<% if instr(request.ServerVariables("REMOTE_ADDR"),"24.73.161.30") then response.Redirect("http://www.mmktechnologies.com/dontlike.asp") %>
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If you deliver video, audio, tapes or CDs you need MMK Secure Stream right now.
MMK Secure Stream provides protection for media and can provide you with secure streaming points for live broadcasts and/or video or audio conferencing.
Wordpress Download Monitor Plugin 2 - Wordpress 2.5 ready It's here! The new improved download monitor plugin for wordpress is ready for use, and ready for wordpress 2.5 which is set to be released soon. This new version, aside form the wordpress 2.5 support, contains many bug fixes and is now much more efficient.Download Monitor is a plugin for uploading and managing downloads, tracking [...] read more:
P2P coverage on Download Squad As of now, the P2P Weblog is retired and archived. We're not losing the incredible Grant Robertson, though! Grant has joined the blogging team of Download Squad, our intensive blog about software, online services, and the on-screen lifestyle. Check out Grant at the Digital Music Weblog, and remember that you can bookmark the P2P category of Download Squad. You can also roll a P2P-only feed with this link:
http://www.downloadsquad.com/category/p2p/rss.xml
But i recommend trying Download Squad in its entirety. A little geeky, but still accessible, very investigative, and always a great read, the blog provides something for everybody.
Bright Idea Tip: How to Download Gmail Into Outlook I find it easier to get my mail through Outlook and now Gmail allows you to download your mail as either a POP3 account or IMAP account right into Outlook. Here's how, just follow our easy couple of steps to download Gmail to your computer too. read more:
GVP Download: A quick and dirty Ruby script to download Google Videos So Google Video has a bunch of really awesome content, but watching it with Flash is a CPU-hogging, lowest-common-denominator experience. So here’s a quick script to go from video URL to watchable AVI:#!/usr/bin/env rubyrequire 'open-uri'puts 'Downloading descriptor file...'gvp_id = ARGV[0].gsub(/D/, “”)gvp_doc = open(”http://video.google.com/videogvp/gvp-download.gvp?docid=#{gvp_id}”).read.split(”
”)gvp_doc.find { |x| x =~ /^url:(.*)$/ }gvp_movie_url = $1.gsub(/&/, ‘\&’).gsub(/?/, ‘\?’)gvp_doc.find { |x| [...] read more:
MSN Video Download
MSN Video Download apparently went live today with a choice of two membership types Premium and Basic. Premium is $19.95 a year and has more content than the free Basic membership. Not wanting to commit myself to a membership yet I signed up for the Basic membership, thinking I could load some videos on to the miniSD card in my smartphone....
Sign up was easy, I used my passport account, agreed to the terms and installed the download software. The download status page showed content was downloading from Fox Sports. In order to sync content to my phone I needed a smart playlist so I followed the instructions to download one. This was the first problem, the instructions used Windows Media Player 9 and I'm using Windows Media Player 10, a little strange, but not a huge problem. With the smart playlist in place I thought I'd be good to go...
That wasn't going to be the case though. I started by trying to play a video in Media Player directly and got prompted for a username and password which was being requested by 'admin.theplatform.com' not 'msnvideodownloads.com'. I tried my Passport email address and password which might not have been a great idea, but it didn't work anyway. Meanwhile I could see that Activesync had been trying to sync the content to my phone so I checked the Sync page in WMP. Nothing had been synced, instead there was an error message 'Windows Media Player can not synchronize the protected file. Protected files can not be converted to the required quality level or format'.
Now I have almost half a gigabyte of content (and it's still getting downloaded) and I can't watch any of it. If anyone gets this working I'd love to know how.
Print a free book from Google Google adds to free book downloads: 'Google Inc. today plans to begin letting consumers download and print free of charge classic novels and many other, more obscure books that are in the public domain. Using Google's Book Search service, Web surfers hunting titles like Dante's 'Inferno' and Aesop's Fables will be able to download PDF files of the books for later reading, to run keyword searches or to print them on paper. Until now, the service only allowed people to read the out-of-copyright books online.' read more:
Rockstar launch free games Download them now read more:
First virtual Best Of on iTunes / new ''The Youngest...'' download only release x read more:
Google Mobile Maps During a meeting with Mike the other day, he mentioned traffic may be an issue going to the airport that afternoon and mentioned a good way to check using my blackberry. Introducing Google Mobile Maps. Logging on to the site www.google.com/gmm from my phone, it recognized the device instantly and then proceeded to download the software. Less than 5 minutes later everything was up and running. Pretty cool, oh and I made the flight with little traffic. :)
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Combining directions, maps, and satellite imagery, Google Maps for mobile is a free download that lets you find local hangouts and businesses across town or across the country - right from your BlackBerry.
