Category Archives: Tablet PC Thoughts

Adam Curry … the Father of Podcasting!

Posted on by
Reply

I know that this is somewhat old news … almost two months … but I
am now catching up on my blogging after completing the first cut of my
new tool. (Yeah … I know … I’m talking so much about a stinkin’
tool for posting to Blogger and Blogspot from Radio Userland
!)

I thought this was a great post for Tablet PC vendors when you get a guy like Adam Curry
to start using Windows on a Tablet PC.  For those who don’t know,
Adam has been hanging out with the Father of Blogging – Dave Winer –
for a long time, and can be considered – IMHO – the Father of
Podcasting.  I’m glad to see him using a Tablet PC and look
forward to more of his writing about it!

If you can’t join them….
Just so you know, I’ve been assimilated. I’ve been learning how to use
my new tablet PC for the past two days. I have to admit, pretty spiffy!
Not only that, but this windows stuff runs some pretty interesting
software. I’m digging the intricacy of sparks. [Adam Curry’s Weblog]

Table PC RSS Feeds

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve been wanting to post this for some time now, but didn’t have my
nifty tool to make the post.  Now that I’ve completed my
Radio-to-Atom posting tool, I can get things in gear on getting
information out on this blog.

This was a comment by Scoble about some new sources of Tablet PC information via RSS … some good feeds.

Chris does Tablet PC newsgroup RSS feeds.

Chris De Herrera has built RSS feeds for the Tablet PC newsgroups. That’s cool. Now I can watch what people in those newsgroups are saying in my aggregator.

[Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger]

The first post with my RadioAtomBridge tool

Posted on by
Reply

Well … I appreciate everyone tolerating my flurry of test posts
tonight.  I am close to having completed my tool that allows me to
now post from Radio Userland
to my Blogger.com and Blogspot.com weblogs. 
This tool installs into Radio, and allows me to write off-line and then
post to my weblogs using the Atom API web services.

This post will tell me if I have it figured out.  It’s not perfect
… there is still one thing that I have to resolve, but it ought to be
functional for now!

Thanks again …

More Radio Hacking

Posted on by
Reply

I am still doing some experimentation with Radio Userland
after my success
last night.  I know … a lot of people don’t understand what the
big deal is … but this is more research that I am doing into the
future of blogging, and various blogging tools.

For a long time I have been looking at how to create the ultimate
blogging tool … a way to be able to post to numerous blogs – both
public and private – easily from one tool.  I’m now getting closer
to the model that I want … and will then be able to see which
implementation wins.

This post is actually a test of some other minor changes (damage?) that
I made to Radio this morning … I talked with Steve Kirks at Userland
and he gave me some very good tips.

Posting to Blogger/Blogspot using the Atom API

Posted on by
Reply

Ok … I was able to get my first “test” post through late last night
… well … early this morning.  I now have a basic framework of
code for Radio that is able to post to Blogger.com or Blogspot.com using the Atom API.  Woo hoo!

I do not yet have this completed for redistribution … but soon
will.  I was able to do this by creating hacked copies of Dave
Winer’s blogger.newPost methods, and creating a blogger.newAtomPost
method.  I did one quick test post, and then headed to bed. 
There are a couple of bugs that I have to work out, and then I was to
see if I can hack this into the #upstream.xml
file processing.  I’d like to simply be able to put a line in the
#upstream.xml file that indicates that I want to upstream using the
Atom API.

If not, then I’ll still end up creating a seperate tool that will be a fork of the xManilaBloggerBridge
tool written by Steve Hooker.  Fun stuff … I’m glad that I took
the time to write this … it was a good learning experience.

P.S. For anyone who wants to use the xManilaBloggerBridge tool with
Radio and Blogger, I found that there are two core changes to get this
working … I had to search for “metaWeblog.” and comment out the calls
to these methods, and then look right next to them and un-comment the
“blogger.” methods.  Once I had done this, the basic Blogger API
stuff started to work just fine.  There is not support for
‘titles’ in the Blogger API though … this is why I pursued the Atom
API support.

Posting to Blogspot using Radio

Posted on by
Reply

I am trying to get my blogging tool – Radio – to post to Blogspot …
and I think that I just got it working.  I’m going to do some
experimentation over the next few days, but this first test
worked.  I was able to get a tool called the xManilaBlogger
Bridge, and then hack the code to get it to use the Bloggr API.

