Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants

Ernest Micklei has been putting together Cloudfork, an interface to the Amazon cloud services - on Squeak, VisualWorks, and VA Smalltalk. To do that, he's needed to move code between the three, and that's an interesting problem. As it happens, we've created a set of tools import/export to Monticello files as part of our Seaside porting/Web Velocity work. The core Seaside work is all done in Squeak, so having tools like this allow us to report bugs and send proposed changes back to the Squeak team in a format they can use.

Technorati Tags: interop, squeak, portability

Today's Smalltalk Daily walks through a small example application, focusing on the scaffolding customizations you can make easily. To watch, click on the viewer below:

If you have trouble viewing that directly, you can click here to download the video directly

You can also watch it on Vimeo:

Web Velocity Application Overview: Scaffolding from James Robertson on Vimeo.

Or on YouTube:

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, web velocity, seaside

Via Rob Fahrni, I ran across this link from Mini_Microsoft:

"And you know, speaking of The Commons: I trekked over there today (meh, not the sunniest day) and I have to say it's an impressive space. I walked around admiring the scope of the project, thinking "This is what Windows built. This is what Office built." I then reflected on the irony that it's Mr. Robbie Bach's Entertainment and Devices moving into the new campus with The Commons. Windows and Office funded this extravagant place for the folks who managed to burn through $8,000,000,000USD+ on the Xbox, be shown how it's done right from Nintendo with the Wii, dash the Zune against the juggernaut iPod, and have the iPhone drop-kick WinMobile to Mars."

In any large organization, there's always a lot of weird stuff going on. Sounds like MS has its share :)

Technorati Tags: microsoft

The May 21st meeting of the NYC STUG sounds interesting:

Carl Gundel , developer of LibertyBasic , a development environment for Basic written in VisualWorks, will be presenting at NYC Smalltalk on Thursday, May 21st, 2009. He will update us on the evolution of his Liberty Basc IDE and its implementation as a Web based IDE based on VisualWorks' Seaside implementation.

You can get directions at the link; it all starts at 6:30 pm. You can see what Carl's done at his runbasic site; We spoke to Carl on the podcast here (part 1) and here (part 2).

Technorati Tags: seaside, basic, liberty basic

No more lame GeoCities web pages for you; Yahoo is shuttering the service.

Technorati Tags: yahoo, geocities

Just because your busy digging a hole doesn't mean you should get a bigger tool to make it deeper. What am I on about? This truly dumb idea:

Let me step back into my M&A shoes for a second, and humbly suggest: the New York Times should acquire Twitter, instead of just professing love for it.

Umm, sure. The NY Times is busy bleeding money. Twitter has no revenue model and is burning through the venture capital they have left. What do you have if you combine the two? A huge rock thrown through the window, with the remaining assets attached.

To be fair, Umair Haque does have a bunch of revenue ideas for Twitter:

Where's the business model? Everywhere. Here's one: charge companies for the right to talk back to people on Twitter enriched by NYT content. Here's another: charge other content providers for the right to distribute via Twitter. Here's yet another: charge advertisers for the right to discuss products and services with people via Twitter. The point is that the NYT could experiment with literally hundreds

Right.... How you're going to charge people for product mentions when they sign up as individuals is an interesting problem all by itself. Take me: A decent proportion of my tweets (which go from my blog to Twitter) are about Cincom Smalltalk. So I should be paying, right? But... I signed up under my name, using a private email address. So have tons of other people. How does Twitter go about pulling that apart and charge? I have no idea, and neither does Haque. Or Twitter.

The Time has enough problems without buying itself a money sink.

Technorati Tags: stupidity

Today's Smalltalk Daily picks up with our simple Notes example, and adds Ajax to the search functionality. To watch, click on the viewer below:

If you have trouble viewing that directly, you can click here to download the video directly

You can also watch it on Vimeo:

Glorp and ActiveRecord from James Robertson on Vimeo.

Or on YouTube:

Technorati Tags: database, active record, glorp

You have to love the clueless way the entertainment industry stumbles along. Real Networks is trying sell - yes, sell - software that would allow you to rip DVDs to your HD. The entertainment industry objects, of course:

The case is ostensibly about RealDVD, a $30 software program that allows users to save digital copies of Hollywood DVDs to their computers — a capability the movie industry strenuously objects to, worrying that it will stimulate piracy and undermine the budding market for digital downloads.

Right. How does making it legal for me to rip a DVD I already own cut into digital sales? Do they actually think people are going to swap DVDs around in large numbers? Do they actually think people are going to buy a digital copy of a movie they already own because they have a long trip ahead of them, and they'd rather not cart a box of discs around?

