Month: July 2002

New Release: AmazonHandler

The AmazonHandler script is an AppleScript glue script for the Amazon web services released this week. It uses the built in SOAP capabilities of AppleScript and requires Mac OS X 10.1 or higher to operate. It requires my SOAPXMLRPCHandler script library. Both scripts are available from my scripts page.

I’m working on a sample script to illustrate using Amazon web services from AppleScript with my glue. As usual, it’s simple to request the information, and the glue script I posted works for that; now I need to demonstrate wading through the copious information that Amazon returns to make it really useful.

A productive silence

Sorry—no update today as I overslept and have been travelling. But I’ve been a little productive. I land in Boston late tonight, but I’m looking forward to seeing the crowd in Boston.

MusicMoz–calling all music geeks

Some of you may be familiar with DMOZ, the open directory project that replaced Netscape’s old directory and attempts to be the open community-maintained alternative to the increasingly creaky Yahoo! directory. I just stumbled across MusicMoz, which attempts to be a definitive directory for music.

Why is this cool? Well, think how important IMDB is—it’s pretty much the de facto authoritative source for information about movies and TV shows on the Internet. If you want the equivalent for music, where do you go? What site can allow you to trace a musician’s progress from band to band, combine a directory with a discography and have a clean and searchable interface?

Well, nowhere, really. In my iTunes scripts, I link to Google instead. But MusicMoz might be a cool alternative. And they’re looking for category editors…
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Don’t mess with the Muppets

Yahoo: HIV-Positive TV Muppet Worries U.S. Lawmakers. The article quotes a letter sent to PBS as saying “We look forward to working with you to ensure that only age and culturally appropriate programs air on PBS” and says that the letter “gives [the president of PBS] until Friday to answer such questions as the amount of money PBS dedicates to ‘Sesame Street,’ how much is being earmarked for the new Muppet, whether she will be introduced to the United States and whether corporate underwriters might participate in the decision-making process.”

I can’t see straight, I’m so angry about this foolishness.

  • First of all, the new HIV-positive Muppet is on the South African version of Sesame Street, where 1.1 million young people are HIV positive. At what age, precisely, is it time to educate kids in an environment like that about what it means to live with someone who is very sick but still needs support?
  • Second of all, what a caring attitude from our lawmakers, who have nothing better to do than to worry about the lives of children in South Africa. Bullshit. This is a transparent stroke-the-archconservative move that makes Quayle’s taking on Murphy Brown look like kid stuff.
  • Besides, the Committee on Energy and Commerce does have something better to do: worry about the continuing fallout from Enron, Worldcom, and other corporate meltdowns, and address the painful question of whether Dick Cheney and George Bush have been guilty of the same ethical lapses they’re now reluctantly calling the business community on.

Please, take a second and fax the idiots behind this boondoggle:

Update: Greg makes some cogent points about the motivations behind stirring up this noise–like an invite to Washington Week in Review…
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Oh, the keynote was 9 am Eastern…

I’ve been pretty good about the whole East Coast-West Coast time difference so far, but this morning it bit me in the butt. Yeah, Steve’s keynote was at 9 am this morning… EAST COAST TIME. So I missed all the fun. Also I forgot to download Quicktime 6 final, so I couldn’t watch the end of the live stream…

It looks like the rumor sites (including CNET) nailed just about everything though: Jaguar to come out in late August, ahead of schedule; new 17″ iMac; iTools to have a name change to .Mac.

What they missed, though is pretty important:

  • iTunes 3 incorporates audio book technology from Audible and has gone OS X only
  • iPod has gone up to 20 GB, now thinner, sports a remote on the earbud control and new software that does a calendar (plus earphones that won’t stretch your ears)
  • Apple will charge for .Mac services
  • iSync, a system level information synchronization architecture for devices, supporting BlueTooth
  • iCal, a system level calendar solution

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Enough? No, but necessary

The Guardian: IRA statement apologizing for “30 years of murder.” The statement directly addresses the fact that the IRA’s terror campaign caused “deaths and injuries” to “non-combatants” as well as “grief and pain” to “combatants.”

