New open source R IDE

Check out RStudio - with typical IDE niceties like autocomplete and windows for documentation/object browsing/history, this might be one of the first serious competitors to Emacs Speaks Statistics. It's also nice to see that it really is open, project on Github and all that.

It's also crossplatform - Windows, OSX, Linux, and even over the web itself. Very cool. Check out the other screenshots for a more complete feature overview, some things that catch my eye:

• Support for Sweave/LaTeX (aka fancy typesetting and literate programming)
• Easy plot manipulation/printing/exporting
• Customizable layout/interface

I very much suggest checking it out, as it looks like a quite promising piece of software. Definitely a nice balance for people who want to still write real code but have a more gentle learning curve than Emacs, and possibly with enough substance to even tease away a few of the Emacs gurus.

FreedomBox (and PirateBox)

A project worth checking out.

Because social networking and digital communications technologies are now critical to people fighting to make freedom in their societies or simply trying to preserve their privacy where the Web and other parts of the Net are intensively surveilled by profit-seekers and government agencies. Because smartphones, mobile tablets, and other common forms of consumer electronics are being built as "platforms" to control their users and monitor their activity. 

Freedom Box exists to counter these unfree "platform" technologies that threaten political freedom. Freedom Box exists to provide people with privacy-respecting technology alternatives in normal times, and to offer ways to collaborate safely and securely with others in building social networks of protest, demonstration, and mobilization for political change in the not-so-normal times.

This project is still in early stages but is definitely worth following. This New York Times article gives a bit more context, but the short version is they're building a Debian derivative that will run on "Plug computers", which are embedded platforms entirely contained in power plugs. These are already available at ~$100 and are capable of being simple home servers, and as the software develops and users increase the hope is both price will go down and functionality will go up.

For contrast, there is a similar interesting project called Pirate Box. While the Freedom Box will focus on traditional "cloud" applications like mail and calendar, Pirate Box is focused on peer to peer connections and media sharing. Issues of legality and intellectual property aside, it's a pretty neat piece of technology. You can build it yourself quite cheaply with the following components:

• Buffalo Technology Nfiniti Wireless-N High Power Router & Access Point WZR-HP-G300NH
• SanDisk Cruzer 16 GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive SDCZ36-016G-A14F
• 6 Inch Fully Rated USB Extension Cable A-A
• Skull And Crossbones Pirate Lunchbox
• Energizer XP8000 Rechargeable Power Pack for Netbooks (optional)

You can think of this as a cross between the Pogoplug Multimedia Sharing Device - itself a plug computer - and the rather rebellious Dead Drops project. While piracy has a negative connotation (legally at least), the ability to freely share media is a critical aspect of any modern open society - and even within the existing legal restrictions, there is plenty of "intellectual property" that is either licensed permissively (for example, music from Jamendo) or in the public domain (for example, books from Project Gutenberg).

But back to the FreedomBox - why should you care? It's pretty simple - even if you really trust corporations and government to not abuse how the "cloud" grants easy access to your private information, having a cheap and simple "appliance" solution that lets you mirror your data locally just makes sense. It serves as a backup and as a fallback if your internet connection fails or if the service you depend on simply goes down (companies do fail, even large companies like Yahoo have cut services with relatively short notice).

For now these projects are all in early stages such that only "enthusiasts" and "hackers" will likely be comfortable setting these solutions up. But there is promise for the future, and if this ever gets to the "appliance" level it will hopefully even be built into routers and automatically guarantee all users a basic level of privacy, security, and control.

Web development for software developers

A very handy list of hints. I'll pick out a few of my favorites:

• Add the attribute rel="nofollow" to user-generated links to avoid spam.
• Use SSL/HTTPS for login and any pages where sensitive data is entered (like credit card info).
• Optimize images - don't use a 20 KB image for a repeating background.
• Use "search engine friendly" URLs, i.e. use example.com/pages/45-article-title instead ofexample.com/index.php?page=45
• Be aware that JavaScript can and will be disabled, and that AJAX is therefore an extension, not a baseline. Even if most normal users leave it on now, remember that NoScript is becoming more popular, mobile devices may not work as expected, and Google won't run most of your JavaScript when indexing the site.
• Understand you'll spend 20% of your time coding and 80% of it maintaining, so code accordingly.

There's many more good tips so check it out if you're thinking of making a website. The JavaScript/AJAX hint in particular is a good one to remember as a lot of hotshot designs seem to be violating that rule quite blatantly (see: recent Gawker sites redesign).

Evolutionary music

Short entry this week, but hopefully a precursor for future entries - Triumph of the Cyborg Composer is a fascinating article well worth the read. It details the work of "Emily Howell", a computer program that composes quite remarkably (samples included in the article).

I highlight this because it's a direction similar to a project I stumbled on called Evolution 9, which is an attempt to "evolve" music to mimic the Beatles. All of this could potentially play nicely with my RNM, so look for more on this in the future.

For now, enjoy the works of Emily Howell (her newly released album is Emily Howell: From Darkness, Light), and ponder the philosophical ramifications of a composing computer (Douglas Hofstadter talks about this nicely in the latter half of Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid).