Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants

Engadget reports that the management ranks at Sling Media have all jumped at once:

Sling Media announced today that they've lost their top executives, including co-founders (and brothers) Blake and Jason Krikorian, CEO and SVP of business development respectively. Also on the way out is Jason Hirschhorn and Ben White, President and Cheif Creative Officer of Sling Media Entertainment Group, and Greg Wilkes the VP of sales

THere's no way that can be a good sign. And I was starting to get interested in their products...

Now Listening to: Flying Sorcery by Al Stewart from: Year Of The Cat

Technorati Tags: dvr, tv, time shifting

Mathew Ingram explains why there won't be an iTunes like model for news. The summary: you'll listen to the same song over and over (and pay for the ability to do so) - but you simply won't do that for an ephemeral thing like news or opinion. The iTunes model isn't going to work.

Now Listening to: Sleeping And Waking by 'Til Tuesday from: Welcome Home

Today's Smalltalk Daily wraps up our look at the JPEG Bundle (warning: it's GPL, which may prevent some of you from using it). To watch, click on the image below:

You can also watch it on Vimeo:

Using the JPEG Package to Read Images from James Robertson on Vimeo.

Or on YouTube:

Technorati Tags: graphics

Steve Rubel brings up a well known and popular example to demonstrate the limitations of video plays:

So what's Scoble's problem? Well a lot. The videos don't generate a lot of in-bound links from bloggers, conversations on Twitter or mentions on aggregators like Techmeme. "None of my 1,000+ videos has ever made it to Techmeme," Scoble said.  He's right. A quick analysis reveals some get no links, others get a couple. However, when he surrounds them with text, it's a different story. Why? Text! It provides context and I suspect for many it's a proxy for the video.

You still need the meta-information in text to make this stuff findable. I should really go through the podcasts and videos I've posted and see if there's a correlation between the textual descriptions (quality, size) and the download rates...

Technorati Tags: video, text, meta-information, seo

I've been doing Smalltalk Daily since September 2006, and there's a lot of content available there now. As we produce new versions of the products, there's going to be normal turnover of the introductory/tools screencasts; those need to be up to date in order to be useful. Beyond that, I could use some suggestions:

What would you like to see? What have I not covered, or not covered well enough? Send me feedback, or just add a comment to this post. Thanks!

Technorati Tags: smalltalk daily

Marcoil has an interesting take on what differentiates a "scripting" language from a "dynamic" one:

Scripting languages read whole programs from outside the compiler and execute them immediately, usually with a minimal amount of processing.

Dynamic languages include the compiler in their own environment, and programming is seen as adding or modifying that environment.

That's kind of a nice breakdown between the two, I think.

Technorati Tags: scripting language, dynamic language, smalltalk

You have to love this use of Twitter:

The TiVo senior programmer from San Jose spent a week modifying his 25-year-old washing machine to send a message to Twitter when his laundry is ready. Rose, 35, admits his less-than-reliable memory has been to blame for the mildewed clothes that have piled up after he's left a load sitting in his machine too long.

There are full details if you follow the link; to quote Mathew Ingram: "finally, someone has come up with an actual use for Twitter"

Heh.

Technorati Tags: twitter, social media

The new Netgear router is in place, and it works - The N support is fast, and reliable. However, I can't get AIM to work at all - it connects and disconnects constantly, and never shows anyone as being online. I could do port forwarding of the relevant ports, but there are two problems with that:

• My IP changes whenever I switch from my office (wire) to the living room (wifi)
• What if someone else in the house (wife, daughter) wanted to use AIM?

So - anyone have any suggestions? I've got the WNR3500.

Now, the MacBook Pro complaint? It seems that it loses track of SMB network shares if the network changes (even after it gets back online). The iMac doesn't have this problem, my Windows boxes don't seem to, and even the lowly G4 based mini and my wife's white plastic MacBook deal with this issue just fine. My MBP? It seems to periodically lose its mind and require a reboot. If it were Linux, I'd just kill Samba and restart it. Is there a simple way to do the equivalent thing in OS X that I just don't know about?

