Steve Trefethen's Weblog

Google Voice your personal PBX if you can get by the Privacy Policy

Steve Trefethen — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 18:22:46 GMT

Last Thursday, I received an invite to Google Voice (a.k.a. GrandCentral) after signing up for the beta months ago, a detail I’d practically forgotten. Google Voice is:

…a service that gives you one number for all your phones, voicemail that is easy as email, and many enhanced calling features like call blocking and screening, voicemail transcripts, call conferencing, international calls, and more.

In other words it’s sort of like having a personal PBX. The feature set (see below) is rich not to mention free, at least for now:

I could easily see Google extending this for small businesses much like Google Apps for Domains which could be an interesting play in that space particularly given my company’s need for a phone system.

When you sign up for Google Voice you get to select your phone number with an option to choose from within a specific area or zip code. My area code (831) was available and within that area code I could choose a Santa Cruz prefix (among other surrounding cities/towns) and I paired that with a memorable last 4 digits.

Another feature of Google Voice optional transcription of calls though in a few test calls I’ve found it might convey the “gist” of the call but can get quite mangled. For example, you can see above a test call where I said “This is a test call using Google Voice trying to call my cell phone from my home phone in Scotts Valley California.” and you can see the result. Nonetheless, it’s a cool feature I’m sure will improve over time.

Here’s the GMail-like web UI (running in Prism):

One minor detail: The Privacy Policy

This is all very cool although the biggest hurdle for me is the Privacy Policy which details the kind of information Google collects through this service. While it’s not really unusual nor unexpected it details how your information will be collected and used including:

When you use Google Voice, Google’s servers automatically record certain information about your use of Google Voice. Similar to other web services, Google Voice records information such as account activity (including storage usage, number of log-ins), data displayed or clicked on (including UI elements, links); and other log information (including browser type, IP-address, date and time of access, cookie ID, and referrer URL). Google’s servers also automatically collect telephony log information (including calling-party number, forwarding numbers, time and date of calls, duration of calls, SMS routing information, and types of calls).

There’s also a bit about transcription:

Voicemail Transcription - if you use Google Voice’s voicemail transcription service, Google may transcribe voicemail messages into text and email and/or SMS the resulting text to the email account or phone number(s) designated in your user settings. Google’s computers process the information in your messages for various purposes, including formatting and displaying the information to you, delivering related links, backing up your messages, and other purposes relating to offering you Google Voice.

Clearly, Google mines your data like it does for everything it offers though this service IMO goes further in that you’re more or less accepting the Privacy Policy on behalf of anyone calling you especially considering there’s no way for a caller to know you’re using Google Voice as it’s transparent.

I’ll experiment Google Voice for awhile but I’m not sure I’m ready to turn this amount of information over to Google regardless of Don’t be Evil.

Are you using Google Voice?

The original source for this content is stevetrefethen.com.

An HttpHandler for use with Facebook

Steve Trefethen — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 05:40:29 GMT

In my SocialMine Facebook application, which uses MIT’s Simile Exhibit, I needed to fetch Facebook FQL query results from the Exhibit client-side JavaScript. While it may not sound that complicated it’s not something directly supported by the Facebook Developer Toolkit (FDT). I created an HttpHandler to respond to the Exhibit requests for the JSON data which populates the Exhibit. The HTTP request includes a Referrer header that contains the necessary data, fb_sig_user and fb_sig_session_key to construct an instance of facebook.Components.FacebookService. For completeness here is a list of the queryparams contained in the Referrer URL:

auth_token=1379094a2a42e1c0037a33048912a875
fb_sig_in_iframe=1
fb_sig_locale=en_US
fb_sig_in_new_facebook=1
fb_sig_time=1245301045.1412
fb_sig_added=1
fb_sig_profile_update_time=1241328269
fb_sig_expires=0
fb_sig_user=719571200
fb_sig_session_key=c93185e145713ce98d72dfc2-719571700 fb_sig_ss=57abbef0284354d029fe8a19fa00dfce
fb_sig_ext_perms=offline_access,email,auto_publish_recent_activity fb_sig_api_key=33c52d0a0c9867f677a1f05154c28478
fb_sig_app_id=5012360767 fb_sig=9ad664af23910ca18aeb203203c366cd

The HttpHandler is an abstract class with a single abstract method called FacebookRequest descendents override to handle the request. As you can see below the handler is quite simple, parsing the queryparams into a Dictionary, creates an instance of the FacebookService and calls FacebookRequest passing the service instance and the HttpContext passed to the handler.

public abstract class FacebookHandler : IHttpHandler
{
    private const string REQUEST_SESSION_KEY = "fb_sig_session_key";
    private const string REQUEST_USER_ID = "fb_sig_user";

    #region IHttpHandler Members

    public bool IsReusable
    {
        get { return false; }
    }

    void IHttpHandler.ProcessRequest(HttpContext ctxt)
    {
        facebook.Components.FacebookService f = new facebook.Components.FacebookService();
        f.ApplicationKey = WebConfigurationManager.AppSettings["APIKey"];
        f.Secret = WebConfigurationManager.AppSettings["Secret"];

        Dictionary<string, string> dic = new Dictionary<string, string>();

        string[] split = ctxt.Request.UrlReferrer.Query.Split(new char[] { '?', '&', '=' });
        // Skip the first item since it’s the "?"
        for (int i = 1; i < split.Length - 1; i += 2)
        {
            if(i < split.Length)
                dic.Add(split[i], split[i + 1]);
        }

        f.SessionKey = dic[REQUEST_SESSION_KEY];
        f.uid = Convert.ToInt64(dic[REQUEST_USER_ID]);
        FacebookRequest(f, ctxt);
    }
    #endregion

    protected abstract void FacebookRequest(facebook.Components.FacebookService fbservice, HttpContext ctxt);
}

The JavaScript of Simile Exhibit requests the JSON data using the following LINK tag:

<link href="friendsjson.aspx" type="application/json" rel="exhibit/data" />

The reference to friendsjson.aspx isn’t actually an ASPX as it’s handled by a descendent of this HttpHandler which is registered in the httpHandlers section of the web.config as follows:

<add verb="*" path="friendsjson.aspx" type="FBFQL.JSONHandler" />

In my application the FacebookRequest method queries using FQL for profile data and returns a JSON result that populates the Exhibit.

Btw, if you're looking for help on Facebook development be sure to read my wiki article.

The original source for this content is stevetrefethen.com.

EDI Purchase Order system goes live

Steve Trefethen — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 23:36:06 GMT

If you’ve been reading my blog for long you probably have read a few previous posts where I blogged about EDI processing using CCNET. Well, yesterday the Purchase Order portion of the system went live so I sent a screenshot of the CCNET web dashboard to the Team at Falafel and our CTO, John Water’s replied with his modified version (right). I figure for those of you programming types you’d enjoy this…

At least, I got a good laugh from it.

For those familiar with EDI this custom system handles 810, 850, 855, 856 and 997 documents. Also, based on my FTP Provider for CCNET there should be a new source provider showing up on that project in the near future as one of the leads approached me about adding it.

The original source for this content is stevetrefethen.com.

iPod Touch well worth it

Steve Trefethen — Fri, 29 May 2009 17:26:02 GMT

It’s been about a year since I posted my thoughts on the iPod Touch and my answer has since changed from a “maybe” to absolutely, even my v1.0 edition. I use it for everything from:

emailed versions of my travel itinerary
podcasts
multi-day alarm clock, a wake-up call replacement
ebook reader
restaurant/coffee shop locator
status updates to Facebook, Yammer and Twitter
newspapers
weather
maps and even a poor man’s GPS
flashlight/nightlight
File sharing device (AirSharing)
Banking
And yes, even music though mostly streamed via Pandora

These days I’m traveling a heck-of-a lot more and I’ve found it to be an invaluable travel tool. In fact, the Touch can even function as a poor man’s GPS. To see this working you’ll need to cache some map content while connected to wifi:

Before embarking on your trip connect to a wifi network
Using the Google Map browse around the area you’ll be driving so the map will be cached. You may want to zoom in so as to capture more detailed content.
Start driving to the location where you’re headed while viewing the Google Maps application. If there are sufficient wifi access points in the area the little blue target locator (pictured) will occasionally update and follow you along the map.

To be sure we’re not talking real time but it does actually work. Notice in the picture that the Touch isn’t connected to wifi when it was captured as I sat at a stop light. I stumbled into this feature while on a business trip to Austin TX and while driving around looking for a Starbuck’s I noticed my location on the map changing. The screenshot here displays it working near Wilkes-Barre PA.

My current favorite application is RSS Player which makes listening to podcasts easy and enjoyable, it still needs a few features but it’s seriously a must have if you’re a podcast listener.

The original source for this content is stevetrefethen.com.

Experienced San Francisco Bay Area ASP.NET Developer’s needed - May 2009

Steve Trefethen — Wed, 27 May 2009 05:46:40 GMT

My employer, Falafel Software, is looking for Senior/Architect level C# .NET developers located in the San Francisco Bay area (U.S. residents or individuals with a work permit only, no visas). We’re looking for developer’s with deep experience developing C# ASP.NET applications. If you are an individual contributor (read not recruiter etc.) and meet the qualifications outlined below contact me or email jobs@falafel.com. I’ll add that both verbal and written communication and presentation skills are extremely important in our line of work.

Senior Software Engineer / Architect

Suitable candidates will possess a software engineering background combined with professional services, consulting or pre/post-sales experience. Engineer/Architect must be comfortable with client presentations, demos and working with client teams to meet development, integration and/or training goals.

Required

5+ years hand-on production experience with Microsoft .NET Framework development (WinForms and/or ASP.Net)
Proficiency in C#
Working knowledge of SQL Server 2000 or later (not DBA, but be able to use the database in projects)
Excellent communication skills, team member, self-motivated and driven (lots of remote work, work from home etc)
Be a consultant: comfortable meeting clients, discussing their problems, listening, finding pragmatic solutions, and billing time
Some travel required 15% or less (conferences, client site visits)

Ideal candidates should also possess one or more of the following proficiencies:

SQL Server 2000 (or later) and Transact SQL (5+ yrs)
Web 2.0 technology (AJAX, dynamic HTML, JavaScript)
Microsoft or other applicable Certifications
Bachelor’s degree or higher in Computer Science or equivalent (i.e. Electrical Engineering) – or natural talent and experience that blows us away!
Knowledge of modeling (ER diagrams, UML etc), processes (agile, RUP, etc), Version Control Systems and Practices (TFS, SVN etc), QA processes and practices (unit testing, continuous integration, automated QA, etc)

The original source for this content is stevetrefethen.com.

Funny code comment

Steve Trefethen — Fri, 08 May 2009 22:34:55 GMT

A little Friday fun… while reviewing some code awhile ago I ran into this little gem:


          
            
            //
             Warning:
Suckage++

The remainder of the comment is in reference to a situation beyond the developers control where they had to special case logic to deal with some missing data. My comments typically aren’t quite this creative and I usually denote code that has issues using NOTE: or "!!!".

How do you mark code that otherwise denotes some nastiness?

The original source for this content is stevetrefethen.com.

Mining your Facebook social network

Steve Trefethen — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 07:33:14 GMT

Many months ago, well before the latest Facebook redesign, I wrote an application to explore my Facebook social network in what I think is a fun and interesting way. Leveraging MIT’s Simile Exhibit project I developed SocialMine, an application that surfaces many attributes of your network’s profile information allowing you to filter and otherwise “mine” the data. As this is the hallmark of any Exhibit application, within the genre, I’d consider it to be quite plain were it not for the personal relevance of the data. Still, you can extensively filter the information in a live view including a Google Map.

Since the application relies on user provided profile data there may be cases where it simply doesn’t/won’t “work”. For example, I discovered a little over half of my friends haven’t specified a current location so they don’t appear on the map. On the other hand, I now know who those people are and can bug them to update their profile. At any rate, I’ve had fun “mining” my network and thought you might too.

Lastly, having been developed for fun in my extremely limited free time largely after 12AM, SocialMine is by no means complete nor thoroughly tested. There I said it and should it fail utterly under load wouldn’t come as a huge surprise. FYI, if you have a lot of friends rendering the page could take significant time so consider yourself warned. For those interested, it’s written in C# using ASP.NET and based on my FDT Starter Kit. And now for those who find this a necessity a disclaimer…

Disclaimer: I make no warrantees expressed or implied, your mileage may vary, use at your own risk. For entertainment purposes only, accuracy of the rendered data is entirely control by your friends so consult them! Insert here any other relevant disclaimer related verbiage encompassing whatever problem(s) or situation(s) you may encounter while using SocialMine. Should you dislike SocialMine kindly remove it and simply move along. Consider yourself warned!

Now that that’s over, enjoy!

The original source for this content is stevetrefethen.com.

Kindness of a stranger

Steve Trefethen — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 02:41:50 GMT

On Sunday, I flew from SFO to O’Hare (radar on right) on my way to Wilkes-Barre, PA and when I arrived I found my next flight canceled. I headed to the United Customer Service desk which was completely unattended (I so wish I’d had a camera, chairs scattered everywhere) and used a self help monitor and got on the standby list for a 9pm flight then picked up a support phone and talked to a rep who, after telling me I was well down the standby list and that the next available seat was two days later, directed me to talk to a United person at the airport. I asked about alternatives and was informed every other United flight out of O’Hare to PA sold out.

I returned to the gate I’d arrived at having seen the neighboring gate was a flight to Philadelphia, roughly 100 miles from my destination thinking if I could make it I’d drive the remainder. No luck, that flight was booked with a long standby list. I got redirected to another terminal and another United Customer Service desk which had what must have been over 100+ people in line. After waiting for over an hour I spoke to a rep who had no better news and offered only a 6pm flight the next day to Philadelphia. Feeling rather dejected decided to grab some dinner. I got seated at a Chili’s and few minutes later a gentleman was seated next to me and we started chatting and exchanging stories. He’d come from SFO too and his next flight had been canceled and that he was on standby as well. When I explained my situation he said “You can’t stick with that plan, it’s a loser so consider yourself adopted.”

He went on, explaining he was a 300K mile traveler and would help to try and get me a confirmed seat or alternative flight plans. We finished dinner and headed to the United Red Carpet Club, got on the web and started looking for alternatives. He walked me through the process telling me that it was possible to get United to pay for an alternate route. While I was looking for alternatives he called is “special” United travelers number and worked that angle but they couldn’t improve my situation. I managed to get a seat confirmed on a Delta flight to Philly so he called United back and got them to agree to buy the alternative route but at the last minute their flight got delayed sinking the deal. We’d spent over an hour on the phone working on alternatives to no avail. Finally, he said “Let’s go try the desk here in the club.” Given he’d already talked to United on the phone he wasn’t optimistic. We walked up to the counter with my canceled ticket in hand where he explained my situation and the rep took my ticket and offered to review my ticket. Not more than a minute or two later she was printing me a boarding pass for a confirmed seat! She then offered to check his flight and got him confirmed as well! At that point, we returned to the lounge, smiling and laughing over our combined good fortune. By then his next flight time was approaching so we exchanged business cards, I thanked him and he left.

A couple hours later I boarded my flight and made it to PA about 7 hours after my original arrive time. The next morning I had an email asking if I’d made it to PA.

So, here’s to the generosity of a complete stranger who not only helped me catch a flight but taught me a few travel tips along the way.

Thanks Don!

The original source for this content is stevetrefethen.com.

Facebook’s Disappearing Platform redux

Steve Trefethen — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 23:10:19 GMT

About a month ago I wrote a post with some thoughts on what I felt the impact was on the platform as a result of the UI redesign. Today, I ran across this post on AllFacebook.com titled Top Facebook Applications See 25 Percent Drop In Traffic Since Redesign. Where Nick O’Neil states:

If you thought the last redesign spelled the death of the Facebook platform, you ain’t seen nothing yet! Last July Facebook released their new design and within a matter of months, widget applications had become a thing of the past. A few of those applications were able to withstand the changes but there’s a grim picture being painted weeks after Facebook’s latest redesign.

He goes on to provide some additional statistics and spells out the fact that it’s not all “gloom and doom”. At present, I’m quite skeptical about the Facebook Platform being worthy of the development time and effort in light of the near constantly shifting playing field.

The graphic I included displays the stats for my Facebook Starter Kit application with March 20th (mentioned in the article) highlighted, where it’s clearly visible even this simple application exhibits a similar drop off though I can’t say for sure this wouldn’t have happened naturally as it is a “Seinfeld” of applications.

The original source for this content is stevetrefethen.com.

Best Buy not quite up to it’s name

Steve Trefethen — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 15:59:20 GMT

Recently, my Internet connection here at the house started dropping roughly every 90 seconds or so, quite annoying as you can imagine. I started trying to debug the problem doing the typical unplug & cabling song and dance but that didn’t work. I have a Motorola SurfBoard 5201 cable modem and the send/receive lights on it were constantly pulsing no, not good. I headed to Best Buy, plopped down $86, picked up a new Motorola SB5101, brought it home, called Comcast and added it to my account and after testing it several but no dice so the rep scheduled a visit the next day. The following day the tech calls to let me know he’s on the way me so I hop in the car, head back to the house and call my wife to let her know. She then informs me she’s been surfing the web and “everything’s fixed”. I pull up to the house and the tech hasn’t found anything wrong with our connection and as my wife indicated everything is fine. Thanks Murphy.

Anyway, back to my point, since Best Buy was convenient I bought a modem there thinking I’d return it if that wasn’t the problem. At this point, it appears that the modem was the problem so I get online and start looking for a better deal. Kind of funny, the Best Buy modem helps me replace itself. I was a bit surprised to that Amazon had the same modem for nearly half the price ($45.93) with free shipping, it arrives in a few days at which point I’ll return the one from “Best Buy”.

[Update: April 6, 2009] Amazon price has dropped another $2.20. I don't see any way Best Buy can compete with that.

The original source for this content is stevetrefethen.com.

