• Installing Virtuoso on Vista with PHP Hosting
• Installing Virtuoso on Mac OS X (Leopard) with PHP Hosting
• EC2 Installation Part 1 (*AMIs take about 5 minutes to get assembled*)
• EC2 Installation Part 2 (*post AMI creation part*)

Virtuoso is an extremely compact product that is very easy to install. The ease of installation carries over to the PHP runtime when bound to Virtuoso.

What are the benefits of PHP Runtime Hosting?

Like Apache, Virtuoso is a bona-fide Web Application Server for PHP based applications. Unlike Apache, Virtuoso is also the following:

• a Hybrid Native DBMS Engine (Relational, RDF-Graph, and Document models) that is accessible via industry standard interfaces (solely)
• a Virtual DBMS or Master Data Manager (MDM) that virtualizes heterogeneous data sources (ODBC, JDBC, Web Services, Hypermedia Resources, Non Hypermedia Resources)
• an RDF Middleware solution for RDF-zation of non RDF resources across the Web and enterprise Intranets and/or Extranets (in the form of Cartridges for data exposed via REST or SOA oriented SOAP interfaces)
• an RDF Linked Data Server (meaning it can deploy RDF Linked Data based on its native and/or virtualized data)

As result of the above, when you deploy a PHP application using Virtuoso, you inherit the following benefits:

1. Use of PHP-iODBC for in-process communication with Virtuoso
2. Easy generation of RDF Linked Data Views atop the SQL schemas of PHP applications
3. Easy deployment of RDF Linked Data from virtualized data sources
4. Less LAMP monoculture (*there is no such thing as virtuous monoculture*) when dealing with PHP based Web applications.

As indicated in prior posts, producing RDF Linked Data from the existing Web, where a lot of content is deployed by PHP based content managers, should simply come down to RDF Views over the SQL Schemas and deployment / publishing of the RDF Views in RDF Linked data form. In a nutshell, this is what Virtuoso delivers via its PHP runtime hosting and pre packaged VADs (Virtuoso Application Distribution packages), for popular PHP based applications such as: phpBB3, Drupal, WordPress, and MediaWiki.

In addition, to the RDF Linked Data deployment, we've also taken the traditional LAMP installation tedium out of the typical PHP application deployment process. For instance, you don't have to rebuild PHP 3.5 (32 or 64 Bit) on Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux to get going, simply install Virtuoso, and then select a VAD package for the relevant application and you're set. If the application of choice isn't pre packaged by us, simply install as you would when using Apache, which comes dow to situating the PHP files in your Web structure under the Web Application's root directory.

Installation Guide

1. Download the Virtuoso installer for Windows (32 Bit msi file or 64 Bit msi file), Mac OS X (Universal Binary dmg file), or instantiate the Virtuoso EC2 AMI (*search for pattern: "Virtuoso when using the Firefox extension for EC2 as the AMI ID is currently: ami-7c31d515 and name: virtuoso-test/virtuoso-cloud-beta-9-i386.manifest.xml, for latest cut*)
2. Run the installer (or download the movies using the links in the related section below)
3. Go to the Virtuoso Conductor (*which will show up at the end of the installation process* or go to http://localhost:8890/conductor)
4. Go to the "Admin" tab within the (X)HTML based UI and select the "Packages" sub-menu item (a Tab)
5. Pick phpBB3 (or any other pre-packaged PHP app) and then click on "Install/Upgrase"
6. The watch one of my silent movies or read the initial startup guides for Virtuoso hosted phpBB3, Drupal, Wordpress, MediaWiki.

Related

At the current time, I've only provided links to ZIP files containing the Virtuoso installation "silent movies". This approach is a short-term solution to some of my current movie publishing challenges re. YouTube and Vimeo -- where the compressed output hasn't been of acceptable visual quality. Once resolved, I will publish much more "Multimedia Web" friendly movies :-)

• Windows Vista (x64) Installation Movie
• Mac OS X (x64 & Universal binary) Installation Movie
• Virtuoso EC2 Cloud Edition Installation Movie
• Guide for PHP based Application Deployment using Virtuoso

With the above in mind (years of getting into trouble during OS installation and usage etc.. I expected the very worst when attempting to get Solaris 10, Linux (Debian), FreeBSD 6.x, and Windows XP installed on a Mac Mini such that I could have all of these operating systems at my disposal without quad-booting. To my utter disbelief (I am still trying to recover from the immense euphoria..) Parallels delivered to me the absolute simplest installation and usage experience across all said operating systems that I have ever experienced.

