• An OTP application, with a C pipe driver under the hood.
• Based on ICU, the best implementation of Unicode.
• Strings stored as binaries ⇒ big memory savings.
• Backwards-compatible (mostly) with the standard string module.
• Distributed under the new BSD license.

Currently, it works on Linux, using the OpenCV library to do the actual detection. Other operating systems should work but have not (yet) been tested.

SearchMonkey reuses structured data to improve search result display with benefits to both search users, developers, and publishers of web content. The first type of applications are focusing on remaking the abstracts on the search result page: Figure 1 shows the kind of presentations that structured data enables in this space. Based on data, the image representing the object can be easily singled out. One can also easily select the most important attributes of the object to be shown in a table format. Similarly for links: the data tells which links represent important actions the user can take (e.g. play the video, buy the product) and these links can be arranged in a way that their function is clear. In essence, knowledge of the data and its semantics enables to present the page in a much more informative, attractive, and concise way.

In this example we're going to take a closer look at the flexibility of Django's loose coupling philosophy by replacing its default templating language with Jinja2. Jinja2 is a very similar template language to the one provided by Django, but provides additional functionality like more flexible if syntax in templates, the option to raise an error when an undefined object is operated upon within templates (as opposed to Django's templating language which will always fail silently), and more flexible solutions for retrieving templates.

This includes:

• mypgrep.py - a tool, similar to pgrep, for managing mysql connections
• compact_innodb.py - compacts innodb datafiles by dumping and reloading all tables
• patches - patches to add features to MySQL 4.0.26 and MySQL 5.0.37

Differences in URL encoding functions will make implementation of OAuth harder. There is an immediate need for correct parameter encoding implementations.

I am working on an implementation of OAuth for anyMeta, our content management system. Whilst checking existing code and implementing my own version I wondered how some implementations will differ.

OAuth uses RFC3986 for the encoding of URI parameters. Another often used encoding scheme is RFC1738 or RFC2396 (updated in RFC2732).

The differences? Quite a bit.

The unreserved characters in RFC3986 are:

unreserved = ALPHA, DIGIT, '-', '.', '_', '~'

And in RFC17138:

unreserved     = alpha | digit | safe | extra
safe           = "$" | "-" | "_" | "." | "+"
extra          = "!" | "*" | "'" | "(" | ")" | ","

And in RFC2396/2732

"A" .. "Z", "a" .. "z", "0" .. "9",
"-", "_", ".", "!", "~", "*", "'", "(", ")"

What do some programming languages use?

PHP

PHP has two options. Use urlencode or rawurlencode. The difference between the two is the escaping of the “+” character.
rawurlencode claim to fame is to be compatible with RFC1738. In fact it is not. It encodes all characters as in RFC3986, and then also the “~”. So rawurlencode comes close. It escapes everything, except:

A-Za-z0-9\-_.

So the only difference here is the “~” character. The correct funtion will be:

function oauth_urlencode ( $s )
{
    return str_replace('%7E', '~', rawurlencode($s);
}

Perl

CPAN implements URI...

This script is a slightly modified version of Paul Moen's from blog.dbadojo.com/2007/11/making-logical-volumes-on-ec2.html.

It’s not like if you accidentally reboot your dedicated server at least you know your DB probably shut down safely, and will probably wake up working just fine. That disk is dedicated to you. But not so with EC2… that disk doesn’t exist anywhere. So you need to really think about how to make that disk image persistent.

In addition, it means that the core code in Merb is kept simple and well organised. This has multiple benefits. It means it’s faster for one thing. It’s also easier to understand, maintain and extend.

Merb is already packed with good stuff; flexible routing, gem plugins, the provides API, part and mail controllers etc.

Raphaël is a small JavaScript library that should simplify your work with vector graphics on the web. In case you want to create your own specific chart or image crop-n-rotate widget, you can simply achieve it with this library.

Raphaël uses SVG and VML as a base for graphics creation. Because of that every created object is a DOM object so you can attach JavaScript event handlers or modify objects later. Raphaël’s goal is to provide an adapter that will make drawing cross-browser and easy. Currently library supports Firefox 3.0+, Safari 3.0+, Opera 9.5+ and Internet Explorer 6.0+.

Scalaris is a scalable, fault-tolerant structured storage with transactions for global online services.

What does that mean?

Imagine you have a small web service with a big potential. You are running your own web server with a database backend. Now your site has suddenly caught attention and you get more traffic than your server can handle.

What are you going to do now? Buying more servers? Introducing complex load-balancing?

Don't waste your time. Scalaris is probably the solution!

The concept of Scalaris is very simple: Scalaris is a transactional data store for online services based on the peer-to-peer principle. It provides self-management and scalability by replicating services among peers. Without system interruption it scales from a few PCs to thousands of servers. Servers can be added or removed on the fly without any service downtime.

Scalaris can be used for online shopping, Internet banking, data sharing, online gaming, or social networks. It is comparable to Amazon's SimpleDB used in S3, but supports strong data consistency and transactions over multiple items.

Scalaris takes care of all the rest:

• Fail-over
• Data distribution
• Load-balancing
• Replication
• Strong consistency
• Transactions

Many apps try to solve these problems from scratch. But you can also buy big, expensive, slow packages called "messaging systems" that handle a lot of these jobs for you. Some of these systems even agree on standard protocols like AMQP. Using a messaging system usually costs a lot but it gives you the power to bring apps together.

Messaging used to be for big wealthy firms only, and the really fast messaging systems are still very expensive. This situation is changing.

What's ØMQ?

• Our mission with ØMQ ("ZeroMQ") is to build the fastest messaging ever. The way to get performance is to optimise the whole software and hardware stack together. So, we are * developing ØMQ closely with major hardware firms.
• ØMQ is already very fast. We're getting 25μsec end-to-end latencies and 2.6 million messages per second today.
• ØMQ is completely free GPL-licensed software written in C++.
• ØMQ is a project in progress. Download the code, read the whitepaper and test results, or join the project if you are a messaging fanatic.

• Rapid Development with Python, Django, and Google App Engine
• Building Scalable Web Applications with Google App Engine
• Engaging User Experiences with Google App Engine
• Under the Covers of the Google App Engine Datastore
• Best Practices - Building a Production Quality Application on Google App Engine
• Working with Google App Engine Models

You could use it as a lightweight alternative to Sun's J2EE patterns for web applications or general solutions.

AbiWord is a free word processing program similar to Microsoft® Word. It is suitable for a wide variety of word processing tasks.

Almost forgot about this one, will take it for a test drive.

• UBF(A) is a data transport format, roughly equivalent to well-formed XML.
• UBF(B) is a programming langauge for describing types in UBF(A) and protocols between clients and servers. UBF(B) is roughly equivalent to to Verified XML, XML-schemas, SOAP and WDSL.
• UBF(C) is a meta-level protocol between used between UBF servers.

While the XML series of languages had the goal of having a human readable format the UBF languages take the opposite view and provide a "machine friendly" format.

UBF is designed to be easy to implement. As a proof of concept - UBF drivers For Erlang, Oz, Java and TCL can be found in the download area. Implementors are welcome to add new languages.

UBF is designed to be "language neutral" - UBF(A) defines a language neutral binary format for transporting data across a network. UBF(B) is a type system for describing client/server interactions which use UBF(A).

Wiky is a clientside Wiki markup to HTML converter written in javascript. As it is bidirectional, it can convert Wiki markup to HTML and later convert that generated HTML text back to Wiki markup. Optionally Wiky will create math formulas from a simple notation similar to LaTeX

JavaScript applications are faster, easier to use, and a lot easier to write that complicate Ajax-driven applications. When you use a framework that SproutCore to help you, they can also be a lot of fun to write.

On Creation of a table in MySQL, the storage engine may be specified. This determines the basic characteristics of the table. For example, the default storage engine is MyISAM, which can be used for non-transactional data that requires fast read access. A table which uses the MEMORY storage engine is held completely in RAM.

Tables that use the PBXT Storage engine have the following features:

• MVCC: Multi-version concurrency control, enables reading without locking.
• Transactional: support for BEGIN, COMMIT and ROLLBACK and recovery on startup.
• ACID compliant: Atomic, Consistent, Isolated, Durable (once committed changes cannot be lost).
• Row-level locking: updates use row-level locking allowing for maximum concurrency.
• Deadlock detection: immediate notification if client processes are deadlocked.
• Referential Integrity: foreign key support.
• Write-once: PBXT avoids double-writes by using a log-based architecture.

BLOB streaming: In combination with the BLOB Streaming engine.

The open source text editor Vim (Vi IMproved) will be used here to present the ideas about effective editing, but they apply to other editors just as well. Choosing the right editor is actually the first step towards effective editing. The discussion about which editor is the best for you would take too much room and is avoided. If you don't know which editor to use or are dissatisfied with what you are currently using, give Vim a try; you won't be disappointed.

Redmine is open source and released under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL).

• jQuery
• prototype
• script.aculo.us
• MooTools
• dojo

Google works directly with the key stake holders for each library effort and accept the latest stable versions as they are released. Once we host a release of a given library, we are committed to hosting that release indefinitely.

The AJAX Libraries API takes the pain out of developing mashups in JavaScript while using a collection of libraries. We take the pain out of hosting the libraries, correctly setting cache headers, staying up to date with the most recent bug fixes, etc.

The briefest summary of the requirements for UQDS is that every task has 3 absolutely required steps.

• A task is created in an issue tracker and assigned to a worker.
• The worker does work, and creates a change-set to be applied to the mainline revision control system. (This can be represented as either a branch or a patch file.)
• A reviewer reviews the completed work, and provides feedback: at least one good thing about the work, at least one area that needs improvement, and a judgement as to whether the good qualities ultimately outweigh the bad, i.e. whether the branch should be merged.

Eran published the OAuth discovery specification. I am very happy with it and will add support to the OAuth PHP library.

I have just released a simple parser to extract the for OAuth relevant information.

The parser accepts a string containing the text of a xrds file. It will check this for OAuth discovery information.

All discovered information is returned in a simple to manage and store array.

For the code:

code.google.com/p/oauth-php/source/browse/trunk/library/discovery/xrds_parse.php

And for an example output:

code.google.com/p/oauth-php/source/browse/trunk/library/discovery/xrds_parse.txt

You can serve your app using a free domain name on the appspot.com domain, or use Google Apps to serve it from your own domain. You can share your application with the world, or limit access to members of your organization.

App Engine costs nothing to get started. Sign up for a free account, and you can develop and publish your application for the world to see, at no charge and with no obligation. A free account can use up to 500MB of persistent storage and enough CPU and bandwidth for about 5 million page views a month.

In a recent interview Tim Berners-Lee pointed out that the infrastructure to power the Semantic Web is already here. ReadWriteWeb's founder, Richard MacManus, even picked it to be the number one trend in 2008. And rightly so. Not only are the bits of infrastructure now in place, but we are also seeing startups and larger corporations working hard to deliver end user value on top of this sophisticated set of technologies.

The Semantic Web means many things to different people, because there are a lot of pieces to it. To some, the Semantic Web is the web of data, where information is represented in RDF and OWL. Some people replace RDF with Microformats. Others think that the Semantic Web is about web services, while for many it is about artificial intelligence - computer programs solving complex optimization problems that are out of our reach. And business people always redefine the problem in terms of end user value, saying that whatever it is, it needs to have simple and tangible applications for consumers and enterprises.

The disagreement is not accidental, because the technology and concepts are broad. Much is possible and much is to be imagined.

• Standalone mode where Yaws runs as a regular webserver daemon. This is the default mode.
• Embedded mode where Yaws runs as an embedded webserver in another erlang application.

Yaws is entirely written in Erlang furthermore it is a multithreaded webserver where one Erlang light weight process is used to handle each client.

The main advantages of yaws compared to other Web technologies are performance and elegance. The performance comes from the underlying Erlang system and its ability to handle concurrent processes in an efficent way. Its elegance comes from Erlang as well. Web applications dont have to be written in ugly adhoc languages.

I just published a new version of our OAuth server and consumer code. The major addition to this version is support for body signing

The body signing is done using the xoauth_body_signature and the optional xoauth_body_signature_method parameters.
These parameters are calculated and added to base string for the main oauth_signature calculation. As such the body is signed and the base string is not lengthened with the complete body.

Body signing is now supported for:

• HTTP PUT requests
• HTTP POST requests with a mime type other than application/x-www-form-urlencoded and multipart/form-data

Whenever you make a POST with a body other than the above two mime types, then the POST parameters are added as a query string to the request url. In this way we can transport a file in the body of the POST and additional parameters in the query string. This is practical as OAuth still doesn't support multipart/form-data requests.

You can download the new version

The future

Next will be the addition of OAuth discovery. I am looking forward to the finished discovery specs, Eran said that they will be simpler than the first draft!

We still need to make the code completely independent of the anyMeta code. This is a nice project for when everything is tested and stable. Any volunteers?

Two included companion utilities, exifcom and exiftime, perform functions on specific tags. exifcom displays and writes the UserComment Exif tag that some cameras include in the image metadata they create. This program is useful for recording caption or location information in the image file itself.

exiftime displays and adjusts the image's Exif date and time tags. Additionally, the utility can list each file in ascending order by date and time, suitable for use in further image processing (e.g., production of a Web catalog) when filename ordering is not useful.

Blurb:

OpenDNS is a better DNS service. We make your Internet safer, faster, smarter and more reliable. It's free, and there's nothing to download.

In the web realm, Comet refers to an architecture that enables a server to actually push data to a client without the client explicitly requesting it. Given that web servers were built to be very good at doing exactly the opposite over a stateless protocol, you should be quite intrigued at this point, so head on over to Comet Daily, a fantastic site that includes incredibly informative articles on Comet, to get some insight on what is going to be the next big thing in web programming.

We want to make all the world's content more accessible, interoperable and valuable. Some call it Web 2.0, Web 3.0, the semantic web or the Giant Global Graph - we call our piece of it Calais.

The core of Calais is our web service. We're working to make this service more accessible by developing sample applications, supporting developers and offering bounties for specific capabilities.

The library implements methods to:

• verify incoming requests against the library
• sign outgoing requests, with curl support for actually doing the request
• sign bodies and multipart/form-data requests
• administrate consumer keys and tokens for multiple users (server and consumer side)
• log incoming and outgoing requests handled by the library (optionally in the database)

This code is in active use for the anyMeta CMS. anyMeta is developed by Mediamatic Lab in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Here is the full implementation of OAuth for anyMeta. For now we publish this as a direct export from our svn repository. It includes full server and client code, including database tables for the storage of tokens and consumer keys. It also includes optional request logging and smarty templates. It has been tested with PHP 5.2.

We have successfully tested this implementation against itself (try it on the Mediamatic OAuth Test Server) and Andy's test server and client.

The code is released under the GPL v2.

Files

The repository contains the following files:

OAuth.mod.php

This is the anyMeta module. All methods starting with httpRequest_ are controllers for a website.

templates/

This directory contains the templates we use. These are Smarty templates and use some tricks provided by anyMeta.

test/

Contains a simple test script. It implements (almost) all tests provided on wiki.oauth.net/TestCases

core/

This directory contains all classes implementing the support for OAuth. In the file OAuth.mod.php you can see how the classes are used.

core/OAuthRequest.php

This is the main class. It wraps either the current request or a request given to the constructor. It provides all basic functionality for calculating the base string, signatures etc.

core/OAuthStore.php

The storage module for OAuth. This file needs some work before it is portable to other systems than anyMeta. It makes use of our database functions, though replacing those calls shouldn't be too hard.

core/OAuthException.php

The exception class for OAuth. Works together with OAuthRequestLogger to enable debugging of OAuth request from and to the server.

core/OAuthRequestSigner.php

Implements methods to sign requests to OAuth servers.

core/OAuthRequester.php

Extends the OAuthRequestSigner class to actually do signed requests to OAuth servers and returning the results. Also implements code to request tokens from OAuth servers.

core/OAuthRequesterLogger.php

Logs all incoming and outgoing requests in a database table. Facilitates debugging of the requests.

core/OAuthVerifier.php

Implements verification of incoming ...

Truncating big tables, with millions of rows, in InnoDB can be really slow. Luckily there is a small trick to speed this up.

The trick is to first create a table that has the same structure as the table you are truncating:

CREATE TABLE `new_table` LIKE `bigtable`;

Then you can swap the to be truncated table for the empty table:

RENAME TABLE `bigtable` TO `old_table`, `new_table` TO `bigtable`;

After this your system will use the new (and empty) table, and you can do a quick drop of the old big table:

DROP TABLE `old_table`;

Done, you have succesfully truncated your huge table.

The term Linked Data was coined by Tim Berners-Lee in his Linked Data Web architecture note. The term refers to a style of publishing and interlinking structured data on the Web. The basic assumption behind Linked Data is that the value and usefulness of data increases the more it is interlinked with other data. In summary, Linked Data is simply about using the Web to create typed links between data from different sources.

The basic tenets of Linked Data are to:

1. use the RDF data model to publish structured data on the Web
2. use RDF links to interlink data from different data sources

Applying both principles leads to the creation of a data commons on the Web, a space where people and organizations can post and consume data about anything. This data commons is often called the Web of Data or Semantic Web.

When using memcache we bumped into some problems. The major one was that we needed to invalidate data due to some content that was updated. For this we took a fresh look at memcache, and made our own derivative, depcached. Short for Dependency Cache.

It is available for all to download and use. Version 1.0.1 and newer now also supports simple queues. Will document it a bit better soon...

Please note that the PHP extension was missing in the 1.0.1 release. You can download the 1.0.2 release when you want to use it.

In the depcached tar we also included the code for the php client. Just use phpize, configure and make install to install the client. Don't forget to adapt your php.ini to load it as an extension.

We also provide the Anymeta_Cache.php source code.

How to use depcached

Depcached is very similar to memcache. Though at the moment depcached only supports a subset of the command set of memcache.

We support:

• set key locked exptime datasz dep-keys
• get key
• delete key exptime
• flush_all
• flush key
• queue key queue-len locked exptime datasz dep-keys
• dequeue key
• version
• quit
• stats

Queues in depcached

Queues are simple fifo queues with a fixed size. With the queue command you can add something to a queue. The get command will return you the complete queue. The dequeue command will send the oldest item in the queue and will afterwards remove it from the queue.

With every queue command you can change the length of the queue.

At the moment there is no option to get the number of items in a queue.

A small example

<?php

$depcached = depcached_connect('localhost', 31307);

if ($depcached) 
{
    $depcached->set("str_key", "String to store in depcached");
    $depcached->set("num_key", 123);

    $object = new StdClass;
    $object->attribute = 'test';
    $depcached->set("obj_key", $object);

    $array = Array('assoc'=>123, 345, 567);
    $depcached->set("arr_key", $array);

    echo '<pre>';
    var_dump($depcached->get('str_key'));
    var_dump($depcached->get('num_key'));
    var_dump($depcached->get('obj_key'));
    var_dump($depc...

Lessons. Fun and interactive lessons that move at the right pace for you.

Motivation. Track your progress and reach your goals with Livemocha tools.

This document is a set of good practices to improve implementations of HTTP and related standards as well as their use. It explains a few basic concepts, points out common mistakes and misbehaviors, and suggests "best practices".

This document does not incriminate any specific product. W3C does not track bugs or errors in implementations. That information is generally tracked by the vendors themselves, or third parties.

Don't let Acorn's size fool you; it's a powerful little guy. Fancy math to keep your pencil strokes from having sharp edges, squeezing as much performance out of your computer's GPU as possible, and simple innovations to make your life easier.

Sometimes the edges in our MySQL database are referring into the wrong direction. In those cases we have to swap the subject and the object id of those edges. How to do that in one SQL query?

It turns out that it is possible, with some combined effort of me and Guilherme Lopes we found a nice SQL statement that does exactly this.

You can exchange the two values by using a temporary variable, which stores the old value of one of the columns. It is assigned in the where clause of the update statement.

This is the simplified SQL statement:

UPDATE `sometable`
SET `a` = `b`,
    `b` = @olda
WHERE (@olda := `a`)

And all the a's and b's in the table are swapped!

And this is the code we use to mirror edges in anyMeta:

UPDATE any_edge
SET edg_subject_id_ref = edg_object_id_ref,
    edg_object_id_ref = @subj,
    edg_prim_subject_id_ref = edg_prim_object_id_ref,
    edg_prim_object_id_ref = @psubj
WHERE edg_predicate_id_ref = (
                SELECT thg_id FROM any_thing
                WHERE thg_kind = 'ROLE' AND thg_symbolic_name = 'MEMBER')
  AND (@subj := edg_subject_id_ref)
  AND (@psubj := edg_prim_subject_id_ref)

Using the OAuth code we published earlier, we created an online test server. It implements both the server and the client (consumer) interface.

You can find it online at oauth-sandbox.mediamatic.nl/ Before you can use it you will need to make an account. The good thing is that you can use that account to add as many keys and tokens as you want, and they will only be visible for you.

I am now in the process of adding some debug code to it, so that you can see what requests came in, and what the replies were.

I hope this server will facilitate in getting OAuth at work on the Internet!

Previously known as Simple Sharing Extensions, FeedSync was originally designed by Ray Ozzie in 2005 and has been developed by Microsoft with input from the Web community. The initial specification, FeedSync for Atom and RSS, describes how to synchronize data through Atom and RSS feeds.

Of course, to actually post to a blog, we also need to know what blogging APIs are supported and where the endpoints are. For MetaWeblog-based protocols, the standard protocol for “autodiscovering” that information from the homepage is RSD.

Configuring an AtomPub blog needs to be equally easy. For some reason, people in the AtomPub community don’t seem to like RSD (only Six Apart puts Atom endpoints in RSD). We need another autodiscovery mechanism.

Update Oct 16 2007, 8:42 AM: Sam Ruby and then Daniel Berlinger [inventor of RSD] have weighed in. Sam created a patch that adds Atom to WordPress’s RSD. Hmmm, maybe we didn’t need another autodiscovery mechanism after all. In fact, RSD nicely solves the “class=preferred” problem.

Not to pick at old wounds, but here’s the thread that made me think RSD wasn’t going to fly with the Atom community. I forgot the specifics last night and was too lazy to go hunt the thread down.

An open protocol to allow secure API authentication in a simple and standard method from desktop and web applications.

Really Simple Discovery is a way to help client software find the services needed to read, edit, or "work with" weblogging software. Although I talk about weblogging software, there's no reason this format can't apply to other forms of web client/system software that I wasn't considering, or may not even exist as of this writing. This format is simple but flexible. One of the deisgn goals was to ensure that it would be human writeable.

We spent some long hours chasing a problem. Some of our users were not able to log on to anyMeta site. The cause of the problem turned out to be, surprise, SpeedTouch ADSL modems.

We quickly found out that the problem was related the IP address of the user. As some users' laptops did work at their office, but not at their home.

Weird.

Testing Long Urls

We then checked our server logs, and found that the machines of the affected users did not even try to load some JavaScript libraries.

Some library and css files were requested, some were not at all. No mention of the longer urls in our logs whatsoever, none, nada.

Different user agents, using different machines, from the same IP address all showed the same problem.

So we started to make a test script that tried to load JavaScript libraries using different urls. After some versions of our script we found an interesting pattern.

What is the difference between these two urls:

www.example.com/jstest/f/TEST/library/Ajax/dir/dir/dir/dir/dir/dir/dir/dir/dir/dir/dir/dir/dir/test21.js

and:

www.example.com/jstest/f/TEST/library/Ajax/dir/dir/dir/dir/dir/dir/dir/dir/dir/dir/dir/dir/dir/dir/dir/test22.js

The big difference is that the first one does load and the second one does not load. Ok, the last one is a bit longer, so rest assured that the following url does load as well:

www.example.com/jstest/f/TEST/library/Ajax/somelangurltext-somelangurltext-somelangurltext-somelangurltext-somelangurltext-somelangurltext-somelangurltext-somelangurltext-somelangurltext/test12.js...

Conclusi]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/article-2803-en.html Mon, 26 Nov 2007 12:09:26 +0100 2007-10-09T20:04:46+02:00 4d73e43a-c7e2-102a-a5cc-5320a7e586ed 40e8d9f4-745b-1029-bdba-ceed3647c3f9 http://www.marcworrell.com/article-500-en.html

There is a new and better version of this memcached clone. Please check out depcached. The mmcached software is not maintained anymore.

Memcached is a high-performance, distributed memory object caching system. It is created and maintained by Danga Interactive. I adapted memcached 1.1.12 so that it supports a directory like structure for keys. I also added an option to prevent particular keys to be flushed, making them persistent during the specified caching period.

The problem with caching data

When using memcached for multiple sites we ran into the problem that:

1. we want to use the same memcached daemon for multiple sites
2. we want to be able to flush the cached keys of a certain site
3. we want to be able to flush certain categories of keys

Why would we want to flush different categories? An easy example is when you change a page template, in that case you want to flush everything that uses that template, but not all cached objects, configuration details, sessions etc.

We were able to use the same memcached daemons by prefixing all keys with the database name of the site. This is possible because every site is using an unique database. For example, the key config will become something like any_mms05/config.

Solving the requirement of flushing only parts of the cache, without deleting specific keys was a bit harder. I needed to change the code of memcached; open source comes to the rescue.

Adding hierarchy to memcached

I added hierarchy to the cached keys by splitting the keys on /-characters. Each key can have any number of /-characters, creating multiple levels of hierarchy.

For every element in the path of the key we store a timestamp. When the timestamp of a path-element (directory) is newer that the timestamp of the key (file) then the key is considered to be invalid.

For every cache lookup I split the key in its list of path-elements. For every level we check the timestamp of the different levels. This is done very fast (O(n) where n is the number of levels) by using a separate hash table, which is never flushed. The maximum timestamp is then compared against the timestamp of the cache entry.

For example database/object/thing/1004, will be have modification checks on database, database/object and ...

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/article-500-en.html Mon, 26 Nov 2007 11:42:34 +0100 2006-08-03T18:13:59+02:00 40e8d9f4-745b-1029-bdba-ceed3647c3f9 856b1df2-eb39-102a-8924-145362f49f42 http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-2975-en.html ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-2975-en.html Fri, 23 Nov 2007 18:27:36 +0100 2007-11-23T18:27:17+01:00 856b1df2-eb39-102a-8924-145362f49f42 7fa6b39a-eb39-102a-8924-145362f49f42 http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-2973-en.html ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-2973-en.html Fri, 23 Nov 2007 18:27:17 +0100 2007-11-23T18:27:08+01:00 7fa6b39a-eb39-102a-8924-145362f49f42 79d505fc-eb39-102a-8924-145362f49f42 http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-2971-en.html ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-2971-en.html Fri, 23 Nov 2007 18:27:08 +0100 2007-11-23T18:26:58+01:00 79d505fc-eb39-102a-8924-145362f49f42 75a800ec-eb39-102a-8924-145362f49f42 http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-2970-en.html ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-2970-en.html Fri, 23 Nov 2007 18:26:58 +0100 2007-11-23T18:26:51+01:00 75a800ec-eb39-102a-8924-145362f49f42 6fb11a66-eb39-102a-8924-145362f49f42 http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-2969-en.html ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-2969-en.html Fri, 23 Nov 2007 18:26:51 +0100 2007-11-23T18:26:41+01:00 6fb11a66-eb39-102a-8924-145362f49f42 69bdb3f8-eb39-102a-8924-145362f49f42 http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-2968-en.html ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-2968-en.html Fri, 23 Nov 2007 18:26:41 +0100 2007-11-23T18:26:31+01:00 69bdb3f8-eb39-102a-8924-145362f49f42 5c989ac6-eb39-102a-8924-145362f49f42 http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-2967-en.html ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-2967-en.html Fri, 23 Nov 2007 18:26:31 +0100 2007-11-23T18:26:09+01:00 5c989ac6-eb39-102a-8924-145362f49f42 3553e136-ea3b-102a-8924-145362f49f42 http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2955-en.html JQbus uses off-the-shelf Jabber chat services as a generic information bus, passing SPARQL queries and results via user accounts, encoded as XMPP IQ messages.

JQbus provides a Jabber (XMPP) transport for SPARQL queries and responses, using Java. Each question comes "from" some Jabber account (possibly shared with a human user) and is routed by Jabber magic to code attached to another such account, whose response is transmitted back, addressed only to a jabber: ID.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2955-en.html Thu, 22 Nov 2007 18:50:40 +0100 2007-11-22T12:06:51+01:00 3553e136-ea3b-102a-8924-145362f49f42 29950e5a-ea73-102a-8924-145362f49f42 http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2959-en.html Great story about the difference between programmers and managers.

The Peter principle in action.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2959-en.html Thu, 22 Nov 2007 18:47:24 +0100 2007-11-22T18:47:23+01:00 29950e5a-ea73-102a-8924-145362f49f42 56642ac6-ea3a-102a-8924-145362f49f42 http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2952-en.html We are proposing a stack of abstraction layers that are intended to facilitate the concept of data portability, of open web data. Each layer is an abstraction of functionality based on recurring computer science patterns on how to model a system. In this document we take a look at current practices for data on the web, setup an argument for open web data, look into various scenarios where this model could come to fruition, and then look at practical considerations from a business standpoint as to the economics of open web data.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2952-en.html Thu, 22 Nov 2007 12:00:37 +0100 2007-11-22T12:00:37+01:00 56642ac6-ea3a-102a-8924-145362f49f42 4c76e5b2-ea30-102a-8924-145362f49f42 http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2949-en.html VectorMagic - the online tool for precision bitmap to vector conversion.

This site converts bitmap images to vector art - it's an online auto-tracer. Just upload your image and we will vectorize it for you.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2949-en.html Thu, 22 Nov 2007 10:48:46 +0100 2007-11-22T10:48:45+01:00 4c76e5b2-ea30-102a-8924-145362f49f42 7568e9a2-d928-102a-a5cc-5320a7e586ed http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2839-en.html An open protocol to allow secure API authentication in a simple and standard method from desktop and web applications.

OAuth is a simple way to publish and interact with protected data. It's also a safer and more secure way for people to give you access. We've kept it simple to save you time.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2839-en.html Tue, 20 Nov 2007 12:48:21 +0100 2007-10-31T18:39:48+01:00 7568e9a2-d928-102a-a5cc-5320a7e586ed 00cfc5b6-e585-102a-a5cc-5320a7e586ed http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2939-en.html The Relationship Update Stream is an endless feed of social relationship data, designed for web services to be able to send and receive information when changes to social relationships on their service occur. This is a developer platform, not something for regular users.

Relationship Update Stream:

• Allows all open services to share public relationship data
• Provides real-time updates about changes to public relationships
• Makes it possible for services to both publish and subscribe to public relationship changes
• Data quality is high since services have to vouch for the data they provide
• Designed by developers, for developers
• Builds on top of the Atom Stream format that's already seen strong adoption and has existing client libraries

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2939-en.html Fri, 16 Nov 2007 12:12:30 +0100 2007-11-16T12:12:30+01:00 00cfc5b6-e585-102a-a5cc-5320a7e586ed 7595ab56-e57e-102a-a5cc-5320a7e586ed http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2935-en.html NoseRub wants to be an inspiration, protocol and implementation of a decentralized social network.

