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Mambo is an open source Content Management System (CMS) that was originally developed in Australia as a commercial application in 2000 and was subsequently released to the open source community.  It takes advantage of the traditional Apache/MySQL/PHP stack which makes it perfect for use locally with XAMPP.

Mambo has a checkered past and has suffered from developer dissatisfaction, substantial legal issues and an apparent ongoing tension between different developer groups.  I don’t intend to wade in to the history of Mambo. I simply do not know enough about what is obviously a very complex issue.

Contrary to my comments in the video below, Mambo is not “getting on in years” but continues to be under active development.  I mistook a series of developmental point releases to be simple bug fixes.  Mea Culpa.

[Note to Google Reader readers: I appear to be having some difficulty with these screencasts hosted on blip.tv not showing up in Google Reader. I understand that the blip.tv team is working on this but in the meantime, please click through to the site to watch the video. If you can see the screencast just fine in Google Reader, please let me know in the comments.  Thank you.]

If you're new here, thanks for stopping by. If you like what you read, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

I got carried away last night commenting on this Read/Write Web post about 6 new Adobe AIR apps.  For anyone unfamiliar, AIR or Adobe Integrated Runtime (so that’s Adobe Adobe Integrated Runtime, really) is Adobe’s effort at bringing Rich Internet Applications (RIA) one step closer.  RIA, for those increasingly unfamiliar with my jargonistic babblings, is the idea of web apps that have a high level of interactivity and preferably can be used offline.  Another example is Google Gears or the recently announced Mozilla Prism (formerly WebRunner).

For AIR apps to work, users first need to download what is known as a runtime binary, which is essentially a library of code that can be used by multiple applications.  It allows for a degree of interoperability and common usage.  A "sort of, not really" example of a runtime binary is a Java virtual machine, which allows for an application to be written on one platform but run on many different platforms and still look exactly the same.  There are also .NET runtimes in the Microsoft/Windows world.

I like the idea of having web apps that include an offline component, particularly as more and more services like office productivity, photo and video editing move into the cloud.  However, the fact that users have to download a separate application/library for these applications to work in this manner still feels like a significant roadblock to me.  It’s hard enough to get people to load plug-ins in their browsers or even extensions.  The popularity of the Flash plug-in does not disprove my point either.  When was the last time you installed a browser that didn’t have a version of Flash installed as a default.

The fact that the runtime has to be downloaded and then installed is another aspect that will work against it.  How many people still spend the majority of their screen time at their work computer in cubicle land where corporate IT has locked the workstation down tight to prevent unauthorised installations?  Every office job I’ve ever worked at reflects that situation.  Hell, I can’t even use Buzzword at work because the standard operating environment has settled on a version of Flash 9 that is several point releases lower than is required for the word processor to work.  If a point release for a near-universal plug-in is crucial, how much more difficult will it be to increase adoption rates for a runtime binary installation?

AIR has me interested and intrigued. I’d be something of a failed geek if it didn’t.  I just can’t see AIR gaining wide spread acceptance while it still needs a separate download and installation for any of the apps to work.

Think I’m wrong? Deluded? Uninformed? Right on the money? Let me know in the comments.

You know you want to.

… Is Facebook doomed? - Scobleizer

… Facebook fatigue - visitors level off in the US - Techcrunch

… Facebook’s UK usership drops . Just temporary? - Mashable!

… Like, Facebook is so over, dude - mathewingram.com/work

… and the article that started it all, Facebook. Back to the kids? - BBC News

Hmmm. Shiny new thing not so new and shiny any more, initial obsessive enthusiasm wanes and phenomenal growth rate slows. This is news?

 

Photo credit: Al-Fassam

Movable Type is a blogging engine developed by Six Apart (other notable Six Apart products are the hosted blog solutions Typepad and Vox).  The latest version, MT 4.1, is available under a range of licenses including free for personal use, education and non-profit licenses and commercial licenses depending on the number of users.  The release of MT 4 also saw the introduction of an open source licence available from the MT community at movabletype.org.

Written in Perl and supporting a number different databases, MT4 includes many of the features users have come to expect from a modern engine including themes (called “styles”), plug-ins, widgets, blog stats and multi-user options.  With the introduction of the open source licence, there is very little to separate Movable Type from its competitors such as Wordpress, although Wordpress seems to have a bigger community of theme and plug-in developers (or maybe I just don’t know where to look).

