Author Archives: Wayne Horkan

About Wayne Horkan

I’m a technologist and engineer, typically working in enterprise architecture and systems engineering.

Congratulations to Plaxo for sending me the most condescending email advert I’ve ever received

3 Replies

Check this:

Now supporting the Pound!

You can now subscribe to Plaxo Premium using your hard earned Great British Pounds. Start your free 30-day trial

You can now pay for your Plaxo Premium subscription using Her Majesty’s currency.

Plaxo Premium includes a full set of tools that help you keep your calendar and contacts accessible, organised and safe.

* Remove duplicates from your calendar and address book* *

* Sync with your Windows Mobile phone* *

* Automated backup and recovery of contacts* *

* Send unlimited Premium eCards* *

* 24/7 VIP phone and e-mail support

Once you sign up, your credit card will not be charged for 30 days. You can cancel online at any time during the trial period.

Plaxo Premium now payable by the perennial Pound! Go on give it a try!

You know what ? They won’t be getting one of my hard earned ‘Great British Pounds’.

Imagine an advert saying paying with your ‘Yankee Dollars’ or some such; next it’ll be attempting to remind me that I’m a Subject and not a Citizen, which I don’t need. Or that our unwritten constitution sits in our Law Lords heads.

If that advert hasn’t been written by a naive ‘Yankee’ marketing noob, then I’d be well shocked.

Toodle-Pip old bean, etc., anyway else you’d like to stereotype me while your at it ?

Oh, and Plaxo, get a grip, just ’cause your buy out went through this month doesn’t mean you need to spam the world for cash. Or does it ?

Although it does seem it appear that you’ve started to share *OUR* address book data that you hold online with your new masters at ComCast. Nice one. Whatever happened to probity ?

See https://blog.plaxo.com/archives/2008/07/post_1.html#comments for more info.

Not sure how I feel about Plaxo now, I mean I really enjoy social networking technology, and have used Plaxo for yonks (mainly ’cause of Sean Parker and Doug Clinton).

But now I’m worried that they are going to exploit my online contact list, and that is just not acceptable.

I’m going to watch what happens and migrate or shut down my account if I think they are being irresponsible with my contacts.

And perhaps, in retrospect, you should think about investigating how they are sharing your contact lists as well.

Congratulations to Peter Ryan newly appointed EVP for Sun’s Global Sales and Services organisation

Leave a Reply

Congratulations to Peter Ryan, newly promoted EVP for Sun’s Global Sales and Services organisation (GSS). Peter has recently led the combined AMER Sales organisation (AMER stands for ‘Americas’) over the last year and a half, and prior to that he very successfully led the EMEA Sales organisation as EVP for the region.

Having worked with Peter during his tenure as EMEA EVP I’m sure he’ll be looking at fresh ways to engage with our customers, as he is immensely customer focused, with a real thirst for his role. Peter’s remit will also be covering a newly created Sun Business Unit, that of ‘Emerging Markets’, predominately made up the fast growing ‘BRICA’ countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and Africa).

Good luck in the new role Peter, I’m sure you’re more than up to it !

Of course all the very best of luck to Don Grantham, who is moving on to new opportunities.

Congratulations to Shez Rawsthorne-Houghton newly appointed CTO for Sun’s Global Services Practice

1 Reply

The title of the post says it all: here’s all the very best to Shez Rawsthorne-Houghton who’s recently been appointed CTO for Sun’s Global Services Practice. …..

Dr. James Martin’s ‘Target Earth’, the 2008 Turing Lecture

1 Reply

I promised a couple of months ago to do a review of the 2008 Turing Lecture, but I’ve changed my mind, and here’s why…

Basically I enjoyed it so much I think you should see it yourself, here’s the link from the IET.tv site, so go to it.

2008 with James Martin

Target Earth: The IET/BCS Turing Lecture

James Martin

Speaker: James Martin, Savoy Place, London, UK

2008-02-19 12:00:00.0 IT Channel

>> go to webcast

The Lecture was done by Dr. James Martin, the “RAD father”[1], or at least the father of RAD (Rapid Application Development).

Dr. Martin reminds me of another hero of mine, E. Gary Gygax (who sadly passed away recently), the father of the RPG, without whom we wouldn’t have MMORPGs as we know them today. Of course without James Martin, and his work developing RAD, it’s likely we wouldn’t have it’s progeny, like RUP, DSDM, XP, SCRUM, or any of the other myriad of agile, re-iterative and rapid approaches to development (certainly not in the form we see them now anyway).

The tweleve mega-problems

James went on to speak about the twelve mega-problems facing us today:

  • Climate Change
  • Population Growth
  • Water / Soil / Farm Shortage
  • Oceans Destroyed (polluted)
  • Failed Nations
  • Mass Famine
  • Automated Global Triage
  • Religious Extremism
  • Failed Nations
  • Terrorism with Atomic Weapons
  • War Ending Civilization
  • Existential Risks

A major issue with the mega-problems, James mentioned, is that they will combine to make a crescendo of disaster.

I really enjoyed the lecture, and although I’m not going to go into it deeply (cause I think you should watch it), I did catch the following notes, which must have interested me at the time.

Growth in China

Growth in China is such that they are building a new power station every week and a new city (of 2 million plus inhabitants) per month. I find this staggering, China’s economic value and growth is incredibly impressive and constantly amazes me.

The Singularity and the Law of Accelerating Returns

James spoke about a number of the predictions in Ray Kurzweil’s major work on futurology: ‘The Singularity is Near‘.

