Charl van Niekerk » Blog: May 2007

Main

Latest

Speakers for Garden Route Geek Dinner

Ok, so it's just less than 4 days before the dinner and we still need speakers. :)

Stii mentioned to me in a private conversation that he could do Microformats; I guess that's settled then. Stii is our Microformats guy for the evening. :) Taking the sudden (very overdue) popularity of the Semantic Web (now more commonly referred to as the latest buzzword on the block, Web 3.0, eish...) into account, this sounds great to me.

But now we need more people. I don't really want to be a speaker because I totally suck at public speaking, but hey, if need be I could do something. Possible topics:

Google Summer of Code
Web Accessibility
Hacking
Linux
Open Source
Security

Web accessibility might connect up with what Stii is talking about which is cool, but we don't want to go too much into one direction and leave the non-web-developers bored out of their skulls. Hackers are often misunderstood so I wouldn't mind clearing up the stereotypes. Hackers sitting at midnight hacking into the FBI - that is not what it's about. Could be an interesting talk. Linux & Open Source - yeah we probably heard it all before. Dunno if people want to hear about that again, but don't mind speaking about it. Security is a little vague - will have to zoom into something more specific but I don't really know if this might end up being too technical. Yeah, actually I think it will be. So that is probably out, then.

Only two interesting things I can think of would then be Hacking and the Summer of Code. But hey, the comments are open as always so please let me know what you would like to hear about! And please if you would like to volunteer to speak about something (before we ask you anyway haha) please comment and let us know!!!

And many thanks to Jayx for this fantastic logo I used in this post; he actually has quite a couple so I'll use the others as well next time.

Track the conversation on Afrigator: Garden Route, Geek Dinner.

CentOS, FreeBSD, ISOs & Freedom Toaster

Thanks to my friend Linoxxis, OpenWeb and the CentOS TENET Mirror, I managed to download all the CentOS 5.0 i386 CD ISO images over the last day and a half. I verified them according to their corresponding MD5 hashes and they check out, so it seems like we're in business.

Currently I am downloading the two FreeBSD 6.2 i386 CDs. Should have them by tomorrow. If anybody in the George area wants, please let me know and we can organise a meet-up.

I will be putting these together with Fedora Core 6 and Ubuntu 7.04 on the George Freedom Toaster soon. We are also going to have a Toaster Party this Friday afternoon/evening so that we can gather even more software. It seems like it will be a bring and braai scenario. More info to be released soon after the "venue" has been confirmed.

(Note to non-South African readers: "braai" is similar to "barbecue".)

I found some other very interesting resources while browsing this afternoon. Elastix seems to be similar to Trixbox in that it gives you a very easy to set up out-of-the-box solution for an Asterisk VoIP server. However, it also gives you a Jabber server and some other goodies. Worth checking out if you're into that kind of stuff.

I also discovered a very nice site Adminsparadise. Check out a quote from their front page:

Here you will find tutorials, how-to guides, and instructions for setting up an enterprise network using free open-source software.

Our goal is to show you how to setup your entire network using open-source solutions and save you a TON of money doing so.

And when we said entire network, we meant EVERYTHING including domain controlers, phone systems, email servers, file servers, backup servers, self-monitoring security systems...EVERYTHING!

Very nice, hey!

Anyway, time to go to bed. Tomorrow I've got a busy day ahead setting up firewalls and all kinds of other cool stuff. Word out!

charlvn.za.net updates

Ok, so charlvn.virafrikaans.com is officially dead and now unfortunately links to there are broken as well thanks to a hosting company with no "redirect compensation". However, charlvn.za.net is alive and kicking. Although the site still needs a lot of work, I updated it a bit. Previously only the front page was HTML 5 and all the other pages were still HTML 4.01 Strict. I now converted all the pages to HTML 5 making this my first site completely coded in HTML 5.

When I say "HTML 5", I actually mean that it validated according to Henri Sivonen's experimental RELAX NG 2.0 validator a few hours before writing this. But the spec is still work in progress so that might change. Good incentive for me to keep updating.

Something I have been complaining about a lot (especially being on African lines) is the spec being one massive document that is very slow to download. Now there's a version broken down into multiple pages which is much better for me.