GUI Test Automation with Ranorex Studio

Steve Trefethen — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 06:19:59 GMT

Today I got a demo of a tool called Ranorex Studio, a test automation product built using the SharpDevelop IDE. Aside from the IDE I last play with in the very early days of the project for me, the real interesting aspect was the C# framework it ships with that provides the bases of modeling UI elements in a similar manner to Zombie’s GEM framework. Tests can be written in C#, VB.NET or Iron Python and are written using this framework to build a test. To give you a taste of this kind of binding here is fragment from a typed class that models Windows Calc:

/// <summary>
/// The FormCalculatorAppFolder folder.
/// </summary>
public class FormCalculatorAppFolder : RepoGenBaseFolder
{

    /// <summary>
    /// Creates a new FormCalculator  folder.
    /// </summary>
    public FormCalculatorAppFolder(RepoGenBaseFolder appFolder) : 
            base("FormCalculator", "/form[@title='Calculator' or @title='Rechner']", appFolder, 3000, true)
    {
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// The ButtonAsterisk item.
    /// </summary>
    public virtual Ranorex.Button ButtonAsterisk
    {
        get 
        { 
            return CreateAdapterForPath<Ranorex.Button>("ButtonAsterisk", "button[@text='*']", 5000, null);
        }
    }
    /// <summary>
    /// The Button3 item.
    /// </summary>
    public virtual Ranorex.Button Button3
    {
        get 
        { 
            return CreateAdapterForPath<Ranorex.Button>("Button3", "button[@text='3']", 5000, null);
        }
    }
    /// <summary>
    /// The ButtonEqual item.
    /// </summary>
    public virtual Ranorex.Button ButtonEqual
    {
        get 
        { 
            return CreateAdapterForPath<Ranorex.Button>("ButtonEqual", "button[@text='=']", 5000, null);
        }
    }
    /// <summary>
    /// The OutputText item.
    /// </summary>
    public virtual Ranorex.Text OutputText
    {
        get 
        { 
            return CreateAdapterForPath<Ranorex.Text>("OutputText", "text[@controlid='403']", 5000, null);
        }
    }
    /// <summary>
    /// The ButtonClose item.
    /// </summary>
    public virtual Ranorex.Button ButtonClose
    {
        get 
        { 
            return CreateAdapterForPath<Ranorex.Button>("ButtonClose", "titlebar/button[@accessiblename='Close' or @accessiblename='Schließen']", 5000, null);
        }
    }
    /// <summary>
    /// The Button7 item.
    /// </summary>
    public virtual Ranorex.Button Button7
    {
        get 
        { 
            return CreateAdapterForPath<Ranorex.Button>("Button7", "button[@text='7']", 5000, null);
        }
    }
    /// <summary>
    /// The ButtonMinus item.
    /// </summary>
    public virtual Ranorex.Button ButtonMinus
    {
        get 
        { 
            return CreateAdapterForPath<Ranorex.Button>("ButtonMinus", "button[@text='-']", 5000, null);
        }
    }
    /// <summary>
    /// The Self item.
    /// </summary>
    public virtual Ranorex.Form Self
    {
        get 
        { 
            return CreateAdapterForPath<Ranorex.Form>("Self", "", 3000, null);
        }
    }

    
}

Notice in this example methods of class FormCalculatorAppFolder use XPATH ~~regular~~ expressions to “bind” their respective UI element which I think this is an interesting approach with a lot of flexibility. Also notice the idea here is similar to that of strongly typed dataset for data access. The tool provides a set of “adapters” which are used to drive various types of UI at varying degrees of accessibility (WinAPI, .NET, Web, MSAA).

I haven’t had enough time using the tool or framework to draw a conclusion as to the validity of the approach or quality of implementation but I have seen a few unexpected error dialogs which are things that will need to be fixed right away.

Are you familiar with or have you used this tool? If so, what do you think?

If not, what tools are you using for GUI automation?

The original source for this content is stevetrefethen.com.

Getting my attention

Steve Trefethen — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 04:49:30 GMT

I’ve written 500+ blog posts and not until I developed a Starter Kit did I start getting so much direct email though the Contact me link on my blog. Of course, not all of it ends up reading like this (comment), far from it, rather let me give you an example:

i 2 m working on facebook app
i try install ur starter kit but it not appear
need u 2 send me solution urgent
i didn’t understand plz help

This kind of writing drives nuts. Perhaps if my kids were teens I might appreciate this a bit more but they’re 5, 3 and 1. While this isn’t an actual email it is representative and as you can imagine, not exactly the kind of thing I look forward to reading. I used to feel obligated to respond to nearly everyone who felt the desire to reach out to me via the Contact me link but seriously? I don’t know, and don’t really want to know, if there is a name for this “style” but I find it difficult and halting to read. How it makes sense to reach out to someone with a message like this and asking for help? Yeah, this ain’t it.

Granted, in some cases it may simply be a language barrier but I’ve gotten plenty of messages written in this “style” where it’s pretty clear that’s not the case.

The original source for this content is stevetrefethen.com.

Comcast Triple Play Denied

Steve Trefethen — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 19:38:30 GMT

Last Thursday I called ComCast regarding an issue with our Internet access and subsequently ended up asking about their Triple Play plan combining TV, Internet and Phone service. The rep gladly quoted me $99 for 12 months which I accepted and scheduled a tech for today (Saturday) between 12-4pm. The rep mentioned he’d call me back within 20 minutes to confirm a smaller time window but that call never happened but I thought “no big deal”. Well, I decided double check this morning that, in fact, someone was coming today and found ComCast had no record of my call nor any order for new service. The new rep apologized and offered to schedule a new appointment and set me up for $115/month! Rather puzzled, I explained my previous call and basically all i got was an apology. He went on to inform me the $99 price expired last November and he wasn’t authorized to give me that “deal” to which I said, “no thanks”.

Suffice it to say, not a good experience. Perhaps it’s called Triple Play because it’s just that, over quickly.

The original source for this content is stevetrefethen.com.

Simile Exhibit of Falafel Training Sessions

Steve Trefethen — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 18:41:35 GMT

I’ve mentioned before part of my job at Falafel Software is online and onsite training which is a great and expanding business (fortunately in this economy). And recently, I’ve been working on training.falafel.com, Falafel’s new training website which includes a Google map driven by Simile Exhibit highlighting Falafel’s training engagements dating back to January of 2007. I’ve blogged about Exhibit before and found it to be a great visualization tool.

