BIT320 Remix: November 2005 Archives

Microsoft may upgrade services

Microsoft expected to add new web services

In del.icio.us/rasheff, 11/01/2005 | Original | Archive

XML??????

I know that we only had one class of XML but I am confused already. I feel as though I skipped the an “intro to XML” class (which we didn’t have) and then came in, in the middle of learning XML. I did try reading the chapter that was listed on the syllabus but that confused me as well. Maybe it will become clearer as we move on. I just wanted to voice that I am confused. Does anyone have any suggestions for getting me to understand?

In Tigerlily's Blog, 11/01/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

Jack-PC Thin Client Puts a PC In a Wall Jack

is this the new wave in PCs?

In del.icio.us/tigerlily23, 11/01/2005 | Original | Archive

Microsoft May Expand Web-Based Offerings

Microsoft is going to let other firms take over without a fight?

In del.icio.us/tigerlily23, 11/01/2005 | Original | Archive

Ford to Debut Pickup With Mobile Office

A great way to appeal to those who work on the road.

In del.icio.us/tigerlily23, 11/01/2005 | Original | Archive

Man Is Sentenced in Phishing Fraud

Thankfully those who thought they could get away with this are wrong

In del.icio.us/tigerlily23, 11/01/2005 | Original | Archive

Sprint to sell song downloads at $2.49 a pop

Do they think this will be more popular than itunes?

In del.icio.us/tigerlily23, 11/01/2005 | Original | Archive

XML…not that bad

Tigerlily showed concern about XML and her understanding of it. I think before you can jump into already writing it, you have to understand exactly what XML is. The best description I recieved was at a website which defined it as

XML (Extensible Markup Language) is a web initiative that allows information and services to be encoded with meaningful structure and semantics that computers and humans can understand. XML is great for information exchange, and can easily be extended to include user-specified and industry-specified tags.

I think like everything we do in class, the more you do it and practice it, the better your understanding is of the subject.

XML

XML (Extensible Markup Language) is a W3C initiative that allows information and services to be encoded with meaningful structure and semantics that computers and humans can understand. XML is great for information exchange, and can easily be extended to include user-specified and industry-specified tags.

XML

XML (Extensible Markup Language) is a W3C initiative that allows information and services to be encoded with meaningful structure and semantics that computers and humans can understand. XML is great for information exchange, and can easily be extended to include user-specified and industry-specified tags.

In zee124, 11/01/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

What time is it? Blog time!

So I found myself thinking over the past week, “Gee, you’re a bit behind on your blogging. You know, asking some project questions would be a great way to catch back up.” Which seemed like a good idea to me, as well as Supriya, Pink Footsie, and JB.

However, I found myself hesitating to do so. And I wondered why. And I realized that it was the non-immediate nature of blogging that bothered me. I’m more of a last minute worker so when I do have questions, I usually don’t want to wait for an answer. So it seemed to me to be not an efficient or pleasing way to get answers if I have to post a question and then hope that someone will answer in a timely fashion (i.e. in the next half hour). I know that this time expectation is not reasonable, so it was preferable for me to hunt down the answer in my book or online even though I know someone would eventually answer it…Shady Waters points out:

“Oh may I always find my answers on this blog, oh wise ones!”

This points out the temporal quality of blogs which I never had really considered before. Has anyone else run into this issue?

In Matt's Musings, 11/01/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

A VC: Technology and Markets Trump The Law

Open Source Software discussion

In del.icio.us/mridge, 11/01/2005 | Original | Archive

Micro Persuasion: The Secret Sauce for Any Corporate Blog

Corporate blogging

In del.icio.us/mridge, 11/01/2005 | Original | Archive

Review: Blogging Tools Need Integration - Yahoo! News

Video Blogs?

In del.icio.us/mridge, 11/01/2005 | Original | Archive

Learner Blogs

Free blogs for K-12 students

In del.icio.us/mridge, 11/01/2005 | Original | Archive

Uniblogs - free blogs for university and college students

Free blogs for college students

In del.icio.us/mridge, 11/01/2005 | Original | Archive

edublogs.org

Free blogs for education professionals

In del.icio.us/mridge, 11/01/2005 | Original | Archive

Name that tune.