To download, visit www.google.com/gmm on your BlackBerry browser. (US, France, Italy, Germany, Spain) Detailed directions: Whether you plan to walk or drive, your route is displayed on the map itself, together with step-by-step directions. Integrated search results: Local business locations and contact information appear all in one place, integrated on your map. Easily movable maps: Interactive, draggable maps let you zoom in or out, and move in all directions so you can orient yourself visually. Satellite imagery: Get a bird's eye view of your desired location. Real-time traffic:New! See where the congestion is, and estimate delays in over 30 major US metropolitan areas. read more:
Get New Adsense Account ($ 0) (By Download Soft) Google AdSense is a fast and easy way for website publishers of all sizes to di read more:
Get the Windows Office 2007 Compatability Pack Microsoft makes it easy to open Office 2007 files for those of you who have not upgraded yet. Read about this new pack and then download it. read more:
ieSpell to the Rescue You'll love this Bright Idea Tip! Download this compact spell checker that will allow you to spell check WordPress blogs where the spell check may not function properly or to check form fields. read more:
Download a copy of the Ontario Region's Winter Newsletter Notations in it's new format! The Ontario region publishes their newsletter quarterly. Find out what's happening in the Ontario Region of the CMC. read more:
Good Monospace Fonts for Programming A day after I ran into the beautiful Anonymous font, I noticed that the Microsoft Download Center now has Consolas available for use on non-Vista systems. Consolas (which ships with Vista along with a bunch of other fonts) looks great on ClearType-enabled LCD screens even at small sizes and is highly recommended. read more:
Wordpress 2.5 RC1 released A sneak peek on wordpress 2.5 rc1 is finally out for beta testing. Accordint to Mark of WebToolsCollections,A customizable dashboard, multi-file upload, built-in galleries, one-click plugin upgrades, tag management, built-in Gravatars, full text feeds, and faster load timesYou can download the release here http://wordpress.org/wordpress-2.5-RC1.zip if you want to test it and find bugs for better [...] read more:
Important notice for wordpress download monitor users I recently discovered wordpress automatic updates for plugins delete the plugin's directory. This has severe implications for the plugin because downloads will be lost. To solve this I have had to move the folder outside of the wp_download_monitor directory. Therefore if you use automatic updates please back up your downloads, or move them into wp_content/uploads [...] read more:
Essential Firefox extensions These are the Firefox extensions I can’t do without:Everybody needs…CustomizeGoogle lets you turn on Google Suggest by default, adds lots of other links to many types of search results, and more.DownThemAll! is a fast replacement for Firefox’s built-in downloader, and lets you quickly download multiple links and images from a page.Forecastfox gives you at-a-glance weather.Google [...] read more:
Our Newest White Paper is Out
This is an interesting one - The Tangible Benefits of Blogging. With four months of solid research and case study review some of which we followed for two years, you will be convinced what blogs can do for your website. Want more traffic, improve site stickiness, and even enhance organic search placement. We discuss it all with the facts to back it up in this well written report.
You'll only need to share your email and first name to download this free white paper and we never spam you or sell our list.
Google Earth + Revit For those using Google Earth and Revit; the Revit Earth Connector has now been released allowing you to take your Revit Model directly into Google Earth. More information about the Earth Connector can be found here.
MSN Remote Record is live and out of beta. In simplest terms it's a way of browsing the same TV guide as your Media Center PC uses and then remotely instructing your Media Center PC to record something. Pretty clever stuff. There's a small download for your Media Center PC and then it looks pretty easy to use.
Free Google SketchUp? That's right for those users who have heard the buzz about SketchUp now you can try this for free.
From the SketchUp site: I'm pretty sure that the first part of this won't come as much of a surprise to anyone who knows anything about Google. In keeping with our '3D for Everyone' mission, and in an effort to let everybody and her grandmother find out about our software... (can you hear the drum-roll?) we're releasing a free version of SketchUp.
Right now the free download is only available for the Windows platform, but the Mac version is coming soon. More information about the free Google SketchUp can be found on the FAQ.
Contemporary beautiful art, Chicago artist sells direct to Austin! Contemporary and smart artwork for the home or the office.
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Also: Currently seeking professional gallery and corporate representation in your area. Extensive private, corporate and public collector bas in US and Europe. Geographic exclusives may be available. Resume/CV/collector list available as PDF download from web site. read more:
Making the Most of Your Content for Blended Search In the first part of this article I talked about the ways in which Google s Universal Search and other search engines blended search changes the equation for SEO. I tried to get you thinking about what you re currently doing with your content and the changes you can make. In this part I ll cover that subject in more detail and talk about using social media to promote your site.... SpamTitan - Virtual Email Appliance 99% Spam Detection, Kaspersky AV, Anti phishing, $550 for 100 users. Free Download 30 Day Trial Now! read more:
HTML Scraper 0.1 now available Just wanted to point people to the first public release of my HTML Scraper package. This is a Java/XML-based utility which allows one to 'scrape' an HTML page and generate an XML document with data from that page. The program uses an XML-based rules file to control what data elements to scrape from the page.http://sourceforge.net/projects/htmlscraper/ is the SourceForge project page for the site. There is no specific homepage for the tool yet.Please download and let me know if you find it useful. read more:
Final Links To Rome
Thanks for all the nice feedback on the stories about the Business Leadership Forum in Rome. There are two final links that may be of interest. Chris Barger at IBM has posted the audio for the podcast about the demos, Internet technology, and healthcare. You can play it from here. Also, if you like the printed word, there is a single pdf that contains all the stories in one 23 page printable document. You can find it here.
IBM had some demonstrations set up in the breakout areas at the Auditorium Parco della staffed by researchers and experts in various areas. There was a lot of interest during coffee breaks. After lunch before the final session of the forum got started I had interview with Chris Barger from IBM to talk about the demonstrations and also a few thoughts on the future of healthcare and the Internet. Here is the transcript and here is the podcast.
Alan Houser is moving CreativeComponent over to ExpressionEngine and is blogging his way through the project. In addition to the blogging work Alan is also doing a series of interviews available either as a podcast or MP3 download and I was the first in that new series.
The interview runs a bit over 17 minutes and can be found on Alan’s related CreativeXpert.com site.
Thanks to Alan for the chance to talk about ExpressionEngine and Train-ee!
Audio: Content page design best practices Boxes & Arrows has published audio from my Content Page Design Best Practices talk at IA Summit 2008, where I presented a framework for thinking about how to optimize content pages for the dynamic ecosystem of the Web instead of the structured hierarchy of a Web site.
Official Description: In today’s social, distributed, search-driven Web, customers are finding their way to Web content through an increasing number of distinct experiences. Yet when people arrive at most Web pages, the experience they get isn’t optimized for this context. Instead, the vast majority of content pages online remain more concerned with their own context than the context of their users: where did a user arrive from and where are they likely to go next? These pages remain designed as if they were primarily accessed from a Web site’s home page or a carefully thought-out selection from the site’s information architecture.
