code

Jul 18 2008   11:40AM GMT

Bit.ly: A better URL shortener for developers, data geeks and microbloggers

Posted by: Alexander Howard
applications, Web 2.0, programming, software, data, Technology, Web services, Internet, innovation, useful, cool, hacks, free, public domain, feeds, social bookmarking, social publishing, design, creativity, reviews, startup, resource, collaboration, community, WhatIs.com Editor's Award, code, tracking, traffic, Web analytics, tool, Web design, blogging, communications, Web applications, statistics, interface, geek

The old adage about not reinventing the wheel doesn’t quite extend to Web applications. URL shorteners may have been around for years but there is plenty of room for improvement. This list of 68 URL shorteners from Honkiat.com show both the competition in the space and the need for innovation. There’s certainly plenty of demand: TinyURL.com, for instance, which has been around since 2002, purports to receive over 1.5 billion hits a month. While that seems a little high, the emergence of character-limited microblogging platforms like Twitter and long, forgettable Web addresses spit out by content management systems has resulted in a need for effective ways to simply Web addresses.

Enter bit.ly. Bit.ly was created by Betaworks, the NY-based software concern that created Summize. Summize was recently acquired by Twitter, if you’re not following the rapidly evolving Web.20 startup space.

Dave Winer used a post announcing the launch of bit.ly on scripting.net to explain why bit.ly fills a number of other needs:

“They asked what it would take for me to use bit.ly, I said: data. I need to know how many clicks each pointer got and where the clicks came from. They gave me that, and thumbnails, permanent caching of the pages I’m pointing to (goodbye linkrot) and a lot of smart stuff going on behind the scenes that we’re not ready to talk about yet. (Though we told Marshall and he explained.) Here’s the info page for this post.

And, most important, an XML/JSON interface, so I can process all that data with my own programs. Here’s the XML readout for the shortened link to this post.”You can use your own keywords to the URL, organizing your links like tags.

Winer also notes that he’s a minority investor in the service, so while you can take his words with a grain of salt, try the service out and weigh its merits for yourself.

 I will say,  however, that bit.ly is easily the best URL shortener I’ve used to date.  It accomplishes its core mission quickly and easily, converting long URLs to short ones on the bit.ly homepage or using a bookmarklet you can drag to your Web browser’s toolbar. (It’s even kinda cute; note the blowfish mascots on the right.)

If you’re a Web developer or simply a data geek, the ability to pull all of the data about a given shortened URL through a XML or JSON interface will be quite helpful for analyzing your traffic and audience behavior.

Here’s a quick rundown of some of bit.ly’s other nifty features:

• display your 15 most recent shortened URLs below the entry field
• tracking of both clicks on shortened URLS and referring pages
• an API for creating shortened URLs from web applications, which is quite useful is you’re a Web developer
• automatic creation of thumbnail images that can be displayed on a webpage next to shortened URL

If my excitement about bit.ly doesn’t move you, Marshall Kirkpatrick has posted a glowing review of bit.ly at ReadWriteWeb that thoroughly explains why bit.ly is worth a try, along with an endorsement of bit.ly’s advanced URL tracking capabilities by Lifehacker.

If you like bit.ly, please recommend it to others. The larger the bit.ly community grows, the more effective and useful this nascent index of the Semantic Web will become. That’s because bit.ly is analyzing all of the pages that its users create shortcuts to using the Open Calais semantic analysis API from Reuters. All the data gathered is available in public RSS feeds. bit.ly is also using the MetaCarta GeoParsing API to draw geolocation data out of the database of submitted links.

May 12 2008   9:46AM GMT

Video: Richard Stallman talks about the importance of free software, GNU, copyleft and open sourcing

Posted by: Alexander Howard
open source, operating systems, command line, video, YouTube, commentary, free, invention, copyright, collaboration, freeware, conversation, community, code, fundamentals, history, software development

In these videos, Robin Good interviews Richard Stallman about free software and the open source movement. Stallman created the GPL and the Free Software Foundation to protect the GNU operating system from becoming proprietary.

In the sequence embedded below, filmed, the founding father of open source software answers a series of questions. This interview was originally posted at MasterNewMedia.org in 2006 and features commentary and links from Robin Good.

Q: What is free software?

Q: What are the negative consequences of using proprietary software instead of free software?

Q: What free software do you recommend using?