So I’m sitting up here in the Media Union trying to muster up the motivation to do homework when someone fires up iTunes or something along those lines and and starts playing music. Mind you, it’s not that loud, but it’s sure loud enough for the whole darn computer cluster to hear. This person’s putting their music out in the open for the whole world to hear and nobody’s said a thing. It’s been going on for about 20 minutes now.

Since I’ve been blogging, it got me thinking about how what this library music man/woman is very similar to blogging. What is blogging? Random people, posting random thoughts and ideas about their life and the world around them for the world to see. And then they sit and wait and see if someone says anything. Nobody asked them to post a blog just like nobody ask for someone to play music in the library. Yet, people do it, try new things, forge new ground. With blogging it’s caught on and caused a monumental shift in popular-culture. I’m excited to see what’s next. Let’s just hope that library music hour doesn’t quite catch on in the same way!

BTW: I’m really starting to like this “Opinionslug” term Pink Footsie coined a bit back.

In Matt's Musings, 11/01/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

Spell Check Your Weblog Entry

Ways to go about spell checking your blog entry

In del.icio.us/mridge, 11/01/2005 | Original | Archive

To spellcheck or not to spellcheck

A while back, Pink Footsie lamented over not being able to spell check in her blog. I agree, it’s a pain in the rear to not have spell check on the Wordpress Client (interesting on how reliant we’ve become on spell check isn’t it?) However, I found a article about ways to go about fixing it. Granted, none of them are great fixes and can be a bit of a hassle, it still gives you options. And variety’s the spice of life right?

Which brings me to my next point: I’ve noticed that I’ve had some typos/misspellings in my other posts. However, I’ve been reluctant to fix them. Mainly because I remember Bud saying sometime back in the begining of all this blogging madness that editing a post caused it to be reposted to the remix. Is this still true or has the problem been fixed? The fate of all grammatically and correctly spelled posts rest on the answer.

In Matt's Musings, 11/01/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

The Secrets of Building Links and Increasing PageRank

Google Page Rank

In del.icio.us/mridge, 11/01/2005 | Original | Archive

Halloween treat for Oracle: A database worm | Tech News on ZDNet

Oracle worms: database thrests

In del.icio.us/mridge, 11/01/2005 | Original | Archive

Google Will Return to Scanning Copyrighted Library Books

U of M books continued to be scanned

In del.icio.us/mridge, 11/01/2005 | Original | Archive

Matt is a great guy

Matt is currently increasing my popularity though I don’t always deserve it. The spellcheck feature was actually talked about by Lindsey (Matt linked to the right blog, it’s just Tigerlily he was missing not me). But I still appreciate the attention since it moves me up in Google ratings (thanks Matt!). Oh and thanks for the kudos to Opinionslug. Perhaps I’ll work on something new soon…

In Pink Footsie, 11/02/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

Opinionslug on a tiny rant

By the way most of us have become one of two backgrounds and it is slightly annoying (though not of any of our faults). It seems like WordPress managers deleted several of the presentation formats (including my red chairs) and now I’m back to picking from 1 of 4 Themses. I’m not a happy camper because like any Marketer I like to differentiate myself, yep a brand of my own. Is there any way to coerce them to put them and others back on? I mean, they do want to become more popular as a service right? I think the uniqueness and character formatting/ability is what truly differentiates one blogging site from another (aside from reliability).

In Pink Footsie, 11/02/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

XML… a lot like HTML

Tigerlily has expressed some concern with understanding the world of XML. Zeenah makes a good point, saying that simply being able to define XML makes understanding it a lot easier.

For me, understanding HTML has helped me jump into this XML stuff. I’m certainly not an HTML expert, but I’ve taken a class on it and I’m definitely seeing a lot of similarities between XML and HTML. Tags seem to work the same way in both. You can learn about HTML tags on a lot of websites, like this one.

