http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog Decent Blogging using TWiki Read on en-us Copyright 2009 by contributing authors TWiki Administrator [webmaster@michaeldaumconsulting.com] TWiki Administrator [webmaster@michaeldaumconsulting.com] Michael Daum Consulting http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/pub/TWiki/TWikiLogos/T-logo-140x40-t.gif http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogEntry72 MichaelDaum 2008-10-28T12:45:00Z OpenSource MichaelDaum Yesterday, 2008-10-27: 21:00 GMT, just a minute before the regular TWiki release meeting, the company TWIKI.NET announced unilaterally that the best for the TWiki.org project would be for them to take over governance. With it comes a complete lock down of the community site. From that minute on, all long-time contributors have lost access to their code. Counter-reaction: the community has left the building, leaving TWIKI.NET without a contributing community. Question: is it a sensible move for a venture capital firm that depends on a healthy Open Source community to lock it out? <p /> (Note: this is a cross posting also appearing on the <a href="http://blog.wikiring.com" target="_top">WikiRing blog</a>.)<p /><div id="" class="imageFloat imageFloat_right " ><a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/pub/Blog/BlogImages/DirtyFork-300.jpg" class="imageHref" title="DirtyFork-300.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/pub/Blog/BlogImages/DirtyFork-300.jpg" alt="DirtyFork-300.jpg" width="126" height="300" longdesc="DirtyFork-300.jpg" /></a></div> Access to the site is only granted if contributors agree to a set of newly installed terms and conditions dictated by TWIKI.NET, a company founded by Peter Thoeny 12 months ago. His power to do so grows out of two sources: (a) he is the sole owner of the trademark on TWiki and (b) he is sponsoring the server hardware and thus had root access. <p /> And now he has triggered the trademark gun and fired the TWiki community. He even repeatedly threatened people on the #twiki IRC channel that "[he has] been advised by one of [his] investors, <a href="http://www.wsgr.com/WSGR/Index.aspx" target="_top">Wilson Sonsini Goodrich and Rosati</a>, that [they] need to protect [their] trademark". Clearly, their VC people have no picture of the situation other than their own return of investment. Sure, protecting a registered trademark is what it is all about. But threatening the community that has been working on TWiki on a volunteer basis for the recent 10 years that way is a bit strong. Too strong for the TWiki community. <p /> If there was ever any hope to re-establish a relationship of trust and faith to create a win/win situation by combining community &amp; commerce, this is totally gone now. Thoeny installed himself as BDFL (Benevolvent Dictator for Life) again, despite being rejected by a community vote during the TWiki Summit in Berlin last month. <p /> During the TWiki Summit in Berlin 4+5 September 2008, it became clear that Thoeny has sold part of his trademark rights to his venture capital funded company. Part of that deal was that while he remains ownership on the trademark itself, TWIKI.NET gained the sole right to exploit the brand on a commercial basis. This created a completely new situation for the Open Source project and all of its already existing commercial eco-system. As a consequence, TWIKI.NET was asked to grant a perpetual license to the community to secure the legal situation for contributors and commercial stakeholders, a license that would only have formalized the way TWiki has been running for more than 10 years with Thoeny promising to "take care of the brand". <p /> As faith in him as a leader diminished over the years, and the foreboding of a trademark problem increased, the community asked Thoeny to write down the rights he has granted orally before. Which he didn't. Instead he pulled the trademark trigger in a move he calls "relaunching the project" to "weed out" the good and the bad. Trust in Thoeny as a leader diminished last but not least when his role as a community leader became more and more mixed up with his interests as a CTO of TWIKI.NET, up to the point where he obviously showed more interest to cement a genuine marketing advantage for TWIKI.NET. <p /> The rise of his newly created company continually eroded willingness to contribute to TWiki as an Open Source project. People were more and more irritated by the changed rules of the game. The community has been watching the actions of TWIKI.NET with a lot of interest, in the hope that they would add significant value to this very successful project. Unfortunately, they took an approach of recasting the success of the product, created with years of volunteer work, as their own success. <p /> That's where Open Source shows its ugliest face. And there's definitely no beauty in this shock therapy, even though Tom Barton, CEO of TWIKI.NET says: "the beautiful thing about open source is you don't need to recognize the authority of TWiki.net". What an irony to close another very sad chapter. The last one for TWiki.org as we knew it before. <p /> The appearance of TWIKI.NET on the scene forced a governance crisis TWiki was not able to overcome, despite the good progress that was made up to a couple of hours before. On the TWiki Summit in Berlin last month, a democratically elected Interim Board of Directors was founded whose sole agenda was to negotiate the conditions under which this governance crisis could have been overcome. <p /> The plan was to create a TWiki Association consisting of a Board of Directors and a General Assembly following the example of KDE e.V. The board itself would have created so called Task Teams that manage the operational part of the project to a finer granularity. <p /> The members of the Interim Board of Directors were in the process of creating the Articles of Association and were prepared for the next logical move in an ever growing project, organizing it similarly to other projects in the Open Source business. This formal body would also have been an entry path for sponsors and other organizations willing to partner with TWiki as a project. No such thing was available before. The only way outside parties could have made donations was to give them directly to Thoeny and thereby TWIKI.NET. <p /> This was the case when Sun donated server hardware to power the TWiki.org community site. Sun sponsored TWiki as an Open Source project, not TWIKI.NET. However, there was no entity other than Thoeny and TWIKI.NET to handle these opportunities and resources. It now is clear that the access to these server resource has been used against the TWiki community itself by locking it out. <p /> The democratically elected Interim Board of Directors of TWiki has been displaced by the trademark holder of TWiki as a final chord on the governance crisis. Now, Thoeny is sending around emails to high profile contributors individually to invite them to come back subordinate to the governance of TWIKI.NET. He obviously seems to be in hope that people will do so once the situation has settled. Quite far-fetched and not very likely to happen. Those same contributors who implemented the features he is praising aloud as the shiny new TWiki, are far too displeased by his hostile behavior to be willing to go back to business as usual. <p /> TWIKI.NET is striving to repaint their move as a "new opportunity". What they don't see is that they have put their own business case into severe danger. They just lost the horse power for a product that they were selling. They have been signaling to the community that they don't have the manpower for certain developments and were seeking for help, even willing to pay work for hire. Another error. Adding