Archive for Feb 2009

14 entries

Area Code Change in Utah on Sunday

Fri Feb 27 15:51:00 2009

This Sunday, the new, 385 area code will become available in Utah. Unlike past changes to area codes in Utah, this will not be geographically based, but an overlay. Plenty of other places in the US have done this already, but this is a first for Utah and the first time most people will have to dial a 10-digit number for all calls. So, updte your phone directories in your cell phone to include the area code and bask in the joy of knowing you live in a growing, vibrant area instead of complaining about the
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Safari 4 Public Beta Kills MailGrowl

Thu Feb 26 07:16:00 2009

I'm a big fan of Growl, an OS X add-on that creates a universal messaging system on the Desktop. Various plug-ins for Growl allow other applications to send messages. One is GrowlMail, a plug-in for Mail.app, that sends notifications of incoming mail. Last night I installed Safari 4 Public Beta and then Mail quit working. After a little exploration, I found this notice from Apple that "After installing Safari 4 Public Beta in Mac OS X v10.5.6, Mail may unexpectedly quit when opened if a third-party Mail plugin is installed." It specifically references GrowlMail. I removed
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Making Sense of Digital Identity

Thu Feb 26 07:06:00 2009

Image by dsearls via Flickr Gabe Wachob is going to be teaching a course on digital identity as part of the Blue Oxen Associates Sense Making series. From the intro: Digital identity has always posed unique social and technical challenges centered around security, privacy, and convenience. The Internet has made these challenges even more complex. The good news is that a number of new technologies are creating new opportunities for creating a secure and private Internet, where individuals are in control of their own data. This is a win-win scenario, because it creates new opportunities for service providers. The
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CTO Breakfast this Thursday

Tue Feb 24 09:28:00 2009

Image by windley via Flickr We'll be holding February's CTO breakfast this Thursday (Feb 26) at 8am in the Novell Cafeteria (Building G, Provo campus - map). Whether you're a CTO or not, you're welcome to come. The discussion is about building high-tech products, building companies, and what's hot right now. We'd love to have you join us. Here are future dates to mark on your calendar: Feb 26, 2009 (Thursday) Mar 27, 2009 (Friday) Apr 24, 2009 (Friday) May 28, 2009 (Thursday) I have created a Google Calendar with dates for the CTO breakfast that you can subscribe
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SMS Phishing Attack

Fri Feb 20 08:45:00 2009

Image by Chaddycakes via Flickr I received several texts this morning, allegedly from my bank that said: FRM: FARWESTBANK MSG: Urgent Far West Bank message AUTHORIZATION. To verify call TOOL FREE 8662249038. Being the curious sort, I called and played around with it. The system was an IVR that asked for credit card information (all of it). I recorded the call so you can listen too. Click here for the MP3 file. The places with low audio are me typing my responses. Of course, I didn't give it a real credit card number but I did give it a
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Context Automation

Tue Feb 17 09:36:00 2009

Judith Burton has written a good piece on context automation and what we're doing at Kynetx. She says: When browsing the Internet, each web site encounter throughout the browsing episode is a separate or ad hoc experience. There is no thread or connection from one site to another except in the user's mind. The user must hold the context of the browsing episode outside of each web site encounter. From Context AutomationReferenced Tue Feb 17 2009 09:30:53 GMT-0700 (MST) And then later: To create a context across multiple sites, an abstraction layer may be employed that is capable of
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Book Review: The Advent of the Algorithm

Mon Feb 16 10:44:00 2009

Computers are important--everyone knows that. But computers aren't nearly as important as the ideas behind them. If you want to understand why computer science is important, then you need to read Berlinski's book, The Advent of the Algorithm: The 300-Year Journey from an Idea to the Computer. Berlinski ranks the algorithm as the idea, next to calculus, that has most shaped modern science and, consequently, our world. If there's one things that gives me pause in recommending this book, it is that I'm not sure how accessible it is to the layman. For someone with a Ph.D. in Computer
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Just in Time for Valentine's Day: Bob Blakley on Relationships