I now have a MacIntel Mac Mini (one of several that I will be stocking up on while I wait the Microsoft Universal Binary port of Office) that delivers me the long sought nirvana of having Solaris, FreeBSD, Linux, Windows XP, and Mac OS X on a single desktop!

If you want to enjoy one of the genuine innovations of our time, simply make parallels an integral part of your Mac OS X experience (whether you are an end-user, developer, administrator, or systems integrator).

Parallels Desktop Release Candidate 2, uh, released: "

Filed under: OS, Software

Get your mice clicking ladies and gentlemen, as Parallels has offered up the final test version of Parallels Desktop for Mac, their virtualization software that allows you to run almost any OS right within Mac OS X. With this version, however, Parallels has increased the app's final price to $79.99, as they have incorporated their Compressor Server tool (due to user feedback) into the software package for streamlining and optimizing your virtual machines and the amount of disk space they occupy. The beta testing pre-order price of $39.99 is still in place, and probably more appetizing than ever. Other new features and improvements in the Release Candidate 2 include:

• Significantly improved performance
• Improved USB performance and broader device support
• Improved Host-guest networking
• Automatic network adapters now switch on-the-fly
• Guest OS no longer steals host IP address in some DHCP servers
• Fullscreen mode is now customizable
• Integration with Virtue is now bug-free
• Customizable Ctrl + Click mapping
• Guest 32bit color is supported when Parallels Tools is installed
• Improved Shared folders performance
• Resolved shared folders/MS Office incompatibility issues
• Windows 98 no longer consumes 99% host CPU even when idle (in VT-x mode)

Also note that if you download this newest release, you must re-install the Parallels Tools for guest Windows installations (NT/2000/XP/2003). As with previous beta releases, this download is free before the software package goes official.

Read'|'Permalink'|'Email this'|'Linking'Blogs'|'Comments

"

(Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).)

"...Also today I came across the latest project of a man who wants to tear down Tim Berners-Lee's World Wide Web and replace it with his own vision. It used to be known as Xanadu, but has since morphed into Transliterature, A Humanist Design. I am of course referring to Ted Nelson, who invented the term 'hypertext' in 1965 and is generally regarded as a computing pioneer.

Ted Nelson recently wrote an essay about 'Indirect Documents', which got Slashdotted today. In the essay Nelson outlines why (in his opinion) the Xanadu project failed and he explains his new vision for Transliterature. He takes a number of potshots at Tim Berners-Lee's WWW on the way, e.g.:

'Why don't I like the web? I hate its flapping and screeching and emphasis on appearance; its paper-simulation rectangles of Valuable Real Estate, artifically created by the NCSA browser, now hired out to advertisers; its hierarchies exposed and imposed; its untyped one-way links only from inside the document. (The one-way links hidden under text were a regrettable simplification of hypertext which I assented to in '68 on the HES project. But that's another story.) Only trivial links are possible; there is nothing to support careful annotation and study; and, of course, there is no transclusion.'

Ted Nelson is certainly an original and I'm glad he's still around to throw spanners in the works. I've written about him before and I'm sure I will again, Web 2.0 or not.

(Excerpted From: Read/Write Web.)

My thoughts on the commentary above:

There is nothing fundamentally incompatible between Ted Nelson's pursuits and future incarnation's of the Web. None whatsoever -- we are simply working our way through an process. The process in question is what I call "standards driven ubiquity" (becoming de facto at Internet Speed). Remember Sun's "The Network is the Computer" vision? Well, without a "Computer" in mind-space you can't think in terms of "Operating Systems". Thats all changing, because today we are gradually beginning to accept the imminent reality that "The Internet is the Operating System" and not Windows/UNIX/Mac OS X/Others. Ahem! And after the Operating System what comes next? I think a set of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), and I think we know what that is (in all of its controversial glory), the very thing we refer to as Web 2.0 (the APIs for the Internet Operating System).