money as an incentive to Open Source is changing the game completely. Before, people volunteered as part of an act of free speech. Add money to it and nobody will work for free anymore. This poisoned the dynamics. <p /> The current situation is that all core developers have left the ship and joined a new undertaking with the working title NextWiki. This is a fork based on the current code in TWiki that will soon be released under a new name. The goals of NextWiki are clear. Basically, the plan is to found an Association as a formal body for the project, including the reorganization of its governance down to all operational questions, as was in progress for the TWiki project. <p /> The result will be a much strengthened new player, much more agile as it just got rid of the reason for TWiki's ongoing paralysis. <p /> There remains a message for TWiki's users: no worries, we continue working, faster and more productive than ever before, embedded in a volunteer-friendly environment. Sure, this fork now introduces a new choice that was not there before. Well, it <em>was</em> there before and it was introduced by TWIKI.NET, not those guys that "asked for a fork". TWiki users already had the choice between TWIKI.NET's product (a rebranded version of an old TWiki release, packaged as a VMware image), or Open Source TWiki, most recent stable version. This choice more or less remains available with the difference that you will get the real thing from a new site, reworked to be real Open Source, backed up by a large and highly motivated community as a guarantor for continuity and innovation. <p /> <p /><b>Tags</b>: <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=community" rel="tag">community</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=fork" rel="tag">fork</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=opensource" rel="tag">opensource</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=twiki" rel="tag">twiki</a> http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogEntry71 MichaelDaum 2008-08-04T10:23:00Z WikiWorld, OpenSource MichaelDaum This is the first patch release in the 4.2 cycle. Anybody using TWiki-4.2.0 is urged to upgrade. There've been some major bugfixes, some of which are even security related. <p /><div id="" class="imageFloat imageFloat_left " ><a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/pub/Blog/BlogImages/ZodiacLion.png" class="imageHref" title="ZodiacLion.png"><img border="0" src="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/pub/Blog/BlogImages/_120___ZodiacLion.png" alt="ZodiacLion.png" width="94" height="120" longdesc="ZodiacLion.png" /></a></div> There've been a lot of people that tried to integrate 4.2.0 into their LDAP infrastructure using one of the latest LdapContrib beta releases, and failed unfortunately. That's been a major headache for all of us and it turned out that 4.2.0 did a bad job refactoring its authentication and authorization code. While digging into the code we not only found it to be suboptimal in terms of performance and internal API, but also containing some sublte security bug when using non-alphabetic characters in a login name. That's been weeded out in 4.2.1 now. However, the latest LdapContrib betas will have to be rewritten once again to meet the changed internals of TWiki's user code. LdapContrib will continue to support TWiki-4.1.x, as well as TWiki-4.2.1 onwards, but not 4.2.0 as this simply was too buggy. <p /> Anyway, a lot of people take a deep breath of relief that this patch release finally made its way out into the field and we are now able to concentrate on the next major release rolling your way with yet more exciting stuff under the hood. <p /> Read on on what's new in this patch release, go get it <a href="http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Codev/DownloadTWiki" target="_top">here</a>. <p /> <p /><b>Tags</b>: <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=release" rel="tag">release</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=twiki" rel="tag">twiki</a> http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogEntry70 MichaelDaum 2008-06-18T13:13:00Z Humor MichaelDaum You probably already know the famous "... in plain english" videos by <a href="http://www.commoncraft.com/blog" target="_top">Lee LeFever</a> like <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogEntry67" class="twikiLink">Wikis in Plain English</a>. Okay, here's one other, this time not by Lee. That's an original by Ernie and Bert on the Sesame Street. Ernie is trying to group toys to decide who is going to clear the mess. Well, just see how he fails to come up with a classification to make it a fair job.<p /><div id="" class="imageFloat imageFloat_center " ><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch%3fv%3ddvTFv5xJUQc" class="imageHref" title="SesameStreetSnap1.png"><img border="0" src="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/pub/Blog/BlogImages/SesameStreetSnap1.png" alt="SesameStreetSnap1.png" width="437" height="330" longdesc="SesameStreetSnap1.png" /></a></div> <p /><b>Tags</b>: <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=classification" rel="tag">classification</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=collaboration" rel="tag">collaboration</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=knowledgemanagement" rel="tag">knowledgemanagement</a> http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogEntry69 MichaelDaum 2007-10-12T09:45:00Z BlogDev, WebDesign MichaelDaum Once again this site has been redesigned. Well, for 1 year, 4 months we had the ``black water'' theme, dark and quite special. This wasn't quite appropriate anymore as business expanded from that of a free lancing TWiki consultant to a real company. So enjoy the much improved current design.<p />This is much more corporate designing, although with a touch of irony and fun, much brighter. I first went to <a href="http://www.4templates.com" target="_top">4templates</a>, a great site for html, flash, logos and business cards, as I did not want to come up with a design all by myself. So I bought this one for a couple of bucks and finished it in TWiki/NatSkin. Infact, I had to rewrite it mostly, leaving only the basic idea and colorset in place. The package I downloaded from 4templates was coded too badly and surely was not fit to cover a CMS. In addition its imagery was targeted at a medical site, not an internet consultancy. However, I really liked the original design and its potential to be quite appropriate. <p /> Well, and then I went out and bought the michaeldaumconsulting.com domain to get away with using the wikiring.de domain for my own business. While the primary brand of this site is MD Consulting, the WikiRing will only be used as a secondary branding, as required by the Terms of Business for WikiRing partners. <p /> I moved over all the content and user accounts from the old JojoWiki blog in here as I didn't want to cut that off and all blogging happening here from now on will be in direct continuation of what was there, a mix of business related and personal news and opinions. <p /> So while the old JojoWiki site was a blog foremost, the MD Consulting site is much more of an corporate site, which happens to integrate a blog as well. <p /> I am not sure what I will do with the old JojoWiki theme. Maybe I am going to open source it as part of the NatSkin package. <p /> Ok, so this all is quite fresh and the MD theme for this site is not quite finished with some rough edges here and there. For those of you that use the <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/TWiki/NatSkinStyleBrowser" class="twikiLink">NatSkinStyleBrowser</a> to explore available designs you will experience that the markup of the current