So, all in all, exciting stuff. :)

PHP MySQL Extension: Invalid access to memory location

Currently, the equation looks like this:

Windows 2000 Server + Apache 2.0.59 + PHP 5.2.2 + MySQL Extension = Disaster

Every time Apache starts, I get an error telling me that c:\php\ext\php_mysql.dll cannot load because of Invalid access to memory location. Since I had a lot of issues with the PHP installer previously, I downloaded the ZIP file and am installing manually. I am using PHP as an Apache module, not through CGI.

I found a forum thread; some people seem to have the same problem with PHP 5.2.1. The interesting thing is that the php_mysql.dll file has exactly the same size as the php_mssql.dll file.

Does anybody have any advice? Had similar problems?

VirAfrikaans.com Hosting

I had a site with the original free virafrikaans.com hosting because my website was dual-language (Afrikaans and English). Since the project seems to have closed down, I wondered how long they would keep the sites on there. Today I checked my main site and it was completely wiped off the server. I did not get any notification or warning of this. Just a quick note to Vidronic Online to say that you suck bigtime; at least you could have had the decency to notify me; you could even have given me the option to continue paying. I will definitely never take any business to you if that's your style of operating.

I will promptly take my hosting elsewhere. Thank you.

(Just a note to clarify: The issue here is not the fact that they closed my site down; they have all the right in the world to do that. The issue is that they could have at least notified me first to give me ample time to organise my hosting.)

The 1% Rule

It's an emerging rule of thumb that suggests that if you get a group of 100 people online then one will create content, 10 will "interact" with it (commenting or offering improvements) and the other 89 will just view it.

- What is the 1% rule?

So then I guess we Bloggers are part of the 1% of online population. I wonder what causes some people to become bloggers and others to not become bloggers. Are some people just born bloggers and others non-bloggers or are all born either one of the two orientations?

Google Trends

Google Trends is quite interesting. Here are a couple of searches I tried:

open source (we got beaten by Sri Lanka, but second place is not too bad)
linux (we're not even on the list)
microsoft (we are third on the list! shocking!)
windows (second on the list! oh no!
vista (thankfully not on the list - maybe there's hope after all)
open source vs. microsoft (Microsoft is kicking our butts!)
linux vs. windows (actually not looking too bad, but still can do with a lot of improvement)
linux vs. vista (at least here we are kicking butt)
ubuntu (good for Norway; we have to settle for fourth place though - beaten at our own game)

How are your favourite topics doing? :)

Loudervoice

I just tried Loudervoice. The idea behind it is to easily allow people to post reviews on their blogs marked up according to the hReview Microformats standard.

The idea sounds really cool and I am very excited. However, so far I haven't managed to get it to work yet.

First I had to register. OpenID integration would have been cool here, but fair enough. After verifying my e-mail account, I had to log in again (why can't I be logged in automatically?) so I clicked on "Write a Review". I had to select a blog type and enter my Blogger username and password so that they can associate my blog with my account. I refuse to do this simply because I perceive this as a security risk. I therefore selected "other". I got an error so I filled in my blog address. Still got an error telling me Your URL didn't work, make sure it is correct.

Why can't I just get an interface to write my review and then copy-and-paste the generated markup to my blog manually? Afterwards I can give Loudervoice the IRI of my new blog post and they can go and index that to make it searchable on the site.

But in the interest of testing I therefore used a separate account and created a new blog for reviews.

After that I could easily write a new review. The interface is very simple, although in order to edit the HTML source I got a new pop-up window.

In general, I think the service is brilliant. However, for the security paranoid like me, there will have to be some extra options.

De Lille vs. Bloggers

Oh my goodness, first the Bullshit scandal and now De Lille is having her go at it in the post De Lille calls on government to regulate MXIT and Internet blogging.

ID President Patricia de Lille has called on Government to look into ‘urgently implementing legislation that will regulate MXIT and Internet blogging, where members of the public can with impunity slander and defame individuals and organisations they do not like.’

[...]

Another worrying development in cyberspace is the abuse of blogging, which allows anonymous individuals to post slanderous and defamatory comments with impunity about anyone they choose, without the legal consequences they would face in other more reputable print and electronic media.

[...]

‘Because the problem is that we couldn’t trace the author of the defamatory statements, we will also ask the NIA to investigate.

[...]

‘Our legal team has advised us that in terms of the law anyone who republishes, reprints or rebroadcasts defamation of this nature published on any blogging website, is liable for civil and criminal action.

