Chris Shiflett: Planet Chris

NHIN Direct: Open Healthcare Records and Government as a Platform - O'Reilly Radar

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:50:26 GMT

In my advocacy around Government 2.0, I've been focused on the idea that government should act like a platform provider rather than a complete solution provider. That is, government should lay down rules of the road, create core functionality that others can build on, and then let the private sector compete to flesh out the offerings. You'd never think it from the right-wing media hysteria around the administration's health care initiatives, but some of the best thinking about minimal gove...

Reverse chronological order comments - Roger Johansson

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:43:59 GMT

Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I don’t get why some sites display reader comments in reverse chronological order. It seems especially popular on newspaper sites, which also for some reason tend to use paging for comments. I think the combination of reverse order and paging makes trying to follow discussions very frustrating. Still, since more and more sites seem to display comments this way I guess there are some people who actually prefer comments displayed backwards, so it is probably h...

Cache Machine: Automatic caching for your Django models - Simon Willison

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:35:32 GMT

Cache Machine: Automatic caching for your Django models. This is the third new ORM caching layer for Django I’ve seen in the past month! Cache Machine was developed for zamboni, the port of addons.mozilla.org to Django. Caching is enabled using a model mixin class (to hook up some post_delete hooks) and a custom caching manager. Invalidation works by maintaining a “flush list” of dependent cache entries for each object—this is currently stored in memcached and hence has potential rac...

Using Parameter Pollution and Clickjacking to Aid Anti-CSRF Bypass - Robert Hansen

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:06:22 GMT

It’s been a while since I’ve talked about Clickjacking, with only a few exceptions here and there. Mostly because I haven’t seen it much in the wild - at least not yet. But there’s still a lot of research out there to be done. I got an interesting email the other day that talked about a way to use parameter pollution (or a mix of URL parameters and POST) to create a condition where you can defeat CSRF tokens: The technique, found by Lava Kuppan describes a scenario...

Module Bootstraps in Zend Framework: Do's and Don'ts - Matthew O'Phinney

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:55:55 GMT

I see a number of questions regularly about module bootstraps in Zend Framework, and decided it was time to write a post about them finally. In Zend Framework 1.8.0, we added Zend_Application, which is intended to (a) formalize the bootstrapping process, and (b) make it re-usable. One aspect of it was to allow bootstrapping of individual application modules -- which are discrete collections of controllers, views, and models. The most common question I g...

Hackvertor and JSReg - Gareth Heyes

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:55:13 GMT

I’m not a developer any more so I find it difficult to update the experiments I’ve been working on but I managed today to upload the work I’ve done with JSReg and update Hackvertor. They are both integrated closely together because Hackvertor allows untrusted Javascript using JSReg. The recent upgrade to JSReg allowed me to upload the Hackvertor changes I did a while ago, it is now very nice and easy to share code between users. At the moment registration is disabled but I ...

Listing Published Pages In Habari - Bedrich Rios

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:58:51 GMT

For the past few months, I've been using Habari to power my site, and so far the experience has been a good one. But, sometimes the documentation in the wiki lacks code examples and is therefore difficult to parse. Thankfully, the Habari community provides its users with several support channels to...

YQL Geo library – all your geo needs in pure JavaScript - Ajaxian

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:04:15 GMT

I just finished doing some talks on geo hacking (slides are available here) and how to use some of the Geo technologies Yahoo and Google provide as part of a University gig in Atlanta. As a lot of the students liked the idea of APIs like GeoPlanet and Placemaker but had a hard time getting their head around them I thought it a good idea to build a small JavaScript library that does the job for them. I give you the YQL Geo library (and its source on GitHub). Using this library you can do th...

ModSecurity Handbook shipping soon! - Ivan Ristić

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 14:29:09 GMT

It's been an adventurous journey, but we are nearing a major milestone: the official publication of the first book published by our publishing company, Feisty Duck! We've just received a batch of ModSecurity Handbook paperbacks and we're enjoying them in all their glory. Two further batches are on their way to our warehouses (one in the US and one in the UK), from where they will be shipped to early adopters. (If you're one of the early adopters, you will soon get an email fr...