Like many people I’d already been turned onto the idea of ‘The Singularity’, but James positioned Kurzweil’s ‘Law of Accelerating Returns‘ as a significant influence on our combined ability to respond to the ‘mega-problems’.

The basic premise of this law is “an increase in the rate of technological (and sometimes social and cultural) progress throughout history, which may suggest faster and more profound change in the future”.

This first slide shows a correlation of fifteen preeminent lists of innovation, disruptive change and paradigm shift throughout history, that suggest an exponential trend.

Ray uses this as a primary source of data for the aforementioned law.

In Kurzweil’s 2001 essay ‘The Law of Accelerating Returns’ Ray extends Moore’s law to describe an exponential growth of technological progress.

He describes this as one of the reasons behind the Law of Accelerating Returns.

Many thanks to Ray Kurzweil and his organisation, Kurzweil Technologies, Inc., for the permission to reproduce these slides under a Creative Commons Attribution 1.0 license.

Understanding and Communicating the ‘Big Picture’

Another point James made was that to have any chance of resolving the mega-problems above it “needs”…”everybody (to) get the big picture”.

Of course “getting the big picture means everyone pulls together !” and that’s the real reason that vision statements and goals really do need to be clear and understandable, so everyone involved understands how their contribution ends up helping to make a difference.

Frankly I find the number of businesses that understand this is phenomenally low. I genuinely think it’s a big reason behind corporate inertia as company employees ‘churn’ around over what the ‘real’ goals of their organisation are.

A major reason that we all need to “get” the “Big Picture” is that our Politicians views reflect those of their voters and constituents, and until resolving these issues becomes important to us, our Politicians won’t really reflect them in their policies.

James Lovelock

James also name checks James Lovelock, another of my heroes and one of my favorite scientists, particularly for his work on Gaia Theory and the related ‘Daisyworld‘ virtual world simulation that suggests bio-diversity is a key component of the mechinism of the eco-system maintaining a habitable environment.

He is probably most well known for his work inventing the electron capture detector (1956) which led to the discovery of the ubiquitous distribution of pesticide residues (initially DDT) and pollutants (Lovelock was the first to detect the widespread presence of CFCs in the atmosphere) in the natural environment and can be said, along with Rachel Carson’s seminal book Silent Spring, to have started the environmental movement.

Jeffrey Sachs

Dr. Martin also name checks Jeffrey Sachs, and his book ‘The End of Poverty‘. Despite some negativity to Sachs methods online I still aim to get a copy soon.

Kleptocracy

Something I hadn’t heard of before, in regards to ‘Failed Nations’ was “Kleptocracy”: where a Government steals from it’s own people, a number of African Governments were given as example.

Overall

So I definitely enjoyed the lecture, thought provoking and extremely relevant, and I’m already looking forward to next years event, I wonder who the IET and BCS will get to present for 2009.

Previous IET / BCS Turing Lectures

Here’s links (and synopses) to the last four years Turing Lectures, all of which have been recorded by the IET for your viewing pleasure. Well worth a couple of hours of your time rather than being exposed to the latest ‘Internet Meme’…

2007 with Grady Booch

9th Annual Turing Lecture

Grady Booch, IBM

The Promise The Limits and the Beauty of Software Lecturer: Grady Booch, IBM

2007-01-25 12:00:00.0 IT Channel

>> go to webcast

2006 with Chris Mairs

Lifestyle access for the disabled

Dr. Chris Mairs

The BCS/IEE Turing Lecture 2006 Speaker: Dr Chris Mairs, Data Connection plc

2006-01-26 12:00:00.0 Control & Automation Channel

>> go to webcast

2005 with Fred Brooks

7th Annual Turing Lecture

Professor Frederick P Brooks

Collaboration and Telecollaboration in Design Lecturer: Professor Frederick P Brooks, Jr., FREng, Dist. FBCS

2005-01-20 12:00:00.0 IT Channel

>> go to webcast

2004 with Fred Piper

Cyberworld security – the good, the bad and the ugly (2004 Turing Lecture)

Professor Fred Piper

This lecture looks at some of the technical security mechanisms used for protecting our infrastructure by providing confidentiality for information; entity authentication over distributed computer networks and the detection of alteration to information. It discusses some of the social and political problems that can result from their use and from the fact that the same technology can be used by law enforcers (to catch criminals) and law breakers (to avoid being caught), as well as by businesses (to protect their assets) and by individuals (to protect privacy and preserve confidential data).

2004-01-21 12:00:00.0 Communications Channel

>> go to webcast

Notes

  1. If Paul Weller can be called the “Mod father“[2], I don’t see why I can’t re-appropriate the term in a computing context.
  2. Actually shouldn’t that be Steve Mariott ? Surely Mr. Weller only qualifies as the Punk Rock / Mod Revival cross-over father ? Or does that not trip as lightly off the tongue…

My haiku

Leave a Reply

My haiku

Washed up

Love you

Back soon

Sent via text from the 6.10 am train to London whilst rushing off to work last week, I thought it was kind of cute, can’t say Donna agreed though… not particularly sure it counts as a haiku either, c’est la vie…

New Glasses

Leave a Reply

Finally my new glasses have arrived. I say finally, but that really not fair, they only took a week.

I’ve been having more headaches lately, and increasingly painful ones, and it was pretty obvious that it was my eye sight letting me down.

