Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants

You know, to hear the content providers tell the story, you would think that digital downloads are the end of life as we know it. However, an awful lot of the problem lies directly in their hands. Consider: We've been watching "Hell's Kitchen" this year. It's in its fifth season, and I've never watched the show before. I just watched all of season 4 on hulu, and would be willing to buy seasons 1, 2, and 3 - if only they were all available digitally. I can buy season 1 on DVD. I can buy season 3 on iTunes. I can't buy both from the same source, and season 2 isn't available anywhere.

I'm sure one of the content dudes would have a reason why this supposedly makes sense. In the meantime, my wallet is closed, and he's not getting my money - because it's not possible for me to buy all of the content I want in the format I want it in.

I'm sure not collecting any money from me improves their business model. Somehow...

Update: Wow, another example just popped up. My wife and daughter wanted to watch an episode of "Big Bang Theory" that expired off our DVR. Is it on Hulu? Nope. Cbs.com? Nope. iTunes? Nope. Apparently, they don't want our money, either.

Technorati Tags: stupidity

There's been some discussion in the comments to this post about media disintermediation - I think the best one pointed out that the deadline based, pull from the wire service, support via ads model is dying. I think the only thing that's going to work is special interest (tech gadgets, specific sports, etc), and hyper-local. If all you report is wire stories, why should I bother? As to the op/ed pages - blogs are killing that.

That whole thing brought to mind the problems that TV providers are starting to have. I don't mean the content providers, or the broadcast networks; I mean the cable/phone companies. Those outfits are involved in two businesses that are in the process of colliding: broadcast TV through the wire, and ISP service. Back when bandwidth was limited, there really wasn't a conflict. Now? There are plenty of good reasons to scale back the (expensive) cable service and watch shows directly off sites like hulu. I can jack the content straight to my TV pretty easily, either by using cables, or by recording the streaming content and tossing the bits at iTunes.

That's a problem for the cable services. Their video on demand service, and the marked up plans they offer are where the money is. IP service is a flat rate, so having people bail over to it is a potentially big hole. I think that's why we're starting to see bandwidth caps introduced. I seriously doubt that most people are going to cause grief grabbing 100 gb a month - except insofar as that interferes with the cost added cable services.

I'm expecting the same kind of pitched battle over this that we saw with DRM and music, and that we're still seeing with DRM and movies.

Technorati Tags: news, tv, media

You might have noticed a switch in today's "Smalltalk Daily" post - I made a few errors in the morning post, so I yanked it down and replaced it. I'll be covering ajax in Web Velocity tomorrow; sorry about the confusion.

Today's Smalltalk Daily picks up with last week's simple example, and adds some customization to the list display. 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 YouTube:

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, web velocity

Boy, I'd love to know the full scoop on how and why the IBM/Sun deal fell apart. The Times is reporting that Sun's board balked at the reduced offer; I think they'll regret that move not long from now. Given the track record Sun's had over the last few years, I just don't see the upside for them on their own. They could start by looking for a CEO who has a better idea than "give it all away, and spend tons of cash on stuff that's free already".

Technorati Tags: sun, ibm

Ernest Micklei has been doing some interesting work lately - an interface (Cloudfork) to all of the Amazon Cloud services, and today, I noticed his work on Glare: an interface between Flex (client RIA) and VisualWorks (server). Very cool looking stuff.

Technorati Tags: flex, glare

This week we spoke to Alan Knight, our own engineering manager for the Smalltalk product suite here at Cincom. We mostly talked about the process of "herding the cats", and how the process of moving from developer to manager has been for Alan. 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!

Baseball and social media are getting together:

This year, we're also going to "tweet" every play and win probability in real time! We have twitter feeds set up for each team, so you can follow your favorite team on your cell phone or through a twitter application of your choice. We will be tweeting all 162 games for each team, the all-star game, and the playoffs.

If they manage to find a revenue model, they're on track to go completely mainstream.

Technorati Tags: twitter, social media

I do enough things with Smalltalk and social media sites like Twitter that I thought having a little service interface to TinyUrl would be useful. So, I created one. Very simple usage model:

TinyUrl.Shortener shorten: 'someLongUrlStringHere'

The code is in the public repository, in package TinyUrlInterface. The guts of it are short enough that the package almost isn't worth it, but I use this kind of thing a fair amount:

client := HttpClient new.
response := client 
	post: 'http://tinyurl.com/create.php' 
	formData: (Array with: 'url' -> 'http://www.longUrlHere.com').
stream := response contents asString readStream.
stream upToAll: '<blockquote><b>http://tinyurl'.
stream throughAll: 'b>'.
tinyUrl := stream upTo: $<.

