Spilling the Beans
June 3rd, 2010
Morten Kaltoft (@owix) informed me of problems with my short domain name setup, Google punishes double content posting, and it appeared I was doing so.
After some searching, i found a helpful post by Gruber. Now any request on the short domain “cph.cc” will redirect to the longer “copenhagencocoa.com” with a proper 301 response. It took some time to get working, since I have never messed with mod_rewrite before, nor regular expressions, if you are experiencing similar problems for your domain, you can add this at the top of your .htaccess file:
#Rewrite short domainRewriteEngine OnRewriteBase /RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www\.)?shortdomain\.com$RewriteRule (.*) http://longdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]
A run through of the code might be in order, the first two lines are mandatory, the third line is the condition for the execution of the fourth line.
‘%{HTTP_HOST}’ fetches the domain the user requested, if it matches the appending regular expression, the fourth line will be executed.
The appending regular expression requires some explanation. The ‘^’ signifies the beginning of the expresion. The ‘(www\.)?’ signifies that the expression will return true regardless of a prepending ‘www’.
‘shortdomain\.com’ describes the domain we are trying to match, and the concluding ‘$’ ends the regular expression.
The reason we write ‘\.’ instead of just plain ‘.’ is that the dot-character is reserved in regular expressions, it signifies any single character, by prepending the backslash we ensure that we are only looking for the dot-character.
The forth line will replace the entire URL ‘(.*)’ with the the new domain, the $1 inserts the tail of the URL (anything after the TLD). ‘R=301′ sends the proper HTTP response (moved permanently), and the L ensures we do not execute any following rules, this is to avoid daisy-chaining rule execution, if other rules are present in the .htaccess file.
May 31st, 2010
Tomorrow (1st of June) there is traditionally NSCoder Night, but one of my friends has just finished his first album, and is hosting a release party!
I am going to attend the release party, and everyone from NSCoder Night is most welcome to join as well.
The venue is Tjili Pop, and the artist is Tristan Hawke (Dennis Kruse), the party will kick-off at 20:00.
May 27th, 2010
The High Court of Denmark ratified the decision to censor The Pirate Bay, the foundation has been laid for the Great Firewall of Denmark.
Some politicians disagree with the state of things, Linda Kristiansen a candidate for parliament understands the importance of net neutrality, and I believe there are more like her.
I would love to start a movement, that profiles politicians who want to ensure net neutrality in Denmark, if you in any way could assist, please throw me an email on me at aronallen dot com.
May 25th, 2010
Remember NSCoder Night this evening (25th of May 2010), 19:00 at Café Retro Knabrostræde 26 Copenhagen.
Bring your Mac and code with friends.
May 18th, 2010
The Pirate bay has faced some tough waters this last week, it’s recent closure, and reopening confirms that they stick to their tag line: “The Most Resilient Bit-torrent Site”
In Denmark The Pirate Bay is blacklisted and the High Court will decide this Thursday if ISPs are obligated to filter the internet. The current blacklist is easy to circumvent, all the user needs to do is change their preferred DNS server, something that can be done in seconds, on any connected device. Denmark also uses DNS blacklisting to combat child-pornography, though I believe we should rid the Internet of such things, there are more effective methods that do not only blacklist, but completely remove the content at the source.
The simple DNS internet filter is unsettling for more than one reason, if the copy-lobby wins this Thursday they will without doubt use the verdict to blacklist more than just The Pirate Bay, giving carte-blanche to a private organization to ‘filter’ the internet is a dangerous route to take, mostly because they act in the interest of their pockets, and not the interest of the People. The greatest flaw of the DNS filtering is that the government gives people the impression that the state can control what is on the internet, even though this is far from the truth.
The copy-lobby chose The Pirate Bay for one reason, their ideology and the reality they represent, that the People in lesser and lesser degree pay heed to copyright, some knowingly, and some unknowingly, and that the laws and rules regarding copyright are deprecated.
