Roland Tanglao's Weblog

I am fascinated by JavaScript and its rise in Drupal and the web in general and I am looking for a system to do some visual hacking with my 30000 or so public photos on flickr.

So I spent a couple of hours with the Lively Kernel which is JavaScript all the way down instead of turtles! It might not be what I am looking for but it sure is clever.

Here are my notes (I attempted to pick out the nuggets of gold from the mailing list and forum (now closed, bring on the wiki please!)):

Lively Kernel Mailing List Notes

1. http://livelykernel.sunlabs.com/pipermail/general/20080406/000058.html - console.log(<string expression>) print output of some methods to console window
2. http://livelykernel.sunlabs.com/pipermail/general/20080521/000061.html - Roadmap May 21st, 2008
   
3. 0.8.5 beta http://livelykernel.sunlabs.com/0.8.5/index.xhtml http://livelykernel.sunlaLKbs.com/pipermail/general/20080528/000062.html
4. alt xml studio supports lively kernel: http://web.mac.com/altmobile/altmobile_blog/ALT_Mobile_Blog/Entries/2008/3/21_Announcing_XML_Studio_v7.3.html
5. set rgb value has no effect instead this.setFill(new Color(1, 0, 0)); // We use 0..1 instead of 0..255 http://livelykernel.sunlabs.com/pipermail/general/20080324/000054.html
6. how to run LK without using any other software other than apache on localhost: http://livelykernel.sunlabs.com/pipermail/general/20080301/000042.html - "the gestalt I am working toward is that each time you make a change, it becomes a new web page that you or anyone else can share and experiment with ."
7. "SquiggleMorph (also 3 short methods -- it's just a sketch (get it?)) to let you make very basic freehand drawings. " - http://livelykernel.sunlabs.com/pipermail/general/20080208/000034.html
8. needs of community and a history of LK - http://livelykernel.sunlabs.com/pipermail/general/20080201/000024.html
9. first announcement of ALT mobile toolkit for LK i.e. HTML layout and rendering engine http://livelykernel.sunlabs.com/pipermail/general/20080127/000004.html

LK Forum Notes

1. turn LK widgets into Leopard dashboard widgets aka Web Clips - https://research.sun.com/projects/lively/forums/viewtopic.php?t=13
2. zip file to run from local (i think this is obsolete since it's from october 07, use sun zip file instead?) https://research.sun.com/projects/lively/forums/viewtopic.php?t=8

Go Drupal go! Personally looking forward to running Drupal 6 here on this site "real soon now" :-) !

QUOTE

After one year of development we are ready to release Drupal 6.0 to the world. Thanks to the tireless work of the Drupal community, over 1,600 issues have been resolved during the Drupal 6.0 release cycle. These changes are evident in Drupal 6's major usability improvements, security and maintainability advancements, friendlier installer, and expanded development framework. Further, from bug fix to feature request, these issues follow-through on the Drupal project's continued commitment to deliver flexibility and power to themers and developers.

END QUOTE

Bambuser (my archived videocasts) is another competitor to qix and flixwagon. It's out of Sweden.

Observations after a couple of 'casts:

1. Back end site is Drupal
2. You can download the flash video unlike the current versions of qix and flixwagon
3. You can select the quality and the size up to 640x480 unlike qix and flixwagon although qix supposedly will have this feature soon.
4. Does not seem to have a "stop streaming but keep uploading feature", only connect and disconnect
5. Current version seems to be slower and more jerky than the qix and flixwagon
6. It's out of Sweden

Richard said I have until January 15 :-) so here goes some randomly ordered predictions which are worth what you paid for them!