Exhibit is a pretty fascinating way to leverage both JavaScript and HTML markup. Using custom attributes on tags HTML tags you craft a page that using Lenses, Views and Facets creating a unique presentation of your data. In fact, the Map View super easy to use and “just works”. For example, the entire markup necessary for this training page looks like this (fyi, the Google Map Key has been removed as it’s very long):

 <html>
   <head>
       <title>Falafel Trainings</title>
       <link href="/trainingmap/trainings.js" type="application/json" rel="exhibit/data" />
       <script src="http://static.simile.mit.edu/exhibit/api-2.0/exhibit-api.js"
           type="text/javascript"></script>
       <script src="http://static.simile.mit.edu/exhibit/extensions-2.0/map/map-extension.js?gmapkey="
           type="text/javascript"></script>
        <style type="text/css">
        body {
            font-family:Arial,Helvetica,SunSans-Regular,sans-serif;
            font-size:12px;
        }
        </style>
   </head> 
   <body>
    <div style="float:right" ex:role="logo" ex:color="DeepSkyBlue"></div>
    <div ex:role="view" ex:viewClass="Map" ex:latlng=".addressLatLng"
        ex:center="38.479394673276445, -95.361328125" ex:zoom="4"
        ex:showHeader="true" ex:overviewControl="true" ex:colorKey=".type">
    </div>
    <table width="100%">
        <tr valign="top">
            <td width="50%" valign="top">
                <div ex:role="facet" ex:expression=".product" ex:facetLabel="Product"></div>
            </td>
            <td width="50%" valign="top">
                <div ex:role="facet" ex:expression=".location" ex:facetLabel="Location"></div>
            </td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
            <td width="50%" valign="top">
                <div ex:role="facet" ex:expression=".training" ex:facetLabel="Type"></div>            
            </td>
            <td width="50%" valign="top">
                <div ex:role="facet" ex:expression=".startdate" ex:facetLabel="Start Date"></div>
            </td>
        </tr>
    </table>
</body>
</html>

The data is in JSON format and loaded by Exhibit using a special <link> as you can see in the HEAD section above. To find lat/long coordinates for a set of data you can follow this tutorial and fetch them via a simple page loaded in the browser, though it’s limited as Google restricts how many geocode requests you can make within a given timeframe leaving you with partial results, or use a geocoding routine that handles the throttling for you ensuring a complete result set. In this case, I’m using a simple text file as we don’t have hundreds of items, at least not yet .

Exhibit supports numerous views though this example uses just the Map View, another example of a view is the timeline, built into dasblog, for displaying blog posts over time. As I’ve said before, if you haven’t looked at the Simile projects you should, they could save you lots of time.

So, how about it, have you used any Simile projects?

[Update: March 21, 2009] Fix typos.

The original source for this content is stevetrefethen.com.

Facebook’s Disappearing Application Platform

Steve Trefethen — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 08:21:45 GMT

ith each refinement to the Facebook UI it seems their application platform is taking a back seat to the desire of chasing after millisecond status updates a la Twitter and with this latest round applications seem to have all but disappeared. When the platform first rolled out there was a period of rapid developer adoption largely due to the potential audience size an application could field in a short period of time, that viral affect that was so popularized. The excitement continued for quite some time though I think in some cases Facebook must have become envious as it seems others were perhaps having more commercial success on their platform than Facebook itself if not in real terms perhaps in relative terms.

In the beginning, applications played a prominent roll and “installing” new applications was perhaps all too easy. I’d refer to those as the “wild west” days with the ensuing gold rush period that was eventually killed off. Ever since then it seems Facebook as increasing clamped down user’s exposure to third party applications and in many cases made it difficult and costly to keep an FB application up and running successfully over time as the API continues to be a moving target.

With the latest round of UI changes I couldn’t find a link to Facebook’s own Developer’s application, which I have “installed” on my account allowing me to review the FB applications I’ve created. Eventually, I found a round-about path through the Settings|Application Settings menu though that seems quite counter intuitive. Clearly, the rules of engagement for applications have changed dramatically over the platform’s brief lifetime so much so I’d be interested in statistics regarding how the viral nature of Facebook applications has been altered since the early days though I suspect we’ll never know. I think if you were fortunate enough to get in early and earn a respectable size audience you’re probably doing just though I’d suspect that’s not nearly as repeatable as one might hope given the current situation.

Facebook has something unique with their platform and garnered a developer audience quickly though it seems bent on following in Apple’s footsteps by locking it down so tightly they’ll end up thwarting the majority of developer’s who’d write applications they wouldn’t have the time nor wherewithal to write. These days it’s almost looking like Facebook would have preferred Facebook Connect rather than their platform route as that’s certainly the direction their pushing. At this point, let’s just say I’m glad I’m not working for a company in the midst of developing a Facebook application hoping to reach my target audience.

The original source for this content is stevetrefethen.com.

Reading list since November 2008

Steve Trefethen — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 06:18:21 GMT

Following up my last post I thought I’d add my reading list from roughly November of last year. I’m currently finishing up Obama’s Audacity of Hope while at the same time reading Robinson Crusoe on my iPod Touch using the Classics App, a must buy IMO at $2.99. I wasn’t sure how I’d like reading a book on a device but it’s been an enjoyable experience and a great escape when eating dinner while on the road like I am right now writing from Sierra Vista, AZ.

I’ve been thinking I should put together a similar list of the books our kids are enjoying from our local library. We usually pick up 10-15 books every few weeks for reading before bed and there have been some clear favorites.

The original source for this content is stevetrefethen.com.

10 pages a day

Steve Trefethen — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 07:27:39 GMT

A few weeks ago I had a wide ranging and varied conversation with Mark Dahlby, a principle of writers.com, and Jeff Meyer an old friend from my Borland Tech Support days, where we discussed writing, music and Tuvan throat singing among numerous other topics. During the conversation I mentioned one of the main reason’s I blog is the habit of regular writing outside the context status updates, instant messages and email none of which I view as “writing”. We discussed the immediacy of content on the web and that much of our communication is breaking down to twitteresque snippets and how our consumption of content isn’t much deeper as skimming now rules the day. In fact, I’ve trimmed my blog reading dramatically and I’m no longer keeping up with the river of posts as evidenced by my Google Reader Trends which isn’t a bad thing.

Back to Basics

At the beginning of the year, not that I’m a subscriber to resolutions, I decided I’d gotten too far away from reading books and started a ten-page-a-day commitment. Each day I work to set aside time for at least ten pages from whatever book I’m reading and so far it’s working. In fact, I’ve been working on a reading list post but I’ve been too darn busy and have slowed down on blogging. Ah, the trade offs!

Do you have any reading goals or find this to be a problem too?

The original source for this content is stevetrefethen.com.