‘The only way to put a stop to this is to use every legal option to hold not only the website, but also the perpetrator, responsible. This kind of thing must not go unchallenged,’ De Lille says.

I completely agree with Max's post Linkbaiting 101 for politicians though:

Has Patricia de Lille been to dinner with David Bullard lately?!..perhaps they share the same online reputation management consultant or social media PR specialist?

We had a very interesting discussion about Internet Censorship in South Africa on the Garden Route Forums though, so at least something good came out of it. :)

Just a note to all my loyal readers: I will be leaving this country sooner than I will be shutting up so watch this blog for much exciting action in the coming months. :)

Snow on Outeniqua Mountains

We are having exceptionally cold weather in George at the moment. Yesterday morning, I took the above photo of the peak of the Outeniqua Mountains.

Sorry for the photo being so dark; the weather made it that dark. :)

NMMU Advertising Showcase: Feedback

Wow, this post has been delayed for long but finally I'm getting around to it. The NMMU Advertising Showcase (I don't know of any official online IRIs to link to) has been a great success. Well done to all the organisers!

There were a lot of myXchange people that were there also. First I met Imel outside as I was standing with some cherry in my hand. Then we went to sit down inside with my mom and I got a call from Jacobus. I walked around to the front and met him there. We were chatting to each other via cellphone and then saw each other in person as we were waking. :)

We went inside and met up with Jayx and Louis. Then Bev and Stii also found us there later.

Afterwards we went to the cactus for a few drinks; I went home early as the beer was really getting to me and I decided I need to sleep it off. Next morning I should have been blogging already but got swamped with work (as usual).

All-round, lots of fun! Now can't wait for the Toaster Party (more details will be released soon) and then the Garden Route Geek Dinner.

Also see Jayx's post for more info.

Garden Route Geek Dinner June 2007

It's that time of year again - we will be having another fantastic Geek Dinner in the Garden Route! We set up a wiki page - if you are interested in attending please add yourself to the list or let me know and I will organise it.

This time we will be holding it at Dutton's Cove. Many, many thanks to Bev for organising this great venue for us; we really appreciate it!!!

Event: Garden Route Geek Dinner June 2007
Date: Saturday 2 June 2007 from 17:30 for 18:00
Location: Dutton's Cove Restaurant, Herold's Bay, George, South Africa
Reservations: Add yourself to the wiki page please.

Please do not hesitate to contact Stii or me if you have any questions; would love to see you there! Please also see Bev's post for more information.

Technology, Innovation & Getting Ahead

A while back I wrote a post about RSSza. At that point in time, I thought that RSSza was a spin-off from the other services such as Afrigator and Amatomu (in alphabetical order). As it was soon pointed out to me in the comments, this was indeed not the case; as a matter of fact, quite the contrary. It seems like RSSza was one of the first (if not the first) to start a general-purpose aggregator in South Africa. For that, I owe them a humble apology and much respect!

In fact, I have no problem with RSSza particularly. Please allow me to explain my issue from a more general point of view.

We, as mankind, are in the infancy of our technological development. In 100 years from now, if we still exist, we will look back and laugh at our current (very primitive) state just like we do now looking back at the ages before electricity or even running water.

The technologists between us are in fact pioneers at the dawn of this development. We are laying down the technologies that future generations might be basing their developments on.

We therefore have no time to waste. There is a lot that needs to be done; at this point in time it appears to be virtually infinite. We should utilise all of our combined resources to the maximum to achieve bigger things than we could ever dream of.

At this point in time, one of the major things that we need to be looking at in my opinion is the Semantic Web (also now often referred to as Web 3.0). This will make the web much more accessible for all and will prevent us from wasting our precious time doing things that technology can do for us.

As South Africans, I believe that there are two main challenges at this point in time we need to overcome in order to achieve our true potential.

The first challenge would be to stop needlessly repeating each other's work. If somebody starts a project and you know how to improve it, rather volunteer to take part in that project and help than start your own and redo all the work that has already been done. All that happens is you end up with two good products instead of a single great one.

Now by all means, I have nothing against competition. That's what keeps people on their toes. But it is an old hacking principle that there's no point in doing things that have been done hundreds or even of times before. If you ask me, two or even three competing products or services are enough. We probably don't need more.