XML will probably get a lot more confusing than this. Already I’ve noticed that declarations work differently than tags. But, having some experience reading HTML makes those messy XML scripts a lot less intimidating and has allowed me to even figure some of it out through basic logic. So, my advice to you if you’re confused is to start simple and look at some HTML stuff. You probably even use it already in programs like AIM or Wordpress. The “blockquote” tag that a lot of us use in our blogs is HTML.

In jb's blog, 11/02/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

Respond to me Now

Matt brought up a great point:

…when I do have questions, I usually don’t want to wait for an answer. So it seemed to me to be not an efficient or pleasing way to get answers if I have to post a question and then hope that someone will answer in a timely fashion (i.e. in the next half hour). I know that this time expectation is not reasonable, so it was preferable for me to hunt down the answer in my book or online even though I know someone would eventually answer it…

I experienced the same thing while studying for the midterm. I had a question about the material, and I knew my classmates could help me out, but I also didn’t want to wait an hour for a response. So I figured it out myself in about 20 minutes. The remix is great for discussions, and also for general concept questions that you can afford to go without understanding for a couple days. But for more imminent questions, its not fast enough for my liking. Maybe me and Matt are just too impatient?!

In jb's blog, 11/02/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

Sprint Nextel inks services pact with cable firms - U.S. Business - MSNBC.com

4 cable firms make a deal with Sprint Nextel to bundle cable and wireless - the cable firms hope to battle phone companies like SBC who are moving into cable

In del.icio.us/jbartko, 11/02/2005 | Original | Archive

CNN.com - Tech billionaire revises mansion plans - Nov 2, 2005

former PeopleSoft owner was reluctant to sell to Oracle, now his proposed mansion is too big for his neighbors' liking

In del.icio.us/jbartko, 11/02/2005 | Original | Archive

TIME.com: Gadget of the Week | RIM BlackBerry 8700c -- Page 1

Cingular introduces RIM's newest blackberry - features a more conventional look with a lot of changes on the inside

In del.icio.us/jbartko, 11/02/2005 | Original | Archive

Hey, I’ll respond when I feel like it

The ever expressive (and now we realize very impatient) JB opines:

The remix is great for discussions, and also for general concept questions that you can afford to go without understanding for a couple days. But for more imminent questions, its not fast enough for my liking. Maybe me and Matt are just too impatient?!

after reading Matt’s musing:

However, I found myself hesitating to do so. And I wondered why. And I realized that it was the non-immediate nature of blogging that bothered me. I’m more of a last minute worker so when I do have questions, I usually don’t want to wait for an answer. So it seemed to me to be not an efficient or pleasing way to get answers if I have to post a question and then hope that someone will answer in a timely fashion (i.e. in the next half hour).

Last year, I remember emphasizing that if the house is burning down, blogging is not the best way to communicate that fact.

I thought Kevin did a good job right before the test answering some questions, as did Ryan. The general theme of the class is that, more often than not, you are better off sharing information. Expressing ideas helps nail them down in your own head. You frequently discover where problems in your own thinking are.

In Blogonautic Solutions, 11/02/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

Gizmo – A free phone for your computer

This is being called a competitor to skype, a sort of firefox vs. IE. The revenue model seems to be built around add-ons.

In del.icio.us/fpgibson, 11/03/2005 | Original | Archive

A VC: Will Live Kill?

But on to Windows Live and Office Live. I don't see despair. I see opportunity. Because Windows Live is lame. I honestly could not find a single thing I'd use it for.

In del.icio.us/fpgibson, 11/03/2005 | Original | Archive

Yahoo revamps map service in duel with Google - Tech News & Reviews - MSNBC.com

in an attempt to out-do Google, Yahoo introduces upgraded map service featuring the ability to get directions to several places at once

In del.icio.us/jbartko, 11/03/2005 | Original | Archive

Yahoo! Maps, Driving Directions, and Traffic

Yahoo's latest maps service - the beta version

In del.icio.us/jbartko, 11/03/2005 | Original | Archive

Spam-a-lot: Comment Spam

So a while back, I opened up my blog to comments from any user. Which was cool, because the day I did it, I got a comment from some guy. It’s on this post.

