, Groovy support is back in Netbeans. Basic Groovy support with syntax coloring and support for running scripts from the IDE is available in plugin form (download page) for Netbeans 6.0 (starting with RC2), read about it on Geertjan's blog.

Here's what's coming after Netbeans 6.0, Groovy project support:</>

After Netbeans 6.0, the story gets better. Geertjan writes that a brand new Groovy plugin will be available in the post-6.0 builds that adds support for three types of Groovy projects: applications, class libraries and Grails webapps.

I've got a couple of Roller related items to blog about, so why not just call it Roller Strong #11.

First, Lars Trieloff responds to some of the questions I raised about JCR and Roller in my ApacheCon wrap-up post. I left a comment on his blog in response. Personally, I think a JCR back-end is a very interesting idea and I wish I had some more time to explore it.

Manchi Leung AKA Thinkboy posted the code for a new Textile plugin to the Roller dev list, using Textile-J. Thinkboy says "it supports almost all of the Textile syntax. very much the same as Confluence wiki. Now I can easily sync or copy working notes from Confluence wiki to my personal Roller blog." Nice. Note to self: I need to fix up some of our existing entry plugins -- I think some of them (e.g. Ekit) still haven't been updated for Roller 3.1.

Arun Gupta blogged recently about Backing up your Roller entries and explained how to use the Grabber example (now known as BlogBackup in Blogapps 2) from the Blogapps project to backup your Roller blog. Backing-up your entries, but backing up your uploads is not. Hopefully, blogs.sun,com will turn on Atom protocol someday and that'll will make it easy for a tool like Grabber backup both entries and uploads.

We're still waiting on Roller 4.0, but I sense our wait is soon over. Roller 4.0 RC10 was released one week ago with just a couple of bug fixes. And so far, no critical issues have been found. We've got only one +1 vote (thanks Anil!) so far so committers please test and vote.

And finally, I have to mention MarkMail because I've been using it throughout this blog post. MarkMail provides a slick interface and excellent facilities for mailing lists of all kinds. They're indexing all of the Apache mailing lists and providing statis and charts for each. Check the Roller page at MarkMail for example.

That's all I've got for this go-round. Keep on rollin'

• Roy Fielding [ogb-discuss]: please dissolve the Desktop Community
  "there is absolutely no reason for this organization to exist if all decisions are going to be made by Sun."
• Ian Murdock [ogb-discuss]: re: please dissolve the Desktop Community
  "You have to be joking? I don't even know where to begin.. This is like Robert's Rules of Order run amok"
• Jim Grisanzio: Two Great Linus Quotes
  "(1) one person or company shouldn't control the entire community, and (2) the real value of community development comes over the long term and results from many small contributions, not one big one."


• Ed Burnette: Sun/Google Android “fight” overblown
  "I’m here to tell you, it’s all bunk"..."However Google did make one big mistake with Android"
• Slashdot: Google, Sun Headed for Showdown Over Android
  Pure FUDtastic speculation based on Stefano's blog post
• robilad: QOTD: Google's license for the Android SDK
  "you may not extract the source code or create a derivative work of the SDK"
• Javalobby: Is Google the New Microsoft?
  Dalibor's comment: "Google will keep Android as proprietary as they can for as long as they can, while letting people believe something else"


• David Heffelfinger: Eclipse Veteran Switches To NetBeans
  "NetBeans has now surpassed Eclipse in usability. Count me in as a new convert."
• Stuck in the middle : Weblog
  Rickard Oberg is blogging at JRoller.com again
• Alan Burlison's Blog: How to leave Facebook
  "try mailing them, quoting the clear precedent they have set by closing my account"
• Symphonious » Why Support OpenSocial?
  "However, if OpenSocial gets support outside social networks it has the possibility of attracting developers who actually care about their users, not just their advertising profits and install count"
• ZDNet: Firefox 3 Beta 1 has landed
  "Improved performance with more than 300 memory leak fixes."

thanksgiving-2007
Originally uploaded by snoopdave

Happy Thanksgiving, turkeys.

I spent last week at the ApacheCon US 2007 conference in Atlanta, Georgia. Here's a write up of some of my experiences there. [Read More]

I just posted the slides for my ApacheCon US 2007 talk on the ApacheCon wiki. It's basically the same talk that I gave at ApacheCon EU earlier this year, but I spent some time tweaking the slides, simplifying removing unnecessary bits and adding a little Abdera coverage. That, and the fact that the power did not fail, seemed to make the talk go more smoothly this morning. Here are the slides:

Apache Roller and blogs as a web development platform (2MB PDF)

Apache member Brian McAllister, who works for Ning, has proposed a new project for Apache called Shindig. Here's an excerpt from the proposal:

OpenSocial provides a common set of APIs for social applications across multiple websites. With standard JavaScript and HTML, developers can create social applications that use a social network's friends and update feeds. A social application, in this context, is an application run by a third party provider and embedded in a web page, or web application, which consumes services provided by the container and by the application host. This is very similar to Portal/Portlet technology, but is based on client-side compositing, rather than server. More information can be found about OpenSocial at http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial.

