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Upgrading to V11
2007-09-15 13:57:00
We are upgrading to V11 this weekend. This may involve downtime, especially Sunday morning though we'll try to minimize disruptions. At times may be slow since we'll be effectively running two parallel BlogMatrix.coms for a while. Update: we only got half way through the update and had some issues. We'll be picking up the second half ASAP. Tags: v11 · upgrades · downtime

Meet Charlotte
2007-08-28 23:48:00
Here's a simple and useful SlideShare demonstration on how the Web 2.0 experience (that everyone is enjoying on the web) can be translated into the enterprise (via Bryce): Tags: social software · enterprise 2.0
More About: Meet , Charlotte , Char , Charlot

Simple Calendaring
2007-08-27 13:35:00
Here's a screenshot of the monthly calendar view in the BlogMatrix Platform. The individual entries are events imported Upcoming feeds and collected together into a "Toronto Network" Tags: blogmatrix platform · calendar · rss · product:upcoming
More About: Simple , Lend

Intranet Blogging at Wells Fargo
2007-08-27 13:21:00
Investor's Business Daily reports on the use of Blogging and Web 2.0 in the enterprise intranet for knowledge capture and sharing: Wells Fargo 's 160,000 employees are finding it easier to communicate these days. They're using blogs and group-written Web pages called wikis to spread the word about products, marketing materials, the latest company news and reports and much more. "It used to be people had to talk one-on-one to have actual communication," said Danny Peltz, executive vice president, wholesale Internet solutions at Wells Fargo. (WFC) "Things like wikis, things like blogs, are just another form of communication — from one to many or many to many." The bank is an adopter of collaboration tools called Web 2.0. Tags: intranet · blogging · company:wells fargo
More About: Intranet , Anet

Complete BlogMatrix Platform Feature List
2007-08-27 13:07:00
From our developing website documentation. There'll probably be modifications to this before we officially go live but this is in horseshoe/handgrenades distance. Posting easy-to-use Web 2.0 interface allowing continuous posting and editing group blogs networks; blog collections aggregating posts from all members multiple-posters per blog tagging, with tag memory structured blogging; add the following types to posts (extendable): ratings / reviews links (for social bookmarking) address information contact information Google maps attachments; group photos into albums easy inclusion of images and YouTube-style videos using wiki-like instructions attach large binary objects to posts, such as podcasts and videocasts workflow capabilities allow “blobs” to be transformed before presentation to the end user Extensive e-mail integration post by e-mail subscribe by e-mail participate in comment discussions via e-mail distribu...
More About: Feature , List , Complete , Platform , Feat

CIOs use blogs
2007-08-27 13:03:00
CIO Insight has posted the results of a survey of CIOs about which web apps they use "personally": Video over the web 54% Wikis 49 Blogs 48 RSS (Really Simple Syndication) 47 Podcasts 39 Social networking (e.g., tagging, social bookmarks, community sites such as del.icio.us, LinkedIn, Technorati) 33 Isn't that interesting? Statistically speaking, wikis, blogs and RSS work out to be about the same. Tags: blogging · wiki · social software · podcasting

PyLinda
2007-08-23 01:09:00
PyLinda is a Linda-like implementation (and JavaSpaces-like, which I'm more familiar with) for Python. The BlogMatrix Platform does a lot of it's work by one process dropping stuff on queues and other processes picking that stuff up. Just saying. Tags: python · linda · java · javaspaces

Embedding Google Maps
2007-08-23 01:02:00
Google has (finally) announced a way to embed Google Maps in webpages, in much the same way a YouTube video can be embedded. We're going to see if we can create a [[*map=...] (like we have for videos and images now) so you can drop these in anywhere in your blog posts. We'll still be keeping our Map structured data extensions, as that actually has semantic meaning toward the post (plus we can do other tricks, like navigating between posts with a map!) Tags: google maps
More About: Google , Googl

Distutils and Setuptools
2007-08-23 00:45:00
Here's an article on creating a python apps and libraries for distribution using distutils. And from this, here's an article on setuptools, an enhanced version that's been making our lives hell in terms of making totally self contained distributions. Tags: python · development