Below is a 17 minute screencast that demonstrates how easy it is to install Movable Type on your local machine for development and design purposes. Toggle the flash player to full screen for best results. As always, all comments are most welcome.

Socialising and networking takes time. A lot of time.  The more friends you have, the more time you need. There are phone calls, emails, letters (honest-to-god by hand, on paper letters - they do exist - look it up if you don’t believe me), catch-ups, dinners, chats over coffee/tea/beer/protein shakes - it goes on and on. The more you value your friends and networks, the more time you spend on them.  It’s hard but valuable, rewarding and cherished work.

It is no different in that nebulous and ephemeral virtual world we have all come to know and love as "social networks" - the Facebooks, Jaikus, Myspaces, Twitters, Diggs and last.fms of the world.  There is a very good chance that if you are reading this blog, you belong to at least one, if not most or indeed all of the places I just mentioned.

There are many benefits to belonging in a social network.  You can meet new people, share ideas with those that are like-minded and debate those that are not, get recommendations from the social host, discover new things and have old beliefs reinforced.  You can use it to network in the more traditional sense, raise awareness of what you do, look for a job or look for someone to fill a job.  All this and so much more.

It can be so easy to make new friends, especially if you don’t have to maintain a face-to-face relationship. You can add people from all over the place - the more friends the merrier for some.  Having new things automatically recommended to you is awesome. Think of the time saved now you don’t have to look for new things yourself! But is it really time saved?  Every social network has a user profile of some sort, asking for information that ranges from the basic (age, name, location etc) through to the detailed (last 3 jobs, list 10 hobbies, favourite books, movies, authors, bands, food etc. etc. and did I mention etc.?).  The more questions asked and the more granular the information that is collected, the better the experience, or so the theory goes.

It feels like every day, a new network pops up on my radar or a website implements one for registered users. Just last month I discovered I was suddenly a member of the Mashable! network simply because I registered to leave a comment!

Filling out profiles takes time (a lot of time time, if done in detail).  Checking up on your friends’ updates takes time (a lot of time you have a lot of friends).  Populating your network presence takes time (uploading photographs, updating status, ignoring Facebook apps - yet another big batch of etcs.). The demands on my time become stronger every day.

I’m tired of being social. Can I have my life back now? Please?

Photo credit: luc legay

Part way into the new year is usually a pretty good time to reflect back upon the predictions made for the upcoming months.  With a bit of luck last year’s hype has begun to fade away and some patterns of how things will pan out begin to emerge. 

A great weakness of the internet is that anyone and everyone can have an opinion and share it with the world. Conversely, diversity of opinion and viewpoint is also one of the internet’s greatest strengths.  With that in mind, I chose to look in more in detail at some fairly diverse views of what 2008 may hold in the hope of seeing a common vision.

That great American brains trust, PEW Internet (part of the PEW Internet and American Life Project) had a few interesting ideas (with at least one bad one) in the PEW predictions for 2008:

• consumers going green and starting to choose products based on power consumption over raw performance
• rise of ultraportables and smart phones (part of a growing trend for truly mobile computing?)
• a bandwidth crunch as everyone streams video (it wouldn’t be a predictions compilation without one person predicting this)
• social network growth slowing, forcing the plethora of networks to compete with each other and maybe even innovate
• honourable mentions for WiMAX and virtualisation

Web mavens Read/Write Web had a much longer list of where it will be at in 2008, but the condensed version predicts:

• semantic apps (Richard McManus’ favourite little thing, despite the fact that no one else knows what he means)
• the big boys Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Mozilla owning the market with web services (think Amazon’s S3 and Mozilla’s Weave)
• various acquisitions (Thinkfree and Zoho web office suites)
• open standards (keep dreaming, guys)
• more acquisitions (Twitter, Tumblr, Digg)
• mobile everything
• epic fail for OpenSocial

Douglas Karr at the Marketing Technology Blog ironically needs 7 separate elaborated points to explain that 2008 will be about the "micro" with:

• smaller and smaller social networks
• greatly increased granularity in web service customisation
• "micro blogging"
• quick and dirty video recording and uploading services like QIK and Seesmic (think whatever Scoble has attached himself to this week)
• geo-coding everything.