It’s been at least fifteen years since my last pair, and they had held out for a fair while, but I could tell my sight had been degrading.

Worse than I thought though, I’ve been told I need these for anything that takes concentration, including watching the TV and driving.

Just getting used to them, it’s nice not to be so close to the screen again to be able to see what’s on it.

Oh no, not another redesign…

1 Reply

A number of reasons drove me to redesign the site, in part due to frustration with the existing one and inspiration to try something different.

My main frustrations were due to the fact I was posting a wide range of material whose messages I felt were getting mixed up.

One of the criticism’s people had of my blog was that it jumped around between high (detailed overviews of UK Gov. G2G sysetms) and low brow (going for a walk) too quickly. It had been my original intent to go with this, and that’s why the blog was originally called ‘eclectic’, but I’ve found it’s a little too jarring for people to handle, and I suspect was turning them off. By getting them to choose between different categories I’m hoping that they’ll pick up on that ‘channel’ and become familiar with it before trying the others. I think of this issue as one of signal to noise, however I suppose different readers signal is another’s readers noise.

Most people who have been through this learning curve move to multiple blogs, but I wanted an aggregated page, plus I had fun overloading some of the Roller macros to allow category specific functionality.

My frustration is that I’m sick to the gills of Facebook and the ilk, they are all just so much lock in to closed systems. Frankly I want all of these social applications to integrate. Now. For instance rather than have LinkedIn, Namyz, Xing, etc. keeping records of my professional contacts I just want a blended service where all my professional contacts are visible to me in a single data set, even if they are actually separate and multiple data sources (and wherever the data might actually be).

And I don’t want this applications to be shunting my data around in a haphazard manner, I’d rather just be able to view the information as a unified stream.

Just because the big three of MySpace, Facebook and Google have said that they will ‘play nice’ they are all, to a man, going to be ring fencing their user populations. They will attempt this with guile initially, then with ‘attractive’ *new* features, and finally with strong arm tactics. Eventually they will lose out, because if it’s not open, how ‘social’ is it really.

I’d started to feel that what was needed was a non-Facebook Facebook profile page, and once I’d seen Cal Henderson’s ‘iamcal‘ it all started to fall into place. Cal’s page was a real source of inspiration, and I hope that if he sees my current design that he likes it.

What I’m effectively going for is ‘Radical Transparency‘, mainly as put forward by Clive Thompson’s Wired article “The see through CEO“, and by Chris Anderson’s blog ‘The Long Tail‘ (in fact check out this recent article “You may be on Facebook, but the money’s in the Long Tail“).

Last week I was coming back from London on the late train from Euston and bumped into Chris Loughran from Deloitte, who was also doing the London to Birmingham trek. I was really pleased when, after showing him the new design, he immediately said ‘Radical Transparency’, because I knew I had ‘hit the nail on the head’ as it was obvious to him what I was trying to achieve.

You can see what I mean if you have a look at my new front page over at: https://blogs.sun.com/eclectic/

You should be able to see that I’ve collated recent blog entries, by ‘Category’, over on the left hand side (each of the Categories loads a different look and feel, which I’m hoping won’t be too disturbing for the readers, but will keep the separate nature of the contents in mind).

The centre is taken over by a tag graph combo, along with stuff I’m doing (including books I’m reading, music, films, all via All Consuming, sms via Twitter, online ‘radio’ via Last.fm, and a photo stream from Flickr).

Over on the right are some contact details, about the site, upcoming talks and presentations, and other pages accessable via the site.

The last section is a rss feed of the last blog post of my four favorite blogs, those of Alan Mather, Bill Vass, Mick Farren, and Tim Caynes.

I hope you like the new design, it appears to be popular, in that I’m converting more hits to page reads and multiple pages too.

There are a couple of things to complete, such as tidying up some of the code, finish re-implementing the multi-locale aspects of the site (although I doubt I’ll post machine translated blog posts again anytime soon), and finishing off a sitemap.

Free XML-RPC blog ping site submitter: “Blog Ping”

61 Replies

Here’s a free, as in beer, Blog Directory and Search Engine Site Submitter I wrote which works by sending out an XML-RPC Blog Ping.

“In blogging, ping is an XML-RPC-based push mechanism by which a weblog notifies a server that its content has been updated. An XML-RPC signal is sent to one or more “ping servers,” which can then generate a list of blogs that have new material. Many blog authoring tools automatically ping one or more servers each time the blogger creates a new post or updates an old one.”

– according to the Wikipedia article: ‘Ping (blogging)‘.

One of the things I have noticed most across the blogosphere and the wider ‘net during my time blogging, and it’s been just less than a year, is the obsession people have with “SEO”, or ‘Search Engine Optimization‘. There are a huge number of blogs dedicated to the subject and who simply go on about the whole SEO thing alone.

Frankly I feel that if I’m going to be putting effort into blogging then I might as well make it easy for people to find me and I’m sure plenty of other people feel the same way. If using technologies like blog pinging and other techniques like SEO is the norm, then it’s almost as though you are forced into doing the same to compete for readership; a technical ‘arms race’ in the competition for the attention of your readers.

So I wrote a program to help me notify the largest number of directories and search engines possible, in a simple and convenient way, and you’re welcome to use it as well.

You can download the Blog Ping application here: Blog Ping v1.0 (BlogPing.Jar)

You may find that if you click on the link to the file above, and you have Java installed, that it will attempt to run the application from where it is, so it’s probably best to do a ‘Save as…’ and save a local copy.