Flash Video adds H.264, metadata support
2007-08-23 00:38:00
Niall Kennedy has the news on all sorts of goodies in the beta version of Flash Player: Yesterday Adobe released a beta version of its Flash Player browser plugin capable of decoding H.264 video, AAC audio, and associated rich metadata. Web browsers utilizing Flash 9.0.60.184 or higher will now be able to playback content encoded for digital television, iPods, and high-end mobile phones using international standards. Adobe's support for these standardized audio and video codes will streamline the production process for desktop and web video, hopefully reducing time-to-market and opening more video catalogs to online viewers. A beta version of the new player, Flash Player 9 Update 3 Beta 2 "Moviestar", is available from Adobe Labs. I'm hoping this means we can just encode for H.264 (aka MPEG4) and have it play with Flash player widgets, without having to do "FLV" anymore. Flash Player now supports 3GPP time text tracks, iTunes metadata ("ilst" atom), and chap...
More About: Video , Support , Metadata

Normal posting will resume shortly...
2007-08-21 20:45:00
Sorry about the sudden silence: the result of travel days, post vacation um recovery + a broken Internet connection made things less lively than they should have been! Tags: administrivia
More About: Resume , Posti , Normal

OPML Support
2007-08-16 15:45:00
We're going to have moderately deep support of OPML 2 in the BlogMatrix Platform. In particular: there'll be an OPML icon next to the RSS icon in the main bar (or below it in a pull-down menu) there'll be an OPML link in the sidebar from the OPML you can get to (via OPML inclusion): all entries, organized by year friends, networks and groups we'll provide subscription lists at the network/group level for people wanting to subscribe with a syndication reader Testing has been relatively smooth thanks to the Grazr minibrowser; we just plug our OPML URI into Grazr and it works (or not). If OPML 2 changes, we'll adapt as necessary but I suspect any changes will be relatively minor at this point. Tags: opml · blogmatrix platform
More About: Support

Ad Support
2007-08-14 00:19:00
We're putting ads on all non-paying accounts (and NSF) accounts, in a top banner. As you can see above, we don't pay for our own accounts ;-) Tags: administrivia · advertising
More About: Support

No BlogMatrix Platform on Windows
2007-08-12 14:09:00
I think it may be doable, but it's quite a time sink. We're leave all our mods in the code base for another day but the core issue is that the Windows "shortcut" is a third-class citizen compared to UNIX's symbolic link. And we use a lot of symbolic links, especially when constructing the "htdocs" directory for Apache. Now, in Python we can get around this (not efficiently, but good enough) but Apache just doesn't have the proper code to do this. The other option would be to run it all under Cygwin, except mod_python isn't really supported and that's a whole other can of worms. Tags: development · apache · windows · python
More About: Platform , Trix

Running mod_python on Windows XP
2007-08-10 20:13:00
I'm currently linuxless, but since I have access to a Windows XP laptop I thought I'd try a few little experiments. I'm probably not going to pursue this to far, as at this stage in the game it doesn't make a lot of sense to bring another, radically different, platform into the mix. Running mod_python on Windows (XP) is actually quite simple: install Apache (Windows MSI Binary 2.0.X) install Python; I like ActiveState's version from my Windows versions (Windows MSI 2.4.X) install mod_python from here; make sure you pick the correct matching version for Apache and Python! On Windows I find it fairly useful to install everything the default way. Configuring this is simplicity: edit httpd.conf (there's probably a start menu option for this) add "LoadModule python_module modules/mod_python.so" in the LoadModules section restart Apache test (the Directory version works out of the box with the appropriate path adjustment) BlogMatrix uses a lot of shel...
More About: Windows Xp

Whoops
2007-08-10 20:02:00
Missed posting yesterday -- sorry, it was a travel day. I'm on vacation right now, but a working one. Tags: administrivia

Status report
2007-08-09 03:01:00
Internetless most of today, so forgive the lack of (real) posting. Any code changes from this point will be minor (excepting bug fixes!)
More About: Report , Status

