SilkTide

I saw Ben Poole's post regarding his SiteScore on Silktide and thought I would try it out.

It says I rank #1 on Google when searching for bonj. I already knew that, but there aren't many people looking for bonj, so it's not the same as say being #1 when looking for Lotus or something like that.

Marketing: 8.7
Design: 8.9
Accessibility: 5.6
Experience: 8.5
User rating: No votes (Click here to be taken to a screen to cast your vote)
Overall Summary score for this website. 8.1

I don't actually rank 9.9 as the graphic up above shows. My real score graphic represents the 8.1 and is towards the bottom on the right-hand side.

Right now I rank 401st on the Top SiteScores. As more of you run yours that will probably drop.

Updated: 12-8-04 You won't see it at the bottom right-hand side anymore as I removed it when their site appear to be having some problems. It looks like they are working now, but I am not going to bother adding it back.

Little Joe's Atom feed.

I somehow missed or forgot that Joe Litton had a Typepad blog as well, LittleJoe - Joe Litton's brain droppings.

I was reading a post from his JoeLitton.net blog and followed a link in one of his post over to the typepad blog.

I thought, okay, if I want to check it out I can throw it into Bloglines, but did not see an RSS or Atom feed, just the Syndicate this site (XML) link, which is to a .rdf file, which asks if I want to open or save it.

Having no clue what a .rdf file is I cancelled and looked around a bit. I found a page on TypePad and aggregators, which appeared to say no RSS.

Okay, I now know that an .rdf stands for Resource Description Framework and that one can find out more in many places, listed below are a couple:

W3C
O'Reilly xml.com

I guess I am fitting the "management" role more and more. I wasn't out to learn about .rdf, simply looking at easily subscribing.

Didn't really see anything right off under resources on Typepad. They do have a Help area that might have some info in it, but I am not a member, thus couldn't look there.

I finally did what I often do when it comes to the web, I just tried something. I tried a few of the common file names that one finds associated with subscription files. Bingo atom.xml paid off. I don't need to look at the .rdf thing anymore, but if you want more info you can follow the links above.

I had also fallen victim to habit. Ouch, maybe I am fitting the "complacent user" role more and more as well. I simply looked for the feed on the page. If I would have simply put the blog url in Bloglines it would have found both the atom and .rdf and allowed me to simply click to subscribe to either one. Bloglines rocks! That method will probably be the first I take next time. I am guessing the .rdf file if downloaded would be used by many of the aggregators that one loads on the desktop. As I started with Bloglines, as it met my biggest requirement of keeping all things up to date for me in one spot, not having to load the software on each machine that I use was nice too. Bloglines comes through again, so I don't have to worry about the .rdf for now.

Missouri State Penitentiary

The original entrance of the prison.

My youngest son and I toured the Missouri State Penitentiary yesterday as did thousands of others. The open house was held for the public both Saturday and Sunday (10/23/04 & 10/24/04). It was interesting to see the other side of the walls. I am a native of Missouri, and although I did not grow up in Jefferson City, I remember being driven by the State Pen a few times as a kid and it does tend to make an impression on one. Having lived in Jefferson City for the past 17 years and driving by it many times in adulthood, it still makes an impression on one today. Seeing the inside and hearing some of the history makes it no less of an intriguing place, although there is still no question, it is not a place one would have wanted to be confined to. It is hard to believe that just 5 weeks prior there were men serving their time in the same areas that we were walking through, yet their existence had to be much different than ours, as my son and I walked freely about the grounds. We were not allowed to enter every building and every location, yet we were not subject to being written up for stepping out of bounds either and were allowed to freely leave the grounds.

If interested you can find pictures that I took while inside here on my photoblog, A Visual Life. (I got them posted, but still need to try to get some text with the photos.)

Below are the dates that were highlighted on a page handed out to attendees. The prison was decommissioned last Thursday. It had been the oldest working prison west of the Mississippi River prior to its closing. The 1,355 inmates housed at the facility were moved to the new Jefferson City Correctional Center on September 15, 2004.

