My quasi-annual venting of spleen on core changes in the latest release of Drupal.

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This evening I was trying to make a custom RSS feed using Views, that would replace the node body (in <description>) with a CCK field. For other types of output, this involves making a preprocessor for the Views row, or using hook_nodeapi to modify the node content, but RSS feeds don't seem to allow any of that flexibility.
Hook_nodeapi has an 'rss item' op, but I could only get it to add elements, not replace existing ones. The 'alter' op was triggered, but changes I made to the content with it didn't follow through. The only one that seemed to work was 'view', which is klugy, and incomplete, because fields added through CCK's display/rss settings are put on afterward.
Anyway, this is the best I could figure out -- if anyone knows a better way, I'd love to hear it.

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Newscast for May 6th 2010

Fully formatted shownotes can always be found at http://javaposse.com Please join us for the Bay Area JUG Roundup - Wednesday May 12th, 6pm at Oracle HQ in Redwood City, CA. http://bayareajugroundup.eventbrite.com/

• More on Apple and Flash
  • http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/
  • http://jessewarden.com/2010/04/steve-jobs-on-flash-correcting-the-lies.html
  • http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/04/29/live-blogging-the-journals-interview-with-adobe-ceo/
  • http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/news/comments/apple-now-largest-cell-phone-maker-in-u.s/
  • http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/news/comments/apple-to-shut-down-lala-on-may-31/
  • http://www.conceivablytech.com/831/products/google-rolls-out-flashified-turbo-charged-version-of-chrome/
  • http://don.blogs.smugmug.com/2010/04/14/apples-new-policy-is-good-for-you-me-and-the-web/
  • http://daringfireball.net/2010/04/why_apple_changed_section_331

• Google Android roundup
  • http://www.zdnet.com/blog/google/android-22-froyo-features/2010
  • http://www.androidguys.com/2010/05/05/adobe-air-flash-running-flawlessly-prototype-android-tablet-video/
  • http://blogs.adobe.com/air/2010/04/adobe_air_applications_for_and.html 
  • http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-20003922-94.html
  • http://blogs.computerworld.com/16000/android_and_linux_are_growing_back_together
  • http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703866704575224232417931818.html
  • http://lifehacker.com/5529598/cyanogenmod-507-brings-android-21-to-g1-and-mytouch-phones
  • http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2010/apr10/04-27MSHTCPR.mspx
  • http://lifehacker.com/5525578/android-phones-surpass-iphone-in-web-traffic
  • http://googlenexusoneboard.blogspot.com/2010/04/update-on-nexus-one-partnerships.html
  • http://java.dzone.com/dose/dzone-daily-dose-426
  • http://lifehacker.com/5529666/mintcom-android-app-puts-all-your-finances-on-your-phone 

Quick News

• HP is buying Palm.
  • http://money.cnn.com/2010/04/28/technology/hp_palm/index.htm?hpt=T2

• Exception multi-catch and final exceptions in project coin.
  • http://blogs.sun.com/darcy/entry/project_coin_multi_catch_rethrow

• The eclipselink team is organizing a development summit in the Oracle Offices in Ottawa, Canada. 
  • http://wiki.eclipse.org/EclipseLink/Development/Summit

• The 2010 JVM language summit has been announced.
  • http://www.regonline.com/Checkin.asp?EventId=859228

• The Apache Lucene project has spawned three new open source projects.
  • http://lucene.apache.org/mahout/
  • http://lucene.apache.org/nutch/
  • http://lucene.apache.org/tika/

• Ubuntu Lucid Lynx (10.04) released.
  • http://www.ubuntu.com/

Groovy, Baby!

• The GR8 Conference
  • http://eu.gr8conf.org/

ScalaWags

• All of the talks and sessions recorded at the ScalaDays event are now available on the web.
  • http://days2010.scala-lang.org/node/136

• Looking for some Scala lovin' near you? Scala-tribes, a new site for tracking Scala user groups around the world might be for you.
  • http://www.scala-tribes.org/p/tribes.html

• And several Java and Scala projects have made it into the Google summer of code.
  • http://www.scala-lang.org/node/6178
  • http://socghop.appspot.com/gsoc/program/list_projects/google/gsoc2010

Listener Feedback

• JVM language summit call for Speakers
  • http://registration.jvmlangsummit.com/

