Entries from April 2008 ↓

ZeroTurnaround has announced the final release of JavaRebel 1.1. JavaRebel is a JVM plugin (-javaagent) that enables reloading changes made to Java class files on-the-fly, saving developers the time that it takes to redeploy an application or perform a container restart. In addition to changes like the provision for dynamic proxies, full SDK availability, and full class reloading, ZeroTurnaround is offering a free license for bug reports.

Those of you who remember MeasureMap are long time readers of this blog. It was a blog-centered analytics service that first surfaced in August 2005. The service was created by San Francisco based Adaptive Path. The first details emerged in October 2005.

It was Google Analytics but just for blogs. It told you stats based on posts and other key blog features. By November 2005 Google had copied some of the features. And a couple of months later, before MeasureMap had even officially launched, they just bought it outright.

Since then, nothing. Founder Jeffrey Veen became the User Experience Manager and has been associated with a number of projects. Measure Map simply faded and was forgotten.

Except, not completely. Today Google emailed early MeasureMap users and said:

About your Measure Map account

Remember Measure Map? A couple of years ago, we gave you an account on an
early alpha test of our blog analytics software. Since then, a lot has
happened. We got acquired by Google, we redesigned their Analytics app, and
we’ve since rebuilt Measure Map from the ground up.

I’m writing you because we need to move everyone over from their Measure Map
accounts to the new version at Google. If you’re no longer interested, no
problem. You can stop reading this now. But if you’d like to try out the new
service, here’s how: [instructions followed]

I went through the signup process, which requires a Google Analytics account and tracking pixel. They then said “Great! You’re all set. We’ve got a few things to set up on our end. We’ll send you an email when we’re ready (soon!) and explain how to log in.”

I’m emailing Google now to see if they’ll give more details on the planned launch and how it will be different from Google Analytics.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

University of Pennsylvania roboticists—who talk like robot versions of Alan Alda—have developed modular artificial creatures capable of recomposing themselves in case that they are destroyed—effectively taking the first step towards global annihilation, thank you very much. Happily for Humanity, they are far from T1000, and closer to Jerry Lewis, as the (quite funny, yet sad) end of the video shows.

Composed of 15 modules arranged in groups of five, each of CKbot’s clusters have a module with a 20fps camera, a blinking LED, and a accelerometer to reconstruct the entire robot, tied by magnets. Each of the other 12 modules have an embedded computer, proximity sensors, and a servo motor with 180 degrees that allows for a rotational range of about 180 degrees.

When the main mini-Voltron-wannabe gets destroyed and the clusters are disconnected, they self-right up themselves detecting its orientation according to gravity (don’t keep looking like an idiot and start running now.) Once they are on position, the cameras search for the unique LED patterns, and then two closers start to approach to each other at glacial speeds (by this time, you should have reached the weapons storage and grab a shotgun, five machine guns, and a grenade launcher.) When the two first modules connect, the start searching for the third one (you may fire now) until the finally assemble again, forming a single entity that would inevitably destroy you if we didn’t tell you the steps above. Yes, somewhere in the future, this advice will save your life. [New Scientist Tech]

Twistori is a fun little site created by Amy Hoy and Thomas Fuchs. As you would expect, design is a key part of the application, and the Prototype / Script.aculo.us combo pull off the work.

The site pulls in live data on various topics (love, hate, think, believe, feel, wish) via the real-time twitter search tool summize.

In related Twitter news, I created a Greasemonkey script Twitter Translate that auto-translates foreign text to your language inside Twitter.

For more Ajax news, you can follow me @dalmaer or our new @ajaxian account.

As the national library of the United States, the Library of Congress has created vast amounts of metadata to describe books and other documents in its collection. Among this metadata is the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), a “controlled vocabulary” for classifying documents by subject. In order words, experts at the Library of Congress have come up with a (large) list of subject headers from which catalogers of documents can choose. As an example, if you look at the Library of Congress record for Tim Berners-Lee’s book Weaving the Web, you’ll that it is classified under “World Wide Web“, specifically “World Wide Web–History“.

Since the Library of Congress isn’t the only entity that classifies documents, you can imagine that other entities (and not just libraries) would interested in reusing the LCSH vocabulary. But how should the Library of Congress make LCSH available so that it can be easily reused?

That’s where the recent release of lcsh.info comes in (see also the lcsh.info ProgrammableWeb Profile):

This is an experimental service that makes the Library of Congress Subject Headings available as linked-data using the SKOS vocabulary. The goal of lcsh.info is to encourage experimentation and use of LCSH on the web with the hopes of informing a similar effort at the Library of Congress to make a continually updated version available. More information about the Linked Data effort can be found on the W3C Wiki.