Technorati Tags: netgear, router, wnr3500, macbook pro, samba

I guess a downturn has a way of concentrating a VC dependent company's mind:

Twitter receives a crushing amount of partnership opportunities on a regular basis—it's a good problem to have yet until now there has been nobody on staff dedicated solely to business development. Things are changing. We hired Kevin Thau as our Director of Mobile Business Development late last month. Although his title includes the word "mobile" Kevin is digging in on several fronts since he's our first official business development guru.

With the end of the various investment bubbles, the "support it all with ads" model isn't looking so hot. I'm not sure what they'll come up with, but I don't think any ad based model is going to cut it. I just don't see Twitter being able to define targetable niches very easily...

Technorati Tags: social media

Over in the UK, they are trying to filter out illegal content at the ISP level. The problem? The blacklist filters cast way, way too big a net over things:

According to multiple customers of Demon Internet - now owned by Brit telecom Thus - the London-based ISP is blocking access to all sites stored in the archive. When they query the Wayback Machine, hoping to retrieve archived pages, customers are met with generic "not found" error pages. But judging from their urls, these pages are generated by a web filter based on the blacklist compiled by the Internet Watch Foundation, a government-backed organization charged with policing online pornography.

This is where well intentioned - but too simple - schemes go awry. I've seen this kind of thing myself. I have a simple minded filter for comments on the blogs here, and it's been known to block legitimate comments based on accidental matches against poorly chosen keywords. Basically, when you decide to filter, you have to decide what level of false positive you're willing to put up with. Sure, Baysian filters do a better job - but heck, even there, I have to continually go in and check the junk folder. For awhile, my mail client had decided that everything our company President sent was spam. None of these systems are perfect.

Technorati Tags: spam, filtering

This is pretty cool: BottomFeeder is in a "top ten Linux Aggregators" list. Pretty cool stuff. BottomFeeder is the Smalltalk RSS/Atom reader I started writing back in 2002. You can download and try it yourself here.

Now Listening to: Magnum Opus by Kansas from: Leftoverture

Technorati Tags: rss, atom, bottomfeeder

Local Media may be having problems, but they still seem to have more pull than a paying customer - the Consumerist chronicles the year long saga of cables being left lying across driveways and gutters:

Ms. Franz tried showing the cables to some techs who came to repair her family's service over the summer. They didn't fix it. She also tried contacting Comcast's Twitter team - they at least called her back - but didn't fix the problem. Finally, it took a call from the Baltimore Sun before any Comcast trucks showed up.

There are times when you have to get someone in the PR department to notice before anything happens and - for good or ill - local media can get their attention, while normal people just can't. There are bloggers that have the same level of pull that the old media has, but not many. And most of them aren't paying attention to small scale stuff like this.

Here's where a nice matchup between local bloggers and local media could work though. It's unlikely that an entity like the Baltimore Sun is going to notice something like this story - but a local blogger might, and, if he/she is working with the Sun on an ad-hoc basis then boom - you get fairly complete local coverage, from top to bottom. The Sun can get the meetings with local powers (governments, etc) that the bloggers can't, while the bloggers can stream in leads that the Sun is simply not going to find.

Now Listening to: If It Makes You Happy by Sheryl Crow from: Sheryl Crow

Wow, Apple has actually released its all too common death grip on a technology and allowed it to become a standard? Seems un-possible, but there it is: the stock mini-display port on the new Macs is going to be an industry standard:

The Video Electronics Standards Association, or VESA, said last week as CES began that DisplayPort 1.2 should include Mini DisplayPort as part of the DisplayPort 1.2 specification.

...

It's not known whether the officially approved Mini DisplayPort will involve the full range of features from 1.2, but it will let any company building a computer or graphics card adopt the port with the blessing of the standards group and know that it will work with other 1.2-supporting hardware.

I'd say that means Apple is continuing to move into the consumer space - they need to have lots of devices that work with their stuff if they want to make that play.

