"In StarTrek: The Next Generation, the Enterprise got a new feature, they could separate the ship into two parts. This experiment is like that. XML-RPC is and always will be a creature of HTTP. But what about the payload format, could it be transported through other protocols? Of course it can. So today I boldly went where no one has gone before and started doing RPC across SMTP."

"The question is, how do you manage files, attatchments, and even keep note of whats going on in a thread. And how do you do it securely? How do you transform messaging into something which creates a sense of community. How do you let workgroups collaborate; how do you let workgroups happen dynamically? Version Control?"

"I have put 2001 in the title because this is going to be the year for the beginning of a makeover for the Internet. The abstract goal: to eliminate those Reload and Receive buttons from your software, and to add features that will bring back the ?wow factor? to the Internet once again."

"Not quite worthy of the term "pet project," I do have an application swimming about in my mind and ~/src directory.

An RPC-over-SMTP proxy running on the local desktop or server facilitating communication between local P2P / Web Service apps and the outside world. The proxy brokers interactions, tracking, routing, storing, and forwarding the asynchronous requests and responses, cacheing when useful and appropriate to do so. Obviously the proxy should not be limited to RPC-over-SMTP, allowing for synchronous communication over HTTP whenever possible.

Dave's absolutely correct in referring to these shenanigans as "messaging." . After all, isn't an email client set to send immediately and retrieve every 1 minute just low-tech IM?

Almost Instant Messaging? MailStorm?"

"Many people think that the barrier to some applications is how hard they are to learn to use and that they will only catch on when it's "brain dead simple" to learn. I think in many cases the real problem is that the application is just not that valuable to the people -- they have ways to do the same thing that are OK or they just don't care. The challenge is in creating the right tools that are appropriate to the task as seen by the individual, and having the use be worthwhile. Making it "simple" often is translated into making it less flexible but it is often the flexibility we look for in our tools as humans."

" A flaw in the design of many websites is that they do not fit within a user's context--they were designed to replace it. There was a bizarre assumption that users would happily transfer all that activity to the Web. This faulty understanding was a core factor contributing to the ineffectiveness of many sites. In reality, a web site is lucky to get, oh, 15 minutes out of a person's day. A smart designer understands this as a constraint, and builds a system to support it.

Happily, what I saw on the wireless panel was an understanding of this behavior, probably due to the form of wireless devices. Small portable objects. They obviously cannot replace a current experience, but it's clear they can augment one."

"The next microcomputer is just software using the standards of the Internet, XML, HTTP, SMTP and perhaps instant messaging, and today's IT managers are last generation's MIS managers, plugging dikes, with Microsoft's help, as their ancestors had IBM's, but the flood will come anyway."

"The amount of hair lost in a few weeks is staggering and can fill several garbage bags. In a full "blow" the undercoat may actually come out in many large clumps of hair."

"InstantWAP is a java servlet that converts websites on-the-fly for wireless devices. Once InstantWAP is installed on your server, every change you make to your html site is relflected in the wireless (wml) version. Using InstantWAP, you don't have to maintain multiple versions of the same site."

"It's a seamless, Java servlet-driven technology that pumps out sites for wireless phones, pagers, and PDAs.

And it works. We've been running it all week without a hitch. Even database queries and forms function surprisingly well. And, as I may have mentioned, you don't have to cook up a second version of the site, or change your markup in any way.

Oh yeah, and it's free."

" The Darpa mobile-communications program, also know as the "situational awareness system," would use high-capacity, low-power radios linked together by a "self-configuring" network to keep soldiers connected with each other at frequencies ranging from 20 MHz to 2.5 GHz. Kolodzy called the architecture a "mobile, ad-hoc, peer-to-peer network" that uses frequency-hopping technology to avoid communication intercepts and location-finding capability — in other words, situational awareness on the battlefield — but little power."

"The planned technology demonstration next year would link 70 prototype radios over a network utilizing MontaVista's Hard Hat version of the standard Linux kernel and other open-source components, as well as StrongARM processors, DSPs and FPGAs."