Do they simply not know that Handbrake is around, and already lets you do this? Last year, I was headed overseas to a conference, and I wanted to watch the new Stargate DVD we had just bought while I was on the plane. I didn't want to cart the disc with me - why would I? I had already paid for the movie, but in the parallel reality inhabited by the MPAA, I should have paid again, to get the bits onto my HD.

Idiots.

Technorati Tags: movies, stupidity, copyright

Michael has been working on an interface to Monticello, since we need to stay in synch with the core Seaside work:

We now have better (read only) support for working with Monticello http repositories.

You can watch a video Michael put together on this - it sounds like we'll be getting the ability to publish to Monticello as well, but I can't really speak to any kind of timelines on that. This will make it easier to work with the Squeakers, that's for sure.

Technorati Tags: version control, store, monticello

I've been working on a small Web Velocity application - both as a demo of what WV can do, and as a useful little application for finding podcast/Smalltalk Daily content from the website. I'm hoping to have a small bug fixed by the WV development team next build, so I can get it online. In the meantime, here's a screenshot:

You can search by tag or keyword, and filter by type (audio or video). It's ajax driven, so the queries update only the results field. It's small, but a nice, simple example.

Technorati Tags: web velocity, seaside, glorp, ajax

One of our neighbors has a big event going on, so I'll be away from the net most of the day - other than my iPhone :)

Janko Mivsek has announced the second beta of Aida/Web 6.0:

This time with considerably more fresh meat and on both Squeak+friends and VisualWorks, a second beta of Aida/Web 6.0 web framework and application server is released.

You can head over to the site for lots more details and the download.

Technorati Tags: aidaweb

How hot is the iPhone? Well, take a look at this analysis in the NY Times - it looks like Apple has At&T ready to shovel money at them to keep exclusivity, while Verizon is ready to make a nice offer to end that exclusivity. Must be nice to be Apple right now :)

Technorati Tags: iPhone, apple

This week Michael and I spoke to Jecel Mattos de Assumpcao. We spoke to him as part of the Squeak boarda few weeks ago, but this week we talked to him about his background in Smalltalk, and some of the interesting work he's done with custom hardware and Smalltalk implementations. It was a wide ranging talk, and a lot of fun. To listen now, click here.

If you have feedback, send it to smalltalkpodcasts@cincom.com - or visit us on Facebook or Ning - you can vote for the Podcast Alley, and subscribe on iTunes. If you enjoy the podcast, pass the word - we would love to have more people hear about Smalltalk!

Technorati Tags: fpga, smalltalk

I'm finally getting to break my shorts out - yes, that might be scary for other people :) Seriously though, it's been a cold (if not snowy) winter, and a cold spring. It's pleasant to finally get some nice weather.

We have the agenda finalized for this Wednesday's even in Minneapolis. It's free; you can register here. The agenda:

• Welcome with Suzanne Fortman, Smalltalk Program Director at Cincom
• Dynamic Returns, a talk on the return of Dynamic Languages by Randal Schwartz, Sr. Partner and GM of Stonehenge Consulting
• Making Hard Problems Simple, (my talk), on how Smalltalk makes a lot of things simpler
• Increasing Productivity with Limited Resources with Andreas Hiltner, Lead Software Engineer at Cincom
• Better, Faster, Cheaper, a talk from Arden Thomas, our Product Manager
• Smalltalk - Yes We Can - Georg Heeg, founder of the Heeg company in Germany, Cincom partner, and STIC director on Smalltalk success stories
• Rocket Launch, an introduction to Web Velocity with Arden Thomas

Technorati Tags: minneapolis, cincom

I've seen a lot of people say that the iPhone would "never" have support for CDMA, but it looks like never might be a year out:

Verizon (VZ) and Apple (AAPL) are discussing the possible development of an iPhone for Verizon, with the goal of introducing it next year, people familiar with the situation say.

THus far I've had no complaints about the AT&T network, but we'll see what I think after 2 years (and more travel) are up - especially if Verizon becomes an option....

Technorati Tags: iPhone, att, verizon

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at integrating a File Library and some custom styling into a Web Velocity application. To watch, click on the viewer below:

If you have trouble viewing that directly, you can click here to download the video directly

You can also watch it on Vimeo:

File Libraries in Web Velocity from James Robertson on Vimeo.

Or on YouTube:

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, seaside, web velocity

One of the cool things about Seaside in general, and about Web Velocity in particular, is how easy it is to add ajax into your web app. I did a tutorial on this with straight Seaside, and I've done screencasts on it for Web Velocity.

The basic steps in Web Velocity are pretty simple though - you add the Javascript library you want to use to your component - that's a simple menu pick in the WV environment. Now, say you want to change an input field from updating on submit to updating on change. Here's the "on submit" code:

html textInput on: #fieldName of: someObject

On submit, that will send the #fieldName: message to someObject with the new value. Simple, right? Here's the version that updates on change instead of submit, using Mootools:

html input changeCallback: [:renderer :newValue | searchVal := newValue].

