Core Enterprise PHP is reaching a solid aplha state. Marcus and I are developing several sites on already. I know that there will be some adversity to the announcement of yet another application development framework, but the fact of the matter is that this framework is allowing us to develop apps REALLY quickly. It may or may not be of use to the community, but making it available is the right thing to do.

We are just waiting on SourceForge to make a decision on my abandoned project takeover request. They are supposed to make a ruling today. If they give us the cep project namespace then we could have the alpha (with limited documentation) in CVS today or tomorrow. If we have to create a new project then it will probably take a little longer (at this point, but it would have been faster if we did that in the first place).

Anyway, I just thought I would post that out there in slashdot land.

Jackson

I am not quite sure why this didn't get posted earlier, but I figured I would add it to Slashdot's public record.

Second KDE 3.2 Alpha "Tereza" Released Posted by Stephan Kulow on Thursday 25/Sep/2003, @21:31
from the oh-not-again-I-just-finished-compiling-the-first dept.
As the first beta has been delayed to finish more PIM features, we're proud to present the second alpha release of KDE 3.2. The first alpha was already seen as a very strong release and the second one is even better with 1374 bugs closed in the last 31 days. The major changes are the import of KSVG and KPDF into the KDE distribution, along with a major rewrite of the window manager. You can download the new release here. The are currently no binary packages, but you can of course use Konstruct to build it. Please give this one a good testing as we'll be moving to the beta phase next.

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Large ISPs have started allowing spam complaints (minus the complainant's email address) to be forwarded to the administrator of the mail server that sent the offending email using a "feedback loop"

I feel this is a great tool in the fight against spam. It allows the ISPs and companies that send large amounts of legitimate email to work together (in a very automated way).

For instance, if a company who sends out marketing email is reported to as ISP as having sent spam. The company can use the feedback loop email to remove the complaintant from their lists.

The world doesn't trust opt-out links and forms in comercial. There are legitimate, non-spam commercial emails with legitimate opt-out tools. The feedback loop allows those services to use the feedback loop as a trusted interface to their opt-out system. The ISP interface to their opt-out system will provide accountability to the email sending service. If the email service does not honor the opt-out requests, then they will have a higher percentage of spam complaints per campaign. They are more likely to then be blocked by the ISP.

-Jackson

I just stumbled upon a cool script that converts Google News searches to an RSS feed.

An example of the script is here: voidstar.com.

The PHP source code is available here: gnews2rss source.

I think this is a pretty handy utility. I found it when someone has posted a resulting rss feed to feedster.com. I am really tempted to add a news section to jaxn.org or tekzen.net that shows current news about the topics I am most interested in.

The example I found in a feedster search was for a feed searching on "The Salvation Army".

From looking over the source code it looks like a few small changes would need to be made for it to handle PHP installations that have register_globals turned off. I would like to take the idea and turn it into a module for cataBlog.

Anyway, I just thought that was kinda cool.

-Jackson

After using the Zend IDE for over a year I have decided to see what has been going on with Quanta Plus. The primary impitus for this was not because I was dissatisfied with the Zend IDE for any reason, but rather because I have been so impressed with KDE lately.

All in all KDE has quickly become my favorite desktop environment. It is extremely powerful and well suited for a professional development workstation (which for me is a laptop). One by one I have committed to KDE applications and parting with my mismatch interface.

Don't get me wrong, there are some GREAT non-KDE applications for Linux. Mozilla Firebird and Zend IDE being two of my personal favorites. Ximian Evolution is another top notch app. However, there is something about consistency and integration that I do enjoy. The KDE developers have been doing such a good job that I find myself missing KDE when using a non-KDE app.

Which brings me to the point of this entry. The last non-KDE program that I have been using is also the program that I use the most, my code IDE. I write PHP code all day, and have been really impressed with the Zend IDE. however, the Java GUI is just not as nice as KDE. Not to mention little improvements that are always happening to KDE like the fish:// protocol.

So I have decided to give Quanta Plus a shot.

I must say that after a week I am quite impressed. Quanta has a lot of features that are not available on other editors. My personal favorite feature is that you can collapse blocks of code. This really eases the process of creating documentation.

Another feature that has been brought to my attention by Marcus is that you can save a "view" of the project. A view is a collection of files. When you save a view, Quanta Plus takes note of all the files that are open. When you open the view Quanta opens all of the files in that view. This is great for complex projects. often times one aspect of an application deals with a hand full of files. Views allows you to open that aspect of the application and have all the necessary files right there.

The next version of Quanta Plus will have some features that I am really looking forward to. There will be a class browser, better integration with CVS and more. However the best feature that I have found in Quanta is the ability to talk directly with the developers of the project. After using Quanta for a week I have already had two email conversations with one of the developers. This is the beauty of open source.

I can't help but feel like I owe the guys behind Quanta a few tokens of my appreciation.

I was hoping that there was an RSS feed for Shasldot journals. I haven't participated much in slashdot. I make an occassional comment, but for the most part I am just a troll. I think that I would participate more if there was a feed of my Journal. This would allow me to have a "My Slashdot" section on my website. that would be cool.

If you would like to see my real journal, head on over to jaxn.org.

This site is also the testbed for cataBlog which I will be releasing soon.