site does not fit 100% the standard css of NatSkin. That's mostly due to the reworked header art and logos for the MD theme. I will find a way around this soon. <p /> Last not least a message to all you rss feed readers: come along and visit this site ... and drop me a line of what you think. <p /><b>Tags</b>: <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=lookandfeel" rel="tag">lookandfeel</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=natskin" rel="tag">natskin</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=twiki" rel="tag">twiki</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=webdesign" rel="tag">webdesign</a> http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogEntry68 MichaelDaum 2007-10-02T16:00:00Z Feature, OpenSource MichaelDaum Here's one of my favorite bands, sharing videos on <a href="http://www.last.fm/music/The+Brand+New+Heavies/+videos/Stay+This+Way" target="_top">last.fm</a> recently. Too bad my Konqueror is having problems with gtk based browser plugins, such as flash, that are badly programmed and don't call gtk_init (or what was it) before using the toolkit. <p />So right now, any non-gtk applications using flash, e.g. Konqueror, freeze solid on ``flashed'' websites. Firefox, being a native gtk application, is ok however ... waiting for Debian. <p /> <center> <object width="340" height="289" id="player" classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,0,0" align="middle"> <param name="movie" value="http://cdn.last.fm/videoplayer/33/VideoPlayer.swf" /> <param name="menu" value="false" /> <param name="quality" value="high" /> <param name="bgcolor" value="#000000" /> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /> <param name="flashvars" value="embed=true&amp;creator=The+Brand+New+Heavies&amp;title=Stay+This+Way&amp;uniqueName=Stay+This+Way&amp;albumArt=http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00005A09M.01.MZZZZZZZ.jpg&amp;album=The+Brand+New+Heavies&amp;duration=246&amp;image=http://panther3.last.fm/storable/videocap/24929/0/original.jpg&amp;FSSupport=true" /> <embed src="http://cdn.last.fm/videoplayer/33/VideoPlayer.swf" menu="false" quality="high" bgcolor="#000000" width="340" height="289" name="player" align="middle" allowFullScreen="true" flashvars="embed=true&amp;creator=The+Brand+New+Heavies&amp;title=Stay+This+Way&amp;uniqueName=Stay+This+Way&amp;albumArt=http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00005A09M.01.MZZZZZZZ.jpg&amp;album=The+Brand+New+Heavies&amp;duration=246&amp;image=http://panther3.last.fm/storable/videocap/24929/0/original.jpg&amp;FSSupport=true" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" /> </object> <p /> <object width="340" height="289" id="player" classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,0,0" align="middle"> <param name="movie" value="http://cdn.last.fm/videoplayer/33/VideoPlayer.swf" /> <param name="menu" value="false" /> <param name="quality" value="high" /> <param name="bgcolor" value="#000000" /> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /> <param name="flashvars" value="embed=true&amp;creator=The+Brand+New+Heavies&amp;title=Never+Stop&amp;uniqueName=Never+Stop&amp;albumArt=http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/P/B00005B0E3.01._SCMZZZZZZZ_.jpg&amp;album=The+Acid+Jazz+Years&amp;duration=254&amp;image=http://panther3.last.fm/storable/videocap/24914/0/original.jpg&amp;FSSupport=true" /> <embed src="http://cdn.last.fm/videoplayer/33/VideoPlayer.swf" menu="false" quality="high" bgcolor="#000000" width="340" height="289" name="player" align="middle" allowFullScreen="true" flashvars="embed=true&amp;creator=The+Brand+New+Heavies&amp;title=Never+Stop&amp;uniqueName=Never+Stop&amp;albumArt=http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/P/B00005B0E3.01._SCMZZZZZZZ_.jpg&amp;album=The+Acid+Jazz+Years&amp;duration=254&amp;image=http://panther3.last.fm/storable/videocap/24914/0/original.jpg&amp;FSSupport=true" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" /> </object> <p /> <object width="340" height="289" id="player" classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,0,0" align="middle"> <param name="movie" value="http://cdn.last.fm/videoplayer/33/VideoPlayer.swf" /> <param name="menu" value="false" /> <param name="quality" value="high" /> <param name="bgcolor" value="#000000" /> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /> <param name="flashvars" value="embed=true&amp;creator=The+Brand+New+Heavies&amp;title=I+Don%27t+Know+Why+%28I+Love+You%29&amp;uniqueName=I+Don%27t+Know+Why+%28I+Love+You%29&amp;albumArt=http://cdn.last.fm/coverart/130x130/2473767.jpg&amp;album=Get+Used+to+It&amp;duration=215&amp;image=http://panther3.last.fm/storable/videocap/24906/0/original.jpg&amp;FSSupport=true" /> <embed src="http://cdn.last.fm/videoplayer/33/VideoPlayer.swf" menu="false" quality="high" bgcolor="#000000" width="340" height="289" name="player" align="middle" allowFullScreen="true" flashvars="embed=true&amp;creator=The+Brand+New+Heavies&amp;title=I+Don%27t+Know+Why+%28I+Love+You%29&amp;uniqueName=I+Don%27t+Know+Why+%28I+Love+You%29&amp;albumArt=http://cdn.last.fm/coverart/130x130/2473767.jpg&amp;album=Get+Used+to+It&amp;duration=215&amp;image=http://panther3.last.fm/storable/videocap/24906/0/original.jpg&amp;FSSupport=true" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" /> </object> </center> <p /> Last.fm is doing a great service! They've sent me an email notification that these videos are available on the base of my listening habits. <em>All</em> of the site is based on profiling their users, collecting data which song you played when etc. Maybe some day I will discover iTunes but it seems I am not ready for <em>that hype</em>. <p /> And did you know last.fm has got a wiki too? Here's what they <a href="http://www.last.fm/music/The+Brand+New+Heavies" target="_top">write about The Brand New Heavies</a>. <cite> The Brand New Heavies are an acid jazz and alternative hip hop group formed in 1985 in Ealing, a suburb of London, England. Originally an instrumental rare groove group, the Brand New Heavies gained a cult following in the London club scene and soon signed to Cooltempo as acid house replaced rare groove in clubs. </cite> Lots of their content is carried over from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brand_New_Heavies" target="_top">WikiPedia</a>. Let me guess, they don't sync their wikis if users write in one or the other places. <p /><b>Tags</b>: <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=browser" rel="tag">browser</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=debian" rel="tag">debian</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=firefox" rel="tag">firefox</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=funk" rel="tag">funk</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=gtk" rel="tag">gtk</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=jazz" rel="tag">jazz</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=konqueror" rel="tag">konqueror</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=music" rel="tag">music</a> http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogEntry67 MichaelDaum 2007-09-13T10:26:00Z WikiWorld MichaelDaum Just came across this nice <a href="http://www.commoncraft.com/video-wikis-plain-english" target="_top">posting</a> on <a href="http://www.commoncraft.com/blog" target="_top">Lee LeFever's blog</a> This is a 3:52 minutes video explaining how to manage project coordination using wikis instead of emails.