Scripting News -- June 1998
Tuesday, June 30, 1998
InfoWorld: UserLand releases Frontier 5.1. "We're happy to not be everything to everyone." Thanks InfoWorld!Should I send this DaveNet out tomorrow?
Be the first to post a free ad on our Classified Ads server.
Check it out. Two job openings on the Help Wanted page.
InfoWorld covers Marc Andreessen talking about the death of client-side Java, server systems that scale, technology thinness in Silicon Valley, and why it makes sense to give money to the Democratic Party.
SF Chronicle: The cautionary examples of Pointcast and Marimba. "These guys trumpeted themselves loudly, but didn't do a good job of explaining who they were."
This morning I exchanged mail with a longtime friend, Dan Shafer, about the Frontier 5.1 pricing model. (Updated with a Q&A with Jacob Levy at 10:43AM.)
Also this morning, I exchanged mail with Deke Tallent on the Script Meridian list about DAV, XML-RPC, Lingo and collaborative user interfaces.
My programming bibles. Marketing Warfare teaches the value of being focused because it helps customers understand what you do. Microserfs teaches the value of being innovative and customer-driven (totally 1.0). Writing Solid Code is a more engineering oriented version of Microserfs.
One more bible. My longtime friend, Fred Davis, just released his Windows 98 Bible. If you use Windows 98 (I don't) you gotta get this book. Fred totally knows his stuff. And Fred recently started a new company, Lumeria, funded by another longtime friend, Charlie Jackson, and they're working on some very exciting stuff that's still top secret. (I know what they're doing.)
Interesting! According to Alexa, Jerry Springer is related to Scripting News.
A confused cliche-filled piece that explores the ridiculous idea that Java and XML are opposing forces in the software world. What a crock!
ZDNet redesigns for the 'portal look'.
Monday, June 29, 1998
DaveNet: Business Development.Thea's Galleria takes us to Royal New Zealand Air Force website. Welcome back Thea!
Script Meridian: Jason Levine explains how the Goodwill Games site will work.
InterWoven TeamSite appears to be in the same category as Frontier 5.1.
Same with SiteMan.
Another screen shot showing Frontier in action.
Washington Post: Patent database to go on the web.
News.com: IBM steers around Microsoft too.
Wired: Nader questions AT&T/TCI merger.
Dan Shafer: The web is a garden.
My designer friend Marney Morris says, 'Hey Dave. Director is still the best design tool.'
Dilbert: Mission Statement Generator.
Sunday, June 28, 1998
Emails I sent this morning about lots of things. I've been revising and adding to this page all morning!Jakob Nielsen: Should you outsource web design?
Saturday, June 27, 1998
Important advisory for people running Frontier 5.1 and 5.0.2 betas on Windows.The problem, illustrated in a simple script:
file.exists ("C:\\apache\\htdocs\\index.html ")All three statements are true.
file.exists ("C:\\apache\\htdocs\\index.html.")
file.exists ("C:\\apache\\htdocs\\index.html. ")
News.com: Windows bug exposes script source code.
Jason Levine explains the loophole and offers a little history. It's a serious hole.
Earlier today, Bob Denny, the developer of O'Reilly's server, acknowledged the hole and said it will be fixed in an upcoming release.
MacAddict: Frontier 5.1.
W3C: Redefining HTML as an application of XML.
The second Frontier 5.1 HOWTO explains how to use the People suite to manage multi-user access to resources and services.
Friday, June 26, 1998
MacWEEK: Frontier blazing Internet trail. Wow!We're doing HOWTOs for the new features in Frontier 5.1. Here's the first one. It shows you how to set up the website framework so that it renders to the object database. The next step is a 30-day trial version of 5.1.
In a message posted earlier today, Matt Neuburg explains the alphabet soup of acronyms in Frontier 5.1.
The Be Fund is endorsed by Be (they point to it from their home page).
The fun continues... Here's a comparison of 4D to Frontier. All this attention sure feels good!
But wait! It gets better. A fellow named "Raster Boy" has posted a comparison between Frontier and his 1996 Dodge Intrepid. It's great to get some humor into this flow!
MSNBC: Microsoft faces fiasco for rights to browser name.
ScriptMeridian: French translation of Phil Suh's object database tutorial.
Also on ScriptMeridian, Phil Suh, formerly of Japan, is now starting a Bay Area Frontier User's Group.
I first met Phil in the 24 Hours of Democracy experiment in 1996. Here's his essay.