The second challenge would be to stop competing on an African scale. We have world-class developers and some really brilliant minds in the continent. There is no reason why we can't compete internationally. We should go out there and conquer the world, not sit here caught up in the stigma of us being a retarded little place with no potential.

Of course, I have nothing against locally-focused services. The world is a pretty large place and there's definitely lots of space for African-focused services such as Afrigator, Amatomu, Muti, RSSza, Zoopy, etc. to bring us African content that won't disappear under tons of other stuff from overseas countries.

But if we think, let's think big. There are already some major international goods and services that originated from Africa. Let's continue on that trend and do some more world-firsts.

So, to summarise, instead of doing the same things over and over again, rather join an existing project or start something original.

Also see Rafiq's post South African Innovation? for more discussion.

myXchange 6-6

Finally, the details for the myXchange 6-6 Meeting:

Date: Wednesday 6 June 2007 from 18:30 ~~(until you pass out and we have to drive you home) :D~~
Location: Upstairs at Harrys above Spar in York Street, George, South Africa
Theme: Technical (Open Source, Networking, Internet, Blogging, VoIP, and all the other usual topics)

Please see the myXchange website for more information and add yourself to the wiki page if you're interested in attending. Thanks!

And I promise this time I will refrain from suiping so much. ;)

(Note to overseas readers: "suip" means drinking heavily in South Africa.)

No alcohol for me this time. Only cool drinks.

Pure Pwnage in George

I just watched Episode 13 (the first episode of the new series) of Pure Pwnage. I really love it when the noobs pronounce it as "ponage" or even "pawnage"; ROFL!

Pure Pwnage is a mockumentary of the internet gaming culture. Really funny and worth seeing in my opinion if you're up for a good laugh and kind-of into this stuff. You can check the Wikipedia article for more information if you want.

Anyway, I have all the episodes in .avi format in George if anybody is interested. Just organise a time with me to come collect them; remember to bring a large flash drive, hard drive or a DVD with you. I wonder if we could actually put this up on the Freedom Toaster.

McDonald's Tomato Ketchup

In front of me I have two sachets - one labeled "All Gold Tomato Sauce" and one labeled "McDonald's Tomato-Ketchup". Ok, so what we call "tomato sauce" in South Africa they call "tomato ketchup" in America; as far as I know the two are pretty-much the same.

Then I turned the sachets over and inspected the ingredients. The published ingredients for both are:

Tomatoes
Cane Sugar
Vinegar
Salt
Spices

I thought, "Wow, what a coincidence!" so I checked where they were manufactured. The All Gold was Manufactured by Tiger Food Brands Ltd. [...] Product of South Africa. The Tomato-Ketchup was Manufactured exclusively for McDonald's by Tiger Food Brands Ltd. [...] Product of South Africa.

Since the "tomato ketchup" is a product of South Africa, why on earth did they just not call it "tomato sauce"?
Unless the proportions of the ingredients are different, the ketchup is just the same as All Gold. What's so "exclusive" about it then? I can go and buy a whole bottle full at the nearest supermarket.

Authentically American, isn't it. ;)

Bah. I have never once eaten at McDonald's myself and never plan to either. I am proudly South African and eat South African food, thank you very much. Some of the best food in the world IMHO.

GSoC iWeek Article

iWeek Magazine did an article on my GSoC project in their 96th issue dated 3 May 2007 on page 13 titled "SA student impresses Google". Many thanks to them for their great article; I hope this will raise further awareness for both Web Standards and Joomla! in South Africa. Thanks also to Imel for telling me about it and donating his copy to me! :)

The article is also viewable online if you have a login on iWeek's site.

In unrelated news, it seems like Blogger added a very cool new feature - it automatically saves my blog posts while I'm editing them similar to Gmail. See the Blogger help page for more information.

African Solution to DDoS

Another world-first for the South African telecommunications industry! This time it's preemptive safeguarding against brute-force DDoS attacks where lots of computers take part in sending large quantities of data to some servers thereby completely consuming their available bandwidth and effectively "flood them off" in a way. This means that normal legitimate users cannot access them anymore.

The South African solution is to make bandwidth so extremely expensive and limited that it would cost a fortune to launch such an attack, placing it well beyond the capabilities of most would-be attackers. And bandwidth is typically so well monitored that it would be much more difficult over here than overseas to use others' bandwidth resources for these malicious purposes.