How crowdsourcing helped Haiti's relief efforts - O'Reilly Radar

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 14:25:00 GMT

Tech-minded volunteers quickly pitched in with a variety of communication and data services in the days following the Haiti earthquake. One company -- crowdsourcing platform CrowdFlower -- repurposed its service as a text-message translation tool to aid Mission 4636. CrowdFlower founder and CEO Lukas Biewald shares his story in this guest post. Before January 12, I knew little to nothing about Haiti or the role of crowdsourcing in disaster relief. My company, CrowdFlower, offers a crowdsou...

Popular Science Archives - Jeffrey Zeldman

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 13:51:23 GMT

Popular Science has partnered with Google to offer its entire 137-year archive for free browsing. Posted via web from Does This Zeldman Make My Posterous Look Fat? ...

Automate EC2 Instance Setup with user-data Scripts - Simon Willison

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 12:31:50 GMT

Automate EC2 Instance Setup with user-data Scripts (via). I knew about EC2’s user-data feature—what I didn’t know is that the Alestic and Canonical images are configured so that if the user-data starts with #! the instance will automatically execute it as a shell script as soon as it boots up (after networking has been configured). ...

The Jungle Book, Part 3 - Rich Bowen

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 12:09:45 GMT

The Jungle Book, Part 3, in which Mowgli hunts Shere Khan and returns to the pack.Listen to it HERE, or subscribe to my podcast.

Four short links: 11 March 2010 - O'Reilly Radar

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 11:00:00 GMT

Digital Inclusion: How Do You Tell? -- [N]either means nor skills are simple binary states. A while ago, I was talking to a young man looking for a job, and asked him why he didn’t look online. Because it’s two buses to get to the public library and you only get half an hour, was his reply. Or being in a library myself and watching an older man asking a bit tentatively if he could use one of the computers and being firmly told that he could book a slot for three days time. H...

SVG Wow! - Ajaxian

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 10:35:01 GMT

Erik Dahlström and Vincent Hardy have put together a cool website, called SVG Wow!, that showcases SVG doing things you didn't expect SVG can do: There are alot of unique demos on there. One of my favorites uses SVG, HTML5 Audio, Web Fonts, and YUI to play music accompanied by flying animated lyrics (Chrome and Safari only): There are lots of other great samples for you to play with and study! ...

Bangkok Unrest - Matt Mullenweg

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 07:26:04 GMT

In celebration of my arrival in Bangkok the opposition party is apparently planning a million person “red shirt” rally. Exciting! On the bright side, “The UDD [United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship] can only afford to keep its protest going for three to five days. If the government has not fallen by that time, it will have to withdraw and draw up a new strategy.” I always pick the best times to travel. (Mom, don’t worry. I’ll stay safe!)...

Ext JS 3.2 beta: stores, components, transitions, and themes - Ajaxian

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 06:12:05 GMT

The Ext JS team have announced the 3.2 beta which includes new components and goodness. Take the animated DataView transitions for example: On top of that, the release includes: Multiple sorting and filtering on Ext.data.Store Composite Fields Slider improvements Toolbar plugins: ToolbarReorderer and ToolbarDroppable New Accessibility Theme: compliant with Section 508 of the Disabilities Act. Quality Assurance: Unit Testing: over 180 bug fixes and enhancements over 3.1 ...

South by Twenty Ten - Jeremy Keith

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 23:15:11 GMT

I’m about to head off to Austin for South by Southwest, the annual Bacchanalian geek festival. I’m speaking on a panel again, but this year, the emphasis is very squarely on having fun. MJ very kindly asked me to represent the British contingent on her How to Rawk SXSW panel. It will be a fun, if somewhat bittersweet affair: Brad Graham was also going to be on the panel. Ol’ bastard Death has put paid to that. Southby won’t be quite the same without him. But while th...

http://www.agencycharlie.com/work/ - Patrick Reilly

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 22:16:56 GMT

http://www.agencycharlie.com/work/ http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&hs=2aU&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&q=180+Varick+New+York,+NY+10014&oq=&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=180+Varick+St,+New+York,+NY+10014&gl=us&ei=pheYS-2OLoHmswO02PQ_&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CAcQ8gEwAA http://bit.ly/beMsVi