<p /><div id="" class="imageFloat imageFloat_center " ><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch%3fv%3d-dnL00TdmLY" class="imageHref" title="YouTubeSnap2.png"><img border="0" src="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/pub/Blog/BlogImages/YouTubeSnap2.png" alt="YouTubeSnap2.png" width="426" height="342" longdesc="YouTubeSnap2.png" /></a></div> <p /> True, you could just meet in a nice pub nearby and talk everything through. But most of the time you are located in different areas, not having time to meet face 2 face. Other options are telephone conferences or web conferences. Still, wikis are simpler and more sustainable. Wikis are helpful for a wide range of applications for yourself only, a group of friends or for project management in a corporate environment. <p /><b>Tags</b>: <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=wikis" rel="tag">wikis</a> http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogEntry66 MichaelDaum 2007-02-12T14:27:00Z Feature MichaelDaum This is one of my long-time favorite sites, that I really enjoy to visit from time to time: a site full of music videos, old music videos.<p /><div id="" class="imageFloat imageFloat_left " ><a href="http://scopitones.com" class="imageHref" title="scopitones.com"><img border="0" src="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/pub/Blog/BlogImages/scopitones-header.gif" alt="scopitones-header.gif" width="160" height="50" longdesc="scopitones.com" /></a></div> This site, is dedicated to the origins of music videos presented in a kind of jukebox. The Scopitone Machine was invented in the early 1960ies in France using surplus World War II airplane parts. There <em>was</em> some forerunner of those ``color sound film viewers'' invented in Italy shortly before that. You can still buy a scopitones machine at ebay for ca. $1,200.00 ... <div id="" class="imageFloat imageFloat_right " ><a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/pub/Blog/BlogImages/scopitone-inc.jpeg" class="imageHref" title="scopitone-inc.jpeg"><img border="0" src="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/pub/Blog/BlogImages/_230___scopitone-inc.jpeg" alt="scopitone-inc.jpeg" width="230" height="303" longdesc="scopitone-inc.jpeg" /></a></div> Or download some of the clips from scopitones.com (is this legal?) and play them back using your laptop and a beamer on your next 60ies party. <p /> The funny thing about this video jukebox is that the players in those movies had to act in a rather restrained way because of the very narrow visual boundary of the video format. They are obviously not supported by nowadays professional choreographers ... even though those are also funny from a certain perspective. In the end, the machine was arranged in a corner of a bar with a little display on the top, not comparable with today's MTV productions (multiple cuts per seconds, fast moving cameras). After all, this is exactly the appeal of those old clips fanning your addiction to trash. I don't want to say that those clips are really trash. They are, but in a charming way. There's good trash and bad trash. Bad trash is one that you can't stand because it is so trashy. Good trash is cult. Maybe today's MTV trash will be cult in 40 years from now on. I don't know. <p /> Well, go ahead and give it a try and see for how long you can stand it. <p /><b>Tags</b>: <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=jazz" rel="tag">jazz</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=music" rel="tag">music</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=retro" rel="tag">retro</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=trash" rel="tag">trash</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=video" rel="tag">video</a> http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogEntry65 MichaelDaum 2007-01-12T17:53:00Z WikiWorld MichaelDaum There are lots of good blogs&amp;wikis out there that suffer from steady attacks of the spammers. <p /> <p />Simply set up a page that says ``Guestbook'' and you get loads of it. They buzz around the net like blowflies sh**. Anyway, I opened up this blog for anonymous commenting again in the hope that the newly installed <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/TWiki/AntiWikiSpamPlugin" class="twikiLink">AntiWikiSpamPlugin</a> will keep them away. <p /><b>Tags</b>: <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=blogs" rel="tag">blogs</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=plugin" rel="tag">plugin</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=spam" rel="tag">spam</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=wikis" rel="tag">wikis</a> http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogEntry64 MichaelDaum 2006-12-25T22:45:00Z TopNews MichaelDaum Our <a href="http://www.funky-stuff.com/" target="_top">Godfather of Soul</a> just died today in a hospital in Atlanta where he has been treated for a sever pneumonia.<p />This man and his music is one of the most important puzzle pieces in modern history of music. We love you. We thank you. <p /><b>Tags</b>: <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=funk" rel="tag">funk</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=jazz" rel="tag">jazz</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=music" rel="tag">music</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=obituary" rel="tag">obituary</a> http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogEntry63 MichaelDaum 2006-12-08T17:56:00Z BlogsWorld MichaelDaum Simple question: when is a blog gone?<p />There are obvious signs for a blog to have closed doors: the domain is gone, the site isn't hosting the blog anymore, there might be technical reasons like it being broken and not fixed for a longer time. There are also not so obvious signs, for example that there's no new posting for quite some time. This may be just because the owner is on a longer vacation trip ... away for new material to blog about. People stop blogging for very personal reasons. An old blog may have silently been superseeded by another one, where the writer is publishing now, forgetting about the former. Admitting that this blog is dead is not that easy as announcing a new one. So blogs die silently, and this is hard to find out automatically, e.g. by using a web crawler. <p /> You might know the proud stats by technorati about the number of new blogs that are claimed and the pings they receive per second, showing how the blogsphere is growing faster and faster, doubling in size every 5 months. <p /> But who is counting down? For instance, I quit jojowiki.dyndns.org and relaunched as micha.wikiring.de taking over the old content. I simply have no means to remove the record from technorati or even google. I can delete a blog claim, but it remains in the database of technorati. <p /> What about all those blogs that haven't updated for more than, let's say, one year. This is incredibly long, for me an obvious sign that those blogs are abandoned. Frankly, I'd kick out a blog if there've been no postings for 1/2 a year. <p /> Bottom line: most probably there <em>are</em> no 55 million blogs, active and maintained. As fine as it is that people start blogging, I am more interested to know when they stop and why. Will <em>you</em> still be blogging tomorrow? <p /><b>Tags</b>: <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=blogsphere" rel="tag">blogsphere</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=statistics" rel="tag">statistics</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=technorati" rel="tag">technorati</a> http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogEntry62 MichaelDaum 2006-12-07T09:41:00Z MichaelDaum <a href="http://www.cs.reading.ac.uk/people/J.Anderson.htm" target="_top">Dr. James Anderson</a>, from the University of Reading's computer science department solved the 1200 year old problem of dividing by zero, which results in a new number called ``nullity''.