Please don’t deep link directly to the file above, instead link to the page you are currently on at: https://horkan.com/2008/04/22/blog-ping-search-submitter-seo

Here’s what the application looks like in action:

Blog Ping Application FAQ

Basically what does this software do ?

It notifies a variety of Blog Directories and Search Engines that your blog has been updated recently, which is often followed by those Blog Directories and Search Engines checking your site for new content, using a technique called ‘Spidering‘. Once verified by these ‘Web Crawlers’ they list your new content, postings, etc., in their directories and search results.

The list of Blogs is configurable, as is the the list of Blog Directories and Search Engines Servers (with a maximum of one thousand), and the application has a default list of those Servers, which includes some of the most popular that I have tested the application with successfully.

Will it improve the quality of my site ?

C’mon, now you’re just being silly, of course it won’t.

Will it improve the quality of conversation about my site ?

Again ‘No’, only you can do that by engaging your audience.

Will it get you listed on a large number of Search Engines and Blog Directories ?

Yes.

Will it generate page hits from people potentially coming to read your site ?

Yes, but very much dependent on the volume, quality, and cadence, of your blog posts. I’ve tested it against sites with small volumes of blog posts and poor cadence, and I have found that despite being listed in those blog directories, etc., it does not generate page hits.

Fundamentally you need three things, but you need these anyway to create a blog which gets regular readership, and that is:

  • A good volume of posts
  • Good quality of posts with interesting and engaging content
  • Regular postings, ‘Cadence’

Will it connect you with people who are genuinely interested in your topic matter ?

Maybe, maybe not, you’ll just have to see. It’s very dependent on the answer to the question above…

When should I use this software and how often should I use it ?

I recommend that you use it when you’ve initially set up a site to make as many Blog Directories and Search Engines aware of your new site as possible. You should probably be aware that a number of them require you to create an account with them, however the default list included in the application aren’t any of these.

After that I recommend that you only use it after posting a new blog entry and definitely not more than once a day (even with new posts and content).

What will this software do on my system ?

It will load up, along with the libraries it is bundled with. It uses the vanilla java swing libraries, as well as the apache xml-rpc project libraries.

Once loaded up it’ll do nothing until you either:

  • add, modify or delete a blog which you want to notify blog directories about (it’ll save your blogs in a file called “blog.txt” in the same directory as the application is run out of)
  • add, modify, or delete a blog directory / search engine to notify via an xml-rpc pingback (it’ll save your blogs in a file called “ping.txt” in the same directory as the application is run out of)
  • start a blog ping session, where it will cycle through all the blogs you’ve added, and through all the blog directories you’ve added, and send each one an xml-rpc pingback call (it’ll connect to the Internet via the Apache xml-rpc libraries, so you may need to let Java or BlogPing.jar have access through any locally configured firewalls)
  • have a look at the about page, which will load info from a special page from this blog, where I’ll post help and any news or updates about the application

What do I need to get it to work ?

An installed copy of the the Sun Java Runtime Environment (JRE). I set the software to be compatible with JRE version 1.5 and above, although I’ve only tested it from JRE 1.6 onwards.

Whilst writing it I used the Java Development Kit (JDK) version 1.6.0_0.5 (or 1.6.0 update 5, as it’s also known, the latest current version) so the JRE which matches this will definitely work.

You can get the Sun JRE here: https://java.com/en/download/index.jsp

Will it work on my system ? I use Windows, Linux, Solaris, etc.

Yes, it very much should, and because of Java’s platform independence, meaning programs written in the Java language have to run similarly on any supported hardware / operating-system platform via the Java Virtual Machine (Java VM or JVM). It should work on any system for which there is an available JRE.

For a full list of Operating Systems, System Configurations, and platforms, supported with a JRE (version 1.6) from Sun Microsystems, please see this page: https://java.sun.com/javase/6/webnotes/install/system-configurations.html

How do I run this software ?

Easy peasy, once the JRE is installed, two choices, command line or desktop environment.

If you are using the command line the following command should run it:

java -jar BlogPing.jar

Otherwise you should be able to simply ‘click’ on it from your desktop environment for it to start up.

For this to work files of the type “jar” (a ‘Java ARchive’) need to be registered as being associated with Java (notably the Java executable). You may find that the application doesn’t start in this instance and a common cause is that another application, most frequently compression and de-compression software like Rar or Zip (or there windowed versions, like WinRAR or WinZip), have already made this association and thus will be started up instead of Java.

How do I use this software ?

I’ve used screen grabs to show how to use the program, you can resize these images using the “Body Image Size” function over in the top of the right hand side bar (options are “Small”, “Medium”, and “Large”, and they should be set on “Medium” when you first come to the page).

When the program loads this is the first screen, and as it is such a simple program there is not much to it.

There are four menu items of note: “Exit” (under “File”), “About” (under “Help”), “Add Blogs” and “Add Pings” (both under “Menu”).

This screen shows the two menu item which you need to use to get the software to ping the servers you want to notify. You need to let the program know which blogs to tell people about and which directories and search engines to notify.

If you don’t have any blogs configured it will ask you to add one.

You need four pieces of information for this:

  • The title of your blog.
  • The URL of your blog.
  • The main URL for blog posts, most frequently the same as the URL of your blog.
  • The URL for syndication services on your blogs, either RSS or Atom. If you don’t know it simply add the URL from above.

If you choose ‘OK’ above it will have saved your blog, and you are free to add more, edit whats already there, or delete some.