Down another 2,000 points on the DOW

Steve Trefethen — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 08:54:04 GMT

Chart from bloomberg.com

I last commented on the economy back in October and things are far worse now. The predictable job market loses are being reported daily, a pattern which I believe we’re likely to see for quite awhile. The next shoe to drop might well be the failure of some of our major financial institutions or the very large and distressed companies such as GM. It’s becoming increasingly unclear to me why throwing billions of dollars at these companies, like AIG in particular, is the right thing to do as they appear to be bottomless sink holes. Like BofA’s predicament with Merrill Lynch where it appears they completely misunderstood the severity of the problems Merrill faced. It’s striking how Ken Lewis, BofA’s CEO, was on 60 minutes in late October touted as having created one of America’s “healthiest banks” yet eight weeks later was asking for billions from tax payers in bail-out.

I find it hard to believe the government can continue writing checks without letting at least some of these large institutions fail. Now that we’re into near constant bail-outs it seems actually allowing even one to fail would likely send another shockwave to the economy yet it seems almost inevitable.

I’ve been traveling a lot lately for work and it’s interesting to see businesses that are doing well during these economic times. For example, I was recently in West Virginia training at the American Public University whose stock has held up quite well all things considered. And today, listening to Fareed Zakaria’s GPS podcast from March 1st with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper about how Canada hasn’t had a single bank failure nor bail-out. In January I was in Toronto at the CPP Investment Board and asked about the impact of the economy on their business though they too are doing quite well. We also discussed how Canada’s banking regulations may have helped it avoid the crisis the US finds itself in as they haven’t suffered a sub-prime mortgage meltdown.

As for our personal investments I continue to be extremely concerned about our 401k/IRA’s as we’re over 50% loss meaning many years worth of savings is gone. We’re fortunate that we purchased our home in 1999 meaning we have valuable equity although that’s declining too. Home sales in our neighborhood used to be commonplace though houses now rarely come on the market and when they do they sit there for months.

Lastly is crime which at least anecdotally seems could be on the rise. In the past few months two friends of ours have had their cars broken into here in Scotts Valley, the first such cases I can recall in the 10 years we’ve lived here. I suspect this too will be a sad reality as time marches on and the number of displaced and desperate people increases. Speaking of which over the weekend we were at Costco in Santa Cruz and the crowd surrounding the nearby homeless shelter was many times the largest crowd I’d seen there before.

[Update: March 10, 2009] A third friend’s car was broken into this time in Aptos.

I haven’t reached the depths of despair of the like so aptly described in Robinson Crusoe, which I’m presently reading, but the economic outlook isn’t good.

Finally, as I learned from my son I’ll close with a few good notes: we just hired a new employee at Falafel this week and I head out on Sunday for yet another business trip, the third such trip this year. So here’s to good business!

[Update: March 19, 2009] A car in at neighboring house was broken into last night and my wife spoke with the police who said that our neighborhood had been targeted several times recently. Apparently, they caught two parolee's from nearby town in relation to theft.

The original source for this content is stevetrefethen.com.

Lesson from my three year old, “I’m great”

Steve Trefethen — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 05:22:49 GMT

Nearly every morning I wake to my three year olds faint call of “Daddy, Daddy…” and make my way to his room where he always asks “Will you lay down with me?”. I lay down and ask “How are you bud?” to which he always responds “I’m great”.

Personally, I’ve always responded to this question with “I’m good” or “pretty good” but I don’t do that anymore. So, it took a few months but, my son finally managed to teach me that I’m not just “good” or “pretty good” but that I too am doing “great”. This might seem trite but I’m beginning to think responding to people this way actually affects their reaction. I’m willing to concede it may solely be my outlook that’s changed but I see people smile and engage more when they recognize that I’m apparently doing well. I notice this particularly during brief encounters such as at a coffee shop or airline ticket counter (I’m seeing those a lot lately). I’ll see more eye contact, a longer smile or a more engaged response. Admittedly, the difference is subtle but I believe it’s there, perhaps people are more inclined to engage someone who outwardly appears to be doing really well opposed to just “good”.

Anyway, kids are awesome. Thanks Colby! And in case you’re wondering I’ve actually talked to him about this and now he always asks me how I’m doing.

The original source for this content is stevetrefethen.com.

Growth of a Facebook Application

Steve Trefethen — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 07:34:34 GMT

I’ve written what I consider to be sort of a Seinfeld of Facebook applications, an app about “nothing”. I’m talking about my Facebook Starter Kit application which you can add to your Facebook account here. The application, pictured to the right, has a total of three pages:

Main page (pictured) which lists all your friends with their photo and a link to their profile page
An XFBML page that illustrates usage of XFBML via JavaScript on an IFrame canvas page
An FQL query page that allows you to test FQL queries with a list of your friends Facebook ID’s as well as your ID for convenience

And that’s it.

By the Numbers

What I’ve found fairly interesting is watching the apps statistics, provided by Facebook, which are quite extensive. Here are some basic stats from from January 28th:

And two weeks later:

Meaning my “app about nothing” attracted roughly 10 new users a day over the past two weeks. Here is a chart of active users over the past few months:

The inflection point is Dec 24th 2009 which is interesting because I’ve read Facebook had a very big Christmas with regard to traffic. I’ve done little to actually “market” this application other than blog about the Starter Kit and post a link to my wiki article.

Anyway, I thought this mildly interesting and it will be fun to watch where the stats go from here. I noticed today that the FDT now has +17K downloads and I know that no where near that number of people are using my Starter Kit so there is “room for growth”.

Anyone else have interesting FB app stats to share?

The original source for this content is stevetrefethen.com.

Adding a project to TFS from TestComplete

Steve Trefethen — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 16:10:46 GMT

As a TestComplete trainer I’ve found myself re-installing it a few times and I typically have to reconfigure my TFS connection. I’ve been asked about this a few times so I thought I’d write it down. Here are the steps to setup and add a TestComplete project to TFS.

Select Tools | Issue Tracking | Connection Manager. This is usually the step I forget since it seems a bit odd to got to Issue Tracking when I want Source Control. Anyhoo…
Click Add…, provide a Connection name and select Visual Studio Team System:
Click Next and specify the TFS URL and credentials:
At this point, you should see the status of the connection and the top-level projects from the TFS server:
Now, from the Project Explorer you can right click your Project Suite and add it to the repository:

And that as they say is it.

Are you using TFS? Do you use it in TestComplete?

The original source for this content is stevetrefethen.com.