However, over the past day or two, I’ve got 2 spam comments on one of my posts. When I noticed I had a comment, I got really excited; only to find out it was a link back to some hotel/vacation solicitation page. It seems spammers are always on the hunt for new avenues to exploit. First it was our home phones, then it was our e-mail. Now they’ve moved on to cell-phone text messages and I guess blog comments. This is a new one for me. However, I hope a stop is put to this sooner rather than later. Has anyone else had issues like this? Maybe more so for people like Shady Waters who have other blogs?

In Matt's Musings, 11/03/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

Teens & Blogging

Survery finds blogging popular among teenagers

In del.icio.us/mridge, 11/03/2005 | Original | Archive

Offical Google Video Blog

Video blogs

In del.icio.us/mridge, 11/03/2005 | Original | Archive

Bind Parameters

Todays class seem to flow smoothly but as I look over my notes, I have one concern. That is the concept of bind parameters. We didn’t use bind params until we got into the more complex queries 2 & 3 on page 14 of the in-class notes which can be found here. So my question is, when is it appropriate to use bind params and what purpose does it actually serve. Thanks!!

In The Blogstar, 11/03/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

Online accounts insecure

Cyber crooks break into online accounts with ease

In del.icio.us/rasheff, 11/03/2005 | Original | Archive

Teen blogs in bloom

Survey: One in five teens have own blogs

In del.icio.us/rasheff, 11/03/2005 | Original | Archive

Business Blogging

Blogs in the business world - talks about Denali!

In del.icio.us/mridge, 11/03/2005 | Original | Archive

Blogspotting

Another business blog - again with some Denali action

In del.icio.us/mridge, 11/03/2005 | Original | Archive

Watch what you write!

After reading an article on Micheal Brown the ex head of FEMA it shows you have to take the good with the bad with regards to internet technology. Recently his personal e-mails have been released to the public that took place during the Hurricane Katrina crisis. It is evident that the response time was delayed, but I find it to be very disapponting to see how the supposed “man in charge” displayed an attitude of carelessness just days after the hurricane hit. Here is an exerpt from the article I read,

A few days later, Worthy advised Brown: “Please roll up the sleeves of your shirt, all shirts. Even the president rolled his sleeves to just below the elbow. In this [crisis] and on TV you just need to look more hard-working.”

On August 29, the day of the storm, Brown exchanged e-mails about his attire with Taylor, Melancon said. She told him, “You look fabulous,” and Brown replied, “I got it at Nordstroms. … Are you proud of me?”

An hour later, Brown added: “If you’ll look at my lovely FEMA attire, you’ll really vomit. I am a fashion god,” according to the congressman.

The link to the article I read can be found here, and a link to the actual e-mails can be found here and here. I don’t think he’s a fan of internet technology at this time.

In The Blogstar, 11/03/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

Correcting Errrors (oops)

Matt posted a comment here saying he’s been reluctant to fix errors within his blog. He reasons by saying,

”Mainly because I remember Bud saying sometime back in the begining of all this blogging madness that editing a post caused it to be reposted to the remix. Is this still true or has the problem been fixed?

To answer the question I don’t think the problem has been fixed. I recently forgot to add a link to to one of my post and after trying to add it in after the fact I found that it still wasn’t on the actual class remix page. It did however correct the error on my blog site, but since I’m not in the top ratings among blogs like Matt or Pink Footsie along with others, I’m also reluntant to correct my errors b/c nobody would see it but me!!

In The Blogstar, 11/03/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

So that’s what happen to my background..

I along with Pink Footsie noticed the change in my blog site background. I remembered having the red chair background as well, but one day I log on and I see that it’s no longer there. I thought maybe I was extremely tired one night and decided to just up and change it without remebering. I never thought to check the theme page and change it back but now I know that it was deleted overall. I agree with Pink Footsie, unique backgrounds differentiate one from another and we should find a way to perhaps convince WordPress to add on some new themes.