Afterward add, editing and deleting blogs choose ‘OK’ to save them or ‘Cancel’ to ignore all the recently made changes.

If you don’t have any servers to send blog pings configured it will ask you to add some.

You can choose to add them individually, or to load the default list.

Having choosen to load in the default list of servers to ping, you are free to add more, edit whats already there, or delete some.

Afterward add, editing and deleting servers to ping choose ‘OK’ to save them or ‘Cancel’ to ignore all the recently made changes.

All servers to be sent blog pings are saved in a text file called “ping.txt” which should be in the same directory, or folder, as the one the ‘BlogPing.jar’ program was started in.

When adding a blog directory or search engine ping service you need just one piece of information: the URL for XML-RPC blog pings for that site.

Here the program is working through a processing cycle of blogs and servers to ping. The results are posted in the main notification output area. Once it’s finished going through all of the blogs you call grab the output and copy it into a text file.

Here’s the about box, it loads a page from this blog, which means I can update the page and make sure news and information about the program is kept up to date.

Why did I write it ?

Because I could and because I wanted more flexibility in using blog pinging over and above the default blog ping functionality in my blogs platform (Roller Weblogger, created by Dave Johnson, is used exclusively to host https://blogs.sun.com).

You may find that you have a similar requirement, even if your using another blogging platform such as WordPress, Movable Type, LiveJournal, or the like.

Plus I really dislike elitism, especially ‘technology’ elitism based on arbitrary things like what or how much you know, for me experience of having ‘done’ something matters more. Giving this software away and distributing it in the way that I am is an attempt to bring this capability to the non-programming, non-scripting, and much wider, blogging community.

Shouldn’t you have just contributed to Roller ?

Probably, in the longterm yes, as this is partially a tactical ‘fix’, done primarily to see if I could do it reasonably easily, of which the answer was definitely ‘yes’.

I also wanted more control and granularity when notifying Search Engines and Blog Directories of updates to my site, in fact I initially used it to make sure my blog was listed on as many global sites as possible.

What went into writing it ?

The Java Development Kit (JDK) 1.6.0 update 0.5 (and of course, as stated above you’ll need a compatible JRE to run it).

NetBeans version 6.0.1, which you definitely don’t need to run this program, available here: https://download.netbeans.org/netbeans/6.0/final/

Please note that the latest version of NetBeans (6.1) is currently in RC, or ‘release candidate’, form and that I’ll likely update Blog Ping to have been written in that in the very near future.

Download Java

Download Netbeans

The Apache XML-RPC libraries, version 3.1, also which you don’t need to run this software, available here: https://ws.apache.org/xmlrpc/

The ProGuard libraries, version 4.2, also which you don’t need to run this software, available here: https://proguard.sourceforge.net/

Anything else interesting about this software ?

Yes, my default set of blog ping services, which I’ll post later, and that I obfusticated the code using the latest version of ProGuard after being inspired by this article written by Geertjan on how to obfusticate java code written using NetBeans.

Possibly that I wrote it whilst listening to Flanders and Swann, notably “Madeira M’Dear”, famous for its syllepsis.

And maybe that I wrote this blog post listening to New Order, specifically Blue Monday (’95 tweleve inch version), and thanks to Walter Milner I think the Pink Fairies got in there somewhere too.

What do you want for this software ? Similar Blog Ping clients are on sale around the ‘net from anything between $30 and $100 ?

Nowt, yadda, zip, nothing, I just wanted to see if I could do it, and found that I could. If you use it, and you like it, please tell people about it, blog about it, add links to this page and this blog (but not the download itself), and leave a comment if you have time.

I’m especially interested in hearing from anyone who downloads and installs Java and the JRE as a result of wanting to use this software, so please let me know if you have.

Link to my blog here: https://blogs.sun.com/eclectic/

Link to the Blog Ping application page here: https://horkan.com/2008/04/22/blog-ping-search-submitter-seo

And comments here please: https://horkan.com/2008/04/22/blog-ping-search-submitter-seo#comments

There are also online services like ‘Pingoat’ and ‘King Ping’ which act as ‘Blog Ping aggregators’ for you, you can find them at https://www.pingoat.com and https://www.kping.com respectively. Whats nice about the software here is that you can configure it to use these ‘Blog Ping aggregators’, if they have an XML-RPC interface, which in the case of ‘Pingoat’ and ‘King Ping’ they both do.

By the way, there are other free Blog Ping software out there, notably Blog Pinger (a Linux command line utility, which as it’s written in Python should run on any OS where you have a compatible Python instance installed) and Submit’em now (a Firefox Add on).

Go check them out, they might be more to your liking, and diversity is good.

Will you be maintaining or updating this software ?

Maybe, it depends on three things: demand (from you guys), use (for me), and time (i.e. what gets priority over this).

What changes would you make ?

Probably spend some time learning more about the XML-RPC blog ping call protocol, I’m sure I could generate much higher volumes of Blog Ping successes if I did.

What license does this software use ?

This instance uses the Creative Commons License. Copyright 2008, Wayne T. Horkan.

Why isn’t this software ‘Open Source’ ?

If there is enough demand for the software, and more importantly changes to the software, then I’ll consider putting the effort into setting it up as Open Source. However, frankly, it’s a very minimal and trifling set of code at the moment.

Is this software anything to do with Sun Microsystems at all ?