Thanks

• Libsyn.com - http://www.libsyn.com - for hosting and bandwidth
• Feedburner.com - http://www.feedburner.com - for feed redirect
• Kirsty Doherty, Amy Ehmann for Java Posse artwork
• Theme Music:
  • Opening - "Java" the parody song Copyright 1997 Broken Records and Marjorie Music Publ. (BMI),
    • written and performed by Loose Bruce Kerr of the Dr. Demento Show and Sun Microsystems attorney.
    • Based on the WWI popular song, "Ja-da." Ukelele style on the recording taught to Bruce by his dad.
    • Re-produced with kind permission from "Loose" Bruce Kerr - http://loosebrucekerr.libsyn.com http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAX0gJt-aZg
  • Closing - Juan Carlos Jimenez - In the House (Intro No. 1)
    

• To contact us:
  • Visit our homepage - http://javaposse.com
  • Post on our Google Group - http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse
  • Pose a question on our Google Moderator group - http://tinyurl.com/q4javaposse
  • Call us with questions and feedback - (408) 465-4626
  • Or send us email - javaposse@gmail.com

The Java Posse consists of Tor Norbye, Carl Quinn, Joe Nuxoll and Dick Wall

As many of you may have heard, Ning recently eliminated its free networks and laid off 40% of its staff. Currently, Ning supports exporting users; for those of you interested in migrating your community members from Ning into Drupal, you have two well developed options at your disposal:

• User Import: http://drupal.org/project/user_import
• Feeds: http://drupal.org/project/feeds

If Ning ever opened up their APIs to allow content export, then importing the content would be equally straightforward. Both the Feeds module and the Node Import module would get the job done.

Another option for data import is a combination of the Table Wizard and the Migrate module.

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We’d like to welcome ebizQ.net to the TechTarget family of websites! ebizQ is a portal for blogs, webinars, podcasts, news, features, white papers, and virtual conferences focused on business enablement. Tap into the latest SOA, BPM, decision management and cloud computing advice from 100+ bloggers, contributors and analysts.

There seems to be growing interest in CiviCRM in Seattle. People want to know more about what it is, how it works and how they can harness the power for their clients or their own organizations.

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I’d like to start by saying that using JSF by itself can sometimes feel trying to pull your own teeth out with a pair of tweezers, but there’s hope. JSF was designed to be a platform of extensions – a foundation for building web-frameworks, and that it’s done very well. JSF 2.0 addresses most of the concerns about usability (so there’s less tooth pulling,) and provides even more extensibility. That’s where Seam Faces comes in, that’s where PrettyFaces comes in.

I had the opportunity to interview Microsoft's Vice President Jeff Teper today. He has been managing the development effort for SharePoint from when it was just a gleam in Bill's eye. And next week SharePoint 2010 is officially released. He graciously took the time for an interview with me today, and gave a really interesting picture of SharePoint, as well as some other subjects. The conclusion I took away from this interview? That through Office & SharePoint, Microsoft has a very good shot at owning the cloud.

Our development of Brightcove module is steadily progressing and I thought it would be useful to explain a bit about our development processes. For version control we use Git on all of our internal projects, so for Brightcove we decided to utilize this same tool with just a small change - using github.com instead our own private repositories.

Why Git?

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The new Appro 1U Tetra GPU server provides the highest compute power to density ratio solution delivering scalability, reliability and best price/performance to support technical computational applications.

It’s taken a while to build, but it’s finally ready – a global translation glossary for each client.

Many words can be translated in different ways and it’s important that everything we translate come out the same.

The solution is a glossary.

A glossary helps produce consistent translations, as it shows how phrases were translated before.

Website owners and developers can create entries for important phrases. These entries can include the translation and serve as guidelines for the translators, or remain untranslated, so that translators can suggest the right translation.

As translators work, they too can add glossary entries. These entries will help translate the rest of the project consistently and also serve as reference for other translators who work on the project.

Now it's ready for website translation projects

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A couple of weeks ago, after attending Abbie's Talent Show, the kids and I packed up and headed to Oregon for a weekend. This weekend marked a special weekend for my parents. When we arrived, my Mom had a week left of work before she retired from the Bureau of Land Management. You might've read about my Mom in the past. And you might know that my Dad retired last year.

My Mom has always enjoyed her career and I like to think I get a lot of enthusiasm for my own career from her. She taught me to love what you do for a living. When we lived at The Cabin, she had the drive and ambition to go back to school to get her degree in Forestry. Upon graduation, she got a job with the BLM and we moved to Oregon. My parents have lived there since 1990.