Note: In addition to the Computer, Operating System, and Application Programming Interfaces, we also have those frequently misunderstood and under-appreciated workhorses called "Databases" in place (but we still call them Web Sites for now). And by the way, "Internet Filesystem" has been there forever, but for some reason we can't see WebDAV in all its current and future glory (that will change very soon also!).

Ted and TBL are cool with each (whether they know it or not)! I see no mutual exclusivity in their collective visions (IMHO) :-)

Microsoft Gadgets, Start.com and Innovation: "

A lot of the comments in the initial post on the Microsoft Gadgets blog are complaints that the Microsoft is copying ideas from Apple's dashboard. First of all, people should give credit where it is due and acknowledge that Konfabulator is the real pioneer when it comes to desktop widgets. More importantly, the core ideas in Microsoft Gadgets were pioneered by Microsoft not Apple or Konfabulator.

From the post A Brief History of Windows Sidebar by Sean Alexander

Microsoft 'Sideshow*' Research Project (2000-2001)

While work started prior, in September 2001, a team of Microsoft researchers published a paper entitled, 'Sideshow: Providing peripheral awareness of important information' including findings of their project.
...
The research paper provides screenshots that bear a striking resemblance to the Windows Sidebar. The paper is a good read for anyone thinking about Gadget development. For folks who have visited Microsoft campuses, you may recall the posters in elevator hallways and Sidebar running on many employees desktops. Technically one of the first teams to implement this concept

*Internal code-name, not directly related to the official, ‘Windows SideShow™’ auxiliary display feature in Windows Vista.>

Microsoft ‘Longhorn’ Alpha Release (2003)

In 2003, Microsoft unveiled a new feature called, 'Sidebar' at the Microsoft Professional Developer’s Conference. This feature took the best concepts from Microsoft Research and applied them to a new platform code-named, 'Avalon', now formally known as Windows Presentation Foundation...

Microsoft Windows Vista PDC Release (2005)

While removed from public eye during the Longhorn plan change in 2004, a small team was formed to continue to incubate Windows Sidebar as a concept, dating back to its roots in 2000/2001 as a research exercise. Now Windows Sidebar will be a feature of Windows Vista. Feedback from customers and hardware industry dynamics are being taken into account, particularly adding support for DHTML-based Gadgets to support a broader range of developer and designer, enhanced security infrastructure, and better support for Widescreen (16:10, 16:9) displays. Additionally a new feature in Windows Sidebar is support for hosting of Web Gadgets which can be hosted on sites such as Start.com or run locally. Gadgets that run on the Windows desktop will also be available for Windows XP customers – more details to be shared here in the future.

So the desktop version of 'Microsoft Gadgets' is the shipping version of Microsoft Research's 'Sideshow' project. Since the research paper was published a number of parties have shipped products inspired by that research including MSN Dashboard, Google Desktop and Desktop Sidebar but this doesn't change the fact that the Microsoft is the pioneer in this space.

From the post Gadgets and Start.com by Sanaz Ahari

Start.com was initially released on February 2005, on start.com/1 – since then we’ve been innovating regularly (start.com/2, start.com/3, start.com and start.com/pdc) working towards accomplishing our goals:

• To bring the web’s content to users through:
  • Rich DHTML components (Gadgets)
  • RSS and behaviors associated with RSS
  • High customizability and personalization
• To enable developers to extend their start experience by building their own Gadgets

Yesterday marked a humble yet significant milestone for us – we opened our 'Atlas' framework enabling developers to extend their start.com experience. You can read more it here: http://start.com/developer. The key differentiators about our Gadgets are:

• Most web applications were designed as closed systems rather than as a web platform. For example, most customizable 'aggregator' web-sites consume feeds and provide a fair amount of layout customization. However, the systems were not extensible by developers. With start.com, the experience is now an integrated and extensible application platform.
• We will be enriching the gadgets experience even further, enabling these gadgets to seamlessly work on Windows Sidebar

The Start.com stuff is really cool. Currently with traditional portal sites like MyMSN or MyYahoo, I can customize my data sources by subscribing to RSS feeds but not how they look. Instead all my RSS feeds always look like a list of headlines. These portal sites usually use different widgets for display richer data like stock quotes or weather reports but there is no way for me to subscribe to a stock quote or weather report feed and have it look the same as the one provided by the site. Start.com fundamentally changes this model by turning it on its head. I can create a custom RSS feed and specify how it should render in Start.com using JavaScript which basically makes it a Start.com gadget, no different from the default ones provided by the site.