You get the renderer sent in in case there's a piece of the UI (typically one or more divs) that need to be updated. Otherwise, the code is straightforward, and that's what I like about Seaside: programming a web gui in Seaside is very much like programming a client GUI - so the instincts you've built up over years of that style of development are still good. Very cool stuff

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, web velocity

Apparently, some of the malware out there can spew out astounding amounts of spam traffic. PCWorld reports:

TRACElabs concluded that Rustock and Xarvester, the latter perhaps linked to the down-and-out Srizbi botnet, are the most efficient spam-spewers of the nine bots. Each is capable of sending up to 25,000 messages per hour, or 600,000 per day, and 4.2 million per week.

If they do that level of traffic normally, you would think the owner's of infected PCs would notice....

This is kind of neat: in a listing of the best 12 RSS/Atom Readers that work across Windows, Mac, and Linux, BottomFeeder hit the 3rd spot on the list. Pretty Cool :)

Technorati Tags: rss, atom, bottomfeeder, aggregator

Scoble tried an experiment - getting back to a basic theme on his blog and ditching all of the widgets and gadgets... and an interesting thing happened:

I wanted to see who would complain and who would praise it. Some complained that it was too unprofessional. Others complained it's hard to read on high resolution monitors (the text goes all the way across the browser). Still others missed my "brand." But something else happened. Other people said they really liked this new theme. In pressing in more I think they liked that it was different than, say, TechCrunch or Mashable and that it had an anti-advertising stance on it. Also, some people said it was more readable because I got rid of the advertising and the friendfeed widget.

I'm not surprised, although a bet a bunch of social media "experts" are, or would profess to be. At the end of the day, when people come to your site, they want information on what you sell (or in the case of someone like Scoble, on what you do). This is all a lot less complicated than a lot of people say it is: just tell people your story, in a straightforward way.

Technorati Tags: social media

There's an old line about a lie being able to spread around the world while the truth is still getting its boots on; it looks like misinformation has upped the ante in the age of Twitter. There's been a ton of talk on Twitter about Swine Flu, much of it ill informed. Foreign Policy writes:

First of all, I should point out from the very outset that anyone trying to make sense of how Twitter's "global brain" has reacted to the prospect of the swine flu pandemic is likely to get disappointed. The "swine flu" meme has so far that misinformed and panicking people armed with a platform to broadcast their fears are likely to produce only more fear, misinformation and panic.

The problem is the utter lack of context driven by the requirement to stay within 140 characters. If you limit your view to your trust network, then it's probably ok. If you trawl through the global hashtag memes, not so much...

Technorati Tags: social media, twitter, misinformation

Today's Smalltalk Daily shows you how to deploy a Web Velocity application. To watch, click on the viewer below:

If you have trouble viewing that directly, you can click here to download the video directly

You can also watch it on Vimeo:

Deploying a Web Velocity Application from James Robertson on Vimeo.

Or on YouTube:

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, web velocity, seaside

We're all heading to Minneapolis for the one day conference we've set up - you can still register (free) here. If you are going to be in Minneapolis tomorrow and would like to go, here are all the details you need:

Location	Hyatt Regency Minneapolis 300 Nicollet Mall Minneapolis, MN 55403 Tel: +1 612 370 1234
When	April 29, 2009 9 AM - 4 PM

It should be a great day; I have the agenda posted here. See you there!

Technorati Tags: minneapolis, conference

I just arrived in Minneapolis, and am at the hotel. We'll have a quiet dinner tonight, and get prepped for the conference tomorrow. There's kind of an ironic thing going on with the hotel though. It's a nice Hyatt Regency, which means:

• There seem to be fewer power outlets available
• The internet access is a daily charge

.

I don't mean the Hyatt specifically; that seems to be true of most high end hotels, while the low and midrange ones have convenient power and free net access. Go figure :)

Technorati Tags: minneapolis

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at how you can adjust method visibility (across packages and inheritance) in the browser. To watch, click on the viewer below:

If you have trouble viewing that directly, you can click here to download the video directly

You can also watch it on Vimeo:

Method Visibility in the Browser from James Robertson on Vimeo.

Or on YouTube:

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, browser

Well, this should be fun to watch: Warner has sent a DMCA takedown notice to Larry Lessig. He plans to fight it, of course - it's one of his own presentations. I wonder if this was a planned thing, or if their bots managed to hit him by accident?

My macbook pro is not booting, so it's off to the Apple Store as soon as I get home tomorrow. At least I have AppleCare.