Let’s look at what you can do with lcsh.info through a couple of examples. First, we return to the subject heading World Wide Web, this time accessible from lcsh.info as

http://lcsh.info/sh95000541

Note the form of the URL: http://lcsh.info/{lccn} where lccn refers to the Library of Congress Control Number (LCCN), an identifier of the subject heading. In this case, the LCCN for World Wide Web is sh95000541.

If you drop this URL into your browser, you’ll get the default format or representation of the information lcsh.info has about the World Wide Web subject header, including:

• broader terms (e.g., Hypertext systems)
• narrower terms (e.g., Semantic Web)
• related terms (e.g., Internet)
• alternative label — (e.g, W3 (World Wide Web))

The diagram below illustrates some of these relationships

To facilitate reuse of the data, lcsh.info offers its data a variety of formats that can be accessed via content negotiation. That is, you use the Accept HTTP header to specify which of the following content type you want:

• XHTML (with embedded RDFa), which is the default value (application/xhtml+xml)
• JSON (application/json)
• RDF/XML (application/rdf+xml)
• N3 (text/n3)

For example, you can use curl to get JSON representation of the World Wide Web subject header:

curl -v -L -H “Accept: application/json” http://lcsh.info/sh85062913

By looking at the RDF/XML and N3 representations, you can see a concrete example of semantic web approaches to express notions of broader, narrower, and related terms as well as alternative labels using

• Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS), which is “a model for expressing the basic structure and content of concept schemes such as thesauri, classification schemes, subject heading lists, taxonomies, folksonomies, and other types of controlled vocabulary”
• designs rules for linked data to represent the network of interconnected subject headings

This experimental but promising service may soon pave the way for full production level web services from the Library of Congress.

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What it does

Is there a controversial idea or theory you would like to debate? At RiledUp.com you can voice your opinion on controversial topics and engage in a debate with other users who also voice their opinion. In order to create a topic or comment and vote on a debate topic you must be a user. You can browse through the different topic categories and read the two sides and comments as a visitor to the site. When you are a user you can start a debate by posing a question and giving two sides. Users can then vote on which side they agree with and add comments. There are many types of debates on RiledUp confronting topics on religion to technology to health. You can easily find debates that interest you by searching through the categories or the popular tags. You can make friends and enemies with other users. Take a look at the other users’ profiles to see which debates they have participated in and who their friends and enemies are. Express your feelings at RiledUp.com.

In their own words

“Debate and discuss topics in any area. Make friends. Create enemies. Become an authority. These are the issues that matter to you, so make your voice heard and have fun at the same time!”

Why it might be a killer

RiledUp is a fun site. It is great that RiledUp offers users many ways to participate. Users can create their own debate or comment on other debates. The enemies and friends feature is a great way for the community to get to know each other. All of the debates are easy to locate because they are organized into categories and tags.

Some questions

It would be great if users could engage in a live debate by messenger or even webcam. There are many sites and communities in which users voice their opinion and discuss, how will RiledUp.com deal with the competition pose by similar sites?

Updates

 » original news

Tomorrow a new breed of investment firm called Prototype Invest will officially launch, though the site is available now. Prototype Invest is a unique type of early stage investment firm. Rather than put money into startups, Prototype supplies technology in exchange for equity. This is an investment firm for anyone who has ever been told, “Ideas are a dime a dozen, kid. Come back when you have a working prototype.”

Founded by web developer and Denmark native Michael Christensen, Prototype Invest will provide people who have an idea but don’t possess programming or design skills a way to take their idea and turn it into a prototype to show investors. “Think of us as a Venture Capital firm providing software, web applications and guidance, instead of money,” says the company on the site. “All we ask for is equity in your idea – you don’t have to pay anything for our services.”

The company has a network of developers and designers which it will employ to create prototypes or full products based on ideas submitted by entrepreneurs. In return, it will take an equity stake in the app it helps create. Prototype Invest will evaluate ideas submitted to it based on merit as well as the character of the entrepreneur who pitched it.

“There are so many great ideas wasted for the wrong reasons – we are here to change the rules of the game,” Christensen told me. According to Christensen, any entrepreneur who is unhappy with the results of their relationship with Prototype Invest can walk at any time.

Prototype Invest has a lot riding on trust — in fact they say on their front page that “without trust we simply can’t exist” — which means that ideally, anyone willing to fork over an idea to the service has not only been told that ideas are a dime a dozen, but also truly believes it. Prototype will work out contracts and the amount of equity taken on a case by case basis, and Christensen tells me that they’re open to signing an NDA with entrepreneurs prior to being pitched.