Social networks are great: you can stay in touch with friends all across the world and find new ones based on your interests. But often, social networks serve a single purpose or interest. For instance photos, videos or classmates from school and university.

This is not a problem by itself, but when you want to keep track of all your contacts in all these social networks, this is a lot of work for you to update your contacts list in all the social networks you are in. And you also might need to get a member of a social network, although you're not interesed in the subject, but only want to track your friends activities.

NoseRub only defines the social network and some basic content types like media, links, micropublishing and text. You can now add all your contacts to a NoseRub network and aggregate several social networks into just one.

And you always have full control of your data, as you can install NoseRub on your own server and have it connect to other servers out there.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2935-en.html Fri, 16 Nov 2007 11:25:42 +0100 2007-11-16T11:25:39+01:00 7595ab56-e57e-102a-a5cc-5320a7e586ed fe0c1bb8-e025-102a-a5cc-5320a7e586ed http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2929-en.html A great but simple editor for creating the plist files needed for launchd on Mac OS X 10.4 and later.

After creating your .plist you can launch it with launchctl load path_to/your.periodic.program.plist.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2929-en.html Fri, 09 Nov 2007 16:09:50 +0100 2007-11-09T16:09:47+01:00 fe0c1bb8-e025-102a-a5cc-5320a7e586ed ef2c67f8-dd9e-102a-a5cc-5320a7e586ed http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2913-en.html Location Linked Information by Matt Mankins at the MIT Media Lab

Location Linked Information (LLI) is a project that attempts to merge virtual spaces and communities, such as those that reside on the Internet and in traditional databases, with the physical world, the world of atoms.

LLI uses geography, measured in degrees latitude and longitude as the primary key linking the two realms.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2913-en.html Tue, 06 Nov 2007 10:57:58 +0100 2007-11-06T10:57:58+01:00 ef2c67f8-dd9e-102a-a5cc-5320a7e586ed ac904190-dd98-102a-a5cc-5320a7e586ed http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2910-en.html Google Gadgets are mini-applications built using HTML, with JavaScript, Flash or Silverlight for dynamic behaviors. Since gadgets can run on multiple sites and platforms, there are special tags and libraries that work in different places. All of these are extensions to the core Google Gadgets API, to provide additional functionality.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2910-en.html Tue, 06 Nov 2007 10:13:11 +0100 2007-11-06T10:13:09+01:00 ac904190-dd98-102a-a5cc-5320a7e586ed 383030f4-dcfc-102a-a5cc-5320a7e586ed http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2900-en.html NEPOMUK brings together researchers, industrial software developers, and representative industrial users, to develop a comprehensive solution for extending the personal desktop into a collaboration environment which supports both the personal information management and the sharing and exchange across social and organizational relations.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2900-en.html Mon, 05 Nov 2007 15:33:13 +0100 2007-11-05T15:33:12+01:00 383030f4-dcfc-102a-a5cc-5320a7e586ed e575462c-dcf8-102a-a5cc-5320a7e586ed http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2894-en.html Geonames provides tons of geographical information. It also adds a REST interface to query the information.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2894-en.html Mon, 05 Nov 2007 15:09:29 +0100 2007-11-05T15:09:25+01:00 e575462c-dcf8-102a-a5cc-5320a7e586ed f8b5326e-d9ca-102a-a5cc-5320a7e586ed http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2893-en.html Raptor is a free software / Open Source C library that provides a set of parsers and serializers that generate Resource Description Framework (RDF) triples by parsing syntaxes or serialize the triples into a syntax. The supported parsing syntaxes are RDF/XML, N-Triples, TRiG, Turtle, RSS tag soup including all versions of RSS, Atom 1.0 and 0.3, GRDDL and microformats for HTML, XHTML and XML. The serializing syntaxes are RDF/XML (regular, and abbreviated), N-Triples, RSS 1.0, Atom 1.0 and Adobe XMP.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2893-en.html Thu, 01 Nov 2007 14:03:07 +0100 2007-11-01T14:03:07+01:00 f8b5326e-d9ca-102a-a5cc-5320a7e586ed 4d710b80-d9ca-102a-a5cc-5320a7e586ed http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2889-en.html Web service that converts different sources to standard formats. Example: convert microformats on a webpage to rdf triples.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2889-en.html Thu, 01 Nov 2007 14:00:10 +0100 2007-11-01T13:58:19+01:00 4d710b80-d9ca-102a-a5cc-5320a7e586ed 08b7bd1e-d9b5-102a-a5cc-5320a7e586ed http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2848-en.html ODS is a new generation Distributed Collaborative Application platform for creating semantic web presence via Data Spaces derived from: Weblogs, Wikis, Feed Aggregators, Photo Galleries, Shared Bookmarks, Discussion Forums, and more.

What are Data Spaces?

Data Spaces are a new database management technology frontier that deals with the virtualization of heterogeneous data and data sources via a plethora of data access protocols.

As Unified Data Stores, Data Spaces also provide solid foundation for knowledge creation, processing, and dissemination; a making them a natural foundation platform for the emerging Data-Web (Semantic Web - Layer 1).

Why are they Important?

They provide a cost-effective route for generating Semantic Web Presence from Web 2.0 and Traditional Web data sources, by delivery of an atomic data container for RDF Instance Data derived from data hosted in Blogs, Wikis, Shared Bookmark Services, Discussion Forums, Web File Servers, Photo Galleries etc.

Data Spaces enable direct and granular database-style interaction with Web Data.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2848-en.html Thu, 01 Nov 2007 11:26:07 +0100 2007-11-01T11:26:05+01:00 08b7bd1e-d9b5-102a-a5cc-5320a7e586ed 73fe2f1a-d9b3-102a-a5cc-5320a7e586ed http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2842-en.html dbpedia is a community effort to extract structured information from Wikipedia and to make this information available on the Web. dbpedia allows you to ask sophisticated queries against Wikipedia and to link other datasets on the Web to Wikipedia data.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2842-en.html Thu, 01 Nov 2007 11:14:47 +0100 2007-11-01T11:14:46+01:00 73fe2f1a-d9b3-102a-a5cc-5320a7e586ed b7d67692-d923-102a-a5cc-5320a7e586ed http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2833-en.html The goal of XML11 is to help programmers write AJAX-applications without requiring any JavaScript knowledge. AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) has become very popular for building web applications. AJAX basically proposes to move part of the application to the browser without requiring a JRE-plugin. In order to do so the application needs to be written in JavaScript since JavaScript is the lowest common denominator across different web browsers in terms of prerequisites. Writing portable JavaScript is a daunting and tedious task. XML11 allows you to write your application in Java (not JavaScript!). XML11 then translates your Java application to JavaScript so that it can run inside any browser. Just like a C++-compiler shields the programmer from the assembly language, XML11 shields the web-developer from the intrinsic complexities of writing cross-browser portable JavaScript code. As a consequence, a web-developer never has to write or even look at one line of JavaScript code.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2833-en.html Wed, 31 Oct 2007 18:05:54 +0100 2007-10-31T18:05:52+01:00 b7d67692-d923-102a-a5cc-5320a7e586ed 969b88ac-d84a-102a-a5cc-5320a7e586ed http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2832-en.html It is often difficult to align text and graphics horizontally on the Web. To help horizontally-challenged designers, Wilson Miner wrote a fantastic guide for building pages on a baseline grid. If you do the…

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2832-en.html Tue, 30 Oct 2007 16:12:39 +0100 2007-10-30T16:11:35+01:00 969b88ac-d84a-102a-a5cc-5320a7e586ed 56d188e8-a05f-102a-890e-a3b292c31f4e http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2722-en.html Blueprint is a CSS framework, which aims to cut down on your CSS development time. It gives you a solid CSS foundation to build your project on top of, with an easy-to-use grid, sensible typography, and even a stylesheet for printing.

Features

• An easily customizable grid
• Sensible typography
• Relative font-sizes everywhere
• A typographic baseline
• Perfected CSS reset
• A stylesheet for printing
• Compressed version
• No bloat of any kind

Planned features

• Support for PNG transparency in IE5.5+ (js)
• Liquid layout version

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2722-en.html Tue, 30 Oct 2007 16:06:07 +0100 2007-08-20T13:19:03+02:00 56d188e8-a05f-102a-890e-a3b292c31f4e be941cf8-d849-102a-a5cc-5320a7e586ed http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2830-en.html This tool will help you generate more flexible versions of Blueprint's grid.css and compressed.css and grid.png files. Whether you prefer 8, 10,16 or 24 columns in your design, this generator now enables you that flexibility with Blueprint.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2830-en.html Tue, 30 Oct 2007 16:05:34 +0100 2007-10-30T16:05:33+01:00 be941cf8-d849-102a-a5cc-5320a7e586ed c42f64fe-7afe-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1637-en.html The Atom Publishing Protocol (AtomPub) is an application-level protocol for publishing and editing Web resources. The protocol is based on HTTP transfer of Atom-formatted representations. The Atom format is documented in the Atom Syndication Format.

The protocol supports the creation of Web Resources and provides facilities for:

• Collections: Sets of Resources, which can be retrieved in whole or in part.
• Services: Discovery and description of Collections.
• Editing: Creating, editing, and deleting Resources.

The Atom Publishing Protocol is different from many contemporary protocols in that the server is given wide latitude in processing requests from clients.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1637-en.html Mon, 29 Oct 2007 15:55:31 +0100 2007-07-03T23:44:32+02:00 c42f64fe-7afe-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 510caed4-d4ed-102a-a5cc-5320a7e586ed http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2826-en.html The goal of this project is to provide a system for storing and retrieving huge amounts of data, distributed among a large number of heterogenous server nodes, under a single virtual filesystem tree with a variety of standard access methods. Depending on the Persistency Model, dCache provides methods for exchanging data with backend (tertiary) Storage Systems as well as space management, pool attraction, dataset replication, hot spot determination and recovery from disk or node failures. Connected to a tertiary storage system, the cache simulates unlimited direct access storage space. Dataexchanges to and from the underlying HSM are performed automatically and invisibly to the user. Filesystem namespace operations may be performed through a standard nfs(2) interface.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2826-en.html Fri, 26 Oct 2007 10:26:23 +0200 2007-10-26T10:26:22+02:00 510caed4-d4ed-102a-a5cc-5320a7e586ed 406730fa-d393-102a-a5cc-5320a7e586ed http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2824-en.html Carrot2 is an Open Source Search Results Clustering Engine. It can automatically organize (cluster) search results into thematic categories.

Carrot2 provides an architecture for acquiring search results from various sources (YahooAPI, GoogleAPI, MSN Search API, eTools Meta Search, Alexa Web Search, PubMed, OpenSearch, Lucene index, SOLR), clustering the results and visualising the clusters. Currently, 5 clustering algorithms are available that are suitable for different kinds of document clustering tasks.

Thanks to its flexible architecture, high quality and a friendly BSD-like license, Carrot2 has been successfully used in a number of commercial and research applications and resulted in a number of interesting publications. To get started, please have a look at live demos and the downloads section. If you have any questions or comments about Carrot2, please let us know.

For consulting services, installation, maintenance and text mining expertise, please contact the Carrot2 spin-off company called Carrot Search. Carrot Search offers Lingo3G -- the third generation high-performance document clustering engine featuring hierarchical clustering, ontologies, synonyms and advanced tuning capabilities.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2824-en.html Wed, 24 Oct 2007 17:09:10 +0200 2007-10-24T17:09:08+02:00 406730fa-d393-102a-a5cc-5320a7e586ed 56401028-d086-102a-a5cc-5320a7e586ed http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-2817-en.html ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-2817-en.html Sat, 20 Oct 2007 19:59:33 +0200 2007-10-20T19:59:08+02:00 56401028-d086-102a-a5cc-5320a7e586ed c1b50366-cd6d-102a-a5cc-5320a7e586ed http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2813-en.html The AJAX Toolkit Framework (ATF) provides and extensible framework and exemplary tools for building IDEs for the many different AJAX runtime offerings (Dojo, Zimbra, Rico, etc) in the market. Tools built upon these frameworks will initially include: enhanced JavaScript editing features such as edit-time syntax checking; an embedded Mozilla web browser; an embedded DOM browser; and an embedded JavaScript debugger.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2813-en.html Tue, 16 Oct 2007 21:25:39 +0200 2007-10-16T21:25:37+02:00 c1b50366-cd6d-102a-a5cc-5320a7e586ed 9bc2f63c-cc8b-102a-a5cc-5320a7e586ed http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2810-en.html Dive Into Python is a Python book for experienced programmers. You can buy a printed copy, read it online, or download it in a variety of formats. It is also available in multiple languages.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2810-en.html Mon, 15 Oct 2007 18:26:50 +0200 2007-10-15T18:26:47+02:00 9bc2f63c-cc8b-102a-a5cc-5320a7e586ed 180a99d6-7ce5-1029-9217-1fbf61a722b5 http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-556-en.html Solr is an open source enterprise search server based on the Lucene Java search library, with XML/HTTP APIs, caching, replication, and a web administration interface. It runs in a Java servlet container such as Tomcat.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-556-en.html Tue, 09 Oct 2007 13:19:31 +0200 2006-08-14T15:00:50+02:00 180a99d6-7ce5-1029-9217-1fbf61a722b5 597a52be-c729-102a-a5cc-5320a7e586ed http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2795-en.html A cross platform(!) tool for checking the size and css attributes of elements on your page. Just tested it in Safari and it works great!

XRAY is a bookmarklet for Internet Explorer 6+, and Webkit and Mozilla based browsers (including Safari, Firefox, Camino or Mozilla). Use it to see the box model for any element on any web page.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2795-en.html Mon, 08 Oct 2007 22:00:51 +0200 2007-10-08T22:00:50+02:00 597a52be-c729-102a-a5cc-5320a7e586ed 55100288-b98b-102a-890e-a3b292c31f4e http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2786-en.html Fondu -- A set of programs to interconvert between mac font formats and pfb, ttf, otf and bdf files on unix.

Dealing with mac fonts is hard on other operating systems because mac fonts are stored in the resource fork, and other operating systems do not support this concept. Fondu will extract the resource fork from either a macbinary file or a binhex file. Ufond will create a resource fork inside a macbinary file.

This utility saved my day when i needed to embed some Type 1 fonts in a generated PDF (using FPDF).

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2786-en.html Fri, 21 Sep 2007 16:43:38 +0200 2007-09-21T14:06:57+02:00 55100288-b98b-102a-890e-a3b292c31f4e 050a38b2-b3f0-102a-890e-a3b292c31f4e http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2782-en.html When you visit a Web page or you interact with a Web application, you receive an Internet Explorer dialog box that contains the following error message:

Internet Explorer cannot open the Internet site <Web site>.com. Operation aborted.

Translated into dutch this error is something like "de bewerking is afgebroken."

This problem occurs because a child container HTML element contains script code that tries to modify the parent container element of the child container. The script code tries to modify the parent container element by using either the innerHTML method or the appendChild method.

This Internet Explorer thing irritates me more and more. After all the problems we had with earlier versions, now IE7 is still acting up.

Earlier we had our problems with compressed Javascript, where IE6 forgot that the Javascript was compressed. Gave nasty errors, like "DNS Error" etc. Makes you wonder how they programmed Internet Explorer....

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2782-en.html Fri, 14 Sep 2007 13:19:44 +0200 2007-09-14T10:52:35+02:00 050a38b2-b3f0-102a-890e-a3b292c31f4e fbe8e7b4-b355-102a-890e-a3b292c31f4e http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2778-en.html AggData is short for aggregate data, which means a set of data that is collected together in one place. On this site, the AggData will come in the form of a list of records, where each record has details about a specific object in the group.