"Starting next month, for a $30 annual subscription, we will begin offering readers a special service, Salon Premium, that will include not only all the regular Salon fare but additional "bonus" features available only to subscribers. Premium subscribers will be able to view Salon without banner or "pop-up" ads. Over time we will add additional features, like an easy-printout download."

"Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown"

"It had a personal voice. When you went to the home page, there was a happy little note about the new offices or the latest course offerings; the style was not boring corporate/marcomm happy-talk, it was Phil telling you that if you're poor, there are some free services, but if you're rich, head on over here and we'll build you a nice service of your own, but bring a lot of money please..."

"Coincidentally, just as I started to think about this stuff, Orange/France Telecom was looking for someone to build a new research laboratory in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I'm just starting to define the research program and hire some people and explore the possibilities for joint work with researchers here in Europe (France Telecom R&D has 3000 engineers and scientists), with groups at MIT (e.g., Project Oxygen), and with other corporate labs (Intel, Microsoft Research).

I'm still interested in Web stuff. I've been thinking recently about methods for collaborative development of and quantitive measurement of information architectures. I've revamped my one-day "why" course and will give it in Cambridge on February 20. Any system that has a WAP or VoiceXML front end will also presumably need a Web interface as well. I still supervise MIT graduate students who wish to do theses in the Web area."

"When porn started appearing on wireless Web sites in July 2000 analysts thought the same audience used to the terrestrial Web's offerings of color pictures, moving images and thousands of pictures, all for free, would never migrate to the tiny screen.

Yet the audience now ranks in the millions. "

"Using XML to describe parts of a Web app user interface can make it easy to convert the UI for multiple devices via XSL style sheets. The article describes using XML data and XSL style sheets to build the user interface of complex Web applications. A Web calendar sample application demonstrates the basic techniques and concepts. The article also includes more than two dozen code samples that you can easily extend for your specific requirements."

"This article, a sequel to the author's December article on Web application front ends, describes extensions to the basic framework for XML data and XSL style sheets. It focuses on the back end this time, covering National Language Support (NLS), enhancements of the view structure, and performance issues. While the first article demonstrated the basic architecture for building Web applications using XML and XSLT, this article shows you how to make the applications ready to go online."

"Viewing pages fixed at 800x600 on a monitor with a maximum resolution of 800x600 is like reading the newspaper on the airplane: You can do it, but it's inconvenient and unwieldy. Or, imagine if television were the same: Owners of large TVs would have to watch their favorite shows within a 12x12-inch square on their 3-foot screen; and owners of small TV sets might miss half of the picture. We wouldn't tolerate this, yet it's been accepted on the Web."

"Whether you're a beginner with XSLT or a seasoned programmer, you'll surely find that these five tips from Benoît Marchal will improve your coding and give you new ideas. The handful of tips cover using CSS with XSL style sheets (including HTML entities), incorporating client-side JavaScript, working with multiple input documents, and using XSLT to generate style sheets automatically. The article includes sample code to adapt and reuse."

"In this article, I'll discuss the concept of voice portals and the associated architecture. I'll then show how simple design patterns — together with XML and XSL — can be used to deliver Internet content and services cost effectively not only to web browsers and various wireless devices, but also to any telephone via VoiceXML (for more information on the VoiceXML Standard, see http://www.voicexml.org/). I'll then present an implementation of this architecture that uses software that is freely available on the Internet. Finally, I'll examine key business and technical issues associated with voice-driven applications."

"All of the concepts and ideas above are just the start of a more formal specification for what JAM is. If nothing else, it is a description of a dream that I have for applications using Jabber. Of note, several people have raised a question about JAM replacing the current jabber:client protocol. This is not the goal of JAM. The end goal of JAM is to provide the necessary architecture and routing elements necessary for robust, efficient application communication. Jabber provides the basis for moving the data, JAM will provide the middleware semantics -- it is up to the individual application to provide the content. In this way, JAM will be RPC agnostic. The payload it carries may be XML-RPC, SOAP or any other form of XML which an application cares to embed."

"Many powerful myths exist for software developers on the role of design, specifically the design of user interfaces. Drawing on 13 years of experience in the field of user interface design, Paul Smith describes and debunks these myths."