Thursday, June 25, 1998
Chris Nandor, the author of a MacPerl book posted a table, derived from one here on Scripting News, comparing MacPerl, Frontier and AppleScript.My table was part of an essay saying that AppleScript and Frontier were so different as to not be comparable. I think Chris stretches a lot to make a point. Yes, Perl is great. But it is not the same thing as Frontier.
Eric Soroos, a Frontier user who also knows Perl, posted an email with his view of this comparison. And then Wesley Felter checked in.
What's needed? An unbiased, objective, independent analysis of the scripting market. I'm obviously not the person to do that.
If you're operating a website with Frontier with 20,000 or more pages in the object database, please send a message to bierman@userland.com. Thanks!
News.com: Gates says anti-trust case is now moot as Microsoft launches Windows 98.
Wednesday, June 24, 1998
Frontier goes commercial. A new beginning!Frontier 5.1 Pricing and FAQ. Things should be clearer now. Sorry for all the confusion. We added a student and non-profit price. Lots of questions answered.
Short list of new features in Frontier 5.1.
IBM: Java and XML.
Reuters: AT&T to acquire TCI. Wow!
Tish: Set-top nonsense. 'Ted Turner, John Malone ... these people are evil. These people make the devil want to move out of the neighborhood because it's getting "seedy." These people have minds that work in ways only fan club members of "The X Files" can understand.' How did she know?
Tuesday, June 23, 1998
DaveNet: Telescript and Java.General Magic was awarded a patent for distributed computing based on movement. Close call! It's OK, because it wasn't a good idea. Remote procedure calling does what we need. I hope no one has a patent on that!
Paul Snively on mobile code. Lots of links.
Here's the best I could find on the vision of Telescript.
MacWEEK: MacHack top-10 list.
News.com: Microsoft shares soar on ruling.
News.com: Sybase targets financial services.
People are taking Don Hopkins too seriously. He's kind of a combination of Steve Martin and Butthead. Very smart, very wild dude, lots of fun at a party. You can't argue with his logic. He's just playing. Trust me.
TidBITS covers the upcoming Frontier 5.1 release.
Dan Gillmor is thankful no one asked him to cover the good side of Hitler.
Nexus is a 100-percent Java web server. Josh Lucas is psyched. "You can put this in any Java app and be able to allow HTTP requests and responses to interact with the app. Now that is cool. I've found something to play with today!"
News.com: Marimba ships Castanet 3.0.
InternetWeek: Marimba targets enterprise app developers.
Monday, June 22, 1998
A new website: Transitioning to 5.1. Wish us luck!In a public email exchange, Jason Levine at Sports Illustrated commits to a partner-level license for Frontier 5.1, explains why this form of pricing is common, asks questions and raises issues, and I respond.
MacCentral: Frontier goes commercial.
XML.COM: The quest for a graphics standard.
The inimitable Don Hopkins checks in on Java and killer apps.
Nicholas Petreley in InfoWorld: The network computer is dying of OS/2-itis.
SJ Merc: Y2K has some preparing for chaos.
News.com columnist Tim Clark says it's time to stop believing in portals.
Tim Bray on XML.COM previews XML support in IE 5.
InfoWorld: XML builds momentum as repository standard.
Sunday, June 21, 1998
NY Times: The voice on the phone is not human.Forbes: Have you planned your summer vacation yet?
SJ Merc: The life of O'Reilly.
Saturday, June 20, 1998
MacInTouch points to an email UserLand sent yesterday explaining a special pricing offer to registered Frontier users. We have not yet opened a public website explaining this to people who are not registered users. We hope to do that soon.ScriptMeridian: Robert Parker uses Frontier in a newspaper.
Yesterday I met privately with a group of developers working on RPC-over-XML-via-HTTP, with very encouraging results. We expect to announce major new compatibility before the end of summer, leading to an easier and more efficent web programming model.
SJ Merc: SPA says Microsoft wants server monopoly.
SF Chron: Sex sells software?
Salon: The Freudian email. I've been on both the sending and receiving end. Either way it's embarassing and hurts.
Wired: Gotta pay to push?
News.com: Netscape next in portal madness?
AppleScript can talk XML-RPC using FaceSpan.
InfoWorld: Two-faced Coins catching on.
Thursday, June 18, 1998
DaveNet: We're Ready!ScriptMeridian: Keola Donaghy explains how he does his site with the help of the Frontier community.
News.com: IBM to bundle Apache.
Red Herring has trouble making sense of Software.net's valuation.
InfoSeek: Disney purchases 43% stake.
Interesting product! E-Stamp.
Wired: Doerr and friends snuggle with Gore and friends.
You can get anything on the Internet.
AP: All-nun band still grooving.