Pretty basic stuff, but I thought it might be useful for anyone doing Http interface work in Cincom Smalltalk :)

Technorati Tags: tinyurl, url shortener

I had to laugh at one thing about Microsoft's new "Laptop Hunter" ad - and it has nothing to do with ad itself. This is what I was presented with when I went to look:

Yeah, there's a way to make the thing go viral :)

Update: To be fair, I did find an embedded YouTube version here just about immediately.

Technorati Tags: microsoft

The Terminator franchise - movies, rides, products, and now a TV show - have been on one heck of a ride since 1984. Here's the timeline of ownership rights and events.

Technorati Tags: terminator

I'm starting to think that traditional media deserves to die - the people running it are too stupid to live. Ponder this outburst from Rupert Murdoch:

Rupert Murdoch threw down the gauntlet to Google Thursday, accusing the search giant of poaching content it doesn't own and urging media outlets to fight back. "Should we be allowing Google to steal all our copyrights?" asked the News Corp. chief at a cable industry confab in Washington, D.C., Thursday. The answer, said Murdoch, should be, " 'Thanks, but no thanks.' "

Umm, right - it's terrible the way Google search provides links that go directly to his content, and it's just as bad that Google News provides short summaries that also link to their content. Forcing people to follow links for full content... it's diabolical, I tell you!

Not to be outdone, Anthony Moor had this example of smart thinking on display:

For now, newspapers' attempts at gaming Google remain "rogue efforts," says Anthony Moor, deputy managing editor of the Dallas Morning News Online and a director of the Online News Association. "I wish newspapers could act together to negotiate better terms with companies like Google. Better yet, what would happen if we all turned our sites off to search engines for a week? By creating scarcity, we might finally get fair value for the work we do." Sounds like an idea Murdoch would endorse.

Sure, there's a plan. For that week, any news outlet that took part would see their traffic plummet, while those who didn't play would see it skyrocket. I suppose it's a good plan, if your goal is to hasten the arrival of chapter 11...

The Squeak board met recently, and they have a few announcements. One of them is that Randal Schwartz, Craig Latta, and Jecel Mattos de Assumpcao Jr will be appearing on the podcast soon to talk about the board, and Squeak's immediate future.

Technorati Tags: squeak

I hadn't given it much thought, but the newer touchscreen devices - iPhone, gPhone, Touch, Storm (etc, etc) are a problem for people with impaired vision (and completely unusable for the blind). There's just no feedback at all as to where you are on the device. Google has a response to that:

The system works by mimicking the traditional phone keypad, with the number five in the center and the other numbers arrayed around it. But since the screen has no physical keys, the software pops up the keypad wherever the user touches it. Wherever the finger makes contact becomes a five; slide the finger upwards and release, and it's a two; slide it downwards, it's an eight, etc. The user can enter a whole phone number by tapping, sliding, and releasing, all without having to look at the screen, since wherever the user taps becomes the keypad

That's a neat idea, but I think it's of limited utility for the impaired. Why? If you have vision problems, you're highly unlikely to be in the market for a touch screen device; you'll be looking for something with good tactile response. The whole accelerometer thing is lost on the vision impaired as well - ultimately, I just don't see the blind, or the nearly blind, being able to really make full use of one of these things. So yeah, it's a nifty answer - but not that useful for the blind. For the person using one of these in a place where looking at the device isn't a good idea though (like while driving)? Very interesting.

Technorati Tags: touchscreen

Are there too many coffee snobs around for you to stand out? Never fear: you can get on the cutting edge, and be a tea snob!

Technorati Tags: tea, coffee

I've mentioned the Cincom Smalltalk seminar that we'll be holding in Minneapolis on April 29; I've got more details to announce today - Randal Schwartz will be a keynote speaker at this event. We will be putting more information out soon, both about the schedule and the venue. We'll likely have a registration page for the event, but there won't be any cost associated with it. Stay tuned for more information!

Technorati Tags: minneapolis, cincom, seaside, objectstudio, visualworks

Looks like Twitter has found their revenue model: sell to Google:

Why would Google want Twitter? We've been arguing for some time that Twitter's real value is in search. It holds the keys to the best real time database and search engine on the Internet, and Google doesn't even have a horse in the game.

While I have serious doubts about Twitter's ability to monetize their base tool or search (on the latter, there's the whole issue of scale - I'm back to seeing lots of fails on Twitter fetches), there's no question about Google's abilities there. They just extend their existing ad system over to Twitter's live search, and bang, done.

The only question left is whether Twitter will go through with the deal. IMHO, they would be really, really silly not to.

Update: Kara Swisher dumps on the acquisition story. I'll repeat this though: true or not, I think Twitter needs to be acquired by a company that can scale the service. I don't think they can do it on their own.

Technorati Tags: twitter, social media, google

Today's Smalltalk Daily picks up with yesterday's simple example, and adds a search field to the application. This means we have to customize the query going to the database. 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:

Customizing a query in Web Velocity from James Robertson on Vimeo.