Vancouver: Canada's startup capital
2007-08-07 22:49:00
Victoria Revay of NowPublic explains why Vancouver is kicking ass in startups: A key reason that was sited for Vancouver’s success as a city that fosters great startups, by people like David Raffa, a predominant VC in Vancouver and Jim Charlton of Growthworks was that investors get a high return on their dollar with a relatively low risk of failure. Raffa says that often companies in British Columbia can be built faster on less and operators can “run a leaner ship, because of tax incentives and lower salary demands.” This allows startups to have a chance of staying in the game longer, which often leads to investors getting a high return on their dollar. Tags: startups · business
More About: Canada , Startup , Capital

Non-feature: social bookmarking
2007-08-07 22:45:00
This one was a close call, since we're like 98% of the way there. In the end though we've decided to get out the door with a blogging centric platform and we'll fill in the blanks afterwards. What's social booking? I'll let the man in the video explain: Tags: features · social bookmarking · tagging · blogmatrix platform
More About: Social , Feature , Social Bookmarking , Bookmarking , Feat

Lifestreams, "leaf only" posts
2007-08-07 22:26:00
A new feature we're very pleased to be announcing (for the next release, obviously) is "lifestream". A lifestream provides a compressed view of everything that you're doing. Here's a quick screenshot: Note the following: your lifestream consists of all your imported feeds, and in the future, events you've done on your blog (changing your picture, adding information to your profile, etc.) the icons on the left show you where the stream is coming from; we dynamically make this icon from the favicon, or if it's a local user, we display their picture clicking on the date brings you to the entry that's on your blog; clicking on the link will bring you to the original post in it's original location (i.e. it will bring you to del.icio.us, twitter, or whatever) I've just combined a number of randomly chosen feeds for this example; please excuse me if the Chinese characters say something horribly rude! there's a link in the sidebar to get to the lifestream ...
More About: Leaf , Posts

Fake Steve outed
2007-08-06 14:36:00
Well, all good things must come to an end: Fake Steve Jobs has been outed by New York Times' report Brad Stone as Daniel Lyons, senior editor at Forbes. Kudos all round, especially to Lyons who has kept the blogosphere well amused (by his writing, and by the identity hunt) for the last year. Tags: funny
More About: Steve O

Non-features: wiki
2007-08-06 14:24:00
We'll be discussing over the next couple of days a number of non-features: things that won't be in the BlogMatrix Platform, at least for the initial release. Wiki capability is built into the BlogMatrix Platform. In fact, that's pretty well how we provide our (very low function) CMS capability for the "www" account. However, the initial release of the BlogMatrix Platform will not be supporting it because: we want a deeper security model, so users can selectively decide who can access their wikis we need better versioning information within each entry; for a blog, this is not so important; to be a wiki, it's very important. This becomes even more complicated when we start talking about attachments we want to specialize in blogging; there's lots of decent wiki platforms out there, diverting attention to weak wiki functionality distracts from the core platform we need to understand a number of usability concerns: how do templates interact with wikis? how does...
More About: Features , Feat

Blogger native support for hAtom
2007-08-06 11:52:00
Kevin Marks reports: I made an initial conversion to hAtom by hand in the meantime, but a few weeks back Michał Cierniak and I checked in a change to the underlying Blogg er templates to make hAtom the default, which the Blogger team graciously accepted. This should enable much simpler client-side parsing of the blog pages. Kevin has more details on how to add this to your template if you're using new-style Blogger templates. Here's a note I sent to the Blogger mailing list when someone raised the "what good is it" question: Just to clarify, hAtom was never intended to be a "syndication format" nor to compete with Atom or RSS. It's simply designed to describe the microcontent on webpages, such as blog posts. We used Atom because it provides a well-defined nomenclature for describing such elements. What can you do with it? You could provide search results that narrow into the exact content on a page, rather that keywords that were found elsewhere on a pag...
More About: Support , Native

EOD (end of day)
2007-08-06 02:24:00
I was going to write some more clever things, but a combination of my Internet being down for enough of the day, my daughter discovering and become addicted to the damned penguin, and compiling a list of potential beta testers (plus email address, plus feeds from their blogs, flickr, etc.) has left me, well, fried. See you tomorrow! Tags: administrivia