From my perspective, we're shipping really innovative stuff but because of branding that has attempted to cash in on the 'widgets' hype, we end up looking like followers and copycats.

Marketing sucks.

(Via Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life.)

Google trying to recruit Susan Dumais?: "

Is Google trying to recruit Susan Dumais or just have some fun with her?

If you don't know who Susan is, she's one of our brightest researchers and works on MSN Search, among other things. Do a Google Search for her name. Now look over at the ads. I think someone at Google is saying 'hey, Susan, come work for us.'

I did several other searches on Microsoft employee names, and Susan is the only one I could find that is being targetted this way.

(Via Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger.)

Personally I think this is cool use of technology by Google :-)

The intersection of Technology and karma is a wonderful thing to see!

In the past I have expressed views that echo the essence of John's piece. It has been pretty darn clear to me that Microsoft is struggling as a result of its inability to handle challenges associated with the metaphoric "computing vase" which it sought to own solely as a result of its proclivity for crushing and/or alienating erstwhile technology partners as part of this quest (a process that commenced a long time ago culminating the contradiction and ultimate paradox called IE7; remember not too long ago it was impossible to separate IE from Windows! It could only exist as an OS extension etc.).

Windows in its current incarnation fails to provide a productive working environment, you either have a plethora of viruses and spyware contending for you computing resources, or you have all the software in place to protect against these assaults rendering the computing resources equally busy. The computing power lag is simply too much when using windows, and this is its achilles heel!

I have been using Windows since version 2.0, and although I have always found the Mac OS variations to be superior on the UI front, I never found any of the historic versions viable alternatives. In my case, this is all about providing a productive work environment across the following usage modes, in descending order of priority:

1. Power User (OutLook, Excel, WORD, and other desktop productivity tools)
2. Product Testing and QA
3. Programmer Buddy (a Microsoft term)
4. Programming (for the most part prototyping)

The release of Mac OS X Tiger lead me down an evaluation path that I have repeated many times in the past: test the viability of moving wholesale from Windows to Mac OS X and remain functional (if really lucky, exceed existing productivity levels). This time around I found that I could actually migrate over 6 years worth of emails, contacts, presentations, documents, spreadsheets from Windows to Mac OS X. I also discovered that success extended all the way to my data linked documents that are transparently bound to back-end databases (in my case the norm rather the exception via ODBC).

I now use Mac OS X as my prime working platform (I still have to use Windows as the platform remains strategic for all our product offerings), and I am absolutely loving it! The joint feelings of euphoria and confusion that I experienced post migration were similar to how I felt after making the transition from "stick shift" to "automatic" geared cars (as I transitioned my residence from the UK to the U.S). At the time I couldn't understand why anyone (other than a grand prix driver) would ever drive a "stick shift" by choice.

Today, I can't understand why I stuck with Windows for so long at the expense of my daily working productivity. The biggest bonus from this transition is that Mac OS X has made it easier for me to engage less technical individuals (family & friends) in the sheer joy and potential of Information Technology across a variety of realms as opposed to being confined to the "business computing" realm solely. I can demonstrate the power and potential of the Internet, Web, Web Services, Blogosphere, Wikispehere, with much more sanity and coherence now that my machine responds in a timely fashion during these demos amongst other benefits.

Some may deem this windows bashing, but if they take the time to look a little deeper, this is simply about "straight shooting" from a real computer user (I like my computers to do deliver on their hugh potential promised; I don't compromise this basic expectation; my computer and associate software should save me time and ramp up my productivity!) . If Microsoft is the company that it once was, then it would simply use this kind of commentary to rally its troops and get its act together! That's what I would do if a customer felt so badly about our technology (UDA or Virtuoso).

Bill Gates: Cell Phones Will Overtake MP3 Players, Calls iPod 'Unsustainable' Microsoft's chairman draws on computing history to make his proclamation that the iPod phenomenon won't...

"Why did Foreman lose to Ali? The fact is Ali beat Foreman because he was tougher and stronger than he's ever given credit for. Ali didn't box Foreman! He went to the ropes and allowed Foreman to hit on him, is that boxing? What if Foreman had knocked him out while he was stationary against the ropes. It would've been said for the rest of time, why did Ali remain stationary letting Foreman get off on him? How come he didn't use the ring and box? Which is exactly what those watching the fight were thinking and saying during rounds two through eight. That's not boxing, that's being forced to fight because your opponent will not allow you to box."