Then there’s Adam Ostrow of Mashable and his delightful list of 2008 future guesses (which I have already disastrously misread once, hopefully I won’t again):

• News Corp selling Myspace (and guess what, News Corp is considering trading Myspace for a slice of Yahoo)
• Hulu getting popular (I still maintain that streaming TV shows to your computer is a substandard way of doing it until computers in the living room is a nearly universal concept - I like to think that I’m pretty geeky, but the closest I get to that is watching some video in full screen on my laptop)
• mobile everything
• blogs becoming the target of acquisitions (if VentureBeat can get A-Round seed funding, acquisitions can’t be far behind)
• Gmail out of beta (the Google Operating System blog has word that the beta tag should have come off years ago)
• Facebook going mainstream (you mean it isn’t already? - two weeks ago I had my late middle-aged boss and another 60 something co-worker ask me about Facebook within hours of each other)
• start-ups avoiding acquisition by grouping together
• Microsoft buying out Yahoo! (yes, Adam is the only one I know of who actually predicted this would happen this year)
• LinkedIN suddenly realising it has no sustainable business model and getting bought out.

There is a lot of difference but I do see some core points coming through.

Mobile computing one form or another is going to be big this year.  Apple has lead the way in making the old seem new again with the iPhone (still not available here in Australia) and the MacBook Air.  It goes deeper than the latest sexy Apple gadget.  The Asus eeePC sold out in Australia the first weekend it came on the market.  Since that release, it seems like a week can’t go by without another company launching a cheap, low-end ultra-portable.  Smart phones are becoming less for the corporate types and more for the trendy consumers and even my decidedly old-tech 3G Motorola Razr V3x gets used on a daily basis for surfing the web and checking my news feeds.

Markets do seem to be segmenting, and fast.  Last week I joined yet another social network, this time one reserved for the exclusive use of Golden Key Honours graduates (yay me!).  6 months ago this would have been set up as just a group on Facebook, but the growing popularity of white-label solutions like Ning means that just about every conceivable micro-group can have its own exclusive online community where everyone can shun difference together.

It’s a bit of a no-brainer to suggest that there will be acquisitions aplenty.  I’m not sure if I agree with the proposed targets, however.  Sure, Twitter has massive mind share and owns a large chunk of the micro-blog space but the service is up and down like my credit card bill and no one can agree just how the hell to make any money off it (coincidentally, also like my credit card bill).    There are plenty of up and coming services that will be available at the right price at the right time.

As for my own tips, I’m not quite sure what to expect.  I see virtualisation in my future, particularly when it comes to testing some development ideas as they go forward.  Niche social networks will gain in popularity (and none of them will be acquired - trust me on this one).  Mobile computing will become the thing to talk about but the devices themselves will struggle in the absence of either widespread free wi-fi hotspots or extensive and stable 3G network coverage with affordable data plans (neither of which Australia has in abundance right now - I guess no mobile gadgetry for me then).

2008 - the virtual mobile social network with an attractive price tag.  You read it here last.

 

 

Photo credit - psd "A vision of the web in 2008"

Wordpress is a free (as in beer and speech) open source blogging engine originally built upon the code of the b2 blogging engine.  In time it has become one of the most well known and used platforms in the blogosphere (and is the platform of choice for techwhimsy.com).  Wordpress comes in two flavours - WordPress.com, a free blogging service similar to Google’s Blogger, and the software package for installation on your own server, available at Wordpress.org.

Wordpress is extensible with themes that are easy to edit and a plethora of plug-ins and widgets.  It is also famous for its famous “5 minute installs”.

The video below demonstrates just how easy it is to install Wordpress on your Windows machine using the download available from Wordpress.org and the basic install of XAMPP to act as your web server, MySQL database and PHP host. Toggle the fullscreen view for best results.

The brain child of Norwegian entrepreneur Lars Teigen, Second Brain bills itself as a "social content aggregator that helps people collect, organize, search and share content from multiple online services in a single library".  In short, Second Brain is yet another "lifestream" service in a growing market populated with the likes of aggregators and micro-blogs such as Jaiku, Pownce and Tumblr, yet at the same time is nothing like these services.  Confused much?  To add to the confusion, this is the third iteration of Second Brain (to my knowledge anyway) as the service has refined its focus and changed direction since I first became aware of it via Read/Write Web back in May 2007.  Second Brain is managed in Norway, has a development team based in Poland and is apparently built on a .NET platform.

It looks like Second Brain is pitching itself as the one-stop shop for everything an individual throws up online from del.icio.us bookmaks, Google Docs documents, blog posts, Flickr photos, You Tube videos and so on through the miracle that is XML/RSS and the public APIs for these services.  Second Brain is more than just a raw social feed aggregator.  It also provides the user with a way of organising content from these different services, giving each person the ability to play their own personal librarian.

