World: r3wp

QNX isn't as much of a player in the Japanese automotive market, 
AFAIK.

http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/lfcamera/<--- very interesting 
camera: take a picture, then choose the focus you want in the image.

ubercool, I want one!

Steve Dekorte (Io's creator on his visit to Ruby's User Group)


I dropped by the San Francisco Ruby User Group meeting the other 
day. There were about 100 people there and all the presentations 
that I caught were basically non-technical overviews of dotcom sites 
that people were making with Ruby on Rails. Also, there were a ton 
of folks looking to employ Ruby programmers. In contrast, the last 
Python meeting I went to at Stanford was about 20 people and all 
the talks were fairly technical. 

Dynamic languages really seem 
to be taking off. Perhaps they just need to provide solutions (as 
Rails does for quick web programming) instead of merely technology 
for people to see the direct benefits and make the leap. 

Another 
interesting bit, I heard that Ruby's Mongrel webserver uses globally 
locked threads. I'm curious to know don't they use proper continuations 
and asynchronous sockets as Io does (with coroutines and async sockets)?

the most interesting thing I heard about Io at that meeting was that 
I could run it on my cell phone!

Gates to work 'part-time' in MS by 2008.
Ozzie step up to be Chief Software Architect.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060616/tc_nm/microsoft_dc_8

Great, a guy that basically was "granted" Lotus Notes (he did not 
invent it for you young guys) is now in charge of MS....amazing...fitting..

You want the billion $ idea for digi-cams?


Add a SLIM and BEAUTIFY button that will alter the taken pictures 
in real-time.

: )

Sometimes known as a "lens cover"

digital beer goggles. I like it.

Well he did manage to take groove from a good idea into a bloated 
behomoth. I think that's how he got MS attention ;-)

Yup...

http://irows.com/<--- way better done than google spreadsheets I 
think

http://www.wetpaint.com/<-- has Reichart debunked this one yet? 
:-)

First off, I haven't used a spreadsheet in 10 years, and second.. 
wetpaint.com generates a boring web 1.0 page  (here's the wetpaint 
anime page http://anime.wetpaint.com/
C'mon people.. think out of the box.

Latest framewerks development uses ajax to send a change to the DB.. 
if that change requires authentication, the server <i>pushes</i> 
an authentication widget to the page (no refresh), the user fills 
it out, and carries on. very smooth.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060619/ap_on_sc/norway_arctic_seed_vault

A form of tech...

Perhaps they should be archiving old computer languages and source 
code?

Opera 9 released - http://www.opera.com

Will give a try to their widgets ....

Tried widget touchTheSky - very nice ... transparent window, borderless 
... kind of cool looking mini-apps View should excel at ....

instead of View desktop, we could look how do the organise their 
widgets in opera ...

.... and create plug-in version for all browsers supported :-)

trying goal 06 widget - it is rather slow ... imo VID could outperform 
it .... just who is gonna do nice graphics elements for us? :-(

71 KB of js, css, xml, html code to get weather plug-in .... imo 
could be done in fraction of size of rebol code ...

sorry, weather plug-in = weather widget ...

Are they compatible with Tiger widgets?

I may be missing the trend here, but 'widgets' do look and feel a 
bit gimmicky.  For one, they break the window metaphor -- I guess 
that is why Apple set them apart from the regular Tiger desktop. 
 Are there any widgets that have transformed the online habits of 
anyone here?  (non-rhetorical)

http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/ui/demo.mspx-- Preview of 
Office '07 UI.  Interesting changes...

'Thirst for knowledge' may be opium craving

 -- http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-06/uosc-fk062006.php
I think I'm a junkie.

Widgets are good if they are done right. I like the dictionary widget 
for example in Tiger. If I'm watching a movie and someone says a 
word I don't know, I press F12, type the word, get an explanation, 
press F12 again without every pausing the movie or manipulating windows.

The MacOSX Tiger implementation lacks a few things. It can be very 
slow since all widgets need to be prepared with webcontent before 
they can be used. There's no proper threading.

New MS Word is missing the File, View, and Insert menus.... that'd 
take forever to get used to...

Are there any widgets that have transformed the online habits of 
anyone here?


1) Customizable real-time stock price monitor ... significantly faster 
and more versatile than traditional website equivalents.

2) Broadband usage monitor - aggregates several metrics into a simple 
display.


Widgets that are well-designed focus on solving a specific [informational] 
need. The advantages they have over traditional websites with the 
same content are:

a) Immediacy
b) Conciseness
c) Customizable

Could those examples be better addressed with an appropriately designed 
Reblet?  (I guess I make the reblet/widget distinction as 'reblet' 
= 1. behaving as a traditional application within the OS, in that 
it appears in the taskbar/dock and can be alt/cmd-tabbed to and 2. 
contained within an OS window, opaque though perhaps containing custom 
styling)

Again, not a rhetorical question -- I see both as filling a similar 
space, I think Carl described it as 'disposable applications', easy 
to author, easy to use.  Widgets look good, but break the windows 
metaphor, substituting gimmicky aesthetics for consistent user experience. 
 I'm not sure there is value in the effort to emulate them over 1. 
making it easier to communicate with the services that drive them 
(better XML handlers, more flexible HTTP protocol, I18N, whatever), 
2. making reblets more accessible (within the OS, not the browser), 
3. providing an effortless base for making reblets look and feel 
good (still a chore, despite the capability of the view engine).

On point 3, I know that is a goal of RebGUI, but the project underlines 
that it is not trivial to set up a UI of OS/typical Ajax quality 
out of the box.

Ah. But the windows metaphor may get on your way, wasting pixels, 
could you imagine an airplane control with windows interface? I think 
widget are good as Ashley pointed out. The approach apple took seem 
appropiate too.

I think that Viewtop was not bad idea - but when you look at public 
section, you see rather static/dead/non-live section .... it is like 
with rebol site Reichart was working on .... it needs to show evidence 
of life ...

it is not in widgets itself, but in categorisation per author, per 
theme, newest, most popular, etc etc. We have kind of categorisation 
experience with our librarian team ...

Chris - rebgui looks old, dull to me. Look at ad-aware look for e.g. 
There are two things - typical application, as db-stuff, etc., you 
want them to be system friendly. But I don't want my cool widget/reblet 
to look like W9X app ...

my long time experience - since the times of amiga, is, that if it 
catches your eye, you have already won typical user's attention. 
Sadly, but the rest is often "a technical detail". We miss some gfx 
guys here, as Chris is surely pressed for the time. View engine is 
created for non-typical designs, yet we were not successfull in utilising 
it ...

That's what I'm addressing -- it takes over much effort to make a 
good looking reblet UI, compared with say, making a Ajax-based app 
with HTML + CSS (not to say it's easier to provide app logic).

you are kidding, no? how can be Ajax and css easier to produce? in 
CSS you have to do it nearly manually (you said so to me some time 
ago :-)

hmm, maybe I missunderstand .... what might be easier is to provide 
final look, as css is independent to gui elements ...

but it should not be the problem to do the same using rebol ... you 
remember Gateway's RT catalogue? Looked very nice for such kind of 
app ...

Creating CSS manually is not necessarily a barrier.  I love the control 
it provides.

You would think.  But you have to dig deeper to get comparable results.