<p />So now if I divide something by nothing, nothing will happen anymore, as it is all nullity. Here's the full ``explanation'': <p /> <strong>Definition:</strong> <p /> <div id="" class="imageFloat imageFloat_none " ><a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/pub/Blog/BlogImages/NullityDef.png" class="imageHref" title="NullityDef.png"><img border="0" src="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/pub/Blog/BlogImages/NullityDef.png" alt="NullityDef.png" width="181" height="113" longdesc="NullityDef.png" /></a></div> <p /> <strong>Usage:</strong> <p /> <div id="" class="imageFloat imageFloat_none " ><a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/pub/Blog/BlogImages/NullityUsage.png" class="imageHref" title="NullityUsage.png"><img border="0" src="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/pub/Blog/BlogImages/NullityUsage.png" alt="NullityUsage.png" width="452" height="48" longdesc="NullityUsage.png" /></a></div> <p /> Nullity was first introduced in ``Representing Geometrical Knowledge'' <a href="http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1997RSPTB.352.1129A" target="_top">(Anderson 1997)</a>. See also ``Exact Numerical Computation of the Rational General Linear Transformations'' <a href="http://www.bookofparagon.com/Mathematics/SPIE.2002.Exact.pdf" target="_top">(Anderson 2002)</a> available in full text online. Or simply watch the a <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/berkshire/features/divide_zero_sum.ram" target="_top">video</a> of Mr. Anderson (nichname Neo) explaining it in short on a whiteboard. <p /> So the original publication was in 1997, already 9 years ago. Nevertheless, the new number is still a newcomer compared to all the others. And it will possibly take some time till nullity will be integrated into everyday's electronic devices. A good start would be to translate the ``division by zero'' error message into something like ``can't handle nullity'' in all kind of languages. <p /> <h3><a name="Update_08_Dec_2006"></a><a name="Update_08_Dec_2006_"></a> Update (08 Dec 2006) </h3> From <a href="http://www.bookofparagon.com/News/News_00012.htm" target="_top">Book of Paragon: Transreal Arithmetic and Analysis</a>: <cite> Two papers have been released. The first paper, <a href="http://www.bookofparagon.com/Mathematics/PerspexMachineVIII.pdf" target="_top">Perspex Machine VIII: Axioms of Transreal Arithmetic</a> describes how to divide by zero consistently in a non-trivial way. This shows that division by zero is no longer an error. Amongst other things, the paper explains why the standard model of arithmetic is not valid. The second paper, <a href="http://www.bookofparagon.com/Mathematics/PerspexMachineIX.pdf" target="_top">Perspex Machine IX: Transreal Analysis</a> explains how to extend calculus so that it works with transreal numbers. This paper disposes of various counter "proofs" that attempt to show that division by zero is impossible. The paper ends with a very simple equation demonstrating the possibility of division by zero and challenges the reader to accept it. </cite> <p /><b>Tags</b>: <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=maths" rel="tag">maths</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=nullity" rel="tag">nullity</a> http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogEntry61 MichaelDaum 2006-11-23T11:40:00Z Feature, WikiRing MichaelDaum <a href="http://o3spaces.org" target="_top">O³Spaces</a> is a young company from the Netherlands that puts forth a document collaboration and management solution for OpenOffice rivaling Microsoft's SharePoint.<p />You may either work completely from within the office suite that will take care of basic workflows as well as versioning of documents you work on during a session. It also comes with an AJAX base web client. In the background there's a J2EE based server built on top of Apache Tomcat and the PostgreSQL that takes care of the document store. <p /> They've got a time restricted demo VMware appliance that you can download <a href="http://o3spaces.org/Page/sp19/nctrue/index.html" target="_top">here</a>. They've got a short <a href="http://o3spaces.org/Page/nctrue/popup/vt=1/index.html" target="_top">presentation video</a> that shows the basics of the web client. <p /> <div id="" class="imageFrame imageFrame_left " ><a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/pub/Blog/BlogImages/O3SpacesSnap1.png" class="imageHref" title="O3SpacesSnap1.png"><img border="0" src="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/pub/Blog/BlogImages/_200___O3SpacesSnap1.png" alt="O3SpacesSnap1.png" width="200" height="135" longdesc="O3SpacesSnap1.png" /></a></div> A nice idea is to deliberately <em>open</em> a workspace and get a tab at the bottom for it. A workspace in a way maps on TWiki's webs. But instead of having to deal with all webs at the same time every user can just open ``his'' workspaces in O3Spaces and concentrate on them. Despite all the technical merits that come with O3Spaces I like those little usability improvements that make a big difference. <p /> The portal page of a workspace is build up from little areas where specific information is listed (latest changes, recent comments, etc). But why do they have to create yet another <code>XXXlet</code> name for it: ``Spacelets'' from the outer regions of Ursa Minor. So spacelets are in a way <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portlets" target="_top">portlets</a>. Besides other conceptual parallels, they share the same potential for gooseflesh. <p /> The screenshot shows three pulldown menus to select a workspace, files and discussions in it ... which makes me wonder how this interface scales when the number of documents and discussions in it grows. Unfortunately the presentation does not show how documents can be organized, e.g. classifying and tagging them. The spacelets only show latest changes but don't provide a path to find ``relevant'' information whatever that is. So as good as O3Spaces might be in collaborative document <em>creation</em> it may lack components essential to <em>manage</em> long-term knowledge. <p /> Anyway, go ahead download the test version and make up your own mind. <p /><b>Tags</b>: <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=collaboration" rel="tag">collaboration</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=office" rel="tag">office</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=othreespaces" rel="tag">othreespaces</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=vmware" rel="tag">vmware</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=webapp" rel="tag">webapp</a> http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogEntry60 MichaelDaum 2006-11-15T09:28:00Z Technology MichaelDaum There's lots of robot research to make them more autonomous, that is implement devices that not only classify sensory input accurately but also get active, e.g. shoot you. Unfortunately these devices are not yet available for a reasonable price: 200.000 US-Dollar for the latest Armed Security Guard Robot made in Korea. Maybe I just wait and see when they show up on ebay.