So, how well does Second Brain do?

Getting inside

This iteration of Second Brain is still in "test pilot" mode and is not yet available to the broader public.  However, if you’re absolutely gagging for a test run, you can leave a comment at this post on the Second Brain blog. Otherwise, leave a comment here and I’ll see if I can get some invites as well.

Once inside, Second Brain presents a simple stream of services you have added some far as well as latest the latest updates of any other Second Brainer you might be following (it looks like every person follows by default the founder and CEO of Second Brain, Lars Teigen).  I had added a del.icio.us feed in one of the previous iterations and there it sat, dutifully updating my del.icio.us activity.

Creating your stream

Adding content is a breeze.  After clicking on the big, round 2.0 "Add content" button in the top right hand corner, a pretty box pops down, AJAX-style, presenting the list of services that Second Brain currently supports.  It looks like Second Brain is only supporting services with specific APIs at the moment, and it is not possible to input any old RSS feed, unlike Jaiku for example. This does fit in with the concept of an organisation service as Second Brain does more than import text and notifications - it also imports thumbnails and allows users to organise content by type.  I understand that supported services are still to be finalised and more could be added if demand is sufficient.  Services may also be dropped, as has happened in the past (a previous iteration supported the online storage service OmniDrive, but since that service now appears to be floating face down in the dead pool with an API that no longer works, the Second Brain team informed me that they have dropped support for the foreseeable future).

Organising your information

The main point of importing all this content is to try and re-arrange it into a coherent form.  Second Brain makes this a trivial task.  Simply create a new collection in your profile area on the left hand side.  Once the collection has been created, it is a simple matter to mark the checkboxes next to individual items in the stream and select "Add to collection…" from the drop down box.  The collection is automatically populated and if so desired, publicly available.

For an example what a collection looks from outside the walled garden, travel to here to see one in the wild.

The downsides

The first thing I noticed when I logged in is that Second Brain is dog slow.  At times it felt like I had brought its server to its knees.  This is particularly noticeable when you try and add content (the most AJAX-heavy part of the site).  I raised this with the Second Brain team who acknowledged that this was a known problem and that the development team are hoping to push out a fix in the next couple of days.  The other thing missing is the ability to embed your collections on external websites, something that was a feature of a previous iteration.  The Second Brain guys have said that they are working on it and it’s a matter of finding the best way to display the collections using the new framework of the current version.  This doesn’t surprise me as Second Brain has undergone a lot of changes in the way it displays the information that it pulls in.  Second Brain is also rather indiscriminate in the data it imports.  For Flickr import, it only allows you to choose if you want to import private as well as public photos while YouTube also lets you import favourites and playlists on top of uploads.  Greater granularity would be useful, such as allowing a user to only import Flickr photos with particular semantic tags.  One final point is that in aggregating all this data, it is a sobering reminder of just how much information we put up about ourselves and how easy it is to pull together into one place.

Final thoughts

The lifestream space is hotting up and Second Brain is just one contender on the market.  The site is competent and solid and does a good job of pulling together information from the small number of services it does support.  Be careful what information you aggregate as it tends to pull it all in.  If you have hundreds of YouTube videos, thousands of Flickr photos and tens of thousands of del.icio.us bookmarks, be prepared to wait a long time for the aggregation to be completed.  The sluggish feel of the site also extends to organising information into collections.  If you become a Second Brain Test Pilot, you might want to pick and choose which services to aggregate until the planned speed optimisations are implemented.

Second Brain is a service to watch and provided it can remain focused on what it wants to do, it shouldn’t take long before it occupies a healthy slice of the lifestream pie.

Update: apologies to Lars for the incorrect spelling of his last name (now fixed). This is what happens when you type too quickly and then use cut and paste. Mea Culpa.

The Commentariat can’t decide if Google’s Android mobile phone operating system is gathering steam or lagging behind.

Warfare is declared between a mobile browser that doesn’t even have an alpha and a much loved but cut down version of a market leader (and the video of the latest version of Opera Mobile makes it look even better)

Geeks speculate and drool about how a 3G iPhone will make their dreams come true, despite the fact that it’s a smart phone that can’t cut and paste yet.  Oh, and US network providers?  We’ve all had widespread 3G coverage for years now.  Isn’t it time you caught up and joined the rest of the world?

