Incredible!
Author Archive for nesrait
Yesterday I was hacking trying to hack away some code in Java when I realized there was something wrong…
Something was trying to stop me from being productive!
In one case I wrote some code which turned red on me the moment I stopped typing it… The reason was obvious: the exceptions! We can’t have those exceptions running around! 
So… ok IDE! Go ahead and add the try/catch for me. Errors: gone.
Then after a bit I rewrote the code and removed the Exception-throwing part. To my surprised: errors! Wtf?
Unreachable catch exception for WtfException. This exception is never thrown from the try statement body.
Cool… so that means I have some junk code lying around. Fine by me!
Not so fine by java… I had to fix the “error” before continuing, which took away the remaining hacking flow I had. What was I really doing before my IDE decided to interrupted me? Beats me… 
A while ago I read that after a distraction a person needs 8 minutos to concentrate again. If that is so then it’s possible that Java and other compiled languages might be working against programmers. They might help you write more thorough code. But that will be at the expense of loosing the big picture. While you hack away you are constantly brought down to the “current-error” in front of you level.
In the last few weeks I’ve been working more intensely with php and I’ve come to love it’s hackability (or could it be… its documentation?). For instance, I knew nothing about php’s XPath support but php was fine with that. It would let me write shitty code anyway until I got to where I wanted. I could experiment for hours without having a single negative feedback other that my own reprimands for not getting it right! Yesterday’s attempt was a completely different story. For the first time in that project’s lifespan I “felt bad” while working in it. Yuck! 
And now for something (not) completely different!
I don’t know if you’ve read “7 Thinking Hats” - you should by the way - but I couldn’t help but connecting yesterday’s experience to being in the same room with someone wearing a black hat, someone who kept interrupting any green or yellow ideas you might had.
What about your favourite language? Does it have “nag the developer whenever we does something wrong” in it’s feature list?
Just dumping some news I consider relevant.
These are glued together by “Information Overload”:
- Google Maps Now Editable by Anyone
Too much data, too little context to allow for a sensible control over the editing process. - Five Methodologies to Deal with Email Overload
The article describes ways to deal with information overload. Nice, but drives attention away from the real problem: the limitations of email. - The Conversation Has Left the Blogosphere
Indeed, indeed. The world is moving online and the available technology isn’t coping well with it. Lifestreaming services are a good step forward but still… we might want to look back into what people are putting online (as well as why and where) before “mending” the problem by aggregating information (doing so strips information from its original context and assumes the public and universal sharing of information between people - profiling heaven ahead) - AllPeers Closes - What Happened to the Glorious Future of P2P?
Every day we see a new startup popping up, another feature or site update. All craving our attention, our presence in their space.
The article mentions marketing problems and I reckon that its all about reaching people, about giving them the experience that makes them include your product into their daily life. If you cross that threshold “you’re in” and then you have access to the “social threshold” - the sense that something is so cool that “I have to share it with someone else”.
Most startups start working on this later barrier before even considering the former. Until now, social recommendations were an important part of human’s information gathering toolkit. But with the comercial exploitation of the social graph how long is it until our minds start to kick back and worn off the high preference attributed to data collected from our peers? What might the alternatives be? Food for the mind…
These are “Semantic”:
- Zemanta Brings a Semantic Layer to Your Blog
One of SeedCamp’s startups - Semantify - Automate Your Semantic Web SEO in Five Minutes
Gotta love the guys from dapper!
- And Nerds Became Kings: Yahoo! to Announce Semantic Web Support
And Yahoo!
Others:
- WordPress Social Networks - I’ll Take a Distributed One, Please
Chris Messina’s interview with… himself is worth seeing. He’s on the right path with DiSo, I’m considering dropping in the mailing list. - Google Releases AJAX Language API
This is way cool! - Google Releases Contacts API
But this is cooler! - Shindig - an Apache incubator project for OpenSocial and gadgets
And this is even cooler! - SXSW: Lessons Learned at 37 Signals
An interesting read. - Goodbye, P2P! P4P is Coming
Curious mode: on. - UN Data: the Ultimate Research Tool
Trust in information source mode: on. - LiveJournal Says Goodbye to Unique Account Structure, Against Wishes of Advisors
Ridiculous mode: on.
Sleep mode: on.
Dear Web,
I’m sorry to report that I’m leaving you. I’ll be googling and taking away all you might know about me. And the things I can’t take with me… Well, I’ll mess those just to make sure you won’t share them with anyone else, ever.
I could say “it’s not you, it’s me” but I’d be lying. The fact is that IT IS YOU. I’m sick of having you go out and share our stuff with one billion people. Why couldn’t you just keep things quiet? “This is a local shop for local people” comes to mind.
I’m sorry but you’re just a wreck and I don’t want to hear from you until you get your shit together.
