Web Development

I spent a couple of days messing around with Darwin Streaming Server, the open source port of Apple's Quicktime Streaming Server. Here's what I learned from my poking and prodding of Darwin installed on a Redhat Linux box:

1. Darwin streams over port 7070 by default. There's an option to have it stream over :80, but since Apache also uses :80 to serve web pages the two servers will conflict if you're planning on running them on the same box.
2. Darwin will stream .mov and .mp4 files, but the movies must be hinted. I'm not sure how one goes about hinting an .mp4 file; I assume you can add such hints via Final Cut Pro.
3. Darwin will not stream individual MP3s, but it will stream MP3s as part of a playlist. The Quicktime Streaming Server under Mac OS Server may appear to stream individual files, but in reality it just pretends to do that by by creating playlists for each individual file. You could do the same with DSS, but it's cumbersome via the web interface; it's likely something you'd want to script. On a related note, there is "muse" add-on for Icecast (another open source streaming server) but it has the same playlist limitation; there's no streaming of individual files outside of a play list.

I got to spend too much time the last two days fighting the good fight while trying to update and redeploy a Firefox extension that creates a toolbar of popular links for the college where I work. Firefox toolbar are nifty creatures, but they can be finicky.

I'm giving a brownbag presentation on what's new on the Web at work tomorrow, looking at the best of what's come out since this time last year. What follows are the rough draft of my notes. I've persnally used about half of these sites; the rest were suggested by the Tribe on Twitter. I'm still looking for suggestions, so if you have any, please feel free to post a comment.

I'll be at DrupalCon Boston from March 3 through March 6, which I'm attending for the day job. While I'm keeping an eye out for stuff related to higher education, most of the sessions deal with developing Drupal for any environment, be it a campus blogging platform or a science fiction webzine.

I've been fighting the good fight against RSS bugs in Moodle 1.8.2. The problem isn't actually with Moodle, but with Snoopy, the PHP class that emulates as a web browser and which Magpie RSS library uses to fetch the feeds.

It seems that the current version of Snoopy has some issues with redirected URLs. It has trouble following 302 Page Moved messages and has an annoying habit of putting the port number into redirected URLs. While it's not technically wrong to do this, not every web server thinks that the urls foo.com and foo.com:80 are the same (strange but true).

Case in point: The Wall Street Journal. The following feeds involve redirects (apparently served through FeedBurner, so I'm betting any feed using FeedBurner would have the same issue):

http://online.wsj.com/xml/rss/3_7011.xml
http://online.wsj.com/xml/rss/3_7014.xml

My new MacBook Pro arrived Friday, and the first thing I did (after basking in the beauty that is a new Mac) was to start loading my “must have” applications on it it. Of these, the Quicksilver fast app launcher is probably the single most important tool I have -- using it has become as instinctive as breathing, and it’s disconcerting for me to work on a Mac that doesn’t have it installed.

Matt Asay discusses the seemingly incongruous rise of the proprietary Mac in open source community. He makes a lot of good points, including the ability to quickly evoke terminal and run Unix apps while at the same time maintaining an attractive desktop interface, but I think this statement sums up why many have switched:

At a certain point, I just want something that works well.

Crafty Games, the folks who publish Spycraft and its kin, have unveiled a brand new web site, and wouldn't you know it's powered by Drupal? For those of you who are keeping score at home, Drupal is also the CMS that drives this ol'thermonuclear burg.

The new Crafty Games site includes a wiki, three blogs, a discussion forum, and extensive downloads for both the 1st and 2nd editions of Spycraft.

Later this month I'm going to be giving a lunchtime-presentation on Web 2.0, updating everyone on the latest web sites and apps that have been released since my last talk on the topic a year ago. I'm looking for suggestions and recommendations about sites to talk about this year. The audience is college faculty, staff and students.

Last time around, I talked about:

• Basecamp
• Blogger
• Del.icio.us
• Facebook
• Google Maps
• MySpace
• Protopage

Unix geeks should appreciate this short clip depicting the Microsoftization of the vi text editor.

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