T Bryce Yehl: Mobile Offline Blogger

Moving

Mon, 04 Nov 2002 20:15:07 GMT

I'm finally taking the plunge and switching to "MT". I'm not going to bother importing this weblog, at least not initially. Too much work for too little benefit. My archives can stay here indefinitely.

My new home page and weblog. Feeds are available in RSS 0.91, RSS 1.0, and RSS 2.0 flavors. I'm not going to set up RSS redirects. I don't like Userland's solution because any aggregator that doesn't understand the format will barf on it. HTTP 301 redirects are better supported, but I don't feel like reconfiguring Apache to allow .htaccess files.

For the couple of people that subscribe to my category feeds, I'll get around to re-creating those eventually. Stay subscribed to the current feeds and wait for an update.

Polling all Pocket Blog users...

Sun, 22 Sep 2002 05:55:18 GMT

I've added two polls to the "pb-support" group: What weblog software are you using with Pocket Blog? and How do you connect your Pocket PC to the Internet?

Pocket Blog Support

Sat, 21 Sep 2002 05:04:03 GMT

I've created a Yahoo Group for Pocket Blog users: pb-support. Please use this forum for all Pocket Blog support requests, enhancement ideas, praise, flames, etc.

Porting to .NET Compact Framework Beta 2

Fri, 20 Sep 2002 21:06:06 GMT

The porting of "Pocket Blog" to the .NET CF is back underway. The "bugs" in my XML-RPC routines and test wrapper have magically disappeared under Beta 2, now they just need to be cleaned up so that I can move on to the next piece.

I had been debating VB vs C#, but I've decided to stick with what I know for now. The advantage to C# is that it should give me a head start in porting to the Zaurus once "Mono" is ready, but realistically that's probably a year away. No point in wasting effort on that now.

When "PB" is finished, or stalled again, I've got another project in mind to kick off my C# learning experience. I'll write about that in another post...

Tue, 17 Sep 2002 17:53:04 GMT

"Pocket Blog" was added to DMOZ today. I wonder how long it'll take for Google to update...

Sat, 07 Sep 2002 19:52:52 GMT

Blogwalking

l.m.orchard has coined a new term for mobile weblogging, Blogwalking. He's thinking about the impact of PDAs on weblogs, how environmental metadata might be incorporated, and how weblog and aggregation systems could take advantage of opportunistic networking.

He starts off with the idea of running "MT" on a Zaurus. I had a similar idea earlier this year, documented in Blogging Anywhere. I never tried to implement that idea but have been reconsidering it as I contemplate leaving "RU" for Movable Type. The downside to this solution is that using a PDA as the primary repository of weblog data doesn't seem like a bright idea. PDAs have limited storage, are easily lost, and are lousy as servers because they are usually powered off. Most of all, PDA web browsers are extremely poor writing environments.

Out of the box, however, the Zaurus is one of the most compelling platforms for blogwalking. The built-in thumb keyboard is a major advantage for writers and gives the Zaurus a size advantage when compared to other PDAs with add-on keyboards. Battery life is good when battery-draining peripherals aren't installed (ie: WiFi cards). The Zaurus' use of the Linux kernel allows it to use software and tools that were originally designed for servers and desktops.

What the Zaurus needs are some tools to improve the blogwalking experience. In the context of Movable Type, a tool for bi-directional synchronization of entries would be an excellent start. From there it would be nice to have a tool like "Pocket Blog" that offers a richer environment for writing than the web browser.

As a side note, via Mark Pasc I have learned that someone documented the local use of Movable Type back in February.

Wed, 04 Sep 2002 18:49:21 GMT

"PB" Direction

The port of "Pocket Blog" to the .NET Compact Framework is mostly on hold at this point. I find myself working around too many of the CF's bugs and limitations, which is very frustrating. I don't want the CF version of PB to degrade into an ugly mess of difficult-to-maintain work-arounds... I already have that with the eVB version.

When a new Beta is released I will re-examine the problems I am having and decide if it is worth continuing. If not, I'll wait for the full release.

In the mean time I am thinking about how to better integrate "PB" with various weblog software and APIs. The "Blogger API" and "metaWeblog API" are established standards. Pyra has been extending "Blogger", "MT" has several extensions and does not implement the full "metaWeblog API". On the "RU" front, I wonder how PB could work with "liveTopics".

Rather than shoe-horn all of this stuff into PB itself, I'm thinking of switching to a plug-ins architecture. Using the object-oriented capabilities that .NET offers, PB would provide base objects that represent a weblog post and the editor interface. Individual plug-ins would inherit and extend these objects to account for metadata required by a particular API. They would also manage communications with the server. Ideally, plug-ins would allow themselves to be extended by other plug-ins: a plug-in for "MT" would only implement functionality specific to MT, the rest would be inherited from the "metaWeblog API" plug-in.

I like this concept because it allows "PB" to grow incrementally: new APIs will not require a new release of PB and could be supported by others (particularly in areas that don't interest me, like the "liveJournal API").

Wed, 04 Sep 2002 17:46:37 GMT

Problems with Blogger?

