Guys and gals, I need your help: I've proposed a session for SXSW called Building on a Cloud and it would really help if you could take a moment to vote for it!
Thank you all in advance! 
Ah, how late can I be in pimping my SXSW session proposal? How about blogging it on the last day?
A quick heads up: early bird pricing for the Singularity Web Conference ends August 31, 2008. Get your tickets for just $99 today.
We've been adding new speakers and sessions and confirming local conference hubs.
We are also going to be announcing our new sponsors today, The Guardian, .Net Magazine, and our very own Pistach.io.
Get your tickets today for just $99 (and consider becoming a micro-sponsor for just $199).
I love viewing PDFs on a Mac. The built-in Preview app is lightweight and good for 99% of what I need to do (if you need to digitally sign stuff, created PDFs, etc., then by all means get the official Acrobat reader/writer from Adobe.) I have the latest Acrobat installed (all 1GB or so of it) but I still want to use Preview and Safari's built-in PDF viewer for my daily browsing because it's fast, lightweight, and Just Works.
Until upgrading to Leopard and reinstalling my software, I hadn't had an issue with this at all. But since the upgrade, I started getting the following message when trying to open a PDF with Safari: AdobePDFViewer cannot find a compatible Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Reader to view this PDF. Please select one.
Bummer.
And the dialog that pops up doesn't let me select the Preview app.
A quick Google search later, I find a forum post with the solution.
The thing to do is to delete the AdobePDFViewer.plugin file in the /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/ folder.
I have no idea when Adobe managed to sneak that plugin in there but it was a very naughty thing to do!
Deleting the plugin and restarting Safari has returned things to normal and PDFs now pop up quickly in the built-in previewer.
The cool thing about user submitted content is that you can't always predict what you're going to get. Our speakers at the Singularity Web Conference, for example, submit and update their own bios and session descriptions on the site. Yesterday, I noticed that Dr. Woohoo had put up an image of one of his awesome generative artworks in his session description.
Of course, since I hadn't considered images in session descriptions, this had the side-effect of breaking the layout of the sessions page.
(In case you're wondering, yes, this is the way I like to work. Instead of over-engineering things, I like to see how people actually use stuff and then evolve them to meet their needs.)
So tonight I wrote a bit of code to massage and tame how images in session descriptions are displayed and I thought I'd share it with you in case it helps anyone else. (Another, more complicated way to go about things would have been to grab the images using urlfetch, store them in the datastore, and resize them via the image API -- but that would have been overkill for my needs.)
# Copyright (c) 2008 Aral Balkan, Singularity Web Conference # http://www.singularity08.com # Released under the open source MIT license. from markdown import Markdown image_tag_width_re = r'(?P<img><img.*?width=")(?P<width>\d*?)"' image_tag_height_re = r'(?P<img><img.*?height=")(?P<height>\d*?)"' image_tag_re = r'(<img)(.*?)>' image_tag_src_re = r'<img.*?src="(.*?)"' image_tag_alt_re = r'<img.*?alt="(.*?)"' image_tag_width_rc = re.compile(image_tag_width_re) image_tag_height_rc = re.compile(image_tag_height_re) image_tag_rc = re.compile(image_tag_re) image_tag_src_rc = re.compile(image_tag_src_re) image_tag_alt_rc = re.compile(image_tag_alt_re) IMAGE_SAFE_WIDTH = 160.0 def massage_images(html): """Helper: Alters dimensions of any images in the passed HTML to make them safe for the site's design.""" image_tag_widths = image_tag_width_rc.findall(html) image_tag_heights = image_tag_height_rc.findall(html) image_tag_srcs = image_tag_src_rc.findall(html) image_tag_alts = image_tag_alt_rc.findall(html) for i in range(len(image_tag_widths)): # Reduce the width of any found images to 160px so as not to break the layout original_width = int(image_tag_widths[i][1]) maintain_aspect_ratio = True try: original_height = int(image_tag_heights[i][1]) except IndexError: # Mismatched width/height pairs on image tags. We won't be # able to maintain aspect ratio. maintain_aspect_ratio = False if maintain_aspect_ratio: aspect_ratio = float(original_width)/float(original_height) new_height = int(IMAGE_SAFE_WIDTH/aspect_ratio) # Substitute the new height html = image_tag_height_rc.sub(r'\g<img>'+repr(new_height)+r'"', html) logging.info(html) # Substitute the new width html = image_tag_width_rc.sub(r'\g<img>'+str(int(IMAGE_SAFE_WIDTH))+'"', html) # Add float:left and slight margin so that text flows around the image html = image_tag_rc.sub(r'\1 style="float:left; margin-right:.5em;" \2>', html) # Finally, add a link to the original image if people want to see it larger html = image_tag_rc.sub(r'<a href="'+ image_tag_srcs[i] + '" title="'+image_tag_alts[i]+r'">\1\2></a>', html) return html
There are a couple of basic but helpful regular expressions in there and you might find the snippet useful if you want to manipulate image tags generated from user submitted content.
