It might be worth keeping an eye on Bug Labs for  some interesting modular HTTP linked hardware. Perhaps a use for good accessibility gadgets?

It's hard to pin it down but this post gives the most clues. At least it mentions RESTful interfaces not SOAP so there's a good chance of entry level hacking by users.

 

http://labs.mozilla.com/2007/08/better-animations-in-firefox-3/

The GNOME Free Software desktop is used in many Linux distro's including Ubuntu and recently attention has turned to mobile devices such the Nokia N800. 

Miguel de Icaza founded the "GNOME Desktop project" as a "free and complete set of user friendly applications and desktop tools [...] based entirely on free software."

 

 

A month of celebrations have been arranged with a Software Freedom Day and the release of GNOME 2.20 as the final event.

GNOME holds particular interest for me due to its commitement to usability and  accessiblity. The Linux a11y API, AT/SPI, originated in GNOME and the ATK library along with GAIL's provision for stock widgets simplify the creation of accessible applications. especially when using GTK GUI Framework. AT/SPI has subsequently influenced newer APIs on other platforms including the IAccessible2 (Win32) and now QDBus Bridge (QT and thus KDE), leading to a level of consistency in how AT access programs.

Other GNOME a11y projects include a magnifyer, the Orca screen reader, GOK on screen keyboard, LSR (now parked), Accerciser inspection tool and the python binding for AT/API pyatspi.

Again this year the GNOME Boston Summit includes an Accessibility Summit as part of the procedings.

See the Press Release for detials including history and comments from industry leaders.

Happy Birthday GNOME.

Last week's news was  Citrix brought XenSource and now ClamAV is brought by SourceFire. And so it appears Open Source enters a new era of corporate wheeling and dealing by companies like Citrix with proprietary portfolios and large Open Source companaies. It remains to be seen how this will affect the Open Sourceness of these products and how this trend affects the freedoms we enjoy with Open Source. It certainly demonstrates an acceptance of Open Source in the corporate and finacial worlds.

A rummage around my loft prompted me to bring down my old trusty IMB PC for some photos.

Unfortunately it doesn't boot reliably, only starting on rare occasions that the power is switched on. I suspect a dodgy power supply. I only got it going when stripped down to the minimum of just the display card but I seem to remember that Lotus 123 was on the disk and you can just make out its top menu bar burnt into the monitor.

 

 This is a IBM PC 5150 with 5 ISA expansion slots and the all important Cassette port is fitted.

It is a UK model made in Greenock, Scotland The date is given as 1983 and serial number SN 55 03606.
The mothernoard is the original model with a massive 256KB memory (not 64K) fitted.but the 8087 floating point co-processor is abscent.

 

 

A Everex ev138 card with another 256KB memory card is fitted dated 1985.

Hard disk is a classic 20MB seagate ST 225  with and a western digital card (I think, WDCXTGEN F320 X3)

A Tandon 5 1/4 floppy (1983 so original) and unnamed card.

 

  

The video card is a Hercules (80 * 25 monochrome ) driving a Taiwan made 5151 (002) green phoshper mionitor serial number 1748525. (I believe that the incredibly long persistance was to avoid flicker from the original 6800 microprocessor family display driver).

A serial card is also fitted (8088 is the only number).

 

 

The keyboard is the solid 83 Key UK 515X-(55-14887) also 1983

The power supply is a Seasonic SS-180A which I guess is a replacement.

Real cork feet are provided.

This was probably upgraded from the original spec.for business use.

Manuals are missing.

 

 

 

 

 

More photos 

I also found an old magnetic core memory.

A useful post from Roger Yohansson about writing input device independent web pages  with a focus on javascript. As Roger says:

There are several groups of people who do not use a mouse or pointing device to interact with Web pages. A few examples:

• Mobility impaired people who cannot use a mouse at all
• People with motor impairments who can use a mouse but lack fine motor control
• Screen reader users who do not use a mouse, or even a monitor
• People using mobile phones
• Laptop users, since most laptops have really bad trackpads or other means of positioning the cursor (ever tried using a hierarchical dropdown menu with a trackpad while riding on a train?)
• Speed typers who have learned to use keyboard navigation efficiently and are slowed down when they have to switch to their mouse (if they have one)

[...]

The most common problems I see are drag-and-drop functionality and onclick event handlers added to arbitrary elements. For drag-and-drop, you need to give users an alternative way of interacting.[...] For onclick event handlers, the solution is simple. Always use an a element with a value assigned to its href attribute.

See also WCAG 1.0 Guideline 9. Design for device-independence and Accessible JavaScript: Beyond the Mouse by James Edwards.

 

CafeScribe.com will send every e-textbook purchaser a scratch and sniff sticker with a musty "old book" smell as reported by the NZHearald.

"By placing these stickers on their computers they can give their e-books the same musty book smell they know and love from used textbooks -- without any of the residual DNA you often find stuck to the pages of used textbooks,"

If you've seen Notting Hill you might appreciate the lack of DNA (thinking of the scene where a punter tries to steal a book).

A good talk

http://www.oreillygmt.typepad.com/oreillygmt/nik_butler.html

This is an impressive demonstration of technology that allows resizing of images by selective 'distortion' as an alternative to design-time choice of crop or scale.

It's disconcerting to watch parts of an image dissapear as it shrinks and purists may object but it does make sense in this 'good-enough' web 2.0 age (rather like lossy compression of audio has an application).

I just watched Krzysztof Cwalina's excellent 3 hr long presentation on API design and guess i'll add the book he co-authored, 'Framework Design Guidelines: Conventions, Idioms, and Patterns for Reusable .NET Libraries ', to my pile of books to read. Thanks to a tip from the Gnome blogger Philip who pointed out this excellent resource that all developers should watch.

In 3 hours Krzysztof distills the wisdom gained designing .NET framework APIs. Some you'll know already, and some is obvious common sense you probably hadn't actually thought of 'till now, but nearly all is valuable architectural design goodness. Even if you don't agree with all the prescriptions there's plenty of 'food for thought' to guide you in making sure your API's are highly usable.

You can view it online or else download to watch on a Windows box (needs IE for slides and video is an .ASF).

There are excerpts of the book on MSDN or see Krzysztof's blog for updates and more.  Hey I just spotted that they use Pythonic Duck typing too.

 (oh OK, a 'PowerPoint' if you must use that for the generic)

This amusing presentation by Peter Norvig is Abe's famous 270-odd words of the Gettysburg_Address distilled so we can understand it whilst nodding in a meeting.

Bonehill Rocks benifits from being situated off the beaten track between the 2 tourist traps of Haytor and Hound tor. The car park is small and has no ice cream van so there's not the same constant stream of people goining up the tor from the car park (reminds me of Aborigenes calling the the tourists on Uluru 'ants').

Kids of all ages love it for the many small rocks, caves and tunnels, which are relatively safe. It's a chance to scramble and imagine, play games or just sit and look.

 

Views across the valley to Widicombe-in-the-moor are wonderful and the resident Dartmoor Ponies and cows are busy shaping the environment by grazing.

Climbing up nearby hill offers larger rocks with views back to bonehill and haytor.

 

In addition to the rocks there is a small picturesque stream to trace and jump over as it meanders around and under rocks and trees.

Word is obviously spreading as it was fairly busy yesterday with climbers, pic-nic-ers and letterboxers (hunting plastic lunch boxes with a notepad and rubber stamp in order to exchange stamp prints).

The Zafira's flexible 7 seat arrangement proved itself useful again with 4 children easily seated.