Salon: We only think old computers are useless. (I don't. They make great servers. Like this machine. It's a Quadra 800, circa 1991. It's very slow for a personal machine, but it does the server job well and never crashes.)
NY Times: The anatomy of new PCs. (More megahertz, RAM and 3D graphics.)
ThinkTank makes a brief appearance on infoworld.com. (I seriously doubt the theory that Microsoft killed ThinkTank. I think we played a pretty big role in its demise. We took our eye off the prize.)
Here's a 1993 review of ThinkTank's successor, MORE written by Matt Neuburg, who chronicles Frontier for O'Reilly. Matt writes so beautifully! And he groks our software at a deep level. Thanks!
O'Reilly puts animals on the cover of all their books. Our animal is the bison. "Bison are the largest mammals in North America: mature males stand about 6.5 feet tall at the shoulder, and weight almost a ton. They generally live in herds, which vary in size and movement." Yeah! That describes the Frontier community.
Wednesday, June 17, 1998
Survey: Are surveys valuable?Wired: Portal stocks jump on AOL bid.
My friend Lenn Pryor had a strong positive reaction to the first few pages on the UserLand site. Thanks Lenn!
InfoWorld: Interesting discussion of software that died.
Netscape: Communicator 4.5.
News.com: Microsoft previews Office 2000. Key features, HTML, XML, collaboration.
News.com: Greenspan says let monopolies be.
Opera Software is porting their web browser to Be and Mac.
Tuesday, June 16, 1998
DaveNet: Who is Ralph Nader?Computer Currents: Y2K? What's that?
A new search engine that finds things the others don't.
A Frontier user who's running for state office in Oregon.
Microbiology News should look familiar even if you're not familiar with microbiology.
NY Times: US stocks plunge as Asian turmoil worsens.
Wired: Out of print books come back. Thanks to new technology.
Wired: SMIL declared a standard.
SJ Merc: How to prevent or recover from job burnout.
I remember getting this issue of Upside, in 1990, and shouting Yeah! I sat down and read it immediately, every sentence was beautiful. I wrote my own version of this story in 1995.
Monday, June 15, 1998
A new look for the UserLand site.Two important new pages for Frontier users: What is UserLand? and Three groups of users.
Dan Gillmor: Gates and The Economist.
Variety: Warner catches computer glitch pitch.
Salon covers slashdot.org.
Python.org's XML SIG.
News.com: Microsoft, Compaq invest $425 million in RoadRunner. I wrote about RoadRunner in this DaveNet piece.
Macrobyte: Prepress Autotools 1.2. A Frontier app.
How big is the web? NEC and DEC weigh in.
Ralph Nader says you can't buy a computer without Windows. But what about the Macintosh?
NY Times: Most approve of Microsoft, poll shows.
Does Microsoft approve of Linux?
KPCA is looking for speakers.
SJ Merc: Former Apple evangelist Guy Kawasaki visits with Silicon Valley venture capitalists pitching his latest idea.
MacWEEK covers web development tools and runtimes.
According to an InfoWorld interview with Netscape's Marc Andreessen, they are doing work to embrace XML serverside. "You're going to need is a single repository for them, and then you'll need a whole generation of software systems that also support them." Sounds like an XML object database.
Sunday, June 14, 1998
DaveNet: Y2K The Movie.Shawn Pierce, on the Casbah list, tells a story of Vignette.
Upside: A historic and futuristic look at search engines.
From the author, Jason Kelly, this book is being considered for a movie by TriStar, Dakota, Warner Bros, Kopelson, and Renaissance. Here's an excerpt from the book. And another.
News.com: Polygram owner sees bright future for net-based music distribution. A visionary... Thanks!
What is PuppetTime? It's from Apple.
Warner Brothers is doing a movie called Y2K. Damn!
And there was a remake of 1984 done in 1984. Serves me right for writing at 1AM.
Jakob Nielsen: Fighting Linkrot.
Rick Smolan's latest project.
Saturday, June 13, 1998
Red Herring interviews Tim Berners-Lee on XML and the W3C, and Jim Whitehead responds, citing factual errors.Edge.org: John Brockman and George Dyson.
LAN Times: XML reality must include openness.
InfoWorld: Oracle and XML.
CNN: Florida man is a walking billboard for love. He's got guts!
Friday, June 12, 1998
DaveNet: 1/1/00.Ed Ream compares his outliner with the one in Frontier.
InfoWorld: SAP gets behind XML.
Perl.com on Y2K compliance.
News.com: Is Inktomi overrated?
