Melinda & Cristiano

Why are only now developers starting to really bring “push”-like services to the desktop? I mean: originally internet related services (like email and web pages) required the user to “pull” the data from the internet. Now recently there has been alot more development for creating some “push”-like content like widgets, gadgets, twitter, etc.

I am just amazed by this recent focus on “push”-like services while originally services like telephones and sms have always been push services. Has the technollogy really never been there for the internet or has there been a refusal to go push by developers?

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Want to setup your own openid on your own URL? This is how you can do this using the concept of delegation:

1. Go to MyOpenID and register your OpenID with your username (<ID>).
2. Put the following code in the header of the site that you ACTUALLY want to use as openid (for example http://myname.net):
   
<link rel="openid.server" href="http://www.myopenid.com/server" />
<link rel="openid.delegate" href="http://<ID>.myopenid.com/" />
<meta http-equiv="X-XRDS-Location" content="http://<ID>.myopenid.com/xrds" />

3. Don’t forget to replace <ID> with your own ID, and don’t forget the last line which is really needed for MyOpenID.
4. Now you can login to any ite with your own OpenID (for example http://myname.net)

Why would you do this? My reason is that this way I can simply change OpenID provider by just changing this piece of code. The advantage of this again is that if your real provider quits or proves to be unreliable, you can simply switch and still login at any site with your unique OpenID.

A obvious disadvantage is that your server that you use for this delegation code must be reliable. That is why I am thinking of moving this site to dreamhost.

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There are alot of interesting people here in London, including my new neighbour who will start working at Symbian in April. For his final project at university he made a VNC viewer for Symbian. The tool allows you to use your symbian phone to control anything running VNC server. Today he gave me a demo and I was really impressed.

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So, I managed to create a nice web-app in RoR in very little lines of code, and it even has user login! Now the real problem that I encountered is this: how do you deploy a simple web-app with RoR? I mean, I don’t want to put the code on SVN and then use some advanced system like Capistrano to deploy my app to 5 servers. I just have a Mac Mini with integrated Apache and 4 users that will use the product. How do I do a SIMPLE deployment?

It is just weird that an app that is so meant for developers with deadlines, it is very badly documented on how to do a simple deployment!

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I decided to take up Ruby on Rails (bit late, I know). First thing I noticed is that setting it up on a Mac beats setting up Django on a Mac. I haven’t really mastered it yet, but spend most of today trying to build a simple “grocery-list-manager” that would help me and my housemates to keep track of what is spend. I’m almost done and hope to post some screenshots soon.

For now I want to place some interesting links to get you started. First there is the Ruby on Rails homepage which has a few excellent screencasts to get you going. Don’t whatch them just once, because I noticed that even if you watch them after trying a project on your own you can still find new things. The other link is this quick overview of Ruby syntax and Rails by Patrick Lenz. Although not necessary, learning a bit of basic Ruby really helps you understand some things you would normally not be able to wrap your mind around. The last link is to RadRails (free), an Eclipse based editor with integrated browser and server. I think I prefer it above TextMate (not free) but I have just started.

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