Q: Can individuals and organizations use GNU/Linux in their daily operations?

Q: What can individuals do to support the open source movement?

Apr 28 2008   10:36AM GMT

Video: How to install the Cosmos User Kit

Posted by: Alexander Howard
Microsoft, interoperability, video, YouTube, innovation, free, invention, collaboration, Development, code, Visual Studio and the .NET Framework, .net

This video from GoCosmos.org demonstrates how to install the Cosmos User Kit.

Cosmos is an open source microkernel .Net-based operating system written entirely in C#. The folks over at SharpOS.org, who have also created a microkernel OS written in C#, have reasonably objected to claims that Cosmos is the first OS of this type. Both operating systems can be installed and run from a USB jump drive, which only adds to their geeky cred.

You can get updates to the Cosmos project at the official blog. A Cosmos FAQ is also available at the site.

Apr 22 2008   8:34AM GMT

Videos: Application Design using Real-Time Specification for Java (RTSJ)

Posted by: Alexander Howard
interoperability, applications, programming, video, YouTube, Internet, Development, code, Sun, Sun Microsystems, software development, demonstration

Sun has uploaded a number of helpful tutorials and lectures to YouTube, including this three-part series that features Dr. Doug Locke explaining the Real-Time Specification for Java (JSR-001). The Sun Java Real-Time System (Java RTS) is Sun’s commercial implementation of the JSR-001. Application developers interested in using Java for real-time applications (RTA) should find this series useful.

Part I

Part II

Part III

Apr 9 2008   11:00AM GMT

Video: Botnets, Botmasters, Zombies and the greatest threat to online security?

Posted by: Alexander Howard
Security, applications, media, video, YouTube, Internet, academics, code, hacking

Professor Merrick Furst, associate dean at the College of Computing at Georgia Tech, explains how botmasters use zombie armies for financial gain. Furst estimates that about 7% of all Internet traffic is zombie. Kraken, today’s Word of the Day, is now reported to be the largest botnet in the world, with over 400,000 machines infected.

Mar 14 2008   11:39AM GMT

Video: Scott Forstall demonstrates Touch Fighter at the Apple SDK launch

Posted by: Alexander Howard
Mobile, applications, news, programming, Apple, fun, video, YouTube, multimedia, cool, design, invention, event, downloads, Development, code, gadgets, buzz, interface, software development, display, geek, gaming

Two weeks and less than 10,000 lines of code result in this demonstration of a starfighter action game on an iPhone that takes advantage of the device’s accelerometer, touch screen and high contrast display. This is a great use of the interface and should inspire some creative thinking the software development community.

My immediate thought upon seeing Steve Forstall’s demo is that there could be a lot of flying iPhones, similar to the stories we’ve heard about the Wiimote. Remember those videos of plasma screens when the Wii debuted?

Now just imagine it’s a device that costs more than $500 direct from Apple in the U.S. and often much more than that in Europe.

That being said, I’m excited to see how software designers take advantage of that new Apple iPhone SDK.

That and Spore. Given more than two weeks to work on this game, I think this could be a killer gaming app for the device.

Mar 13 2008   10:08AM GMT

Video: New Features in the Next C++ Standard

Posted by: Alexander Howard
Google, programming, Technology, useful, learning, courses, free, downloads, Development, code, information, fundamentals, software development, languages

This Google Tech Talk addresses each of the new features in the upcoming standard for C++. You can read more about them in depth at the Wikipedia entry for the new standard, C++0x.

Mar 11 2008   9:35AM GMT

Video: Ted Nelson, hypertext and the Web

Posted by: Alexander Howard
business, programming, operating systems, media, Technology, video, YouTube, Internet, commentary, cool, learning, free, public domain, design, invention, collaboration, Development, forum, conversation, code, tool, HTML, science, fundamentals, history, communications, software development

In this Google TechTalk, Ted Nelson discusses implementing the original hypertext concept and how transclusion should be used now to fulfill its original potential.

While Nelson is credited with coining the term “hypertext, Vannevar Bush is responsible for inventing the concept, which he described as “instant cross referencing.”

As usual, we tread in the path of giants.