"The Snowcrash plug-in runs a mini HTTP server inside WinAmp. This server is called the Snowcrash plug-in server throughout this documentation. The HTTP server listens to incoming requests on port 82 (the port number is configurable). Incoming requests are turned into WinAmp commands, such as "play", "pause", and "stop.""

"But I'm not some militant anti-corporate warrior. I'm just your average media-saturated, bozo-filtering consumer and this is my personal innoculation against whatever nice, easy-to-swallow, blue-lit, "down with the kids", ironic, straight-to-camera with a wink and a "Hey, you got me" smirk, meta-post-modern, faux-honesty / faux-deceit, triple dummy-fake, shake 'n bake media sheen that these people are going to cloaks themselves in and come at me with. I want to be tired, tired, tired of this by the time they get their act together."

"...all the CSS solutions i've seen so far have this problem, unless they're designed very carefully so that a) nothing can overlap, or b) if something does overlap, it doesn't wreck the layout. blue robot is an example of this approach (sidenote: and the design is gorgeous). but this puts some serious limits on the kinds of layouts you can achieve.

we're always open to discussion about this; feel free to use the comment feature or send us email with the contact form. and we're certainly not opposed to the concept of using pure CSS for layout. but a cost/benefit analysis of the table/div equation still comes out in favor of tables, for real-world implementations."

"In this article, I'd like to show you how easy it is to put together a simple system for pager-style notification of incoming mail, using some standard tools, Perl and, of course, Jabber."

"It seems to me that Jabber is a "meta-technology". By that I refer to the fact that it enables other technologies to work together. It hides the complexities of moving structured (yet often disparate) data between network endpoints. In a sense, Jabber is like a telephone. When I pick up my phone to call my wife at work, I don't have to understand anything about how my voice gets to her -- I only worry about "addressing" the data to her and then talking when the connection is made. Jabber provides this same capabilities to applications and services. Indeed, it provides precisely what SOAP/XMLRPC doesn't -- a specific ability to get data from point A to point B. Could I be so bold as to say that Jabber could be the dialtone for XML applications?"

" Increasing interest has been expressed in using the Jabber architecture as a middleware layer for application-level communication. This is a natural and logical progression in Jabber's growth."

"With Hailstorm, Microsoft wants to position IM as a Web services development platform instead of as a single-purpose application. In addition to IM, users would be able to do Web-based e-mail, real-time stock quotes and calendar functions.

One developer who plans to attend the meeting, but requested anonymity, said Microsoft is looking to extend the capabilities of IM as a standalone application and turn it into a software infrastructure that can be used to build many types of applications. "

"I have a feeling that now that as Visual Studio.NET beta 2 is preparing to hit the "shelves" and it's strong support for XML and SOAP, we're going to see a massive amount of SOAP/WebServices being embedded into applications, and the days of form "frustration" are slowly going to disappear behind us."

"The Microsoft marketing machine is starting up. It will be interesting to see how software developers react to their Microsoft's pitch. We all are starting to realize that software is increasingly going to be built using a distributed application framework model, but not many people have realized that Microsoft's .NET is really just their version of what Mozilla has been doing since 1998."

""We're making it so you can write services in the Linux environment and bring them to the (Microsoft) .Net platforms, as well as do the reverse," said de Icaza.

"We think Microsoft.Net looks sweet," de Icaza continued. "Microsoft is supporting SOAP for creating .Net services. But we will let these services become available to Linux.""

"$_='while(read+STDIN,$_,2048){$a=29;$c=142;if((@a=unx"C*",$_)[20]&48){$h=5; $_=unxb24,join"",@b=map{xB8,unxb8,chr($_^$a[--$h+84])}@ARGV;s/...$/1$&/;$d= unxV,xb25,$_;$b=73;$e=256|(ord$b[4])<<9|ord$b[3];$d=$d>>8^($f=($t=255)&($d >>12^$d>>4^$d^$d/8))<<17,$e=$e>>8^($t&($g=($q=$e>>14&7^$e)^$q*8^$q<<6))<<9 ,$_=(map{$_%16or$t^=$c^=($m=(11,10,116,100,11,122,20,100)[$_/16%8])&110;$t ^=(72,@z=(64,72,$a^=12*($_%16-2?0:$m&17)),$b^=$_%64?12:0,@z)[$_%8]}(16..271)) [$_]^(($h>>=8)+=$f+(~$g&$t))for@a[128..$#a]}print+x"C*",@a}';s/x/pack+/g;eval"

"The idea of a wireless network was right on my wavelength. "You mean I can get Ethernet-speed web browsing, file transfers, and the whole works -- with nary a cable connection in sight -- from as far away as the coffeehouse across the street? Um, I'll be working from there this morning. IM me if you need me.""