Oh, and before I forget, Dr. Woohoo is going to be talking about Generating Artwork at the Singularity Web Conference. Check out his bio and session and the other sessions at the conference.
(You can find out more about Dr.Woohoo on his web site and take a look at his latest book, Color Visualizations: Exploring the Circle, vol 02.)
If you haven't booked your ticket for Singularity yet, hurry, as the $99 early bird discount ends at the end of this month.
It seems that Google Groups has some seriously strict spam filters in place as they're currently blocking urlfetch requests for RSS feeds from Google App Engine applications.
This morning, I started what I hoped would be a quick Flash widget to display the latest RSS headlines from our new Singularity Local Conference Hubs Google Group on the new local conference hubs page on the Singularity web site.
Since Google Groups does not support consumption of its feeds by Flash and Flex applications (they don't have a crossdomain policy file on their servers), I set up simple server-side proxy and wrote some quick E4X in Flash to parse the Atom feed.
Hit publish, test locally, everything works! Ah, cool, let's deploy and move on.
Not so fast, young man! Have you met Murphy? He sells ceiling fans for lavatories.
I deployed and got an error. Weird.
So I checked the proxy URL directly in the browser and saw the following message:
OK, so Google Groups has some paranoid spam filter that's blocking Google App Engine urlfetch requests (quite understandable as Google Groups must have to deal with every type of spam known to humans.)
I opened an issue and posted on both the Google App Engine and Google Groups Help forums so the issue should hopefully be on their radar. Not being one to give up, however, I decided to try another route.
Yahoo! Pipes to the rescue
I need a proxy but I can't use my own app on Google App Engine... wait a minute, Yahoo! Pipes should fit the bill
So I set up a very simple pipe that does nothing more than grab the RSS 2.0 feed from Google Groups and re-publish it. Since Yahoo! does have a cross domain policy on Pipes, we can load the RSS feed in directly from Flash.
That's exactly what I did and, instead of parsing the XML by hand, I decided to use the generic FeedFactory parser in as3syndicationlib. So I downloaded that and its dependency, corelib, and refactored my code.
Unfortunately, as3syndicationlib is Flex-only at the moment. It has two simple bugs that have been fixed but have not been included into the library, barring entry to Flash CS3 developers.
The first bug is in ParsingTools.as and produces the following error: ReferenceError: Error #1065: Variable mx.utils::StringUtil is not defined..
The other error is that it uses the Flex-only DateBase class.
Thankfully, Steve Jones ran across the same errors earlier, fixed them, and shared his solution on Mike's blog.
I do hope that Mike finds the time to commit Steve's version into the repository at some point so that Flash CS3 developers can also make use of the excellent AS3 Syndication Library without jumping through these hurdles.
The final hurdle was that Yahoo!'s crossdomain policy is on pipes.yahooapis.com not pipes.yahoo.com. By default, when you copy the RSS feed URL from Yahoo! Pipes, you will get a feed URL that references pipes.yahoo.com. You have to change this to use pipes.yahooapis.com to take advantage of the crossdomain policy file.