Wine.com and RSS APIs
2007-08-05 13:01:00
Read/WriteWeb has a post on Wine .com and it's RSS API. You can see an example of the API (i.e. a REST GET) here; you can see how well it validates here (not very, though the fixes look to be very simple). Every page (well, except admin stuff) in BlogMatrix is an "RSS API" in the same sense as this. Our production model is quite simple: a userid + a set of tag selectors + a template selector = output. The userid is encoded the domain name; "all" acts as a wildcard and our new "network" feature acts as a wildcard across a defined set acconts. The tag selector is defined by the path of the URI: for example, this selects all posts tagged "blogmatrix" and "downtime". Finally the template is selected in one of three ways: ending a path in "index.xxx" selects template "xxx"; "?t=yyy" selects template "yyy" (and will override index.xxx if present). If neither of these are there, the query is assumed to be "index.html" which selects the template "html". Thus, to convert the page above to...

SIMILE Timeplot
2007-08-05 12:12:00
Here's a neat Javascript library developed by the folks at SIMILE: Timeplot. Timeplot takes the same input format as Timeline (think of Google Maps for time events) and produces interactive graphs. Here's a few screenshots (with links to the examples): Tags: simile · timeline · timeplot
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Use flex and ffmpeg to do Flash video
2007-08-05 00:53:00
There's a good post over at ONLamp about building your own "MyTube" using PHP and Flex (and ffmpeg). I'm not too interested in the PHP part, but how to encode and display Flash videos is a pretty useful thing to know (and apparently not too hard). Note that -- and I know this from practical experience -- re-encoding videos is very computationally expensive, so be prepared if you want to do this in a serious way. Tags: flex · ffmpeg · video · flash
More About: Video , Lash , To Do

Switching Users
2007-08-04 00:47:00
A key and new feature of the BlogMatrix Platform is the ability to "switch user" -- basically, the ability to work with different accounts while logging in only once. This function gives us: "superuser" accounts that can edit anything "group/bulletin board" accounts, that can be posted to be different users group blogs, where you can grant other users (friends) the right to post on your blog (and possibly do administration) Here's a screenshot of switching users. You reach this popin window by clicking the new "su" button which you can see near the top right (it appears on all administration pages). Once you select a friend or group to switch to, you will be brought to the corresponding page on their account. Note the following: certain options are greyed out; this is because you haven't been granted permission to do these actions your original user account is still listed if you create a new post, it will be posted as your original (login) name, not t...
More About: Users , Switching , Witch

E-mail integration and the BlogMatrix Platform
2007-08-02 21:15:00
An essential feature for bringing blogging into the Enterprise (in our opinion) is quality e-mail integration. Initially, the bulk of people within the corporation are not going to be comfortable with running blogging tools, using RSS subscriptions, etc.. Everyone does know how to e-mail and usually has e-mail running. So here's what we're doing: anyone creating a post can choose to push the post out as e-mail to a chosen set of recipients. Once you've create a recipient list it can be reused as a mailing list. anyone leaving a comment on a post will receive all future comments on that post via e-mail if a post or comment has been mailed to you, you can respond to the e-mail and it will be posted as a comment if the blog owner e-mails BlogMatrix, their e-mail will be converted to a post. If there is a leading link, it will be added as a social bookmark type link. If there are attachments, they will be added appropriately as enclosures. If there is no subject, Blo...
More About: Mail , Integration , E-Mail , Platform , Trix

Web Tech 2.0 on Wall Street
2007-08-02 20:56:00
Web Tech 2.0 on Wall Street (via the Fast Forward blog, a fantastic resource for all this E2.0): The Wall Street meeting for Web 2.0 and SaaS. Web 2.0 collaboration and delivery offer great potential for Wall Street and the global financial markets. Web 2.0 technologies - collaboration tools, such as blogs, wikis and social networking, plus deployment of rich user interfaces and delivery of Software as a Service (SaaS) - are taking off in the financial markets. Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Wells Fargo, Jefferies, and others have Web 2.0 applications at work to extend their business reach and agility. 2007 Web Tech 2.0 on Wall Street will focus on: Applications for collaborative technologies – blogs, wikis and social networks – on Wall Street Delivering financial applications using a Software as a Service (SaaS) model Rich User Interface technology options – AJAX, Flex, JavaFXand Silverlight – for the financial markets ...