Your’s trully,
<Messed up signature>
Just went over the contents of my Bloglines “Identity” folder and I have to say that Microsoft’s move to acquire Credentica’s U-Prove technology and expertise got my full attention!
U-What?
Brands is the inventor of private credentials technology which allows a user to prove something about their identity without disclosing more information than is absolutely necessary. For example, a voter can prove unequivocally that they have the right to vote in the state of California, without having to disclose their name or other personal information.
Description shamelessly taken from here.
Kim Cameron did a good job of following the ripples caused by the news:
- Microsoft to adopt Stefan Brands’ Technology
- Reactions to Credentica acquisition
- Ralf Bendrath on the Credentica acquisition
- Microsoft says, “U-Prove it”
Summing it up: a great technology just got a huge boost and might just find it’s way to our lifes a little bit earlier than I expected.
And in case you didn’t realize: these are really important news!! Just checkout this nifty video to “get it”.
Great interview with Mark Zuckerberg over at GigaOM (I like their coverage on events).
Here’s what the interview would have looked like if I was there:
Stacey: Let’s talk about monetization. You said yesterday that you envision the social advertising landscape evolving over the next 10…15…20 years. How will those ads evolve and when will we start seeing aspects of them on Facebook? And where does Beacon, which you said wasn’t an ad effort, fall into this?
Mark: Beacon was a part of the platform. It was part of this while effort to blur the boundaries between what’s inside Facebook and what’s outside Facebook. Beacon was our first cut at a protocol to do that.
When it comes to social ads we really want to line up what people are trying to do on Facebook and the utility it offers with monetization. If you look at what people are trying to do on the site, it’s communicating and connecting with each other and sharing information, so the business model should be around people sharing information and staying connected.
Davide: Fair enough.
Mark: In banner advertising, people who have developed a trust with the audience run a banner ad and the trust bleeds over to the ad so people pay attention to it.Stacey: (making a skeptical face.)
Davide: (also making a skeptical face.) Mark… Is it ok if I call you Mark? Are you high on something? “people who have developed a trust with the audience”… wtf? So in Facebook’s eyes companies are “people” and the real people like me are just “audience”?
Mark: What? You look like something’s wrong? People go to a content site to see a specific kind of content and will trust those ads relate somehow to it. On Facebook, people aren’t coming to see content from Facebook; they’re coming to see what other people are sharing, so the most natural analog would be having the ads be information shared among the people. Because so much of our society has some commercial component it seems like there will be a way to both share information and line that up with what advertisers want.
Davide: (Ohhh… “it seems” does it?)
Mark: Some amount is happening as advertisers pay to accelerate that distribution of information. The amount they’d be willing to pay is proportional to how much it is accelerated.
Davide: That’s some fucked up shit man!
I’d like to thank Mark and “Me” for making this interview possible.
And off the record…
Davide: What is the Facebook “audience” saying about the constant attempts at lining up “what they are doing on the site” with “what advertisers want”?
Mark: Dude! The interview’s over!
Davide: Oh… sorry! I already know the answer to this one: they just want to be left alone “sharing information and staying connected”. But wait a second… that doesn’t seem like the kind of things “audiences” do.
Stacey: I think you have a point there. Facebook users aren’t a quiet bunch. Comparing them to an “audience” is looking at Facebook as a tool for “advertisers”, not one for people.
Mark: Humm… Good point!
lol…
The Internet In 1993 - Watch more free videos
Warning: geek post about version control systems. But still… if you work with a computer and manage multiple versions of your stuff (renaming files and folder with numbers or dates) you’ll learn something useful in this post!
Today I read about Bazaar in a Free Software Magazine article and decided to take a look. Now… I’m simply hooked!
Ok, so what’s Bazaar after all? Bazaar is a Distributed Version Control System which… is NICE! I mean, really DAMN NICE! It simply works!
I’ve used CVS and Subversion while attending my CS degree but never have I or my close colleagues got to apply good version control practices. Branching? Tags? What are those?
Well, now I know it wasn’t all my fault! The tools didn’t help.
So… back to Bazaar! This tool is dead easy to work with and it’s online User Guide will get you going in no time!
The part I’m more excited about is that Bazaar supports lots of usage workflows! You can start off by managing your files locally, shift to peer-to-peer work and then to centralized development. You can mix these usage patterns at any point always using the same tool! So yeah… FANBOY!
Here’s a quickstart for those who are familiar with cvs/svn:
- Setting up a [shared] repository: bzr init-repo repository
- Create a project: bzr init project
- Add files and folders: bzr add
- Commit changes [locally]: bzr commit -m “commit message”
- Create a branch: bzr branch parent_branch new_branch
- Merge changes from parent branch: bzr merge
- Update parent branch with changes made on the current branch: bzr push parent_branch
Some [subjective] basics:
- Branch = Project
- Any branches contained within a repository’s folder hierarchy “share” that repository, otherwise: Branch=Project=Repository (important for disk usage)
- Working with local repositories is the same as working with remote ones! So in the commands I described above you can swap “branch|folder” references by remote locations and it will work as expected! Really! It will!