In The Blogstar, 11/03/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

What’s a BIND to do?

A couple posts back, Blogstar asks the question

“when is it appropriate to use bind params and what purpose does it actually serve.”

As far as I can tell, a bind parameter is a way to limit and select only a certain set of records from our database. So when we ran queries that asked for specific records (e.g. query1.no_style.xsql), we used a bind paramter. In this query, we were looking for homeowners whose age = 32; so we bound on age. Then we substituted a “?” in the SQL query where we’d normally have the binding condition.

NORMAL : SELECT customer, salary, age, zip FROM house WHERE age = ‘32′;
XSQL : SELECT customer, salary, age, zip FROM house WHERE age = ?;

So when the XSQL query is run, the default value we inputed for the bind (32) is substituted for the “?”.
However, the question mark also serves as a variable and can be defined on the fly as Bud showed us in class.

Dynamic Declaration: query1.no_style.xsql age=50

I hope that makes sense and helps clear up some things. On an interesting side note, while searching Google with the term “XSQL bind parameters”, the first result are the fall 2004 BIT320 lecture notes. Interesting huh?

In Matt's Musings, 11/04/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

Denali on the web

Hello. So I just wanted to point your attention to a couple of blogs I found yesterday. The both talk about character blogs (which Tigerlilly, JB, SuperMatt have talked about in the past)and specifically, Denali flavors. I think it’s pretty cool when a small company like Denali get’s recognized by business bloggers in the public sector. Maybe someday one of our blogs will garner some national attention? One can only hope.

Blogspotting
Business Blogging

In Matt's Musings, 11/04/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

Beware the power of the blog

How blogs can affect popular opinion

In del.icio.us/mridge, 11/04/2005 | Original | Archive

IMB Bloggers create Core Rules

How IBM implemented blogging and established a set of core rules

In del.icio.us/mridge, 11/04/2005 | Original | Archive

Splogs - Spam blogs

Account of a new phenomenon in the blogsphere

In del.icio.us/mridge, 11/04/2005 | Original | Archive

Oracle has one less leader

Oracle is losing one of it's leaders after only being with the company for a short time

In del.icio.us/mridge, 11/04/2005 | Original | Archive

Microsoft Plays Catch-up

Microsoft's foray into service software

In del.icio.us/mridge, 11/04/2005 | Original | Archive

Sony uncloaks hidden DRM code

Bad Sony. Bad Sony.

In del.icio.us/mridge, 11/04/2005 | Original | Archive

BBC NEWS | Technology | US youths use internet to create

In del.icio.us/zeenah, 11/04/2005 | Original | Archive

BBC NEWS | Technology | Firefox fanbase reaches new high

I'm using it right now=)

In del.icio.us/zeenah, 11/04/2005 | Original | Archive

BBC NEWS | Technology | Outspoken Chinese blog 'blocked'

Internet Freedom?

In del.icio.us/zeenah, 11/04/2005 | Original | Archive

Soon you can buy a book on Amazon, read it online

Its about time!

In del.icio.us/tigerlily23, 11/04/2005 | Original | Archive

Traders warned of online thieves

n a first-of-its-kind warning to online stock traders, the SEC on Thursday alerted consumers who buy and sell stocks on the Internet to be wary of cyberthieves.

In del.icio.us/tigerlily23, 11/04/2005 | Original | Archive

Yahoo revamps map service in duel with Google

Web portal adds more flexible driving directions, merchant locations

In del.icio.us/tigerlily23, 11/04/2005 | Original | Archive

Microsoft acquires file synchronization service

Microsoft Corp. said Thursday it had acquired FolderShare, a service that helps computer users share and synchronize large files without needing to use e-mail, burn CDs or upload information to the Internet.

In del.icio.us/tigerlily23, 11/04/2005 | Original | Archive

Online versions of Windows, Office unveiled

Microsoft announced online enhancements to its Windows operating system and other popular software programs, hoping to defuse a growing threat from Google and other fast-moving challengers.