Now Listening to: Monsters by Blue Öyster Cult from: Cultosaurus Erectus

Technorati Tags: apple, standards

Today's Smalltalk Daily covers a topic that lots of people are interested in: scripting the build of a runtime image. I give a simple example of that today, without using Runtime Packager. To watch, click on the image below:

You can also watch it on Vimeo:

Scripting a Runtime Image build from James Robertson on Vimeo.

Or YouTube:

Keep up with the Cincom Smalltalk Team here - we'll keep that page updated.

Technorati Tags: smalltalk

Apparently, the transition to Digital TV is caught up in a whole morass of conflicting interests and agendas - Ars Technica has the details. It doesn't look like a simple disagreement.

Technorati Tags: dtv, digiatl tv

Steve Jobs is taking a leave of absence from Apple, for health reasons:

In order to take myself out of the limelight and focus on my health, and to allow everyone at Apple to focus on delivering extraordinary products, I have decided to take a medical leave of absence until the end of June.

All I can say is, good luck and get well.

Technorati Tags: apple, steve jobs

Spotted in Engadget:

You're now gazing at President Barack Obama's just-released official portrait -- the first of a U.S. president ever taken with a digital camera.

Film has been on the way out for awhile, but when even "official" photos have gone digital, that's a pretty big nail.

You can tell that things are tough all over: Google is starting to clean house a little. They are shuttering a bunch of services that have either been superseded (Google Video), or been eclipsed by the competition (Jaiku):

Google’s announced they’re closing or ceasing development of a variety of products as part of an already continuing move to keep efforts focused on other products with greater usage. These include an end to video uploads to Google Video, closure of Google Catalog Search, Google Notebook, Dodgeball, the microblogging service Jaiku and the Google Mashup Editor.

And, they are laying off a bunch of people who do hiring for them as well. Not a huge surprise; even a generally successful company like Google has to be seeing problems in this economy.

Technorati Tags: google

I had no idea anyone still made LaserDisc players - and now they don't anymore!

Pioneer is ceasing production of their three remaining LaserDisc players, marking the end of major manufacture for players of the giant, shiny, long-obsolete format.

Supposedly, there was a market in Japan for these things until recently. I seriously had no idea that format was still viable...

Now Listening to: Hope Has A Place by Enya from: The Memory Of Trees

Technorati Tags: dvd, laserdisc

Today's Smalltalk Daily continues from yesterday's screencast - we add a custom emergency handler for the runtime, and set up a default log file for capturing error reports. To watch it, click on the image below:

Scripting a Runtime Image Build, Part 2 from James Robertson on Vimeo.

Or on YouTube:

I decided to stop pounding my head against the walls of port 5190 (the default port for AIM), and looked at what possibilities there are for using alternate ports. A quick search showed that you can specify a few other possibilities, and one of those worked for me - so, using iChat, I'm back on the service.

It's always something...

Now Listening to: California Dreamin' by The Mamas & The Papas from: 16 Greatest Hits

Technorati Tags: IM, AIM, iChat

Good thing I have a window - here's what the Weather Channel says it's like right now:

Meanwhile, the reality channel says:

Hmmm...

You might get bad results for the main Smalltalk site on an on/off basis for a bit - I'm preparing to swap over to a new site design, and there's always the possibility of hiccups...

Here's Phillippe Marschall at ESUG 2008, issuing a "call to action" - he wants to see Smalltalk application deployment made easier. There should be a link to his presentation here, but the link isn't resolving right now. To watch, click on the image below:

Update: Presentation has been removed at the speaker's request

Zork returns, to a browser near you.

Here's the audio-only of Phillippe's talk at ESUG 2008 - you can go here to see the video from the talk. To listen, click on the image below:

Update: Presentation has been removed at the speaker's request

No recession for Nintendo:

According to NPD Group statistics, Nintendo sold a record 10.17 million Wii consoles to US Americans in 2008. That trumps Nintendo's own record of 9.95 million consoles sold in the relatively healthy 2007 economic climate. Nintendo added to its money pile by hawking 9.95 million DS handhelds for the year compared to the 8.52 million sold in 2007. Those tallies represent 55% of all consoles and 72% of all handheld consoles sold in the US.

To really grasp how much Nintendo is winning, follow the link to see the pie chart. It's amazing.

