The Duke of Java is Finally Free Monday 2006-11-13
As rumors buzzed as flies for the last couple of months, Sun has finally announced that it releases its Java implementation under the GNU GPLv2 license.
The Duke is free, free at last. But what does it all mean?
For a long time during the first successful years of Java, many developers urged SUN to submit Java to one or the other of the standards bodies of the world. The intention was to make sure that Java, the platform wouldn’t crash into the non standards diversity, that would make it unusable. But SUN stood firm and demanded that all additions to the platform, and all its implementations should follow the “pure Java” standards set out by SUN.
Microsoft, who licensed Java from SUN, wanted Java to be seen as just another programming language, and made additions to it, that it thought was missing. They did this in violation of the license and after a long legal battle had to pay dearly.
As Java has developed and matured over the years, many Java experts has grown comfortable with SUN:s firm grip on the language and the platform, and have come to believe, this is the way for Java to survive .
So what now? What will happen when Java is GPL’d ? Will it turn as wild as JavaScript or CSS and other web technologies, with a plethora of small differences between implementation, that will drive developers nuts ?
Read this ZDNet article by Martin LaMonica, for more!
Edit Your Photos Online
One of the characteristics of the Web 2.0 era, is the fast emergence of net top applications. Making good on the old SUN slogan, “The Net it the computer”, these applications run on some server anywhere on the globe, and only its user interface shows up on the client machine. No need for installation and immediate access from any personal computer or workstation.
One of the more nifty net top applications I’ve run across lately is the pixer.us On Line Photo editor.
It works like this: You upload an image to the server through their client GUI, and when it shows up, you can start editing away to your hearts content. You may crop and resize your image, and you can adjust its color balance, contrast and lightness. You can make it B&W if you like, and you can apply some artistic filtering to make it look like marble or an oil painting.
You can undo your last change or revert to the original, if you do mistakes. Once you are satisfied with your changes, you click the Save button and download the resulting image. You can choose the image format by clicking a button for JPEG, GIF, PNG or BMP.
The application GUI is beautiful and very intuitive, so the learning is shot to none. Before you join pixer.us, you can work with a test image. Go ahead and test the pixar.us Online Photo Editor. I had great fun testing the application. From the test image I cropped out one of the girls, saturated the colors a bit and applied the oil painting filter.
The original photo
WordPress Updated Sunday 2006-10-29
In the anticipation of the 2.1 version of WordPress, here comes the bug fixed and polished 2.05 version.
If you don’t use the WordPress blogging tool, you should just download this version and follow the install instructions.
Chances are, that you already run the 2.04 version, and in that case you’ll get away cheep 
Mark on WordPress has put together a page with a Changed Files List, and what’s even brighter, he have made a diff file, containing all files that has changed since 2.04. You can download it in a ZIP archive from the same page, and just upload them to your old installation. You should the run the update script to get everything running again. If you don’t however, you will be reminded and offered an update link. Just click and you’re on the air again!
Really nice job Mark!
Truth in Blogging Friday 2006-09-15
And of course an good way of getting links, and promoting sponsors
The moving Flickr API Thursday 2006-09-14
I like free services like the Flickr image sharing service, and I’m not alone. Not only is it a easy way of sharing your photos with anyone connected to the Internet. You can choose who has access to your images or some of them, you can get them commented on if you are so inclined. And new ways for presenting your images pops up quite often. It’s a popular service and developers come up with innovative applications for selecting and presenting images all the time.
The applications rest on public API:s for authentication, and request for images in different sizes and other criteria, as how they are tagged, how popular they are, who owns the image, and so forth.
There is a problem with this, if the service endpoint, i.e. the URL of the service, is hard coded into the application. For my own flickr badge, called petikr I noticed a whilde ago, that it ceased to show any images. I thought the service was temporarily down, or bogged down. I am ashamed to admit, I didn’t discover until today, that the damage was permanent.
Sorry if you have problems with it! It is fixed now.
I googled for “flash flickr stopped working”, to see if someone had the same problem. Oh, yes. And some of them knew why and had the solution, like Doug Marttila at “Forest and Trees“, author of findr. Flickr changed its service endpoint just slightly.
I wrote a tutorial on how to build your own Flickr Flash Display, in quite a few steps, each having its own demo. all of them was compiled using Kelvin Lucks Flashr wrapper for the API. The API endpoints needed by the application is hard coded into the Flicks class of the library.