ConFoo - PHP in the Enterprise - Paul Reinheimer

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 21:24:43 GMT

I just finished my PHP in the Enterprise talk at ConFoo, Slides are available here: PHP in the Enterprise - ConFoo March 2010

Gov 2.0 invades Harvard: A report from #gov20ne - O'Reilly Radar

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 20:00:00 GMT

Last Saturday (March 6), several hundred folks gathered at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government to spend the day discussing open government. O'Reilly's own Laurel Ruma was one of the organizers, and she sends in this report: To geeks, bar camps are nothing new. But what we're seeing is a surge in civic-based camps, including Transparency Camp , Participation Camp, Change Camps in Canada, City Camp, Congress Camp, and the ongoing Crisis Camps. However, there is one overarching topic tha...

The End - Web Standardistas

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 19:55:28 GMT

It is, indeed - View Source - the end.

End of Transmission - Web Standardistas

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 19:44:30 GMT

Ominous though it looks we hope this doesn’t spell the end of the ever excellent Grafikcache.

About Face - Web Standardistas

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 19:28:34 GMT

Once again, Richard ‘Poster Designer Extraordinaire’ Weston, of Ace Jet 170, has come up trumps with a beautifully designed poster for our forthcoming screening of ‘Typeface’. Tickets are still available though they’re going fast. You should get yours now to avoid disappointment....

My SXSW - Jeffrey Zeldman

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 17:13:11 GMT

It’s that time again. Spring and pheromones are in the air, and 11,000 web geeks are about to descend on beauteous Austin, TX for our industry’s version of the TED Conference plus Spring Break, SXSW Interactive. Along with nearly all of Happy Cog, I’ll be there. Join us, won’t you? Friday, March 12, at 3:30 PM, come to Battledecks 2010 in Room 18ABCD, where I’ll compete against the likes of Avery Edison, Ted Rheingold, Mike Monteiro, and Seoul...

True Self - Jeffrey Zeldman

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 16:41:11 GMT

Happy Cog’aoke 2 / Lesson Four: ‘Over the Top’ from Happy Cog on Vimeo. See all the videos on OK! Happy Cog’aoke, and join us in Austin for the best party of SXSW. ...

Multiple Partners - Jeffrey Zeldman

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 16:22:46 GMT

Happy Cog’aoke 2 / Lesson Three: Multiple Partners from Happy Cog on Vimeo. See all the videos on OK! Happy Cog’aoke, and join us in Austin for the best party of SXSW. ...

An intriguing use of lambda functions - Eli White

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 14:47:44 GMT

I’ve been working hard on Goodsie.com lately trying to bring it to launch. It’s been great being in on a new PHP project from (near) the beginning, as it frees up a number of things. One of those, is the fact that I can be using PHP 5.3 and all the new features that come with PHP 5.3. While I’ve used my fair share of the short-cut ternary already (?:), the bigger win for me, are the Lambda functions with scoping (anonymous functions). I found a very specific use out of th...

What We're Reading - New York Times

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 14:38:25 GMT

It's time for another roundup of links from NYT developers and Open blog readers. This week features lots of JavaScript-oriented links (not that there's anything wrong with that).

We're about to scratch the real-world data itch - O'Reilly Radar

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 14:00:00 GMT

Since virtually all of my work is done on the web, I've grown accustomed to granular information. Even a casual look at web traffic reveals insight. I can see the topics that strike a nerve with visitors. I can pick out new or unusual traffic sources. I can even see how usability and design influence click-throughs. Yet, all that goes away in the real world. My parents, for example, have owned the same retail store in the same location for more than 20 years. They have strong relationships ...

CSS3 Please! Instant results… Thank You - Ajaxian

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 13:39:24 GMT

Paul Irish and Jonathan Neal have created a fun example of various CSS tweaks that you can make, and see the results instantly. CSS3, Please! lets you play with fancy new rules such as: border-radius box shadow gradients rgba support in backgrounds transforms font-face Really nice way to make tweaks inline in the page..... nicely done. Hope to see some other examples out there :) ...