Shindig is an implementation of an emerging set of APIs for client-side composited web applications. The Apache Software Foundation has proven to have developed a strong system and set of mores for building community-centric, open standards based systems with a wide variety of participants. A robust, community-developed implementation of these APIs will encourage compatibility between service providers, ensure an excellent implementation is available to everyone, and enable faster and easier application development for users.

. . .

Ning, Inc. intends to donate code based on their implementation of OpenSocial. The backend systems will be replaced with more generic equivalents in order to not bind the implementation to specifics of the Ning platform.

Brian is pretty excited about OpenSocial as a light-weight client-side alternative to Portal/Portlet technology, not just for social apps but for webapps of all kind. He'd like to see both Apache Roller and Apache JSPWIki (incubating) become OpenSocial containers, despite the fact that neither product stores the social graph of user/friend relationships. Blogs and wikis are already great platforms for web development, OpenSocial could make them even stronger. Very interesting stuff.

I hadn't planned on talking OpenSocial during my session tomorrow, but I might have to add a slide or two to illustrate the possibilities.

I'm off to ApacheCon US in Atlanta this morning. Here's where you can find me.

• Monday afternoon: hackathon
• Tuesday: hackathon
• Wednesday 10AM: my session Roller and blogs as a web development platform
• Wednesday 8:30PM: joint Roller/Struts 2 bird-of-a feather session, Room Atlanta E-F
• Thursday 11 - 12AM, 12:30 - 1:30PM: Sun booth
• And you can follow me on Twitter

• Sound Opinions from Chicago Public Radio and American Public Media
  Best podcast ever


• The Aquarium: GlassFish Interim Governance Board - Now Complete
  "The complete roster is Tony, Greg Luck (Wotif.com) and Pierre Delisle (Google), and Simon and myself (Sun)"
• Bistro!: GlassFish/SJS AS in production - which bundle, which profile, ...?
  Explains differences between developer, cluster and enterprise profiles
• GlassFish Podcast: The GlassFish Podcast
  Finally, a Glassfish podcast! Props to Alexis Moussine-Pouchkine
• Apple - Downloads - UNIX & Open Source - GlassFish
  Download Glassfish V2 directly from Apple
• Red Hat and Sun Collaborate to Advance Open Source Java Technology
  "Red Hat has signed Sun's broad contributor agreement that covers participation in all Sun-led open source projects."


• Megginson: First looks at OpenSocial: part 1 (URLs)
  Lists the URIs for the AtomPub collections available in OpenSocial
• Megginson: First looks at OpenSocial: part 2 (members and friends)
  How OpenSocial members and friends are represented in Atom format
• Megginson: First looks at OpenSocial: part 3 (activities)
  How OpenSocial activities are represented in Atom format and manipulated via AtomPub protocol
• Megginson: First looks at OpenSocial: part 4 (persistence data)
  How OpenSocial persistence is implemented via AtomPub protocol
• Google: OpenSocial Container Sample
  Shows "basic demonstration-level OpenSocial container can be implemented"
• Dare Obasanjo: OpenSocial Tech. Overview and Critique
  "Despite these misgivings, I think this is a step in the right direction. Web widget and social graph APIs need to be standardized across the Web."


• snellspace.com: Notes, Part 2
  "lots and lots of things that can be modeled as collections of web resources"
• netzooid: Building Services with AtomPub
  "While APP is not the one true protocol, I think I?m hooked"

Tri-LUG announcement: Pat Patterson from Sun Microsystems will provide us with a developer perspective on digital identity, starting from the emergence of LDAP in the 90s, through single sign-on, SAML and the Liberty Alliance protocols to recent developments such as OpenID, Cardspace and OAuth. The emphasis will be on understanding the protocols and how they are implemented in the real world, with a particular focus on deciding which (if any!) approach to select for a given project.

Pat Patterson is a federation architect at Sun Microsystems, focusing on federation, identity-enabled Web services and OpenSSO, Sun's open-source implementation of those technologies. Pat's blog centers on identity-related topics.

Looks like a great talk and I've always wanted to meet SuperPat, so I'll be there.

Here are the details:

Speaker:   Pat Patterson
Title:     Digital Identity from LDAP to SAML and beyond
Date/time: 7PM Thursday Nov. 8, 2007
Location:  Red Hat HQ (map)
           1801 Varsity Drive
           Raleigh, North Carolina 27606
           Tel: +1-919-754-3700

<img src="http://rollerweblogger.org/roller/resource/peachtree-westin-atlanta.jpg" hspace="7px" align="right" title="ApacheCon US 2007 venue" alt="Peachtree Westin Hotel, Atlanta, GA" />

Matt Raible, Don Brown and I will be doing at "Roller and Struts 2" birds-of-a-feather (BOF) session on Wednesday night at ApacheCon at 8:30PM. Thanks to Atlassian for sponsoring the beer-of-freeness (BOF). The sign-up is here:

http://wiki.apache.org/apachecon/BirdsOfaFeatherUs07

There are already handful of people signed up, so I guess I better work on some preso materials. I'll be prepared to talk about Roller status, future plans and Roller's recent migration from Struts 1 to 2.

Are there any specific Roller issues you'd like to discuss in the BOF?