Technorati Tags: games, nintendo

On today's Smalltalk Daily, we finish up the small series on scripting a runtime image build. Instead of stripping down, we use a base image (provided by Cincom) to do a "build up" approach. You can find "base.im" in $VISUALWORKS/preview/packaging.

To watch, click on the image below:

You can also watch it on Vimeo:

Scripting a Runtime Image Build, Part 3 from James Robertson on Vimeo.

or on YouTube:

Looks like Microsoft needed to give a tighter set of instructions to the ad agency that produced the web ad shown here; they are using a thinly veiled MacBook Pro instead of a recognizable PC. This is the kind of gaffe that any vendor needs to look out for.

Technorati Tags: windows, mac

The Cincom Smalltalk site has been updated - same old server, new look and feel. Let us know what you think!

PC World is reporting that VisualHub is being (kind of) resurrected in open source form. It sounds like it's a not terribly well connected set of pieces yet, but this is good news. VisualHub is a really, really nice little app.

Update: I should mention that I happily bought VisualHub a few years ago, and love the product.

This is a great summary of one of the things that I think gets in the way of real innovation - from User Friendly:

Ideas by themselves aren't worth anything. It's their implementation that has value.

All you have to do is survey the field of patent trolls to get a sense for that.

PCWorld reports that our new President intends to hold onto his BlackBerry:

President-elect Barack Obama told CNN today he had a plan to "hang onto" his beloved BlackBerry, but did not explain how he would overcome legal and security concerns

I find this fascinating - Bush gave up email in 2001, due to concerns about private communications being caught up in the public records laws. It'll be interesting to see how modern communications technology interfaces with all of that.

On a side note - can you imagine how ecstatic the folks at RIM must be over this? You can't buy better publicity...

I hadn't really noticed, but there were some changes to the code critic between VW 7.5 and 7.6. Here are two screenshots - the first being 7.5, the second being 7.6:

You'll notice that the "Miscellaneous" category is missing in 7.6, and, if you look through and compare, there's been a general reorganization. It's also the case that four checks have been deprecated, amongst them the "long method" check. I'm not claiming that these are great checks; for instance, the "long methods" check calls anything over 10 lines "long" - kind of a subjective thing.

Having said that, I recently received a question from a colleague, who was relaying a concern from an academic customer. For teaching purposes, he liked the "long methods" check. So the question arose, how do you bring those rules back into play? As it happens, it's not hard - you need to make two small changes

First, modify BasicLintRule class>>protocols to look like this:

protocols
	^ OrderedCollection new
		add: ( #Bugs << #browser >> 'Bugs' ) -> 'bugs';
		add: ( #PossibleBugs << #browser >> 'Possible bugs' ) -> 'possible bugs';
		add:
			( #UnnecessaryCode << #browser >> 'Unnecessary code' ) ->
					'unnecessary code';
		add:
			( #IntentionRevealing << #browser >> 'Intention revealing' ) ->
					'intention revealing';

		add: (#Miscellaneous << #browser >> 'Miscellaneous') -> 'miscellaneous';
		yourself

That's almost enough. Now you need to go to class BlockLintRule and rename the protocol category "deprecated" to "miscellaneous". Alternatively, you could just use the name "deprecated" in the #protocols method above and leave everything else alone. After doing that, you'll see this in 7.6:

In general, if you want to add new rules you can look in class BlockLintRule - the class methods are the rules, and the categories are the rule category names that show up in the Code Critic tab of the browser.

Technorati Tags: small lint, lint, code critic

If you want an example of what not to do, here it is: don't pay people to post positive reviews of your product, whether they own it or not. For extra stupid points, don't pay people to mark as "not helpful" the bad reviews of your product. Unless, of course, you want to end up looking very, very stupid.

Update: Mathew Ingram explains just how this kind of thing backfires:

As I've often said when I talk to groups of marketing people about social media, this kind of strategy -- or even Wal-Mart's disastrous motor-home adventure -- seem like a great idea, right up until someone finds out about it and blows the whistle (and surely by now everyone knows that's going to happen eventually, the Internet being what it is). And when that happens, you will not only lose whatever goodwill you thought you were buying with your 65-cent reviews, but you will lose a bunch more besides. You will wind up in a hole, since people will now believe that even things you didn't pay for were either paid for or fraudulent in some way.