I did a lot of experimenting with Flashr at the time, and now I had to find all the correct versions of the example in my tutorial, and recompile them using the same version of the flashr library, updated with the new service endpoint.
That is hard work, and although it is nice not to have external setup files, I think maybe one should. Flash can easily read in data from a text file, XML based or not. It is good for volatile data such as developing protocols or moving web services.
Akismet Jubilee Monday 2006-09-11
Hurrah!!
My Akismet has just cought it’s 500:th spam, and not one slipped through.
Time to celebrate.
Promote Your WordPress Plugins Tuesday 2006-09-05
A new and promising site, for presenting and getting WordPress plugins, has just been launched. Sean Hickey, aka Headzoo, author of such efficient WordPress plugins as aLinks, Edit N Place and Create N Place, has just launched WP Plugins, a friendly place for plugin authors and bloggers to meet.
WordPress plugins abound. Due to the relative ease, with which you can create plugins for the popular blogging tool, and the flexible framework WordPress offers, a lot of functionality can be added through plugins.
There are plugins that make the administration easier, or present all kinds of statistical information. And there are plugins to include any imaginable Multimedia, and plugins to build social networks, to include other bloggers’ feeds or to earn a buck on ads.
You name it, and there is a plugin. And if there isn’t, you can write one, or just wait a while, and someone else will.
The mere amount of plugins spread out on their authors sites, makes it difficult to find that very gadget, that gives you the functionality you dream of. There are a few repositories for plugins, as Lorelle on WordPress mentions in her latest excellent article on plugins.
Sean’s idea seems to be, that they lack some functionality, be peer reviews, a voting system or the possibility to search by tag. Or maybe just too dull. I don’t know, but this new repository has all this features, a friendly look and easy navigation.
So if you are a plugins author, head over and present your plugin at WP Plugins. You’ll be on the front page immediately. It’s very simple, you just register for an account, log in and fill in a form with a description of your plugin, and a link to the install package on your site.
That’s all there is to it.
If you are a blogger in pursuit of the ultimate plugin for your needs, you may already find what you want. The site is new however, so it will take a while to get the great variety, we all want to find in the grocery
Graffiti for the Web
Among all wonderful things, that pops up on the web, as a result of new standards and standards compliance, my latest stumble find is amazing. Virtual Street Art – Graffiti for the Web presented by Draw Here, is an application, that allows you to draw images on top of any web page and save it in the Draw Here repository. Anyone can go to the Draw Here site to look at the graffiti comments of others. Look at my first attempt to draw on my own site, to get an idea of how it looks.[Edit: Someone killed my image :/]
The application, using javascript and the canvas has all you need to make beautiful graffiti. You can vary the pen size and chose and tune colors from a palette, and set color transparency. You can create and draw on stacked layer and even set the overall transparency of any layer. To easily work on one layer at a time, you can hide and show any layer.
You launch the Draw Here application directly from their site or using a bookmarklet sitting on bookmarks toolbar. You can even include a launch button on you web page, to let visitors draw on any page you want.
If you want to save your work at the Draw Here web site and get it rated, you have to sign up for an account. They have the fastest sign up form I’ve seen. Just type in the user name and password you want in a slick little login form. If accepted, you are already logged in and ready to paint and save your first graffiti comment on any web page on the Net. Ajaxian wise, the page doesn’t even reload.
Sign up/log in and paint my world!
A Million WordPress 2.0 Wednesday 2006-08-23
What makes you happy ? »
Podz, well known WordPress guru, wrote in Mars, 100000, “That’s a big number !”
WordPress 2.0 download counter has now passed a million – that’s one more of zeros.
Congratulations! The counter now shows a blinking instead of that big number. Maybe the counter register can’t take such a big number – like the millennium bug mistake – or the Adriane II elevation control disaster 
A Flash Browser On the Horizon? Monday 2006-08-21
Is the next browser generation based on on a Flash platform. This article by Matthew David at InformIT, may lead you to think so.
Here is a slightly modified version of his “Lorem Ipsum” demo case for presenting HTML or rather any XML content markup, styled by CSS. Both the XML and CSS are external files, brought together by a short Actionscript in the Flash movie. Both can easily be changed, wihtout touching the SWF. Read the article and draw your own conclusions!
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