Missouri State Penitentiary Timeline

1831 Governor John Miller suggested a prision be built in Jefferson
City to help ensure the city remained the seat of Missouri Government.

1833 January 3rd, the Missouri House of Representatives passed a bill
25 to 24 to establish and build a penitentiary in Jefferson City.

1834 Construction began on the firs State Prison west of the Mississippi River.

1836 February 29th the first inmate, Wilson Eidson was received from
Green County.

1841 Officer William Ballard was killed during an escape attempt.

1842 In May, the first femail inmate, Amelia Eddy, arrived from St.
Louis County.

1861 Generals John C. Fremont and U.S. Grant placed union troops in
MSP shops making war materials.

1885 Six major shoe factories and numerous other industries,
including the largest saddletree factory in the world, contribute to
the Jefferson City economy utilizing inmate labor.

1893 MSP is considered one of the most efficient prisons in the
county housing and feeding inmates for 11 cents per day. (I wonder if
this was a typo and should have been country, but not sure.)

1900 The Jefferson City Star Tribune declared the Missouri
Penitentiary the "Greatest in the World". By then, on average, 2,200
convicts lived behind the walls.

1905 Officers John Clay and Ephriam Allison are killed by inmates
escaping from the penitentiary. Deputy Warden R.E. See is seriously
wounded and died a few months later.

1911 February 5th, MSP convicts save thousands of documents when the
Missouri State Capitol is destroyed by fire.

1918 Officer Eli Jenkins died in the line of duty.

1922 Inmate Harry Snodgrass gained the title of "The Most Popular
Radio Entertainer". He was known as "King of the Ivories" in his
radio broadcast from the dome of the capitol building.

1924 Officer James Hart is killed during a daring escape.

1925 Charles Arthur "Pretty Boy" Floyd arrives at MSP.

1932 MSP becomes the largest prison in the United States with 5,200 inmates.

1937 Missouri Gas Chamber constructed by inmates. It would be the
location of 40 executions.

1940 The first school in the penitentiary began with over 700 inmates in class.

1950 Chares A. "Sonny" Liston enters MSP and learns to box.

1954 A major riot occurred focusing national attention on MSP.

1955 The first classes were conducted for new officers. The 40-hour
course was the start of formal training for new staff.

1967 MSP is called "The bloodiest 47 acres in America" by TIME magaine.

1975 Lt. Harold Atkinson is killed in the line of duty.

1979 COI Walter Farrow is killed in the line of duty.

1989 MSP death row ends with all Capitol Punishment inmates moved to
the new prison at Potosi.

1991 The name is changed from Missouri State Penitentiary to the
Jefferson City Correctional Center.

1995 The nations first drug and alcohol treatment therapeutic
community is started in a maximum security prison.

1998 A replacement facility is approved by the Missouri Legislature
and Governor.

2001 Groundbreaking for the new JCCC occurs and the name of the old
institution is changed back to Missouri State Penitentiary.

2003 The first Victims Ceremony of its kind in the nation is held
with inmates honoring crime victims inside the penitentiary.

2004 On Wednesday, September 15th, 1,355 inmates are moved from the
Missouri State Penitentiary to the Jefferson City Correctional Center.
The Missouri State Penitentiary served Missouri as the oldest prision
west of the Mississippi River over 168 years.

Presidential Candidate Technology Agenda

Seeing the article Republican Web Sites Downed by Mystery Outage got me to thinking.

I know there has been discussion about which candidate would be better in respect to Technology.

Maybe seeing what kind of infrastructure they have in place to keep their campaign websites up would give some insight. Hmm, a simultaneous attack on both JohnKerry.com and GeorgeWBush.com and see which site handles it better. May the best man, I mean site, win. Of course, I am only joking. I would not condone taking down a website, nor attacking one, but on a serious note, November 2nd will be here before you know it. Do your part as a United States citizen and get out and VOTE on November 2nd! If you have missed getting registered in time to vote in the national election, go ahead and take the time to register so that you can vote in other elections.

Watch out - Microsoft in the driver's seat

Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) could take on a whole new meaning.