Per user queued Windows Error Reporting and reclaiming 3.13GB of disk space

Steve Trefethen — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 07:56:22 GMT

I just ran the Disk Cleanup utility and discovered this little gem: 3.13GB worth of disk space worth of Vista error reports. Why would it be allowed to grow this large? Seriously, what’s the point. Anyway, if you’re looking for some extra disk space you might just recapture some of it here like I just did. If only my fondness for Vista grew as fast as it’s waste of my disk space (have you checked the size of your winsxs directory lately?)

The original source for this content is stevetrefethen.com.

Need suggestions for fixing Windows Vista Sleep problems

Steve Trefethen — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 03:23:51 GMT

I’m running Vista on a MacBook Pro using bootcamp and over the past 7 days Vista’s Sleep functionality has completely failed which isn’t necessarily a new problem. Now, the vast majority of times when the machine enters Sleep mode it eventually results in a system failure and reboot and roughly 30% of the time lost data of one kind or another leaving this message in the Event Viewer:

The previous system shutdown at 11:07:50 PM on 1/26/2009 was unexpected.

I’m open to suggestions as to how to fix this problem. On Jan 9th 2009, I installed AVG Free (which I’ve now uninstalled) but that’s it, no other software has been installed/removed.

Any ideas?

[Update: Feb 5, 2009] Knock on wood but after uninstalling FreeAVG I seem to be in a fairly stable state again WRT Sleep, meaning my machine actually wakes properly at this point. Go figure.

The original source for this content is stevetrefethen.com.

Replacing Yahoo

Steve Trefethen — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 18:40:42 GMT

As the complaints about Yahoo’s homepage redesign continue pouring in on my Switch back post I thought I’d mention how I moved on:

Forwarded all Yahoo email (using Yahoo Mail Pro, don’t worry it’s cheap) to my newer email address hosted on my own domain using Google Apps for Domains meaning I can use GMail as my client even with my personal email address (very nice!)
Use Prism (or Refractor add-on for Firefox) hosting GMail on the desktop
Switched to Pandora replacing, the now sold-off, LAUNCHCast for music
Switched to Feedly in Firefox for news and RSS reading based on my Google Reader feeds
Use Trillian as my IM client for my Yahoo contacts (among others)
Moved my address book to my iPod Touch and Facebook which is nice since friends provide their own updates
Switched to Google groups from Yahoo Groups
Switched to Google Calendar
Switched to Google’s Picasa for photos

Having been a Yahoo customer for well over ten years I’m a little torn though feel they left me more then I left them. Regardless, my Yahoo days pretty ended, I do wish them well as I know they’re struggling.

The original source for this content is stevetrefethen.com.

Trigger exception logging now supported in Cruisecontrol.NET

Steve Trefethen — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 22:22:50 GMT

A little over a year ago I wrote a post expanding on a problem I was having in CCNET where exceptions thrown by a Source Control Provider wouldn’t trigger the build publisher meaning there was no easy way to see something went wrong. Well, it took awhile but persistence paid off and thanks to Ruben Willems, who works on CCNET, a recent check-in has addressed this problem. Working from suggestions included in my patch he developed a more complete solution, after several iterations, that deals with a number of build status issues among other things. In case you’re interested the details can be found here and here.

Aside from the details you can now rest assured that if your Source Control Provider throws an exception the build publisher(s) will execute to let you know. Additionally, a new project property was added allowing for control over the number of exception that can occur before the project is simply stopped called maxAmountOfSourceControlExceptions which you’d use like this:

<project name="ProjectName" maxAmountOfSourceControlExceptions="3">
...
</project>

Again, big thanks to Ruben for his time and effort!

The original source for this content is stevetrefethen.com.

Inauguration

Steve Trefethen — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 18:27:16 GMT

Just watched what few portions of the Inauguration my kids would allow, fortunately it’s recorded, and I can’t overstate how happy I am the US affords it’s people the ability to elect new leadership. Despite what’s ahead I’m glad that we have a new set of eyes looking at the myriad of problems we face.

President Obama, I wish him well.

Btw, subscribed.

The original source for this content is stevetrefethen.com.

Handling unexpected Windows in GUI test automation

Steve Trefethen — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 19:07:48 GMT

Since I conduct training for AutomatedQA’s TestComplete I like to follow the support forum to see the types of questions people are asking. Recently, Michael Groves posted the following question:

We do testing on our applications on production boxes that are setup as our production builds. This being the case, we get applications that try to update i.e. virus, Adobe etc... and mess up test runs. Does anyone know of a way have the test script ignore these items as they come up and continue with testing our app?

Michael’s talking about a class of unexpected windows which aren’t part of the application being tested. This includes things like Microsoft’s own Windows Update dialogs that popup, sometimes persistently, asking to reboot the machine. Unfortunately, there isn’t a simple answer to the question which is perhaps best illustrated by the lack of response he got (aside from me). Clearly, turning off such update prompts would eliminate the problem but they come from all kinds of different sources and may not be easy to disable particularly in environments where software configuration is strictly controlled.

While at Borland working on Delphi’s automation framework I solved, or perhaps a better way to put it would be mitigated, the problem at the framework level meaning test developers could write tests without ever thinking this particular issue. The solution used a secondary thread that constantly probed the active window and under certain conditions would dismiss the window allowing the test to proceed unimpeded. Additionally, the thread handled various exceptions dialogs raised by the application under test (AUT) and aborted the current test allowing subsequent tests to run. In most cases the AUT was terminated and the framework simply re-launched the AUT for the next test. The approach afforded test writer’s freedom to focus on their tests and write much less “defensive” code.

Those pesky #32770 windows!

If you’ve ever been knee deep in Windows GUI automation you’re likely to be familiar with #32770 windows. #32770 refers to a commonly used window class that you’ll find in all sorts of places throughout Windows. For example, the Windows Update dialog, mentioned above, can be particularly problematic not only because it keeps popping up but because it too is a #32770 window. The #32770 class is also used by the .NET Frameworks Assertion Failed dialog as well as other standard error dialogs not to mention Windows Task Manager and Windows common dialogs, ok have I made my point yet?

Clearly, identifying windows by window class alone is insufficient. To that end, the solution I developed cached a list of #32770 window handles that existed prior to test execution to help distinguish them from instances created by the AUT.

As Michael points out, there may be numerous other applications that display UI during test execution that the test may need to dismiss to prevent false failures. Years ago I wrote a tool (pictured right) to help figure out the specifics of such windows available here. It’s a simple utility application displaying a hierarchy of windows on your system listing Window Handle, {Classname}, Caption, thread ID, and dimensions. I found this tool to be very useful in developing solutions to deal with errant popup windows.