Technorati Tags: marketing, stupidity

TechCrunch has a bunch of emails (with identifying information pulled out) from people explaining why they left Google. There's nothing telling in there, but I did find this interesting - from one of the emails:

One last thing: Google also thinks inside a box (the browser). I felt this a lot, and was another reason I left. (too constrained) It'€™s no surprise that they push to extend what the browser can do. (Gears, Earth plugin)

I think every large company (and many smaller ones, for that matter) end up engaging in "in the box" thinking. It might start as outside thinking, but in the end, it results in a new box inside of which company culture lives. That's not necessarily a bad thing until the company gets so big that the box actively prevents new ideas (Microsoft may have reached this point, and the IBM of the early 80's was deeply in that state).

Short of a corporate crisis, this just seems to be the norm. Apple managed to escape that - the question being, was that a function of Steve Jobs alone? We'll find out over the next few months.

Technorati Tags: corporate culture

For most PR people, it used to be a 9 to 5 job - unless you worked for a truly large company (the kind that attracted network/cable news coverage), you could safely ignore the world from Friday evening to Monday morning. That's gone now - it hasn't been the case for a few years. This point is made pretty well in an article about the demise of print news:

In the meantime, public relations professionals need to recognize that the days of daily deadlines are also coming to an end. Sooner rather than later, virtually every publication will be deadline-free, because no journalist will ever have to say, "We're going to press at 7:00 P.M." This will change the playing field, giving public relations pros more time to respond to some stories, but less time to deal with breaking news, especially bad news.

Especially for bad news, there's no time lag anymore - you simply have to deal with it in real time. We now live in a world where things can go viral on blogs, on YouTube, on Twitter - the list is endless. At the same time, getting news out that puts you in a positive light is getting harder. The old world of a handful of trade press people you needed to deal with is gone - and the new outlets are doing at least national, and probably global, reporting.

I really don't want to start sounding like a "get off my lawn" type, but plugging TV stuff in just seemed easier back when the options consisted of coax and/or RCA cables:

Technorati Tags: hdtv, cabling, tv

Unless you're selling something that needs no explanation (like, say, socks), you have to pay attention to your value adds - something a lot of retailers seem to have forgotten. As Don Tennant of ComputerWorld points out:

What killed Circuit City is precisely the same thing that killed CompUSA a year ago: Its only real value-add -- knowledgeable sales and support staff with the expertise to explain the technology to customers -- was long gone. Specialty stores like Circuit City lost their appeal when they stopped investing in proper hiring practices and training programs. There was no longer any reason to venture out to Circuit City for electronics and computer gadgets and peripherals when you could get the same merchandise, probably at lower prices, while you were at Wal-Mart buying underwear and razor blades.

That nickle you save in the expertise department could cost you your business. If people expect expertise to come with your product, then they need to actually find expertise.

This week James and Michael discussed the Code Critic (which I posted on recently, here). It's an interesting - if under-utilized and not well understood - tool, with a lot of potential. To listen, click on the image below:

There's some older, possibly out of date information on the Code Critic here.

Today was my father in law's 86th birthday, so Smalltalk Daily is late. I have a topic and the material all set - I just have to record it after I handle one more errand.

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at the implementation details for the Code Critic - the user level details, not so much the sorts of things that a maintainer would want to know. Specifically, we look at how to surface some of the deprecated checks that were in the previous release, but have been removed from this one. Using that information, tomorrow's screencast will create a new check. To watch, click on the image below:

You can also watch it on Vimeo:

The Code Critic - where things are implemented from James Robertson on Vimeo.

Or on YouTube:

On today's Smalltalk Daily, we create a new Code Critic check and add it to the tool. To watch, click on the image below:

You can also watch it on Vimeo:

Creating your own Code Critic Checks from James Robertson on Vimeo.