See the Car crazy: Microsoft in the driver's seat article from News.com.

A bit funny - Microsoft Junk Mail

I posted the other day about my recent MSN Support experience. I notice in my Junk E-mail folder today that I received an e-mail from Microsoft Customer Support. Based upon MSN's own Junk E-mail filter it threw this e-mail into the Junk E-Mail folder with a High Junk Rating. Kind of funny. It was a Microsoft Customer Satisfaction Survey.

Notes

I had short notice to supply some text for an architecture document on Lotus Notes.

As is often the case, you have to think about who is going to be reading it and that many people only think of Lotus as an e-mail competitor of Outlook/Exchange. The product listed on the document was Lotus Notes and I know that in the committee members minds, they were not simply thinking of the client.

Think about the average user or manager. You may hear them refer to the product used in-house for e-mail, such as Notes, Outlook or Exchange (I don't think you hear many mention Domino as a lot of technical people still use the terminology of Lotus Notes for both sides; client and server). I think you hear the other two used more interchangeably in shops and not always in the correct context. Such as Outlook is down, when it is actually Exchange that is down. You don't often hear the average user talk about the applications that they use, but if you do, it is often by the name or Acronym of the system, such as CMS (Case Management System). You usually don't hear them say CMS that runs on Notes or .NET, so the platform supporting the applications are not commonly referred to in the user community. This of course, doesn't help others realize that there is more to the Lotus Notes/Domino environment than just e-mail. It is sometimes funny talking to people when the light goes on and they finally realize that it is more than just e-mail. Oh well.

The information on the document submitted is to be concise, which once you start talking about all the things Notes/Domino can do it is kind of hard to do. I told the committee member I could have gone into so much more as I didn't even get into the licensing aspects, iNotes, etc.. and she said that what I gave her was perfect. Below is what I submitted.

Description:

Many refer to the collection of Lotus clients, Notes, Designer, and Administrator, along with the server, called Domino, as Lotus Notes. Lotus Notes is a product of the IBM Company, Lotus Software.

The Notes Client is the end user client, somewhat similar to Microsoft's Outlook client, although it is not simply limited to working with electronic mail. It can also be the interface for Lotus Notes applications. Many Lotus Notes applications can also be accessed via a web interface (browser).

The Designer client is the tool used by application developers to develop applications in the Lotus Notes environment.

The Administrator client is used for administering accounts and the server.
Although some Lotus Notes applications can be run locally, most environments serve them from a Domino server. In regards to electronic mail Lotus Domino is similar to Microsoft Exchange, except that it also hosts other Lotus Notes applications. Domino can also serve Lotus Notes applications via it's own web server.

In a nutshell Lotus Notes is a database-driven groupware application that manages information for many users on the network to communicate, collect, and share database documents following a client/server model.

Note: Lotus Notes databases are not relational, they are a collection of unstructured data, combined with various design elements that allow you to access and manipulate that data.

Rationale:

Allows for one environment to do electronic mail and collaborative applications.

Benefits:

The benefits of Lotus Notes is that it encompasses the following components:
• e-mail
• calendaring and scheduling
• address book
• web server
• programming
• database
• applications
• groupware/collaboration
• granular/multi-level security (databases, views, forms, sections, fields)
• replication

If I would have had time I would have posted for input from others. Besides what little I already know I did pick up some of the info from Julian's nsftools site. Thanks Julian.

I imagine I could have bugged Ed, as he is rather quick to respond, but as mentioned I was limited on time and why should he have to find stuff that I should take the time to find.

I did do a quick search on the Lotus site, looking for a quick consice Lotus definition of Lotus Notes, but didn't find what I wanted. As a lot of States have Architecture Committees looking for similar information on products, it might be handy for Lotus to have architecture documents on their site that capture a lot of the information that these committees are looking for in a quick and easy place to find.