Check out the new local conference hubs page to see the simple widget in action.
Photo: Flickr
The Singularity Web Conference is breaking new ground: we're creating a new type of web conference that is at once global and local, social, and green. Instead of flying half-way around the world, we're going to be meeting up in our own local communities and using those gorgeous pipes on The Internets to take part in this seminal global event.
Do you want to be instrumental in making this historic effort a success?
Local conference hubs are an essential -- core -- part of the Singularity experience. As community organizers and leaders, your support and participation is invaluable.
Sign up on the Singularity Web Conference Local Hubs Google Group to get involved.
Let's make some history!
Photo: Flickr
I just added a sessions list to the Singularity Web Conference site so you can easily skim the announced sessions in one place.
The topics are eclectic and range from First "Principles of Web Accessibility" by Mike Davies from Yahoo! to "The best way to predict the future is to invent it" by Carlos Ulloa of Papervision3D.
Just some of the highlights:
Let All Things Be Connected by Rafi Haladjian, father of the Nabaztag bunny:
Since the end of the 70's we consider that computers (and mobile phones) are the only way to interact with information. Now the time has come to go to the next step.
Web Hooks: Real pipes for the web by Jeff Lindsay:
The web hooks pattern is a simple and pragmatic solution that will change the dynamics of the web as much as the adoption of web APIs. By complementing web APIs and RSS, web hooks will give us empowering infrastructure similar to Unix command pipelining, but on a grander scale. Pipes for the web have not yet been fully realized, but web hooks can change this. They also come with the added potential for allowing users to customize and extend web applications.
In this talk, Jeff Lindsay will describe the pattern in theory and by example, and explain the implications and importance of mass adoption.
Big Spaceship: Digital Creative Agency by Joshua Hirsch, Minister of Technology at Big Spaceship:
Get a glimpse behind the scenes and learn about the approach, philosophy, structure, process, techniques and culture of award winning creative agency Big Spaceship.
The Essential Elements of Great Web Applications by Robert Hoekman, Jr., author of designing the obvious and designing the moment:
Most great web applications have a few key things in common. But can you name them? Better yet—can you achieve them consistently in your own projects?
In this session, Robert Hoekman, Jr., author of Designing the Moment (New Riders) and the Amazon bestseller Designing the Obvious (New Riders), describes the qualities of great web-based software and how to achieve them. See why it’s important to build only what’s absolutely essential, apply instructive design, create error-proof interactions, surface commonly-used features, and more in this informative session that will change the way you work and enable your users to walk away from your software feeling productive, respected, and smart.
Education in the Internet Age by Lynda Weinman, author, teacher, and founder of Lynda.com:
We live in a game-changing age that's both disruptive and democratic, and requires that we challenge our past assumptions and play by new rules. It's clear to us industry insiders life as usual has forever been altered, but our formal educational systems trail behind and aren't keeping pace. What are the challenges to education in this age – where is the correct balance between real and virtual? Lynda Weinman, founder of lynda.com (one of the largest online education subscription sites in the world) discusses her views on this and related topics such as assessment, mentorship, authenticity, advertising, subscriber support, information, inspiration, and much more. Defining the role between the computer and the teacher, what is left best to technology and left best to live human interaction, is going define the future of education.
See the full list of sessions on the Singularity Web Conference web site.
Tickets for the Singularity Web Conference are just $99 until the end of August.
New sessions are being added every day, so check back for updates!
OS X Leopard comes with Python 2.5.1 and lacks the PIL package for image manipulation. Google App Engine's local SDK uses PIL to emulate its image manipulation features.
The instructions on Google's installation page for PIL are incorrect.
To install PIL, follow these instructions by Matt Kangas instead. (Thanks, Matt!)
The only thing I'd add to that is that the instructions won't work unless you've got your .bash_profile file set up to read your .bashrc file.
So, make sure you have the following code in the .bash_profile file in your home folder (cd ~):
if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then . ~/.bashrc fi
Finally! Go get 'em!
Go get 'em!
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