Google Movies

I just saw this on Slashdot. Wow. Google Movies.

What I find really cool about Google is that they integrate everything into one box. What do I mean? Well, for movie search, you use the same search box as for regular search — there’s no “extra steps” involved in getting the information. I mean, movie info on the web isn’t amazing or revolutionary. Having it one step easier is, well, nice.

Javascript Dynamic List Creation

So you want to have your javascript dynamically add structure to your page without reloading. Yes, you can do this, and it all comes down to the document.createElement function, which works in at least Firefox 1.0.3, IE 6, and Konqueror.

How to do this? It’s actually a fairly simple javascript function that does this:


function listAdd(input)
{
// Input mode
var list = document.getElementById('thelist');
var element = document.createElement("LI");
element.innerHTML=input;
list.appendChild(element);
}

First off, we get an element named ‘thelist’ — this is the OL or UL tag enclosing your list. Then, we create a new element. In this case, it’s a “LI” element. Next, we use the innerHTML property to set what goes inside the LI and /LI tags — in other words, innerHTML is what’s inside the tags. Finally, we use the appendChild function to add the element we created to the list.

The end result can be seen and tested here.

Overall, it’s a fairly simple but highly effective little technique that you can add to your bag of tricks.

Breaking your constituents tv is political suicide

MAKE: Blog: MAKE Audio show: Cory Doctorow on the Broadcast Flag

Hosted by: Phillip Torrone, Associate Editor MAKE Magazine.
Show details: 20 minutes, 10MB, MP3.

I thought that this podcast, which is mainly just Cory Doctorow talking about the broadcast flag was interesting. The take home point for me was, “Breaking your constituents’ televisions is political suicide”

This podcast is basically a narrative from Cory going over the history and timeline of the broadcast flag — how it’s been struck down over time in various forms and how we’re still not entirely out of the clear.

ATA Over Ethernet is cool

I don’t think it’s just me, but ATA over ethernet has got to be one of the coolest things I’ve seen, recently. ATA over ethernet basically lets a driver on your computer access hard drives on a LAN (AoE is not routable). You can then set the multiple drives you access up to be mounted into a software raid array.

Basically, you’re using ethernet cabling plus some driver magic to connect hard drives up to your server.

Right now, the only manufacturer I’ve seen who makes ATA over ethernet products is a company named Coraid

You can get full details about how to set one of these things up in the June 2005 issue of Linux Journal, in the article titled, “ATA over Ethernet: Putting Hard Drives on the LAN”

For further reading, you can go to the Linux Journal article resources page