Sep 17 2007   1:49PM GMT

Andreesen on the three kinds of platforms, the cloud and the future of the Internet

Posted by: Alexander Howard
Microsoft, interoperability, programming, operating systems, Web services, Internet, innovation, blog, learning, interesting, futurism, Silicon Valley, entrepeneurship, code, social networking, buzzword, cloud computing, Amazon, the cloud

One of my favorite discoveries of the past year has definitely been Marc Andreessen’s blog. From the moment he first started posting long, chewy, thoughtful discussions of his thoughts on technology, business and startups (along with wonderful digressions into great new sci-fi writers, Web 2.0, and essential online cheat sheets), Marc has been on the must-read list for most of the techie blogosphere.

Now, the famous co-founder of Netscape and co-author of the Mosaic browser has moved on to Ning, a social networking startup that’s jostling with Microsoft, Amazon, Sun, Facebook and others to provide a platform for all manner of distributed applications, all within “the cloud.” Amazon even calls their platform the Elastic Compute Cloud, or EC2.

Therein lies the rub. The word platform has become overused to the point of losing any precise meaning. WhatIs.com has long provided two definitions for platform:

1) In computers, a platform is an underlying computer system on which application programs can run. On personal computers, Windows 2000 and the Mac OS X are examples of two different platforms. On enterprise servers or mainframes, IBM’s S/390 is an example of a platform.

A platform consists of an operating system, the computer system’s coordinating program, which in turn is built on the instruction set for a processor or microprocessor, the hardware that performs logic operations and manages data movement in the computer. The operating system must be designed to work with the particular processor’s set of instructions. As an example, Microsoft’s Windows 2000 is built to work with a series of microprocessors from the Intel Corporation that share the same or similar sets of instructions. There are usually other implied parts in any computer platform such as a motherboard and a data bus, but these parts have increasingly become modularized and standardized.

Historically, most application programs have had to be written to run on a particular platform. Each platform provided a different application program interface for different system services. Thus, a PC program would have to be written to run on the Windows 2000 platform and then again to run on the Mac OS X platform. Although these platform differences continue to exist and there will probably always be proprietary differences between them, new open or standards-conforming interfaces now allow many programs to run on different platforms or to interoperate with different platforms through mediating or “broker” programs.

2) A platform is any base of technologies on which other technologies or processes are built.

Fortunately, in this mammoth post, Andreessen both modifies and adds to these definitions, putting the term in the context of the Internet and then exploring three different levels of online platform: the “Access API,” the “Plug-in API,” and the “Runtime environment.”

As a rather famous online pundit often writes,  read the whole thing (RTWT). If you’re at all interested in programming, online business strategy and the concept of the cloud, you’ll be glad you did.

Jul 9 2007   6:17PM GMT

Code to Joy’s 7 Wonders of Programming Languages

Posted by: Alexander Howard
programming, command line, Technology, fun, interesting, Development, conversation, code, Ruby on Rails, controversy

It’s been quite a week for wonders of the world. First, the online world got together and voted for seven modern wonders of the world, provoked by the lonely status of the Pyramids as the last remaining example of the ancient wonders. (For those that love these kinds of lists, Wonderclub.com has put together their own indices of global wonders, including ancient, modern and natural versions.)

My eye was drawn, however, to this list of programming languages from Code to Joy, where computer scientist, philosopher and cyberscriber M. Easter has “compiled” his own, “admittedly biased,” list of languages. In chronological order, here are the languages that the digital composer thought were the seven wonders of the coding world:

1. Fortan
2. Lisp
3. Smalltalk
4. C
   
5. Python
6. Java
7. Javascript

Now, no doubt many of you are already grumbling. What about C++, Visual Basic, COBOL, Perl or APL? What about the sexy new kid on the block, Ruby? What about PHP, ubiquitous on the Linux servers that underpin today’s database-driven Internet?

Several comments on Easter’s post have already listed those examples, protesting Easter’s choices, along with .NET, Forth, SKILL, Objective-C, Haskell and others. As usual, everyone has an opinion — especially on a rather subjective subject like this.

Whew! Editing a list like this isn’t easy, of course, and it’s much easier to criticize than create. What do you think? When you look at the history of code, as illustrated in this exceptional diagram of the evolution of programming languages (hat tip to M) which do you think are “wonders of the programming world?”

What would your list look like?

My own line in the sand, in case you were wondering, would (in no particular order) reads follows:

1. Javascript
2. Java
3. C
4. Ruby
5. COBOL
6. Perl
7. Python

Agree? Disagree? Think the whole thing is preposterous? Comment away.