Archive for the 'Code' Category
June 20, 2007
Marc Andreeson on Facebook’s API
Marc Andreeson, founder of the original Netscape, has posted his thoughts on Facebook’s new API, which has created quite the storm of attention since it launched. This observation is quite interesting:
Analyzing the Facebook Platform, three weeks in
The implication is, in my view, quite clear — the Facebook Platform is primarily for use by either big companies, or venture-backed startups with the funding and capability to handle the slightly insane scale requirements. Individual developers are going to have a very hard time taking advantage of it in useful ways.
In short, creating a Facebook application with the API requires that you provide your own server resources to power the application. Facebook’s super-viral distribution of popular apps leads to crushing load on your web servers in a very short amount of time if you are (un)lucky enough to create a popular application.
The capacity to rapidly scale up server capacity is probably beyond even some large corporation’s ability unless they have specifically prepared themselves to do so. Your web application needs to be designed for scaling up the number of servers as well.
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June 20, 2007
Microsoft’s Hammer
Is it just me or has Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007) mania taken over the IT world?
I have heard lots of buzz about this package, especially in the association industry, but I’ve yet to see the overwhelming value in MOSS’s interfaces and services over previous versions of SharePoint. MOSS is nice for collaboratively managing documents and searching but beyond that basic project work I think its interface gets in the way. It is a horrible community platform compared to many of the open source and low-cost solutions already available.
Not to mention the organizations that are diving in head first and planning on using MOSS (with MS CMS rolled in) as the total solution for their intranet and public web sites. There is a good reason that different classes of solutions have evolved for public and intranet sites: they have vastly differing requirements for most organizations.
My advice is to bide your time and carefully consider which nails you ultimately decide to whack with the MOSS hammer.
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May 25, 2007
Draft Standard from ASAE Data Standards Committee
If you need some reading for beach this weekend, have I got a draft standards document for you!
Seriously, the draft standard described in the announcement below is the first step in an overall effort to improve the ability of association systems to integrate more effectively and efficiently. If you are an association IT exec or a technology vendor serving this market, please take the time to review and comment upon the draft.
The ASAE Data Standards Task Force is pleased to announce the release of
a draft standard for expressing constituent records in XML. This
standard will serve as a core for expanding into other data
representations. Therefore, it is especially critical to gather feedback
on the draft standard from the association technology community.Please go to this page on the ASAE web site in order to download the
standards documents: http://www.asaecenter.org/datastandardsreview.Please review the draft standard and consider how well it serves your
needs as an association or those of your customers if you are a
technology vendor. Once you have reviewed the standard, please provide
your comments.You will need to register with the site in order to submit a comment,
but you do not have to be a member of ASAE. Go to the same page from
which you downloaded the documents
(http://www.asaecenter.org/datastandardsreview) and follow the
instructions on providing comments.Non-IE browser (Firefox, Safari) users: Before logging in, you will
receive an error message “Website Certified by an Unknown Authority”.
Accept the certificate permanently and you’ll be able to continue.Please share this message with your database experts on staff or with
supporting vendor companies. Their input as experts in implementing your
technology is highly valuable to the standards development process.We thank you in advance for your critical review of the draft standard
and the feedback you provide.
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May 22, 2007
On Launching and Marketing a Redesigned Web Site
There was an interesting thread last week on a list I subscribe to about how to best launch a major web site redesign. I ended up writing a white paper in response on how to best prepare for a web site launch from a technical standpoint: Five Critical Steps for a Successful Web Site Launch.
There was also a discussion of whether you should market the new site in advance or launch it quietly without fanfare. In my view, the decision should be driven by your overall goals and confidence in your timelines.
If the new site is the embodiment of a major initiative, making a splash with the launch may be in order. However, if you are not highly confident in your ability to stay on schedule, the soft launch will ameliorate a lot of potential risk.
Finally, when you do market the new site, focus on the new value it provides to visitors rather than the fact it is new. This sounds obvious but it is easy to lose sight of after the organization has invested so many resources in the effort.
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April 4, 2007
Survivor Meets Ecotourism Meets Web 2.0 Job
Here is an interesting job if you are up on your web 2.0 development skills and fancy an adventure in Fiji: Wanted: 2.0 web chief to manage and develop Tribewanted.com from Fiji. Looks like the company provides an ecotourism experience in Fiji and is trying to build a global community around itself. Interesting!
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January 12, 2007
The Adobe PDF XSS Vulnerability
Nasty little cross-site scripting attack via PDFs hase been discovered: Chris Shiflett: The Adobe PDF XSS Vulnerability.
Any site that has PDFs is vulnerable. The interesting thing is that it doesn’t compromise the server of the web site. The attack can gain access to the site visitor’s computer by passing some code in the URL referencing the PDF on a site. The post I link to provides info on how to upgrade your own computer and what you can do on the server side to prevent this from being used.
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January 10, 2007
Outlook 2007 to Use Word for Rendering HTML E-mail
According to SitePoint, Microsoft Breaks HTML Email Rendering in Outlook 2007:
That’s right. Instead of taking advantage of Internet Explorer 7, Outlook 2007 uses the very limited support for HTML and CSS that is built into Word 2007 to display HTML email messages.
Egads! This will be quite a boon for newsletter designers, once they figure out what will work in Word 2007. It will be a horrible pain for the rest of the world. Given Word’s atrocious history of HTML mark-up, I shudder to think what hoops designers will have to employ to get decent rendering.
Perhaps my traditionalist preference for plaintext will come back into vogue.
(Spotted via Simon Willison.)
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January 4, 2007
Bernard Golden on Amazon’s Computing Services
Bernard Golden, a noted open source guru, posted an excellent summary of what Amazon is doing with on demand computing services: CIO Blogs - Amazon: Books, DVDs and … Infrastructure?
Amazon’s role in this is truly amazing. It has in stealth created a vision of a new style of computing, delivered in market-appropriate, market-transforming fashion. I’m astonished they’ve turned in this direction (what, single-handedly creating ecommerce wasn’t enough?), but believe they’ve limned one path forward for the IT industry.
Read the whole post to learn more about how Amazon is striking out into a blue ocean.
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December 20, 2006
Google Deprecates SOAP Search API
Google has deprecated their SOAP Search API. This means that people who already have keys to use the system can continue to do so but no new ones will be issued. Ongoing support of the SOAP API is questionable as well. Google suggests that people now use their AJAX Search API. Here is a good discussion (read comments and follow links) of concerns about how the AJAX API is not a complete replacement for everything that was available in the SOAP API.
Update: Here is another interesting post, Beginning of the end of for open web APIs?, that is worth checking out on this issue.
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December 19, 2006
WYMeditor
Here is a new WYSIWYG editor for use in web-based content management interfaces: WYMeditor. It won’t give your users true “what you see is what you get” views of the content they are editing but it does enforce strict adherence to XHTML markup. If you have to have highly structured content then this might be a good tool to add to your system.
Spotted via Gadgetopia.
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