They have some data you should pay for, and other data that is free. Free data is United States Zip Codes and International Calling Codes and Area Codes.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2778-en.html Thu, 13 Sep 2007 16:29:58 +0200 2007-09-13T16:29:57+02:00 fbe8e7b4-b355-102a-890e-a3b292c31f4e 6e0bb35c-b267-102a-890e-a3b292c31f4e http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2776-en.html FPDF is a PHP class which allows to generate PDF files with pure PHP, that is to say without using the PDFlib library. F from FPDF stands for Free: you may use it for any kind of usage and modify it to suit your needs.

FPDF has other advantages: high level functions. Here is a list of its main features:

• Choice of measure unit, page format and margins
• Page header and footer management
• Automatic page break
• Automatic line break and text justification
• Image support (JPEG and PNG)
• Colors
• Links
• TrueType, Type1 and encoding support
• Page compression

FPDF requires no extension (except zlib to activate compression) and works with PHP4 and PHP5.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2776-en.html Wed, 12 Sep 2007 12:02:19 +0200 2007-09-12T12:02:19+02:00 6e0bb35c-b267-102a-890e-a3b292c31f4e 7923cb4c-a5fd-102a-890e-a3b292c31f4e http://www.marcworrell.com/article-2733-en.html

More and more people collect a growing mountain of digital photos. I try to manage that nice mountain, but somehow I ended up with a couple of directories which contain photos, which might be duplicates, or might not.

Note: the droplet uses the PHP script, you will need both and you will need to edit the droplet!

Normally I collect all my photos in iPhoto on my desktop iMac. That is a problem when travelling, then I use an iPod or my MacBook. At some point I ran out of disk space on my desktop. Which is a major problem with iPhoto, as it stores all photos in one big directory on a single volume.

So I ended up with multiple directories on multiple volumes containing thousands of photos.

What to do?

Group By Date

Grouping photos by date is a very logical way of organising photos.
As the date is not necessarily the creation date of the photo, we have to look at the DateTaken in the Exif information. This date is written into the photo at the moment the photo is taken.

Grouping by date calls for a very simple directory structure:

year / month / day / myphoto.jpg

Removing Duplicates

My script moves the photos to the above hierarchy, and while doing so tryes to find duplicate photos and delete them. It does so by checking all photos with the same name against their md5 checksum.

When the checksum is the same, we can safely assume that the photo is the same.

When copying a batch of photos, the script will first add a file using the md5 checksum as the filename. This prevents creation of multiple copies of the same photo. After copying all photos into the hierarchy, the script will rename the photo to its original name.

Duplicate File Names

Of course, you can have two photos, taken on the same day, with the same filename. This happens when you make an excessive amount of photos, or when you use two cameras with the same numbering scheme.

I solve this by prefixing the photo name with the last three digits of the serial number of the camera. When this results in two different photos of with the same name (from probably the same camera) then the filenames will have an added '-1', '-2' etc....

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/article-2733-en.html Wed, 12 Sep 2007 11:25:06 +0200 2007-08-27T16:53:37+02:00 7923cb4c-a5fd-102a-890e-a3b292c31f4e 0907847a-ae72-102a-890e-a3b292c31f4e http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2771-en.html MonetDB/SQL and MonetDB/XQuery, fast query language support in an open-source column-orienated database system

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2771-en.html Fri, 07 Sep 2007 11:08:11 +0200 2007-09-07T11:08:09+02:00 0907847a-ae72-102a-890e-a3b292c31f4e dff97fa0-ac16-102a-890e-a3b292c31f4e http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2767-en.html CouchDb is a distributed document database system with bi-directional replication. It makes it simple to build collaborative applications that can be replicated offline by users, with full interactivity (query, add, update, delete), and later "synced up" with everyone else's changes when back online.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2767-en.html Tue, 04 Sep 2007 11:10:36 +0200 2007-09-04T11:10:34+02:00 dff97fa0-ac16-102a-890e-a3b292c31f4e 78504d5e-fc15-1029-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f http://www.marcworrell.com/article-1377-en.html

Verso Wiki is a Wiki to HTML and HTML to Wiki markup translator. We use this Wiki translator in the information management system anyMeta.

Features are:

• Translates Wiki to XHTML
• Translates the generated XHTML back to Wiki
• Has an intermediate XHTML format for editing purposes
• Enables using Wiki for markup, but storing HTML in your database
• Postprocesses the intermediate XHTML to fill in dynamic page and image references
• Written in PHP (for easy portability)
• Fast (when compared with other PHP solutions)

We license the Verso Wiki markup translator under the GPL version 2.

History

We made this Wiki translator because we needed an easy way to edit markup, without people learning HTML. On the other hand we also needed a fast translation of the Wiki to HTML.

We made it fast by storing all text in HTML and introduce a HTML to Wiki translator for editing the text. In this way we can serve the HTML directly from the database. Only a small part of the HTML is so dynamic that it is generated on runtime (ie. when displaying the page). Examples of dynamic parts are references to other pages and images.

Which Wiki markup rules are supported?

Originally we used the excellent PEAR Text_Wiki package by Paul M. Jones. Because we had some databases with existing Wiki markup, we made our Wiki compatible with Paul's Wiki.

See wiki.ciaweb.net/yawiki/index.php?area=Text_Wiki for more information and markup rule documentation.

Files in Verso Wiki

The archive verso_wiki-1.2.0.tar.gz contains the following files:

any_wiki_tohtml.php

Translate Wiki markup to HTML, almost ready for display.

any_wiki_towiki.php

Translate HTML (generated by any_wiki_tohtml) back to Wiki.

any_wiki_runtime.php

Fill in dynamic parts of the by any_wiki_tohtml generated HTML.
This is done just prior to using the text in a web page.

any_wiki_tokenizer.php

Used for tokenizing the Wiki markup.

XML_Wiki_Parser.php

XML parser for the XHTML to Wiki translator

any_wiki_glue.php

Some routines that are called by the any_wiki routines.
You will need to fill these in with your own database or model access methods.

demo.php

An example of how you can use the VersoWiki routines.

LICENSE

The license of VersoWiki. In short the GPL version 2.

README

Basically the same as this story :...

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/article-1377-en.html Fri, 31 Aug 2007 16:50:21 +0200 2007-01-23T10:37:06+01:00 78504d5e-fc15-1029-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f 945dc8f4-d6c3-1029-9217-1fbf61a722b5 http://www.marcworrell.com/article-1322-en.html

In anyMeta we have a very powerful access control mechanism. It builds on top of phpgacl and extends into the realm of trust in social networks.

The access control allows the administrator to define very detailed access rules. And the system also empowers the users themselves to give rights to other users on the basis of trust.

What is access control?

With access control we define who can do what with which content. For example, when you requested this page the access control system checked if you were allowed to view the article. It also checked if you are allowed to change it, and if you are allowed to react to this article. When you were not allowed to react, then you wouldn't see the react form underneath this article.

Every access control list entry consists of three parts:

• who is requesting access (a guest, an editor, etc.)
• what the requestor wants to do (view, edit, delete, etc.)
• on what the requester wants to it (an article, photo, etc.)

In short, using the terms we use internally:

• the requestor (aro - access requestor object)
• the action (aco - access control object)
• the subject (axo - access extensible object)

Access control for a semantic network

A semantic network (and with that anyMeta) is in essence a directed graph, consisting of nodes and the connections between them. The nodes are articles, keywords, people, images etc. The connections give meaning, like identifying an author, a figure for an article etc.

When you want to change the text of a node, say the title of this article, then you need edit access. For deleting you need delete access.

The basic actions on a node are:

• view
• create
• edit
• publish
• delete

To add a connection between two nodes you need:

• link access on the subject
• linkto access on the object

The link and linkto access is differentiated per predicate. So it might be possible that you are allowed to add a figure to a document, but are not allowed to add the same document to a blog as a blogposting.

In anyMeta we call a node a thing. As in “every...

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/article-1322-en.html Fri, 31 Aug 2007 16:49:52 +0200 2006-12-06T22:47:41+01:00 945dc8f4-d6c3-1029-9217-1fbf61a722b5 c7de1ae6-cfb4-1029-9217-1fbf61a722b5 http://www.marcworrell.com/article-1284-en.html

Some time ago we released version 3.3.0, shortly followed by 3.3.1 and in two weeks we will add 3.3.2 to the family. What is being changed, fixed and added to anyMeta in these latest releases?

Figure and Document handling

We changed the Figure and Document handling. Figures and documents are “hung” on articles and so on using the predicates figure and document. The interesting point here is that within the templates we refer to specific images. The first group of images is mostly used at the top of the page, withing the text we refer to yet another set of images and below the text we might want to have yet another set of figures.

Of course, where everything shows up depends completely om the templates being used.

To make it easier to add images to specific spots on your page we added the concept of groups of images. Each group consists of 10 items and we have six groups. We have changed the on the page editing and the admin backend to correctly handle these groups of images.

Because of these changes it is now possible to control where your figure will show up, without resorting to specific templates. A nice step forward to make the common set of templates applicable to many more sites.

This change introduced an incompatibility with older versions. One of the reasons to call this release a 3.3 and not a 3.2 release.

The common templates

Which brings us to the common templates. This is the set of templates that is build in into anyMeta, part of every install. The templates are designed for flexibility, so that with proper application of css we can derive many different website design without having to implement specific templates.

Besides being extremely flexible to use, the templates also support a very nice implementation of editing content on the pages themselves (that is without resorting to backends and the like). For that we use JQuery, an excellent Ajax toolkit. See more below.

Katharina, Bas and Guilherme have been hard at work to make this all possible. My compliments to them!...

Ajax support move]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/article-1284-en.html Fri, 31 Aug 2007 16:49:45 +0200 2006-11-27T23:14:07+01:00 c7de1ae6-cfb4-1029-9217-1fbf61a722b5 0df49822-8fc6-1029-9217-1fbf61a722b5 http://www.marcworrell.com/article-602-en.html

I just tagged anyMeta 3.2.3. It is a small version number change that incorporates big changes under the hood.

Most important changes are a complete new caching system and new Authentication module. We also started to modularize some functionality like the Contacts, Ajax etc.

Because of these changes we will go live with this version on only a small number of sites, making it possible to test the new system in real life situations and measure its performance.

The most important changes

The most important changes are:

• complete rewrite of the low level read and write routines for things
• new templates and css for the common templates and the admin tools
• added caching at many different places
• much lower number of queries per page request and significant overal speedup
• Authentication is now a seperate module
• numerous bug fixes

Bug fixes

We fixed the following bugs/ problems and change requests:

• 488 when applying a filter to an icon, the image would not appear
• 540 when registering, send only one confirmation mail (and not one on registration, one on confirmation)
• 597 the search results in the admin are now ordered on text-matching score and not on title
• 758 sets with keywords as set members could loose their members when the keywords of the set were changed
• 771 the spam filter not always blocked black listed ip addresses
• 778 when adding members, the default AXO content class is now set to public
• 788 when an edge had a date range, then that date range could not be removed
• 653 the icon of a non-picture attachment showed the nopic-image instead of the icon for the mime type
• 772 the linkchecker could 'hang' on some illegal urls

And previously, in the 3.2.2, we fixed:

• 441 with inline edit a text could not be emptied
• 690 rss feed aggregation for sharing did not update after the initial fetch
• 691 some filters in the anti spam module incorrectly let spam through
• 703 a caption could be saved to the wrong language
• 704 in the wizard, searching for images could only find your own images
• 709 the predicate 'undefined' is removed as a normal option in the admin and the wizard
• 710 in the admin, the 10 most recent subjects for the current item are shown...

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/article-602-en.html Fri, 31 Aug 2007 16:49:35 +0200 2006-09-07T15:36:31+02:00 0df49822-8fc6-1029-9217-1fbf61a722b5 4a3afcaa-c643-1029-9217-1fbf61a722b5 http://www.marcworrell.com/article-1238-en.html

Everyone uses different ways to format their code. And everyone has very good reasons to do it his/her own way. Of course, at Mediamatic we also use our own coding style. This article shows the coding standard we use.

In another article I will discuss the code commenting we use, including the documentation we write inside the code.

Most of the code in anyMeta is written in PHP. PHP does not have namespaces, and uses many constructs well known to C programmers. Because of this we started with reusing the coding standard that was (and I guess still is) in use at Tasking for their C programs.

Indentation

A simple guideline here.

• indentation is four spaces,
• tab length is also four positions.

Not eight because we don't want to end up at the right hand side of the screen, not less than four because we want to prevent too deeply nested constructs and unclear indentation within longer code blocks.

Curly braces

Always a hot topic. Where do you place the braces? An example of our use is the simplest:

function foo ()
{
    if (bar())
    {
        do_something();
    }
    else
    {
        do_something_else();
    }
}

So we always have the opening and closing braces on the same indentation, each on a separate line. This makes it very clear which brace belongs to which block. Just move up or down on a certain indentation level and you will find the accompaning curly brace.

Another rule: always use curly braces, even when the block contains a single statement. Why? In C you never know for sure if that one function in your block doesn't expand to multiple statements after preprocessing. The same might happen with search & replace actions in your editor. Always enclosing a block in curly braces makes sure that your else parts still belong to the correct if.

For example:

if ($a)
    if ($c) b();
    else c();

Now, with our pre-processor or text editor, we replace b() with two statements, b1();b2():

if ($a)
    if ($c) b1(); b2();
    else c();

which of course means:

if ($a)
{
    if ($c)
    {
        b1();  // the first statement of th...

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/article-1238-en.html Fri, 31 Aug 2007 16:49:27 +0200 2006-11-15T22:49:02+01:00 4a3afcaa-c643-1029-9217-1fbf61a722b5 9e6f5ab2-16fa-1029-bad5-cda7dc5826b6 http://www.marcworrell.com/article-101-en.html

All Internet applications have to secure their inner workings against attacks from outside. We all know sites that were successfully attacked and modified, often due to some inventive usage of input parameters. The challenge is to prevent that happening to your website.

How to solve this problem? Here I show a well known solution, filtering all input per default. Making it harder to get to the unfiltered input.

This solution is now part of anyMeta.

Tainted values and PHP

In Ruby we know the concept of tainted variables. Variables are untrusted until mentioned otherwise. An example:

require 'cgi';

$SAFE = 1

cgi = CGI::new("html4")

expr = cgi["field"].to_s

if expr =~ %r{^-+*/\d\seE.()*$}
  expr.untaint
  result = eval(expr)
  # display result back to user...
else
  # display error message...
end

Looks ok, on first sight. However I am a bit worried about the .untaint method. Who can be sure that I didn't make a slight error in the filter? Or who protects against lazy programmers, untainting all variables per default? Of course Ruby protects against this behaviour with the safety levels. In PHP we don't have anything similar.

What to do for PHP?

A solution for PHP is the filter extension developed by Rasmus Lerdorf and Derick Rethans. When enabled, and installed, this extension will populate the _POST, _GET and other superglobals with filtered data. Access to the unfiltered data is done using a special API.

Of course, here also, we can't protect against dangerous sloppy programmers who dig in and always get the unsafe-raw-very-dangerous-dont-use-this data and skip the input filters. We can't protect against these people.

I think the filter solution is brilliant, and a good solution for a problem that is in need to be solved.

Why don't I use it?

Well.. we have to host on different machines. We don't always control the configuration of those servers. So when we rely on the filter extension, how do we protect our site when the filter extension is not there?

I will paint the solution we reached, relying on new object oriented functionalities of PHP 5.

Wrapping the super globals

The idea starts with replacing the super globals (_GET, _POST et...