Ok, so this is a tongue-in-the-cheek post but it just comes to show that out of every negative there comes a positive as well. :)

Telkom pricing only the third highest?

I just read the article on My Broadband Telkom charges are world’s third highest. This is propaganda and gives a completely wrong impression of Telkom in my opinion. That only takes into account normal call charges; not internet access.

So what if Belgium and the Netherlands are higher? That totally sucks for them, indeed, but you have to remember that internet access in those countries (both in terms of quality and pricing) are not even comparable to that of South Africa. For a similar ADSL service, you can expect to pay approx. 100 times more here. Add to that the fact that the Europeans are earning a couple of times our usual salaries. Some things like food are relatively quite expensive in many places over there, but technology is relatively very cheap.

DNS & Hosting Issues

Just sincere apologies to anybody trying to visit my blog at the moment. The stylesheet and the images are not loading because both my web host and Everydns.net seem to be having problems. We hope that things will be resolved soon. Thanks to Imel for the heads-up. :)

Linux Laptop Recommendations

I am currently compiling specifications for a Linux-based laptop. I have a heavy preference for Ubuntu and have a copy of Feisty ready and waiting but am somewhat flexible in this regard.

Obviously, I would like things like screen dimming, sleep mode, etc. to work. However, when it comes to the hardware I am not an expert at all. I am sure many of my readers are also fellow Linux enthusiasts so would love to know if anybody could make some recommendations. The best online resource I found so far is the Laptops section on the Recommended Hardware CLUG Wiki page, but any information, pointers and help would be highly appreciated!

Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty) in George

Towards the end of last month, I managed to download the following on an ISDSL account which went over its international cap and still had about 20 GB left on the local cap. I would have downloaded much more, but on my slow 384kbps ADSL connection at home (which costs a bucket-load of money in South Africa, mind you) I just didn't have enough time.

ubuntu-7.04-alternate-i386.iso
ubuntu-7.04-desktop-i386.iso
ubuntu-7.04-dvd-i386.iso
ubuntu-7.04-server-i386.iso

If you find yourself in the George area and would like a copy of any of the above, please let me know so that I can hook you up. I am planning on putting this on the toaster as soon as possible but am waiting for more info regarding a possible refurbishment before I do any updates.

I also still have a copy of Fedora Core 6 lying around somewhere but that's about all I have that's new. Oh yes, and part of OpenBSD 4.1. :)

Operator & Google Apps

There indeed seems to be a problem between Operator and Google Apps' Calendar. I mark up events in hCalendar format and try to add them to my Google Calendar on Google Apps.

Previously, the form looks filled in correctly, but as soon as I try to add the event, Google tells me that the service is down temporarily and I must try again in a few minutes time. But I can try as many times as I like on as many different days as I like without success.

Today, it only displays the following message to me:

Oops, we're having trouble loading this event. The event might have been deleted, or you might not have access to it any more. Cross your fingers and try again in a few minutes, or talk to the person who set up this event.

Previously, at least I got the add form. Now on exactly the same events, I don't even get that anymore.

I talk to Stii and some other people and they claim to be able to add the events perfectly. Only thing is, they're probably not using Google Apps.

I actually thought it was only me, but when Neil Blakey-Milner mentioned he was also having problems in a comment on Stii's post Go2SA full of Microformat goodness I started thinking. He mentioned this to me previously also on IRC if memory serves correctly but I had to go offline so didn't have time to discuss it then.

Any similar experiences out there??

Cape Town Daily Photo

I really love the Cape Town Daily Photo blog. However, it would be even better if the photos were licenced under a Creative Commons licence.

What would I need to do in order to convince them? Aquila, what do you think? :)

mod_delicious migrated to Joomlacode

It seems like my Joomla! module mod_delicious has now successfully been migrated to Joomlacode. Many thanks to all the admins over there for their hard work! Migrations are never easy. I haven't coded much on that particular project in the last couple of months and really want to migrate it over to Joomla! 1.5 as soon as I get a chance. I actually have a good excuse now thanks to the GSoC. Naturally I welcome any other contributors too, so if you're looking for a module for Joomla! that to display your latest del.icio.us bookmarks, by all means join in. At the moment I would be more interested in making something like this for Muti though, to be honest. Ah, I smell a mod_muti coming along... ;)

Advertising Showcase

Next week, there will be an Advertising Showcase at the NMMU in Saasveld.