Hmm - so now the Mac is starting up fine. Is there a problem, or did it get into some weird "I think I'm still asleep mode" earlier? I'll head to the Apple sure. In the meantime, the next few posts were made this afternoon and morning when I had no laptop connectivity (in the ballroom), so bear that in mind while reading :)

I can't post live, because the hotel's WiFi doesn't work in the ballrooms. The morning talks have gone pretty well. Randal talked about dynamic languages and why they're cool - he'll be posting the slides later this week. I gave a talk this morning, ranging over a bunch of cool things in Smalltalk (cross platform, debugging), and ending with a brief Web Velocity demo. You'll be able to see the app I demoed later this week - I'll be taking it live.

As I write this, Andreas Hiltner is talking about ObjectStudio, and he'll be demonstrating the Modeling and Mapping Tools (which are being upgraded for OS8.2) in a few minutes. Good stuff.

I'll be posting video and audio from this conference over the next few weeks on our site; stay tuned to the video feed and the podcast feed for that!

Technorati Tags: minneapolis, objectstudio, seaside, web velocity, visualworks

Georg is giving a fun talk about what Smalltalk does best: enable "Design for Change". One of his examples is the "Search for the Bach House" project he spoke about at ESUG last summer. He's taken the "Yes we Can" political phrase and related it to Smalltalk's roots and design goals, which is a nifty way of looking at it. Another example he's giving: SeaBreeze, the gui/design editor his team has built for Seaside.

Technorati Tags: stic, minneapolis

Last talk of the day - Arden is doing a demo with Web velocity, building the mappings to the db tables on the fly, and then using the scaffolding to quickly build up a CRUD app in the browser. People seem interested in this :)

Technorati Tags: minneapolis, seaside, web velocity

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at some interesting class querying capabilities that are available directly in the browser - as opposed to having to know the specific messages to send in a workspace. To watch, click on the viewer below:

If you have trouble viewing that directly, you can click here to download the video directly

You can also watch it on Vimeo:

Querying a Class in the Browser from James Robertson on Vimeo.

Or on YouTube:

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, browser

Last night's problem seems to have vanished; I can't really see taking the MBP to the Apple Store and telling them it wouldn't boot last night, but everything's ok now. What would they look for, gremlins?

Anyway, it's cool that everything seems to be normal. One thing that kept the panic in the background though: I have time machine backups through the time I left the house on Tuesday, so the only things I would have lost would have been the emails - the two screencasts aren't on my home backup, but they are on the server in Cincinnati. Knowing you have backups certainly helps ease the alarm.

PCWorld reports on the rumors that Verizon is talking to MS about phones:

Microsoft denies rumors of a Zune phone, but the idea has some merit. Is this just Verizon's ploy to get Apple to play ball?

While everyone counts MS out of the phone game (just do a few Google searches to get an idea as to how little regard their mobile devices have now), one thing people need to keep in mind is how long a game MS is willing to play. They have a huge pile of cash on hand, and a history of patience. Think back to the early days of Windows: no one took Windows 1.0 or 2.0n seriously, and even 3 was chuckled at before it took off. After Windows 95, it was MS' turn to laugh all the way to the bank.

So with that in mind, look at the phone space again. The big play seems to be coming in games and video, and MS has been doing pretty well there with the XBox 360. It's not unreasonable to ponder a mobile Zune phone that synchs nicely with Windows and the 360. While Apple owns all the buzz in the smartphone space right now, the second spot is wide open - the gPhone isn't really taking off, and Palm is in "last chance" mode with the Pre (I'll get to the Blackberry below).

If Microsoft wants to take a real stab at this space, I think the field is still open to them. RIM seems to have a solid lock on that #2 spot, but consider: how safe is their hold on the corporate connectivity space if Microsoft actually comes after them with a device that works well and talks to Outlook (and the rest of Office)?

Meanwhile, it's not at all clear to me what Verizon is up to. Do they actually want the iPhone, or are they just trying to make ATT have to pay more to keep the exclusive contract?

Technorati Tags: ms, apple, zune, iphone, verizon, att

We had a great event yesterday; lots of good content, and a great crowd showed up to take it in. Here are a few photos:

You can check out the entire gallery here; I'll be pushing a bunch of these photos to Facebook as well. Audio and Video from the event should be out soon.

Technorati Tags: minneapolis, cincom

Apple is serious about gaming - they just hired away one of Microsoft's top Xbox guys. From Gizmodo:

Anybody who said Apple wasn't serious about gaming can swallow their pundit nuggets right now: They just hired Richard Teversham, Xbox Europe's (now former) senior director of business, insights and strategy.

So with the rumors about Apple buying tablet size screens and the popularity of games for the iPhone, it makes me go "hmmm" about what they're up to. I think they've decided to go sideways at the console space...

Technorati Tags: apple

Oh Noes, the intertubes are going down in flames. Engadget explains :)