Dave Remembers XML-RPC

Scripting News: 11/20/2005It’s the fifth hit on Google for XML, ahead of some pretty famous sites. It’s by far the number one reason people go to the DaveNet site. I guess I pay too much attention to the critics who say that XML-RPC isn’t good enough for them.

XML-RPC is, I think, more significant than RSS in a number of ways.  Using XML-RPC allows me to give direct access to my data to developers so they can use it as they see fit.  In essence I can provide content and data (which I can do well) and let others worry about layout, design, etc (which I don’t do well at all).  I’m glad Dave is going to turn his attention back to XML-RPC.

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Google Pods?

This shipping container is a prototype data center. Google hired a pair of very bright industrial designers to figure out how to cram the greatest number of CPUs, the most storage, memory and power support into a 20- or 40-foot box. We’re talking about 5000 Opteron processors and 3.5 petabytes of disk storage that can be dropped-off overnight by a tractor-trailer rig. The idea is to plant one of these puppies anywhere Google owns access to fiber, basically turning the entire Internet into a giant processing and storage grid.

Slashdot | Google’s Secret Plans For All That Dark Fiber?

Wow.  Needless to say the /. is rather up in a lather about one corporation weilding this sort of power.  I wonder if they would as upset if Google were still private or if it were a non-profit.  Is there something inherently evil in one  corporation exercising a large measure of control over all the info on the net?  Can’t say really.  All we have to compare something like this to are the monopolies of the last centruies.  And none of that ended well.

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Skype, Radio Shack Bring PC2PC VOIP to Consumers

Beginning Monday, Fort Worth, Texas-based RadioShack will feature Skype products in a special kiosk, including a new Motorola Inc. headset that uses short-range wireless Bluetooth technology to make calls via Skype, priced at $100. It will sell a $40 headset from Logitech and a $129 cordless phone from Cisco Systems Inc.’s Linksys unit.The RadioShack kiosk will feature Skype starter kits for $5 with a simple earpiece/microphone, software and 30 minutes of free Skype calling time to any number in the world. Sales clerks will offer training videos and software to customers.

Skype in U.S. Retail Distribution Pact

This is huge for Skype.  Retail placement in Radio Shack will put the next to cell carriers like Verizon.  RS already has some of the hardware with Skype included available here.  A geek bonus would be if this hardware could be reconfigured to work with SIP.  I’ll be looking into this.

links for 2005-11-18

Cisco To Acquire Set-Top Leader Scientific-Atlanta

Cisco Systems Inc. agreed to buy Scientific-Atlanta Inc. for $6.9 billion, adding the second-largest U.S. maker of set-top boxes for cable television and tapping into the growing market for Internet TV.Cisco, based in San Jose, California, will pay $43 a share, the companies said today in a Business Wire statement. The offer is 3.7 percent higher than Lawrenceville, Georgia-based Scientific- Atlanta’s closing price yesterday.

Bloomberg.com: Top Worldwide

This would seem to give Cisco a leg-up on the race to grab the sofa surfer market.  S-A boxes currently provide hi-def, DVR, and a host of other features.  DVD burners are coming. The boxes are networkable and Cisco has Linksys.  It isn’t too much of a leap to imagine a S-A box talking to a Linksys router and beaming content all over the house as well as receiving downloads of music, movies, and photos.  It beats adding a MSFT media PC to my home theater rig.

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IM Bots for CALI?

Ideally, these bots could use RSS and anyone with a feed could create their own bots that their visitors could add and use. Would you use a MAKE bot? You could ask it “how do i solder” and it he’d return text and links to our pages on this online and in the magazine

MAKE: Blog: Make AOL Instant Message bots?

Here’s an intriguing idea: we create bots that run on popular IM platforms (Yahoo, AIM, MSN, Jabber,etc) that fetch links to lessons or search the US Code.  I could see this as part of our study group idea, or for use in the classroom.  Put all that IM speak to good use.

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Google Base: Powered By RSS

What’s perhaps most interesting about the Google Base design is that it appears to have been designed from the ground up with RSS and XML at its center. One need look no further then the detailed XML Schema and extensive RSS 2.0 specification to realize that Google intends to build the world’s largest RSS “reader” which in turn will become the world’s largest XML database.

Burnham’s Beat: RSS and Google Base: Google Feeds Off The Web

Google extends RSS through the use of a namespace, adding attributes to the <item> level.  While this will certainly consume feeds, it seems that the feed’s author will need to be fairly clear about what the feed is providing.  I wonder how long it will be before we see extensions built for commerce apps that will generate these beefed up feeds?  In many ways it should be fairly straight forward if you are operating some sort of online inventory or catalog to generate these googlified RSS feeds. 

Of course there is still the problem of getting the feeds to Google.  It is not clear if Google will ‘aggregate’ feeds or merely parse the feed and create records.  For it to be really cool, it needs to regularly read the feed.  The focus on the bulk upload pages seems to be on FTP, but RSS is certainly lurking in the background. If I can give Google Base a URL for a catalog feed and have it chekc the URL for new items, then this makes a lot of sense.  I guess we shall see.

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