Gmail-man over Wave (en oh ja, nog paar invites te krijg)

In de reeks “laat het schrijven maar aan slimme mensen over”: Paul -Gmail- Buchheit bespreekt Google Wave.

From what I’ve seen, the realtime aspects of Wave are both the most intriguing, and the most problematic. I think the root of the issue is that conversations need to be mostly linear, or else they become incomprehensible. […] Wave puts the conversation into little Gmail-like boxes, but then makes them update in realtime. The result is that […] the chronological linkage and flow of the conversation is lost.

en nog:

I don’t know what Google has planned for Wave or Gmail, but if I were them I would continue improving Wave, and then once it’s ready for the whole world to use, integrate it into Gmail [to] give it a huge userbase, and partially address the “email is universal” problem. They could use MIME multi-part to send both a non-Wave, HTML version of the message, and the Wave version. Wave-enabled mail readers would display the live Wave, while older mailers would show the static version along with a link to the live Wave.

Lineariteit in Wave tegen de chaos en integratie in Gmail tegen de eenzaamheid. Ik hoop dat er daar in Mountain View nog iemand naar Paul (die Friendfeed opstartte en sinds de overname dus bij Facebook werkt) luistert.
Kwestie van die eenzaamheid, ik heb dit weekend nog een paar nominatie-slots gekregen. Vertel me in de comments op m’n blog waarom ge per se op Wave wilt en wie weet krijgt ge één van die 7 Wave invites van mij. En ja, als ge er een haiku van maakt of als ge mij op een andere manier kunt entertainen (tip: een Ukelele werkt altijd), dan maakt ge natuurlijk net iets meer kans …

As found on the web (November 30th)

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Frank mag nu ook naar zijn dansend dochterken komen kijken :).
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Frank heeft een kloteweek in het vooruitzicht. Waar staat die fast-forward knop als je hem nodig hebt …
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Liked 2 videos.
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Shared Common lands.
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“iPhone developers are stupid!”

steve says: may iphone devs burn in appstore hellI’m not really a fan of blogposts that are mere quotes, but forgive me while I post this beauty from “Apple is not evil. iPhone developers are stupid” by Peter-Paul Koch on Quirksmode;

The fundamental problem on the iPhone is not Apple’s App Store approval policies, but the iPhone developers’ arrogant disdain for Web technologies.
[…]
After ten years I am fucking tired of the “Web development is not real programming” bullshit that the arrogant bastards in “real programming” are spouting because they’re too frightened to learn something new. Fuck those condescending, ignorant, self-important, stupid, blind, fearful pricks. Fuck them real hard. Where it hurts.
And fucking them real hard where it hurts is exactly what Apple is doing right now.
That’s why I changed my mind. That’s why I’m cheering Apple on. I hope the App Store approval process sticks around for a loooooooong time.

How to crash Firefox with FoxyProxy

FoxyProxy LogoIn this brief HOWTO I will describe the procedure to crash Firefox using the great FoxyProxy add-on.

  1. Check if your employer mandates the use of a filtering proxy for web-access
  2. Find a way to circumvent that proxy, regaining full-internet access
  3. Breach corporate IT-guidelines by installing Firefox
  4. Install FoxyProxy, add both proxies and enable “AutoAdd” (make sure to ignore the vague warning about “significant delays” in page loading times) to automatically use the alternative proxy for forbidden pages
  5. Open a new tab, go to gmail.com and wait for Firefox to freeze completely (if your browser complains that some script is taking too long to finish, just click on “continue”)

(Disclaimer: I provide no guarantees that this will actually work, I never watch porn and I take no responsibility if your browser does (not) crash)

Chrome, Opera to support html5 webdb, FF & IE won’t

HTML5’s WebDB is one of the building blocks to create offline-enabled webapps. It allows web applications to store data in a local database and it is as such an important part in Google’s push for mobile webapps as an alternative for native mobile apps. The spec (although not finalized) is already implemented in Safari, Safari Mobile and in the Android 2.0 browser.
So WebDB will take the world by storm, won’t it? Well, pretend you didn’t read the title of this post and let’s look at some excerpts of the meeting minutes of the W3 Web Applications Working Group Teleconference of 02 Nov 2009 for more info on the state of WebDB. Charles McCathieNevile (Opera) had some good news to share:

At opera, we implemented web db […] it’s likely we will [ship it] as people have built on it

and Google’s Ian Fette joined in:

We’ve implemented WebDB … we’re about to ship it

So that’s great news, no? We can expect WebDB to arrive in Chrome and Opera! OK, so what about Firefox and MSIE? Microsoft, represented by Adrian Bateman, stated:

We don’t think we’ll reasonably be able to ship an interoperable version of WebDB

Well, that doesn’t really come as a surprise does it? No WebDB in MSIE, but surely Mozilla will support this great spec? But Jonas Sicking’s point of view might be slightly shocking to some:

We’ve talked to a lot of developers, the feedback we got is that we really don’t want SQL […] I don’t think mozilla plans to ship it.

Sorry, come again? Does that mean that Firefox will never support window.openDatabase()? Nope, they probably won’t and they provide some valid concerns (see also Vladimir Vukićević’s blogpost) in a mailinglist-discussion between Mozilla and Apple-engineers shortly after the meeting minutes were published. Summarized and simplified their objections boil down to two issues;

  • in order to have a webdb standard, you also have to specify (and standardize) the SQL-language to query that database, the question is what SQL-dialect to standardize on.
  • as the current implementations are all SQLite-based (including Google’s and Opera’s), the spec would have to describe the very specific SQL-dialect that SQLite uses (and maybe even of a specific version of SQLite)

Although I doubt that web-developers don’t want to do client-side SQL at all, writing a spec that almost mandates the use of a specific version of a specific product (even if it’s open source) can indeed be hardly considered the goal of w3.org’s standards creation process.
So back to the drawing-board for yet another spec? Based on the webapp group’s meeting minutes, Web SimpleDB (or  “Nikunj”, after the name of the Oracle-engineer behind the idea) is considered a worthy alternative by at least Mozilla, Opera and Microsoft. Let’s hope that a consensus, a finalized spec (it’s in draft now) and the first usable cross-browser implementations will arrive soon.

As found on the web (November 17th)

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Voorspelling 2010: offline is het nieuwe online

failmailAf en toe loopt het mis in “the cloud” en dan durven nochtans doorwinterde digitale nomaden al eens klagen over de onbeschikbaarheid van hun online tools, terwijl eeuwige web2.0-twijfelaars hun grote gelijk -dan toch tijdelijk- bewezen zien.
Misschien moeten die mannen en vrouwen toch eens kijken naar de offline-ondersteuning die bv. Gmail, Google Reader, Google Docs, Google Calender, Zoho, Mindmeister en Remember the Milk bieden? En misschien moeten de webbouwers onder hen hun klanten die mogelijkheden ook beginnen verkopen? Want ik voorspel: 2010 wordt het jaar van offline-enabled webapps, mobiel maar even goed in de desktop-browser!

As found on the web (November 10th)

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Frank snift, snottert en snuit.
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Shared New order.