alinobairro

joaobordalo.com is out

2006-02-07T16:47:00.000+00:00

After 2 weeks of design, coding and others, joaobordalo.com is now officially launched, so this blog will be terminated. All posts have been migrated to, and new ones will appear only at joaobordalo.com. Please take a look and drop some feedback.

If you are reading this through a RSS reader, the new feed is available at http://joaobordalo.com/xml/rss20/feed.xml

Your rights online

2006-02-03T16:15:00.000+00:00

After a few days not digging, I've just found three pieces of news that worries me:

Going for tiger

2006-01-25T22:22:00.000+00:00

Ok, no more excuses, I'll upgrade to Tiger: saft and google earth only works with 10.4.4.

Bluepulse

2006-01-22T19:53:00.000+00:00

Guys, if you own a cell phone (who doesn't), you have to point your browser to the bluepulse website, sign-up, and follow the instructions. These guys developed one amazing software, described as:

A free program for mobile phones that allows you to run tiny, useful widgets for a variety of uses, such as instant messaging and RSS.

And it's true, and works like a charm: in less than 5 minutes, I was talking with my buddies in MSN. I'm going to try now the RSS reader.

The platform allows any one to develop new widgets, and I surely hope the business model motivates people to develop new functionalities and services. I'm really impressed with this, and I reiterate: go to the website and try it.

Trend watching

2006-01-18T00:08:00.000+00:00

Today's bloglines reading gave me a lot of interesting stories about possible technical, social and political trends. Here are a few, rescued from my last browser crash:

Yahoo seems to be experimenting a new way of online ads: in Yahoo Movies, search for a movie (I used Vatel), go to the bottom of the page, and in the Sponsored Links box notice the links for different ad types. Click one and you will see ads only about the tag you just selected. Nice move, gives you less visibility, but targeted ads with higher levels of attention;

Still in the advertising market, it looks like the marketing guys are getting there: The New York Times as a story about marketers getting really excited with three second messages in phone displays, all powered up by GPS positioning and location target adverstising;

An interesting post on why Yahoo Music is better than iTunes for home entertainment. I admit I will think about this, really;

A beautiful idea, sharing broadband to increase speed, is becoming a business case: two companies, Mushroom Networks and WiBoost Inc., are about to launch their new products. It looks like good sense is prevailing, take a peak at the article;

Lawrence Lessig wrote an interesting post about the need for regulation on the "net neutrality" issue. If you want to know more on this subject, try the Wikipedia definition.

Try ruby on your browser

2006-01-17T13:15:00.000+00:00

A beautiful interactive ruby lesson by why the lucky stiff, don't work well on Safari, use Firefox. More resources on ruby at squidoo lens, another bright idea for content organization.

The ultimate geek car

2006-01-11T14:40:00.000+00:00

I'm really sorry Santa, for being a pain in the ass, but with all the gadgets I'm requesting, I will need a car to transport them:

Can you send me one of this?

Ok, this was my last request.

Mac World San Francisco

2006-01-11T01:03:00.000+00:00

Dear Santa, is me again. I've just watched Steve's keynote (1h32m23s) and I would like to add to my wish list a couple of things:

the new iMac, with a Intel duo processor inside (2-3 times faster);
a MacBook Pro, also with the Intel beast (4-5 times faster), an iSight built in and a remote controller;
the new iLife 06, now with iWeb (amazing!);
the new iWork;
and a .Mac account.

Ahh, and a huge, huge one was a real Mac retail store here.

Late Christmas

2006-01-09T22:48:00.000+00:00

Dear Santa, I know I'm late, but can you please send me one of each?

this one for be able to speak with my mom while in the pub;
one of this, to impress girls;
and one of this, because it's so cool!!

Thanks in advance.

Google announcements

2006-01-05T15:38:00.000+00:00

Fresh from ArsTechnica, it seems tomorrow Google will announce a new video service:

The service, which will be an addition to Google's Video Search, will allow users to buy video content for pre-determined prices, and the company is expected to announce partnerships with the likes of CBS and the NBA.

Additionally, Google will announce Google Pack, several applications available for download in a single installation bundle:

Sources tell us that Google pack will feature a Google-tweaked version of Firefox, Adobe Acrobat Reader, antivirus software from Symantec, AdAware, Trillian, and Google's own offerings, including Google Desktop Search, Picasa, Google Earth, Google Talk, and all of the toolbar action you can shake a stick at. Oh, and I left out one other item: the RealPlayer.

