InContext Editing: A whole new editable web. All over again.

Adobe has just announced the preview of their upcoming technology, InContext Editing which purportedly allows Dreamweaver designers / developers to create static web pages and let their customers edit just parts of the web pages themselves.

The technology seems to be based around a public web based editing service (that’s run by Adobe) to allow people to use (surprise, surprise ) just their browsers to edit the page’s content. The designer is free to use locked zones where (Dreamweaver’s template features will no-doubt hook in) to create their designs and to pre-designate editable zones that the end customers can directly modify at will. All they need is their web browser with the Flash Player installed (9.0.124+) and Local Storage enabled (for the InContext service to store temporary data, probably).

Will this usher in a whole new wave of pre-designed, (and thus, much better looking) web pages that can be cheaply designed by graphics and web developers to look great and yet be editable by the end users themselves? Sounds logical:

Web designers can concentrate on what they’re good at, designing graphical, good looking web pages. They can completely ignore the nitty gritty details where the “developer” needs to get involved, data persistance, and dynamic UI, which they’re not good at.

End-users can get much more direct access to their websites without being forced to pay the web designers an arm-and-a-leg to create all the dynamic infrastructure that is needed to allow them to manage their own content.

The developers can concentrate more on where they’re really needed (building Rich Internet Apps ? ) and like being anyway - I mean who really likes to code “basic” dynamic web pages, anyway, right?

Looks like a win-win-win situation to me.

InContext Editing is currently free, at least in this preview stage.

Links:

• InContext main marketing page
• Adobe labs page for InContext Editing
• Features page

Batman: The Dark Knight is the best darn movie I’ve seen in a long, long time. Top notch acting, direction, action, gadgetry, effects, storyline, everything just works!

And as expected, in Batman movies that have The Joker in them, the overshadowing of Batman’s character is almost inevitable. Christian Bale does manage to hold his own, but Heath Ledger’s Joker is the performance of a lifetime, sadly also his last.

Update: I just noticed that The Dark Knight has managed to top the IMDB Top 250 movies of all time, beating even The Shawshank Redemption. And it’s been what …. 3 weeks since it released? Amazing!

After the recent move to Ubuntu

…for my primary computer’s operating system, I’ve mostly been happy, but as always there are a few gripes.

I finally managed to eliminate yet another one: RSS reading. I’ve always been an avid RSS consumer, and while I retain GreatNews as my RSS reader on my now secondary Windows computer, I was unable to find one to suit my advanced needs for Ubuntu.

The one RSS reader that I knew would probably work out for my tastes, simply refused to do it’s job. I’m talking about the RSS Owl 2.0 reader of course, (known as boreal, to some). The main problem I was facing with this one was that it would simply would not show the posts in the main view!

RSS Owl looked like it was working fine - i.e. it was displaying the standard Eclipse RCP UI, progress bars, everything but it simply would… not… render.. posts. Nothing would happen when I would click an RSS feed. I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out what the problem was, but there was absolutely no symptoms as to why this was happening, so I gave up on it, (incorrectly) assuming it to be a bug with the (afterall preview milestone 8a) release and decided to wait for the next version.

Then, on a repeat round of surfing some blogs, and missing subscribing to them by an RSS reader, I re-visited the boreal, in hopes of a new release. Didn’t find a new release, but I did find an interesting post in the boreal FAQ, and I quote:

What are the steps to use Mozilla as Browser in RSSOwl?

Note that you can only use the rendering engine of Mozilla inside RSSOwl. Any other feature of Mozilla or Firefox can not be used from within RSSOwl. Download XULRunner for your operating system:

• Windows: xulrunner-1.8.1.3.en-US.win32.zip
• Linux: xulrunner-1.8.1.3.en-US.linux-i686.tar.gz
• Mac: xulrunner-1.8.1.3.en-US.mac-cocoa-pkg.dmg

Then follow these short instructions on how to complete the installation after the download. Make sure to restart RSSOwl. It will use XULRunner from now on automatically until you uninstall it again.

On a hunch, I did some checking, and found that while I did have a xulrunner installed, it was version 1.9.x and it looked like RSS Owl was expecting 1.8.x! Fired up synaptic manager and yup, found a xulrunner 1.8 that was not installed - installed that and…. voila! RSS Owl was showing up the feeds just fine!

My Point?

The fact that I solved my RSS reading problem is not really what I wanted to talk about here. I just wanted to put down, and this is especially true for open source projects depending upon support from the community:

NEVER assume that your users are all knowing. I did not realize that I’d be needing a separate component just for reading, and that too just on linux. And mind you, this is not a secondary function in a software that is meant to perform other duties, it’s called an RSS READER for crying out loud! If there is a dependency, it should be ideally packaged, or at least stated!