 

On the surface, Graham’s piece seems like a nice pat on the back to the Mac platform. But there’s an implication in his piece that the world’s most prodigiously talented programmers are only now switching (or switching back) to the Mac, when in fact some of them have been here all along. GUI programming is hard, and for GUI programmers, the Mac has always been, in Brent Simmons’s words, “The Show”.

I.e. the idea that by the mid-’90s the Mac user base had been whittled down to “graphic designers and grandmas” is demonstrably false — someone must have been writing the software the designers and grandmas were using, no? — but I don’t think it’s worth pressing the point, because I suspect it wasn’t really what Graham meant to imply. And the main thrust of his point is true: there is a certain class of hackers — your prototypical Unix nerds — who not only weren’t using Macs a decade ago, but whose antipathy toward Macs was downright hostile. And it is remarkable that these hackers are now among Mac OS X’s strongest adherents.

It’s another sign of Mac OS X’s dual nature: from the perspective of your typical user (and particularly long-time Mac users), it is the Mac OS with a modern Unix architecture encapsulated under the hood; from the perspective of the hackers Graham writes of, it is Unix with a vastly superior GUI.

Read on....

Here goes:

Blog Editing

I can use any editor that supports the following Blog Post APIs:

- Moveable Type

- Meta Weblog

- Blogger

Typically I use Virtuoso (which has an unreleased WYSIWYG blog post editor), Newzcrawler, ecto, Zempt, or w.bloggar for my posts. If a post is of interest to me, or relevant to our company or customers I tend to perform one of the following tasks:

- Generate a post using the "Blog This" feature of my blog editor

- Write a new post that was triggered by a previously read post etc.

Either way, the posts end up in our company wide blog server that is Virtuoso based (more about this below). The internal blog server automatically categorizes my blog posts, and automagically determines which posts to upstream to other public blogs that I author (e.g http://kidehen.typepad.com ) or co-author (e.g http://www.openlinksw.com/weblogs/uda and http://www.openlinksw.com/weblogs/virtuoso ). I write once and my posts are dispatched conditionally to multiple outlets.

RSS/Atom/RDF Aggregation & Reading

I discover, subscribe to, and view blog feeds using Newzcrawler (primarily), and from time to time for experimentation and evaluation purposes I use RSS Bandit, FeedDemon, and Bloglines. I am in the process of moving this activity over to Virtuoso completely due to the large number of feeds that I consume on a daily basis (scalability is a bit of a problem with current aggregators).

Blog Publishing

When you visit my blog you are experiencing the  soon to be released Virtuoso Blog Publishing engine first hand, which is how WebDAV, SQLX, XQuery/XPath, and Free Text etc. come into the mix.

Each time I create a post internally, or subscribe to an external feed, the data ends up in Virtuoso's SQL Engine (this is how we handle some of the obvious scalability challenges associated with large subscription counts). This engine is SQL2000N based, which implies that it can transform SQL to XML on the fly using recent extensions to SQL in the form of SQLX (prior to the emergence of this standard we used the FOR XML SQL syntax extensions for the same result). It also has its own in-built XSLT processor (DB Engine resident), and validating XML parser (with support for XML Schema).  Thus, my RSS/RDF/Atom archives, FOAF, BlogRoll, OPML, and OCS blog syndication gems are all live examples of SQLX documents that leverage Virtuoso's WebDAV engine for exposure to Blog Clients.

Blog Search

When you search for blog posts using the basic or advanced search features of my blog, you end up interacting with one of the following methods of querying data hosted in Virtuoso: Free Text Search, XPath, or XQuery. The result sets produced by the search feature uses SQLX to produce subscription gems (RSS/Atom/RDF/OpenSearch) and URIs that enable dynamic tracking of my posts using your search keywords.

BTW - the http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen blog home page exists as a result of Virtuoso's Virtual Domain / Multi-Homing Web Server functionality. The entire site resides in an Object Relational DBMS, and I can take my DB file across Windows, Solaris, Linux, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, AIX, HP-UX, IRIX, and SCO UnixWare without missing a single beat! All I have to do is instantiate my Virtuoso server and my weblog is live.