<p /><div id="" class="imageFrame imageFrame_none " ><a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/pub/Blog/BlogImages/SGR-A1.gif" class="imageHref" title="SGR-A1.gif"><img border="0" src="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/pub/Blog/BlogImages/SGR-A1.gif" alt="SGR-A1.gif" width="214" height="259" longdesc="SGR-A1.gif" /></a></div> I especially like the SGR-A1 model made by Samsung. It moves it's head 180° including its sensors and the weapons. It can be armed with different kinds of machine guns, it can recognize humans, animals or vehicles within a range of 2km at daytimes and 1k radius at night. It can then distinguish between friend and foe and will shoot autonomously after warning you first. For security reasons it has a password that it will understand up to a distance of 10 meters, given you make it so far. This is newest technology from Korea and I am not sure if non-korean passwords will work too. They didn't mention that detail. I also hope that the loudspeakers to blast out the warning (a nice femail voice btw) are capable enough before these robots enter combat mode. I can imagine that when they finished equipping the Korean border with a line of SGR-A1s that things will be quite noisy. So a femail voice warning you first before shooting might be missed, right? I just try to picture these things in real life. Oh, yea these robots can be driven using a joystick and/or a touch screen. But you don't have to. That's the whole point. <p /> Well, it seems so as if lots of other things might not follow the same plot as being faced with a human guard. There might be an interesting market for silly counter actions against autonomous robots as there are no rules like in robo-cup. <p /> Are you interested in getting one to protect your front garden? Maybe you'd like to <a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xg078_robot-sentinella" target="_top">watch a movie first</a> and then decide. The soundtrack is available separately. And yes, some computer games need to catch up. <p /> Some links: <ul> <li> <a href="http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/23/23972/1.html" target="_top">Kampfroboter zum Schutz von Grenzen, Flughäfen oder Pipelines</a> </li> <li> <a href="http://www.samsungtechwin.com/product/features/dep/SSsystem_e/SSsystem.html" target="_top">Samsung SGR-A1 Security System</a> </li> <li> <a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xg078_robot-sentinella" target="_top">Video</a> </li> <li> <a href="http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200609/200609280023.html" target="_top">Biz/Tech: Korea Develops Armed Security Guard Robot </a> </li> <li> <a href="http://www.korea.edu/academics/01co_14.php" target="_top">College of Science and Technology, Korea University: Brining theory to life</a> </li> <li> <a href="http://www.korea.edu/academics/01co_07.php" target="_top">College of Engineering, Korea University: Building a better world</a> <p /><b>Tags</b>: <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=intelligence" rel="tag">intelligence</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=research" rel="tag">research</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=robots" rel="tag">robots</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=science" rel="tag">science</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=war" rel="tag">war</a> </li></ul> http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogEntry59 MichaelDaum 2006-11-14T21:24:00Z BlogsWorld MichaelDaum Found it on the <a href="http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/" target="_top">Creating Passionate Users</a> blog. Just want to share this one with you. <p /><div id="" class="imageFrame imageFrame_center " ><a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/pub/Blog/BlogImages/thatiscool.jpg" class="imageHref" title="thatiscool.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/pub/Blog/BlogImages/thatiscool.jpg" alt="thatiscool.jpg" width="418" height="524" longdesc="thatiscool.jpg" /></a></div> <p /> Read the full posting <a href="http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/11/two_simple_word.html" target="_top">here</a>. <p /><b>Tags</b>: <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=design" rel="tag">design</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=passion" rel="tag">passion</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=usability" rel="tag">usability</a> http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogEntry58 MichaelDaum 2006-11-14T08:27:00Z OpenSource, Rant MichaelDaum Tell me, who cares. I don't as there are better platforms to develop software with <em>and</em> have been in the hands of fossies for quite some time now. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols asks <a href="http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS4045253737.html" target="_top">whether Java's move to GPL is too late?</a> and my answer is a firm ``Yes, Sir.'' I don't care what took them so long to make that step. <p />They f***ed all those people for nearly a decade that tried to cooperate with them to get Java running on different platforms than Windows. If you followed the history of <a href="http://www.blackdown.org" target="_top">Blackdown Java 2</a> you know how stingy Sun has always been to answer technical questions that these guys asked again and again without getting a sufficient answer. Blackdown tried hard to cooperate with Sun to bring Java to Linux but their stack was never a vital alternative to using the original distribution downloadable by Sun for free (as in free beer). And programmers that first of all want to get their <em>own</em> problems solved don't care as you simply risk to get fired for using non-standard tools if things go belly up due to incompatibilities between different Java engines. For a long long time there was a pressure to get a free Java implementation. Just count the lines of code other people where willing to write just to get around using Sun's Java. Good code, that will probably never flow back into an open sourced Java. <p /> Yes, Java and all its APIs still runs best on Windows, Microsoft not being a particular friend of Sun and vice versa as you know. Nevertheless, Sun developed Java for Windows first as this is the biggest market. They always had to catch up with the underlying operating system and its moving APIs trying to lock out competitors. That surely was not cheap. <p /> One of Java's key selling point has always been platform independence: ``write once -- run everywhere''. So far the theory but things are always different in real life. <a href="http://www.trolltech.com" target="_top">Trolltech</a> had a nice twist on that meme rephrasing it ``with write once -- <em>compile</em> everywhere''. The differences between both approaches to platform independence are compelling. Java plain fails to run on multiple platforms for technical reasons or just because Sun did not deliver the equivalent software stack for other platforms than Windows; Java is slow as its byte code is still to be interpreted by a virtual engine even though you need a separate compile step. Qt, Trolltech's key product, on the other hand, is simply yet another library you link your programs against the result of which is a highly optimized executable. And you can do so on whatever platform <em>you</em> decide to support. Plus the code is more efficient. I could go on comparing Java's APIs with Qt for quite some time where Qt wins hands down, e.g. library design. But let's stop here. <p /> In some respects Java on servers has to be judged differently than in browsers or on the desktop. Let me make it short: it is OK on servers but sucks everywhere else. Applets are dead. Swing sucks. It is too complicated. It looks bad. It is ugly, out of the box. It does not integrate with the rest of your desktop. If it does then it only integrates with a Windows desktop. Fonts are a nightmare. Themability and skinnability of its widgets is voodoo -- at least to me. <p /> Next point: who is interested not only going to looking at the masses of source code but also understand and fix it? The anonymous Open Source masses? This project is much too large now to. It was locked away for too long. Things are fine if a community is given a chance to mature and grow as the software does it is grouped around. This is obviously not the case