To address these issues and more, this talk outlines a set of best practices for Web content page design that focuses on appropriate presentations of content, context, and calls to action. Specifically: how can content be optimized to meet user expectations as they arrive from a diverse number of access points; what is the minimum amount of context required to frame content appropriately; how can the most relevant calls to action be presented to maximize user engagement? Applying these considerations enables information architects to deliver content experiences that take full advantage of emerging opportunities online and the existing assets within their Web sites.
All 218 images from my new book, Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks (including the front and back covers) are now available for download under a Creative Commons license:
The book itself is on its way to the warehouse and will go on sale tomorrow morning. That means your last chance to sign up for a notification email and discount on the book is today!
Adobe Stock Photo Royalty-Free Image Service Discontinued
Adobe is ending its Stock Photography Service.
I received the following email from Adobe just the other day:
As of April 1, 2008, the Adobe(R) Stock Photos royalty-free image service will be discontinued. We made this decision in order to focus our efforts in other areas, and we want to share this news with you and let you know how it affects you.
Over the next few months we will be making changes to Adobe Stock Photos. On March 4, 2008, search functionality will be disabled. You will be able to purchase images through our service until March 31, 2008.
To finalize your transactions with us, please follow these steps: 1. Complete your image searches by March 4, 2008. 2. Make final image purchases by March 31, 2008. 3. If necessary, re-download past purchases and print your purchase history by March 31, 2008. 4. When you're ready, uninstall Adobe Stock Photos from Adobe(R) Bridge in your Creative Suite(R) applications.
For a long time I really wondered why Adobe would offer a stock photography service. It just seemed like a big hassle for them to get information from the big stock photography sites, organize it, etc. I really doubt that they were making very much off of each purchase. Now it looks like I was correct because they are shutting down the service.
So from now on you'll have to go search for your images the good ol' fashioned way. At least this way everyone that uses the Adobe suite won't be presented exactly the same images any more.
Audio: Luke Wroblewski on Form Design I recently had the pleasure of talking with Tom Crawford, CEO of VizThink, about my Web Form Design book and its relevance for the visual thinking community.
If form design is everywhere, why are there so many bad forms?
What are some of the common mistakes web form designers make?
What are the Top 3 tips for improving web forms?
Why do good designers create bad forms?
What is the disappearing form?
How does web form design relate to visual thinking?
For more on Form Design... Check out Luke's book about Web form usability, visual design, and interaction design considerations: Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks.
ASP.NET MVC Support with Visual Web Developer 2008 Express
Last week I blogged about the ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 release. One important thing I forgot to mention about this release is that you can now use it with both Visual Studio 2008 as well as the free Visual Web Developer 2008 Express edition.
The SP1 release of Visual Web Developer 2008 Express adds support for both class library projects as well as web application projects (previously only web site projects could be used with it). This new support is useful in itself, as well as in enabling both ASP.NET MVC and Silverlight project support with VWD Express. If you install the Visual Web Developer Express SP1 Beta you can start using ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 with it immediately.
Important: ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 does not require SP1 to be installed if you are using Visual Studio 2008. ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 will work with both VS 2008 and VS 2008 SP1 just fine.
You can learn more about the new VWD Express support for ASP.NET MVC from the VS Web Tools team blog here. This post also includes a free web download that provides ASP.NET MVC Test project support for NUnit-based unit tests. You can use these NUnit project templates with both Visual Studio 2008 as well as with Visual Web Developer Express 2008.
As catbirdseat has already stated, it's tough concentrating on this week's releases when next week looks so massively promising. Here are a few notables though. If none of them catch your eye, check out the Rutles 2 DVD giveaway we just kicked off (for those of you who are reading this via RSS, you're gonna need to open the website in an actual browser - sorry).
Dread Leppelin - Chickens And Ribs I know the joke should be old by now, but it still cracks me up. It features a guest appearance by Billy Zoom.
Mahi Mahi - Remove Your Body This came out a few weeks ago and I forgot to mention it. I always bitch about the music scene in Providence, but when someone releases an album, I forget to write about it on the site. Sorry about that.
They Might Be Giants - Here Come The ABCs Speaking of children's music, have you seen the Pancake Mountain site? I've probably already linked it, but the Fiery Furnaces "Mouse House, Moose Hoose" clip is too crazy to not mention several times.
Wedding Present - Take Fountain I wanted this album to be absolutely amazing, but I'm having trouble getting into it. I'm gonna give it a few more tries - I can sense that there's some great material hidden in there.
South Korean P2P Networks Agree To Block Mp3 Format
read more:
DOMAssistant bundle for TextMate
Like many other Mac users I do most of my coding in TextMate. It has tons of really nice features, one of which is its extensibility – if you need support for a coding language that isn't included with TextMate, you can add it yourself.
Well, I've been using Robert Nyman's DOMAssistant JavaScript library quite a bit lately, and TextMate doesn't support DOMAssistant's methods and syntax. I was getting a bit annoyed at knowing that I was doing a lot of unnecessary typing because of this, so I decided to create a TextMate bundle for DOMAssistant.
Armed with my copy of TextMate, James Edward Gray II's excellent TextMate: Power Editing for the Mac, and the DOMAssistant documentation, I started hacking away. This was the first time I took a closer look at adding support for a language in TextMate, but it turned out that it really isn't that difficult.
After a few hours of work, the result is a DOMAssistant TextMate bundle with tab triggered snippets for all methods, a code completion dictionary, and documentation links for all DOMAssistant keywords.
Former RIAA Chief Speaks Against Lawsuits, DRM read more:
IA Summit: Content page design best practices In my Content Page Design Best Practices talks at IA Summit 2008, I presented a framework for thinking about how to optimize content pages for the dynamic ecosystem of the Web instead of the structured hierarchy of a Web site.
Official Description: In today’s social, distributed, search-driven Web, customers are finding their way to Web content through an increasing number of distinct experiences. Yet when people arrive at most Web pages, the experience they get isn’t optimized for this context. Instead, the vast majority of content pages online remain more concerned with their own context than the context of their users: where did a user arrive from and where are they likely to go next? These pages remain designed as if they were primarily accessed from a Web site’s home page or a carefully thought-out selection from the site’s information architecture.
