Author: Vince Kimball

Bridging PHP and .NET with XML-RPC. A couple of months ago, I mentioned that we are developing rich Windows clients running on .NET. We are still using PHP on the web server, and using XML-RPC for communication between .NET and PHP. We could have tried to use SOAP, but at that time there were too… Continue reading Bridging PHP and .NET with XML-RPC

A negative assessment of the FCC's broadband efforts. BusinessWeek: “Based on this latest court ruling, it seems more likely that little of substance from [FCC Chairman] Powell's controversial three-year crusade to change the face of telecom in the U.S. will survive.” [Werblog]

Ah, now it makes sense!. Jeff Taylor of Reason Magazine: “To recap, the law says your cable modem is a phone, except when you use it as a phone. Then it is not a phone.” (via Arnold Kling)  [Werblog]

In the Beginning was the Command Line. Working on a recent column, I remembered Neal Stephenson's short book In the Beginning was the Command Line and wanted to reference it, but I couldn't find my copy.  Lucky for me (and all of you), there is a downloadable ZIP file of it. There is so, so… Continue reading In the Beginning was the Command Line

Load Acrobat Faster…use Flash Paper. Russell Beattie has a post today about his quest for getting PDFs to load more quickly, noting as other's have that the footprint of Acrobat 6 is getting larger and larger, with stuff that mostly no one neads for simple digital paper. A number of people have noted that Flash… Continue reading Load Acrobat Faster…use Flash Paper

BBC Vision for download video apps. It's great to see/hear this kind of thinking coming from a major broadcast media company.  This is precisely the kind of approach that Maven Networks has taken in building a broadband media system, focused on the broadband-connected PC rather than the PVR/TV (for now, though as convergence devices come… Continue reading BBC Vision for download video apps

Canter on Faces of your digital lifestyle. Marc's PeopleAggregator project is a good start in this direction.  The problem described in this posting on Many2Many is exactly what federated identity networks (and supporting protocols) have been designed to address.  Our identities (online and off) are fragmented all over the place, often purposefully, but we can… Continue reading Canter on Faces of your digital lifestyle

Oh, here's one for the Three Degrees team. Chris Putnam writes “Microsoft is incompatible with teenagers.” Chris should know. He's a high schooler. If he can't be convinced to use Three Degrees, then the target market has not been served. He IS the target market.  [The Scobleizer Weblog]

Preparing for the NetGens. Text Generation Growing Up Online “With almost every girl and boy in Australia using the internet – 93 per cent, according to the latest reckoning – a new 'kid society' is blooming. Internet messenger services, email, text and mobile phones are broadening children's social networks and making them virtually inseparable from… Continue reading Preparing for the NetGens