The shakesperian tale of Macbeth also comes to mind as depicted in the excerpt below:

".... Macbeth goes to visit the witches in their cavern. There, they show him a sequence of demons and spirits who present him with further prophecies: he must beware of Macduff, a Scottish nobleman who opposed Macbeth's accession to the throne; he is incapable of being harmed by any man born of woman; and he will be safe until Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane Castle. "

Having used all the major operating systems on a serious basis for a number of years in a variety of modes; user, developer, and administrator. I have always felt that a RISC based UNIX operating system (of BSD genealogical branch extraction), if somehow combined with a user interface that is superior to Windows, would ultimately unravel the Windows Desktop Monopoly. That operating system exists today in the form of Mac OS X (its lastest Tiger release simply kicks the differential up a notch).

Back to the Macbeth correlation:

"Birnam Woods coming to Dunsinane" is the metaphoric equivalent of desktop users and first time computer users being forced (by the scourge of virus and spyware) to revaluate Windows as the only choice for productive desktop computing. What would you recommend to "Aunt Milly" when she tells you she wants to get on the Internet? Especially if "Aunt Milly" isn't living with you?

"Man not born of a woman" is no different to saying: UNIX with a superior user interface to Windows!

I don't think you need me to tell who play the characters of Macbeth and Macduff in this drama :-)

The Windows security vulnerabilities quagmire (google juice on this phrase is currently 6,620 pages) has basically created an inflection of monumental proportions adversely affecting Windows and creating great visibility and evaluation building opportunities for Mac OS X ("once users experience a Mac they don't come back to Windows!").

Paul Murphy of cio-today.com has also written a great article sheds light on the often overlooked hardware aspect to the security problem for Windows Here is a poignant excerpt:

Software and Hardware Vulnerabilities

At present, attacks on Microsoft's Windows products are generally drawn from a different population of possible attacks than those on Unix variants such as BSD, Linux and Solaris. From a practical perspective, the key difference is that attacks on Wintel tend to have two parts: A software vulnerability is exploited to give a remote attacker access to the x86 hardware and that access is then used to gain control of the machine.

In contrast, attacks on Unix generally require some form of initial legal access to the machine and focus on finding software ways to upgrade priveleges illegally.

Consider, for example, CAN-2004-1134 in the NIST vulnerabilities database:

Summary: Buffer overflow in the Microsoft W3Who ISAPI (w3who.dll) allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service and possibly execute arbitrary code via a long query string.

Published Before: 1/10/2005

Severity: High

The vulnerability exists in Microsoft's code, but the exploit depends on the rigid stack-order execution and limited page protection inherent in the x86 architecture. If Windows ran on Risc, that vulnerability would still exist, but it would be a non-issue because the exploit opportunity would be more theoretical than practical.

Linux and open-source applications are thought to have far fewer software vulnerabilities than Microsoft's products, but Linux on Intel (Nasdaq: INTC - news) is susceptible to the same kind of attacks as those now predominantly affecting Wintel users. For real long-term security improvements, therefore, the right answer is to look at Linux, or any other Unix, on non x86 hardware.

One such option is provided by Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL - news) BSD-based products on the PowerPC-derived G4 and G5 CPUs. Linus Torvalds, for example, apparently now runs Linux on a Mac G5 and there are several Linux distributions for this hardware -- all of which are immune to the typical x86-oriented exploit.

This may even been the nullifier of that age old argument about porting Mac OS X to the x86 in order to broaden its adoption potential?

Mac OS X is certainly a breath of fresh air for anyone who needs to simply get stuff done with their desktops and notebooks.

The Microsoft Memo Bill Gates hires open-source icon Linus Torvalds? That was just the beginning of Redmond's hybrid strategy to face the free software age. Fanciful prognostication by Gary Wolf from Wired magazine.

From their web site:

At Glance Networks, we believe people need a simple way to work together at a distance.

Each day, people send billions of emails and faxes to each other. They talk together on phone for billions of minutes. While there is always a need for improved communication tools, traditional web and video conferencing solutions are often too complex, too over-featured and too expensive. Customers want a solution they can master in under a minute. It must connect instantly and reliably to anyone from anywhere on the Internet.

