Blue Sky On Mars

• Dynamic CSS via JavaScript
  Nice looking library for manipulating CSS via JavaScript.
  (tags: css javascript library mootools)
• Rope, a python refactoring library …
  Nice… a modern library for refactoring Python code. I’d love to see this integrated with TextMate.
  (tags: python programming refactoring development)
• templatemaker
  Adrian Holovaty’s project that takes multiple files (say web pages, for instance), finds out where they differ and uses that as a template for extracting future data.
  (tags: python web scraping library software OpenSource)

• DSL Book WIP
  Martin Fowler is working on a book about Domain Specific Languages. This site has his work-in-progress.
  (tags: programming book dsl)

• The Blogger’s Guide to SEO - by Aaron & Giovanna Wall : SEO Book.com
  Haven’t read this yet, but it seems like an interesting read.
  (tags: blogging seo toread)

• MonetDB and SQLAlchemy [panela.blog-city.com]
  I’ve never previously heard of MonetDB. It’s a column-oriented database (superfast for reads). Matt Harrison is putting together an SQLAlchemy interface for it. How cool is that? Use row-based DB for writing data, move the data to Monet later for reportin
  (tags: sqlalchemy python orm database monetdb)

• The Omni Mouth » OmniFocus public beta/introductory pricing
  OmniFocus public beta starts. $80 for a todo list? Looks snazzy, but iGTD sure does an awful lot of this for free.
  (tags: gtd omnigroup omnifocus igtd)

• Jonathan Ellis’s Programming Blog - Spyced: Reed-Solomon libraries
  Jonathan Ellis worked on an s3-like service while at Mozy. Here, he gives some pointers on how to manage disk failures in that giant environment.
  (tags: python storage)

Apparently, Google is readying a bid for wireless spectrum. They’ve got the cash to buy the spectrum, but the analysts say that they must get a carrier partner:

“Wireless spectrum and network management are nowhere near Google’s core competency. Its competence is in one market, online advertising,” said Emma Mohr McClune, principal analyst with Current Analysis.

To me, this is confusing Google’s revenue model with the things it is competent to do. Certainly, Google has proven itself quite competent in the online advertising space, and it generates gobs of revenue from there. But I can think of something else they are capable of: running a large-scale, wide-area TCP/IP network.

Google has no experience running a traditional landline or cellular phone network. The thingsis that no one wants a traditional network. They’re all trying to move to IP-based networks. Hey, and Google knows how to run one of those. Remember those rumors of Google buying up dark fiber? If that’s true, I’m inclined to think that Google is seriously considering owning a good chunk of infrastructure to provide services as it sees fit.

One thing in the original article that I linked to that does ring true: Google enjoys gigantic profit margins on its current services. Unless they have some extremely non-traditional ideas up their sleeves, competing with traditional carriers is a very low margin business. It’s going to be interesting to watch where this goes.

Maybe their real plan is just to bid up the spectrum a bit to put a squeeze on the carriers for the fun of it.

• VisualHub: The Universal Video Converter for Mac.
  Handy looking program for video conversion. Looks like it does everything QuickTime Pro does and more.
  (tags: mac video software)
• How-to: Proper Gmail IMAP for iPhone & Apple Mail
  (tags: Gmail mac iphone mail.app)

On Tuesday, I ordered Final Cut Express 3.5 with overnight shipping because I had some screencast work to do. I got it yesterday and installed it. Today, Apple released Final Cut Express 4. They’ve lowered the list price to $199 from $299 (luckily, I paid about $230). I don’t so much care about that part… what I do care about is that I don’t want to have to pay $100 to upgrade to FCE4, when I just yesterday paid more than the new price for the product.

Yes, yes, new products come out, technology changes, yadda yadda. Remember the iPhone price drop that people were complaining about? If you bought an iPhone within 14 days of that price drop, you got that money back. If you bought a computer within a few weeks of Leopard’s release, you could get Leopard for $10.

I have no problem with paying $10 to cover the media cost for FCE4. Unfortunately, the Apple customer service rep said there was no such deal, and that my only recourse was to try to return FCE 3.5 to the reseller I bought it from. I called them, but what could they do? They can’t take opened software back! I’m going to try the time-tested technique of calling Apple again and talking to a different rep.

Dear lazyweb: if you happen to know of an Apple policy about this, please post a comment here. Thanks.

The complete CodeMash Conference Session List is up now, and it looks like both of my talk proposals were accepted! I mentioned earlier that I’ll be giving an overview of the Dojo JavaScript Toolkit there. It turns out that I’ll also be giving a talk on Dojo Offline + Google Gears for taking your web applications on the road.