Welcome to U.S. Government 2.0

We're off to a great start - at least technologically speaking - with the new Obama administration. Just check out the fresh new whitehouse.gov site. There are even several RSS feeds available (!). ...and it validates XHTML Transitional 1.0! (Now that is a geeky statement...)

News is also coming in that the robots.txt file on the new site is much less restrictive than it was previously (2400+ lines of 'disallows' vs. 1!). (Geeky statement #2...)

Finally, President Obama (ahhh...it really feels great to type that!) has taken over the @whitehouse Twitter account, so go follow it right now!

Now this is what I call 'change Hiro would believe in'! :)

The Concept of 'Real-Time' on the Web

My first job out of college was a computer engineering gig, programming in C on an OS/2 platform (yikes!). But the real key characteristic that made things interesting was the fact that the application consisted of a real-time monitoring piece - temperatures within a hot steel casting machine were updated once per second (not the fastest 'real-time', but still...) and monitored for patterns which would indicate trouble with a capital 'T'.

Fast forward 15 years or so (man, I'm feeling old now), and the meme of a 'real-time web' is now making the rounds. There are some inherent challenges with this concept - mainly due to the fact that HTTP is the basis of most of the web's transactions, and HTTP is clearly a request/response protocol. So the big challenge these days seems to be this: how do we effectively and efficiently get real-time updates or notifications via this platform?

RSS was a precursor to the eventual solution, I think. RSS allows a web application to effectively 'monitor' changes on any other web application (yes, that is what it boils down to in a programmatic sense), and that is a good start. But it kind of falls apart when you scale it up by an order of magnitude.

XMPP seems like the next good attempt at a 'real-time web' technology, and I'm keeping my eye on it as it develops...until someone comes up with the next big solution, at least.

Quote of the Day

"‘That’ll do’ won’t do. ‘That’s good enough’ is never good enough."
- Stephen Fry

Frack John McCain?

You know, for the past several weeks, I've been noodling around with the idea of compiling all of the FACTS about John McCain's negative traits in one easily-browsable list. Unfortunately, I never got around to actually doing it...though I did have several very good links saved up.

It is awesome to see, then, that someone else had the same idea and did all of the legwork for me.

F**k John McCain

Unfortunate that it carries such an angry tone (it sounds like it was written by someone in the McCain-Palin camp, actually, with all of the latent anger spewing all over it), and unfortunate that it has such a NSFW URL, but damn if it doesn't sum things up. FACTS, my friends, FACTS.

Hopefully this will be the last divergence into the political space for this blog...unless things go horribly, horribly wrong on November 4th.

FACT: Obama is NOT the most liberal Senator

I always knew that this was a lie from the Republicans and their 'Faux' News buddies, but here is the proof:

Liberal interest groups' ratings for Senators

Have they told even one truth in this whole campaign???

Why Technology Rocks

Stephen Fry (who I've mentioned in this spot once before) is currently travelling across Africa making a documentary, and he is Twittering in real-time (follow him here), as well as posting Twitpics and videos on his own site. It's fascinating to get his real-time Twits while I'm sitting here poring over code in the office, thousands of miles away. :) I guess you can call it 'technology-enabled vicarious travel'. Hmm...need a better moniker than that...

Here's his first video post from Africa.

The Question is Moot...

...I get the car.

I hereby apologize for all of Pennsylvania

Today, I am ashamed to be a Pennsylvanian.  The racism and hatred shown by these McCain/Palin supporters at a rally in Johnstown, PA over the weekend is disgusting and appalling.  And to think I thought we had progressed somewhat in this country with regards to racism in my lifetime.  Tsk, tsk, tsk.

HYPOCRISY ALERT: McCain is Not Patriotic, Since He Did Not Wear a Flag Pin to Either Debate

WTF???  After all of the outcry and outright smears a while back from the media and the (hypocritical) right wingers out there claiming that Barack Obama was 'not patriotic' because he did not wear a flag pin, John McCain is now 0-for-2 after two debates - he has not worn a flag pin himself for either debate, while Obama, Biden, and even Palin (though hers was an ugly, garish piece) wore theirs.

So I ask...where is the media outrage now?  Where are the right-wing pundits who feel it is so important to nitpick about such menial things during the most important Presidential campaign of our lifetime???

UPDATE: McCain is now 3-for-3 in disrespecting the U.S. of A. by not wearing a flag pin to debates.

H-Y-P-O-C-R-I-S-Y

GOP = HYPROCRISY incarnate. Oh, and Fox News is just as hypocritical, initially by association, but ultimately by their sick lies and slander.