I've been receiving occassional reports of problems with "Pocket Blog" and "Blogger", and there are always reports of problems on the bloggerDev Yahoo! Group. Often these issues are fleeting, related to Pyra deploying new functionality. Sometimes they are not.

If you're having persistent problems with "PB" and Blogger, it would be very useful to me if you could capture the XML-RPC / HTTP exchange. tcpTrace is a very simple tool for doing this, if you can understand what that page is talking about then you should not have any trouble using it.

Mon, 26 Aug 2002 02:14:08 GMT

.NET Compact Framework Hell

Every time I sit down to work on the VB.NET port of "PB", it seems like I spend the entire day to fighting missing, broken, or improperly documented portions of the .NET Compact Framework.

On the first day, I discovered that forms don't resize with the SIP. Spend entire day fighting PInvoke code to detect the SIP's presense, eventually manage to make my forms resize properly. On the second day I decide to ignore all that is UI and focus on lower-level stuff. XML-RPC seems like a good place to start, and porting XML-RPC.NET seems like a better idea than re-using my lame-ass routines (based on XMLRPCCOM). Stripped XML-RPC.NET down to a client-only subset, found the right command-line incantations to make csc.exe build .NET CF apps, only to realize that Serialization isn't in there. Doh.

On the third day, I start porting my lame-ass XML-RPC stuff. Quickly discover that XQuery / XPath isn't in the .NET CF. This stuff is in the MSXML stuff on CE, but there's no COM Interop either (if there were, I could use PocketXML-RPC). Also missing is XMLHTTP. Finished the Object to XML portion of my routines, learned the proper way to convert types when using Option Strict...

Today I worked on the XML to Object and HTTP routines. Learned that the Stream returned by HttpWebResponse.GetResponseStream is completely broken. Try to pass it to a StreamReader, get an exception. Try to retrieve it's length, get an exception. Finally figured out that I could use HttpWebResponse.ContentLength to read the correct number of bytes from the ResponseStream. Oy.

I've got another weird issue remaining, responses from "Radio" seem to get truncated, probably related to CR/LF funkyness (no problems with "Blogger" and "MT"). Not sure just yet if it's the Stream, the conversion from Byte() to String, or what...

Supposedly a new Beta of the .NET CF will be included in the upcoming "Everett" Beta of Visual Studio .NET, and supposedly Microsoft will mail me a copy. It can't come too soon.

Mon, 12 Aug 2002 10:30:00 GMT

Pocket Blog Beta 1 v0.1.5 Released

See the "pbdl2" page.

Improvements:

Blogger Users: "PB" probably hasn't been working for Blogger sites for some time. Pyra has been silently breaking from the published "Blogger API" spec, and while "PB" will happily ignore data that it doesn't understand, the extensions exposed a bug in my XML-RPC handling. If you've been receiving an "Object Required" error message when updating a Blogger weblog, this update should resolve the problem.

Mon, 12 Aug 2002 10:00:00 GMT

Grrrr...

Pyra has been silently extending the "Blogger API", presumably to support some Blogger Pro features (like titled posts). Why aren't they using the "MetaWeblog API", which supports titles and is designed to be extensible? NIH syndrome?

Unfortunately, the changes exposed a bug in the XML-RPC handling for "PocketBlog". If you're a Blogger user, and you've been getting an "Object Required" error message when updating, "PB" v0.1.5 should provide the fix. Hopefully this will be my last release under eVB...

Sun, 04 Aug 2002 22:36:02 GMT

.NET Compact Framework Resource Site

The .NET CF Resource site has been substantially updated and we now have the discussion group online. If you have a questions about the .NET Compact Framework, information that you would like to share or you just want to see what other people are doing with the .NET Compact Framework, this is the list for you.

[sellsbrothers.com via System.Error.Emit]

IDSS has a DG for .NET CF source samples, and microsoft.public.dotnet.framework.compactframework has been a great source of information for me.

XML support under the CF has been driving me nuts for most of today. My first problem was that XMLNode.AppendChild was throwing an ArgumentException. I spent hours re-arranging code, building tests, and bashing my head against the wall... only to discover that my problem was in the documentation. AppendChild won't take child object that was created with a different XMLDocument instance. Doh! That wasn't an issue under the old COM libraries...

New problem is that XPath isn't available with the CF. The documentation is conflicting. The .NET CF Program Manager posted that it's not supported due to "size/performance requirements." Ironic considering that the COM libraries on CE do support XPath -- the performance sucks, but we are talking about a 200MHz PDA. Unfortunately, the CF doesn't support COM Interop either...

Such is the price of coding on the bleeding edge...

Sun, 04 Aug 2002 14:00:00 GMT

Life has been keeping me on my toes and away from "PB". To the people who have been patiently waiting for the next release, I apologize. For those that have sent e-mail due to troubles with "PB", I am especially sorry. Unfortunately, I do not anticipate being able to provide effective support for "PB" any time soon (especially for problems with installation or initial configuration). My time is constrained and I have only one Pocket PC 2002 device to test and debug with...

I have begun work on porting "PB" to the .NET Compact Framework. I don't want to comit to any sort of timeframe just yet, but I am hopeful...

