The 6th incarnation of Elmer's blog
BetaNews | MSN Testing Personalized ‘Start’ Page
“Microsoft’s MSN unit is testing what it calls an “incubation experiment” of a new “start” page for Web browsers. The site, located at Start.com, serves as an aggregator for RSS feeds and allows users to custom tailor its content.“
I took a look at this yesterday and really like the clean, simple look. Would be an interesting thing to do.
Internet Explorer Developer Center: Fiddler PowerToy – Part 1: HTTP Debugging
“Have you ever found yourself wondering how Microsoft Internet Explorer interacts with your Web application? Have you encountered a strange performance bottleneck that you can’t track down? Are you curious about which cookies are being sent, or what downloaded content is marked as cacheable?Microsoft Fiddler can help you answer these questions, and many more. Fiddler is an HTTP debugging proxy that logs all HTTP traffic between your computer and the Internet. Fiddler enables you to inspect all HTTP traffic, set breakpoints, and “fiddle” with incoming or outgoing data. Fiddler is much simpler to use than NetMon or other network debuggers because it exposes only HTTP traffic and does so in a user-friendly format.
Fiddler includes a simple but powerful Microsoft JScript .NET event-based scripting subsystem flexible enough to support a broad array of HTTP debugging tasks. Written in C# on the Microsoft .NET Framework, Fiddler is available as an unsupported PowerToy for Internet Explorer.“
Does a lot of the things that the developer extenisons to Firefox do, but as a system proxy. You can even set Firefox to proxy thru it to get the same info. It is interesting to see the way sites can react to the different browsers. Download Fiddler here.
[teknoids] OpenExpert 0.1.1 release
“OpenExpert.org (http://www.openexpert.org/) is a web based, easy to use Expert System. It is being developed by the University of Victoria Legal Clinic as a diagnostic / teaching tool to help students navigate technical areas of the law (such a divorce), more quickly, and with fewer mistakes. That said, the project is still under heavy development, with new features being added, and refinements being made. Please see the roadmap for the project for further details on planned features and enhancements (http://www.openexpert.org/documentation/roadmap.html). You can see a demo of the system here: http://www.openexpert.org/demo/ “
Rich is a friend of ours and a frequent Teknoids poster. He demoed this project last June at the CALI Conference. It is cool and I can think of a thing or two to do with now that I have the code:)
The Freshmeat announcement is here and the SourceForge summary is here.
Knoppix 3.8 and UnionFS. Wow. Just Wow.
“Klaus has released the latest version of Knoppix, 3.8, to the crowd at CeBIT 2005. This version includes the normal round of updates including the 2.6.11 kernel by default, KDE 3.3.2, and Firefox and Thunderbird instead of Mozilla. The exciting news, however, is the addition of UnionFS. UnionFS stacks your Knoppix ramdisk on top of the read-only filesystem on the CD, the effect being that you can apt-get install, and otherwise modify all of the files on the system as though they were all writeable. Here I’ll go over why I think this is going to change Knoppix in a major way.“
Of course it doesn’t appear that Knoppix 3.8 is actually available for download yet. I hope it is released soon since it sounds a good idea to build CALIoppix 2 on top of this.
Computer Laboratory – Xen virtual machine monitor
“Xen is a virtual machine monitor for x86 that supports execution of multiple guest operating systems with unprecedented levels of performance and resource isolation. Xen is Open Source software, released under the terms of the GNU General Public License. We have a fully functional ports of Linux 2.4 and 2.6 running over Xen, and regularly use it for running demanding applications like MySQL, Apache and PostgreSQL. Any Linux distribution (RedHat, SuSE, Debian, Mandrake) should run unmodified over the ported OS.“
Library Stuff
“Structured Blogging is exactly what it sounds like: Having more structure to a blog entry (and more importantly, the syndicated feed behind it) in order to go beyond just reading it in your browser or aggregator. It allows people to connect with others in more ways than ever. It allows for more organization (and then manipulation) of blog entries.“
I need to take a look at this to see how it goes beyond (or if it goes beyond) categories in a blog. Suddenly meta data seems to be all the rage.
BetaNews | Novell Packs Apps Into SuSE Linux 9.3
“On a high level, SuSE Linux Professional 9.3 is built atop the Linux Kernel 2.6.11, using either KDE 3.4 or GNOME 2.10 as its default desktop environment. As opposed to retail versions of Windows, SuSE can take advantage of the latest PC processors, including the AMD Athlon 64 and Intel Extended Memory 64 Technology.Novell has provided Linux users with a catalogue of end-to-end desktop applications. Productivity software, Internet tools and multimedia viewers are all included. Reflecting today’s hostile Internet environment, the package also integrates system security: a firewall, spam blocker and virus scanner.“
BetaNews | Novell Ships Joint Linux, NetWare Server
“Narrowly missing its February target release, Novell on Thursday announced that Open Enterprise Server has begun to ship. The server combines Novell’s rewritten NetWare core with SuSE Linux Server 9, providing customers with a central console to manage a mixed environment of NetWare and Linux servers.Open Enterprise Server rolls file, directory, print, management, and messaging services into a single package. The server is compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SuSE Linux Enterprise Server distributions.“
Mozilla Drops Development of Namesake Suite
“The Mozilla Foundation late on Thursday reversed course by announcing that it is no longer planning to develop major updates to its original application suite.Instead, the open-source project will focus its efforts on its stand-alone Firefox Web browser and Thunderbird e-mail client, the foundation said in a “transition plan” posted to its Web site.”
SuSE Linux gets desktop search – ZDNet UK News
"SuSE Linux Professional 9.3 will include Beagle, an open source desktop search tool that makes it easier for users to find various types of files, including documents, emails, IM conversations and code. Novell claims to be the first Linux provider to have packaged Beagle into its desktop application."For the first time anywhere SUSE Linux Pro includes Beagle, the innovative open source desktop search tool that can access everything on your desktop," Novell said in a statement."
SUSE 9.3 Pro is due out momentarily.