Today's public service announcement


The American robin (QuickTime)

Courtesy of the Canadian Wildlife Service.

One step closer to the open library system dream

I am extremely pleased that the open ils project has found a way to expose an XML interface for search and circulation functions. This creates unending potential for extensibility and integration with other applications - at least for large sophisticated library systems that are capable of taking advantage of these opportunities.

"So, after our discussion of XML and JSON in the previous post, Mike sat down and developed a REST style XML handler to the system. You pass in the same URL parameters and receive data/objects as XML instead of JSON. Now anyone who wishes to use an XML based client interface will have access to the same data and will retrieve it in the same way, except for the location they request in the URL. Allowing Apache plugins to do all of the conversion work for us (the XML plugin was about 120 lines Perl code) we can transform our system data into just about anything that Apache can serve."

You can review the open ils XML/AJAX/JSON debate here. Maybe you can change the world through blogging.

Wi-fi bandits beware

Many people take a rather cavalier attitude towards hopping onto whatever unprotected wireless network might be at hand. You might want to rethink your perspective based on this news item blogged today by Schneier.

"Near as I can tell, there was no other criminal activity involved. The man who used someone else's wireless wasn't doing anything wrong with it; he was just using the Internet."

Of course, there are many wireless network owners that leave their networks open precisely because they do not mind at all if passers by jump on for a while. I am sure that I am not the first to suggest this, but if you have no problem with casual users on your network, broadcast a clearly inviting SSID such as "all_r_welcome".