24 Jul 2007 trs80   » (Apprentice)

I feel confident in predicting that 2007 is the year of free standards-based calendaring. Why? Because it works already - I'm using Lightning with Bedework (which is not shit(tm) despite being a java webapp), and there's also RSCDS which is a simple PHP CalDAV server, and Leopard's iCal will have CalDAV support to go with Apple's Darwin Calendar Server. There's also a Outlook CalDAV connector, the somewhat fear-worthy OpenGroupware fork Scalable OpenGroupware project which has a WebUI designed to mimic Thunderbird and Sunbird, as well as having a GroupDAV extension for Thunderbird's contacts and an extension to do free/busy in Lightning. And who knows, Chandler might even ship this year ;-).

Actually, OS X Server 10.5 looks really hot, and I'd even go so far as to recommend it to to people wanting to move away from Windows Server. And with any luck Apple will open source more of the components, or said people will get a taste of open source quality and move to a distro with real update support (ie, Debian or Ubuntu).

Steve Yegge was definitely correct in saying JavaScript is the next big language - Pyro, the plethora non-webbrowser usages that have appeared lately, plus the sheer size of the web creating new 1 ecosystems like most RIA platforms and the ever growing number of widget engines.

Life On Mars is pretty awesome. At the end of Transformers, when Optimus Prime is giving his speech while two humans get it on on Bumblebee, this image just popped into my head.

Uni started this week, I'm doing Databases, HCI, my final year project, and Software Engineering Industry Project Leadership which has to be in the running for "most uninformative unit name". The main task is "coaching the team [who are doing Professional Computing through several of the development stages." Hopefully there will be a team with UCCans in it, which I think is fairly likely as PC isn't being offered in semester 1 2008. The BCS is also being reworked next year, resulting in the new Web Technologies and Entertainment Technologies majors and a Game Design and Multimedia unit, with the how to use a word processor and spreadsheet first-year unit replaced with Web Technologies.

At work I'm migrating work's address book from FoxPro (ugh) to LDAP, using ConTagged, which is a nice web frontend for LDAP address books. I'm also coding up some wrappers for PBSmapping, which is an R mapping library.

Meta: I know I said I'd talk more about communities in this post, but it'll have to wait until next time. And yes, I did make as many phrases link to a relevant page as I possibly could.

1. http://iphone.fiveforty.net/wiki/index.php/ARM/Mach-O_Toolchain notwithstanding

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