Tue, 30 Jul 2002 06:02:14 GMT

Pocket Feed "Pre-Alpha" now available

Pocket Feed is an RSS/RDF news aggregator that runs on the Pocket PC 2002 PDA's. Using OPML for it's blogroll, you can now take your news, blog entries, or any other type of syndicated data with you, sync it wirelessly or read it offline. So yes, you can sit in Starbucks with your PDA and read the latest news over 802.11b.

I've been holding off on posting about this until Steve had something ready for download. A "probably-will-crash-your-device" release is now available, so check it out.

Pocket Feed is a natural compliment to "Pocket Blog", hopefully we can come up with a way to make our programs work together.

Mon, 10 Jun 2002 15:59:42 GMT

Audio Blogging

Adam Cury and Dave Winer are exploring the possibilities for audio weblog entries. Dave wrote:

Itopia, in Belgium, has a service I am quite interested in. It's not perfect. I want MP3, not WAV. And I want the recorded conversations to go directly to a website. But it's very close to what I've been looking for.

I say: Focus on creating the service(s) that will enable audio recordings to be posted, preferably in a way that will work through NAT and that can be adopted by non-Userland software. Let the community build the bridges to individual recording services and software. There will not be one service like Itopia that is perfect for all users in all locations, and even if there were, they would probably run out of funding and shut down next week.

I would like to add audio blogging capabilities to "PB", but there has to be a standard API for doing so...

Mon, 13 May 2002 21:16:18 GMT

Scripting News: Simon Fell's Pocket XML-RPC is "an open source XML-RPC client COM component for the Windows family based on James Clark's excellent Expat XML parser and the HTTP transport from PocketSOAP."

This would have saved me a ton of time in creating Pocket Blog...

Mon, 06 May 2002 17:48:09 GMT

My "roommate" found WAPBlogger, a Blogger API service for WAP devices. Gotta love that this service, like AvantBlog, doesn't provide the software itself. You must trust that they won't steal your password.

Wed, 01 May 2002 15:07:08 GMT

It turns out that the Spelling Checker API for Windows CE may not actually exist on Pocket PC devices.

Wed, 01 May 2002 08:33:47 GMT

Beta 1 v0.1.4 Released

It's still Tuesday somewhere...

See the "pbdl2" page.

Improvements:

"Update" button: Forces "PB" to post updates and refresh it's cache immediately.

Error Handling: Some types of errors are handled better, still much room for improvement.

Several minor display bugs fixed: Thanks to Josh Puetz for reporting one of them.

Focus fixes: "PB" tries to set the focus to the proper control whenever it switches screens.

Continuous polling has not been implemented in this release. Error handling needs more improvement before this feature will be ready for use. In the interim, use the "Update" button.

Tue, 30 Apr 2002 01:04:09 GMT

My attention has been elsewhere, "Pocket Blog" v0.1.4 isn't going out the door tonight. Tomorrow, I promise.

Sat, 27 Apr 2002 15:24:42 GMT

"PB" Status Update

Willkommen to readers coming from pocket.at. Ich spreche klein deutsche, and my grammar is scheisse, so bear with me in Amerikanisch.

The v0.1.4 release may be pushed back until Monday.

A kind reader has offered to write a wrapper for the Pocket PC Spell Checker API, so hopefully that feature will be ready for the v.0.1.5 release in a week or two.

The plan at this point is to ship v1.0 very soon and start working towards v2.0 as a port to the .NET Compact Framework. New features like multiple weblogs, multiple servers, and MetaWeblog API support will appear in v2.0. Guess I'll start thinking about localization issues too...

Fri, 26 Apr 2002 01:16:15 GMT

I got a link from Web McDeb. She's a road warrior like I once was, but her Dell Inspiron is broken. "Pocket Blog" + iPaq to the rescue. Her site is cool, she makes Pocket PC themes, check them out.

And on that note, I use the BMW Theme. I searched for a good ///M3-related theme to match my '97 coupe, but none really lived up to BMW standards. And FWIW, my Bimmer was built in Regensburg, where I used to live "smile-shades"

Thu, 25 Apr 2002 16:34:18 GMT

Happy Happy, Joy Joy

I've been accepted for the Smart Device Extensions and .Net Compact Framework beta! 40MB downloaded, 55MB to go...

Yeah baby, yeah!

Tue, 23 Apr 2002 15:52:15 GMT

You've got users.

Being featured on Pocket PC Thoughts has brought some real flow, "Pocket Blog" has been downloaded about 70 times since yesterday and hits are trickling in from other PDA web sites. Folks are asking about support for Pocket PC 2000 and other things that I haven't a clue about.

Cool "smile-shades"

Tue, 23 Apr 2002 14:07:02 GMT

"Pocket Blog" v0.1.4 should go out this weekend. The primary change will be the implementation of continuous weblog polling. Presently "PB" only posts updates and downloads new entries when a connection is initially detected. I will also clean up the Configuration menu and add an "Update Now" button.

I would like to know if anyone has encountered problems with "PB" not detecting an Internet connection. Use the Feedback Button