New blog address

http://brunovernay.blogspot.com/ !!

Open Source Social Networks

Most of the Social Network sites are not Open Source : FaceBook, Plaxo, MySpace, Last.fm, LinkedIn …
I searched for some and here is what I found so far :

• Mugshot is an open project sponsored by Red Hat.
• Elgg looks more like a CMS/blogging platform. But you have to install your own.
• Barnraiser the tools you need to take control of your identity and social network on the web. AROUNDMe is a suite of social tools; a social toolkit from which you can build your Internet identity, create networks and contribute to collaborative environments. Need to search more.
• The Appleseed Project is an effort to create open source Social Networking software that is based on a distributed model.

Obviously, it needs more work

Will Human Laziness Burst The Web 2.0 Bubble ?

Interesting article from Seth Porges on CrunchGear :
Will Human Laziness Burst The Web 2.0 Bubble ?

The comments are worth reading too, to mitigate his opinion.

How do Ninjas raise their children?

From the dead…
http://askaninja.com/

I remember a french translation : “I am a mute death but I can read on your lips” : Je suis un mutant de la mort, mais je peux lire dans tes entrailles. Which gives “I am a mutant of the dead, but I can read in your entrails” … DrunkAndRetired.com would appreciate, I suppose.

Push Ajax lost in buzz noise

I watched the Webcast : Ajax Push and Collaborative Enterprise Applications - Vendor Webcast about the ICEfaces framework.
Two remarks :

• It is very long : more than 1 hour ! In the same amount of time, I could have read a (good) article and have some entertainment. The WebCast format didn’t convince me, but to be fair I don’t think I was the intended audience for this one, even if I learned a big news.
• I didn’t know about the non-blocking IO solution ! This is big and great ! Looks like AJAX buzz made so much noise that this information get lost to me !

It is big in that it involves changes in the Servlet handling level. There are explanation here : Ajax, Comet and Jetty

Before that, what was called “push” was in fact a regular polling of the server. Now, it isn’t still a real push : the server doesn’t initiate the connection to the client. But the result is about the same, the browser send an asynchronous request to the server and only when it is needed, the server will send the answer. If the connexion timeout, the javascript simply send the request again.
With traditional J2EE this wasn’t possible since each connexion is handled by a thread, now with non-blocking connexion, it is feasible. A good point is that ICEFaces is free and OpenSource, but if by chance your application is successful, they will sell the non-free clustering solution …

Synergy2 : a substitute to wireless keyboard and mouse

I installed Synergy2 on my Fedora Core 6 FC6 linux and my Mac PowerBook osx : it is very easy lightweight and fun. Now I can control my Linux box from the sofa … choosing and pausing movies a piacere.

NoMachine NXserver : Linux remote desktop … install

I installed the free and OSS NX server on my Fedora core 6 FC6 and the client on my Mac (PowerBook osx) and it works really well !!
I just had a few problem to install the server : You have to put localhost.localdomain in your /etc/hosts.allow and add the line AuthorizedKeysFile /usr/NX/home/nx/.ssh/authorized_keys2 in /etc/ssh/sshd_config.
The error messages would be : ssh_exchange_identification: Connection closed by remote host and nx not allowed to connect.
To debug and see SSH messages : tail -f /var/log/secure and as client : ssh -v 127.0.0.1

Google bookmark hacks

More about the Google Bookmark service.
The “Official” service doesn’t do a lot by itself in fact ! Much of what I like is provided by the GMarks Firefox Extension.
But I hope that it will improve to the point where your search history and bookmarks will have a great influence on the Google search.
Now, there is a lack of tools ! Like I already said, (but seems that no one is paying attention), all the social/semantic web is lacking tools. There are formats, standards, languages, but nothing to use them effectively.

So here are some references to hack the Google Bookmark service :

• http://www.google.com/bookmarks/lookup?output=xml&sort=title&start=0&num=10
  This will get 10 bookmarks in XML format (RSS is also available).
• You can upload XML via a POST to http://www.google.com/bookmarks/mark?op=upload. see the complete JS script
• Two blog posts : persistent.info and Digital Atrophy.

I hope to see more of this

Firefox bookmarks, notes, history and search and usefull extensions

Finally I found what I wanted for years …
A combination of Gmark, WebComment and eventually GoogleToolbar.

• GMarks is an extension to display/manage your Google bookmarks AND search in the pages you have bookmarked ! It would be great to search in your history pages too. Anyway, I think that the key point is that the search engine (Google) has to be tight to your bookmarks and history.
• webcomments makes it easy to see what bloggers are saying about a page you’re viewing in Firefox and even make your own blog post about it ! Well it needs to be managed carefully if you don’t want your blog to be scattered with comments about every site you visit …
• The Google toolbar is well known, I am evaluating it for the moment.

I discovered Firebug : this IS a great piece of software ! It is a mix of the Web developer, Tamper Data and Javascript debugger with more usability ! Of course you may not find all the functionalities, but most of the informations you may seek will be found easily with this single extension.

And I still use

• Tamper Data 0.9.8.1 : this is for serious testing and hacking HTTP(S) communications !
• RefControl 0.8.7 : lets you control the HTTP Referer on a per-site basis. Simple hacking stuff.
• XPather 1.0.1 (26ko) : generates XPaths while browsing documents; evaluates your XPaths and inspects the results; extracts the content.
• JavaScript debugger 0.9.87 : AKA Venkman.
• Selenium IDE : for functionnal tests. More about it later …
• greasemonkey : for permanent quick hacks into the JavaScript. I don’t use it heavily, I admit.

Linux and choice problem

One of the thing that I have difficulties with is the number of choices you have to make when you choose Linux. First you have to choose a distribution, then a desktop manager and basically, you have about 10 application to choose from for each basic needs.
Some argue that this is an advantage, but I found some informations to show that on a usability point of view, this is clearly retaining people to switch to Linux :
Choice Overload and other Paradoxes and