In del.icio.us/tigerlily23, 11/04/2005 | Original | Archive

Change in blogging backgrounds

In response to Pink Footsie and Blogstar, I know that there was an issue with commenting through Internet Explorer and the red background. John Nardini had a problem commenting on one of my posts when I had the red background and he was using Explorer. Bud had to alter the background options, I believe, so that others could comment. To me, it seems a little wired that something like the background choice has an impact…but technology is funny like that. Anyway, this may be the reason why your backgrounds changed and you have limited options.

In Tigerlily's Blog, 11/04/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

Class Remix Question

For whatever reason, one of my blog posts got submitted twice and showed up twice on my blog. When I realized this, I took the duplicate post of my blog. However, the class remix stills thinks I have both and displays both. This made me wonder about the connection between our individual blogs and the class remix site. Once the post shows up on the remix, are you unable to delete/edit that post and have the changes reflected in the remix?

In Tigerlily's Blog, 11/04/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

57% of teens create, remix, and share contenet online

Remix Culture among teens

In del.icio.us/mridge, 11/04/2005 | Original | Archive

Class Remix Answer

Matt and I recently commented about editing blogs within the class remix site. For some reason we can edit the blog on our blog site but not on the remix site. So in other words, once the blog post is published, it’s no taking it back. I’m not sure if this error between the connection of our site with the remix site will be fixed soon so maybe Bud will respond to that.

In The Blogstar, 11/04/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

China pulls plug on blog

China reportedly shuts down blog

In del.icio.us/rasheff, 11/04/2005 | Original | Archive

Microsoft protects privacy

Microsoft pushes for privacy legislation

In del.icio.us/rasheff, 11/04/2005 | Original | Archive

Name that space?

More questions for the pros: what exactly are namespaces and URIs? I know what a URL is, are we talking about something alike? Again I’m taking this from O’Reilly’s Chapter 2. I know Bud said not to focus on them but I’m just kind of curious since I tried to get a better understanding of all the interrelationships. I guess I’m still a bit confused about the difference between XML and XSQL as well. Why are they not directly integrated? Thanks for all the input.

In Pink Footsie, 11/05/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

XSQL Query 3 example

I was going through the slides from thursday’s class. I tried doing query 3 (query2.no_style.xsql) and I couldn’t get it to work. It worked as SQL and XSQL when I tried the original query but when I subsituted values it did nothing. All that happened was the prompt came up again. I am not sure if I did not type the substituting values wrong or what. Can someone tell me how the command should be typed?

In Tigerlily's Blog, 11/05/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

To all my experts, with love, Pink Footsie

Apparently my first post didn’t post (and I saved it, it’s nowhere to be found). Therefore my question is this: what’s the difference between system ID and DTD….is there any? What exactly does DTD do and why would we save it as so. Any clarification would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

In Pink Footsie, 11/05/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

Generations and Technology

On Friday I had the oppourtunity to attend the Michigan Intramurals and Rec Sports Association (MIRSA) annual conference at Western. The topic this year was “Bridging the Gap.” This relates to students and professionals, departments and participants, etc. One of the first things we talked about was technology, of course. Rec Sports is an interesting career path because there are many veterans who have been in the business for 30+ years, and then the ages run down through undergrad students working part time. We were asked what we respect the most about the other generations we work with, and what bothers us the most. Turns out, the older generations both respect and are bothered by our tech skills. Sometimes they find email too impersonal, and don’t understand why we never want to meet in person. It’s a respect of elders thing… they don’t understand why we can’t meet face-to-face with our boss. But, at the same time, they admitted to being very impressed with the new ways we find to operate rec sports through the use of computers.

I think this is a great thing to keep in mind the next time you come across an elder who is slow to respond to your emails. Instead of criticizing, maybe try to understand where they are coming from. However, the more I think about it, it occurs to me that maybe this just isn’t acceptable in some situations. In Rec Sports things are pretty traditional, so the older generations can get away with traditional ways of doing things. But in some industries I think you have to either keep up or get out. Any thoughts?? Should we give the older generations the benefit of the doubt all the time??