The Standard: Magaziner, Dyson say 'Hands off the Net'.
Bill Gates replies to The Economist.
Wired: XML and classified ads.
Electronic books! Sounds interesting. I'd like to write for this medium. Hey I already have a book. The back issues of DaveNet. It's a pretty unique database. And it's not ink, it's just bits.
A coin has two faces, an XML element and a JavaBean. If you do Java, what do you think?
Thursday, June 11, 1998
Say goodbye to DEC. I have fond memories. I learned assembly language on a PDP-11. What a beautiful machine! Now DEC is part of Compaq. Ohhh the big wheel keeps on turning. 
MSIE 5.0 developer release. Registration required to download software. News.com summarizes features.
If this really works, it's the product of the year.
David Chun, a UCLA student, tried to buy a computer without buying Windows. No deal.
Due to a LAN glitch, the DaveNet home page had the wrong piece for the last 18 hours or so. I'm starting to get email on it. It's OK, it was a good piece, written a little less than a month ago, and it's worth a re-read. The network gods were at work here!
Amazon opens its music store; Reuters story.
Thinking about Alan Greenspan's evaluation of the US economy yesterday made me want to re-read this DaveNet piece from 1995. Remember Murphy's Law.
Four things that could spoil US economic prosperity:
- The Asian depression.
- US limits on privacy software.
- Y2K.
- Nuclear war.
Wednesday, June 10, 1998
Microsoft.com: XML Tools. Frontier is listed. Yay! This should get us some credibility? Thanks Microsoft!ZDNet: Stewart Alsop doesn't dig Network Computers.
XML.COM is looking for structured XML editors. What do they mean by structured editors? Are they talking about outliners?
SJ Merc: Greenspan says it's the best economy in 50 years.
News.com interviews Chief Operating Yahoo Jeff Mallet on their acquisition of ViaWeb. "These guys have kept a lean and mean operation, very Web-centric from a user and merchant's standpoint. They never got caught up in the IPO race."
NY Post: Startups deal with hypergrowth in the race to IPO.
Wired: $40 million pours into Inktomi.
Red Herring explains the rationale behind Inktomi's $700 million valuation. Is caching really that hard?
Reuters: Lycos gets search spider patent.
Last week I asked why print journalists are so upset with Matt Drudge. I emailed with an experienced reporter who wouldn't go on the record. He said that Drudge didn't play by journalistic rules, no fact-checking, or multiple-sources. Very low quality reporting. Here's a NY Times opinion piece by Frank Rich that explains this view.
Jason Figone, a journalism major at Penn State, asks why my journalist friend wouldn't go on the record.
A panel discussion on stereotypes in media from 1996 led by Mr. Rich. Requires RealAudio.
SJ Merc: Researchers question net-based polling.
Upside: Apple's comeback?
MacWEEK: NetObjects woos Mac webmasters. There appears to be some scripting support in this release. A free public beta is available. Can anyone verify this?
InfoWorld: Sun's Ed Zander wants to woo developers. He wants to pattern his developer pitch after Apple's, as Netscape has.
Tuesday, June 9, 1998
Stuart II, which was a descendent of my own LBBS, an early 80s Apple II BBS, has been ported to the web. I did a Stuart search for LBBS and it came up with three matches. Then I searched for messages by Mastodon, which was my handle in those days. Nick Turner was the developer and host of Stuart II. The story of LBBS is on my outliners & programming page.Navigator to include Flash: Wired, InternetWeek.
CNN: Compaq and Yahoo start a new online service. This is interesting.
Upside: The long strange death of Byte Magazine.
Columnist Tom Halfhill has a FAQ on the Byte closure.
Wired: A 36-year old net crusader dies.
Reuters: Paul McCartney sings goodbye to Linda.
News.com: NBC buys control of Snap, stake in CNET.
FoxNews covers web-based distributed computing.
Michael Winser is a member of the Internet Explorer team at Microsoft. He has comments about the PC WEEK article I linked to yesterday.
The Standard: Microsoft to wire up US court system.
gnuotes (aka yoga) is a project to produce an open source equivalent of Lotus Notes.
A note to Microsoft people. While the government lawsuit was rolling out I asked that Microsoft people not send me email on that subject, but now that the dust has settled I find I miss their participation in Scripting News, so please send comments, on or off the record. Thanks!
Monday, June 8, 1998
Let's go to the movies with Thea's Galleria!NetMarketing: Peace and quiet on the Internet.
SJ Merc: Yahoo to make it easy to set up a store on the Internet. Yahoo!
LEO is an outliner for programming in C or C++ on the Mac. It's patterned after MORE, to which the author pays tribute. Thanks!