Date: Wednesday, 16 May 2007 at 19:00
Venue: Main Hall, NMMU, Saasveld, George, South Africa

Previously it was announced that we would be having a myXchange meeting on the same evening. Since lots of the regulars want to go to Saasveld, we decided to "merge" the two events into one. We will be coming together at Saasveld for the showcase and afterwards, those that want can come together to grab something to drink somewhere in town for more chatting.

Apparently you need to reserve your place at the showcase. I am not sure if I can post the contact details on my blog, but just give your information through to me and I will pass it along. Thanks in advance!

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you need any more information. Would love to see you there!

DNS Issues Again

If you are having trouble accessing charlvn.za.net or any of its subdomains, please be patient as it seems like EveryDNS, its current DNS provider, is having issues. If these continue I will consider moving the DNS but I'll give them a fair chance first. Up to thus far they have been nothing less than excellent. I presume there could be a potential Denial of Service attack on their servers.

Google in South Africa

Google is widely considered one of the best companies to work for in the world. If you look at the Googleplex, who doesn't want to work there? I guess lots of people, but I'm certainly not one of them.

Google seems to be offering jobs in Africa but none of them are technical. They are trying to recruit guys from here to work overseas for them in their technical sections.

Well, I just got my passport today. After my studies are all finished and done, I'll throw my resume past them. Would definitely like to be considered. Lots of open source coders are going off to work for them because you can spend 2 hours of work time per day on your open source projects (or anything else that piques your interest for that matter).

I also hear they have a preference for organic food! Sounds like my kind of people. ;)

GSoC 2007 Logos & Joomla! 1.5 Beta-2

As was blogged, the official logos were released for the GSoC 2007!

Relating to my GSoC project, Joomla! 1.5 Beta-2 (codename "Red Barchetta") has been released. This is extremely exciting news for the content management industry as 1.5 is a total rewrite of Joomla! and indeed heavily improved.

Apparently there is another GSoC student from Africa (Nigeria to be exact). Wow, so there indeed seems to be only two students from the entire African continent? We will certainly have to change that! I am sure there's many more people over here that could enter so some advertising definitely needs to be done. I would particularly like to ask University personnel to inform their students of the GSoC next year. Would love to see more participation!

David Bullard

Many South African bloggers are currently up in arms thanks to some guy I never even heard about before called David Bullard. Apparently this guy wrote an article titled Name and shame offensive bloggers. I saw the link on muti and read the article and laughed. Sounds like either sour grapes to me or maybe he's just in desperate need of attention. :)

However, I don't really understand why people are blogging and ranting and going on about this ridiculous article. Personally I believe that one should treat the article with the disregard that it deserves. Why give him free publicity while he actually doesn't deserve crap because he can't even think of something better to write about? I never knew about him, but now I do thanks to all of the attention he has been getting. I probably wouldn't even have been able to remember his name after 5 mins after reading his initial article.

George Freedom Toaster Moved

Last week Wednesday, we moved the George Freedom Toaster to JDL Printing on the corner of Market and Meade streets. The toaster will get better exposure at its new home as it is now located in an open shop where it can easily be accessed by all. You should be able to see the toaster inside the shop fairly easily but please contact me if you would like more information or instructions on how to get there.

Many thanks for the guys at JDL for hosting the toaster and to all those (such as Imel, Jayx, Louis and Vincent - in alphabetical order) that helped us move it there - much appreciated!

We are currently looking at updating the software on the toaster but I am waiting for some information from the Freedom Toaster project regarding possible refurbishment, etc. Will keep you all updated.

Intelligence in Web Development

The South African Ministry for Intelligence Services certainly has an interesting snakes and ladders game but their homepage certainly does not fit the concept of "intelligence" very well in my opinion. It actually tends to remind me of design in the 90s. In their markup:

<meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage 6.0">

That would explain it then. If you ask me they need to get a new web developer skilled in the fine art of code-fu. Any thoughts? :)

Intelligence May 2007

I really like Intelligence Magazine; it's one of the very few offline South African IT publications that I follow. However, nothing is perfect so here is a bit of my (hopefully constructive) feedback.