To that end, we built a simple, affordable service for showing live PC screens over the Internet.

Phone any friend or business associate and click Glance to show them your live PC screen. Demonstrate your software. Go over a spreadsheet. Give a presentation. Show a design. Review a document. Provide technical help. Close a sale. Every mouse movement and screen update you see, they see.

Cool! Imagine a fusion of this technolgy with Skype

ListGarden 1.0 released I've just posted the 1.0 version of my ListGarden™ RSS Generator Program. The source code has been released under the GNU GPL license, and it is available for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, generic Perl, and server-CGI use. A new feature has been added since the beta release: In addition to creating the XML RSS file, it can also produce an HTML file with the same information as the XML. I discuss RSS feeds in general in this weblog post, as well as the issue of private RSS feeds.

Mac OS X Tiger is a copycat, claims developer While Apple is expecting Microsoft to mimic Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, one developer says the new Mac operating system is the one doing the copying... [via MacMinute]

A more important aspect of this post is the changing face of the Web Client/ OS. What I mean by this is the gradual decomposition of the user agent monlith (browser for instance) into composite services that will increasing communicate with services over the net.

This issue really brings WebDAV into scope as this is the protocol that enables this capability (as covered by Jon's piece), and it is one of the many client and server side protocols implemented by OpenLink Virtuoso (the key to how Virtuoso delivers URI based SQL-XML, XQuery, XPath services).

When you install Virtuoso you simply have to start the Virtuoso server instance to the get WebDAV functionality going. All of Virtuoso's services are advertised at ports, and in the case of WebDAV you will find this at port 8890 if you start the demo database.

To exploit the Virtuoso/WebDAV server from any WebDAV client (or point urls at WebDAV hosted resources) simply do the following:

1. Install Virtuoso and depending on your OS do the following:
• Windows - create a Web Folder that points to a WebDAV server
• Mac OS X - mount a WebDAV folder
• Linux - mount a WebDAV directory (also see the Davfs2 Open Source project)
• You can also make WebDAV client calls from Virtuoso's Stored Procedure Language (Virtuoso PL) or use WebDAV implementations in any development environment of your choice (.NET, Java, .
  
2. Place content that you want to reference in your mails in your WebDAV repository via any of the client side mechanisms described in step 1. You can see the results of this in my earlier blog post, even better pass the url on in an email! Or browse the WebDAV folder (there are some nuggets deliberately left in place :-) )
   
• You could simply save an Office Doc (powerpoint, excel, word etc) to this location and the circulate urls in your mails (this has been standard practice at OpenLink for many years; we even have a full blown portal server that would soon be available as a public service to sharing anything via DAV and as usual some more... stay tuned)
  
3. That's it for any platform (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX etc.) once you install Virtuoso!

BTW - This blog is WebDAV based (it's a live instance of Virtuoso doing many things; WebDAV, HTTP, SQL-XML based feed generation for ATOM, RSS, Blog Post APIs support (Moveable Type, Metaweblog, Blogger, ATOM), Free Text, XPath, XQuery, and more). 

David Mertz, IBM developerWorks

Over time, XML has permeated many niches. One area where XML is used increasingly is in the configuration of graphical user interfaces, especially in elements that are persistent but should not be fixed at compile-time. In this installment, the author looks at the use of XML in Mac OS X's Aqua GUI, and in the K Desktop Environment (KDE) which is either standard or available in most modern Linux distributions. So far, the use of XML in configuring modern GUIs is a bit haphazard. Most interfaces use XML in some places, but other mechanisms elsewhere. But it's clear that the general movement is toward XML. Clearly, Mac OS X Aqua and KDE each have their own XML philosophy. Mac OS X uses solely XML elements that correspond to broad data types, while everything that is really application-specific or GUI-specific is shunted off into the PCDATA content of container elements. In contrast, KDE's XML feels very usage-specific.

http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-matters34.html

02 Dec 2003: Mono 0.29 has been released

This release took us a long time to go out, but it is pretty exciting, with PPC supported. The best Mono release ever! [via Monologue]

This time last year Mono enabled us to deliver a release of Virtuoso that unveiled the power of .NET integration as a database extension mechanism on Windows and Linux along the following lines; User Defined Types, User Defined Functions, and Stored Procedures using any .NET bound language. It also enabled the deployment of ASP.NET applications on Linux, and on Windows without IIS. One item missing from my check list at the time was a Virtuoso release for Mac OS X with identical functionality.