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/article-101-en.html Fri, 31 Aug 2007 16:49:21 +0200 2006-04-06T22:17:57+02:00 9e6f5ab2-16fa-1029-bad5-cda7dc5826b6 44548718-5e4f-1029-bad5-cda7dc5826b6 http://www.marcworrell.com/article-397-en.html

We are finalising the anyMeta 3.2.1 release. Yes, there was an intermediate 3.2.0 release. The 3.2.0 incorporated a change that was primarily for the BiD Network.

What did we do?

Major change in figures and document predicates

From now on figures and documents are refered to with the predicate figure or document. There used to be a label on the egde to an image or document for connecting the caption with the correct edge. With the advent of anyMeta 3, this labeling scheme has become unnecessary. With the 3.2.0 release we finally made this cleanup. In practice there isn't a big change for template or controller builders, except that it is easier to handle documents and figures in the context of a thing (eg an article). For editors there is a small change, as they do not need to specify the label of attachments anymore.

Some new modules

We created some new modules.

Rating

enables rating of things in the database, you can rate along 10 different rating systems. There is a batch rating system also.

Log

a simple module to check the error, view and update log

GoogleAnalytics

fill in your Google Analytics tracking code and enjoy all the statistics that Google can give you.

Contact

a refactoring of the friend-system we already had, here we are collecting everything that has to do with the foaf functionality of anyMeta.

Refactored the NewsAggregator, Sharing and Schedule

The NewsAggregator is the basis for the sharing of content between anyMeta systems and with other websites. We completely changed the processing of the RSS feeds, introducing an intermediate RSS item store.

The Share module has been reorganised, using a new module interface to distinguish between anyMeta specific and more generic importers. It also uses the RSS item store to decide if an item can be imported or not.

The Schedule used to work together with the cron. This gave some problems when we updated sites and on load-balanced servers. We changed the Schedule so that is does its periodi...

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/article-397-en.html Fri, 31 Aug 2007 16:49:13 +0200 2006-07-06T16:52:45+02:00 44548718-5e4f-1029-bad5-cda7dc5826b6 062a36f6-5254-1029-bad5-cda7dc5826b6 http://www.marcworrell.com/article-367-en.html

We are finishing the latest version of our sharing system. A good opportunity to write about the system, what it can do for you, how it works and when to use it. In a later article I will dig deeper and explain the more technical details, enabling you to make full use of the module system.

RSS is the basis

RSS is the basis of our content sharing. With the NewsAggregator you can define RSS feeds to be read and have the items in the feed imported in the database. The import can be either automatic or manually by selecting interesting items from the list of available items.

The NewsAggregator can periodically re-read the RSS feed and check for new items in the feed. When the feed is set to automatic import then all items in the feed automatically appear in the database, and with that on your site.

AnyMeta can create a RSS feed of any stored search question (listpublish or listedit) and set of things, so we can use this mechanism to syndicate content from one site to another site. And, as the system is based on RSS feeds, we can import information from any other site as well.

Separating imported content from your content

It is handy to be able to keep imported content separate from your own content. In this way it is always possible to delete imported content and keep your own content. For this we introduce the concept of a source. Every feed is a source, and the locally created content is also attributed to a source, the local source. It is possible to delete a source, whenever you do that then all content of that source and its feed are deleted as well. A quick way to clean up the mess created by an unwanted feed.

Recognising special feeds

When a feed is imported, all modules that are interested can have a go at trying to import any item of the feed. For this we defined the interface iImport.

This recognition can be done on a feed basis or on a item by item basis. For example, a Flickr module could recognise Flickr items in a feed and use the Flickr API to fetch the original image and import it in your anyMeta system. In this way you can keep your anyMeta system in sync with your Flickr photo stream.

The primary usage for ...

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/article-367-en.html Fri, 31 Aug 2007 16:49:05 +0200 2006-06-21T10:56:35+02:00 062a36f6-5254-1029-bad5-cda7dc5826b6 7bdc8e9c-1d31-1029-bad5-cda7dc5826b6 http://www.marcworrell.com/article-134-en.html

After seeing the BiD Network competition come to a succesful finish we entered a relative quiet period. A good reason to start working on some bigger things inside anyMeta. All will be part of the coming release, 3.1.3. The release is now scheduled for the coming friday, april 28.

We are working on some new code, fixing old and new bugs and laying the basis for more web 2.0 functionality.

What did we add?

• Implemented the TaintedArray security measurements. AnyMeta will be more secure than ever!
• Added a prototype of LiveSearch, see search results while you are typing.
• Added a photo SlideShow widget. With this you can add a nice slide show to your templates. A slideshow can show one or more photos, exchanging the shown images for others. The source for the list of images can be any set, listedit or listpublish.
• Added the Gallery module, with support for image uploading using Gallery Remote compatible applications. Uploading images to anyMeta is now very easy, with the correct client side applications it is even possible to keep your iPhoto folders in sync with anyMeta!
• Finished the new Forum module. All posts and topics are things in the semantic network, just like articles, images etc.

We also did some bug fixing and other changes

• Finding articles on the edit state is now not depending on the publish state.
• With the changes in the editing flow we introduced some problems with permission checks, they are now fixed.
• Fixed Wiki rendering of <code/> and <html/> tags.
• Fixed Wiki reverse of simple http links.
• Fixed stacked logon, ie. logging on as a different user and after logging off continuing with the previous logged on user account.
• Fixed posting behaviour within topics
• Also count the postings of sysadmins as activity
• Fixed error returns for service calls
• Added the ...

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/article-134-en.html Fri, 31 Aug 2007 16:48:58 +0200 2006-04-14T20:05:48+02:00 7bdc8e9c-1d31-1029-bad5-cda7dc5826b6 d968ba84-0d48-1029-bad5-cda7dc5826b6 http://www.marcworrell.com/article-37-en.html

A small introduction

I spent most of my time at Mediamatic Lab. Where we develop web sites. For the sites we use the information management system anyMeta. Which is based on Semantic Web principles.

On this site I want to share my ramblings about anyMeta, about what the Internet looks to me and whatever happens to come on my path.

You can always mail me at when you want to contact me!

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/article-37-en.html Fri, 31 Aug 2007 16:48:50 +0200 2006-03-25T13:12:45+01:00 d968ba84-0d48-1029-bad5-cda7dc5826b6 bb1fc2d0-2813-1029-bad5-cda7dc5826b6 http://www.marcworrell.com/article-304-en.html

We just released anyMeta 3.1.3 and updated our servers to work with this new version. The sites www.bidnetwork.org and www.womenonweb.org will be the first ones using this version. This site is running on the head of anyMeta, so that I can use it as the test bed for the anyMeta development.

Changes in version 3.1.3

The following things were changed or fixed in version 3.1.3:

• Implemented the TaintedArray security measurements. AnyMeta is now more secure than ever!
• The Forum module has been finished and is now ready for production. It implements posts and topics just in the same way as any other thing in anyMeta.
• The Captcha has now been finished. A captcha is a small image with text. As humans are quite capable of typing the text on the image and spambots (hopefully) not, we use it to protect the site against comment-spamming.
• A Mosaic of images was added. This uses AJAX to fetch a list of images and creates a mosaic of them, randomly replacing one image with another. You can see it on the homepage of this site. The list can be generated with a stored query or a set.
• A Slideshow has been added, Also AJAX, but only displaying a single image.
• Added the Gallery module, with support for image uploading using Gallery Remote compatible applications. Uploading images to anyMeta is now very easy, with the correct client side applications it is even possible to keep your iPhoto folders in sync with anyMeta!
• Added a prototype of LiveSearch, see search result while you are typing.
• The Jury module is now usable. This module makes it possible to notify the site moderator or members of objectionable content. The module still needs some work for the standard templates (think of mail texts etc.).
• Added dynamic loading of widgets (aka scomps - screen components) using AJAX.
• Added dynamically loaded dialogs. For this we added a special Dojo wid...

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/article-304-en.html Fri, 31 Aug 2007 16:48:43 +0200 2006-04-28T16:30:32+02:00 bb1fc2d0-2813-1029-bad5-cda7dc5826b6 bdbd0292-162e-1029-bad5-cda7dc5826b6 http://www.marcworrell.com/article-90-en.html

We just wrapped up the 3.1.2 release of anyMeta. We made quite some changes in the last couple of days and weeks.

It has been a madhouse, we have been releasing four anyMeta versions in less than three weeks. Why so many releases? We had real deadlines for some real life projects.

What did we improve and change?

In the last couple of versions we added and/or fixed:

• Better article creation. When you make a new article (or attachment, etc.), we used to clone a default and then let you adapt it. Now we do the cloning after you posted the form. This prevents non-edited things floating around in the database and on the site.
• Changed publication flow. We checked and double checked the complete content creation flow. It is now possible to publish the individual language versions of things, instead of all at once. And we fine tuned the differences between users who are allowed to publish and users who are not allowed to publish.
• Secure delete. Normally, when you delete something we only change the publish state to deleted, enabling undelete by re-publishing the thing. Now it is also possible to directly delete the whole thing, without any traces and undelete possibilities. Use with care!
• Searching in the admin interface. We fixed a problem in which it was not possible to search using double quotes in the /admin interface.
• Internet Explorer 7 support. Starting next month or so Microsoft will change the way Internet Explorer handles certain multimedia content. We changed the way we show that content to be compatible with the future changes in IE.
• Wiki fixes. We made some fixes in the wiki translation, especially concerning mailto links.
• Session handling. We now start a session for every visitor, also for anonymous visitors. Of course we don't give crawlers a session :)...

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/article-90-en.html Fri, 31 Aug 2007 16:48:34 +0200 2006-04-05T21:58:32+02:00 bdbd0292-162e-1029-bad5-cda7dc5826b6 e7e37efe-1320-1029-bad5-cda7dc5826b6 http://www.marcworrell.com/article-83-en.html

We are building a shop module for anyMeta. It started with an order form for a book, but we thought that building a complete shop shouldn't be too hard. In the second week of april 2006 it will be functional.

Rui Guerra and I started with looking at other shops. Finding an open source e-commerce package was not difficult, as expected. Finding one that made sense for our environment was a bit harder.

What are our requirements for the final shop?

1. Able to sell everything that is in our database (articles, books, photos etc.) by adding the type 'for sale'
2. Simple in implementation and usage
3. Uses our existing user administration
4. We distinguish only two roles: customer and shopkeeper
5. Simple inventory/ stock management
6. Adaptable back office flow
7. Works with Paypal
8. Pluggable paymet methods for other services
9. Can sell "free" goods
10. Customer can see status of all orders
11. Shopkeeper can see all orders per status, and a complete overview
12. Shopkeeper will change the status of an order according to the workflow
13. Pluggable automatic helpers for state changes (sending e-mail etc.)

And more common e-commerce stuff. There is really nothing new about this all - except that it integrates with anyMeta. One of the features we didn't see yet is the adaptable work flow. We will make a state transition table for that, isn't a shop just a finite state automata?

We found the most inspiration in the osCommerce package. They have a very complete package, which also has a fairly solid datamodel that looks a lot better than the datamodels we saw of other open source packages. Foreign keys and indexes that match your queries are often forgotten in datamodels.

Loosely based on the osCommerce we made our own datamodel. Rui is now busy trying to get it in a nice way on paper. With all foreign key relations drawn in an understandable way.

Something else we immediately desired was an ActiveRecord implementation. One that was in PHP 5.x, easily adaptable, without using all kinds of da...

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/article-83-en.html Fri, 31 Aug 2007 16:48:24 +0200 2006-04-02T00:41:56+02:00 e7e37efe-1320-1029-bad5-cda7dc5826b6 051dfa76-a83a-102a-890e-a3b292c31f4e http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2758-en.html OSCOM endorses several standards and specifications for Content Management.

Standards

WebDAV

WebDAV stands for "Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning". It is a set of extensions to the HTTP protocol which allows users to collaboratively edit and manage files on remote web servers.

RSS

RSS is a Web content syndication format.

ATOM

Atom is an XML-based file format intended to allow lists of information, known as "feeds", to be synchronised between publishers and consumers. Feeds are composed of a number of items, known as "entries", each with an extensible set of attached metadata. The primary use case that Atom addresses is for syndicating Web content such as Weblogs and news headlines to other Web sites and directly to consumers.

JSR-170

The API should be a standard, implementation independent, way to access content bi-directionally on a granular level within a content repository. A Content Repository is a high-level information management system that is a superset of traditional data repositories. A content repository implements "content services" such as: author based versioning, full textual searching, fine grained access control, content categorization and content event monitoring. It is these "content services" that differentiate a Content Repository from a Data Repository. There is also a PHP implementation under work.

Informal specifications

Image and Link libraries

Specification for browsing available images and links in a CMS. Originating from the Kupu project and also implemented in other editors like BXE.

CSS Naming Conventions

Conventions for structuring XHTML documents to promote reusability and changeability of CSS-based designs. Heavily under work

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2758-en.html Thu, 30 Aug 2007 13:12:45 +0200 2007-08-30T13:12:04+02:00 051dfa76-a83a-102a-890e-a3b292c31f4e 701e6858-0d93-1029-bad5-cda7dc5826b6 http://www.marcworrell.com/article-43-en.html

This site is about me, my personal ramblings, what I encounter and of course what I would like to show to others :-)

I primarily use this site to communicate about what I am doing. Besides that it is a testbed for some new techniques we are trying out in anyMeta.

I am living in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and you can reach me by e-mail

What did I use for this site?

It is build with anyMeta. anyMeta is the information management system we use at Mediamatic. We call it information management because it is more about organizing information than it is about making pages in a website.

anyMeta is build with LAMP:

• Apache
• PHP 5.x
• MySQL 4.x (we are moving to 5.x!)
• JQuery
• ImageMagick or GD

Bits of anyMeta are open!

Yes, indeed, you are reading it correctly! We are opening up anyMeta. You can find a growing number of bits and pieces on this site. Just check the download tag.

Currently you can download:

• Verso Wiki to HTML and HTML to Wiki translator
• Tainted. a wrapper around request variables to secure your site
• depcached, an extension to memcache with hierarchies and dependencies

The parts that will come later are:

• a simple static content server proxy for php
• the database layer we use to talk with MySQL

And something Google wanted to have here :-)

Deze website maakt gebruik van Google Analytics, een webanalyse-service die wordt aangeboden door Google Inc. ("Google"). Google Analytics maakt gebruik van "cookies" (tekstbestandjes die op Uw computer worden geplaatst) om de website te helpen ana...

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/article-43-en.html Wed, 29 Aug 2007 15:51:06 +0200 2006-03-25T22:06:40+01:00 701e6858-0d93-1029-bad5-cda7dc5826b6 1ff36232-a786-102a-890e-a3b292c31f4e http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2753-en.html Generate A Color Palette For Any Image

Enter the URL of an image to get a color palette that matches the image. This is useful for coming up with a website color palette that matches a key image a client wants to work with.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2753-en.html Wed, 29 Aug 2007 15:44:20 +0200 2007-08-29T15:44:19+02:00 1ff36232-a786-102a-890e-a3b292c31f4e 806c7656-a765-102a-890e-a3b292c31f4e http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2747-en.html Evolution is a program that can be used to determine the relationships and real world links between:

• People
• Groups of people (social networks)
• Companies
• Organizations
• Web sites
• Internet infrastructure such as:
  • Domains
  • DNS names
  • Netblocks
  • IP addresses
• Phrases
• Affiliations
• Documents and files

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2747-en.html Wed, 29 Aug 2007 11:50:51 +0200 2007-08-29T11:50:48+02:00 806c7656-a765-102a-890e-a3b292c31f4e 3be50ec2-a606-102a-890e-a3b292c31f4e http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2739-en.html AppleScripts, Aperture tips and howtos. Lots of helpful information when you want to start using Aperture.