While the statement is questionable from a standpoint of historical accuracy (thirty years ago, you can be damned sure that the IRA wanted to injure or kill whoever it had to, “combatant” or not, to make its point–this is the essence of terrorism), it says volumes about where the IRA is today. That is: engaging in a peace process, coming to terms with the interests of the other parties in that process, and trying to put the legacy of violence aside despite continued terror from groups like the “Real IRA.” Or, more cynically, dealing with the reality of a massive anti-terrorism war fought by the US and the UK following September 11, and accordingly changing with the times.

But that possibility shouldn’t overshadow the significance of this release. It doesn’t come close to absolving the IRA of past actions, but it’s a necessary move to build credibility as they head away from that legacy toward a more sustainable drive for peace.
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Amazon follows Google, becomes a dev platform

Now this is cool: Amazon rolls out a free web services suite for developers. Browsing the documentation indicates that they provide a SOAP interface and an “XML over HTTP” interface that takes a URI as the call and returns an XML doc as the response. Cool tricks: “enable your Web site visitors to add products to Amazon.com shopping carts, wedding registries and wishlists directly from your site”; XSLT transforms at Amazon, meaning Amazon will return the result of your query in the format you supply; integration with Amazon’s associates program (earn money off your webservice? a unique idea)…

This opens some interesting opportunities. If I become an Amazon associate and embed my associate ID in a tool like iTunes2Manila, is it ethical for me to keep associate revenue that is generated by people who use my script on their website? Probably not, but it’s a fun thought… 🙂
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Hey, let’s all violate the DMCA!

24-Hour Drive-Thru: Elcomsoft Vs. Adobe, The Sequel. I think this is one of those occasions where a good loud outcry about the inadequacies of Adobe’s DRM technology may yet prompt them to come up with a better product, enabling librarians like Jenny and consumers like us to be able to check out eBooks through our libraries.

And yet, of course, discussing the problem is potentially a DMCA violation, because we’re discussing how to circumvent encryption technology. Never mind our intent: to help consumers. From 24-Hour Drive-Thru’s article:

When consumer publications like Consumer Reports test locks, the most important thing they do is try to break in. They send locksmiths to go to work on the locks, they get out the boltcutters on padlocks, and report which ones are broken into most easily and which ones do the best to stand up under attack. Nobody thinks there’s anything sinister about that—everybody can see the practical value. And yet when you try to do the same thing for computer technology, you’re a criminal.

Indeed, this very Weblog entry may well be a felony under the DMCA. I’ll let you know what day to watch out for me on “Cops.”

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Accessibility: relative font sizes

Mark Pilgrim: Using relative font sizes. I should be pointing to one of Mark’s articles every day. This is just one of the thoughtful, well written articles on the state of designing web sites for accessibility in 2002. It offers a good mix of audience justification for taking the trouble to make your pages resizable (“if people can’t read your words, what’s the point?”) and technical details, including stylesheet tricks that prevent Netscape 4 and Mac Opera 5 from choking on CSS syntax they don’t understand.

Of course, I haven’t had time to implement his suggestions yet. Next on my list…

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Straight back to 1989

I never cease to be amazed at how quickly a song can take you back. I loaded the changer this morning with a mix of new CDs and ones that had been in storage for two years. The first song to come up? REM’s “World Leader Pretend” from 1989’s Green. Instantly it’s fall in Newport News, September 1989. I’m a senior in high school, newly confident about my place in the world and arguing about REM with my friends Rob and Matt at Patrick Henry Mall.

Incidentally, it appears that Chris Heschong is World Leader Pretend, according to Google.
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I thought that’s what I was doing until the end of the month

George apparently did some late night fishing after the wedding–taking Niall, which is a big deal given that he basically can’t be in the same room as seafood normally. (It’s not an allergy, just some weird phobia from childhood. Unfortunate thing to have if you grow up in Ireland, where the Atlantic salmon is one of the better local food items available.) I love this quotation:

Brian, from South Carolina also taught us a few fishing terms:

  • Fishing on Credit: This is when your hook no longer has bait…

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