"so what *is* it? it's corporate identity management at it's worst. relatively respectable companies who take themselves too seriously, and clearly have too much money to burn decide that what they really need is a corporate sound. usually something aspirational, to motivate the troops. unfortunately, they tend to take the whole thing just a little bit too seriously. they spend rediculous sums of money commissioning a corporate anthem. something they can play at office parties, conferences and secretly through headphones before they stride confidently into meetings. with few exceptions they eventually realise just how cringe-worthy their little tunes are, and attempt to bury them forever. they should be so lucky..."

"Creating an XML-RPC Web service with Perl is almost as easy as CGI scripting. This article will bring you up to speed on what XML-RPC is and how to use Perl's Frontier::RPC library to create simple clients and servers."

"WHY?! Why should I be force-fed a big pile of shit that I have no interest in? It's like going to a diner, asking for a cheeseburger and having to pay for the cheeseburger, a hot dog, and everything else the cook had on the grill at that time. It's wrong. The dependency madness will only lead us to a scalability nightmare in the not-too-distant future, and I for one want nothing to do with that."

"An important point about my relationship with HP is that the decisions I make can't drive the company into bankruptcy. I have to find the balance between promoting free software and making money."

"In this first tutorial of his series on using scripting languages to manipulate and transform XML documents, Binary Evolution's Parand Tony Daruger takes you through the first steps of using these techniques with Perl. You'll see a method for transforming XML to HTML, followed by a simple stock trading application that uses Perl, XML, and a database to evaluate trading rules. You can apply the techniques using other scripting languages too, including Tcl and Python."

""On an individual user, we can see what you're e-mailing, where you are surfing, if you send anything to be printed, collaborate with anyone on a Word document, access or change the database -- basically everything you're doing on the network," she said.

Although the program gives broad access, lab analysts are careful to only scrutinize information pertinent to the case at hand, she said.

SilentRunner's "collector" recognizes over 1,400 different protocols. It can detect and analyze Web pages, e-mail, digital video and sound files, spreadsheets, word documents, FTP, instant messages, passwords -- you name it."

"The .org Registry Agreement would adopt the form of the registry agreements that will be entered into by the new global TLD registry operators. The term of the .org Registry Agreement would be shortened by almost one year to 31 December 2002, at which time VeriSign would permanently relinquish its right to operate the .org registry, and an appropriate sponsoring organization representing non-commercial organizations would be sought (through some procedure yet to be determined) to assume the operation of the registry. In addition, VeriSign would establish an endowment of $5 million for the purpose of funding the reasonable operating expenses of a global registry for the specific use of non-profit organizations, and would make global resolution resources available to the operator of the .org registry for no charge for one year and on terms to be determined thereafter, for so long as it operates the .com registry. The net result of this would be a .org registry returned, after some appropriate transition period, to its originally intended function as a registry operated by and for non-profit organizations."

"There's much more to 802.11b spec than that teeny little "b" indicates. 802.11b is not just the downstairs apartment of 802.11; it's a whole new world of wireless possibilities."

"This story of the early days of electrical experimentation leads off The Victorian Internet, a fascinating story of the telegraph by Tom Standage, a journalist who writes for The Economist. Thankfully, Standage makes the point that the telegraph was the Internet of it's age, but then lets the metaphor drop and tells the story of the spread of the telegraph on it's own terms."

"Standage's The Victorian Internet is an example of the history of technology at it's finest. It explains the technology, but shows how the technology became real and how it changed our lives. This book is a must-have for anybody interested in how our village became global."