Scripts for Aperture

• Back Up Masters
• Change Caption
• Choose Project/Album
• Clean Deleted Images
• Hierarchical Keywords
• Make Keywords 'Real'
• Multi External Editors
• Project Size Estimator
• Sync Export Album
• Sync Folder into Project
• Sync from iView
• Reveal Photo File

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2739-en.html Mon, 27 Aug 2007 17:56:20 +0200 2007-08-27T17:56:19+02:00 3be50ec2-a606-102a-890e-a3b292c31f4e 4544b2c4-a1dd-102a-890e-a3b292c31f4e http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2729-en.html The Man in Blue showcases the writing and Web design of Cameron Adams.

This is a method to make a Web page footer that is positioned either at the bottom of the browser window or at the bottom of the Web page – whichever is visually lowest.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2729-en.html Wed, 22 Aug 2007 10:53:02 +0200 2007-08-22T10:53:01+02:00 4544b2c4-a1dd-102a-890e-a3b292c31f4e 31252b8c-a072-102a-890e-a3b292c31f4e http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2724-en.html I have been meaning for the longest time to scratch the personal itch of creating a robust command line tool to analyze duplicates on a file system. There are a few scripts floating around in various languages and the problemis not all that difficult to solve, but I went the whole nine yards and wrote a reasonably cool command line tool that uses md5 checksums to detect duplicates. A report is generated in addition to stdout dup messages in CSV format, so you can manually look through dupes and decide what you want to do with them.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2724-en.html Mon, 20 Aug 2007 15:34:01 +0200 2007-08-20T15:34:00+02:00 31252b8c-a072-102a-890e-a3b292c31f4e f6d576e4-a053-102a-890e-a3b292c31f4e http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2714-en.html The Mozart system provides state-of-the-art support in two areas: open distributed computing and constraint-based inference. Mozart implements Oz, a concurrent object-oriented language with dataflow synchronization. Oz combines concurrent and distributed programming with logical constraint-based inference, making it a unique choice for developing multi-agent systems. Mozart is an ideal platform for both general-purpose distributed applications as well as for hard problems requiring sophisticated optimization and inferencing abilities. We have developed applications in scheduling and time-tabling, in placement and configuration, in natural language and knowledge representation, multi-agent systems and sophisticated collaborative tools.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2714-en.html Mon, 20 Aug 2007 11:57:40 +0200 2007-08-20T11:57:37+02:00 f6d576e4-a053-102a-890e-a3b292c31f4e 8fdf07d2-9df8-102a-890e-a3b292c31f4e http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2713-en.html 1001 is a desktop client to be used in conjunction with Flickr, the online photo-sharing website.

1001 not only uploads photos to your Flickr account, it notifies you anytime new photos from either your contacts, everyone, or your favorite tags are uploaded.
1001 allows you to step into the stream of photos passing through Flickr and to quickly see what's new at the moment. Just run the app in the background and if triggered, 1001 pops up a small unobtrusive window to notify you of new photos.

1001 comes with a Flickr screensaver that will incrementally display the latest image from Flickr. You do not need to have 1001 installed to use this screensaver.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2713-en.html Fri, 17 Aug 2007 11:58:18 +0200 2007-08-17T11:58:18+02:00 8fdf07d2-9df8-102a-890e-a3b292c31f4e 1b85ef6c-9def-102a-890e-a3b292c31f4e http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2711-en.html As more Web sites begin to offer personalized services, the need for an easy-to-use authentication system has grown. Many sites are also incorporating services that are familiar to their users—for example, Windows Live™ services and controls. In light of these trends, many Web site operators and developers have expressed interest in incorporating Windows Live ID authentication into their sites. This software development kit (SDK) describes how you can use the Windows Live ID service.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2711-en.html Fri, 17 Aug 2007 10:50:39 +0200 2007-08-17T10:50:37+02:00 1b85ef6c-9def-102a-890e-a3b292c31f4e 995f69ac-9aef-102a-890e-a3b292c31f4e http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-2703-en.html ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-2703-en.html Tue, 14 Aug 2007 16:15:59 +0200 2007-08-13T15:16:35+02:00 995f69ac-9aef-102a-890e-a3b292c31f4e a4d72c52-9aef-102a-890e-a3b292c31f4e http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-2707-en.html ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-2707-en.html Mon, 13 Aug 2007 15:17:06 +0200 2007-08-13T15:16:54+02:00 a4d72c52-9aef-102a-890e-a3b292c31f4e 75e8675a-9ae3-102a-890e-a3b292c31f4e http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2692-en.html Making thumbnails for the Web used to be painstakingly slow if you wanted to apply borders, drop shadows, transformations, alpha channels, and so on. Or if it was fast, you ended up with a boring field of rigid columns and rows. Thumbscrew allows you to quickly and easily chew through a bunch of images, applying scaling, random rotation, border, and drop shadow to each – even resizing the original, and processing the batch as a whole afterwards.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-2692-en.html Mon, 13 Aug 2007 13:49:42 +0200 2007-08-13T13:49:42+02:00 75e8675a-9ae3-102a-890e-a3b292c31f4e 0fb80a82-9627-102a-890e-a3b292c31f4e http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1854-en.html Web 2.0 version of a supermarket :-)

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1854-en.html Tue, 07 Aug 2007 13:11:00 +0200 2007-08-07T13:11:00+02:00 0fb80a82-9627-102a-890e-a3b292c31f4e 15c0044e-9563-102a-890e-a3b292c31f4e http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1746-en.html Amazon Flexible Payments Service (Amazon FPS) is the first payments service designed from the ground up specifically for developers. The set of web services API's allows the movement of money between any two entities, humans or computers. It is built on top of Amazon's reliable and scalable payment infrastructure.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1746-en.html Mon, 06 Aug 2007 13:48:10 +0200 2007-08-06T13:48:09+02:00 15c0044e-9563-102a-890e-a3b292c31f4e 01685022-9302-102a-890e-a3b292c31f4e http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1741-en.html et's say you have two sites both of which understand calendar data. I want to move an appointment from one site to another. With Live Clipboard, there is now an icon on each site, next to each piece of data that can be transported. Bring site A to the front, click on the icon and choose Copy, then bring site B to the front, click on the icon and choose Paste.

Live Clipboard uses Javascript and standard XML formats to easily move data from one web site to another, or between the web and standard applications. It extends the clipboard concept (familiar to most computer users) to the web.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1741-en.html Fri, 03 Aug 2007 13:08:12 +0200 2007-08-03T13:08:11+02:00 01685022-9302-102a-890e-a3b292c31f4e 3153e8a8-917e-102a-890e-a3b292c31f4e http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1736-en.html TIBCO provides you with TIBCO PageBus , an open source message bus implemented in JavaScript

TIBCO PageBus is a message bus implemented in JavaScript that enables disparate Ajax elements in a Web page to broadcast and listen for events and messages published on topic names. In addition to basic publish and subscribe APIs, PageBus supports hierarchical topic names and the use of token wildcards within those hierarchical topic names providing a reach means to listen for both general as well as specific information.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1736-en.html Wed, 01 Aug 2007 14:52:07 +0200 2007-08-01T14:52:07+02:00 3153e8a8-917e-102a-890e-a3b292c31f4e 3daf713e-9175-102a-890e-a3b292c31f4e http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1729-en.html This is a HOWTO for LyX/Mac, a full-featured native implementation of LyX on the Mac OS X.

LyX is a WYSIWYM (WhatYouSeeIsWhatYouMean) DocumentProcessor. Its homepage is at www.lyx.org/ and you can probably get a much better description of what it is there.

The basic idea of LyX is that you do not need to handle style, or actually, you use a set of predefined styles and concentrate on your document content, This makes sure that your resulting document will be typographically correct and good looking visually. You can of course apply various style changes and order LyX to do things differently, but you only need to do it once for each option and the same style will be used throughout the document, making sure that your document is consistent in its look (we are still working on the AI to make sure the document is consistent in the content too :-) ).

LyX uses LaTeX as its backend typesetting mechanism. LaTeX is a very powerful system that gives great results. By using LaTeX, LyX can produce Postscript and PDF output. In addition, by using latex2html, you can get HTML output.

LyX can also export to DocBook and LinuxDoc formats.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1729-en.html Wed, 01 Aug 2007 13:48:05 +0200 2007-08-01T13:48:02+02:00 3daf713e-9175-102a-890e-a3b292c31f4e cc191088-8c07-102a-ad78-67b451796aa8 http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1724-en.html After some time, all Mighty Mouses will stop scrolling down, only upwards. The cleaning method as mentioned on the ‘Apple website’ doesn’t solve the problem, so as a last resort: operation Mouse!

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1724-en.html Fri, 27 Jul 2007 13:07:38 +0200 2007-07-25T16:02:01+02:00 cc191088-8c07-102a-ad78-67b451796aa8 4abb2242-8be4-102a-ad78-67b451796aa8 http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1719-en.html Want to make your site look better on the iPhone with one line of HTML?

It’s easy—just add a <meta> tag that lets the iPhone know how wide to display the initial page.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1719-en.html Wed, 25 Jul 2007 11:47:52 +0200 2007-07-25T11:47:51+02:00 4abb2242-8be4-102a-ad78-67b451796aa8 41c26aa8-8b1a-102a-ad78-67b451796aa8 http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1718-en.html The "unavailable_after" Meta tag will allow you to tell Google that a page should expire from the search results at a specific time.

Google has also added support to control access to non-HTML documents that can't have meta tags in them for blocking, such as PDF files, audio, xls documents and so. This is through a new X-Robots-Tag directive issued via the HTTP Header used to serve the file.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1718-en.html Tue, 24 Jul 2007 11:42:27 +0200 2007-07-24T11:41:38+02:00 41c26aa8-8b1a-102a-ad78-67b451796aa8 fed35036-8b19-102a-ad78-67b451796aa8 http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1713-en.html An overview of HTML meta tags for crawlers.

The meta robots tag was an open standard created over a decade ago and designed initially to allow page authors to prevent page indexing. Over the years, various search engines have added additional support to the tag.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1713-en.html Tue, 24 Jul 2007 11:39:47 +0200 2007-07-24T11:39:45+02:00 fed35036-8b19-102a-ad78-67b451796aa8 484e30c0-8802-102a-ad78-67b451796aa8 http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1712-en.html An article about applying Haskell to web application development.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1712-en.html Fri, 20 Jul 2007 13:12:27 +0200 2007-07-20T13:12:27+02:00 484e30c0-8802-102a-ad78-67b451796aa8 134a6694-87fa-102a-ad78-67b451796aa8 http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1710-en.html Mac OS X includes a wide variety of open source software from FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, the GNU Project, and many more projects each its own vibrant developer community.

Mac OS Forge is dedicated to supporting the developer community surrounding open source components specific to Mac OS X. Here you will find resources for working with the source code to popular Apple-original projects, as well as third party projects that are closely related to the Macintosh operating system.

Only select projects in Mac OS X are featured at Mac OS Forge.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1710-en.html Fri, 20 Jul 2007 12:13:43 +0200 2007-07-20T12:13:42+02:00 134a6694-87fa-102a-ad78-67b451796aa8 bba521f4-87f9-102a-ad78-67b451796aa8 http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1706-en.html The Mac OS X implementation of the functional programming language Haskell. It is still my big dream to make a fully functional (and efficient...) content management system in Haskell. I think it will be a thing of beauty :)

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1706-en.html Fri, 20 Jul 2007 12:11:16 +0200 2007-07-20T12:11:15+02:00 bba521f4-87f9-102a-ad78-67b451796aa8 58e21a2c-874f-102a-ad78-67b451796aa8 http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1704-en.html ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1704-en.html Thu, 19 Jul 2007 15:51:55 +0200 2007-07-19T15:51:35+02:00 58e21a2c-874f-102a-ad78-67b451796aa8 a47d6790-874d-102a-ad78-67b451796aa8 http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1694-en.html Form design is the necessary evil of web development. Don't you wish you had a wizard's wand to create accessible yet attractive forms? We have found such a wizard! Here, Cameron Adams shows you how to use CSS to create forms that are both great-looking and usable, and gives you the code you need to make the job easy.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1694-en.html Thu, 19 Jul 2007 15:39:24 +0200 2007-07-19T15:39:23+02:00 a47d6790-874d-102a-ad78-67b451796aa8 434f1d92-86a3-102a-ad78-67b451796aa8 http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1693-en.html ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1693-en.html Wed, 18 Jul 2007 19:19:57 +0200 2007-07-18T19:19:46+02:00 434f1d92-86a3-102a-ad78-67b451796aa8 3bd10ca6-86a3-102a-ad78-67b451796aa8 http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1690-en.html ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1690-en.html Wed, 18 Jul 2007 19:19:46 +0200 2007-07-18T19:19:33+02:00 3bd10ca6-86a3-102a-ad78-67b451796aa8 33e2a888-86a3-102a-ad78-67b451796aa8 http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1688-en.html ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1688-en.html Wed, 18 Jul 2007 19:19:33 +0200 2007-07-18T19:19:20+02:00 33e2a888-86a3-102a-ad78-67b451796aa8 2d10c7ba-86a3-102a-ad78-67b451796aa8 http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1687-en.html ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1687-en.html Wed, 18 Jul 2007 19:19:20 +0200 2007-07-18T19:19:08+02:00 2d10c7ba-86a3-102a-ad78-67b451796aa8 251ce89a-86a3-102a-ad78-67b451796aa8 http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1686-en.html ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1686-en.html Wed, 18 Jul 2007 19:19:08 +0200 2007-07-18T19:18:55+02:00 251ce89a-86a3-102a-ad78-67b451796aa8 1e5eda40-86a3-102a-ad78-67b451796aa8 http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1684-en.html ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1684-en.html Wed, 18 Jul 2007 19:18:55 +0200 2007-07-18T19:18:44+02:00 1e5eda40-86a3-102a-ad78-67b451796aa8 17fa0e68-86a3-102a-ad78-67b451796aa8 http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1681-en.html ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1681-en.html Wed, 18 Jul 2007 19:18:44 +0200 2007-07-18T19:18:33+02:00 17fa0e68-86a3-102a-ad78-67b451796aa8 105077b0-86a3-102a-ad78-67b451796aa8 http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1676-en.html ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1676-en.html Wed, 18 Jul 2007 19:18:33 +0200 2007-07-18T19:18:20+02:00 105077b0-86a3-102a-ad78-67b451796aa8 44e92938-8502-102a-ad78-67b451796aa8 http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1668-en.html eZ Publish is an open source content management system (CMS) and an open source content management framework (CMF).

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1668-en.html Mon, 16 Jul 2007 17:34:49 +0200 2007-07-16T17:34:48+02:00 44e92938-8502-102a-ad78-67b451796aa8 7a2337ac-84de-102a-ad78-67b451796aa8 http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1662-en.html Joyent Connector

Is Joyents collection of easy-to-use Web-based applications perfect for small businesses as well as individuals or teams collaborating on a project.

Joyent Slingshot

Joyent Slingshot allows developers to deploy Rails applications like a standard desktop application, which work online and offline (with synchronization), have drag and drop, and interact with all the other desktop applications.