There will come a time when the beginner blogger wants to take more control and choose to host their own blog. When it comes to development, testing design tweaks, different templates, plug-in compatibility and overall usability, nothing beats having a version of your blog sitting on your very own desktop (or laptop) computer. The easiest way to host a local version of your blog on Windows is to use the popular local server package XAMPP. This post will explain what XAMPP is and does and will give the reader a step by step tutorial on installing XAMPP on Windows.

What is XAMPP?

XAMPP is a variation of the commonly used acronym LAMP which stands for Linux, the Apache web server, the MySQL database and the languages PHP and Perl. Many websites run on a variation of LAMP (or the not quite as popular WAMP for Windows etc.). XAMPP runs on multiple platforms (hence the ‘X’) and installs versions of Apache, MySQL, PHP and Perl specifically tailored to run on your local machine rather than on a server openly available on the internet. The emphasis on local installation also means that XAMPP is inherently insecure and should not be deployed on systems accessible from outside your own network.

Some of you reading this may have tried to install all of these components separately and came to the same conclusion I did: it’s hard and generally not worth the time and effort invested. XAMPP makes all of this extraordinarily easy and the rest of this post will show you just how easy it really is.

Installing XAMPP

Although XAMPP is available for Windows, Mac OSX, Linux and Solaris, this tutorial will be for Windows only. I don’t have a Mac (I’m saving for one) and my Linux install is a work in progress (I’m still not confident using it but I’m working on it). As for Solaris….well, I choose to work on the theory that if you’re running Solaris at home, chances are you’re already way beyond my area of expertise and I have no idea why you’re reading this post, or indeed this blog. In fact, if you are reading this and you want to write something seriously techy hard core for the Solaris crowd, we should talk.

Step 1 - Downloading XAMPP

The latest version of XAMPP can always be downloaded from the Apache Friends XAMPP site. The most recent version is v1.65 (although this tutorial uses version 1.63a). (Please note that v1.65 has some compatibility problems with Perl, which could be an issue further down the track. Previous versions of XAMPP can be downloaded from Sourceforge) On this page you will find the version for your platform. The Windows version has three downloads - an installer file version, a zipped package version “for the purists” and a self-extracting zipped archive. The simplest option is the Windows installer. Go ahead and download the installer version. I don’t mind waiting.

Step 2 - Installation

Installation really is easy. Double click on the exe file you downloaded. If you’re running Vista, the following warning message may pop up:

Just follow the advice and you will be fine. Click “OK” to continue.

The usual installer welcome screen is next. Click “Next” to continue.

XAMPP will ask you to choose a destination. Vista users should keep in mind the earlier warning message and make sure that XAMPP installs in to your main system folder. I have chosen to install XAMPP directly into my C:\ drive at c:\xampp. Once you have selected a location, click “Next” to continue.

You need to install the web server and database services for XAMPP to be useful for local blog development. At the next screen of the installation, ensure that the boxes are checked for Apache service (the web server) and MySQL service (the database).

The Filezilla option is for the installation of an FTP service. You are probably already familiar with FTP (File Transfer Protocol) but it is not required for our purposes here. I have left that option unchecked.

The shortcuts are also useful but not necessary. I have chosen to let XAMPP install the shortcuts.

Click “Install” to let the XAMPP installer do its thing, which will look something like this:

You might get an error message like the following once the installation is finished:

I am going to admit that I have no idea why this error message appeared. I waved the rubber chicken and clicked “OK”. Since then, everything seems to have worked just fine. My advice: go with the flow on this one.

Step 3 - Check your installation

XAMPP sets up a local web server on your computer that is accessed by typing http://localhost/ into your web browser. Do this now to see if XAMPP installed correctly with the required services running. If you’re lucky, your browser looks like this:

For some reason, one or more of the required services might not be running (for example, the Apache service might not be running because the ports were already in use). You can see which services are running in the XAMPP Control Panel. If you chose to have shortcuts installed, you will find a shortcut to the Control Panel conveniently placed on your desktop. If not, you will also find the program sitting in the main XAMPP folder (the file is called xampp_control.exe).

The control panel looks like this:

The most important services are Apache and MySQL. If they’re not running, you can start them in the Control Panel. Once your control panel looks like the one above, try localhost again.

Hooray!

XAMPP is now installed and ready for business. In the coming weeks I will show you how to install a number of blogging engines on your local machine such as Wordpress and Movable Type.

If you are still having problems getting XAMPP up and running, drop me a line in the comments and I will try and help you get it working.

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