Firstly, as a geek that identifies with the hacker culture, I get extremely pissed off when people abuse the term "hacker". On page 8, in the insert "2010 to set off cyber-crime flurry" they are quoting Patrick Evans, regional director of Symantec Africa stating To that end, South Africans need to have an understanding of the various software tools that hackers commonly use in their cybercrime activities. Note that there is absolutely no distinction being made between normal, legal, white-hat hackers and malicious hackers (a.k.a. crackers or "cyber criminals"). A director of a security company should just know better. But I realise this is just a quote and not a mistake on behalf of Intelligence. I would however like to suggest that Intelligence take a stance on this kind of abuse and refuse to publish such propaganda.

Secondly, as much as I love Amatomu, why is there no mention of Afrigator or RSSza in the article "Prepare to be aggregated" on page 10? I understand that this article was more focused on Amatomu (which is great) but maybe a future article could be published about some of the other aggregation efforts or even do a feature comparison? That would be very interesting. (Please keep in mind that I somehow missed the April issue so maybe there was more.)

Lastly, regarding the article "A smarter web" on pages 22 - 28, I am ecstatic about the attention the Semantic Web is receiving but why is there no mention of Microformats? Don't get me wrong, I love RDF. However, it is not exactly one of the simplest formats out there and can often confuse less knowledgeable developers. I still believe that RDF has a lot of potential, but I believe that we will see results much quicker with Microformats since it's very simple relative to RDF and can often easily be integrated. Maybe again something for a future article?

Just my 2c - keep up the good work, Intelligence!

Linux Conversion Blog Competition

Ok so today I had a brainwave - probably not the first to think of this but I thought I should blog anyway. If you know of any similar ideas out there please do comment.

What about setting up a challenge - get a couple of people to migrate from Windows to Linux and blog about every step of the process and their thoughts, problems and solutions.

This should accomplish two things. The first is to give Linux developers a useful insight into the world of the Windows user and how to make the conversion process more friendly for them. The second would be for other people that are considering upgrading to Linux to get a "quick start" by learning from the mistakes of others. If one person struggles with something, there's probably more people that would have similar issues.

If one could convert a group of people together each blogging on a central site, it could almost end up being like a kind of a "reality TV show" only that it's not on TV.

Maybe add a competition element into this somehow. Needs some more thinking though.

I have been speaking to Anna from the OpenCafe and indeed one could generalise this for many different subjects such as cooking and DIY. A kind of a process blog. Check out the fresh connection cafe.

Resolio

Great news from the semantic web front - Resolio launched recently.

There are apps and scripts out there you can use to generate yourself a resume marked up according to the hResume standard. However, this is by far the most complete system I have seen so far.

Resolio first wants you to register on their site. This seems funny but you have to take into consideration that your details are saved on the site. This might be a problem for some, but I consider my resume to be public anyway. The registration process went fairly smoothly but needless to say I would like to see OpenID integration in future. Also, if you try to log in right after registering and your e-mail address has not been verified yet, it should probably display an error explaining the process in more detail ("you first have to verify your e-mail account before you are able to log in"). On the upside, you get logged in automatically after verifying your e-mail address.

Although some parts are still under development, it provides you with a pretty simple user interface to create your resume and input all your details. I haven't done any in-depth assessment of the accessibility, usability and quality of markup, but from a usability point of view they seem to follow the typical "Web 2.0" style of simplicity quite well.

You can choose from a selection of designs for your resume. Personally I find the selection a bit limited, but that's fair enough considering they barely launched. In future I would like to see a wider selection of designs and especially some more smooth, elegant designs. I think the current designs make too much use of monospace fonts such as Courier.

You can choose to have your resume hosted on resolio.com which would be handy for those that don't have their own hosting, although hosting it on your own domain would be highly preferably in my opinion if that is an option. It just looks more professional and gives you more flexibility. The generated document has no external dependencies, probably to make it easy to copy to anywhere. Therefore the CSS is all internal. Personally I hate internal CSS but that's easy enough to correct later. I guess external dependencies confuse those that are less informed about web development.

I wonder why they do not make use of the hresume class though in the generated document.

So, to summarise, things are indeed looking very good. I have my thoughts and feedback already but I think they did a great job overall. As I said before, keep in mind they have only just launched, so I'm sure they'll figure out the minor hickups along the way. I am certainly going to watch this project closely in future.

Main

Latest

Archives