Sunday, November 14, 1999

8/26/99: "I always forget how humiliating the NT setup process is. I always fail to write it up. I wanted to do this now, while the experience is totally fresh, so I won't forget."

Enterprise Development: "The SOAP protocol was the joint effort of three parties. Dave Winer of UserLand was a very early proponent of this idea and has been using an earlier version of the protocol, XML-RPC, in production code for a while. Don Box and company, of DevelopMentor, add a lot of RPC expertise and just general coolness to the effort. They are building the reference implementations on various platforms which you can find on their Web site as they are finished. And several software engineers at Microsoft helped out too."

Dan Shafer: Are Web Applications Leaving Mac Users Behind? "Recently I was looking for a Web-based intranet service for my company's team to use. We're a heterogeneous group: some of us use Windows, some Macintosh, and one of us (guess who) Windows, Mac, and, increasingly Linux."

259 Diaries: A word from the wife. "How does one go about budgeting for home improvements?"

Financial Observer: "Thanks to the dot-coms, the networks are booked solid for November and December. 'The fourth quarter has essentially sold out,' said Dana McClintock, a spokesman for CBS Corporation. Nonetheless, if a dot-com with fat pockets wants to get on bad enough, Mr. McClintock hinted that they can still buy air time–for the right price. 'If somebody walks in and offers $20 million for a 30-second spot, will we do it?' he said. 'I mean, put yourself in the business person’s shoes.'"

A picture of Frontier's outliner editing XML text that is rendered as a preferences system. Because you do all your editing in a flexible structure, you get to be more creative in asking questions of your users. The prefs system is a built-in feature in Frontier 6.1, in prefs.root.

For advanced architects, we have an open protocol for prefs distribution, thru XML-RPC of course. It works, we use it to glue together two LANS running a thousand miles apart.

Things are really hopping on the ZopeNewbies site. Outliners, content management, web browsers and servers, XML-RPC and object databases.

BTW, we have all the pieces covered, with one exception, web browsers. Are people aware of breakage in Mac IE 4.5? It's got some pretty bad bugs, we hear, from people testing Frontier 6.1.

Epinions: The Easy Way to Maintain a Weblog. "In short, if you want to maintain a running list of posts like a weblog, then Blogger is a great way to go." Thanks to Robot Wisdom for the pointer.

We're working with the Pyra people to make Blogger and Manila work together. They're a joy to work with, great people, as the above review says.