.:justwerks software:.

Wow. I have totally missed the REST bus. I finally took the time to experiment with REST, an architectural style to integrate systems, and my eyebulbs are exploding with neat uses now. This first idea below is the most immediate idea and is a bit rough but I want it documented.

The thought that has been buzzing in my brain is the idea of the universal context that can be selectively searched to provide timely context information. Big words, here's the simple idea.
We send a lot of information to Person A (usually email, but could be other forms now (IM, SMS, Twitter, blog comments, calendar appointments, address book, etc). Repeat this process with lots of other People. There is a lot of data in there about, well, everything. This is the universal context - it is the data about everyone you interact with but it is usually weakly correlated.

Where am I going with this?

Well, imagine if you could create a REST interface/app for each person you interact with. I would be //universal/context/person/Evan Wise and I am talking with "Random Friend" //universal/context/Random Friend. If I had a URI for each of the conversation methods I have used with Random Friend: IM (..../Random Friend/IM), Twitter (..../Random Friend/Twitter), email (..../Random Friend/email, etc, etc, etc. I could query each of those individual data sources for information that is happening right now.
An example, while using IM to chat with Random Friend I mention Mutual Buddy in reference to a conversation I had with them. Now, using existing semantic search methods I query all the existing data stores I have on Mutual Buddy and display them in a search results window next to my conversation with Random Friend. I can now reference previous conversations - or previous/future meetings I have scheduled or previous emails etc - and be more quickly able to relate info to Random Friend.

The real power in this is that you have distinct applications with user interfaces that are purpose designed for their task (email, IM, etc) but they have access to all the information in all your other applications/data stores in a simple common form. The key would to have standards around the query/results interface and the data structure that each of those interfaces returns.

Being able to transparently, and simply, query existing data stores using a simple URI provides a great potential to integrate disparate information systems while not requiring each application to implement the universal context individually.

I think this would be great for people like me that always forget stuff and don't like searching for it all the time.

It has been an interest of mine to look at the job market up here in Yukon since I arrived. One trend that I noticed was the resourcefulness of Yukoners. They really don't work only one job. There are many people that I have met in my time here that have a full time day job (government or larger private sector) but then in the evenings they have a small scale (i.e. one person) shop that may service some sort of IT need.

These "off hours" shops typically service the small independent market in computer servicing (hardware, patches, Mr. Fix-It kind of work) and in web design services (design heavy micro brochure sites).

I would like to put this question to the community: with the size of the market in Yukon and the "lifestyle" decisions to live in Yukon, is the market starting to become too full of low cost options that will become unsustainable in the long term? I am primarily thinking of the entrepreneurs that do these services as a full time job and are not "off-hour-prenuers" when I ask about sustainability.

I spent waaaay too much time figuring out this one and the web is full of half-answers to this problem.

To configure a Tomcat 5.5 server realm to work with Active Directory you can crib from the following setup.

Make the following changes to the %CATALINA_HOME%/conf/server.xml file.

<Realm className="org.apache.catalina.realm.JNDIRealm" debug="0"
connectionURL="ldap://<AD SERVER ONE HOST NAME:PORT>"
alternateURL="ldap://<AD SERVER TWO HOST NAME:PORT>"
connectionName="<"DOMAIN"\"USER NAME TO BIND TO AD">" <!-- e.g. internal\serviceacct -->
connectionPassword="<YOUR PASSWORD FOR THE ABOVE ACCOUNT>"
userBase="<DN TO YOUR USERS IN AD>" <!-- e.g. OU=Users, dc=foo, dc=baz -->
userSearch="sAMAccountName={0}"
userSubtree="true"
roleBase="<DN TO YOUR GROUPS IN AD>" <!-- e.g. OU=Groups, dc=foo, dc=baz -->
roleName="CN"
roleSearch="member={0}"
roleSubtree="true"
/>


Then make the required security changes to your web.xml file for your application and you will be able to authenticate against your AD installation.

I was interested by the recent question of ISP control. In the first, it was a well-formed question instead of a complaint regarding internet usage rules. Secondly, there are some good thoughts that I align with in regards to what an ISP should offer as customer packages.