Blogcast: How to: The comments section gives links for using Windows Media Player to capture demos from your screen while recording your words. "The files usually end up in between 2 and 3 mb for about 6-8 minutes worth of blogcast"  11:30:40 PM    

Solar SeV Finetex Shell: Updated geek jacket, now with solar charger:  "The Solar SCOTTEVEST (SeV) combines the benefits of our signature jacket and removable solar panels. The solar panels enable you to recharge most USB compatible devices on the go, either while wearing the jacket or with the panels removed. When attached, the solar panels compliment the jacket’s design. The solar panels charge a small battery - about the size of a deck of cards. The battery powers your device almost immediately after the solar panels are exposed to sunlight. Once the battery is fully charged, the panels can be removed and your portable electronic device can tap into the stored power.   Typical charge times in direct sunlight range from 2-3 hours, but direct sunlight is not required."  Geek cargo pants also available, teflon coated (but no solar panel...).  10:55:10 PM    

Mapping Google: How Google Maps works in the browser.  Turns out they use XMLHttpRequest, a hidden iFrame and the browser-based XSLTProcessor.  Great to see that XSLT is now working well in browsers, both IE6 and Firefox.  More info on it here, and a broader comment about "AJAX" here:  "AJAX seems to be the new "buzzword of the day". In short, AJAX stands for "Asynchronous JavaScript And XML", an acronym coined by Jesse Garrett recently. The basic idea is very nice - you can actually perform client-side programming directly in the DHTML code, in the embedded JavaScript. And, while the DHTML page interacts with the user, it talks asynchronously in the background with the server through a variety of methods, notably by sending/receiving XML fragments."  Used in Google Maps, GMail, and even Outlook Web Access.  10:42:50 PM    

The XML User Interface Language: (XUL) is a markup language for creating rich dynamic user interfaces. It is a part of the Mozilla browser and related applications and is available as part of Gecko [and Firefox]. It is designed to be portable and is available on all versions of Windows, Macintosh as well as Linux and other Unix flavours. With XUL and other Gecko components, you can create sophisticated applications without special tools.

XUL was designed for creating the user interface of the Mozilla application including the web browser, mail client and page editor. XUL may be used to create these types of applications. However, it may also be used any place you would use currently use a web application, for instance, when you need to be able to retrieve resources from the network and require a richer user interface .. This means you don't have to look for third party code or include a large block of JavaScript in your application just to handle a popup menu. XUL has all of these elements built-in. In addition, the elements are designed to look and feel just like those on the user's native platform, even supporting OS level themes in Windows XP and MacOS X.  .. In fact, XUL is powerful enough that the entire user interface in the Mozilla application is implemented in XUL. "

Example: GeorgeNava.com.  (Use Firefox to view.)  Very slick, fast, pleasant to use.

  10:32:32 PM    

OpenLaszlo: Next generation, open source, supported by IBM:  "With Laszlo, you can:

• Develop standards-based rich Internet applications with one code base in XML and JavaScript
• Deploy them from any J2EE application server or Java servlet container running under Linux, UNIX, Windows or Mac OS X
• Display them in any Web browser enabled with the Flash 5 Player or above, reaching 97% of all Web-enabled desktops

Since 2002, Laszlo-powered applications have demonstrated proven usability, scalability and reliability in public Web deployments to millions of users."

  10:23:28 PM    

Fedora Project Wiki - FedoraXenQuickstart: How to run Xen in Fedora.  "As some people have noticed, Xen is now available from the Fedora development repository. More information on Xen itself can be found at http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Research/SRG/netos/xen/index.html. We're following the -unstable Xen tree at the moment which does occasionally lead to things being broken but also lets us track a lot of the more interesting work going on there. Since setting up to run Xen isn't entirely straight-forward, here's a run-through of what should work for setting up a single Xen guest running the Fedora development tree."  9:26:04 AM