With Joyent Slingshot:

• Create a hybrid Web/desktop application
• Synchronize online and offline data
• Use the same code for online and offline application(s)
• Deploy and update your application easily
• Drag into and out of application

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1662-en.html Mon, 16 Jul 2007 13:18:37 +0200 2007-07-16T13:18:36+02:00 7a2337ac-84de-102a-ad78-67b451796aa8 1700a284-844f-102a-ad78-67b451796aa8 http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1658-en.html ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1658-en.html Sun, 15 Jul 2007 20:12:24 +0200 2007-07-15T20:12:11+02:00 1700a284-844f-102a-ad78-67b451796aa8 bdde5474-091c-102a-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1422-en.html

Qi Baishi is the master of drawing shrimps. He perfected his art over the years. This photo explains how he draws shrimps with just a couple brush strokes.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1422-en.html Fri, 13 Jul 2007 23:52:18 +0200 bdde5474-091c-102a-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f b2116a36-81e5-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1655-en.html ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1655-en.html Thu, 12 Jul 2007 18:33:05 +0200 2007-07-12T18:32:42+02:00 b2116a36-81e5-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 6685bf18-81e5-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1653-en.html A site about design patterns. Useful to get some inspiration and see how to solve re-occuring patterns. Who wants to invent wheels when we have loads of them available?

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1653-en.html Thu, 12 Jul 2007 18:30:36 +0200 2007-07-12T18:30:36+02:00 6685bf18-81e5-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 5e13fd62-81b4-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1649-en.html There's an opportunity to build a new, open mass medium of online television. We're developing the Democracy internet TV platform so that watching internet video channels will be as easy as watching TV and broadcasting a channel will be open to everyone. Unlike traditional TV, everyone will have a voice.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1649-en.html Thu, 12 Jul 2007 12:39:38 +0200 2007-07-12T12:39:36+02:00 5e13fd62-81b4-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 ff14f522-7b06-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1648-en.html ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1648-en.html Wed, 04 Jul 2007 00:43:35 +0200 2007-07-04T00:43:27+02:00 ff14f522-7b06-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 f977b190-7b06-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1646-en.html ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1646-en.html Wed, 04 Jul 2007 00:43:27 +0200 2007-07-04T00:43:17+02:00 f977b190-7b06-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 edb92bc2-7b06-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1644-en.html ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1644-en.html Wed, 04 Jul 2007 00:43:17 +0200 2007-07-04T00:42:58+02:00 edb92bc2-7b06-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 17eca976-7aff-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1641-en.html Joe Gregorio's latest Restful Web column brings us up to date with Atom Publishing Protocol. Fast on the heels of the Atom Syndication Format becoming an internet standard, it's time to see where the APP stands.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1641-en.html Tue, 03 Jul 2007 23:46:53 +0200 2007-07-03T23:46:53+02:00 17eca976-7aff-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 aa253dca-78cb-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1633-en.html Sphinx is a full-text search engine, distributed under GPL version 2. Commercial license is also available for embedded use.

Generally, it's a standalone search engine, meant to provide fast, size-efficient and relevant fulltext search functions to other applications. Sphinx was specially designed to integrate well with SQL databases and scripting languages. Currently built-in data sources support fetching data either via direct connection to MySQL, or from an XML pipe.

As for the name, Sphinx is an acronym which is officially decoded as SQL Phrase Index.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1633-en.html Sun, 01 Jul 2007 04:33:45 +0200 2007-07-01T04:33:42+02:00 aa253dca-78cb-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 6f7d5b7a-7499-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1628-en.html

Just as in Amsterdam, the old Waagh in Nijmegen is conquered by a restaurant/ café.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1628-en.html Tue, 26 Jun 2007 15:02:15 +0200 2007-06-25T20:24:04+02:00 6f7d5b7a-7499-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 7e2fdf62-7499-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1631-en.html

A gate through some very old houses in the center of Nijmegen.
No bicycle parking spots, so this is the only way to park :-)

In the background you can see the St. Stevenskerk.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1631-en.html Tue, 26 Jun 2007 14:42:09 +0200 2007-06-25T20:24:28+02:00 7e2fdf62-7499-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 c970acac-71b2-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1621-en.html ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1621-en.html Fri, 22 Jun 2007 03:48:13 +0200 2007-06-22T03:47:59+02:00 c970acac-71b2-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 7a531d82-712e-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1620-en.html ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1620-en.html Thu, 21 Jun 2007 12:01:01 +0200 2007-06-21T12:00:52+02:00 7a531d82-712e-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 73594e8e-712e-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1619-en.html ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1619-en.html Thu, 21 Jun 2007 12:00:52 +0200 2007-06-21T12:00:41+02:00 73594e8e-712e-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 6ce8ac8e-712e-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1618-en.html ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1618-en.html Thu, 21 Jun 2007 12:00:41 +0200 2007-06-21T12:00:30+02:00 6ce8ac8e-712e-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 67f18066-712e-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1617-en.html ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1617-en.html Thu, 21 Jun 2007 12:00:30 +0200 2007-06-21T12:00:22+02:00 67f18066-712e-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 5f76315c-712e-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1616-en.html ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1616-en.html Thu, 21 Jun 2007 12:00:22 +0200 2007-06-21T12:00:07+02:00 5f76315c-712e-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 5a393662-712e-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1615-en.html ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1615-en.html Thu, 21 Jun 2007 12:00:07 +0200 2007-06-21T11:59:59+02:00 5a393662-712e-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 5289137e-712e-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1614-en.html ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1614-en.html Thu, 21 Jun 2007 11:59:58 +0200 2007-06-21T11:59:46+02:00 5289137e-712e-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 4227941a-712e-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1613-en.html ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1613-en.html Thu, 21 Jun 2007 11:59:30 +0200 2007-06-21T11:59:18+02:00 4227941a-712e-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 555c44ac-c4b5-1029-9217-1fbf61a722b5 http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1178-en.html What are microformats?

Designed for humans first and machines second, microformats are a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1178-en.html Thu, 21 Jun 2007 11:10:19 +0200 2006-11-13T23:20:21+01:00 555c44ac-c4b5-1029-9217-1fbf61a722b5 81e00a8e-6ba1-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1578-en.html ProgrammableWeb is where you can keep-up with what's new and interesting with mashups, Web 2.0 APIs, and the new Web as Platform.

The core of the site is the news blog and the 4 dashboards: Home, Mashups, APIs, and Members. New updates every day, 365 days a year.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1578-en.html Thu, 14 Jun 2007 10:29:12 +0200 2007-06-14T10:29:10+02:00 81e00a8e-6ba1-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 6983a67e-6b12-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1574-en.html Creating a consistent interface for your users is a constant struggle for every application designer. Building consistency on the web is especially tough because the visual rendering differences across browsers and operating systems are wildly different and almost arbitrary in what can and cannot be done. No where does this become more apparent than when you’re dealing with form elements and the biggest loser of them all in the battle for a standardized look is the infamous Submit button.

As is, the input with the type=”submit” is either too ugly (Firefox), a little buggy (Internet Explorer) or completely inflexible (Safari). The solution for most is to use image inputs and create the damn things ourselves. And it’s unfortunate, because then we’re reduced to the tedious tasks of opening up Photoshop every time we’re in need of a new button. What we need is something better—something more flexible and meant for designers. Lucky for us, the solution already exists and all it needs is a little love. My friends, let me introduce you to my little friend : the <button> element.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1574-en.html Wed, 13 Jun 2007 17:24:52 +0200 2007-06-13T17:24:51+02:00 6983a67e-6b12-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 6c1ffd4c-6b08-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1569-en.html CalDAV is a protocol allowing calendar access via WebDAV. CalDAV models calendar events as HTTP resources in iCalendar format, and models calendars containing events as WebDAV collections. This allows users to publish and subscribe to calendars, share them collaboratively, synchronize between multiple users and synchronize between multiple devices.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1569-en.html Wed, 13 Jun 2007 16:13:21 +0200 2007-06-13T16:13:21+02:00 6c1ffd4c-6b08-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 51ba4194-6b06-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1562-en.html CalConnect is the Calendaring and Scheduling Consortium. The Consortium is focused on the interoperable exchange of calendaring and scheduling information between dissimilar programs, platforms, and technologies. The Consortium's mission is to promote general understanding of and provide mechanisms to allow interoperable calendaring and scheduling methodologies, tools and applications to enter the mainstream of computing.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1562-en.html Wed, 13 Jun 2007 15:58:20 +0200 2007-06-13T15:58:17+02:00 51ba4194-6b06-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 1080dc0e-6a3b-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1560-en.html Google Applicance - The googleoff/googleon tags disable the indexing of a part of a web page.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1560-en.html Tue, 12 Jun 2007 15:43:22 +0200 2007-06-12T15:43:20+02:00 1080dc0e-6a3b-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 5045bc08-6651-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1555-en.html This microformats cheat sheet lists the properties by format and also lists each format and the hierarchy. This includes elemental microformats, compound microformats and some of the standard design patterns used.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1555-en.html Thu, 07 Jun 2007 16:13:16 +0200 2007-06-07T16:12:31+02:00 5045bc08-6651-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 6293eae0-6590-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1550-en.html The GMPG can be explained as an experiment in Metamemetics. The first aim of Metamemetics is to create a structure of principles that foster the construction and propagation of elemental ideas. The GMPG attempts to stimulate simplification of virtual substructures and bring people to question established structures and their relationships. Because people are not used to seeing elemental technologies or concepts which are powerful and immediately usable, frequent and novel encounters with GMPG efforts provoke optimism and empowerment, nevertheless reawakening criticism of complexity and a desire for simplicity.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1550-en.html Wed, 06 Jun 2007 17:11:30 +0200 2007-06-06T17:11:29+02:00 6293eae0-6590-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 f06013e0-6567-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1548-en.html OpenID is an open, decentralized, free framework for user-centric digital identity.

OpenID starts with the concept that anyone can identify themselves on the Internet the same way websites do-with a URI (also called a URL or web address). Since URIs are at the very core of Web architecture, they provide a solid foundation for user-centric identity.

The first piece of the OpenID framework is authentication -- how you prove ownership of a URI. Today, websites require usernames and passwords to login, which means that many people use the same password everywhere. With OpenID Authentication (see specs), your username is your URI, and your password (or other credentials) stays safely stored on your OpenID Provider (which you can run yourself, or use a third-party identity provider).

To login to an OpenID-enabled website (even one you've never been to before), just type your OpenID URI. The website will then redirect you to your OpenID Provider to login using whatever credentials it requires. Once authenticated, your OpenID provider will send you back to the website with the necessary credentials to log you in. By using Strong Authentication where needed, the OpenID Framework can be used for all types of transactions, both extending the use of pure single-sign-on as well as the sensitivity of data shared.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1548-en.html Wed, 06 Jun 2007 12:21:58 +0200 2007-06-06T12:21:58+02:00 f06013e0-6567-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 b3b0e62c-6567-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1545-en.html ClaimID is a fun, free and easy way to set yourself up with an OpenID .

Here at claimID, we realize that identity on the web is tricky, confusing and maybe even a little scary. It is our goal to make it completely painless for you to manage your online identity. Here's what we do:

• We provide you with an OpenID which you can use to log into thousands of sites such as Livejournal, Ma.gnolia and Technorati - without ever having to create a new account or remember another password.
• On your claimID page, you can create a profile of all the sites that comprise your identity. We even provide you with a simple and easy way to "claim" those pages - allowing you to easily prove ownership of things like your blog or Last.fm profile.
• We provide a whole bunch of other fun, useful services, widgets and APIs. For example, we'll let you know if an important page about you goes offline - and if it does go offline, we'll provide you a cache of the page so you never lose important materials.
• We enable your profile with Microformats such as hCard, giving you an easy way to take advantage of these new identity tools.
• We try and keep the language human. We understand that all these terms and formats may sound like technobabble, so we try hard to make it super easy for you to take advantage of these innovations - without ever having to think about the complexity that goes on behind the scenes.

One of the greatest things about having a claimID page is that you can easily provide people searching for you with a real picture of your identity. With claimID you can claim your blog, your website and news articles that mention your name into a central place. If someone is searching for you, they previously might not have found all of those important pages. With claimID, you can put your best face forward and let people see the identity you wish to present.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1545-en.html Wed, 06 Jun 2007 12:20:53 +0200 2007-06-06T12:20:16+02:00 b3b0e62c-6567-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 6e932d66-6567-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1539-en.html MicroID is a lightweight identity layer for the web, invented by Jeremie Miller (creator of Jabber). MicroID enables anyone to claim verifiable ownership over content hosted anywhere on the web (social networking sites, discussion forums, blogs, etc.). MicroID is not an authentication or single-sign-on service, just a straightforward method for identifying content ownership that complements existing technologies such as OpenID and microformats. The technology is radically simple and enables developers to build new and unique meta services with minimal effort. It's already being used by the likes of ClaimID, Last.fm, Ma.gnolia, Wikitravel, and Yedda. So join in the fun!

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1539-en.html Wed, 06 Jun 2007 12:18:21 +0200 2007-06-06T12:18:20+02:00 6e932d66-6567-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 897c3b4e-60c2-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1528-en.html Google Gears is an open source browser extension that lets developers create web applications that can run offline.

Features

Google Gears consists of three modules that address the core challenges in making web applications work offline.

LocalServer
Cache and serve application resources (HTML, JavaScript, images, etc.) locally

Database
Store data locally in a fully-searchable relational database

WorkerPool
Make your web applications more responsive by performing resource-intensive operations asynchronously

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1528-en.html Thu, 31 May 2007 14:27:54 +0200 2007-05-31T14:27:54+02:00 897c3b4e-60c2-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 a509ec78-5b20-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1519-en.html A friend recently got some pre-interview questions from YAHOO for a PHP job. Following up my previous post about programmer questions I thought I would post them to give people examples of what a large corporation like YAHOO asks.

The Programming and Management Blog: A programming, development, WordPress and technology blog by Nick Halstead, A-List Blogger from Oxfordshire (UK)

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1519-en.html Thu, 24 May 2007 10:26:34 +0200 2007-05-24T10:26:25+02:00 a509ec78-5b20-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 32a935cc-5a6b-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1513-en.html wok posted a photo: ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1513-en.html Wed, 23 May 2007 12:48:06 +0200 2007-05-23T12:47:35+02:00 32a935cc-5a6b-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 810f15be-50e9-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1507-en.html Steadycams (or camera stabilizers) are attachments used to capture smooth looking video even when the camera and camera operator are in motion. The camera operator may walk (or even jog), move through tight hallways and doorways, and even climb up and down stairs without shaking the camera. Unfortunately, professional steadycams cost around $1500. Even the cheap 3rd party ones cost $600+. Not exactly a bargain considering many of us use cameras in that price range. So, I decided to make my own version. It turns out, it only costs $14. Not too bad. And I'll show you how to build your own right here (or you can buy a ready-to-use steadycam from me through littlegreatideas.com/steadycam. Whether you are an aspiring filmmaker, a videographer, the family documentarian, or just want more utility out of your video camera, you'll appreciate a steadycam.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1507-en.html Fri, 11 May 2007 10:26:33 +0200 2007-05-11T10:26:31+02:00 810f15be-50e9-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 d214d42e-43bc-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1503-en.html nedmalloc is a VERY fast, VERY scalable, multithreaded memory allocator with little memory fragmentation. It is faster in real world code than Hoard, faster than tcmalloc, faster than ptmalloc2 and it scales with extra processing cores better than Hoard, better than tcmalloc and better than ptmalloc2 or ptmalloc3. Put another way, there is no faster portable memory allocator out there! Unlike other allocators, it is written in C and so can be used anywhere and it also comes under the Boost software license which permits commercial usage.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1503-en.html Tue, 24 Apr 2007 16:03:55 +0200 2007-04-24T16:03:55+02:00 d214d42e-43bc-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 5bdf1a92-4305-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1500-en.html This tutorial is an attempt to help you become familiar with multi-threaded programming with the POSIX threads (pthreads) library, and attempts to show how its features can be used in "real-life" programs. It explains the different tools defined by the library, shows how to use them, and then gives an example of using them to solve programming problems. There is an implicit assumption that the user has some theoretical familiarity with paralell programming (or multi-processing) concepts. Users without such background might find the concepts harder to grasp. A seperate tutorial will be prepared to explain the theoretical background and terms to those who are familiar only with normal "serial" programming.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1500-en.html Mon, 23 Apr 2007 18:10:40 +0200 2007-04-23T18:10:38+02:00 5bdf1a92-4305-102a-8f91-f8de70959a46 9d71c046-1938-102a-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1493-en.html Embedded database experts from McObject describe how to build a custom memory manager to avoid the locking conflicts that often occur in multithreaded or multicore designs with two or more processors.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1493-en.html Thu, 01 Mar 2007 12:31:45 +0100 2007-03-01T12:31:44+01:00 9d71c046-1938-102a-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f bfd5f9b6-5f31-1029-bad5-cda7dc5826b6 http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-429-en.html Curious perversions in Information Technology – the subtitle says it all, a list of bugs, implementations and dialogs that every technical person can recognise. A must read when you think that the problems you are facing are bigger than ever and The Code really really needs a one-way journey to the bin.

