Check out Dabble DB from Smallthought

Tom Carroll — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 04:51:24 +0000

I was reading a post from Tim Bray about Dabble DB by Smallthough. So I went and watched the screen cast demo they have up on the site. Wow, very cool. Dabble is a collaborative data management, authoring, and publishing web application (I know that description doesn’t do Dabble DB justice). The application lets you copy and past spreadsheet data into the app. It lets you create associations not explicitly present in the original data. It lets you save views of the data. It publishes data in RSS and a lot more.

Just go and check it out, you will be impressed.

Links:

Tim Bray ongoing ~~RSS~~ Atom Feed
Dabble DB, Check It Out

Smallthough RSS Feed
Dabble DB

My adventures with Ubuntu

Tom Carroll — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 13:44:14 +0000

I recently moved from Fedora Core 5 to Ubuntu Desktop for my laptop. This was due to the fact that Fedora Core 5 would freeze every now and then. So after having to do my development work on my desktop, I figured it was time to try a new Distribution. So as some background I have previously run Suse 9.x and Fedora Core 3 and 4 and Redhat. So I had read and heard that Ubuntu was polished and just worked.

So my mind was made up, I did the back-up dance and began to load Ubuntu 5.x loaded fine and everything worked, NICE! I did find a few issues, like the fact that the packaged version of FireFox was ancient (Similar to Suse 9.x) and the package manager used to add new software was passable at best. So I began setting up everything and just before I began using the laptop for current work, Ubuntu 6.x was released. So I did the online upgrade, and it went well, though it took a few hours.

So after the reboot everything looked great except no Wifi. Ugh… Now the funny thing is my wireless card is old, a Lucent Orinoco Gold only supports WEP, just plain old. It has been the only card that I could count on working with any Distribution, but not on Dapper Drake. So, I checked to see if the device was being identified, checked the driver etc…. No luck. So I fashioned myself an aluminum foil hat and dove into the forums. Plenty of ideas and support, I just haven’t had time to try all of them.

Recently people like Tim Bray and Nicholas Carr have recently written about how Linux popularity, as Nicholas puts it, with the “PC elite” is growing. Now Tim Bray cites the fact that Apple uses proprietary formats to store his data and is less open to community innovation / bug fixing. Now, I agree with Tim Bray, increased openness would benefit Apple and help to sustain its more advanced users. The reality is until it just works, the cost of my attention to fix something that should just work, is just to high.

So the bottom line is, my next laptop is going to be a Mac, because as the Angry Penguin put it “It just works”. I will worry about open later, that’s why I have Google.

Links:

Tim Bray’s RSS Feed
Time to Switch

Nicholas Carr’s RSS Feed

The Angry Penguin’s RSS Feed
The Lab Adds A Mac

Tom The Architect » Tim-Bray

Check out Dabble DB from Smallthought

My adventures with Ubuntu