The copy-lobby is payed by the big content, and big contents core business has been distribution, the problem is that anyone can distribute so the distribution systems of big content have become irrelevant. The record industry have often said they protect the artists, though more artists are stepping forward, giving us a more nuanced picture. Recently Mick Jagger gave his view of the record-industry in a BBC interview.
But I have a take on that — people only made money out of records for a very, very small time. When The Rolling Stones started out, we didn’t make any money out of records because record companies wouldn’t pay you! They didn’t pay anyone!
Then, there was a small period from 1970 to 1997, where people did get paid, and they got paid very handsomely and everyone made money. But now that period has gone.
So if you look at the history of recorded music from 1900 to now, there was a 25 year period where artists did very well, but the rest of the time they didn’t.
The Times posted an interesting graph some months ago, showing that artists revenue is growing, despite piracy, because they are investing their time in live-performances rather than producing records, when performing live the artist gets the lions share of the income.
Piracy is only a sign that something is wrong in the market, a sensible business would stimulate the need, though stay on the right side of the law, the industry has failed to do it so far on a global scale.
The Fear of Radicalization
During the Muhammed-crisis, every politician was confirming that nothing could limit our right to expression, yet afterwards some of the same politicians are discussing blocking access to ‘terror’ sites, as if we have the right to expression as long as we agree with the status-quo in Denmark, even though the proposition was made with the best intentions, it fails on several areas. Contrary to child-porn, it is very difficult to guess a ‘terror-site’ visitors intentions, they could be looking for information for a project, they could be curious of the current threats against our country, or they could (most unlikely) be interested in joining the movement.
The worst argument for the filtering of terror sites, was to avoid radicalization of the youth, I am of the belief that the Internet is all about de-radicalization, it can connect you with a stranger who lives in an entirely different context than you, and you can learn of this persons life, views, and ideas, the access to information is the one thing that truly can de-radicalize our opinions on any subject. True radicalization takes place in isolation, and isolation is the product of excessive filtering.
I will attend the hearing, if there is enough room, for what will be decided there will effect my generation profoundly, my main news-source is the internet, and I want the internet to remain free (as in libre) despite all of its flaws.
I hope the politicians in Denmark will start discussing the idea of net-neutrality, as it is the core of the freedom of expression they are vying to protect. Net-neutrality is idea that The Pirate Bay viciously fights to defend.
May 10th, 2010
Remember CocoaHeads this Tuesday, the keynote will be: “How to write more robust apps with less code using proper inter-
app messaging” by Fredrik Olsson.
CocoaHeads is in Malmø this time, so head over to their Google Group to sign-up, and get address details.
Since there is CocoaHeads, there will be no NSCoder Night this week as usual.
May 6th, 2010
I believe the rarely noticed development tool Dashcode, will play a significant part in Apple’s Flash-conquest. Apple has invested a lot of time in Dashcode, and it already features some cool ready to use templates, that can transform RSS-feeds into web applications. Apple’s commitment to SproutCore, and the recent launch of SproutCore Touch, indicates that something huge is going to take place at WWDC, where creative professionals are going to get their hands on the best content-creation tools for HTML5, without the need to be programming wizards.
Adobe promised today that they would create the best HTML5 tools and that Flash and HTML5 are not mutually exclusive, I just do not believe Adobe is going to do such a thing soon, and Apple is getting tired of waiting.
Apple is launching iAds soon, and they have not mentioned how creatives will be able to make compelling iAds, I believe the answer is Dashcode, and it will have the incredible price of free.
May 6th, 2010
Traditionally humans were required to use mechanical peripherals to interact with computers, mice, joysticks, and keyboards, have been a part of your digital life. Mechanical peripherals have enabled us to interact with computers in complex ways, but I believe the complexity of our well-established interaction-model is leaving a lot of users behind, the mouse might seem like the most natural tool for you, but it still has a learning curve, and though it may be fast to learn the basics, the initial step is to frightening for many.
