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Voice enabling XML, Part 2: Develop a voice-enabled calendar

The second of the articles on developing VoiceXML applications is now available:

In this second article of a four-part series, you learn to develop a voice-enabled calendar. Save the data of the calendar as XML; then to modify calendar entries, have the application read VoiceXML that contains your specified commands. The calendar can also output VoiceXML to speak your daily tasks back to you.

Everyone needs a good calendar tool during these busy times, so why not a voice-enabled one? With VoiceXML, you can create a calendar that you can manipulate using your own speech. Along the way you will also learn to:

  • Create a menu-based application
  • Accept input
  • Write the input to a script for further processing
  • Read a data file and output VXML

Read: Voice enabling XML, Part 2: Develop a voice-enabled calendar

You may also want to read the first in the series: Voice enabling XML, Part 1: Develop a voice-enabled RSS reader.

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MySQL Documentation and Debian/Ubuntu

We’ve got a lot of queries recently on the MySQL docs team address about the documentation (particularly man pages) for MySQL on Debian/Ubuntu.

The source of the original problem was reported as a Debian bug. The assumption from the reading of the license in this instance is that you are not allowed to distribute MySQL documentation unless you’ve asked first, and that the documentation is not released under the GPL license.

The original license was misunderstood in this respect.

In fact, the license as originally quoted in that bug does allow you to provide the documentation if you are providing the MySQL software.

In addition, regardless of how you interpret the license, all of our documentation, including installable man pages, has been available on http://dev.mysql.com/doc. You can find online HTML, offline HTML, PDF, CHM and the man pages for all of our reference manuals (on a version by version basis), along with the main HTML/PDF formats for all of the remaining documentation.

We have never tried to limit the availability of the documentation (that’s why we provide it in so many formats).

However, as soon as this issue was reported on to us by the folks at Debian we agreed with our legal department to put the man pages under a GPL license. This affects only the man pages, but gets round the misunderstanding above by allowing the man pages to be distributed under the same GPL license as the software.

Why did we only change our man page license?

MySQL documentation is updated and released very often, in fact as often
as ten times per day. Allowing anyone to create static copies of an
arbitrary documentation release would lead to many outdated copies on
the ‘Net. This is bad for users doing Google searches for MySQL
documentation, and bad for us (we’ve seen complaints about “our” 5.0.0
Manual being badly outdated when MySQL 5.1.20 was out). We appreciate
anyone mirroring the MySQL Dev Zone which contains all MySQL
documentation.

So where does that leave the man pages in Debian/Ubuntu?

I’m pleased to say that the new 5.0.51-1 package for MySQL that has gone into the latest Debian release (actually, in December). That means that MySQL and the corresponding man pages should appear already in the latest Debian “unstable” branch, and the next major Debian release should include everything you need.

Thanks to Christian Hammers (Debian) and Norbert Tretkowski (Ubuntu) for their help on getting this all sorted!

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Filemaker’s Bento database is the DB for the iTunes generation

FIlemaker have announced that their Bento database is now public after a short beta period.

I was a beta tester for the Filemaker product before it was even announced, and I've been a firm supported and user ever since. The DB has grown over the years with better sharing, web interfaces and connectivity to other solutions over ODBC. Although it can be used simply it's also fair to say that it's a very grown-up database solution and that scares some people from using it.

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OpenBSD coming to the T1000

Is it wrong to want to run a different operating system on another platform?

We kind of take for granted that PCs are multi-talented and therefore capable of running different OS, but how about other hardware and systems. Is it right that I run Gentoo on my Sun SPARC box?

The reality is that it's nice to have the choice. Being able to run OpenBSD on the T1 CPU and make use of those multiple cores has a lot of appeal to those users who prefer the OpenBSD environment over the Solaris one.

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Six months with two Skype phones

I've been using two different types of dedicated Skype phones for the last six months. The DUALphone 3088 has been my main business phone, while a multi-handset Netgear SPH-200D (with three additional SPH150D handsets) has been the main home phone.

On the whole I'm very satisfied. What's good with the DUALphone 3088:

  • Sound quality is good, and in fact generally better than the Netgear units. I've also had better experiences with this phone when making Skype->PSTN calls and Skype-to-Skype calls.
  • Using touchtone services works much better with this phone

    • read more

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What to do with the old computing bits and pieces

We had a clear out of the store room over the weekend and it's amazing what you find. It was like some kind of surreal trip through the history of computing.

What did I find? Some interesting stuff, old Sun equipment (an Ultra 60, a HyperSPARC based SparcServer, and IPC, and even an i386), some old Macs (a IIfx, SE/30 a IIci and a IIcx - even an original Mac Portable), and some newer ones (original green iMac, clamshell iBook), a few more laptops and desktops and so many different components and cables that I couldn't even start to list them.

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Scratch is a programming language for kids

I've talked before about the importance of getting children into computers early, not just using them, but programming them too Most kids today can use computers pretty instantly. Even those of us in the IT trade can be outclassed by some kids who seem to grasp the fundamentals of computing (and perhaps more importantly the importance of playing and stretching computing in ways us adults don't normally think about), but even with this supposed advantage, most kids have little interest in programming them to do what they want.

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System Administration Toolkit: Testing system validity

Have you ever wondered whether the system you are using is the same as the one that you originally configured?

Making sure that the configuration and setting information that you configured is the same as when you configured it should be a basic part of any security procedure. After all, if an unscrupulous person has changed the configuration of your system, you want to know about it.

Tracking that information though can be difficult. You can’t expect to check the contents of every single file. Even if you automated the process, the potential quantity of information to be checked could be enormous and often what you want first is a quick indication of where to start looking.

In my new article, System Administration Toolkit: Testing system validity I show you a number of techniques for recording and verifying this information, and include sample scripts that will automate the process for you.

Read: Systems Administration Toolkit: Testing system validity

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System Administration Toolkit: Set up remote access in UNIX through OpenSSH

OpenSSH has become the defacto standard for connecting to remote machines in a secure way. Not only do you use it for simple interactivel terminal access, but for transferring files and as a backbone for services like Subversion for securely transferring files.

In System Administration Toolkit: Set up remote access in UNIX through OpenSSH I show you how to set up OpenSSH, how to copy files using sftp and scp, and how to set up password-less login by copying across your OpenSSH keys.

Read System Administration Toolkit: Set up remote access in UNIX through OpenSSH

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