Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants

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 :)

The title of this post can probably be said of many people - in certain circles, me included. The interesting thing now is the "certain circles" part. It was a lot easier to make dumb mistakes as recently as a decade ago - the mistake happened, you moved past it, people tended to forget.

That was before the net, before social networks, before blogs. Now, any mistake you make will be recorded for all time, so long as anyone is there to see it. More to the point, it's immediately findable, via the wonder of Google. If you work online at all, you have a personal brand - whether you like it or not.

That means that everything you do in public will add to your personal brand.

That gets me to the best (current) bad example of this: Matt Aimonetti. He gave a controversial talk at a recent Ruby conference, and - for the foreseeable future, that's what he'll be known for. It doesn't matter what you think of his slides, or of how it's all been perceived. What matters is that he's known for that, and it's going to drag behind him forever. Right now, the second hit on a Google search for his name turns up his explanation for that talk. Never mind his explanation and whether it's good or bad; the important thing is this: he's now tagged as controversial, and will likely stay that way for a long while.

That's what happens now - you build your personal brand at all times now, and no public (and it's hard to know what isn't public anymore; consider Facebook and photos/videos) actions are guaranteed to disappear from view. Anything I did in college or in my 20's lives on in memory only. It's not like that anymore, and anything I do from here on out is "on the record" as well. It may not be fair, but life isn't fair - it is what it is.

Technorati Tags: personal brand, social media

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at how to find objects - classes and methods - using the launcher and 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:

Finding Classes and Methods from James Robertson on Vimeo.

Or on YouTube:

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, code browser

I'm starting to get some of the audio and video from our event processed; I'll have one of Arden's talks out as this week's podcast, and the matching video will go online after the audio gets posted. The rest of the content will start showing up after that, probably one talk a week or so.

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, minneapolis

Michael has added publishing to Monticello to our bag of tools; this is in addition to the reading that he spoke about here.

As a continuation from my previous post on Monticello loading/merging/importing, we now have the ability to publish the Monticello .mcz files to contribute code back to the Squeak community as well.

You can watch the video demo here; this should make interop with the Squeak community a whole lot easier.

Technorati Tags: monticello, squeak, version control

I don't know why, but I find this topic fascinating: how far removed from the normal web experience some environments are - specifically, secure environments. Take this Slashdot post, which says in part:

I work routinely in environments where a camera cannot physically be present (e.g., federal court), which really limits what I can carry with me. For instance, I'm a Mac guy, but there's no way to order a MacBook without a built-in webcam

A bunch of us ran into this problem during a customer meeting in Germany last year: due to (very real) concerns about industrial espionage, there was a "no camera" policy. There we all were, with out MacBooks - and no way to give a demo or presentation. We got someone to vouch for us, but it was an interesting problem.

Going back to the article, people who work in these environments do have a problem. Getting a modern phone or laptop without a camera is a hard. In some environments, people work mostly on closed networks with no internet access - can you imagine trying to attract a fresh out of college kid to deal with that? No net, no iPod, no portable devices that can record audio, video, or data, period. In other words, your work day is like a day in 1990 :)

It's an interesting divide to me, and I know it's not one I'd be able to deal with easily :)

Technorati Tags: security, gadgets

Dare Obasanjo explains the key difference between Facebook and Twitter :)

There's an actual marketplace open for selling Twitter names - check out http://tweexchange.com. Add one more thing to the list of protections a company needs to worry about beyond domain squatting.

There's also a weird side to this: people who've built up large lists of followers offering to sell their accounts. Right on the top of the page is a banner claiming that "CNN just bought CNNBRK". I don't know how much of a market there is in this, but a glance at the exchange page shows a few hopeful squatters...

Technorati Tags: social media, twitter

When you notice that the ads for "male enhancement" and "burn fat fast" start coming on in rapid succession, it's usually a hint that it's way, way past your bedtime. Apparently, it's more than that: some of those diet pills are downright dangerous.

Hat tip Rob Fahrni

Technorati Tags: news