What I see in the personal computer industry, is a movement towards natural interaction, a peripheral less world, where interaction is direct, and computers use your motion, your voice, and your touch, to interact with data in complex yet natural ways.
Apple is at the forefront of this movement, their focus on accessibility has not only made their products better for the disabled, but it has also benefitted the majority of users in indirect ways, VoiceOver and VoiceControl are two great examples of technologies that are being actively used by people who are ‘enabled’.
We are at a primitive stage in natural interaction, using mostly touch and gestures to communicate with our devices, but the products that are being developed and adopted by the market are slowly gaining the ability to understand language, intentions, and emotion.
Whether you like it or not, the computer interface is becoming more human, in some ways it is fascinating, and in some ways it is terrifying.
May 4th, 2010
I find Apple’s recent acquisition of Siri quite interesting, I already find myself conversing on a basic level with my iPhone when biking, phrases like “Call John Appleseed”, and “Play Album Dark Side of The Moon”, I can do a lot while still focusing on the traffic.
My iPhone mostly interprets my orders correctly, and responds by repeating my intended action, with Siri I believe Apple wishes to expand the idea of the conversing computer even further, and possibly open up the Voice Control features for 3rd party applications, confirming Apple’s commitment to producing accessible devices.
The iPhone is my first experience of a natural interaction with an AI, though it is not perfect, and very limited, I do not feel stupid giving my phone voice-commands, because most of the time the iPhone interprets my intentions correctly. Apple is creating what many tech-prophets have foreseen, a personal AI or “The Conversing Computer”, they are doing this while their competitors are still having a hard time making their touch-screens work properly, the hard truth is that no company is working harder on an iPhone killer than Apple, and if tide does not turn soon, Palm will not be their only victim.
May 3rd, 2010
I recently traded my iPhone 3Gs for a Google Nexus One (temporarily), I am not going to review the handset, but instead give my perspective on why the current Android cooperative cannot cope with Apple’s successful iPhone.
The greatest difference between Google and Apple, is that Google strives to make great open products, and that Apple strives to make great consumer products. I am an avid user of many Google products, I prefer Gmail over MobileMe, and I believe that Google has a much better take on online services than Apple.
The interesting thing is that both companies are entering each others market, Apple is entering the cloud with the same mindset that led their hardware to success, and Google is entering the OS/Hardware scene with the ideals of openness that has benefitted the Mountain View company profoundly.
Even with many successful products, both companies have a hard time establishing themselves in the markets they recently entered.
My experience with an Android OS device can be boiled down to the lack of focus, there is no single Android experience, it is a fragmented platform that has a hard time finding it’s identity. Normally when i use a Google web-product I can sense the identity straight away, they are the company that made ‘open’ work, Gmail is a great example, any day I could dump all my emails to another provider, but I do not want to switch because Gmail is the best. The thing that made Gmail so great was not it’s openness alone, it was a focused team of Google engineers all working on one common goal, to make email better, and they did.
Android is a whole other story, even though Google leads the development of the Android OS, they cannot make radical decisions without hurting the Alliance, and the handset-companies use their time on customizing the Android OS, to differentiate themselves from their competitors, without committing most of their achievements back to the Alliance. Google is having a hard time, because none of their partners truly understand the two-way relationship in open source, and the handset companies could never dream of writing a significant line of code, that could lead a competitors device to success.
If the rest of the industry wants to beat Apple, they should truly join forces, and begin giving back to a great project Google has sat in motion, even tough Apple is big, and has a lot of talent, they would have to work really hard if all their competitors were developing in unison.
Open can work, Ubuntu is proof of that, and the reason Ubuntu works, is that they have focus and control of their product, as soon as users can sense focus in a product, the product will gain focus in the market.
Apple has focus, and they are still leading the smartphone pack, if Google want’s to catch-up, they need to take control and unify the Open Handset Alliance, without the fear of being evil.