Or on YouTube:

There are more rumors about a Google drive (GDrive) coming out this year:

Gdrive is basically a cloud-based storage that should have two faces: A desktop client that keeps local and online files and folders in two-directional sync via a web interface for accessing your desktop files anywhere and anytime, using any network-enabled computer. In addition, it will come tightly integrated with other Google services to enable editing of supported document types, like spreadsheets and presentations via Google Docs, email via Gmail, images via Picasa Web Albums, etc.

I tried using S3 as a backup solution 3 years ago, but it was way, way too slow. Now that I have FIOS, maybe things are different. The thing I'll be watching for? What the pricing model for this service will be. I understand Amazon's model; how is Google going to do it?

Technorati Tags: cloud computing

After years of being told how cool it is, I finally registered for Pandora this morning, and I'm giving it a try. While iTunes is very cool, I would like to find new music that I'm not already listening to. We'll see how well that works out.

Update: Ok, I like Pandora. After giving it a sample artist, it's created a playlist that includes a lot of stuff I like - some of it I have, some of it I don't. The only downside? I suspect that Pandora is going to cost me money (i.e., extra trips to the iTunes/Amazon store).

Don't tell the RIAA though - they're convinced that Pandora costs them money. Idiots.

Technorati Tags: internet music, internet radio

I find this interesting:

The Obama administration will be using Google Mail accounts in the first few hours of the new administration because it will take time to set up their new official email accounts.

I don't think Google could have paid for better PR than that.

Via Rogers Cadenhead, I see that the White House is using Atom as their feed format of choice. I still use RSS 2.0, mainly out of sheer inertia, but if I were starting from scratch, would I? Somehow I doubt it.

By all accounts, Microsoft has stepped up to the plate with Windows 7 - here's PC World on it:

There's no question about it: Microsoft has a hit on its hands with Windows 7. Even in beta form, the company's new desktop OS is garnering accolades from all corners of the blogosphere. By most accounts, the product seems faster and more stable than even Vista with Service Pack 1. And veteran Windows users everywhere are singing the praises of "new" features like the more refined User Account Control (UAC) mechanism and funky, Mac OS X Dock-like Task Bar.

I've heard from friends (and podcasts that I listen to as well) that the beta runs fine in things like VMWare and Parallels, and that it uses existing Vista drivers just fine. That's good news for MS - it means that 7 will hit the ground running. The only thing left is the branding exercise, which they muffed for Vista. I don't really expect a repeat of that - say what you will about Microsoft, but they rarely make the same mistake repeatedly.

There's a good news for Smalltalkers in this, too: We'll have to go through the process again, but our Vista Certified Smalltalk - ObjectStudio - should run smoothly under Windows 7. We've done some basic testing, and not noticed any issues. Which is not to say it's supported on Windows 7 - the OS is only in beta, after all. What it does mean is that we don't expect any real hurdles to supporting it quickly once MS goes to release.

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, objectstudio, cincom smalltalk

I guess it's time to start really scrutinizing the old credit card statements - from PC World:

A payment processor responsible for handling about 100 million credit card transactions every month disclosed today that thieves had used malicious software in its network in 2008 to steal an unknown number of credit card numbers.

It's not that theft is more common with electronic transactions than it is with old fashioned physical ones; it's that any electronic theft has the potential to be much, much larger.

I've been looking for a solid way to have a full backup of any podcast recording I do, and SkypeCap might be just the thing:

SkypeCap records audio conversations you have using the Skype Voice over IP (VoIP) service to MP4 audio file. You can save sessions for later use and playback

It's OS X software, which is what I need. Right now, I record my end of the call, and Michael records his - and then I mix it all together at the end. If Audacity crashes though, I have a mess (and that happened to me a few weeks back). I might have to give this a look.

Technorati Tags: audio, recording, skype

You can follow this blog on Twitter - every post gets linked over there. Just follow me, and you'll get all the updates. There's also a FriendFeed room - lots of stuff gets aggregated there. There's more than one Facebook group, but the "Smalltalkers" group seems to be the primary - you can also just friend me there. Finally, there's a Ning group, a Vimeo Video group, and a YouTube playlist.

Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: social media, web2.0