for Java. Just have a look at Open Office or Firefox. These projects have big big problems to get more coders involved, people that not only work around symptoms but understand and fix the underlying issues besides envision sensible enhancements. How many coders work on Firefox? Who is currently investigating <a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=154892" target="_top">buggy printing</a>? How long does that bug persist? Is this issue being a key feature for browsers really 6 years, 10 months, 5 days, 22 hours, 2 minutes old with a long thread of comments circling around it. To be fair, we all have such bugs buried in you bug tracker too. But hey printing is so essential ... gosh. <p /> One comment from a guy called Wells dating back to 2006-10-13 reads like this: <cite> While I wish I had the skills necessary to fix a bug like this I don't, but I have hung around now a year and a half to see what would happen and I find this bug an excellent case study in the Cathedral and Bazaar model of software development. It seems to defy traditional claims that the bazaar model is a superior development model when it comes to fixing top100 rated bugs. The wider community has not hunkered down and come up with a fix to this critical printing problem. Now the bug fix is slated for Firefox 3, if we should be so lucky. Keep up the good work! </cite> Not quite encouraging, eh? Don't forget that this browser has its own knotty history and this particular bug may be a good indicator of what the situation currently is for the Firefox project. As I trust in history I expect things to be even worse for Java. The community already moved on to different techniques. Will it come back to Java? Let's place a bet on ``no''. <p /><b>Tags</b>: <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=community" rel="tag">community</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=firefox" rel="tag">firefox</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=java" rel="tag">java</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=linux" rel="tag">linux</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=microsoft" rel="tag">microsoft</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=qt" rel="tag">qt</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=trolltech" rel="tag">trolltech</a> http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogEntry57 MichaelDaum 2006-11-13T11:51:00Z WikiRing MichaelDaum The <a href="http://blog.wikiring.com" target="_top">WikiRing</a> has entered the blog sphere finally. Are we too late?<p />Well, it depends. Everybody has a blog. So at least it seems so. And now it is our turn to start <strike>babbling</strike> blogging. But we will not be talking about our personal daily struggle to survive life. Moreover, we -- the WikiRing partners -- are all working on very exciting stuff right now and want to keep you informed about it. We will not or even can not talk about <em>every</em> project that we are on right now but give you pieces of sugar from time to time even before we finally release things making it <em>downloadable</em>. We will also talk about things interesting for our clients as well as feature projects once they are finished. <p /> The first posting is by Sven <a href="http://blog.wikiring.com/Blog/BlogEntry3" target="_top">"TWiki skin demo using Css Zen Garden"</a> showing a new approach to customize TWiki easily using pre-existing art work. <p /> More to come. Stay tuned. (Could not resist those memes). <p /><b>Tags</b>: <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=lookandfeel" rel="tag">lookandfeel</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=twiki" rel="tag">twiki</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=webdesign" rel="tag">webdesign</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=wikiring" rel="tag">wikiring</a> http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogEntry56 MichaelDaum 2006-11-02T17:04:00Z WikiWorld MichaelDaum Well JotSpot is very similar to TWiki but now TWiki is very similar to JotSpot too.<p /><div id="" class="imageFloat imageFloat_left " ><a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/pub/Blog/BlogImages/NotSpotTWiki.gif" class="imageHref" title="NotSpotTWiki.gif"><img border="0" src="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/pub/Blog/BlogImages/NotSpotTWiki.gif" alt="NotSpotTWiki.gif" width="165" height="40" longdesc="NotSpotTWiki.gif" /></a></div> Could not resist in all that hype about Google acquiring JotSpot and made a quick shot in putting together a bit of css to style this site jotspottish but still use TWiki. So even when I can't afford JotSpot at least I can pretend I was using this great wiki that learned so much from TWiki itself. <p /> <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Main/JotSpotStyleContrib" class="twikiLink">Here</a> is a demo page to show some of the elements being covered by the style til now. I am not trying to make it complete and cover every dialog but just as a demonstration ... and a reason for a story with a little different twist. <p /> Congrats to Joe Kraus for making a living selling his company. <p /> <h3><a name="Update_2006_11_08"></a> Update 2006-11-08 </h3> Ok we had our fun. Now I want my own theme back. Here's a screenshot of what the jotspot style looks like if enabled: <p /> <div id="" class="imageFloat imageFloat_center " ><a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/pub/Blog/BlogImages/NotSpotTWiki.png" class="imageHref" title="NotSpotTWiki.png"><img border="0" src="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/pub/Blog/BlogImages/_400___NotSpotTWiki.png" alt="NotSpotTWiki.png" width="400" height="345" longdesc="NotSpotTWiki.png" /></a></div> <p /> The permalink to this posting will be displayed using the jotspot style while the remaining site goes back to normal operation. <p /><b>Tags</b>: <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=jotspot" rel="tag">jotspot</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=lookandfeel" rel="tag">lookandfeel</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=twiki" rel="tag">twiki</a> http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogEntry55 MichaelDaum 2006-10-27T15:11:00Z OpenSource MichaelDaum Read this <a href="http://www.redhat.com/promo/unfakeable/" target="_top">unfakable posting</a>, a first in a series of ``promo'' writings by Red Hat as a reaction on Oracle's recent moves in the Linux market.<p />Weird, isn't it. This reaction is really not helpful and may backfire soon. Is there truth in FUD? And btw Red Hat is not Linux in itself. But you knew that already. <p /><b>Tags</b>: <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=linux" rel="tag">linux</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=opensource" rel="tag">opensource</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=oracle" rel="tag">oracle</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=redhat" rel="tag">redhat</a> http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogEntry54 MichaelDaum 2006-10-26T07:42:00Z OpenSource MichaelDaum Thanks for Firefox 2.0 ... well and also thanks for IE 7.0. These two browsers really create a hugh bow wave. Yet, I still prefer this KDE browser called Konqueror that matures in their slipstream. You may be inclined to call me a pighead. Permission granted. <p /> <p /><div id="" class="imageFloat imageFloat_right " ><a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/pub/Blog/BlogImages/FirefoxLogo.png" class="imageHref" title="FirefoxLogo.png"><img border="0" src="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/pub/Blog/BlogImages/_124___FirefoxLogo.png" alt="FirefoxLogo.png" width="124" height="119" longdesc="FirefoxLogo.png" /></a></div> Any