BTW, Frontier's script editor is an outliner. It really works. I'll never program in a flat text editor again.
InfoWorld: FTC files lawsuit against Intel.
Wired: A Father's Day necktie party at Microsoft.
After a brief respite, the Browser Wars are supposedly on again. Who's to blame? Is there a real issue? Or is PC WEEK making a mountain out of a molehill? Should we tell them all to take a hike?
Andy Sylvester on Script Meridian: Building a standard website with Frontier. A new tutorial.
Sunday, June 7, 1998
To me, this SJ Merc piece says clearly why non-Microsoft developers should work together to build special bridges between our products, whether or not we compete. A common mantra here on Scripting News. Am I Don Quixote?InfoWorld: What are your favorite products of the last 20 years? UCSD Pascal, SimCity, the Mac II, Think C, Eudora, Solitaire, CD Player. Of course I like Frontier too, but I'm biased.
SF Chronicle: A crack in Microsoft's armor? Probably not.
IC Online: XML tools.
Saturday, June 6, 1998
Dan Gillmor spends a day with Novell's Eric Schmidt.NY Times: Remembering Robert Kennedy.
SJ Merc: Microsoft's all-from-one-vendor pitch.
BBC: Indonesia lifts press censorship.
Yesterday on NPR's Talk of the Nation, they explained how last month's popular revolution in Indonesia was coordinated with the Internet. Indonesia is an especially wired country, made up of 17,000 islands, face to face meetings are unusually difficult. Analysts and government officials in the US monitored events thru the net. More pointers: www.sciencefriday.org.
Tabloid.net: The dark side of the Indonesian revolution and Meet the New Boss.
MSNBC: India's nuclear server hacked in an anti-war protest. Here's a diagram that explains how they did it.
The two central pages on our XML site explain how to use Frontier as an XML object database, and how to write RPC handlers in Frontier. Looking at our log digest it was clear that most people aren't finding these pages.
Friday, June 5, 1998
Stewart Alsop: Apple has what it needs, a future.NY Times: Out of print books on the web and a new kind of beeper from Japan.
Wired: Netscape's Ecommerce Campaign. Andreessen says "We are set up to do very well, even in a world where Microsoft is very strong." Thanks!
Dan Gillmor in the SJ Merc: Your privacy for sale.
Thursday, June 4, 1998
DaveNet: XML Parsers.MacWEEK surveys XML in the Mac market.
The Frontier-XML site.
Doc Searls interviews Netscape's Marc Andreessen.
XML.COM: The web is ruined and I ruined it, by David Siegel.
John Ryan: Why the press hates Drudge.
News.com: Netscape leading portal for business users?
Wired: Borders faces stiff competition.
InfoWorld interviews Microsoft's Vic Gundotra on applications that scale to run over the Internet.
News.com: Microsoft invests in Tut Systems.
ZDNet: What is a benchmark?
PC WEEK outlines Netscape's announcements later today.
Chuck Shotton sent me a pointer to this article on diversity and reliability in networks.
Wednesday, June 3, 1998
Tonight in San Francisco: WebGrrls Plaform Independent Mixer. Here's a map. It's for WebBoyz too!In the 'It Had To Happen' department -- according to Variety, Tom Hanks will produce a special for HBO on the history of Apple.
Straight question: Why is the Washington press corps so upset with Matt Drudge?
Wired: Your data as online commodity.
Eric Soroos is working on a Frontier-based mail server.
Tom Geller can do a press release for you for $500.
SJ Merc: Sprint's new phone plan means more full-time net connections. A new kind of software market is evolving.
NY Times: Consolidation in the web service industry.
Tuesday, June 2, 1998
News.com: KPMG goes with Pointcast for new service.ZDNet: And Marimba partners with Intuit and Seagate.
Microsoft explains how they manage their servers.
Junglee and XML: "As much as 90% of the world's data is outside of relational database systems. Vital data is scattered across web sites, file systems, database systems, and legacy applications."
Upside interview with Sun's Ed Zander.
InternetWorld: Is XML a godsend for publishers?
Special event: EFF at the Fillmore on June 26.
Fortune: New Media Nightmare.
Monday, June 1, 1998
DaveNet: Recasting.Script Meridian hosts a Frontier community mail list.
InfoWorld: HP program automates web printing.
Dave Carlick on California Proposition 226.
SJ Merc: Maybe Excite should have wed Zapata?
InformationWeek on XML. "When was the last time a markup language did anything useful for your company?"
Back issues...
Check out Scripting News -- May 1998.
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