You can read the complete article here

News dump, part II

2006-01-05T15:03:00.000+00:00

While printing (in recycled paper) a lot of Rubyonrails tutorials, some random cruising alerted me for some links and news:

The last days where fertile in new search engines, all of them pitching that are better than Google. Well, see it for yourself, by trying Lexxe and Previewseek;

Cingular as reached an agreement with PC manufacturer Lenovo to include HSDPA capabilities in their laptops. This way, ThinkPad owners will have wireless access to the Internet in the US and 90 other countries, either by Cingular's HSDPA or EDGE own network, or by Cingular roaming agreements;

Skype will announce WiFi and Internet phones at CES this week. A logic step from Skype, going to the hardware market, just like Apple and the iPod revolution;

Still on the VoIP world, O'Reilly decided to license his book about Asterisk under the Creative Commons license, making it free to download and distribute. You can download it here.

News dump

2006-01-04T11:42:00.000+00:00

Having nothing more to say, here are some news worth notice:

In the video world, BBC is opening is archive to UK public, and now you are able to download nearly 80 news reports (from the fall of the Berlin Wall to Tiananmen Square) and create something unique. Another great idea from BBC, like backstage;

Still on the video world, it seems that Microsoft is helping Entertainment Group to deliver Vongo, a new movie download service that allows consumers to view full-length studio films, concerts and TV shows. The site is open only to Windows users and US customers, so you have to use a US open proxy to be able to access it (tip: I used this free proxy, 208.21.64.4 port 80);

From ArsTechnica, GNU liberates VoIP with a new open source telephony stack. In my humble opinion, this could be the push needed for total interconnection between different VoIP providers: this could be the lingua franca for VoIP.

A beautiful piece of technology, Retrievr, allows you to search for photos in Flickr by making a sketch of what you want. Really nice and well done;

As everyone else, I'm waiting for AllPeers, a new Firefox plugin. This could lead to a all new P2P ball game. For now, you can take a peek to some screenshots here;

And finally, transform your iPod*, iPod mini or iPod nano into a full-fledged video recorder/player with the new iSee 360i. You have to see it to believe it.

Ruby on Rails

2005-12-29T21:24:00.000+00:00

I've just finished my first Ruby on Rails web application, and these baby rocks! It's true that you can develop 10 times faster, and it's so simple that you can do it from day one. What follows is a summary of my RoR investigation, from curiosity to my first working RoR web application.

I decided to study more deeply about Ruby on Rails some time ago, and now I had the chance. First, a visit to the official website, a jump to the screencasts section, and watched the screencasts. Seeing is believing, so you have to watch how to make a blog with RoR in 15 minutes (with installation), and how to make a filter for Flickr in 5 minutes (with CSS).

Next, some documentation, which I recommend reading it in the following order:

After these, I was really excited, to I just had to try it for myself. I have a Mac, and I was not willing to compile anything, so I started looking for a no frills package. Found one, Locomotive. Ok, free download, one application, double click and its on. Locomotive is integrated with TextMate, so I decided to extend a little further my investigation and also try it. A trial download, one application, double click, no frills. By the way, TextMate looks promising (more in some days).

Opened a terminal window (tip: open it from Locomotive, it will take care of all the environment variables for you), create a dummy database with sqlite (comes with Locomotive), did some script/generate scaffold xpto, edited some files, and voila, my first web application in RoR.

It's really easy to program in RoR, and still maintain a lot of power. It's a very well organized framework, clean and helpful. And if you are sick of doing always the same things, do yourself a favor and take a couple of hours to try it.

2005 2.0

2005-12-28T20:10:00.000+00:00

Everybody is trying to make a list of important things for 2005. Well, I was to, but decided to simply label it the "2.0 year". New business models are building from the peer-to-peer social model found in the net, and from the ability to explore the long tail of the market. In the first, digg became bigger then Slashdot, del.icio.us was bought by Yahoo, and wikipedia and folksonomy became part of our lexical.

On the second, iTunes Music Store proved to be a huge business success, eBay paid several billions to have Skype, and everyone is trying to take a piece of the AdSense pie. Maybe the best presentation summarizing all this, was made by Brandon Schauer, check is sources (in the PDF) for further reading.

But this year was also the year of Ajax, JavaScript frameworks and mashups. The web is now easier to use, easier to develop, and the API business model is growing rapidly, as stated by the growth of the mashup matrix. For an excellent example of a mashup, take a look at BlockRocker (GoogleMaps + Amazon + Craigslist).

Well, 2005 was a good year, hope 2006 be even better to everyone.

Podcast and Xmas

2005-12-22T16:34:00.000+00:00

Due to popular demand, this blog has now a podcast version: subscribe it by copying the URL in the Talkr chicklet on the right. Due to Xmas and so, I'm in a kind of offline mode: I'm sure after Xmas I will be able to post more frequently. See you then.

Talkr

2005-12-15T12:40:00.000+00:00

This blog is now powered by Talkr. For every post in, you can click on the "Listen to this article" link and have it read to you. Try this one and enjoy.