Previous called “The Daily WTF ”

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-429-en.html Tue, 27 Feb 2007 08:45:48 +0100 2006-07-07T19:53:59+02:00 bfd5f9b6-5f31-1029-bad5-cda7dc5826b6 e465c2de-1746-102a-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1484-en.html GeSHi - Generic Syntax Highlighter for php. Highlight many languages, including PHP, CSS, HTML, SQL, Java and C for XHTML compliant output using this easy PHP Class. Every aspect of the highlighting is customisable, from colours and other styles to case-sensitivity checking and more. GeSHi - the best syntax highlighter in the world!

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1484-en.html Tue, 27 Feb 2007 01:09:02 +0100 2007-02-27T01:08:54+01:00 e465c2de-1746-102a-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f 351ab478-16e3-102a-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1480-en.html Bokardo is the blog of Joshua Porter, a web designer/developer, researcher, and writer. I live in Newburyport, MA, USA.

WHAT IS SOCIAL DESIGN?

Social design is a subset of design that focuses on the social lives of users. It deals with the activities, behaviors, and motivations of people who work and play together through software interfaces. In the early days of the Web, most sites were read-only, focused on providing information to a single person at a time. Then the Web became read/write, allowing people to save information but still mostly for them acting alone. Now, we're seeing a tremendous amount of social software that allows many people to collaborate and share what they're doing with others. Designing for this social world is social design, and that's what we're talking about here at Bokardo.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1480-en.html Mon, 26 Feb 2007 13:15:23 +0100 2007-02-26T13:15:19+01:00 351ab478-16e3-102a-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f da055dc8-1466-102a-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1476-en.html Spam Link Verification system: an XML-RPC implementation to filter user input with spam links.

The Concept

There are many forms of link-spam but all rely on a single sticky identifier: The link. Because it is humanly impossible to post thousands of times in an hour to guestbooks, blogs, forums, etc. across the web, link spam is vulnerable to a throttling mechanism. If we could track a large number of posts, we could find and throttle link spam. How do we do that?..

The Method

Unlike many other software-specific spam tools, SLV is universally applicable. It simply takes a bit of text, extracts any urls, checks against a database of recently added urls across the web, and determines if a reasonable threshold has been exceeded. The XML-RPC script returns a 1 for accept and a 0 for reject. This means that any type of web form - whether a post to a guestbook or blog, a forum entry, even an email form - can be protected from link spam.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1476-en.html Fri, 23 Feb 2007 09:20:07 +0100 2007-02-23T09:20:07+01:00 da055dc8-1466-102a-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f 26a93aea-13cd-102a-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1470-en.html Finally a word processor that really helps you in organising the structure of your text, from the first rough ideas to the final draft.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1470-en.html Thu, 22 Feb 2007 14:59:54 +0100 2007-02-22T14:59:53+01:00 26a93aea-13cd-102a-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f e6f265de-0fe4-102a-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1452-en.html Yahoo! grids builder tool to make your layout using the Yahoo! User Interface Grids library. Very handy to make a quick layout and copy the code over to your own template.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1452-en.html Sat, 17 Feb 2007 15:49:07 +0100 2007-02-17T15:39:49+01:00 e6f265de-0fe4-102a-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f 7f75c1ec-dab7-1029-9217-1fbf61a722b5 http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1335-en.html The foundational YUI Grids CSS file offers three preset page widths, seven core templates, and the ability to nest subdivided regions of one to four columns. All told, the file offers almost 200 preset layouts and an unlimited number of custom permutations that work across all A-grade browsers, all for less than 2.5kb of minimized file weight.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1335-en.html Sat, 17 Feb 2007 15:48:56 +0100 2006-12-11T23:31:16+01:00 7f75c1ec-dab7-1029-9217-1fbf61a722b5 236970f4-0e9e-102a-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1448-en.html Collex is a set of tools designed to aid students and scholars working in networked archives and federated repositories of humanities materials: a sophisticated COLLections and EXhibits mechanism for the semantic web.

Collex allows users to collect, annotate, and tag online objects and to repurpose them in illustrated, interlinked essays or exhibits. It functions within any modern web browser without recourse to plugins or downloads and is fully networked as a server-side application. By saving information about user activity (the construction of annotated collections and exhibits) as “remixable” metadata, the Collex system writes current practice into the scholarly record and permits knowledge discovery based not only on the characteristics or “facets” of digital objects, but also on the contexts in which they are placed by a community of scholars.

Collex builds on semantic web technologies and brings folksonomy tagging to trusted, peer-reviewed scholarly archives. Its exhibits-builder is analogous to high-end digital curation tools currently affordable only to large (offline) museums and galleries. Collex is free, generalizable, and open source and is presently being implemented in a large-scale pilot project under the auspices of NINES.

A Collex whitepaper is available in PDF format.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1448-en.html Fri, 16 Feb 2007 00:40:47 +0100 2007-02-16T00:40:45+01:00 236970f4-0e9e-102a-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f 3f8f7dd8-0d26-102a-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1445-en.html wok posted a photo: ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1445-en.html Wed, 14 Feb 2007 03:50:32 +0100 3f8f7dd8-0d26-102a-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f 2eac6f6c-0d26-102a-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1441-en.html wok posted a photo: Not really according European work regulations... ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1441-en.html Wed, 14 Feb 2007 03:50:01 +0100 2eac6f6c-0d26-102a-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f 2774cb10-0b7b-102a-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1436-en.html wok posted a photo: ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1436-en.html Mon, 12 Feb 2007 00:53:16 +0100 2774cb10-0b7b-102a-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f 1811c712-0b72-102a-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1430-en.html wok posted a photo: ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1430-en.html Sun, 11 Feb 2007 23:48:28 +0100 1811c712-0b72-102a-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f 384e1aca-09a7-102a-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1426-en.html Ghost Action is a Getting Things Done application for Mac OS X

Instead of having a single list full of unrelated to-dos, Ghost Action gives you different views of your to-dos, grouped according to context or project. You will use the project view when planning the next action for your projects. A project can be, for example, Repaint bedroom or Review report. You will use the context view to get an overview of what can be done at a the current context. A context refers to locations or situations, such as Home, Computer, Work and City, that are suitable for doing a certain kind of to-dos.

Ghost Action features full two-way synchronization with iCal, which enables synchronization of your to-dos to any iSync compatible device such as a phone or PDA, so that you may access your to-dos even when you are on the move. Users, who don’t use a portable device, can achieve the same goal by printing their to-do lists.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1426-en.html Fri, 09 Feb 2007 17:03:10 +0100 2007-02-09T17:03:10+01:00 384e1aca-09a7-102a-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f b07bc0e6-091c-102a-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1421-en.html wok posted a photo: ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1421-en.html Fri, 09 Feb 2007 00:31:54 +0100 b07bc0e6-091c-102a-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f a3187304-091c-102a-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1420-en.html wok posted a photo: ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1420-en.html Fri, 09 Feb 2007 00:31:31 +0100 a3187304-091c-102a-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f 9281c3b0-091c-102a-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1419-en.html wok posted a photo: ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1419-en.html Fri, 09 Feb 2007 00:31:09 +0100 9281c3b0-091c-102a-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f 80fbdc02-091c-102a-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1418-en.html wok posted a photo: ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1418-en.html Fri, 09 Feb 2007 00:30:41 +0100 80fbdc02-091c-102a-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f b9901cd6-0147-102a-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1415-en.html wok posted a photo: ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1415-en.html Tue, 30 Jan 2007 01:19:51 +0100 b9901cd6-0147-102a-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f e3d1f076-007c-102a-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1411-en.html wok posted a photo: Modern and old construction materials meet. ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1411-en.html Mon, 29 Jan 2007 01:07:49 +0100 e3d1f076-007c-102a-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f d9b15c8a-007c-102a-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1408-en.html wok posted a photo: In Macau ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1408-en.html Mon, 29 Jan 2007 01:07:29 +0100 d9b15c8a-007c-102a-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f c9bd6896-007c-102a-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1405-en.html wok posted a photo: ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1405-en.html Mon, 29 Jan 2007 01:07:12 +0100 c9bd6896-007c-102a-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f 91f8cc7e-0073-102a-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1403-en.html wok posted a photo: Tubing for the Macau ferry ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1403-en.html Mon, 29 Jan 2007 00:01:12 +0100 91f8cc7e-0073-102a-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f 86120cae-0073-102a-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1398-en.html wok posted a photo: ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1398-en.html Mon, 29 Jan 2007 00:00:46 +0100 86120cae-0073-102a-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f 1232f56c-feea-1029-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1391-en.html wok posted a photo: ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1391-en.html Sat, 27 Jan 2007 01:04:19 +0100 1232f56c-feea-1029-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f 7d06fd8c-fe1a-1029-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1387-en.html wok posted a photo: Something is weird this year. On the first day of the winter that we might call cold we saw these nice flowers appearing on barren twigs. ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1387-en.html Fri, 26 Jan 2007 00:18:28 +0100 7d06fd8c-fe1a-1029-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f 0809ca86-fa8d-1029-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1374-en.html wok posted a photo: Some older photos ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1374-en.html Sun, 21 Jan 2007 11:48:18 +0100 0809ca86-fa8d-1029-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f f80f0434-fa8c-1029-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1372-en.html wok posted a photo: Some older photos ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1372-en.html Sun, 21 Jan 2007 11:47:54 +0100 f80f0434-fa8c-1029-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f e6d22f24-fa83-1029-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1370-en.html wok posted a photo: Some older photos ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1370-en.html Sun, 21 Jan 2007 10:43:00 +0100 e6d22f24-fa83-1029-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f d776b95a-fa83-1029-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1367-en.html wok posted a photo: Some older photos ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1367-en.html Sun, 21 Jan 2007 10:42:33 +0100 d776b95a-fa83-1029-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f 0e8b7afc-f755-1029-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1362-en.html wok posted a photo: ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1362-en.html Wed, 17 Jan 2007 09:30:04 +0100 0e8b7afc-f755-1029-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f 725b3a46-efb6-1029-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1356-en.html wok posted a photo: ]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/attachment-1356-en.html Sun, 07 Jan 2007 16:47:13 +0100 725b3a46-efb6-1029-b2a0-d2fd7b6fbb5f d6ea0982-dfd6-1029-9217-1fbf61a722b5 http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1346-en.html Working together on a remote project? With this tool you can work together on a drawing with your friends and colleagues who are overseas. A great example of a collaboration tool.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1346-en.html Mon, 18 Dec 2006 11:58:14 +0100 2006-12-18T11:58:13+01:00 d6ea0982-dfd6-1029-9217-1fbf61a722b5 2f6753c2-dd88-1029-9217-1fbf61a722b5 http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1336-en.html By including a little javascript snippet you get a popup-preview of external links on your page. Pretty neat for link collections, and free to use

Snap.com marketing blurb below :-)

Snap.com - The other way to Search. Snap is a new search engine that offers a very different alternative to the Big Search, Text-In, Text-Out, method. Snap is visual. Snap is fast. Snap is Interactive.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1336-en.html Fri, 15 Dec 2006 13:30:12 +0100 2006-12-15T13:30:09+01:00 2f6753c2-dd88-1029-9217-1fbf61a722b5 34a2405a-da58-1029-9217-1fbf61a722b5 http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1329-en.html F# is a programming language that provides the much sought-after combination of type safety, performance and scripting, with all the advantages of running on a high-quality, well-supported modern runtime system.

]]> http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1329-en.html Mon, 11 Dec 2006 12:09:15 +0100 2006-12-11T12:09:09+01:00 34a2405a-da58-1029-9217-1fbf61a722b5 66d32a6e-d69b-1029-9217-1fbf61a722b5 http://www.marcworrell.com/artefact-1315-en.html Web Applications 1.0 - Working Draft

This specification introduces features to HTML and the DOM that ease the authoring of Web-based applications. Additions include the context menus, a direct-mode graphics canvas, inline popup windows, and server-sent events.

The World Wide Web's markup language has always been HTML. HTML was primarily designed as a language for semantically describing scientific documents, although its general design and adaptations over the years has enabled it to be used to describe a number of other types of documents.

The main area that has not been adequately addressed by HTML is a vague subject referred to as Web Applications. This specification attempts to rectify this, while at the same time updating the HTML specifications to address issues raised in the past few years.

Includes a specification of the parser rules for parsing (X)HTML5.

Look around, and let me know when you like the photos!

Marc /

wok posted a photo:

It provides a full suite of well known enterprise-level persistence patterns, designed for efficient and high-performing database access, adapted into a simple and Pythonic domain language.

SQLALCHEMY'S PHILOSOPHY

SQL databases behave less and less like object collections the more size and performance start to matter; object collections behave less and less like tables and rows the more abstraction starts to matter. SQLAlchemy aims to accommodate both of these principles.

SQLAlchemy doesn't view databases as just collections of tables; it sees them as relational algebra engines. Its object relational mapper enables classes to be mapped against the database in more than one way. SQL constructs don't just select from just tables—you can also select from joins, subqueries, and unions. Thus database relationships and domain object models can be cleanly decoupled from the beginning, allowing both sides to develop to their full potential.

wok posted a photo:

wok posted a photo:

wok posted a photo:

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wok posted a photo:For Gui and Rui :-)

wok posted a photo:

CSS is the modern way to build web sites. Intensivstation offers insight, help, tips and templates for CSS design.

Apples To Oranges is a visual and experience design studio with a strong focus in the design for websites and online applications

Home of software like iHook, Fugu, radmind etc.

Sesame is an open source RDF framework with support for RDF Schema inferencing and querying. Originally, it was developed by Aduna (then known as Aidministrator) as a research prototype for the EU research project On-To-Knowledge. Now, it is further developed and maintained by Aduna in cooperation with NLnet Foundation, developers from Ontotext, and a number of volunteer developers who contribute ideas, bug reports and fixes.

It contains about 120 pages with CSS and JavaScript tips and tricks, and is one of the best sources on the WWW for studying and defeating browser incompatibilities. It is free of charge and ads, and largely free of copyrights.

Broke your computer or iPod, but don't feel comfortable diving in without any experience? The Fixit Guide Series is your solution. Each Fixit Guide has detailed disassembly instructions that walk you through the process of easily accessing and replacing components in your iPod, PowerBook, or iBook.

He works at Google. Previously, worked at the IB Almaden Research Center. Before moving to the Bay Area, He was a Member of Technical Staff in the Information Sciences Research Center at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, where he worked on Operating Systems and Networking.

This is his personal web site, though most of the information here is related to his interests in computer science, computers, and some random hobbies.

wok posted a photo:Meeting someone on the stairs :-)