Of course, if I would have simply taken the time and browsed through Lotus.com instead, I would have found more information as the site is more friendly for browsing than it once was. Simply clicking on one of the "What we sell links" would have been better than a search. The IBM Lotus Notes page has benefits listed right on it:

• Integrates your most valuable messaging, collaborative and personal information management (PIM) resources—like e-mail, calendar, to-do list—to allow users to access them while connected with or disconnected from your network
• Gives users a single, unified access point to the tools, tasks and the people users work with - through the new Lotus Workplace for Notes welcome page Integrates Lotus Instant Messaging functionality to provide presence awareness and enable users to initiate chats with colleagues—without launching a separate application
• Maximizes responsiveness and ease of use through follow-up function and visual indicators to show users when they've forwarded or replied to e-mail messages
• Provides industry-leading calendaring and scheduling functionality, which lets users easily collaborate and schedule meetings with colleagues across the world
• Helps reduce total cost of ownership through minimal training requirements, end-user productivity enhancements and built-in management function like Smart Upgrade

It still might be nice to have a "Lotus (insert product name here) is:" or "What is Lotus (insert product name here)" page with brief descriptions in very basic terms for managers and end users not familiar with the products at all and link to further in depth info from there.

Lotus Notes is:
Lotus Domino is:
Lotus Workplace is:

I got my part done and hopefully the next person looking for info will have and take the time to browse the Lotus website for info.

Active Paper - Active Magazine - by Olive Software

It looks like Zinio could have some competition from Olive Software. There may also be others in this competition, but this one just came to my attention as I received a link to the digital edition of a magazine today and the magazine was an Active Magazine. Pretty slick. Zinio has a client that loads on your PC, you configure it for subscription downloads, etc, which is kind of nice as you have the mag on your PC and can read it at any time, even when not near a network connection, and you can keep it as long as you want (magazines can take up some up disk space - often 3-6MB per weekly periodical and I believe I have seen 25-30MB on some monthly ones). I imagine the Active Paper products are only available as long as those publishing the content keep it available online (This is simply an assumption, I haven't researched thoroughly.).

Here is an example of a newspaper via Active Paper Daily, The Washington Post - old copy.

Here is an example of an Active Magazine, Wireless Week.

Their products based on their ActivePaper platform include:

ActivePaper Daily®
ActiveMagazine
ActivePaper Archive®
AdLauncher
ActiveTearsheet
ActivePaper Platform
Olive's Enterprise Publisher

You can find out more about the company and their products here.

Hotmail Upgrade (upgradation) - MSN Support Lacking

I think I have mentioned before that I have an MSN Account. It is okay and has some nice features, but support is lacking. That seems to be a constant theme when I try to get support. I did not display her name. I figured I would follow up on the mail storage upgrade that never happened. The last I had read (e-mail or member services, I can't remember which, possibly both) it was to take place in September. It didn't happen. You can see the conversation below. Upgradation? I have never seen the word. Maybe a new Microsoft thing (maybe not - dictionary.com - the word spy).

I kind of take it that if I added an account she could get a new account added with the new account size. What ever happened to taking care of the paying customers first? I take it new accounts can be had now with the new limits although I believe I recently saw a post stating that it was advertised with the new limits, but someone created one and didn't get the new limit either. Oh well.