Or on YouTube:

There were a lot of people who didn't like the ending of Battlestar Galactica, but you can say this for it: it wrapped up the story lines and gave closure to the series. Life on Mars? The phrase "epic cop out" comes to mind. without giving any spoilers away, it reminded me a lot of the bogus dream thing on Dallas from back in the day.

Update: To be clear, I am talking about the US series. The UK show had a good ending, IMHO

The NY Times points out that voice mail is fast becoming obsolete:

Research shows that people take longer to reply to voice messages than other types of communication. Data from uReach Technologies, which operates the voice messaging systems of Verizon Wireless and other cellphone carriers, shows that over 30 percent of voice messages linger unheard for three days or longer and that more than 20 percent of people with messages in their mailboxes “rarely even dial in” to check them, said Saul Einbinder, senior vice president for marketing and business development for uReach, in an e-mail message.

It's certainly not the best way to reach me. IM, text message, chatback from my blog, IRC channel - nearly anything will reach me before voice mail does. Heck, on my home line (never mind business), it's often days (or even weeks) before I check the messages. At least I'm not alone :)

Technorati Tags: phone, voice mail

SGI was just picked up by Rackable Systems for a pittance, marking the end of a once high flying company. I'm sure that picking the itanium as "the future" wasn't the thing that did them in, but I'm also sure that it didn't help much :)

Technorati Tags: sgi, itanium

I've spent today (in between conference calls) working on the little demo app that I did a screencast on this morning. That sets up two more screencasts, for tomorrow and Monday:

• Customizing the query behavior by overriding (in a subclass) some of the scaffolding code that relates to database interaction
• Making calls to the back end that involve changing the search become ajaxified

It's all pretty easy to do, and I'll be going over it in video.

Technorati Tags: seaside, web velocity

Today's Smalltalk Daily demonstrates a basic database application using Web Velocity. Starting from a table, we create the mapping to Web Velocity, and then customize the forms that are generated for us. To watch, click on the image below:

You can also watch it on Vimeo:

A Simple Database App in Web Velocity from James Robertson on Vimeo.

Or on YouTube:

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, smalltalk daily, web velocity, ruby, ruby on rails

Regardless of what you think of Vista, doesn't a legislative ban on use by state agencies get into crazy levels of micromanagement?

Technorati Tags: vista, microsoft

Udo Schneider has created a wrapper for OpenFlash charts in Seaside. There's an online demo at seaside.st, and he's made the code available. Head on over to Torsten's blog for more on this.

Update: Link to demo fixed. Ryan Simmons let me know that there's also a flotr wrapper for Seaside; go here to get that, and go over here for information on flotr.

Technorati Tags: smalltalk

It's truly the end of an era for the Yankees - longtime stadium announcer Bob Sheppard is stepping aside, maybe for good. He's been the voice at the park since 1951. He's 98, and says he might be back if his bronchial infection clears. I remember his voice calling out Dave Winfield back in the 80s - he's just an institution there.

Technorati Tags: yankees, baseball

HP might be getting ready to take that step - they've confirmed that they are testing the concept on some of their models. That could make the Netbook segment really interesting.

Technorati Tags: netbook, android

So the news of Facebook's CFO leaving is fueling speculation about an IPO. Seriously? Regardless of what Facebook's business model looks like, I don't think current market conditions are exactly favorable for an IPO...

Technorati Tags: facebook, social media

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at one of the new features of recent Web Velocity builds - the update notification scheme. To watch, click on the image below:

You can also watch on Vimeo:

Smalltalk Daily 4/1/09: Web Velocity Progress from James Robertson on Vimeo.

Or on YouTube:

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, seaside, web velocity

This is kind of cool:

While discussing Smalltalk minutiae with Dan and Avi Bryant, we hit upon the idea of trying to compile Smalltalk down to Factor. After all, Factor already has everything you'd want in a platform for hosting languages. We have a great optimizing compiler, a generational garbage collector, C FFI, a ton of libraries, and so on; in theory we've already done most of the hard work for someone who wants to make a language without dealing with low-level details. So while we've written countless DSLs in Factor since the very beginning, why not try implementing a more complete language?

There are some interesting details on what was done (and how) - but there's a Smalltalk implementation for Factor now.

It's an annual April Fool's Day tradition we could do without: the endless attempts to be funny. TechCrunch has a roundup of this year's efforts.

Technorati Tags: april fools

I swear, when I saw this picture:

I flashed back to countless childhood cartoons and cheesy sci-fi movies with helmets like this that controlled robots. And there it is!

If you're a Canadian iPhone user, there's no skype love for you:

"There is a patent-license issue in Canada which prevents us from making Skype available on the iPhone," Chaim Haas, a spokesperson on behalf of Skype, told ComputerWorld Canada in an e-mail.