This is my personal weblog and on it I do not speak for my employer. However the program was written using Sun technologies and I do work at Sun (although I put this software together as a home project and my current role at Sun rarely involves writing code).

Does that mean that Sun are they responsible for it ?

No, definitely not, nag me about it, not Sun, and do that in the comments section of this page please.

Is this a ‘White Hat‘ or ‘Black Hat‘ SEO tool or technique ?

The tool is implicitly amoral, it’s the user that constructs a moral or immoral pattern of usage.

Using this software aggressively to send falsified blog postings will likely, and deservedly, get search engines and blog directories to block your site, potentially even de-listing it, so please don’t be irresponsible in using it.

Have a look at the following Wikipedia article for more information on White Hat versus Black Hat SEO techniques.

Presenting at the Open Groups “Enterprise Architecture Practitioners Conference 2008” tomorrow in Glasgow

1 Reply

I’ll be presenting tomorrow at the “Enterprise Architecture Practitioners Conference 2008”.

As usual this Enterprise Architecture (EA) Practitioners Conference is being hosted by the Open Group, the custodians of the extremely popular TOGAF EA Framework (it stand for “The Open Group Architecture Framework”). TOGAF is currently used by 80% of the Forbes Global Top 50 companies, and has emerged as a leading framework amongst Enterprise Architects for developing information systems architectures.

The strap line of the conference is “Successful Enterprise Architecture” and through the use of working application case studies and peer-group discussion, the event will demonstrate how the framework used is central to the development of an effective Enterprise Architecture.

I’ll be presenting “Case Studies of Enterprise Architecture“: exploring a number of major customer engagements, including an Enterprise Architecture team which led its company into a 70+ million pound ‘pitfall’, the use of Enterprise Architecture to define a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), and an example of how successful Enterprise Architecture is dependent on achieving the proper Governance model.

This is the 18th EA Practitioners Conference, and is being held in Glasgow, Scotland, at the Radisson SAS Hotel. It will be the third one that I’ll have presented at now, having done the previous two “European” versions of the conferences: Paris in 2007 and London in 2006. There are a variety of posts about these conferences on this blog and the best way to find them, and the content I presented, is via the tag for enterprise-architecture-practitioners-conference or for more general posts with EA content at the tag on enterprise-architecture.

I’m not the only Sun guy presenting at the conference, Dan Berg (CTO Global Sales & Services and Vice President EMEA Systems Engineering) presented “Architecting the Sun” on Monday, and Rakesh Radhakrishnan (Chief Identity & SOA Architect, Sun Microsystems, US) is presenting “Aligning ADM and SOA for Successful EA” today.

Sun were originally founding members of the Open Group and thanks to Scott Radeztsky championing EA in Field / Customer Engineering in the US we have recently rejoined the Open Group as Platinum members. This has also led to a TOGAF certification programme being rolled out in the US, and I very much hope that we can see a similar programme in Europe and the UK.

Here’s the main link to the event: https://www.opengroup.org/glasgow2008/

Here’s the link to the program for the event: https://www.opengroup.org/glasgow2008/program.htm

Here’s the link to the Open Group synopsis of my presentation: https://www.opengroup.org/glasgow2008/horkan.html

WebMission08: Twenty UK web2.0 Startups “face-to-face” networking across Silicon Valley

Leave a Reply

Just been listening to BlogTalk Radio, who’ve kindly been hosting a number of slots for us on our Sun Startup Essentials programme in conjunction with WebMission08.

Web Mission 2008 sees twenty UK web2.0 startups traveling to San Francisco and exploring new opportunities for growth with key people across Silicon Valley.

Sun are a key Technology partner for the event and it is being covered by Sun’s local expert on Startups (based in the UK and beyond), Stewart Townsend.

More on the UK Startups page, hosted by Stewart, here: https://blogs.sun.com/startups/entry/20_uk_startups_and_one

Internationalizing a Roller Weblogger based Blog

9 Replies

So I’ve been spending time lately providing better international support to the blog.

In fact check out the variants I’ve put together:

For the translator I used the Yahoo Babelfish translation service, rather than Google Translate (which I use to produce on demand translations of the site, at the time of posting this it should be at the top of the right hand sidebar), because I didn’t want to become tied in to a single Translation Service Supplier.

During translation I switched to using “blog” rather than “weblog” for the title, as many of the languages would translate blog but not weblog (possibly a weakness of the translation service).

I was alluding to the new multi-language pages and the new multi-lingual nature of the blog in the post on St. Patrick’s Day, however I’d only translated some of the posts, not internationalised the site itself, and so it wasn’t really time to go live, but I did want the posts to start being spidered (and the post “Weblog language translator – blog translation on the fly with Roller specific functionality” explains why).

iron l10n zion – or how I did it…

There are a number of ways to internationalize a blog running over Roller Weblogger, for instance at the Aquarium, another Sun Blog, they use multiple blogs instances, like the Japanese Aquarium, I didn’t go for this approach as I wanted to keep to a single blog instance (due to maintainability basically).

I approached the problem by having a language resource file which loads as the session begins based upon the locale determined in the URL.

At run time this is done dynamically like this:

  1. Decide which locale the user is loading the page from
  2. Load the language specific resource file / pack (from a repository of language resource files, of which there is one resource file / pack per language)
  3. Variables are already allocated and populated with language specific data
  4. Use the above variables throughout the Roller Weblogger template code (HTML mainly) to create the page
  5. Present the page to the user requesting it

A number of language resource files were needed, all of which I populated with text based named variables (obviously the name of the variable stays the same, just the content per language resource file is different).

