December 12, 2003

Open Groupware Knoppix CD

Build a test Open Groupware server simply by rebooting your system with the
OGo Knoppix CD!

“OGo Knoppix CD is a bootable CD which contains a complete Debian GNU/Linux system, a fully configured OGo installation, a Cyrus server and some more Linux software.

I think this is worth a burn and reboot!

December 11, 2003

Building a Low-Budget TiVo Substitute

Gen over at PVRBlog pointed me to an excellent Slashdot thread that’s talking about building a homebrew digital video recorder on a budget, which is very timely for me.

In fact, I just updated my wiki with a rough spec for my own PVR. Now I need to refine and price out the equipment because I think I’m already over budget.

December 10, 2003

Blog without Blogging

No time to blog? Try Drunk Men Work Here’s free weblog service and utilize their Zero-Click posting technology

Best of all, there’s no learning required!

December 8, 2003

Social Network Search

You can create a social network search interface by using Micah Alpern’s ‘Blogs I Read’ Google Hack and/or Feedster. However it appears that Eurekster has taken it one step further:

“Eurekster uses the six-degrees of separation concept to learn from your extended network of contacts and deliver you prioritized results based on the success and proximity of the searches they have done.”

The public beta currently available seems to require a bit more effort than the average consumer “searcher” would be willing to afford. However, I would like to see how well this works within the corporate enterprise — assuming of course you can integrate much of the social network mechanics with existing enterprise directory services such as Active Directory or other LDAP-compliant systems.

December 4, 2003

Comcast’s HDTV and DVR Box

Matt Haughey’s PVRBlog gives some more insight about Comcast’s new PVR box:

“Comcast was testing the PVR waters, but it looks like the rollout will soon be going full-force.”

December 3, 2003

Personal Service Oriented Architecture

Michael Kanellos from CNET exposes some of the research at Microsoft to make search a greater part of its Windows operating system. The following are some interesting quotes from the article:

“Search in many ways is brute force,” Dumais said. “If the two of us type in a query, we get the same thing back, and that is just brain dead. There is no way an intelligent human being would tell us the same thing about the same topic.”

December 2, 2003

jpcache with Movable Type

I’m again using jpcache with my blog. This time however, I’ve integrated the PHP-based gzip and caching capabilities of jpcache with Movable Type.

You should see a significant speed improvement through out the site — especially on some of the longer category pages.

It was fairly easy to incorporate into MT since I’m already outputting PHP files from my MT templates. Basically, after following the uncomplicated install guide for jpcache and running a few sample test pages, all I needed to do was “prepend” the jpcache script to the end of my PHP files.

December 1, 2003

BitTorrent, Blogs and Web Proxies

Don Park gives a good overview of BitTorrent, but also provides an interesting perspective on how blog software in general could utilize BitTorrent technology.

“In my opinion, flash flood nature of blogs will be well served by BitTorrent. Likewise, link-happy nature of blogs will complement BitTorrent well. Ultimately, I think a tailored variation of BitTorrent should be built into blog clients and servers for download sharing of feeds, images, enclosures, and other blog-related resources. BitTorrent will encourage media-rich blog posts without applying power-law to the bloggers’ wallet. BitTorrent means blog torrents.”

November 30, 2003

Linux Home Theater PC HOWTO

Brandon has assembled a comprehensive Linux Home Theater PC HOWTO, which is definitely worth a read if you’re planning on building your own Homebrew TiVo-like device.

November 26, 2003

Disable MovableType’s Send Entry Script

The file ‘mt-send-entry.cgi’ in a default MovableType installation can be used to relay spam. If you’re not using the script to allow your users to “Send this Entry by Email”, you can safely remove the file from your MT install or change the permissions so that the script cannot execute.

However, if you need the functionality Ben Trott has posted a fix, but IMHO, you’d be safer pushing this function client-side using a mailto with some JavaScript