Technorati Tags: canada, skype

We finally upgraded the old TV in our living room - replacing the standard def 36" with an HD LCD screen. There's one interesting problem we ran into: the connectivity expected by the TV is different than the mass of cables we had been using for the old TV. We were using mostly S-Video and composite cables; the new TV only has one input source for that. It has three HDMI inputs and 2 component cable inputs though, and i've got those on order (as I mentioned the other day, you really, really don't want to buy those retail). The good news is, I do have the old ReplayTV hooked up and working (yes, it's a relic of a bygone era :) ), and the new Comcast DVR is humming along as well. Picture quality will improve when I get the new cables, but it's a step up from the old standard def model.

Oh, and just for fun - here's a shot of the now obsolescent mass of cables - I'll be adding to that pile as the set of swap in/swap out composite cables get replaced...

We just got off a long conference call (2 hours), and a post call wrap up (about an hour). It was a good call, but - even when such calls are good calls - they end up being exhausting.

On today's Smalltalk Daily, we take a look at the Timer class in ObjectStudio. To watch, click on the image below:

You can also watch it on Vimeo:

Using an ObjectStudio Timer from James Robertson on Vimeo.

Or on YouTube:

I'm talking about hardware cables, like HDMI, component, that kind of stuff. Yesterday we bought a replacement for our living room standard def tv - which means that we need all new cables to go with it. S-Video and RCA/Composite are on their way out, replaced by HDMI and component.

So at the store this afternoon, after I picked up the new Comcast HD box (and what a joy the DVR on that is), I had a look at cables. Here are the options:

• HDMI Cable at Target: $28
• HDMI Cable from Amazon: $1.04

The component cables weren't quite as dramatic, but here's the thing: buying 7 cables from Amazon, with shipping, cost me what one cable at Target would have. When stores sell these TVs, they must make most of the money on cables :)

Technorati Tags: hd tv, cables

An interesting problem came in this morning vis-a-vis the XmlRpcServer package in the public store. To with: it wasn't fully loading. I took a look, and sure enough, it loaded with reports that various pieces could not be loaded. After a brief look, I discovered the problem:

• One of the pre-reqs is the Servlet package (from Web Toolkit)
• What actually gets loaded is the ancient Servlet package from WikiWorks

I implemented the simplest fix that could possibly work - I changed the pre-reqs to load the entire Web Toolkit. Now if you load it, it comes in clean.

Technorati Tags: public store, xmlrpcserver

Here's a talk description for an April 15 event, InfoTec '09:

Software is less stable than you think it is. Bugs are constantly being discovered in every major piece of software you use. Thanks to the Internet, both exploits and bugfixes are being disseminated faster than everbut the exploits are winning, since applying the fixes typically requires something disruptive like a restart. In this talk, I propose an alternative: modifying a running program to fix the bug, without a restart. I'll discuss why this is hard to do, how those challenges can be overcome, and why this technology represents an important step forward in computer security.

Hmm, hot patching is "hard to do". I've been hot patching the application server that runs this blog (and the entire Cincom Smalltalk Site) for years now. I guess I just have access to better technology :)

Heck, Randal Schwartz is giving a Seaside talk at the same venue; perhaps he should point out that hot patching doesn't have to be hard while he's at it :)

Now Listening to: Who Will You Run To by Heart from: Bad Animals

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, deployment

If this isn't a sign of one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, it should be:

The £4,400 MA in Social Media will also explain how to set up blogs and publish podcasts. The one-year course at Birmingham City University will consider social networking sites as communications and marketing tools.

I could understand a survey course on this topic. But an MA?

Technorati Tags: social media

Randal set up a Smalltalk track at FISL in Brazil - for information on that, head here, and to register and submit a talk, go here. It looks like it's a fun conference - the deadline for submissions is April 26.

Technorati Tags: brazil, fisl

On today's Smalltalk Daily, we take a look at using the resizing divider in ObjectStudio. To watch, click on the image below:

You can also watch on Vimeo:

Using the Resizer in ObjectStudio from James Robertson on Vimeo.

Or on YouTube:

We had our first springtime rumble of thunder yesterday, and that was the end of spring-like weather for a day or two - it's back to blustery late winter mode here:

I'll be all over this app on Tuesday:

Months after teasing us at CES with an announcement of Skype's native VoIP client for the iPhone, the free Skype for iPhone will finally be available to download from the iTunes App Store sometime on Tuesday

Here's what I'll want to see - will this drive down the cost of wireless minutes? I can't see how it wouldn't. Also, when traveling overseas, it makes the phone useful without having to hit a local carrier - so long as WiFi is available.

Technorati Tags: iPhone, skype