Google Gears Up Offline Web Apps May 31, 2007
Posted by Al Castle in : Puter Stuff, Web Design & Dev , 1 comment so farThis would have been a cool event to participate in. Today in San Jose, CA convention center, Google’s Jeff Huber - VP of Engineering, will be presenting to some 500 odd developers “Google Gears“.
A downloadable opensource (BSD licensed) browser plugin for both Firefox and Internet Explorer. The plugin provides three core Javascript API’s for both online and offline application development.
A local server allows the application to cache and server HTML, Javascript, images and so on, without requiring being online to reach the applications online server.
An SQLite database provides the means to access and store data manipulated while offline.
The ability to synchronize information once online, in a manner so as not to overly tax the browser and client computer resources.
In what some are terming a redefinition of “The Web”, Google is strides ahead of the “Web 2.0″ buzzword crowd and is providing a frame work for developers to create and extend existing offerings that should yield some truly cool new startups and applications. Google is currently working with other companies such as Adobe, Mozilla and Opera to extend the features of Google Gears. Currently it will run on all platforms Firefox supports, the Safari web browser however is not supported at this time.
Used in combination with XUL, I can see how using Google Gears could provide for a very robust and feature rich offline client for Mozilla based browsers. Even without XUL, the number of uses is staggering for all those times where connectivity is poor, expensive, or simply not available (airports, trains, downtown Bellingham).
I’ve just downloaded the developers XPI extension for Firefox on my OSX Macbook Pro and am about to try some of the demos which can be found here. This is going to be fun.
Further Reading:
Robert Scoble http://scobleizer.com/2007/05/30/google-brings-developers-offline-with-gears-new-offline-reader/
Artur Bergman http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/05/google_releases.html
Nick Gonzalez http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/05/30/google-gears-lets-developers-take-apps-offline/
Borgish Robotic Worm Thing May 31, 2007
Posted by Al Castle in : Puter Stuff, Science , 1 comment so farThis video is pretty sweet, a series of square actuators can assemble themselves into various shapes, I assume through the use of magnetics.
Reminds me of one of those Rubik’s Cube Snake things I used to have when I was a kid… well of a young age anyways.
Touchscreen Coffee Table May 30, 2007
Posted by Al Castle in : Puter Stuff, Science , add a commentPopular Mechanics has a piece on one of Microsofts in the lab projects, imaginatively called the “Microsoft Surface“. If you’ve ever seen the videos on the touch screen features of the soon to be released Apple iPhone, then you’ll notice some similarity but on a larger scale. In this case, the unit acts as a coffee table which i must admit would be handy for brainstorming sessions and small presentations.
Greasy hands and blue screen of death aside, this might be a cool idea if it was running anything other than Windows.
iTunes Woes May 30, 2007
Posted by Al Castle in : Puter Stuff, gnash-teeth, OSX, Castle , add a commentUgh. Just a week or so ago I had spent some serious quality time getting my music collection in order on iTunes. The other night my laptop battery was drained and I had forgotten to keep it plugged in while syncing with my new AppleTV, and the iTunes Library binary file was corrupted and useless the next morning. After much online hunting for tips or tools to save all my work I realized I would just have to start over, none of the music was deleted just all of my saved preferences, ratings and such.
Then I decided to download a new movie to watch on the flat screen via my AppleTV, well the movie completed its download but refused to play. iTunes only lets you download a movie once, so I was out $9.99 plus taxes. Both Quicktime and iTunes would freeze when attempting to play that one movie. Several days later and as many emails back and forth between me and Apple support - nothing was resolved via their canned replies. Here’s what they sent me, along with my initial trouble ticket, you’ll notice that my ticket includes the operating system and version I’m using…
Dear Al,
I understand your system “freezes up” when trying to watch “[porn]” in iTunes or Quicktime. I apologize for any inconvenience this issue may have caused you, and will be happy to assist you in this matter.
Fortunately, this issue can usually be corrected by simply reinstalling QuickTime.
If you’re using iTunes for Mac, just download and reinstall QuickTime:
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/standalone.htmlI apologize for any inconvenience you may have experienced. If reinstalling QuickTime doesn’t help, please respond to this email, and I’ll have the issue investigated for you.
Thank you for using ITunes, and enjoy your movie!