DropSend

2005-12-14T21:35:00.000+00:00

If you have difficulties sending big emails (up to 1 GB) try DropSend: it comes with an application for Mac & Windows.

Back to business

2005-12-12T16:19:00.000+00:00

Back to work, just to find out that I have +1600 feeds and +400 mails to read. Meanwhile, some news are to important to be kept unnoticed. Please the forgive me the lack of opinions, I'm running against the clock here:

Yahoo bought del.icio.us, and is experimenting with behavioral ads;
Skype launched is version 2.0 (now with video);
Dion released is "The Best Web 2.0 software of 2005" list;
Still in the Web 2.0 context, ZDNet has writes about new services and business models;
And finally, after all the work I had with my calendar solution, Rui points out Chandler.

Vacationes

2005-12-01T11:45:00.000+00:00

I'll be offline for some days (back on the 12th) for some surf & rest quality time.

Shared calendar

2005-11-28T19:28:00.000+00:00

I'm a Mac user at home, and a Windows user at work. I have my mail on a IMAP server, so I can read it in either systems without any frills. In the iMac I use Mail.app, and in the Windows box I use Thunderbird, and everything works fine. But I have a problem with my calendar. I love the iCal design, and I would like to have it in my Windows box. Not only for scheduling meetings, but also for ToDo management, sharing and publishing other calendars. I went to the web and to all the sites with "web application lists" on it, but didn't find any real good web calendar application: I tryied Planzo.com, but has a polluted user interface, and Kiko.com, which don't work in Safari, so I had to improvise.

After some googling, I found Yagoon, and if you take a minute to jump to their site, you will notice the resemblance with Apple iCal. For 30 bucks, this could be my best buy of the year, but wait, I can try it for 60 days, so it seems is going to be my best buy for next year. Ok, I have my iCal look-a-like in my Windows box. Now, how can I sincronize the two applications?

So, I went to .Mac pages for prices and conditions, but 99 dollars per year seems to much for a WebDAV server. Back to Google, I found iCalExchange, which is a free service for sharing iCal files. Ok, so now I have my "synchronizer". I tryied to publish and subscribe the same calendar from iCal and Yagoon, but I got a lot of permission errors, so I had to go for a two calendar solution.

I created two calendars on iCalExchange, named bonnie and clyde. iCal publishes (writes) in the bonnie calendar, and subscribes (reads) the clyde calendar. In the iCal, bonnie is coloured green and clyde is coloured red. This way, I know that I can change, erase or create green events, but I should not do nothing to the red ones. On the Yagoon side, it publishes to the clyde calendar (green) and subscribes the bonnie calendar (red), implementing the same colour code.

At the end, I can use two different applications in two different operating systems, having the same user interface and full syncronization (it even syncronizes ToDos). All for less than 30 dollars, and thanks to iCalExchange. Ahhh, and I can see my calendar live going directly to iCalExchange homepage. Rui, feel free to use this to write a new HOWTO for your blog ;)

OpenLaszlo

2005-11-25T20:30:00.000+00:00

From Ajaxian I found that OpenLaszlo added XMLHttpRequest in is version 3.1. I didn't know what OpenLaszlo was, so I decided to take a peek:

The OpenLaszlo platform allows developers to create applications with the rich user interface capabilities of desktop client software and the instantaneous no-download Web deployment of HTML. These applications run on all leading Web browsers on all leading desktop operating systems from a single XML code base.

Since a video is better than a thousand images, watch this 3m video (2MB) and take your own conclusions.

My iMac is back

2005-11-24T18:52:00.000+00:00

Thumbs up to Apple IMC Portugal. It took 10 days to substitute the motherboard, which is pretty good for portuguese standards. Unfortunally, the new one is like the other, a first generation board, so no Airport or Bluetooth. Well, back to the good user interfaces and a reliable OS.

Google click-to-call

2005-11-24T10:13:00.000+00:00

When everyone was waiting for a click-to-call service from eBay (after all, they paid almost 4 billion for Skype), Google decided to launched it first. Well, it's still in a beta phase, but you can take a look at the screenshot on the right side (more screenshots), and read the FAQ. I think the correct name for the service should be "click to be called", since you enter your phone number (yes, another personal information you're giving to Google) and they call you.

Free culture

2005-11-23T14:17:00.000+00:00

A very interesting presentation from Lawrence Lessig at OSCON 2002. A true call for arms in the fight against control and copyright, a must read. 32 minutes plus download time (8MB).

Google fade out

2005-11-23T14:07:00.000+00:00

What if Google will do most everything wrong, and is competitors don't? A tale from Jack Shafer (Slater's editor) called The Great Google Wipeout give us an interesting view of what could be a possible future.