1. Social Media microniching and microcontent-fication continues to grow rapidly. Twitter and Seesmic are just the beginning. Old skool bloggers like myself continue to blog and to write large pieces but even for us it's the exception rather than the rule.
2. Drupal fervent, creativity, acquisition and expansion continues because Drupal 6 will unleash the creativity of the world. Go Acquia go! Go Raincity go!
3. Apple introduces 3G iPhone not at Macworld but in the spring. Rogers finally brings the iPhone to Canada in time for Christmas 2008. They won't be onboard for the Apple Spring announcement because they still don't "get it" , but they will have no choice for Christmas 2008 since all of the 3G handsets Rogers sells s*ck and nobody will buy them since unlike the iPhone they are unusable and no better than non 3G sets feature wise. [Hope I am wrong about Rogers!]
4. Speaking of "get"-ting it. Translink (or whatever they are called now), start to get it. True feedback comes from BOTH their old very slow 20th century skool approach (e.g. Translink Listens is a farce for the Internet Generation because you a) never see the results or b) know anything about the people behind the very vague and not useful polls but ok for the old fogeys) AND from social media like an official blog, a flickr account and facebook (heck maybe even twitter and Seesmic: e.g. twitter-ing system outages and delays or facebook statusing them would be a lot better than their current very slow 20th century haphazard way of telling us the SkyTrain is down or buses are delayed). The unofficial Translink Attendance at Transit Camp was very encouraging; I'm predicting this type of stuff will become officially supported in 2008.
5. Apple sub MacBook. It won't be the return of the Newton and it won't be a big iPhone, it'll be cool (small, instant on and useful) and again it won't be introduced at MacWorld. [Again hope I am wrong here! Hope it comes sooner]
6. The era of dumb non presence aware "high ceremony" audio and video is over. Go SightSpeed, go Lypp, go Iotum! All three will prosper in 2008. Skype will too since they are ubiquitous for both.
7. Nokia will continue to have the best hardware for mobile devices but unfortunately not the best software. An awesome N93 video cameraphone successor will be introduced that again only early adopters will use and find usable.
8. No usable mobile interface that is nearly as usable as Apple's touch interface emerges in 2008. Fingers crossed for 2009 [hope i am wrong about this one too]
9. Truly Open Hardware combined with truly Open Software - the trend started by Open Moko, Chumby (I've bought a chumby and am mulling some fun but extremely bogus hacks for it :-) !) and Bug Labs continues. Hopefully someone will introduce something like The Bug that is less clunky and uses a more malleable dynamic language like Ruby or Python (I am sure somebody will hack The Bug to use Ruby or Python or some such but it's not the same as having something designed from the ground up to use Ruby or Python as its development environment rather than clunky, "strait-jacketed by typing" and verbose Java). [and yes even though it's "clunky" and Java, I am saving my pennies for my own Bug! ]
10. Canon introduces an ISO 25600 camera to compete with the Nikon D3 and a 5D replacement with sensor cleaning and clean, usable ISO 6400. I'm saving my pennies (coz I'll never like flash photography although I love the Strobist).
11. Nokia or somebody smart buys ShoZu. The rest of the world will start to see the advantage of a "straight to the web from the camera" workflow that ShoZu pioneered (Eye-Fi is inferior to ShoZu because it doesn't suspend/resume upon connectivity interruption/resumption but it's good enough and it works everywhere and I am getting one of their cards pronto! See my earlier Eye-Fi plug). Why not build ShoZu into micro SD cards ? Just a thought :-) !
12. 3G and WiFi are now mature enough for a "straight to the web from the camera" workflow for video too. Why should you have to wait? Why can't video be uploaded directly to the web from your camera like you can with photos with ShoZu and Eye-Fi? There really is no reason other than file size and early adopters will start doing that in 2008.

I am glad I can finally announce that Raincity Studios has acquired Bryght. Needless to say I am stoked and already enjoying working with my new colleagues. Working with Bryght has been great, the best job of my life and I am sure it will be the same at Raincity.

From my Raincity acquires Bryght story on bryght.com:

QUOTE

We can finally take the wraps off something we have been cooking up for a while. Raincity Studios has acquired Bryght (press release)! The expanded company will operate under the Raincity Studios banner and the Bryght name will live on through the hosting products (i.e. Bryght Light Sites and Bryght Virtual Private Servers will continue). Raincity Studios will also continue Bryght's work in leading edge technology like Jabber / XMPP and OpenID. And of course, all Bryght guys are now Raincity guys!

END QUOTE

YES! Drupal running on S60 mobile phones! Have to try this, guess I'll have to get a S60 device with as much RAM as an E90!

QUOTE

PAMP stands for Personal Apache, MySQL, PHP, so yes, the full LAMP stack will be made available for S60 smart phones. In addition, there will be PHP extension modules that provide access to the core functionality of the phone. And on top of PAMP you can basically install any LAMP based content management system. For instance, Drupal can be installed off the shelf. Yes, a fair amount of memory is needed and it's still pretty experimental stuff, but it runs quite nicely on E90. So, if you are in the neighbourhood, join us in Las Vegas Johan

END QUOTE

[Cross posted from my Bryght Blog)

DrupalCamp LA was wonderful thanks to the incredible organization of Crystal (and others who I am too lazy to name here) and to the participants. Here are some thoughts on DrupalCamp LA and this part of California in general:

• People - loved meeting up with our close partners at WorkHabit (great to finally meet Earnest and Dominic) as well as meeting some new folks like Markus, Jen, Mike, Steve, the army from Achieve Internet (thanks for the drink and food on Saturday!) and many others
• Drupal Install Profiles - not only do you want one, but if you are a consulting shop, you need one, watch for Boris's follow-on presentation at DrupalCon Barcelona
• Deployment - as ably presented by Jonathan of WorkHabit and Mike - What happens if you have hundreds of sites and need to upgrade them? What do you do if you have a popular social media Drupal site with content being added continuously and users being added continuously and you want to upgrade it? Bryght and WorkHabit have been dealing with these issues since 2004, it's now hitting other big time firms in the Drupal ecosystem like Lullabot, Warner Brothers and Achieve Internet. DAST, AutoPilot, and Hostmaster 2 are the keywords to watch.
• Theming - I enjoyed the beginning of Milind's Drupal theming presentation. I wish I had time to synthesize all the Drupal theming presentations I have seen into one Godzilla kick a*s one :-)
• Venue - AOL Beverly Hills was spectacular. Great conference rooms, kitchen and lots of places to sleep, recharge and hold informal meetings and the bandwidth rocked. I uploaded many many photos at consistently at 100KB/second!
• Cars - shiny, big and expensive (many many Mercedes and BMWs) seems to be the order of the day. I drove brother in law's Andy's 2001 BMW 330 for 20 minutes; I am not into cars but if I was it would be BMWs - I'll stick to cheap, cheerful and economical Japanese cars like Hondas. The Armenian taxi drive who took me to meet my Mom was thankful to his Filipino doctor and when he heard I was of Filipino heritage and meeting my Mom, he drove very fast and very safe in his big American taxi.
• Mirror World (à la Gibson's Pattern Recognition) - LA seems to be a subtly different mirror of those days in Vancouver when it's sunny: every street is big and wide unlike Vancouver, the sun shines perpetually unlike Vancouver which bizarrely had the same weather as LA but a few degrees cooler, there are freeways everywhere unlike Vancouver (which could have gone down that path but through hard work and accidents of history did not)
• Food: My brother in law took good care of me: delicious Japanese organic food at Fukada in Irvine, great coffee at Abbot's Habit, great Mexican food, yummy retro Italian American at Andre's with my Mom who happened to be in town and my aunt, can't wait to go back to Glendale and eat some seriously delicious and inexpensive Filipino food
• Capitalism: 15 million people with lots of entertainment meant great shopping: Samy's rocks for photo stuff (bought a FireWire 800 Compact Flash Reader to replace my broken USB one) and I went to two Apple Stores and Fry's

Have you ever built an awesome Drupal website or webapp and wanted to share it with others or clone to save you config time? Then Drupal Install Profiles are for you! I'll be leading a session called Anatomy of a Drupal Install Profile at DrupalCamp LA (organized by super organizer and super everything Crystal Williams) this Saturday September 8, 2007 in Los Angeles at AOL in Beverly Hills. The presentation is already available (I reserve the right to drastically modify it :-) !) on our public wiki page, AnatomyOfADrupalInstallProfile as a Keynote, PDF and PowerPoint attachment. Feel free to edit the wiki page with your thoughts, etc.

Go NowPublic go! Go Drupal go! Now if only NowPublic had a blog where could find these cool tidbits rather than finding them elsewhere :P !

FROM NowPublic is one of the best | Dries Buytaert:

QUOTE

Time Magazine named NowPublic as one of the best 50 websites of 2007. Congratulations!

(Disclaimer: I am an advisor to NowPublic.)

END QUOTE

At shdhvan on Friday, Liz Henry (who is most excellent and knowledgeable by the way!) and I started riffing on forums and communities and came up with the following pseudo-manifesto for social software:

1. everything must be subscribable by RSS and email: i) author ii) tags iii) topics
2. google like search of all the text
3. everything must have permalinks with clean urls
4. all urls must be hackable e.g. coolwiki.com/food/restaurants/vancouver/dona-cata - I should be able to remove 'dona-cata' and get a list of all Vancouver restaurants

Surprise, surprise, most wikis and most content management systems and blog systems like Socialtext, Drupal and Wordpress do most of the above things; most forums don't. Which is why forums make me uncomfortable; lots of forums have great content but they are impossible to follow, ugly and have really bad 1990s style URLs replete with question marks and ampersands which are not hackable.