NEVER assume that when people have problems with your software, they will immediately stand up or raise their hands and tell you about it. At least 95% of people who face problems in “getting it to work” or even have questions will simply move on, and only if they really, really liked what they saw (or have a compelling enough reason - like no better alternative) will they ever even come back.

All this has happened before, and will happen again.

- Various Cylons, Battlestar Galactica.

Ah well, another engine move, dhirajgupta.com is now on Wordpress. Seeing how cyn.in v2 is doing great as an Intranet collaboration and knowledge management software, (as opposed to being re-purposed for my personal blog) I thought I’d take the time over this weekend to move my site over to a minimally customized Wordpress.

Hopefully this will mean I’ll blog more as well.

Stay tuned,
Dhiraj.

Watching Battlestar Galactica in DVD quality video has been a cinematic trip by itself, for me. To imagine the kind of triumph in visual effects, story telling and sheer drama on TV is insufficient, one must watch to know what it feels like - the budgets of the Battlestar Galactica franchise must truly be astounding.

Presented here is the much favorited season 3 finale of BSG (as it’s popularly known) and I simply cannot get the theme song out of my mind. This is a rendition by composer Bear McCreary of the much covered Bob Dylan original. Do go here to listen to the CD version on youtube as well - I recommend it. You could buy the original soundtrack from Amazon, as well (much recommended).

Waiting till the season 4 start (mid 2008!?) of Battlestar Galactica is too much torture - that too, the whole franchise has yet to show up on Indian television, I doubt that it ever will, as well. The content of the show is for a bit more mature audience than what is targeted currently, at any rate.

Lyrics
“There must be some way out of here,” said the joker to the thief,
“There’s too much confusion, I can’t get no relief.
Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth,
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth.”

“No reason to get excited,” the thief, he kindly spoke,
“There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.
But you and I, we’ve been through that, and this is not our fate,
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.”

All along the watchtower, princes kept the view
While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too.

Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl,
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl.

– All along the watchtower
Bob Dylan (1967)

Had to include this youtube video on my site when I found the live/unplugged version. This is a song by K’s Choice, a Belgium brother-sister band that features eclectic vocals backed by a mild rock sound. You might also be interested in watching the original “plugged-in” version.

It’s not a habit, it’s cool
I feel alive
If you don’t have it your on
the other side

The deeper you stick it in your vein
The deeper the thoughts there’s no more pain
I’m in heaven, I’m a god
I’m everywhere, I feel so hot

It’s not a habit, it’s cool
I feel alive
If you don’t have it your on
the other side
I’m not an addict (maybe that’s a lie)

It’s over now, I’m cold, alone
I’m just a person on my own
Nothing means a thing to me
Oh, nothing means a thing to me

It’s not a habit, it’s cool
I feel alive
If you don’t have it your on
the other side
I’m not an addict (maybe that’s a lie)

Free me, leave me
Watch me as I’m going down
Free me, see me

Look at me I’m falling
And I’m falling………

It is not a habit, it is cool
I feel alive I feel…….
It is not a habit, it is cool
I feel alive

It’s not a habit, it’s cool
I feel alive
If you don’t have it your on
the other side
I’m not an addict (maybe that’s a lie)

I’m not an addict, I’m not an addict, I’m not an addict.

- K’s Choice
“Not an Addict”

Jpsykes has a nice piece running on their blog about QR Codes. This looks to be much better than standard bar codes, and I’m sure I’ve seen these sort of codes on the back and insides of a lot of hardware (GSM phones and batteries especially).
Stumbling across an explanative tech for something that had aroused your curiosity a long time ago, is so typical when you’re looking around on the web.

• Numeric only Max. 7,089 characters
• Alphanumeric Max. 4,296 characters
• Binary (8 bits) Max. 2,953 bytes
• Kanji/Kana Max. 1,817 characters

DJ Munks is in da’ House!

Or so it seems, at any rate.

Munks has just released 3 new remixes of an old Bollywood classic, do check it out!

He’s looking for feedback, be sure to listen and fill out his survey, as well.

Here’s to challenging your dreams, and having the conviction to know that when you work hard enough to convert your dreams to reality, you will achieve success. Here’s my toast to Munks’ first few (and crucial) steps towards his journey to success,

Cheers mate, and do keep ‘em coming.

This guy is so tricked out, seeing is believing. I’ve seen the video around 5 times, and I still can’t believe some of the stunts this guy does with his yoyo are real. Tell me what you think.

When I found the music video to one of my favorite songs on Youtube, I couldn’t resist posting the vid, here. The song is Nothing to fear by the inimitable Chris Rea, and the video looks to be about a bedouin tribe and also an arab village-town and is a stylized, idyllic take of the life there.

As an aside, have a look at the screenshot below, of the google result. Google, post its acquisition of YouTube finally seems to be listing results from the videos there directly in the search results, that’s how I found the video in the first place!