Then I replaced all the specific uses of text across my roller templates with calls to those variables.

This is a code snippet example of the code which decides which language resource file to load, and yes, before you say it, it’s not aesthetically pleasing, but I’m the only person who’ll be debugging it, so I’ll let myself off on that one. As you can see it checks which locale the page is being called from (based on the URL, but you can’t see that bit), once it finds a positive it loads the language specific resource file (notice I also ensure to load a default at the end if a match can’t be found).





  #if ($model.locale == "en")





      #includeTemplate($model.weblog "_lang_en")





  #elseif ($model.locale == "zh")





      #includeTemplate($model.weblog "_lang_zh")





  #else





      #includeTemplate($model.weblog "_lang_en")





  #end

And here’s an example of a specific language resource file, in this case this is the start of “_lang_de”, one of the files that would have been loaded based on the logic in the above piece. As you can see it has my (string) variables allocated and populated.





  #set ($gtTitle = "Blog Wayne-Horkans: eklektisch")





  #set ($gtMostPopTags = "Die meisten populären Umbauten")





  #set ($gtSitePrefs = "Aufstellungsort-Präferenzen")

Here’s an example use of the $gtTitle (string) variable from above within the Roller Weblogger template, which Roller builds dynamically at run time, obviously if the page was being


  $gtTitle

Probably the worst part of this was being adversely effected by Roller timezone and localization sensitivity issues as documented in ROL-1337 “all components involved in weblog rendering need to be locale & timezone sensitive”.

For instance when generating blog specific URLs in my templates, not all of the Roller Weblogger functions, macros and variables are timezone / localisation safe, and so for a number of them I’ve had to step though the templates modding the code to be timezone and localization safe as I go.

This meant that I had to bodge parts of the code with temporary ‘fixes’ to make up for the incomplete coverage, but it will do for now.

A couple of the most obvious issues was one with dates, as “$utils.formatDate” only produces day and month names in English, and another with “$entry.permalink” as it produces a non-locale specific URL





  ## Replaced instances of $entry.permalink with $entryLSP (Locale Specific Permalink)


  #set ($entryLSP = 

  "https://blogs.sun.com/eclectic/$model.locale/entry/$utilities.encode($entry.anchor)")

I may also have to write alternate macros which are locale specific, including the one that generates a list of recent entries:





  #set ($rEntries = $model.weblog.getRecentWeblogEntries($chosenCat, $rEntriesTotal)) 




  ## Have to use this as locale settings don't yet effect "getRecentWeblogEntries"


  #showWeblogEntryLinksList($rEntries)

I don’t want to give the impression that non of the Roller Weblogger timezone / locale specfic functionality works. In fact a lot more than I assumed would, did. Including the menu (content) functions and Tag URL functions, and I was very pleased that there was the level of support in Roller that there is for internationalization.

I’ll be providing more multi-lingual content, specifically the content rich, article like posts I’ve been doing, so far I’ve translated three posts of this ilk:

Scott McNealy BCS Distinguished Fellow

2 Replies

Last night I was at a BCS ELITE networking event, very kindly organised by Yva Thakurdas, with help from Mandy Bauer, and co-hosted by the indomitable Roger Ellis (in the Chairman, David Tidey’s absence).

BCS ELITE are one of the BCS’s Specialty Groups, a forum for IT Directors and CxOs.

Obviously the event was a good one, I had an enjoyable time, and in the words of Mr. Rodríguez: “Make new friends and keep the old. One is silver and the other’s gold.”

It reminded me that I hadn’t posted the photo that Yva had sent me from the BCS ELITE Winter Gala, where Scott McNealy was presented with his Distinguished Fellowship of the BCS at the stunningly magnificent Goldsmiths Hall (on his Birthday I might add).

So here it is:

From left to right are: Rebecca Smith, Simon Culmer, Scott McNealy, Kim Jones, and Enzo Tolino.

Many thanks for the photo Yva, and again for setting up the event last night.

Welcome to the ‘blogosphere Peter…

Leave a Reply

A big welcome to the blogosphere to Peter Hoots , Enterprise Architect extraordinaire at Sun, who starts his Sun blog , as I’m sure he means to go on, with a post about EA Framework ‘Completeness’ . …..

The Ken vs. Boris Show

Leave a Reply

So the ‘battle’ for Mayor of London is being called ‘the Ken vs. Boris show’.

Strange to think that in the majority of the search results I’ve generated whilst researching the subject most of them came up with ‘Ken vs. Boris’, rather than the other way around, almost as though Boris Johnson is in the stronger position of the two, both in and out of the sentence.

That Ken Livingstone has a battle on his hands this time round is without a doubt. I spend the majority of my working life in the City, and frankly I haven’t heard a good word said about him in almost ten years, when I was still at Harrods, building Harrods Online (yes, I know, pretty isn’t it, although it’s been almost eight years since I spent three ‘heady’ years there, and I expect it’s probably been re-engineered since then, although you never know, as software I engineered is still in commission after over fifteen years).

Of course the battle for the position of the Mayor of London should not be confused with that of the Lord Mayor of the City of London, which is something completely different.

Over on the BBC website they are asking the lowest common denominator question of ‘does it matter outside London ?’, and given the wholesale reliance that the UK economy has on the Finance and Trading industry centered in London, it’d be extremly hard to see how it isn’t.