Sincerely,
Leigh
iTunes Store Customer Support
http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/wwCustomer First Name : Al
Customer Last Name : Castle
email : [barph]
Web Order # : [barph]
Support Subject : iTunes Store
Sub Issue : Other Question
Comments : iTunes Account Name: [barph]
Platform : iTunes/7.1.1 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.4.9)
Item Name : [porn]Comments:
Attempting to play the movie in iTunes or Quicktime causes the application to freeze up. Unable to watch the movie.
Ah the old windows trick, re(install|boot) as needed. Well to humor them I went ahead and reinstalled Quicktime, which of course resolved nothing. By now I’m on day four having not been able to watch my movie and so I simply pay for it again this one plays just fine. Allegedly iTunes will be processing a refund which may take several business days.
A few months prior a similar situation happened where I purchased the entire first season of Desperate Housewives, only one of the 10 plus episodes didn’t download properly. That time support turn around was much faster, additionally they waived the fee for the entire season. I didn’t ask for it, I just wanted my episode. After each support encounter they also email me a canned “How was my driving” type survey questionnaire. I answer as honestly as possible. You know me.
iCastle May 29, 2007
Posted by Al Castle in : Puter Stuff, OSX, Castle , add a comment
Last week I purchased a couple new toys for myself, the relatively new AppleTV and the latest version of the Airport Extreme. The AppleTV uses the same standard remote that comes with the Macbook Pros, thankfully as I lost my remote within seconds of opening the box.
Setup was easy for the most part, the unit auto detected my wireless network and asked to join. I had to enter in my WPA password for the AppleTV to authenticate to my wireless network, my password is more than 25 alphanumeric characters long, and required that it be entered via that little remote. I was sweating while attempting to find each character on the onscreen keyboard, for fear of having to enter it all again from scratch. It was only after I had finished setup and began syncing my iTunes to the unit did I realize that I could have just plugged in the Ethernet connection and skipped the wifi. While waiting for the gigs upon gigs of music, tv shows and movies to sync, I went and purchased an HDMI connector to handle audio and video which allowed me to connect the unit into the back of the 32″ flat screen (I won at last years Xmas party) via a single cable. (The number of cables connected to this TV is impressive as well as hideous.)
I already owned the older cone shaped Airport Extremes, (a Xmas present to myself last year) so I moved that one
downstairs into my new bedroom. This new Airport was setup as my primary on the third floor office with the one in my bedroom daisy chained to it for expanded network coverage.
The new software for managing the Airports is pretty slick, including some parental controls, as well as the ability to setup and access disks on the wireless network. In my case 
I can plug my Epson color printer into the back of the Airport for wireless printing, as well as my half terabyte MyBook which contains more iTunes content to stream to the AppleTV. Muy schweet.
A little over a year ago I was not an Apple/Mac enthusiast at all, now if you come over there’s less Linux and Windows in the house then before.
Sweet Cheats May 28, 2007
Posted by Al Castle in : Puter Stuff , add a comment
Dave Child of ILoveJackDaniels has compiled a number of useful cheatsheets (available in PNG or PDF) on a range of developer topics including CSS, Javascript, HTML, regular expressions, mod_rewrite, and PHP to name a few. A useful compilation for a web developer.
Thanks Dave.
Random Motivator May 27, 2007
Posted by Al Castle in : PRWeb, Insider, Picture of the Day , add a comment
I’ve updated the Unthreaded blog theme as the more observant of you may have noticed. It’s a work in progress as I hack away at the design and code, writing a few of my own functions. The latest is to randomly display images from http://www.despair.com and various others (I’ve dredged up online but long forgot who created them) on the right navigational bar. Clicking on the image will render the full sized image. If you’d like to view all the ones I have please head on over to the motivation page. Better yet head on over to Despair dot com and purchase them (get one for me too).
I Think We’re Dead May 20, 2007
Posted by Al Castle in : Squirrels, Must Listen , add a commentTenDerHeartbear says, “And this kids, is why you shouldn’t do drugs or trust officers who do them either.”
Grumpy Bear Was Taken May 18, 2007
Posted by Al Castle in : Squirrels, Picture of the Day , 2comments
Become a Ninja Tomorrow May 11, 2007
Posted by Al Castle in : Squirrels, TimeWaster , add a comment
That right! Just buy this revolutionary book I’ve never read, but fully endorse based upon the really cool attached photo. Buy it and you too can become a real Ninja in a single day.
Ninja Secrets Revealed goes beyond simply teaching you how to throw “Ninja stars” and make your own smoke bombs. It teaches how to awaken the Ninja within. Valued at over $1000 US dollars these ancient secrets can be yours for pennies a day…or something like that.
