freshmeat.net: Project details for interface preprocessor for PHP
“The ippfp library provides methods for creating and rendering user interfaces in PHP independent of output format. It features XHTML, GTK, ncurses, and PDF. You can create input masks such as forms for databases.“
DittyBot: iTunes on Your Phone
Plastic Bugs – Home of the ‘Original’ GIMPshop » Blog Archive » DittyBot – An Applescript Adventure
“You send a text message from your mobile phone to your POP email account. Your text message should contain the keywords of a song title (and possibly an artist name) that you want to hear. DittyBot finds that email (he checks Mail every 45 seconds) and copies the song name into a text file. The song name is then copied into iTunes and a playlist is created from your search. Next, DittyBot loads Skype (the internet telephony app) and begins calling your mobile phone. Your mobile phone rings and when you pick it up, you should hear your song start playing in all its compressed glory. “
Picked this up via MAKE blog. While it is all about using AppleScript for cool iTunes stuff, it does provide a bit of a road map on how we can get Classcaster to route around complex menuing issues. Following the Dittybot map, a student sends an email to a specific address including the name of a lecturette in the message. We grab this via POP, extract the info, locate the MP3 and then have Classcaster call the number associated with the from address and play the lecturette. Will require user registration, but it could be a cool feature.
New Linux Kernel Release
InformationWeek > New Linux Release > Linux Fans Greet New Kernel Release, Version 2.6.11.12 > June 14, 2005
“For users of the kernel, the more interesting feature may be the addition of Xen, which is a virtual machine monitor, which enables multiple operating system images to execute concurrently on the same platform. Xen is included with the 2.6.11.12 kernel as a standard configuration option, meaning it doesn’t have to be added in manually via a cumbersome series of packages and patches.“
Sun Set To Release OpenSolaris
Sun releasing OpenSolaris technologies via open source | InfoWorld | News | 2005-06-13 | By Paul Krill
“OpenSolaris will run on Intel (Profile, Products, Articles) x86 and 64-bit AMD Opteron systems as well as on Sun’s Sparc hardware. Sun hopes to leverage the operating system by offering support packages. The company also is hopeful that seeding the market with OpenSolaris will boost demand for its portfolio of other products, Goguen said.“
When released, OpenSolaris will be available here.
Building a Linux Virtual Server Cluster
NewsForge | Building a Linux virtual server
“With the explosive growth of the Internet, the workload on servers providing Web, email, and media services has increased greatly. More and more sites are being challenged to keep up with the growing demands and are employing several techniques to avoid overloading their servers. Building a scalable server on a cluster of computers is one of the solutions that is being effectively put to use. With such a cluster, the increasing requests can be easily managed by simply adding one or more new servers to the existing cluster as required. In this article we will look at setting up one such scalable, network load-balancing server cluster using a virtual server via the Linux Virtual Server Project.“
OS3Grid: active javascript tables and grids
freshmeat.net: Project details for OS3Grid
OS3Grid is a Javascript component that allows users to create and use spreadsheet-like grids on a Web site. It is both flexible and powerful, with a rich set of features and an easy to use API for the developer. OS3Grid works well with Mozilla 1.6 , Internet Explorer 5.5 , and FireFox.
Dave’s New Outliner Is Web-ready
Scripting News: 6/6/2005
“What would be the point of having an editor whose native format is OPML and not have it natively push outlines up to the web?“
Well that is a good question. I hope getting the outline on web enables fun features like including other outlines and ‘buddy lists’ of shared outlines. A good networked outliner can really be useful:)
phpCollegeExchange: Higher Ed Student Focused Portal
phpCollegeExchange
“PhpCollegeExchange is a full fledged college community website. It is designed to be the unofficial portal, put up by students for their fellow college students. It is code that has been used and abused so bugs are found and fixed as new features are added. Installation and customization still requires a little knowledge of PHP and HTML.“
A little tooling up and this would work for any given law school. Or how about if CALi runs one for all law students. They could certainly sell each other books and apartment rentals could break out by city.
Knoppix 3.9 Released
Slashdot | Knoppix 3.9 Released
“The Debian-based live-cd Linux distribution Knoppix has been updated to version 3.9. Among the most notable changes are the update to kernel 2.6.11 and the inclusion of OpenOffice 2.0 BETA and KDE 3.4. This is likely the last single-CD version of Knoppix before the split into ‘Light’ and ‘Maxi’ versions. Torrent links here.“
Google Testing Sitemaps
BetaNews | Google Testing New Indexing Approach
“Since its inception, Google has tried to make sense of billions of Web documents and using advanced in-house technology. But now, Google is experimenting with a new concept to better its search crawlers: ask webmasters for help. The program, called Google Sitemaps, could revolutionize how the Web is indexed.Specifically, Sitemaps will direct Google’s Web crawlers to content that has been changed or added, removing the need for Google to spider an entire site. Sitemap files are based on XML and contain a number of parameters to aid in the search indexing process.“
The Google Sitemaps FAQ is here.