The weekend we spent in Oregon was somewhat magical. My parent's house sold in March after being on the market for only two weeks. They had a week left before they packed up and moved back to The Cabin. This meant the outside was pristine (because they fixed it up for the new buyers) and the inside was mostly packed. It was a sunny 3 days that weekend (which is rare in Oregon) and we had a blast at the Oregon Garden Brewfest, enjoyed a sunny BBQ with old friends and shared many memories derived from their 20 years in Oregon.

It was a somewhat bittersweet experience, meeting with all their friends and talking about their move to Montana. Many expressed sadness that they were leaving, but that didn't stop my parents from grinning ear-to-ear. You could see the excitement of moving back home sparkle in their eyes.

They have a huge challenge ahead of them and it seems they couldn't be happier. They'll be working on The New Cabin many long days and expect it to take a year or two.

I think my Mom said it best in an email she sent my sister and I a few days ago:

It's 9:30 and we are at Quinn's Hot Springs. Your father is snoring, he didn't last long when his head hit the pillow. We got here about 3, had a glass of wine and then soaked in the pools for an hour. Had a good dinner (I had buffalo short ribs -- mmm delicious) . They have a network, so I'm using my ipod for email.

I was crying when I drove across the state line because it felt so good to be home!

We are having a very nice drive home!! We love you!!!

Congratulations on Retiring Mom! You deserve it more than anyone else I know.

Enhanced Version » My Mothers Day Card

I frequently use a 3rd party designer to help with the tedious task of going from PSD to final theme. If you haven't realized it yet, but alot of designers have problems setting up a local MAMP install w/ drupal in which to fuck with css. To deal with this without giving the designer any command-line access, my shop uses what we call CZI on all drupal installs. This stands for CSS Injector, Zen theme, IMCE, and allows a designer to upload images and apply css rules to a development site they have been given permissions for on the theme, Zen, that provides all the classes and ids anyone would need.

After my shop, the designer, and the client are satisfied, CSS Injector and it's external files become a weight and need to be removed. Below I detail the process of using Zenophile (http://drupal.org/project/zenophile) to create a zen subtheme in which to wrap up all your CSS Injector files:

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DrupalCamp Colorado has just been announced through the launch of one of the sharpest camp websites we've seen. The event will take place on June 26-27, 2010 in Denver, CO - home to some stellar Drupal companies and contributors. We're excited to sponsor the event and bring an e-commerce focus to it for a second year in a row.

DrupalCamp Colorado is a two day learning event with sessions proposed by community members in one of four tracks: Business, Development, Community, and Design. Accepted sessions will appeal to Drupal users of all skill levels, so newbies and advanced developers alike should benefit from the topics covered. Drupal camps are also great opportunities to rub shoulders with the people writing the modules you're using on a day to day basis.

Our vision is for Drupal to be the #1 open source e-commerce platform in the world, so we'll spend our time at the camp demoing and discussing Drupal Commerce and how people can begin contributing and developing for it even now.

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I recently led a live DrupalDojo webinar on the Aegir hosting system.

The session was designed in lieu of potentially presenting a future series of Aegir-related dojo sessions that progress in terms of topic complexity (i.e beginner through to expert).

For this reason, the session was largely an introduction to the system and how to use it, with some 'under the hood' peeks where possible for those users who are comfortable with the terminology and process already.

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When Webchick announced that Drupal was moving to Git at Drupalcon 2010, our office erupted in pleasure at the news. Lots of great Drupalists are already using Git and there's even an unofficial Github branch of Drupal for your branching and stashing pleasure Github mirror.

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Monday, May 10 at 7:00 pm at Stetson's in Washington, DC

The next Washington, DC Drupal meetup - happening this Monday, May 10 - will focus on open data, with the recent launch of Data.WorldBank.org on Drupal. Data.WorldBank.org is part of a huge open data initiative that the World Bank is undertaking to open up its massive database of worldwide human development indicators and make this data accessible online.

At the meetup, we'll hear from the team behind the project at the World Bank and from some of the developers who worked on it:

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Interest in Drupal the Card Game is massive, why we've offered to mail decks to those who didn't attend DrupalCon SF.

The McGill University Health Centre (MUHC), is one of the most comprehensive university health centres in North America. It includes a network of five major hospitals and is both a patient and research-oriented organization.

SpringSource Continues Expansion of Application Infrastructure Suite with Proven Technology Delivering Fast and Reliable Data Access for Enterprise and Cloud Solutions