A new MSN Interactive Support session has started.
The visitor's chat pages have been loaded (Mon Oct 18 12:41:37 CDT 2004).
1. The visitor is still on Chat (Mon Oct 18 12:42:55 CDT 2004).
2. The visitor is still on Chat (Mon Oct 18 12:44:15 CDT 2004).
{Bonj} Chat says that it is in progress, just making sure it is working as nothing appears to be happening.
The MSN Interactive Support session has been accepted.
{N} [10/18/2004 10:45:07 AM]
{N} Thank you for contacting MSN Online Customer Service, my name is Natasha and I will be assisting you with your issue today.
3. The visitor is still on Chat (Mon Oct 18 12:45:50 CDT 2004).
{N} [10/18/2004 10:45:19 AM]
{N} Hello!
4. The visitor is still on Chat (Mon Oct 18 12:46:55 CDT 2004).
{Bonj} Hello
5. The visitor is still on Chat (Mon Oct 18 12:48:26 CDT 2004).
{N} [10/18/2004 10:48:20 AM]
{N} I understand that you would like to know when will the upgrade happen. Am I correct?
6. The visitor is still on Chat (Mon Oct 18 12:49:54 CDT 2004).
{Bonj} There was a correspondence or info on the member site at one point that it would take place in September. As that has come and gone I was wondering if I was missed or if there is a new date?
{N} [10/18/2004 10:50:40 AM]
{N} Bonj, the upgradation is still in process. You might get the upgradation by the end of this month.
7. The visitor is still on Chat (Mon Oct 18 12:51:23 CDT 2004).
{Bonj} If not, should I open another support incident?
8. The visitor is still on Chat (Mon Oct 18 12:53:00 CDT 2004).
9. The visitor is still on Chat (Mon Oct 18 12:54:39 CDT 2004).
{N} [10/18/2004 10:54:20 AM]
{N} May I know if you would like to open another account?
10. The visitor is still on Chat (Mon Oct 18 12:55:39 CDT 2004).
{Bonj} No, I don't want another account.
{N} [10/18/2004 10:56:47 AM]
{N} Bonj, I suggest you to wait by the end of this month. You will receive the upgradation to 250MB.
11. The visitor is still on Chat (Mon Oct 18 12:57:29 CDT 2004).
{Bonj} Okay. Thanks. Bye.
{N} [10/18/2004 10:57:23 AM]
{N} Thank you for allowing us to assist you regarding your concern, I hope you found our session helpful. For your records, I will send you a transcript of our session in an e-mail message. If you have any additional questions or you need additional information, please login again to speak with an Accounts and Billing specialist. We are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
{N} [10/18/2004 10:57:25 AM]
{N} Goodbye and take care.
12. The visitor is still on Chat (Mon Oct 18 12:58:59 CDT 2004).
The visitor might have closed or refreshed his browser.
Bonj has requested chat transcript to be sent
The visitor has ended the chat session.

Flight Simulator

Alan Bell mentioned an open source flight simulator, called FlightGear, in his post, "I believe I can fly". Looking at the site it looks kind of interesting.

My youngest son took a plane ride on 10/9/04, courtesy of the Young Eagles program. You can find out more about having your child participate, event dates, etc., via this area of the Young Eagles site.




The rides are free and my son enjoyed it. He flew in a Cessna Cardinal (seats 4 including the pilot). The pilots that participate give rides in their own planes. Many here were of the two seater kit plane variety.

Both of my sons took advantage of it a couple of years ago. At that time they flew in a Cessna 172 Skyhawk (also seats 4). The oldest one past on the oppurtunity this time (not sure it past the teenager test of being cool enough for him this time). If he would have known that there were going to be some teenage girls taking advantage of the flights, which there was, he might have changed his mind.

The Young Eagles program stems from priorities of the Experimental Aircraft Association.

Background

In 1991, the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) conducted a survey of long-time members to help determine the organization’s future priorities. Nearly 92 percent said EAA’s primary objective should be to involve more young people in aviation. The survey also showed that a flight experience, provided by a relative or friend, helped guide the respondents toward aviation. On May 13, l992, following several months of coordination by members of the EAA Board of Directors, EAA management, staff and volunteers, the Young Eagles Program was announced at a Washington, D.C., news conference.

Find out more on the background here.

Adobe Photoshop Album 2.0 Starter Edition

Another free (limited version) of Photo Organization Software. It is Adobe Photoshop album 2.0 Starter Edition. You can see a comparison of features versus the full blown Photoshop Album 2.0 here.

Publishing

I have seen others mention it. Not sure if it is just the volume they are having to deal with, but it does appear that publishing on blogger is slower these days. One can check to see if there are any known issues occurring on blogger on the status page. Note the links on the right of the page for known issues, RSS feed status, etc..

5.0.13a

I received and e-mail on Saturday mentioning the "Lotus Domino 5.0.13a Interim Fix Pack 1 for iSeries and zSeries". Of course, since I am off of the zSeries platform and off of Release 5 altogether it doesn't affect me. Yeah!