Almost forgot! The only thing you need to share a repository with others is a shared filesystem to put the files on (ftp/sftp/network share). Bye bye svnserve!
So what are you waiting for? Try it out!
Estava eu muito contente a escrever um comentário à notícia que apareceu no jornal Público, quando me cortaram as pernas, ou melhor, o limite de caracteres. Liberdade de expressão no seu melhor. 
Segue-se o meu comentário original na íntegra:
Concordo com a utilização da Internet como forma de agilizar a máquina do espaço. No entanto, não concordo que “wikis, blogs e sites sociais” sejam a panaceia para melhorar o governo.
Neste momento todos os cidadãos podem ter o seu púlpito: basta criar um blogue e eis que as nossas ideias podem chegar a milhões de pessoas (bom… para isso acontecer as pessoas têm de visitar o blogue). Isto altera um pouco as regras do jogo: para me tornar popular não preciso de ter o meu nome no jornal da minha zona, nem tão pouco concorrer à Junta ou Câmara, posso atalhar e, depois de inspirado por uma sessão da Assembleia da República, começar a versar sobre políticas como se soubesse do que estava a falar. Com alguma sorte (link baiting) eis que vou subindo no índice da Internet (a versão online de uma hierarquia política) e quando dou por mim o meu blogue surge em primeiro lugar quando os cidadãos fazem pesquisas por novas leis ou informações acerca de dirigentes políticos.
A Internet permite que a comunicação entre pessoas se processe de uma forma nunca antes possível na história da humanidade. No entanto, as tecnologias que temos actualmente são ainda embrionárias e apresentam graves falhas no que diz respeito ao controlo da privacidade, dos dados e da visibilidade das nossas ideias.
Estamos a lidar com um meio cujas consequências são tanto positivas como negativas (mas onde os aspectos positivos são aclamados).
Pegando no exemplo relativo às eleições norte-americanas podemos dizer que ficou a ganhar quem melhor tirou partido da tecnologia e não necessariamente a pessoa melhor qualificada. O potencial viral das comunicações na Internet abre a porta tanto para a divulgação de produtos como de presidentes. Assim, torna-se vital dar um passo atrás e começar a repensar conceitos como “direito de antena”, popularidade, boato e por último “partidos políticos”.
Não é uma questão de aplicar ferramentas “web 2.0″ à governação, mas sim de desenvolver ferramentas que, respeitando os direitos das pessoas, permitam uma comunicação mais eficiente e transparente entre os cidadãos e os seus representantes.
Um recurso interessante para verem o lado negativo da Internet é o livro “The Future of Reputation” (leitura gratuita online).
Se quiserem comentar façam-no aqui. Isto de ter de ir visitar outro site para ler comentários só porque o público.pt não tem “Feeds para os comentários” não é para mim.
Bye Bye Meebo?
The Windows Live Messenger IM Control enables web sites to show the presence of Windows Live Messenger users, and let site visitors engage in instant messaging conversations with the Messenger users. A Web site can invite its users to share their Messenger presence and exchange messages with visitors to the site. When a site hosts the Windows Live Messenger IM Control, site visitors can instant message Messenger users directly from the browser without installing the Windows Live Messenger desktop client on their computers. This provides an ideal mechanism for Web sites to enable site visitors to send messages to Windows Live Messenger users who agree to share their presence on the Web. For example, a social networking site can invite its users to share their Messenger presence on user profile pages, or the author of a blog could use it to invite readers to discuss a particular topic.
My take is that Microsoft has just unleashed hell (see bold comments below)! This is taken from the visitor’s sign-in window:
Automatically sign in
Each time you visit <sitename> you will be automatically signed in to Messenger. You can allow your Messenger contacts to see that you are visiting <sitename> and send messages to you.
Choosing this option also allows <sitename> to:
- Learn your Windows Live ID (ok, I can live with this one)
- Set your status, display name, and personal message on Messenger (WTF?)
- See the status and e-mail addresses of your Messenger contacts (see their e-mail addresses? ohoho! Affiliate Heaven!)
- Add and remove your Messenger contacts (<brand X> wants to be your friend!)
- Send and receive messages to your Messenger contacts (any messages?
Microsoft has authorized <sitename> to connect to the .NET Messenger Service provided that it follows certain rules, such as not asking for your password. <link to <sitename>’s privacy policy.
This is going to totally mess up people’s IM usage and create LOADS of noise in MSN’s Network.
Anyway… Docs for developers here. More details as I delve into this.