TestComplete’s Approach to Unexpected Windows

If you’re using TestComplete (TC) you can take advantage of it’s OnUnexpectedWindow event, fired when a keyboard or mouse command is unable to be directed to the intended window.

The event calls a function you write in script giving you the opportunity to manually handle the unexpected window which is passed in as a parameter. TC has a built-in mechanism to handle to try and dismiss the window but in certain cases that can lead to unintended consequences, an issue we explore in the TC training class that Falafel offers. Even if you don’t use this event TestComplete uses a fairly elaborate strategy to deal with unexpected windows and it’s important to clearly understand what it’s doing so you can understand what happens when things fail.

What’s the answer?

I don’t have the perfect answer as it’s often dependent on the environment where the tests are run but developing a flexible system to deal with unexpected windows the rule. In this particular case I suggested to Michael that it might be a good idea to write a console application that handles these unwanted dialogs and simply execute that app from TC and leave it running throughout the test. Using a separate application would help avoid TC’s unexpected window logic which can take time to trigger.

What’s you’re approach to dealing with unexpected windows?

The original source for this content is stevetrefethen.com.

Command line alternatives to Remote Desktop

Steve Trefethen — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 17:14:32 GMT

Most days I’m connected to a client’s VPN working on a project and lately I’ve converted from using Remote Desktop (RD), Terminals actually and highly recommended btw, to psexec and taskkill to get things done. Using psexec I start/stop CCService, run CCNET from the console, use SVN and build from the command line to name a few. The machine I connect to most of the time has a limited simultaneous RD users and occasionally I’m unable to get a connection so having an alternative is crucial. One caveat I ran into was TortoiseProc.exe fails to terminate when run remotely with psexec and has to be killed manually and unfortunately the SVN command line tools are not installed, at least not yet. Occasionally, I use remote.exe from the NT Resource Toolkit though I haven’t used that in quite awhile not to mention the EXE I have is from 1997, not that that makes it any less effective.

Do you do something similar? What utilities do you use?

[Update: Feb 23, 2009] I also use psloggedon which is useful to see who is using the machine. Additionally, it’s nice to be able to launch a console window on the remote machine as well like this (though as Bary notes below ssh is also an option):

psexec.exe \\machine -w d:\ cmd.exe

The original source for this content is stevetrefethen.com.

ASP.NET Facebook Starter Kit for VS.NET 2008 updated to v0.8

Steve Trefethen — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 16:33:56 GMT

I’ve updated my ASP.NET Facebook Starter Kit with the following improvements/changes:

Added support for dynamically resizable iframe which avoids a scrollbar though may have some side effects/caveats. Code is based on JavaScript sample from Facebook.
Added an example of XFBML which requires xd_receiver.htm (included) allowing for a Cross Domain Communication Channel
Added example of using FQL, refer to FQL.aspx
Updated Facebook Dev Toolkit assemblies
Added Facebook stylesheet from Bill Konrad

The download is here and full directions for installation and use are here. To see this application running on Facebook click here. As always, please direct questions on the Facebook API to the Developer’s Forum, or on the Facebook Developer’s Toolkit to the discussion list.

The original source for this content is stevetrefethen.com.

Hosting MIT's Simile Exhibit OS project

Steve Trefethen — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 06:56:14 GMT

I’ve been working on an application that makes use of MIT’s Simile Exhibit Open Source project and the other day the MIT server hosting the related JavaScript files went down. Exhibit is described thusly:

Exhibit enables web site authors to create dynamic exhibits of their collections without resorting to complex database and server-side technologies. The collections can be searched and browsed using faceted browsing. Assorted views are provided including tiles, maps, etc.

Here is an example. Based on what I can glean from the Exhibit newsgroup weather played a role but nonetheless it motivated me to investigate moving the sources to my ISP which happens to be discountASP.NET.While the main server appears to be back up and running at least one service needed for the map view extension is still offline making it more or less just a plain map absent the data points that make it interesting.

There was a request on the newsgroups to explain what I did to "self-host" the code so I figured I’d elaborate a bit. The main issue is that throughout the code there are hardcoded references to an MIT server, namely static.simile.mit.edu.

For starters, you’ll need to grab the Exhibit source code from SVN repository located here:

http://simile-widgets.googlecode.com/svn/exhibit/trunk

Fwiw, on Windows, I’m using TortoiseSVN as my SVN client. Next, correct the URL references in the code that refer to the above server. The source changes look like this:

        /*
         *  Extensions (for backward compatibility)
         */
        if (includeTimeline) {
            scriptURLs.push(useLocalResources ?
                "http://127.0.0.1:8888/exhibit/extensions/time/time-extension.js" :
//                "http://static.simile.mit.edu/exhibit/extensions-2.0/time/time-extension.js");
                "http://www.stevetrefethen.com/simile/exhibit/webapp/extensions/time/time-extension.js");
        }
        if (includeMap) {
            scriptURLs.push(useLocalResources ?
                "http://127.0.0.1:8888/exhibit/extensions/map/map-extension.js" :
//                "http://static.simile.mit.edu/exhibit/extensions-2.0/map/map-extension.js");
                "http://www.stevetrefethen.com/simile/exhibit/webapp/extensions/map/map-extension.js");
        }

Basically, a simple search and replace for "static.simile.mit.edu will suffice to identify the locations that need to be changed. I also made one additional change I’m not sure is necessary which is the following query parameter on the script tag that loads the widget:

Bundling is not something I’ve examined closely though it’s in the interest of saving bandwidth for the amount of Javascript that has to be downloaded. Here is the set of files I modified with the type of changes described above:

Once you’ve made these changes you’ll need to upload the following source directories to your ISP:

simile/exhibit/ajax
simile/exhibit/webapp
simile/exhibit/graphics

Note, the above ajax and webapp directories each have a subdirectory called "site" that contains an example and should not be uploaded. You should now be set to host Exhibit from your own ISP. The map extension requires a Java servlet which you can also self host but since my ISP doesn’t provide that support I’m still relying on MIT’s server for that portion. I’m aware of one such alternative though I couldn’t get that working in the five to ten minutes I spent trying but I’ll likely revisit it as it’s clearly an important piece.

[Updated: March 28] On a somewhat related note I've created a simple Exhibit for my companies training engagements here.

The original source for this content is stevetrefethen.com.