Fri Feb 13 08:32:00 2009

Image by orcmid via Flickr When Bob Blakley presented his ideas on relationships at IIW a while back I blogged it and so did others (like Drummond). After Bob released his paper on the subject to Burton Group subscribers, I blogged about relationship providers (with pictures even). Then Scott and I interviewed Bob on the subject for IT Conversations. Needless to say, I think this is an interesting idea. Now, I'm happy to report that Bob and Burton Group have made the paper publicly available. Go get it and read it. There are some great ideas in there.
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SpokenWord Has Launched

Thu Feb 12 09:35:00 2009

Doug Kaye has launched SpokenWord.org, a "new free on-line service that helps you find, manage and share audio and video spoken-word recordings, regardless of who produced them or where they're published." SpokenWord lets you build collections of programs or follow someone else's collection. There are a number of things you can do with a collection (from the FAQ): Add Tags to help others find your Collections. Go to My SpokenWord and click on the collection's [edit/tag] link. Add Comments. Click on the Share This link to send via email or post to services such as Facebook, del.icio.us and Digg.
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Is SOA Dead?

Tue Feb 10 14:33:00 2009

Image by crazbabe21 via Flickr At the first of the year, Anne Thomas Manes wrote a provocative blog entry stating that SOA is dead. This week's Technometria podcast is a discussion with Anne about her thesis and what it means for practitioners and technologists. I think you'll enjoy it whether you're a fan of SOA or not. From the description at IT Conversations: Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) provides ways to group functions around business processes, packaging them as services. This allows for better coordination between services. Anne Thomas Manes of the Burton Group joins Phil and Scott to discuss whether
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More on Context Automation, Privacy, and Kynetx Business Models

Mon Feb 9 13:22:00 2009

Joe Andrieu posted a response to the white paper I released last week. I'm grateful that Joe would take the time necessary to read the paper in depth and offer a long, well-thought out, and helpful set of questions and critique. From his article it's clear to me that Joe understands the problem space well and has a firm grasp on what Kynetx is doing there. Joe raises a number of questions and points that I'd like to respond to. First, Joe asks who the target developers are: Web sites or third party services. Or both? Our primary offering
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First-Class Namespaces in Programming Languages

Fri Feb 6 08:48:00 2009

Over the last few years, I've written plenty of programs--in various languages--that used a HTTP library to fetch an XML document pointed at by a URL and then used XPath to grab parts and pieces of that XML document. The problem with this is that I'm using two different namespaces (the URI and the XML) neither of which is directly supported by my programming language. Programs that use relational databases suffer similarly: a datastore with a namespace that is extralingual. One of the great selling points of JSON is that it reduces the cognitive load of
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The Advent of Next Generation Browsing

Wed Feb 4 19:44:00 2009

Today I'm releasing the first of a series of white papers on Kynetx and what it's trying to accomplish: The Advent of Next Generation Browsing (PDF). I introduce the problem in the first few paragraphs like so: We are mired in a tangle of architectural legacies that make today's Web browsing experience uncomfortable, confusing, and tiresome for many users. In particular, the lack of Web site independent identity has hampered the ability of the browser to effectively intermediate the Web on the user's behalf. But change is coming and we are about to witness a significant improvement in the
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This Week on Technometria: Aaron Iba on EtherPad

Tue Feb 3 07:15:00 2009

This week Scott and I speak with Aaron Iba about EtherPad and the AppJet platform that it's built on. There are plenty of interesting problems involved in creating a real-time collaborative editing environment with Javascript in the browser. I loved the discussion and got a few ideas about designing collaborative services. Related articles by ZemantaEtherPad: Collab your script (ajaxian.com)EtherPad: Real-time Editing with JavaScript (ejohn.org)Etherpad Shows Google Docs How It's Done (techcrunch.com)EtherPad: Dead Simple Real Time Collaboration (readwriteweb.com)
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