Vice Presidential Debate - Cheney / Edwards

It was politics as usual. Specific questions asked and different questions answered. I was not in debate, so I don't know all of the proper debate strategies, but tonight they could have saved a lot of time, as with most of these political debates, if they would simply answer the questions asked of them and move on. Why the need to ramble and use all of one's alloted time?

It gets old hearing the banter from both sides.

Being of the more web literate, the biggest faux pas of the whole debate that jumped out at me was when Vice President Cheney referred to factcheck.com, when many know he meant factcheck.org. Ouch!



I am sure it will help factcheck.com's hit count. I decided to follow up on factcheck.com and found the .com versus .org to be the biggest irony of all (the contrast of the two being as different as the old whitehouse.com versus whitehouse.gov). It turns out that factcheck.com redirects you to georgesoros.com, which has George Soros personal message, "Why we must not re-elect President Bush". Oops!



I hate to say it, but in my opinion the worst performance at the debate was from Gwen Ifill, the moderator from PBS. She allowed the candidates to control the debate. She did not have the candidates answer the questions she asked of them, she allowed them to take time when answering subsequent questions to address previous questions, and at one point even lost track of who was suppose to answer.

I also don't believe the personal level of questioning was in order for the debate. Was she trying to get them to attack each other?

Maybe they should have simply set the candidates across from one another and set the old rockem sockem robots down in between them and let them go at it.



Updated 10/6/04 @ 8:24am:

Factcheck.org caught the slip and posted about it here.

It appears that other News organizations are posting about the mixup today as well.

VP Debate

About time for the VP debate. Posted via e-mail via cell phone.

E-mail post #2

As it appears that blogger was having problems publishing. The
publishing did not get finished after setting it up to receive e-mail
post, before I had sent the e-mail post. As I did finally get it to
finish the e-mail post did go through even
after getting a delivery failure notification, but I imagine that
played into the posting delay, so I am sending this one as a test as
well.

Sent @ 5:49pm

E-mail post

I figured I would set my blog up to allow me to do the e-mail post.
As there does appear to be times that I can't post via the web, I
thought I might see if the e-mail will still post during those times.
I guess we'll see if it is a problem all the way around. It will be
interesting to see how quick the post shows up as well.

Sent @ 4:21pm

Free GMail Invites

Many others have done it, so I guess it is my turn. I have given a few out to friends and acquaintances, but not offered them openly. Now I am. Many blogs allow one to input their e-mail address behind the scenes. You can't do that here, so don't just post to this saying you want one. If you post you will need to include your e-mail address or send an e-mail to me requesting one at (remove the spaces):

bonjblog @ gmail.com

I only have 6 to give out. First 6 based on timestamp I see on post and/or e-mail.

Free Office Suite - OpenOffice

Don't forget if you need an Office Suite at home and can't afford the others (it would work at the office too, but may depend on where you work as to whether or not you are allowed to use it) or if you need something with a few more features than the free suite you got with a computer, OpenOffice is available for free and available for multiple platforms. Just a couple of interesting features: One-click export to PDF and Export to Flash.

Excerpts from features page:

OpenOffice.org 1.1 introduces the one-click PDF export feature that enables you to easily create PDF files without the need for any additional third party software. This feature makes exchanging documents in a standard "read-only" file format a trivial task. The creation of PDF files normally requires relatively expensive third party add-on tools. With OpenOffice.org this feature comes for free.

OpenOffice.org now can export presentations and drawings to the Macromedia Flash format (.swf). Thus, it's now possible to view presentations in a simple web browser that has the Flash plugin installed. Recipients and users of Flash presentations don't have to install a special viewer anymore in order to view a presentation.

Flickr

I read how much Bruce Elgort likes Flickr here. You can see his photos here.

It appears Esther Dyson does too. See post. You can see some of her photos here.

As I get more time I might have to check into it, but trying out new things as they come along or become more popular can be time consuming. I already have pics on my photoblog via Picasa/Hello, hp, nikon, imagestation, msn, and more.. Just what I need another place to put pics.