improvements in browser technology is good news to web developers, especially if a new release is so long overdue as in IE's case. I am not about to compare IE to Firefox here as this has been done already enough for my taste and I will have to find out the new quirks in these browsers the hard way by my self anyway. However, let's compare Firefox 2.0 to Konqueror on some little details ... not the big picture but only on some details I find important: the usability of editting in textareas. <p /> So far I really appreciate the new <strong>spell checker</strong> and <strong>searching in textareas</strong>. This is great news for wikis! Sorry, but I have to tell you, who most probably never tried Konqueror, that it has spell checking and searching in textareas for ... I don't know for how long. Au contrair: I was very astound when I found out that I was <em>not</em> able to search in textareas in previous releases of Firefox. A further comparison between Firefox and Konqueror shows that while both can search, only the latter can also <strong>search+replace in textareas</strong>, a feature I am very used to. <p /> <div id="" class="imageFloat imageFloat_left " ><a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/pub/Blog/BlogImages/kde-logo.png" class="imageHref" title="kde-logo.png"><img border="0" src="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/pub/Blog/BlogImages/_124___kde-logo.png" alt="kde-logo.png" width="124" height="124" longdesc="kde-logo.png" /></a></div> The <strong>right-click menu</strong> of textareas in Firefox does not show the ability to start a search. You have to go to "Edit" in the menubar to do so or hit the keyboard shortcuts (ctrl+f). While Konqueror does show the "Find" in both places - the right-click menu as well as in the "Edit" menu of the window - Konqueror fails to search in the right place, that is the textarea which has input focus currently. It just takes some arbitrary other input field in the window. Firefox will always search the complete page including all textareas and will start the search from the cursor position, i.e. in the textarea where I am editting currently. This is perfect. Konqueror will do so too but don't continue search on the rest of the page and in other text fields. You have to click onto each to change the input focus and start a new search there. But unfortunately changing input focus will also lose search history (the list of terms I searched for recently). So I have to type in the same query once again. <p /> Apropos <strong>spell checking</strong>. Both show their ability to do so in the right-click menu. I really like the easiness how to switch between dictionaries using Firefox. I also love to right-click on misspelled words and get suggested corrections including the ability to add a word to the dictionary. I can't right-click on misspelled words in textareas in Konqueror and I can't understand why as I this feature <em>is</em> present in other text components in KDE, e.g. KMail. <p /> Firefox highlights misspelled words using a red curly line underneath just the way we are used to in fullfledged word processing programs. For some people this red line may be too invisible to be noticed. It is OK for me but in general it could be a little more visible. Konqueror colors the complete word in red which is much more visible but may get a bit obstructive if you edit wiki markup and lots of words that are not in the dictionary and you won't add them ... as they are simply markup. What I have not found out so far is if there is a way to change the way spelling errors are displayed, maybe using css. <p /> Another difference in that area is that while Konqueror has a separate dialog to start a complete top-down spell checking session on the complete textarea there does not seem to exist a similar feature in Firefox. For now I have to scroll down the text and watch out for little red curly lines and right-click on each of them. No good. But Konqueror's spell checking dialog is really a mess of a widget layout ... and this envisaging bug exists for ... in don't know for how long. Missing also is a kind of summary of all existing spelling errors before I start corrections one after the other and a way to repeat my correction on same instances of misspelling. Am I demanding too much? Don't think so as this feature is already present in the KDE framework elsewhere and hey this is all about recycling components, isn't it. <p /> Alright, nobody is perfect, some are better, best or even <a href="http://www.boingboing.net/2006/10/25/firefox_2_config_twe.html" target="_top">bester</a>. Konqueror is still my first choice ... which may not be justified given the above comparison. <p /><b>Tags</b>: <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=browser" rel="tag">browser</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=firefox" rel="tag">firefox</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=konqueror" rel="tag">konqueror</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=usability" rel="tag">usability</a> http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogEntry36 MichaelDaum 2006-10-18T10:34:00Z Feature, Humor MichaelDaum Guy's I love it. Here's the <a href="http://66.225.205.46:80" target="_top">radio stream</a>. Robert LeRoy Ripley died just 59 years, 11 months, 2 weeks, 6 days ago. Admitted, I come a bit late. Anyway. May he RIP.<p /><div id="" class="imageFloat imageFloat_none " ><a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/pub/Blog/BlogImages/RipleysBelieveItOrNot.gif" class="imageHref" title="RipleysBelieveItOrNot.gif"><img border="0" src="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/pub/Blog/BlogImages/RipleysBelieveItOrNot.gif" alt="RipleysBelieveItOrNot.gif" width="400" height="90" longdesc="RipleysBelieveItOrNot.gif" /></a></div> <p /> From <a href="http://http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripley's_Believe_It_or_Not!" target="_top">wikipedia</a> <cite> Ripley's Believe It or Not! is a franchise which deals in bizarre events and items so strange and unusual that readers might question the claims. The Believe It or Not franchise started in 1918 as a newspaper cartoon panel featuring unusual and startling facts from around the world. Conceived and drawn by Robert Ripley, the panel proved popular and was later adapted into a wide variety of formats, including radio, television, a chain of museums, a book series and a pinball game (produced by Stern Pinball, Inc.). The Ripley collection includes 20,000 photographs, 20,000 artifacts and more than 130,000 cartoon panels. With 50-plus attractions, the Orlando-based Ripley Entertainment, Inc., a division of the Jim Pattison Group, is a global company with an annual attendance of more than 12 million guests. Ripley Entertainment's publishing and broadcast divisions oversee numerous projects, including the syndicated TV series, the newspaper cartoon panel, books, posters, games and mobile phone content. </cite> <p /> And more so from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Ripley" target="_top">here</a>: <cite> Robert LeRoy Ripley (December 25, 1890 - May 27, 1949) was an entrepreneur, anthropologist and cartoonist who created the world famous Ripley's Believe It or Not! series. </cite> <p /> What's your favorite <em>Believe-It-Or-Not</em> story? <p /><b>Tags</b>: <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=jazz" rel="tag">jazz</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=music" rel="tag">music</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=radio" rel="tag">radio</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=retro" rel="tag">retro</a>, <a href="http://michaeldaumconsulting.com/Blog/BlogArchive?mode=tag&amp;search=stream" rel="tag">stream</a>