Wow… Mark Cuban is funding Grokster’s legal battle against MGM:

“It wont be a good day when high school entrepreneurs have to get a fairness opinion from a technology oriented law firm to confirm that big music or movie studios wont sue you because they can come up with an angle that makes a judge believe the technology might impact the music business. It will be a sad day when American corporations start to hold their US digital innovations and inventions overseas to protect them from the RIAA, moving important jobs overseas with them.

Thats what is ahead of us if Grokster loses. Thats what happens if the RIAA is able to convince the Supreme Court of the USA that rather than the truth, which is , Software doesnt steal content, people steal content, they convince them that if it can impact the music business, it should be outlawed because somehow it will. It doesnt matter that the RIAA has been wrong about innovations and the perceived threat to their industry, EVERY SINGLE TIME. It just matters that they can spend more then everyone else on lawyers. Thats not the way it should be. So , the real reason of this blog. To let everyone know that the EFF and others came to me and asked if I would finance the legal effort against MGM. I said yes. I would provide them the money they need. So now the truth has been told. This isnt the big content companies against the technology companies. This is the big content companies, against me. Mark Cuban and my little content company. Its about our ability to use future innovations to compete vs their ability to use the courts to shut down our ability to compete. its that simple.”

People who are wayyyy geekier than I

“Sajax is a tool to make programming websites using the Ajax framework — also known as XMLHTTPRequest or remote scripting — as easy as possible. Sajax makes it easy to call PHP functions from your webpages via JavaScript without performing a browser refresh. The toolkit does 99% of the work for you so you have no excuse to not use it.

“

Guide to Using XMLHttpRequest (with Baby Steps)

There’s been loads of buzz lately surrounding a set of web technologies which Jesse James Garrett of Adaptive Path recently named “Ajax.” Simply put, Ajax refers to the use of Asynchronous Javascript and XML in web applications to help speed and improve user experience by reducing page loads.

I got a chance to mess around with some of these techniques recently on my final project for my current employer. Even something as simple as a User Account Request form benefitted greatly from the implementation of this technology. When a user requests an account, if the username they’ve selected is already taken, they are notified as soon as their cursor moves out of the Username field. No submit required.

Some high-profile implementations of Ajax include power houses like Google’s Gmail, Google Suggest, and Flickr.

This new movement towards Ajax technologies and the excitement surrounding the implementations mentioned above have sparked a bit of a rennaissance in the web development field, at least in terms of the excitement some of us are feeling towards the future of web application development. Hello, Web 2.0!

Some Ajax Links:
Jason Fried warns developers to not forget the users in all the excitement over the technology
Drew McLellan walks us through an Ajax script (I should note that this is where I drew inspiration for my User Account Request page)
Apple’s Developer Connection on Dynamic HTML and XML
And, why not Google Search results for XMLHttpRequest
And if this all sounds somehow familiar, let’s call it DHTML ’05

I’m wondering if we’re maybe seeing the beginning of the end for ColdFusion, at least as Macromedia product? My inbox has seen a few messages about the new 7.0 release of CF, most of which contain all sorts of assertions from Ben Forta (“ColdFusion Product Evangalist”) that this is the most important release in a long long time. Now go to the macromedia.com website. There isn’t a single stinking reference to this big important release anywhere, unless you count the link to ColdFusion 7.0 buried in the products listing box.

Makes me wonder if MM is truly committed to the product. It looks like the big direction from the mothership is communication tools (Breeze) and CMS-style products (Contribute, Web Publishing System). I remember ranting and railing about Contribute when it first came out. I took the position that Macromedia was entering into direct competition with the developers who were building various CMS tools/solutions and I was PISSED. Probably comically so! Finally, I look at the big push on developing dynamic Flash applications using ActionScripting and Flex. There seems to be a lotta Flash tutorials on the site talking about connecting to data & business layers using PHP rather than CF…

Finally, I also take a bit umbrage at the assertions that CF 7.0 is the most important release in the past 10 years. Yes, there’s some nice new reporting tools and some keen “native” tie-in’s to Flash and such, but does anyone remember the huge leap forward that MX provided in terms of Components and XML tools?

R.I.P, ColdFusion, and thanks for a fun ride. I’m almost out…

Good post (and ensuing discussion) on Mezzoblue about how Canadian sites handle Language considerations. Many, including of course all Federal Government sites and some commercial sites like Future Shop, prefer to party like it’s 1999 and opt for a Splash page, while others, like HBC choose to arbitrarily present one language by default (usually English), allowing the user to switch. Air Canada has a slightly different approach (Note the ghetto-style browser warning that doesn’t recognize Firefox as being as capable as Netscape 7) and still others, like bell.ca will present a splash, but it’s more a main level nav in both languages… a touch more useful than just two buttons.

Some great discussion here, especially from developers in countries with more than two (and in the case of Africa, up to 11) official languages. Now that’s a challenge.

Hunter S. Thompson was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound yesterday. Thompson’s brand of Gonzo Journalism won him much respect and adoration in his 67 years. Goodnight, good doctor…

Although I just had a fantastic Valentines Day with my new belle, I still can’t help but laugh at these anti-valentines posters.

I mean it, he really is a dick. Check out these comic book covers and see if you disagree. For Example, or perhaps you would prefer…