FOAF me up!

After reading this blog about adding Friend of a Friend (FOAF) to a web page, and I did this but I wasn't happy with the result. I then found the FOAF project page and used the FOAF-a-matic to create an RDF that's now embedded ins this blog. Yes, I supposed to publish a file called foaf.rdf but you can't have it all.

If you have FOAF, let me know - and I might add you as a friend ;)

- edited back to the original - thanks Tom

Test and Test Again

There has been some discussion of the application of agile principles including test driven development in the office recently. Having been working on a highly concurrent, scalable SIP application server my feet are firmly in the test first, test often camp.

Our testing strategy includes:

* unit testing, usually using mocks and dependency injection
* acceptance testing, using FitNesse
* robustness testing, using custom scenario handlers
* performance testing

These practices are dependent on the type of project, but we've found that although unit testing is done before the functional code is written, the other tests are usually written afterwards. I like to think that acceptance tests demonstrate completed user stories and robustness tests exercise common scenarios, concurrently.

A robust application comes with time, but through concurrent testing, issues can be drawn out earlier and the confidence you have in your application grows.

More Thoughts on Future of TV and Movies

I've read another great article on 'Hollywood vs the internet' thanks to the excellent newspapper, The Economist.

The article discusses how the Hollywood companies have missed out on using the web to leverage distribution of their media. It cites some companies which have spouted up offering films at reasonable prices is a range of formats, awesome! Thing is, these sites are illegal. Bummer. It's not for want of trying to get some stuff out there, there are some companies offering limited titles, but no one company seems fully driven to use the web yet.

I wanted to write something about this, but it wasn't until I read San1t1's excellent post on ownership and 20th century mass media that my thoughts stirred once again.

If we ignore worrying stories about ISP bloodbaths about broadband providers not being able to handle the web as a platform for one moment... I really don't want to buy another CD or DVD disc again. What I would like is purchase rights (paid or free - free is the best price) to view/listen content where ever and when-ever the hell I want!

Would I pay £10 for an 'on-demand' movie that I could watch as many times as I wanted, and could watch on my cable box, laptop or iPod? Probably yes. Would I pay that for being able to listen to my music through my cable box, through a web site or my ipod? Probably yes.

As an interesting aside, San1t1 also published another post along similar lines.

Where does this leave us all? While both Hollywood and the music industry innovate on what they think their customers need, I for one certainly continue to push for zero touch, high-definition, highly accessible content, music, films and TV.