I got a comment from Ducky

As comments don't always jump out at one when they glance over a post I figured I would dedicate this post to a comment I received from Ducky.

I made mention in this post on September 24, 2004, that I do not hear much about Chandler anymore.

I also mentioned that I did not see much activity on the status reports site and wondered how it was going.

Here is what Ducky (Kaitlin Duck Sherwood, OSAF community organizer) had to say to that:

We've actually been working hard on Chandler. I'm not sure what you were looking at, but we've got status reports from the first part of 2004 at http://wiki.osafoundation.org/bin/view/Journal/ComprehensiveWeeklyStatusReports

I will admit that we weren't particularly good about reporting status for a few months this summer -- we've been struggling with what the best tools and process for consolidating status reports is -- but we now have what we hope will be a more efficient way of reporting. See
http://wiki.osafoundation.org/bin/view/Journal/CombinedStatusSnapshots

So what have we been working on? Lots and lots of infrastructure. It's hard to tell because there hasn't been much that has poked above the surface of the UI. (It's not like a building or a road where you get to watch for months or years as dirt gets moved, beams get put in place, concrete gets poured, facade gets installed.) We now have a cool repository in place, a network architecture (including basic IMAP/SMTP/WebDAV protocol support that allows easy sharing of data between users), tools for managing collections, and some really cool UI infrastructure.

We've also done a lot of work to improve and expand upon various open-source code bases that we depend upon. We've done a lot of work to improve wxWidgets and are working closely with the Twisted team, for example. We've wrapped the Lucene search engine codebase with SWIG to make it play nicely with Python; ditto for EGADS. We're working on a Python package for parsing and generating vCard and vCalendar files.

Are we done yet? No, not hardly. But we aren't dead yet, either. Not hardly.

-- Kaitlin Duck Sherwood, OSAF community organizer

The mistake that I made was going to the Status Reports page and first looking at the IndividualStatusReports, once I noticed that they looked to be out of date, I figured I would take another stab and looked at the SummarizedStatusReports, thus skipping the ComprehensiveWeeklyStatusReports, and getting the impression that not much was happening. Little did I know that if I would have simply clicked on ComprehensiveWeeklyStatusReports as well I would have found the real story.

It may be worthwhile making note of the links that are basically outdated, possibly removing them and/or as you mention the journal snapshots possibly being more efficient for reporting status, linking to them instead.

Thanks Kate/Ducky for setting me straight! Chandler is still moving along!

International Pickup

Come on now. I'll agree with the Commercial eXtreme Truck (CXT) label, but I would say it is a bit of a stretch to lump it together with all other trucks out there that are referred to as pickups.

Text accompanying the picture on International's site.

News: World’s Biggest Production Pick-up Truck To Be Unveiled

Your eyes don’t deceive you. It’s a pickup truck. From International. Which makes it much more than a pickup truck. It’s an International® CXT – born out of the proven International 7300 severe service truck used by professionals for the most rugged applications.

You can read a bit about it posted under news here or you can get more info (specs, brochure, etc.) here.

If you can call it a pickup then you probably need to add the Unimog as a pickup and possibly others.

Watching IBM or Lotus Like A Hawk

What's with that?

I see Watching Microsoft Like a Hawk.

I see Watching Google Like a Hawk.

I don't see a Watching Lotus Like a Hawk or Watching IBM Like A Hawk.

The 1st Bush-Kerry Presidential Debate

If you missed the Presidential Debate in the United States last night, that might mean that you were at your son's 8th grade football game and that you had volleyball afterwards. Doesn't matter, the DVR took care of taping it, but if you didn't get it taped either, you can read the transcript here.

eWeek EXTRA

Not sure if you got it or not, but in case you didn't and if you are interested in the most up-to-date news from the eWEEK Security Summit you can find it here.

Excerpts:

Oracle’s Davidson implores Summit attendees to shun weak software.

The hacks and cracks on IT infrastructure are starting to match the pace of inventing new ways to protect data resources. - Cameron Sturdevant

‘Cyberspace is increasingly chaotic, and the government is doing little about it.’ —RICHARD CLARKE