In jb's blog, 11/05/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

A VC: The Future of Media (aka Please Take My RSS Feed)

"if I were a television executive right now, I'd take my content, microchunk it, put a couple calls to a video ad server in the middle of it, and let it go whereever it wants to go"

In del.icio.us/fpgibson, 11/06/2005 | Original | Archive

Bubblegeneration - Evil Corporations Only

"you may receive 70-80% of revenues generated by ads on your blog, but the reality is that your blog increases the value of the Google ad network by a greater amount than the revenues you generate", so Google is not 'fairly' sharing its network effects.

In del.icio.us/fpgibson, 11/06/2005 | Original | Archive

I can name that space in 1 note.

A few posts back, Pink Footsie asks:

“what exactly are namespaces and URIs”

In programming languages, there are generally pre-defined functions, or ways to do an action, bundled within the language. Most languages come with a standard funciton libraries pre-loaded and then additional function libraries can be loaded if need be.

For example, in C++ (a common programming language), there’s a function library called “cmath” which includes functions such as squareroot (sqrt). If you were to just type something like “sqrt(4)” in your program, without declaring the namespace “cmath”, the compiler (the program that interprets your code into machine language) would not know that the letters “sqrt” stand for the function squareroot; there would be no context. That’s why a namespace needs to be declared, to give certain commands and keywords context.

So in XML, when we have the declaration “math xmlns “http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML”, we’re defining a namespace for the XML processor. We’re saying we want to load the “math” library, with the terms and commands we want to define located at “http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML”. So now terms like “sqrt” will have meaning where before this declaration, they would have not.

As for “URIs”, I think it’s a typo and should be “URL.” And luckily, a URL here is the same URL you know and love. It’s just a path to a document or file on the web. Much simpler than namespaces huh?
I apologize for the super technical nature of this post, but I hope that it made sense. Namespaces are one of the cooler features of today’s programming languages and understanding how the work helps take away some of the mystery when looking at code.

In Matt's Musings, 11/06/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

Oh query where art thou?

Tigerlily asks:

“I tried doing query 3 (query2.no_style.xsql) and I couldn’t get it to work. It worked as SQL and XSQL when I tried the original query but when I subsituted values it did nothing. All that happened was the prompt came up again. I am not sure if I did not type the substituting values wrong or what. Can someone tell me how the command should be typed?”

Without having you post what you typed, I can’t say for sure why it didn’t work. If you did type it right and it returned no results you would have seen just:
< ? xml version='1.0'?>
< customer_info/ >
Otherwise, to substitute values, you need to look at the query and see what column names the query was binding on. In this case it was “house_value” and “loan”. So to run the query with dynamically defined variables, it would look like this:

ery2.no_style.xsql house_value=’500000′ loan=’200000′

That query should produce all values with a house value over 500,000 and a load over 200,000. Hope that helps.

In Matt's Musings, 11/06/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

Remix Culture

How teens are increasing "remixing" their lives

In del.icio.us/mridge, 11/06/2005 | Original | Archive

Mash-ups: Business Models and Trends

How mash-ups are transforming the way we do things

In del.icio.us/mridge, 11/06/2005 | Original | Archive

Technology News: Portals & Search : Yahoo Tries to Put Itself on the Map

Yahoo enters the world of map mash-ups

In del.icio.us/mridge, 11/06/2005 | Original | Archive

Paying Up For Google Maps Mash up

Will Google Maps remain free?

In del.icio.us/mridge, 11/06/2005 | Original | Archive

Blog Count

So if you can’t tell by my massive number of posts…sorry…I’m playing blog catch-up at the moment. However, I have a question about blog counts. Can we count the first “test blog post” we did in the first class in our total blog count? Or do we have to subtract 1 from the total count? Also, this is probably a question for Bud, but when this is all said and done, how many blog posts should we have?

In Matt's Musings, 11/06/2005 | Original | Archive | Post to del.icio.us | Technorati

SQL, XML, & Ice Cream

A remixable web learning project at Michigan's Ross School of Business