Mowgli's Song - Rich Bowen

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 12:57:25 GMT

I've finally finished recording part three of The Jungle Book, in which Mowgli hunts Shere Khan. Perhaps I'll get it edited some other morning this week.Here's a preview - Mowgli's Song, That He Sang At The Council Rock When He Danced On Shere Khan's HideListen HERE or subscribe to my podcast.Now I'll have to find something else to record to keep the boy happy....

Back to blightly - Mind Hacks

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 12:00:00 GMT

Apologies if updates are a little irregular, as I'm currently on my way back to the UK for a three week visit. This is largely because I've been asked to speak to the 'All-Party Parliamentary Group on Scientific Research in Learning and Education' about the evidence for whether computer games are damaging kids' brains. I kid you not. I shall also use the opportunity to catch up with the fantastic research group I'm associated with at the Institute of Psychiatry, but I'll largely be sleepin...

HTML Minification - Ajaxian

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 11:14:51 GMT

Good old Kangax has been playing with HTML minification and has shared his new tool in an early stage. What does it do? Kangax has forked John Resig's HTML parser which parses the HTML and sends that into the Minifier. This has rules that do things like whitespace optimization, comment removal, and collapsing boolean attributes (e.g. disabled="true" -> disabled). He also has a linter going: While working on minifier, I realized that oftentimes the most wasteful part of the markup is not wh...

Four short links: 10 March 2010 - O'Reilly Radar

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 11:00:00 GMT

The Future of Book Publishing Business Models (Stephen Walli) -- some good thoughts about the book publishing industry and ebooks. When does Amazon create the iPhone/Android app and the programme that will allow bookstores to receive a cut of every Kindle edition they sell? I scan the book's in-store barcode with my smartphone, and I get the Kindle edition delivered, and the store gets its cut. Why is this different in concept than Borders on-line store being run on Amazon, or any of the i...

Harmony: Canvas Drawing Tool - Ajaxian

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 09:50:44 GMT

Harmony is a new drawing tool, a HTML5/Canvas experiment with great potential. It provides some unique brush styles, and can produce some great-looking charcoal pencil style sketches, among other things. Better to try it out than explain it in words. Creator Mr. Doob (Richard Cabello) explains how he used Canvas to make it darker the more you draw over it: The whole thing is quite modular so I can keep adding more brush styles whenever I get inspired. During the process I found out that, ...

Fuck. Yes. - Web Standardistas

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 09:37:43 GMT

Jason Kottke sums up the trailer for Tron Legacy in just two words: Fuck. Yes. Short and sweet.

Perl one-liner to sample your Mac's voices - Andy Lester

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 05:29:51 GMT

I've been following stories about Roger Ebert's new voice, which a company has made so that they can apparently plug it into his Mac. In his appearances on camera, the voice he's been using is the Mac "Alex" voice. What other voices does your Mac have? Here's a Perl one-liner to play them. From the Terminal window, paste this in at the prompt: perl -le'for (@ARGV){m{/(\w+?)\.SpeechVoice};' \ -e'$_=$1;s/([a-z])([A-Z])/$1 $2/g;' \ -e'print qq{say -v "$_" This is $_};}' \ /System/Lib...

YUICompressor’s CSSMin - Stoyan Stefanov

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 05:14:44 GMT

Honored to be a part of the YUI project, I am now helping with the maintenance of the CSSMin part of the YUICompressor. My changes are now part of the trunk on github, so I'm official. Next on the agenda is documenting the thing, so that's what I'll try to do here, maybe in a few posts. You know, divide and conquer. PHP, Java and a JavaScript port Originally written in PHP by Isaac Schlueter and ported to Java by Julien Lecomte, CSSMin got a JavaScript port by yours truly some time ago. Beca...

In the Exploratorium's distorted room - Mind Hacks

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 03:54:46 GMT

The San Francisco Exploratorium is the Mind Hacks of science museums - every exhibit is hands on, giving you the chance to experiment with and experience for yourself scientific principles. Obviously, one of my favourite exhibits was a psychology demonstration, one based on a classic visual illusion known as the "Ames' Room". We've a small model of this in Sheffield, which I use when teaching PSY101, but the Exploratorium's "distorted room" is full size demonstration of the effect. Here's m...