This announcement implies we are within striking distance of a Virtuoso 3.2 release that enables .NET classes and frameworks utilization (along the lines described above) on Mac OS X.

There is a new HOWTO document that addresses an area of frequent confusion on Mac OS X, which is how do you build PHP with an ODBC data access layer binding (iODBC variant) using Mac OS X Frameworks as opposed to Darwin Shared Libraries.

This document basically brings clarity to both the Frameworks and Darwin Shared library approaches.

NETWORK WORLD NEWSLETTER: MARK GIBBS ON WEB APPLICATIONS

Today's focus: A Virtuoso of a server

By Mark Gibbs

One of the bigger drags of Web applications development is that building a system of even modest complexity is a lot like herding cats - you need a database, an applications server, an XML engine, etc., etc. And as they all come from different vendors you are faced with solving the constellation of integration issues that inevitably arise.

If you are lucky, your integration results in a smoothly functioning system. If not, you have a lot of spare parts flying in loose formation with the risk of a crash and burn at any moment.

An alternative is to look for all of these features and services in a single package but you'll find few choices in this arena.

One that is available and looks very promising is OpenLink's Virtuoso (see links below).

Virtuoso is described as a cross platform (runs on Windows, all Unix flavors, Linux, and Mac OS X) universal server that provides databases, XML services, a Web application server and supporting services all in a single package.

OpenLink's list of supported standards is impressive and includes .Net, Mono, J2EE, XML Web Services (Simple Object Application Protocol, Web Services Description Language, WS-Security, Universal Description, Discovery and Integration), XML, XPath, XQuery, XSL-T, WebDav, HTTP, SMTP, LDAP, POP3, SQL-92, ODBC, JDBC and OLE-DB.

Virtuoso provides an HTTP-compliant Web Server; native XML document creation, storage and management; a Web services platform for creation, hosting and consumption of Web services; content replication and synchronization services; free text index server, mail delivery and storage and an NNTP server.

Another interesting feature is that with Virtuoso you can create Web services from existing SQL Stored Procedures, Java classes,

C++ classes, and 'C' functions as well as create dynamic XML

documents from ODBC and JDBC data sources.

This is an enormous product and implies a serious commitment on the part of adopters due to its scope and range of services.

Virtuoso is enormous by virtue of its architectural ambitions, but actual disk requirements are

Apple's benchmarks under fire ZDNet Jun 25 2003 7:13AM ET

[via Moreover - ZDNet]

OpenLink Software has provided an Open Source benchmark utility that support Mac OS X, Linux, and UNIX. Thus, if mission critical database oriented performance is what is most relevant to your needs (as opposed to Photoshop) then simply download either one, or both of the following:

OpenLink ODBC Bench (you can test TPC-A and TPC-C like performance of the G5 and compare against other platforms) via ODBC)

OpenLink JDBC Bench (same thing using JDBC)

It continues to amaze me that the fundamental implications of corporate data access remains misunderstood by all parties in the ITsphere. How can any organization afford to be ambivalent about where data is stored, and their ability to transform this data into information and knowledge (ultimate competitive advantage)? Data is the most valuable company asset (we even had data in the enterprise before computers!).

Mac OS X is attempting to make a serious push into the enterprise, but how can this be taken seriously if solving one of the biggest problems in the enterprise today isn't a flagship item driving the enterprise marketing strategy? The excerpt below simply sums this up:

One of the new, albeit virtually undocumented features included in Jaguar is ODBC, or Open Database Connectivity. ODBC allows programs to connect to databases from different vendors using the same set of connectivity protocols. This allows for simplified database programming as well as database access from programs that normally would not allow such access. For instance, with ODBC you can use Excel to get data from MySQL, or you can use FileMaker to get data from Oracle.

From article titled Open Database Connectivity in Jaguar by Andrew Anderson

Open Database Connectivity is the only mechanism today that will enable any application to connect to any database without compromising choices across the following lines: Operating System, Programming Language, Desktop Productivity Tools, and Database Engine. All alternatives fail in one of the listed areas, with the ultimate destination being the painful realization that you are down a technology cul-de-sac (and these cost money via integration and data access quagmires).