But there will need to be a certain amount of trust on both sides that ideas won’t be stolen or misappropriated.

Along with development services, Prototype Invest also offers to help entrepreneurs pitch their idea (and newly minted prototype) to investors, which makes sense given that Christensen and team will only make money if the app is a success. At some point in the future the team is also considering offering Y Combinator-style microfunding.

Will Prototype Invest work? It’s hard to say, but there is little doubt that they won’t lack for ideas being sent their way — they are a dime a dozen, after all.

After Mister Jalopy posted a link to mmk_kobayashi’s “tasteless, frequently mean, sporadically NSFW, sometimes jaw dropping and generally hilarious” Flickr photostream my productivity ground to a halt. Link

Radar asked Bill Geerhart to send follow-up notes to the serial killers he wrote in the late 1990s, posing as a 10-year-old. The killers promptly replied (both in 1998, and recently).

in the late ’90s, pop-culture historian Bill Geerhart had a little too much time on his hands and a surfeit of stamps. So, for his own entertainment, the then-unemployed thirtysomething launched a letter-writing campaign to some of the most powerful and infamous figures in the country, posing as a curious 10-year-old named Billy.

As it turns out, no group hates to disappoint a child more than convicted killers, all of whom responded promptly to Billy’s questions about dropping out of school. Their letters, published here for the first time, range from criminally insane to downright sensible, offering snapshots of the personalities behind some of America’s most hideous crimes. Recently, Radar asked Billy to follow up with his mentors as a college student. Link

Photo [PPDIGITAL/Flickr]

Every gadget you own needs some kind of mains power. Even if you don’t hook it straight up to the wall, there will be some kind of battery charger involved. Finding enough outlets in your own home can be a chore, but at least all the plugs fit all the outlets. I was reminded of this on a recent jaunt to the UK, home of possibly the most paranoid electrical designs in the world. The first lesson was that you need to take your adapter with you. Almost nobody you visit will have adapters to fit their own country’s sockets. Why would they? All their plugs fit.

Photo [Wikipedia/Public Domain]

The second realization was that there is a second tier for electrical connections. While the World’s wall holes vary, there are a few international standards, exemplified by the Kettle Lead, or IEC connector (seen above) and its close cousins, the two-pin C7 and C8 connectors.

You find these everywhere, from games consoles to tape recorder to laptops and, of course, kettles. Even Apple uses a modified form on its notebook power supplies (if you have an old yo-yo style iBook mains adapter then it’s likely you’ve replaced the notoriously breakable Apple AC cable with a whittled-down C7).

Because these are so common, almost every house has a few spares, meaning that you can hook up to the local supply, even if it temporarily makes you white power brick look less pretty than Cupertino intended.

Britain

Photo [Docklandsboy/Flickr]

Aside from the practicalities of international portability, the differences in design are themselves fascinating and often reflect the national character of the host country. The most extreme example is Britain. In this joyless nation the average citizen can’t be trusted to think for himself. For this reason, standard 240v mains sockets can never be found in a bathroom (and bathroom lights are activated with a ceiling mounted pull-cord). When you get into drier areas of the house, the madness continues. Every UK socket has an Earth (or Ground) pin, and the three prong design means that the plug can only go in one way. You can still squeeze a two-pin plug in there, but it wobbles in a way that would strike fear into the most carefree Englishman.

It doesn’t stop there. Each and every socket has its own power switch. Even some power strips come with individual breakers. If you don’t think that the UK government interferes in every tiny part of its citizens lives, then consider a public service film that was shown there back in the seventies. In it, homeowners are warned to not only switch all appliances off at the wall before going to bed, but to unplug them, too. Failure to do so would result in electrical fires and death, joyfully illustrated by the scaremongering TV spot.

Other countries are more lackadaisical in their approach. In Spain, you’ll find mains power inches from the kitchen and bathroom sinks, with no way of isolating them. Some appliances requiring a Ground line can’t be fitted into groundless sockets, but that’s as far as the safety goes. For frequent travelers, it becomes clear quickly that people are very similar all around the World. It is these little, unnoticed and mundane, every-day pieces of public design that are one of the constant surprises for the globetrotter.

China

Photo [kenner116/Flickr]

Australia

Photo [Alikai/Flickr]

South Africa

Photo [Joi/Flickr]

Chile

Photo [César Rincón/Flickr]

Mexico

Photo [ZeroOne/Flickr]

Denmark

Photo [plindberg/Flickr]

Please point us to any more Creative Commons pictures, or tell us about any weird power cord conventions in the comments.

Further reading

Domestic AC power plugs and sockets [Wikipedia]