To address these issues and more, this talk outlines a set of best practices for Web content page design that focuses on appropriate presentations of content, context, and calls to action. Specifically: how can content be optimized to meet user expectations as they arrive from a diverse number of access points; what is the minimum amount of context required to frame content appropriately; how can the most relevant calls to action be presented to maximize user engagement? Applying these considerations enables information architects to deliver content experiences that take full advantage of emerging opportunities online and the existing assets within their Web sites.
There is also little consensus among administrators about how successful the services have been in eliminating piracy. Although some say complaints from the recording industry have dropped sharply, no one can tell if that's because fewer students are engaging in illegal file-sharing or if the industry simply doesn't want to go after schools that are spending money to combat the problem. "The RIAA's push to buy into these services strikes me as protection money. Buy in and we'll protect you from our lawsuits," says Kenneth C. Green, the Campus Computing Project's director.
Of course, the RIAA denies strongly if unconvincingly:
The RIAA denies the charge. "We do sue students and send takedown notices to universities that have legal services all the time," says Mr. Sherman. Universities have a particular responsibility to teach students the value of intellectual property, he adds, because they are "probably the No. 1 creator of intellectual property." And he disputes the idea that the subscription services have fallen out of favor. The number of campuses that subscribe will increase "pretty significantly" in the fall, he says.
This "particular responsibility" of the universities is especially rich. Universities don't generate "intellectual property", they generate knowledge, most of which is effectively distributed freely as a side-effect of their teaching and research activities. Whenever universities have tried to monetize their knowledge production, they have created distortions and conflicts of interest that have damaged their core missions and their prestige as institutions supposedly run in the public interest. Even patent licensing, which involves a limited range of university production, has had a dubious overall payoff: while licensing has brought a lot of money to a few schools, it has created nasty conflicts of interest, effectively restricted commercialization of significant inventions, and impeded learning in many other schools. More generally, universities are in a difficult position relative to current trends in "intellectual property". Fair use, which is essential to scholarship, is under threat, and oligopolistic practices of publishers are creating huge stresses for university libraries. So, if universities are to do their teaching job properly in this area, their teachings may well not be at all to the liking of the RIAA, as it will necessarily probe critically the idea of "intellectual property." Using student money to pay for an RIAA-sanctioned download service does not serve critical thinking. read more:
Today, Apple released iTunes 7.0,among otherthings. In earlier versions of iTunes, Apple didits best to prevent users from being able to copy music from an iPod back to adesktop computer. Now, Apple has changed course and is marketing “ReverseSyncing” as a new feature of iTunes 7.
But there is one giant catch:
1. Music and media not purchased from the iTunes store only syncs one way, fromyour computer to your iPod.
This is uninnovation in its most frustrating form. It’s easy to spot and avoid drm-saturatedjunk, but these kinds of subtle limitations in an otherwise great product frustrateusers and drive them to alternativeapplications.How about trusting the user enough to let them get at their own files without thesechildish restrictions?
WMP11 added reverse filetransfer support back in March which works with purchased, and clear content.(It’s also had album art matching in WMP9, dramatically improved in WMP11). I thinkthe author is being a bit overzealous however in his claim of “uninnovation”- it'salways been easy to transfer music off your iPod, it's just a little hidden. Here it’s a little less hidden.
I’ve seen lots of chatter on iTV - Apple's Media Center Extender-esque device forstreaming video to the living room. It feels like we’ve been here before. LongZheng at istartedsomething.com hasa good recap of the relative strengths and weaknesses of products in this space. It seems a bit odd that Apple would break from long-time tradition and givea 'sneak preview' of a product that won't be available for at least Q1 '07, particularlywhen they could have held the announce to availability around MacWorld in January.It's clear they had to do this to try and spur purchase of movies from theirnew store- with no rental model, people just don't want to buy movies towatch on their portable players. Tell them they'll be able to play it in other placesas well around the home and their likelihood of purchase is higher. It’s the battleof cognitive dissonance - buyer's remorse. After all, you're already dealing withthe psychological barrier in that the user is buying an intangible good, somethingwithout physical form that perceptually has less value than physical media such asDVDs. But... you're going to charge about the same as a physical DVD. Without theBonus DVD content. Oh and the 640x480 video quality people are downloading isgoing to be between VHS and DVD quality (which offers 720x480p). Never mindthat it will be potentially less for letterboxed content since the new iPod doesn'tsupport 16:9 (widescreen) display. In the time it will take most customersto download one of these movies, I could have gone to the store, bought the DVD, popcorn,a 6-pack of Coke, dinner, come home, cooked dinner, and be ready to watch. Ina rental model, all of these issues can be forgiven for immediate gratification anda lower price, as witnessed by the popularity of Video On Demand and InDemand services.
The challenges in streaming TV from the PC aren't just the hypothesized need for higherspeed wireless (802.11n) which should be provisionally approved in early 2007. This might be delaying their launch, but streaming 640x480 video across the home hasbeen possible with Media Center Extender for just about two years now. A challengeis going to be convincing consumers to buy and set up yet another single-purpose devicein the living room, another remote, another input on the TV for this thing.
Today, you can get an Xbox 360 that includesMedia Center Extender at no additional cost. Over 16 million Media Centercustomers can use this today, no additional charge. Even if you don’t have a TV tunerin your PC, you can connect a USB tuner and record TV or HDTV (OTA today, DigitalCable with equipped PCs with Vista). No additional fees. As announced at CESlast year, multiple HDTV manufacturers are putting Media Center extender into theirdesigns, something that costs less than a night at the movies to implement.
As for another box in the living room, the Xbox 360 does HD gaming, DVD/HD-DVD Playback,Music, Photos, Video, TV/HDTV playback, runs rich media apps from a multitude of providers,and delivers an increasing amount of media content via Xbox Live, including HD. And it's going to get significantly better with WindowsVista Premium's Media Center features – automatically updating your Xbox 360 tosupport in the family room with the same level of animation and experience.
Either way, a saying comes to mind: “A rising tide raises all boats” and for thatI welcome Apple's foray. But if Apple's iTV costs the same as an Xbox, offers nothing more than a 'simplified remote' and fewer mainstream features whichreally makes more sense when competing for consumer dollars outside the Job'sfaithful? With Sony and Nintendo's Wii also vying for that same space, it'sabout to get a bit more crowded. Or perhaps just noisy. So begins the 'Great FamilyRoom Battle of 2007'.
(Disclaimer: I used to work on Media Center, but haven't for over a year, andspeak only for myself.)
The Art & Science of CSS is not a very thick book, and it doesn't have to be since it is not a reference book on CSS. It is a rather quick read, but it contains useful and practical tips on how to create certain design elements with CSS. These are tips that you can adapt and use in your own projects.
Five authors have contributed to this book: Cameron Adams, Jina Bolton, David Johnson, Steve Smith, and Jonathan Snook. Bolton, Johnson, and Snook have written one chapter each, while Steve Smith and Cameron Adams have both written two chapters. It's an author line-up that raises expectations.
There's not a lot to say about the general structure of the book. There is no introduction to CSS or HTML in here. Instead you jump right in and get working on the examples. During the course of the seven chapters you will find new or different ways of styling, creating, or manipulating headings, images, backgrounds, navigation, forms, rounded corners, and tables. Those are the main topics of each chapter, but in each chapter you will pick up other tips as well.
So, what do I think of this book after reading it? Well, it's not bad. Plenty of good tips and useful techniques are described in it. It's not perfect either. I guess it's partly down to personal preference, but I am not too fond of books that have multiple authors unless there is one main editor that makes sure all chapters are at least reasonably similar in style. I can't quite put it into words, but to some extent the different styles distract me from the actual content.
Apart from the difference in writing style between the authors, there is also the difference in coding practices for both CSS and HTML. It's ok for someone who is experienced and can see that the differences are often just personal preferences, but this book is meant for people who aren't CSS or HTML experts. I can easily imagine how confusing it is to see different approaches to font sizing in different chapters of the same book, with no explanation of why. I think consistency would have been good here.
With that in mind, reading The Art & Science of CSS will teach you how to use CSS to accomplish a number of useful design tasks, so I think it's worth its price unless you already know most of what there is to know about CSS.
As with all SitePoint books, there are sample chapters you can download to find out if the book is right for you.
A book that is sub-titled 'Everything you need to learn JavaScript from scratch' is obviously not aimed at experienced JavaScript developers. However I don't think Simply JavaScript is suitable for absolute beginners either, since it contains programming examples that aren't all that easy for someone without at least some programming or scripting experience to wrap their head around.
The authors, Kevin Yank and Cameron Adams, get off to a great start by explaining the three layers the Web is built on (presentation, content, and behaviour) and how CSS, HTML, and JavaScript should be used for each separate layer. When a JavaScript book starts by talking about unobtrusive scripting and even mentions that perhaps JavaScript isn't always the best way of solving a problem, you can be reasonably sure that it's been written by someone who knows about modern Web development.
Since this book is not aimed at JavaScript experts, there is a whole chapter devoted to explaining the basics of programming with JavaScript. Variables, statements, conditions and loops, functions, and objects are all talked about in an easy-to-understand way, accompanied by plenty of code examples and illustrative figures.
After the first two introductory chapters, the authors dive into some actual programming for the next several chapters. The DOM, events, animation, form scripting, finding and debugging errors, and Ajax are all discussed in one chapter each. The final chapter takes a look ahead at the future of JavaScript.
Throughout the book, the Core JavaScript library is used to make some common DOM scripting tasks easier. I hadn't heard of Core before, but it seems to do the job and is very lightweight. It's so small that the entire source is included in the book.
Overall I think the authors do a great job of explaining JavaScript. The examples and code are easy to follow and explained well, and the book is written in a friendly and inviting tone. I picked up a few tips and tricks from reading this book, which for me makes it worth the time it took to read it.
Revisiting the sub-title of this book, I think the audience that will get the most out of it falls somewhere in between the novice and expert levels. To me it seems best suited for designers or developers with a decent knowledge of HTML and CSS and some familiarity with JavaScript. If that describes you, I can recommend Simply JavaScript.
As with all SitePoint books, there are sample chapters you can download to find out if the book is right for you.
This morning we released the Preview 3 build of the ASP.NET MVC framework. I blogged details last month about an interim source release we did that included many of the changes with this Preview 3 release. Today's build includes some additional features not in last month's drop, some nice enhancements/refinements, as well as Visual Studio tool integration and documentation.
You can download an integrated ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 setup package here. You can also optionally download the ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 framework source code and framework unit tests here.
Controller Action Method Changes
ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 includes the MVC Controller changes we first discussed and previewed with the April MVC source release, along with some additional tweaks and adjustments.
You can continue to write controller action methods that return void and encapsulate all of their logic within the action method. For example:
which would render the below HTML when run:
Preview 3 also now supports using an approach where you return an "ActionResult" object that indicates the result of the action method, and enables deferred execution of it. This allows much easier unit testing of actions (without requiring the need to mock anything). It also enables much cleaner composition and overall execution control flow.
For example, we could use LINQ to SQL within our Browse action method to retrieve a sequence of Product objects from our database and indicate that we want to render a View of them. The code below will cause three pieces of "ViewData" to be passed to the view - "Title" and "CategoryName" string values, and a strongly typed sequence of products (passed as the ViewData.Model object):
One advantage of using the above ActionResult approach is that it makes unit testing Controller actions really easy (no mocking required). Below is a unit test that verifies the behavior of our Browse action method above:
We can then author a "Browse" ViewPage within the ViewsProducts sub-directory to render a response using the ViewData populated by our Browse action:
When we hit the /Products/Browse/Beverages URL we'll then get an HTML response like below (with the three usages of ViewData circled in red):
Note that in addition to support a "ViewResult" response (for indicating that a View should be rendered), ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 also adds support for returning "JsonResult" (for AJAX JSON serialization scenarios), "ContentResult" (for streaming content without a View), as well as HttpRedirect and RedirectToAction/Route results.
The overall ActionResult approach is extensible (allowing you to create your own result types), and overtime you'll see us add several more built-in result types.
Improved HTML Helper Methods
The HTML helper methods have been updated with ASP.NET MVC Preview 3. In addition to a bunch of bug fixes, they also include a number of nice usability improvements.
Automatic Value Lookup
With previous preview releases you needed to always explicitly pass in the value to render when calling the Html helpers. For example: to include a value within a <input type="text" value="some value"/> element you would write:
The above code continues to work - although now you can also just write:
The HTML helpers will now by default check both the ViewData dictionary and any Model object passed to the view for a ProductName key or property value to use.
SelectList and MultiSelectList ViewModels
New SelectList and MultiSelectList View-Model classes are now included that provide a cleaner way to populate HTML dropdowns and multi-select listboxes (and manage things like current selection, etc). One approach that can make form scenarios cleaner is to instantiate and setup these View-Model objects in a controller action, and then pass them in the ViewData dictionary to the View to format/render.
For example, below I'm creating a SelectList view-model class over the set of unique category objects in our database. I'm indicating that I want to use the "CategoryID" property as the value of each item in the list, and the "CategoryName" as the display text. I'm also setting the list selection to the current CategoryId of the Product we are editing:
Within our view we then just have to write the below code to indicate that we want to create a drop-downlist against the SelectList we put into ViewData:
This will then render the appropriate drop down with items and selection for us at runtime:
Built-in error validation support isn't included with our HTML helpers yet (you currently need to write code for this) - but will show up in the future, which will make form editing scenarios even easier.
You'll also start to see ASP.NET AJAX helper methods show up in future preview releases as well, which will make it easier to integrate AJAX into MVC applications with a minimum of code.
URL Routing Improvements
ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 includes a number of improvements to the URL routing system. URL routing is one of the most "fundamental" components of a web MVC framework to get right, hence the reason we've spent a lot of focus the first few previews getting this area nailed. Our new URL routing engine will ship in .NET 3.5 SP1 this summer, and will support both Web Forms and MVC requests. ASP.NET MVC will be able to use the built-in .NET 3.5 SP1 routing engine when running on .NET 3.5 SP1. ASP.NET MVC will also include its own copy of the assembly so that it can also work on non-SP1 systems.
Some of the URL Routing Improvements in the Preview 3 release include:
MapRoute() and IgnoreRoute() helper methods
ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 includes new "MapRoute" and "IgnoreRoute" helper methods that you can use to more easily register routing rules. MapRoute() provides an easy way to add a new MVC Route rule to the Routes collection. IgnoreRoute() provides an easy way to tell the URL routing system to stop processing certain URL patterns (for example: handler .axd resources in ASP.NET that are used to serve up JavaScript, images, etc).
Below is an example of the default RegisterRoutes() method within Global.asax when you create a new ASP.NET MVC project where you can see both of these new helper methods in action.
The MapRoute() helper method is overloaded and takes two, three or four parameters (route name, URL syntax, URL parameter default, and optional URL parameter regular expression constraints).
You can call MapRoute() as many times as you want to register multiple named routes in the system. For example, in addition to the default convention rule, we could add a "Products-Browse" named routing rule like below:
We can then refer to this "Products-Browse" rule explicitly within our Controllers and Views when we want to generate a URL to it. For example, we could use the Html.RouteLink view helper to indicate that we want to link to our "Products-Browse" route and pass it a "Food" category parameter using code in our view template like below:
This view helper would then access the routing system and output an appropriate HTML hyperlink URL like below (note: how it did automatic parameter substitution of the category parameter into the URL using the route rule):
We could alternatively use the new Url.RouteUrl(routeName, values) within views if we wanted to just retrieve the URL for a named route (and not output the <a> html element).
We could also use the new RedirectToRoute(routeName, values) helper method on the Controller base class to issues browser redirects based on named routing rules.
Richer URL Route Mapping Features
ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 also supports a bunch of new URL route mapping features. You can now include "-", ".", ";" or any other characters you want as part of your route rules.
For example, using a "-" separator you can now parse the language and locale values from your URLs separately using a rule like below:
This would pass appropriate "language", "locale", and "category" parameters to a ProductsController.Browse action method when invoked:
URL Route Rule
Example URL
Parameters Passed to Action method
{language}-{locale}/products/browse/{category}
/en-us/products/browse/food
language=en, locale=us, category=food
/en-uk/products/browse/food
language=en, locale=uk, category=food
Or you can use the "." file extension type at the end of a URL to determine whether to render back the result in either a XML or HTML format:
This would pass both "category" and a "format" parameters to the ProductsController.Browse action method when invoked:
URL Route Rule
Example URL
Parameters Passed to Action method
products/browse/{category}.{format}
/products/browse/food.xml
category=food, format=xml
/products/browse/food.html
category=food, format=html
ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 also supports wildcard route rules (these were also in Preview 2). For example, you can indicate in a rule to pass all remaining URI content on as a named parameter to an action method:
This would pass a "contentUrl" parameter to the WikiController.DisplayPage action method when invoked:
URL Route Rule
Example URL
Parameters Passed to Action method
Wiki/Pages/{*contentUrl}
/Wiki/Pages/People/Scott
contentUrl="People/Scott"
/Wiki/Pages/Countries/UK
contentUrl="Countries/UK"
These wildcard routes are very useful to look at if you are building a blogging, wiki, cms or other content based system.
Summary
Today's Preview 3 release of ASP.NET MVC includes a bunch of improvements and refinements. We are starting to feel good about the URL routing and Controller/Action programming model of MVC, and feel that those areas are starting to bake really well. In future preview releases you'll start to see more improvements higher-up the programming model stack in areas like Views (html helpers, validation helpers, etc), AJAX, sub-controllers and site composition, deeper Login, Authentication, Authorization and Caching integration, as well as data scaffolding support.
I also have a (very) long tutorial post that I started putting together this past weekend that walks-through building an application using ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 that I'm hoping to wrap up and post in the next few days. This should provide both a good intro to ASP.NET MVC, as well as help provide some context on how all the pieces fit together if you are interested in using the ASP.NET MVC option.
(Fake Headline, Serious Point:) Movie Studios, Blockbuster File Copyright Infringement Suit Against Customer For Failing to Return DVD Rentals That's obviously not true, but from the way people talk about Rhapsody and other music 'rental' services, they believe that the story could happen, at least in principle. This is part of yet another misunderstanding about how the DMCA reworked the nature of copyright.
Too often, people confuse defenses of DRM+DMCA based on their ability to prevent *infringing* uses and defenses based on protection of new business models predicated on preventing *non-infringing* uses. The former defense is about protecting copyright holder's exclusive rights, the latter is in effect about expanding those rights. These days, this confusion typically involves online music rental subscription services like Rhapsody.
The DRM on Rhapsody songs can (in theory) prevent some infringing uses. But Title 17 grants the copyright holder several exclusive rights in 17 USC 106 (e.g., copying, distribution, public performance), and keeping songs after your subscription ends doesn't infringe any of them. When the DRM prevents you from listening to the song, it's limiting a private performance. The copy you downloaded was lawfully made, and you're entitled to make fair use [*1]; to the extent the uses would be protected with a purchased copy, you can move this 'rented' copy to a portable player or make a back-up copy of it [*1], for instance.
At first, this might seem strange to some, but consider a DVD you rent from Blockbuster. If you fail to return the movie, can the copyright holder or Blockbuster sue you for copyright infringement? No, they can't; you can keep watching that movie for as long as you like. Put aside DRM+DMCA and focus on 17 USC 106 for the moment -- if you rip a copy to your computer, it's a fair use just like ripping a DVD you bought at Wal-Mart; to the extent that the latter is non-infringing, so is the former. The copyright holder could argue that this ripped copy of the rental threatens the market for the work and thus is not a fair use, but ripping the purchased DVD threatens the market in much the same way; after all, if you can rip your purchased DVD, then it threatens the market by making it harder for them to sell you a second copy for use on your computer or your portable player. [*1] You can apply the same reasoning to rented or purchased VHS.
To be clear, you could be violating your contract with Blockbuster. And services like Rhapsody could sue you for violating their Terms of Service. In principle, they could get an injunction and actual damages.
However, you aren't infringing under 17 USC 106 and thus copyright holders couldn't get statutory damages on that basis. The DRM and DMCA don't change this analysis [*2], strictly speaking. If you use FairUse4WM to unwrap your Rhapsody WM DRMed songs, you may violate their ToS, you may violate the DMCA (17 USC 1201) and have to pay statutory damages, but you are not infringing (17 USC 106). The public is still technically entitled to fair use, first sale, and all your other rights under copyright, but in exercising them you might violate the DMCA.
So this suggests one way the distinction matters (the DMCA radically changes the available remedies), but there's a bigger issue here. In reality, the people who support the DMCA's protection of this business model are not supporting the protection of copyright holder's limited exclusive rights, let alone supporting the prevention of 'Internet piracy' -- they're supporting in effect an expansion of copyright holder's rights. The DMCA gives copyright holder's essentially a broad, exclusive right to control any uses of the work and compatible devices.
Some people may still argue that we need the DRM+DMCA because it protects Rhapsody's business model and thus this expansion of rights is a good thing. You return your rented DVDs not because Blockbuster will sue you, but because they'll cut you off from renting again. Rhapsody has no similar threat to hang over your head, so you could download the entire catalog and unsubscribe.
I would dispute that the subscription models would go away for this reason, but let's assume they wouldn't offer downloads any more. The endangerment of a business model, by itself, is not a sufficient reason to extend the scope of copyright holder's rights. Title 17 entitles copyright holders to certain rights, not to certain business models. There are a lot of old and new business models copyright holders would love to protect. For instance, the movie and television studios' business models were ostensibly threatened by time-shifting, and they'd love to be able to limit it in many ways today in order to enable new revenue models. But that wasn't and isn't a sufficient reason to block time-shifting and creation of compatible devices via the DMCA, or to mandate DRM a la the broadcast flag.
A more valid argument here would be that the public benefits by protecting the rental model. Again, I would dispute that the DMCA+DRM really provides a lot of public benefit there. But, regardless, I think most would agree that there are many endangered business models that don't need protecting. I think many dislike how protection of the rental model also involves inhibiting innovation and competition in the development of compatible music devices. I think many would agree that prohibiting time-shifting and backing-up of purchased media doesn't benefit the public, even if it enables some new business models. And I bet there are many more ill-effects of the DMCA that they would disapprove of , as well.
On that basis, I think that even those who laud the DRM+DMCA's role in protecting rental models would be, on the whole, unhappy with the DMCA. To be sure, there are those who like the DMCA because it acts as a general right to control use of copyrighted works and creation of compatible devices; they laud price discrimination and platform monopolies predicated on restricting non-infringing uses. But I think many don't share that view, particularly when they see that those models aren't about stopping infringement, let alone 'Internet piracy.'
[*1 - Update: Initially, I also stuck first sale in here. We've had an interesting back-and-forthin the comments about how I may be wrong that first sale would actually apply to the DVD or to your hard drive with the Rhapsody file on it. Indeed, a court might actually view giving away your hard drive with the song as protected by first sale, but giving the away the DVD wouldn't be, since you can keep a permanent copy of the WMA file and don't have to return it, but you were just borrowing the DVD that perhaps Blockbuster itself had acquired under a revenue-sharing license agreement rather than as an outright purchase. Thanksto my interlocutor, 'analoghole' The possible problem there doesn't affect my fair use analysis, however. Note that it also doesn't change my point that you're still entitled to first sale to the extent you were with a DRM-free, rented copy. Finally, since people are really getting up in arms about a person being able to keep the songs and use them past the subscription (that's the biz model at stake), I figured I'd just pull the first sale analysis out, for clarity's sake.]
[*2 - Update: see a minor clarification in the comments on this. If a copy is *only* non-infringing because of some implied or express license from the copyright owner that vanishes when you circumvent, then that could change the analysis.]
I find it easier to get my mail through Outlook and now Gmail allows you to download your mail as either a POP3 account or IMAP account right into Outlook. Here's how, just follow our easy couple of steps to download Gmail to your computer too.
Thanks for all the nice feedback on the stories about the Business Leadership Forum in Rome. There are two final links that may be of interest. Chris Barger at IBM has posted the audio for the podcast about the demos, Internet technology, and healthcare. You can play it from 
![/>It looks like The Pirate Bay raid may have done more harm than good, at least if you're on the side of the content owners. Swedish politicians are looking towards a September election, and 5 of the 7 major political parties have agreed to look at Swedish copyright law reform, even in the face of an EU directive that prohibits 'unauthorized downloading or uploading of copyright-protected files'</p><p>'<em>The fallout from the May 31 raid on The Pirate Bay has made clear just how widespread and deeply entrenched file-sharing has become in Sweden. On-line forums have been filled with protests against the raid, and a pro-piracy demonstration in early June drew close to 1,000 people. A poll published in early June showed that three out of four Swedes between 18 and 21 supported file-sharing, even if it was illegal.</em>'</p><p>With 1 million potential votes hanging in the balance, Swedish politicians are salivating at this huge swing vote. </p><p>'As a country at the forefront of information technology, we also have to be at the forefront of how we legislate the issue. Above all, we have to say yes to technological development, and encourage people to use computers and to download.' said justice minister, Thomas Bodstrom.</p><p>[via <a href='http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/06/18/business/levies.php'>International Herald Tribune</a>]</p><h6 style='clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;'></h6><a href='http://p2p.weblogsinc.com/2006/06/19/swedish-p2p-gains-political-boosters/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent link to this entry'>Permalink</a> <BR><a href=](http://p2p.weblogsinc.com/media/2006/06/jolly_roger.jpg)
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![/>Several South Korean P2P providers, in response to<font class='article'> music industry requests to block illegal music sharing have completely disabled the ability to download Mp3s through their services.</font></p><p> <font class='article'>``We held an urgent meeting last week, and eight of 11 member companies agreed to block MP3 files until we find ways to charge users,' said Jun Hyun-sung, chairman of the association of P2P service providers.</font></p><p> <font class='article'>P2P services like <a href='http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soribada'>Soribada</a> and Purna have been widely used for file sharing, where thousands of users can give and take their music and movie data. The music companies say such file sharing on the Internet has severely damaged the industry. </font></p><font class='article'>According to the Korean Association of Phonogram Producers (KAPP), the offline sales of music albums plummeted from over 400 billion won in 2000 to 120 billion won in 2005, as most young people tend to listen to music on digital players rather than carrying bulky CD or tape players. </font><p> <font class='article'>Soribada, the first and most popular P2P music sharing service in South Korea, said last month it postponed the launch of its new subscription service indefinitely, as it has failed to make a deal with copyright holders on the price of the songs.</font><br /></p>[via <a href='http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/200606/kt2006060917054753460.htm'>The Korea Times</a>]<h6 style='clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;'></h6><a href='http://p2p.weblogsinc.com/2006/06/11/south-korean-p2p-networks-agree-to-block-mp3-format/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent link to this entry'>Permalink</a> <BR><a href=](http://image.soribada.com/Images/Menu/logo.gif){kind=logo}
read more:![/></a>Former head of the RIAA, Hillary Rosen says she's against the continued litigation her former employer continues to pursue. <br /><br />'I don't honestly know what I would have done about the individual lawsuits had I stayed. I certainly participated in multiple planning and debate sessions about them. There were good arguments on both sides ... But for the record, I do share a concern that the lawsuits have outlived most of their usefulness and that the record companies need to work harder to implement a strategy that legitimizes more p2p sites and expands the download and subscription pool by working harder with the tech community to get devices and music services to work better together'<br /><br />Rosen went on to say, 'Speaking of DRM, it is time to rethink that strategy as well.' but failed to give any details on how her version of a DRM or non-DRM universe would look and act. <br /><br />Rosen is on point when she says that the lawsuits have outlived their useful lifespan. New suits tend to bring anti-RIAA press to a boil for a few days, especially when the named defendant is <a href='http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/12441'>young</a>, <a href='http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,98190,00.html'>old</a>, <a href='http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050204-4587.html'>dead</a> or <a href='http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?threadid=245416'>without a computer</a>. The RIAA are crafting a villainous persona in the press, and where the original public spin on the lawsuits pointed in favor of the RIAA a very serious shift has occurred towards the side of the consumer. When Hillary Rosen tells you to go work with the technology in order to grow your business rather than suing what remains of it out of existence, we can only hope the current management over at the RIAA takes heed of the warning offered by a former colleague.<br /><br />[via <a href='http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hilary-rosen/for-the-record-for-what-_b_22177.html'>The Huffington Post</a>]<br /><h6 style='clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;'></h6><a href='http://p2p.weblogsinc.com/2006/06/10/former-riaa-chief-speaks-against-lawsuits-drm/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent link to this entry'>Permalink</a> <BR><a href=](http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.02/images/FF_hillary_94_1.jpg)
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