That the people of London choose both the best Major for the City and it’s re-energisation, it’s imperative that they also choose someone who can help re-energise the Financial ‘Engine’ of the UK which sits at the heart of the Capital. This is especially true given the ongoing credit crisis, made even worse yesterday with the annoucment that Bear Stearns would sell massively under their expected value.

Andrew Sparrow, a journalistic political blogger over at the Guardian website, has a nice piece ‘Boris invites Ken to get on his bike ‘, which includes the following snippet, in regards to the ‘green’ agenda:

Boris, of course, was funnier. Ken, apparently, never learnt to ride a bike, and, after a question about cycling, Boris urged him to “show a lead” and learn now.

Other headlines include the Telegraph with ‘Boris Johnson prances round Ken Livingstone’, the Times with ‘It’s Horrid Ken v Chaotic Boris’, and I’ve found you can even get betting odds on the ‘competition’ along with the tag line of ‘Red Ken vs Blue Boris ‘.

Frankly it must be the Brummy from Nechells in me, but I actually thought the funniest caption ended up being the Sun’s ‘barmy Boris VS crazy Ken’.

Let’s just hope that the City gets someone who at least attempts to live up to their promises, and who can genuinely help to revitalise not just local authority politics in London, but the Financial sector too, for the sake of us all in the UK.

Goodbye Arthur C. Clarke

Leave a Reply

Farewell to another hero of mine with the demise of Arthur C. Clarke earlier today.

I have fond memories of Arthur, mainly from the ITV series ‘Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World’, and of course from the parody done by the Goodies in the episode ‘Big Foot’.

Arthur’s work was prescient, and he well understood the symbiotic relationship between Science Fiction, and that of Science, Technology, and Innovation:

I’m sure we would not have had men on the Moon if it had not been for Wells and Verne and the people who write about this and made people think about it. I’m rather proud of the fact that I know several astronauts who became astronauts through reading my books.

As a ‘retired’ table top RPGer my favourite quote of his, which I heard, I think from Paul Cooke, was:

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Whilst this following quote amusingly goes very much against Okham’s Razor (which itself is a principal I like, and use, a great deal):

The truth, as always, will be far stranger.

I also like these quotes by Arthur too:

How inappropriate to call this planet Earth, when clearly it is Ocean.

Sometimes I think we’re alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we’re not. In either case the idea is quite staggering.

Somewhere in me is a curiosity sensor. I want to know what’s over the next hill. You know, people can live longer without food than without information. Without information, you’d go crazy.

Apparently another of his most famous works, ‘Rendevous with Rama’, is being adapted and produced as a film, and according to IMDB will be ready for release in 2009. Let’s hope so, and that it’s a fitting adaption.

He leaves the the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation to carry on the good work of promoting Science and Technology in his name.

So here’s to the man, who along with Stanley Kubrick in the adaption of 2001: A Space Odyssey, managed to change the entire World’s understanding of what ‘Space’ might sound like, especially when spaceship’s ‘dock’. Less whoosh, bang and zap, and more ‘An der schönen blauen Donau’ (also known as ‘On The Beautiful Blue Danube’ by Johann Strauss II).

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day!

Leave a Reply
   

FasterTrading 2008年およびイギリスおよびヨーロッパ人の貿易市場の分裂

Leave a Reply

私達の市役所の仕事の使用中日最後の火曜日(第4)私が IntelのFasterTradingの前 日曜日の人が、壮麗なサヴォイの場所のIETのHQのナイジェルWoodward催した得られた後、 2008年の でき事に。 私は実際にそれを見つけるでき事を最もよい売り手の操業の1つ、市場の表面仕上げ、私によってがまだに行っているでき事楽しんだ。 ナイジェルおよびIntelのチームは実際に彼らの原料を知っていた、それはそれらを聞く喜びだったある最高のスピーカーをしっかり止め。 . …..

FasterTrading 2008 und die Zerteilung der Großbritannien-und Europäer-Geschäftsmärkte

Leave a Reply

Nachdem ein beschäftigter Tag bei der Arbeit in unserem Stadtbüro letzten Dienstag (der 4.) ich in der Lage war, Intels FasterTrading an das Ereignis 2008 entlang zu gelangen, bewirtet von einem Exsun-Kerl, Nigel Woodward, vorbei am Hauptquartier des IET am ausgezeichneten Wirsing-Platz. …..

FasterTrading 2008 och splittringen av UK- och européhandeln marknadsför

Leave a Reply

Över på HQEN av IETEN på den storartade savoyen förlägga, efter en upptagen dag på arbete i vår tisdag för jumbon för stadskontoret (4th) jag var kompetent att få along till Intel den FasterTrading händelsen som 2008 varades värd av enSun grabb, Nigel Woodward. ….. 1 Trackback

FasterTrading 2008年和英国和欧洲人商业市场的破碎

Leave a Reply

在一繁忙的天在工作在我们的市政厅最后星期二(4个)之后我能有 英特尔的FasterTrading 2008年 事件，主持由前太阳人，奈格尔Woodward，在IET的HQ在壮观的开胃菜地方。 我真正地享受这个事件，发现它一个最佳的供营商奔跑，市场饰面，我去的事件。 奈格尔和英特尔队巩固了真正地知道他们的材料的一些第一流报告人，并且它是乐趣听他们。 我划分了什么我夺取了反对每位报告人，并且如下他们的沥青(因为 这里 参考 是更多关于报告人和那里个体沥青. …..