At some point in the future I’ll be modifying the code to see if I am
get this same tool using the Atom API … this will allow me to add
titles, etc.

Cool … this will make it so much easier to keep my Tablet PC Thoughts blog going …

Busy with projects …

Posted on by
Reply

I noticed that I am *WAY* behind in my blog reading, and posting. I’ve
been having a blast and just too busy with life in general … it just
hasn’t been a priority. Besides spending time with the family, I’ve
been working on:

  • My full time job at “Agilix Labs”. We are well into our partnership with Blackboard, and are deep into the development of our next generation of the product. GoBinder
    is going to end up being a very fun project. With our next gen
    product, it will become a fully open and dynamic platform for education
    and work. Our SDK will open up GoBinder to allow for the addition
    of custom pages and capabilities. I can’t wait for the next
    builds to come together.
  • Cell Phone Services – I’m working on two projects in this space
    that are coming together nicely. And they both interelate and
    have the ability to support each other. One is related to social
    networking, and then other is a information service … I’m n ot going
    to say much more for now … but we now have operational web sites.
  • Zombie Tracking – I have a prototype of my system for tracking
    and reproting on suspected zombie machines on the Internet. I now
    have 10 of my hosts reporting in to my central collection system and
    basic reporting working. The information that I am gathering is
    interesting already, and I’m not even done yet. I have a lot more
    to do here … but I want to complete the cell phone services first.
  • Wireless Hot Spots – I’m still working on the NoCat open source
    project, and have recently begun the process of integrating my changes
    into the core release. I’m also working with Schuyler at NoCat to
    get the NoCatSplash project completed with full captive and passive
    support.

So … with all of this going on … it’s easy to fall behind in
reading and posting. I’ve actually enjoyed getting back into
coding and have been writing a good bit of Perl and PHP again … doing
some REST web services … and playing on the Internet in
general. Fun stuff.

SCORM and eLearning

Posted on by
Reply

In my new job at “Agilix Labs” I have been introduced a lot of new –
and unknown to me – electronic learning technologies. We have
recently partnered with Blackboard, one of the leading creators of e-Education software and systems. I have also been educated about WebCT, another leader in this same space. In the Open Source community, there are also Open Source solutions like Sakai that are gaining ground at various higher education facilities.

Overall, I had no idea that so much was going on in the automation and
computerization of education systems. Of course it only makes
sense, but it is the extent of it – and the growing maturity – that I
was oblivious to.

Today I was quickly educated about SCORM
– the Sharable Courseware Object Reference Model. Amazing.
There is a good SCORM “brief description” here. It is actually a rich specification for the creation of courseware –
educational software – that includes the course material, coupled with
exercises and exams (assessments), and even some metadata about the
“flow” of the course – the order that students have to accomplish
different parts before progressing, and even scores that must be
attained – along with where to send the results.

I had my first demonstration of SCORM today in the form of a government
course being given by the Navel Postgraduate School. It was
pretty cool … a .zip file contained the entire SCORM course
(something on marine navigation) and once loaded into Blackboard there
was all of the course material, the exams, and for the student a way to
begin learning.

AJAX and Smart Clients

Posted on by
Reply

I always think that it’s funny how people want to say that it’s
either/or. As someone who has been working with AJAX application
development for years, I’ll say that AJAX has it’s share of
issues. At the same time I’ll say that I can’t understand why
more web sites are not using AJAX!

AJAX provides a very rich and usable interface for web-based
applications. As both Internet Explorer and Mozilla/Firefox both
now support extremely rich DOM interfaces, and lots of support of lots
of standards, most web sites could be offering a lot more functionality
to their visitors. Another huge advantage of AJAX is impact on
servers. A good developer can take lot of load off their servers,
and improve response time, by pushing more computing down to the client
machine.

Smart Clients, however, are the future for many applications.
This is most evident with e-mail … probably the most ubiquitous
“Smart Client” application on the planet. We run our e-mail
application, and bring all of the mail down to a cache on our local
hard disk. We can read and write e-mail any time and any place
… connected or disconnected … and later synchronize to the servers.

In any case … it’s not about either/or … instead both of these
models are simply enhancements of what we are already using. Both
AJAX and Smart Clients are going to be with us for a while!

Mary Jo Foley reports on AJAX vs. SmartClient debate.

Mary Jo Foley: Could AJAX Wash Away ‘Smart Clients?’

[Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger]