Progressive page updates

Now this is cool: The joy of flush() shows how PHP's flush() function can be used to send data to the browser before a page has finished rendering. Check out Ben's demo page to see the trick in action.

I've seen this in use on a few sites for progress indicators, but I'd never realised how easy it was to achieve in PHP. The progress indicator trick is pretty neat - it generally works by having a progress indicator widget that can be modified by javascript, then flushing a <script> element with a call to the progress incrementing function whenever an operation in the server side code has been completed. I've seen it used for IRC style chat applications as well, but I've always been concerned about the server resources that must be tied up in serving multiple persistent connections at once.

Piracy is Progressive Taxation

Our current distribution systems for books, music, and movies are skewed heavily in favor of the "haves" against the "have nots." A few high-profile products receive the bulk of the promotional budget and are distributed in large quantities; the majority depend, in the words of Tennessee Williams' character Blanche DuBois, "on the kindness of strangers."

Lowering the barriers to entry in distribution, and the continuous availability of the entire catalog rather than just the most popular works, is good for artists, since it gives them a chance to build their own reputation and visibility, working with entrepreneurs of the new medium who will be the publishers and distributors of tomorrow. -- Tim O'Reilly

"zeldman.gogga"

New connections: the progressive and the
pragmatic

A Progressive Story-Book?

In last Monday's Salon, Jennifer Buckendorff l inks two ideas in an interesting way: Her article The Oprah Way suggests we need to portray progressive values in a person, emotional way, and suggests that one vehicle to do so is through the use of stories. She explains how Oprah has told the story of gay interior designer Nate Berkus, who lost his life partner in the recent Asian tsunami, in a very engaging, sincere and heroic way. By doing so, she has changed the perception of many of her viewers -- including non-progressives -- of gays from a stereotype of stridency, excessive showiness and anger to a new archetype of humility, courage and sensitivity. Buckendorff suggests that such stories can actually change people's values. I'm not sure I would go so far, since I think values are pretty deep-rooted, but I certainly think stories can change perceptions, smash stereotypes, and enable accommodation of ideas and ideals that strike a common chord, and that's worth doing. There have been always been best-sellers about people, often ordinary people, who have chosen a different way and demonstrated universal human values -- bravery, love, perseverance, self-sacrifice, patience, commitment, altruism. One recent book even told stories exclusively about people who quit their wage-slave jobs and started second careers making the world, or at least their corner of it, a better place. Why not compile a story-book that tells heroic and honest tales of progressives, not big-name political leaders, just average Joes and Janes who quietly represent these universal human values and who also represent progressive values, and whose stories are told in engaging, emotionally-powerful terms? Each chapter could present a new progressive archetype, and in so doing smash an old progressive stereotype. I think Lakoff would approve. If we were to do so, what would some of those archetypes be, and whose stories would they tell? What future Obamas are today quietly representing progressive values in ways that can reach everyone, and start to draw us together in positive ways, in common cause?

Use Progressive Boink? Watch what you
say.

progressiveboink.com
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Guidance on cold calling - relevant to
those promoting usage of e-Gov services

Relevant Communications Announces 'One
to One Sales' Customized with
Relevance(TM)

iMicrosoft Certified Professional/i
Magazine to Become iREDMOND/i Magazine

Wired Magazine wins at National Magazine
Awards

Move over Progressive Scan DVD
players...

SCL London Group Meeting & AGM:
'Contract law - Developments relevant to
technology contracts that cannot be i

Baby punk tee

GOP: Grand Old Punk

Americans for Jobs, Healthcare &
Progressive Values

38.113.97.196/websites/Health/default.asp?ID=2
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The Wave Magazine - The Bay Area's Best
Entertainment Magazine... Ever.

thewavemag.com/printarticle.php?articleid=24594
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Damn punk kids

openbsd punk 0.1 (Wallpaper)

Punk at a Moment's Notice

Philips DVP642 Progressive Scan
DVD/Divx/Xvid Player $65

New Walkman-Branded Hard Disk Player

Bantam/GPX BA1000 2GB Hard Disk Player
for $100

i-Bead 1000 1.5GB Hard Disk Player

South Korean firm i-Bead is releasing a new 1.5 gigabyte hard disk player with a built-in 65k-color screen. Although there's no word on price yet, the feature set looks nice, with a built-in FM tuner and recorder, line-in recording, text viewing (something that is missing from way too many players), and USB 2.0, as well as a variety of major audio formats. And the best news? It looks like the i-Bead 1000 will be making it to Europe and the US; previous i-Bead players have been Asia-only.
Read - i-Bead to launch i-Bead 1000 [DAPreview]

Another Hard Disk Sony Video Player?

So there's stink about this one possibly being a fake, but there's a new Sony hard disk-based video player on Japanese website CD Report that claims to have a 20GB hard drive crammed into a unit just a hair bigger than the iPod mini (hence, the fake rumors). If it is legit, it is supposed to be released sometime around Christmas for a price in the neighborhood of $450 - not a bad price if it ends up being the real deal.

Of course, Sony learned from the HMP-A1 that people might actually like players that could support native MP3 playback, so the new unit is rumored to have only ATRAC support (that means, basically, that this thing will be a dud as a music player).

Re ad - The SONY next machine HDD prayer estimate (Japanese) [Nifty via PMW via DAPreview]

Creative's got a new hard disk player coming out called the 'Zen Touch' (apparently dropping the NOMAD branding) that takes them even close to the land of outright iPod clones, with a solid white casing and integrated vertically-oriented touchpad on the front. Stealing is the sincerest form of flattery, I say. Even better, the battery life is amazing -- the claimed 24 hours of the Zen Touch would triple that of the iPod. The 20GB player will be out in the fall and (according to IGN) be available for $330. Size-wise, the Zen Touch is just a tad larger than the iPod, at 4.12 x 2.7 x 0.87 inches.
Read [Creative via EverythingUSB]
Rea d [Gear.IGN]

Sony NW-HD1: A New Walkman-Branded Hard
Disk Player?

Item! I have it on good word that Sony is planning on launching another hard drive-based music player, called the Sony NW-HD1. It's all rumor at this point, of course, but according to my source it will be branded under the Walkman name and has "far better styling than the Vaio offer." Sony is apparently shopping it around to various outlets now to see what people think in preparation of an autumn launch. If anyone can grab me a picture of this mythical new unit, I would bake you the most delicious cupcake man has ever baked. Developing!

Related
Sony VAIO Pocket Review, iPod Comparison [Gizmodo]
Sony's HMP-A1 VAIO Video Pocket [Gizmodo]

Sony's First Walkman-Branded Hard Disk
Player, NW-HD1

So this is it, then; the Sony Network Walkman NW-HD1, the new music-only player powered by a 1.8-inch hard drive, enough RAM to provide 25 minutes of skip-free playing, and an impressive 30 hour battery life. While initial reports mention that the NW-HD1 will support MP3, WMA, and WAV -- and technically, that's true -- it seems the "support" comes via the same old Sony trick of converting everything to ATRAC3 on the fly. That still sucks as much as it ever did, Sony. Still, this is the one they're counting, really, to make a dent in the iPod's dominance, and right out of the gate it's got a couple of dings again, with the ATRAC3 and probable lack of WMA DRM files. At least it's small [8.9cm x 6.2cm x 1.4cm], if not cheap -- the initial prices for the 20GB model look to be around $400.

Our previous rumors of the NW-HD1 also mentioned a 40GB prototype. I wouldn't be surprised to see that soon. The 20GB version should be available in Japan July 10th, in the States in August, and in Europe by September. (Thanks to everyone who sent this in. You all get cupcakes.)
Read - Network Walkman Product Flash [SonyJP]
Read< /b> - Sony unveils HDD Walkman [TheRegister]
Read - Sony's 20GB Walkman Sets Sail for America [EverythingUSB]
Read - mit Festplatten-Playern auf Apples Spuren [HeiseDE]
Read - 20 GB Hard Drive Digital Music Player to Store up to 13,000 Songs [WholesaleConnection]
R ead - Sony plans Walkman to rival iPod [BBC]
Read - Sony debuts revamped Walkman to silence iPod [Yahoo/Reuters]

Related
Sony NW-HD1: A New Walkman-Branded Hard Disk Player? [Gizmodo]

Hard Disk Makers Seek Profits, Price
Stability

Hard Disk Makers Seek Profits, Price
Stability 01/23/2004 10:59 PM
Following earnings reports from Seagate, Maxtor and Western Digital, analysts said the channel picture is uncertain. Will the prices for hard disks rise or fall? That's the question now hanging over the storage market.

Design Contest: Win a JetAudio iAudio M3
20GB Hard Disk Player

Design Contest: Win a JetAudio iAudio M3
20GB Hard Disk Player 07/27/2004 04:09 PM

Some of the graphic design geeks over at Kirupa Forum decided to have a 'Logo Design Battle,' a sort of visual arts freestyle competition, and they chose Gizmodo to riff off of. And as much as we love our current design (not that we aren't always tweaking), we thought it was pretty cool they liked Gizmodo enough to use us as a springboard, so we thought maybe we'd up the ante a bit and offer a new JetAudio iAudio M3 20GB hard disk MP3 player to the winner of the contest (after we review the damn thing, that is). So if you're a designer and you want to head over to their forums and join the battle, we'd love to see what neat graphics you come up with.

Read - design battle anyone? [KirupaForum]
Read - iAudio M3 Product Page [JetAudio]

Contest details/limitations/caveats inside.

LED light-sabers in candy colours

LED light-sabers in candy colours 09/22/2004 06:16 AM
Cory Doctorow: These AA-powered light-fixtures are lit with candy-coloured LEDs and bear a striking resemblance to light-sabers. Link (Thanks, Hary!)

"The yellow light is flashing"

"The yellow light is flashing" 01/16/2004 11:26 AM
Matt Drudge says Wesley Clark's statements to Congress in September 2002 made the case for war in Iraq, but the transcript proves otherwise.

News: Diskology shrinks Disk Jockey hard
disk duplicator

News: Diskology shrinks Disk Jockey hard
disk duplicator 03/30/2005 05:41 PM
Diskology Inc. on Wednesday introduced a smaller version of its Disk Jockey, a hardware appliance that duplicates, backs up and diagnoses hard disk drives. It retails for US$329.

This kid rocks! (Disclaimer: Blatant
Clark campaign endorsement --
hi-bandwidth Quicktime)

This kid rocks! (Disclaimer: Blatant
Clark campaign endorsement --
hi-bandwidth Quicktime) 01/27/2004 01:47 PM
Adorable, well-spoken 10-yr-old .. oh this kid is just too cute .. What would Wesley Clark do? .. bitch

a471.g.akamai.net/7/471/9997/v0001/clark.download.akamai.com/9 997/blog/1_23_04Max1.mov
track this site | 5 links

Tab through Quicktime Player windows

Tab through Quicktime Player windows 11/17/2003 11:39 AM
Not an earth-shaking hint by any means, but here goes. I was editing some audio files from my band's practice in Quicktime Player and accidentally hit Tab. It switched through the windows like if you pressed Command-`. Shift-...

Re: Local Denial Of Service Attack
Against Apple MacOS X, MacOS X Server,
and Darwin.

Re: Local Denial Of Service Attack
Against Apple MacOS X, MacOS X Server,
and Darwin. 12/31/2003 02:32 PM
William A. Carrel (Dec 30 2003)

DivX Player Lite 1.0.2 (with DivX and
XviD Codec)

DivX Player Lite 1.0.2 (with DivX and
XviD Codec) 07/29/2004 10:24 AM

Generate AppleScript Path for QuickTime
Player

Generate AppleScript Path for QuickTime
Player 04/14/2004 10:26 PM
Utility movie for generating 'tell' skeleton paths when scripting QuickTime Player

Feeds that download to disk

Feeds that download to disk 07/06/2004 09:41 PM

I’m not sure what to do about this. It’s a little thing that bugs me.

Say you’re reading a weblog in your browser, and you want to subscribe to its feed. So you click on the XML button, or the Syndicate this Site link, or whatever it is.

You’re expecting the standard page of gibberish, so you can get the URL of the feed and subscribe to it.

But no! The feed downloads to disk instead, and the URL in the browser’s address bar remains the URL of the page you’re reading.

So how do you subscribe? You don’t have the URL. Well, depending on the feedreader you’re using, you may be able to drag-and-drop, but that’s probably a pain since your browser is actually in front.

Depending on your feedreader, you might be able to rely on auto-discovery and subscribe using the URL of the page you’re reading. But that may or may not work.



What’s happening is that the server is doing the right thing: it’s telling your browser that the MIME type of the file is that of a syndication file. (application/rdf+xml, for instance.) Your browser doesn’t know how to display it, so it downloads it to disk.

You could, in theory, tell your feedreader to handle that particular MIME type—but that won’t solve the problem, because the feedreader would get a file, but what it wants is the URL of the feed, not the contents of the feed. (You subscribe to a URL, not to the one-time contents of a feed.)



All I’m saying is that I don’t know what would be best here. It’s broken in so many ways. (Expecting a page of gibberish is itself a totally broken idea, but it does allow me to get the URL of the feed.)

One possibility—on Macs only—is that Safari’s incorporation of RSS features will make this work. You’d click on the feed, and it would appear either in Safari or in another feedreader, depending on how you have things configured. That outcome would be totally cool be me, except that it doesn’t solve the problem for users of other browsers and other operating systems.

Web E-Mail: The New Hard Disk

Web E-Mail: The New Hard Disk 06/24/2004 05:04 AM
Okay, let me get this straight... My GMail account is good for 1GB. I could probably use some of my next invites to get myself a few more accounts, let's say 4. It seems reasonable. That's 5GB of e-mail storage. My Yahoo Mail Plus account has 2GB of storage (employee perk). I could add a few more "normal" Y! Mail accounts at 100MB each. 10 would get me another gig, bringing my Yahoo total to 3GB and my grand total...

Top Tip: 2MB or 8MB hard disk cache?

Top Tip: 2MB or 8MB hard disk cache? 01/22/2004 02:20 PM
Tonight I`m buying a new WD hard drive expansion for my home PC and am wondering what`s the diff between 2mb cache and 8mb cache(beside 6mb`s)? Does this extra cache allow for more what ?????? The tech specs show the same between the two drives,read/write speeds etc. . PLEASE. You tell me. THANKS FOR THE HELP... Dan.

Top Tip: Can't format hard disk!

Top Tip: Can't format hard disk! 01/26/2004 03:03 PM
I have this hard drive that cannot be reformatted. Whenever reformatting is taking place the hard disk reader head stops reading after certain sectors. When the "dir" command is used to view the disk, the files are shown but not the total about of bytes used up or free. The cursor seems to stop before this infomation is shown. Could it be that the FAT table has been damaged.

Hard disk goes kaboom

Hard disk goes kaboom 03/11/2003 09:44 AM
My hard disk fried last night. I'm using one of my "spares" while I download RedHat 8.0. If you're waiting for something from me... it will probably take the rest of the day before I'm back online and able to read and answer your e-mail. <sigh>...

Berklee Shares: free music lessons, mp3,
quicktime and pdf files download

Berklee Shares: free music lessons, mp3,
quicktime and pdf files download 11/11/2003 05:55 AM
Berklee Shares: free music lessons

berkleeshares.com
track this site | 7 links

Top Tip: Sweep my hard disk clean?

Top Tip: Sweep my hard disk clean? 04/16/2004 02:18 PM
I was wondering if anyone could recommend a program to wipe my HDD clean--OS and all. Honestly, I don't even know if such programs exist, but I was just curious.

How to make more room on your hard disk

How to make more room on your hard disk 11/16/2003 11:49 PM
ZDNet Nov 16 2003 10:46PM ET

Build A Stereo From an Old Hard Disk

Build A Stereo From an Old Hard Disk 05/09/2004 10:16 AM

Internet Hard Disk with GmailFS

Internet Hard Disk with GmailFS 08/28/2004 08:52 PM
That's right, the pieces for the previously mentioned webmail basead Internet hard disk are coming together. The release of GmailFS provides a relatively seamless filesystem on top of your Gmail account. However, given that Google is being evil with Gmail now, there's no telling how long this will last. See Also: Ask Jeeves Upgrades Internet Hard Disk...

AOL Goes Light with 'Strauss' Client

AOL Goes Light with 'Strauss' Client 05/20/2004 02:41 PM

JOE STRUMMER, PUNK PROPHET :: RELEVANT magazine :: GOD.LIFE.PROGRESSIVE CULTURE.