Ephemerons for Cog

Igor implemented Ephemerons for Cog and Eliot explains why they are usefull. You can also read a paper on this topic.

Talk about Pharo's Future

James talks to Stef about Pharo's Future. Listen here.

PC Emulator in JavaScript

Nice: a PC emulator in JavaScript to run Linux. Read more or try in your browser.

EyeSee

Need some easy visualizations in your application written in Pharo?
Then check out EyeSee:

Gofer it
squeaksource: 'EyeSee';
package: 'ConfigurationOfEyeSee';
load.
(Smalltalk at: #ConfigurationOfEyeSee) loadDefault

It is easy to create diagrams with it. Check out the examples in class "ESExamples".

I tried it in Pharo 1.2 - some examples were broken since the class Circle was removed. This is currently discussed on pharo-list. However - it's easy to fix.

Next time I need some visualizations I use Pharo instead of Excel ;)

News on JRockit

JRockit (a fast JavaVM similar to Hotspot) is now free and available on Oracles Tech net. Nice!

Video on Cuis and Morphic3

There is a new video available about Cuis (a Squeak fork) and Juans Morphic 3 implementation.

ESUG: registration is open

via Joachim: ESUG 2011 registration is open.

Learn Smalltalk with ProfStef

Thanks to James Pharocasts now includes a screencast on using ProfStef to learn Smalltalk.

BSUG Meeting

The Belgian Smalltalk User Group (BSUG) is organising its next meeting on Tuesday May 31. Read more.

SmallHarbour project

With the support of ESUG there is a new ESUG SummerTalk 2011 project called SmallHarbour. It wants to provide a simple platform to host smalltalk web applications (similar to seasidehosting.st but also for commercial projects.

Read the announcement here and follow progress at www.smallharbour.org.

DabbleDB shuts down

The Dabble DB service shuts down on May 18, 2011
Time to rescue your data...

Moose Suite 4.4 is out

Tudor announced the new Moose Suite in version 4.4. Read more.

25 $ Computer

Remember the 100$ Laptop. Now there is a cheaper alternative: 25$/£15/17,5€ for a Computer.

Nautilus Preview

Nautilus is a new implementation of a Smalltalk browser for Pharo with support for groups, packages (using the new RPackage stuff from Pharo task force), declarative menus, ...

You try it in the latest update of Pharo core 1.3 image. Read here.

JQueryWidgetBox ported to VA

Looks like Sebastian Heidbrink ported the JQueryWidgetBox project for Seaside to VA Smalltalk and uploaded it to VASTGoodies.com.

I started the JQueryWidgetBox project in November 2009 and meanwhile various people contributed wrappers for seaside widgets to it.

Code is MIT, initially I thought about a different license model: everytime one uses the project in a production environment a new widget has to be contributed back to the project. ;)

There are so many good jquery plugins available that could be wrapped for seaside and make the web apps look much nicer. Feel free to help.

I hope that this new port will also help the project to grow...

Squeak forks

Pharo once forked from Squeak ... some people were happy, others angry. And there were IMHO unnecessary posts like this. However - Squeak is still alive and growing. As well as any of its forks.

Pharo and Squeak play nicely next to each other and both communities not only share history and virtual machine but also members and code/fixes.

Pharo took away the pressure from Squeak to be more like other Smalltalk IDEs. Squeak could continue to be the media and etoy Smalltalk. It's still the best environment to experiment with computing ideas.

And we can now use Pharo to introduce business people to (open source) Smalltalk as these two new indendent posts again prove: read here and here.

So IMHO I think it was a good step, especially since other forks like Cuis started to explorer new areas too. There are also other nice forks like the Squeak NOS project or the Croquet/OpenCobalt story with Krestianstvo and the new OpenQwaq. Cool!

I started with Squeak in version 1.0, right after Andreas created a VM port for Windows and helped to move it forward with code and words. Currently I concentrate on Pharo, otherwise I would be lost in all these nice projects. But I follow all the Squeak forks very closely.

It is really exciting to see all these different faces of Squeak and Smalltalk in general.

Squeak VM port to Google Native Client

Yoshiki Ohshima started a Squeak VM port to Google Native Client.
If you work with latest beta of Googles Chrome browser you can try it yourself.

Native client is a technology where native code (subset of Intel x86) could be run from a web browser within a sandbox.

PHANtom - aspect language for Pharo

A modern aspect language for Pharo was announced today.

DNU in JTalk

JTalk now handles #doesNotUnderstand:

OpenQwaq available

Teleplace today announced OpenQwaq, a major open source initiative for collaboration based on Squeak Smalltalk. To quote:


The OpenQwaq project is based on the commercial software that Teleplace has been delivering to the market over the past four years. It is a highly-secure, enterprise-class virtual collaboration platform that has been used by large commercial enterprises and federal agencies. The OpenQwaq project enables organizations - large and small, profit and not-for-profit - to implement virtual workspaces for their specific needs.

OpenQwaq is released under the GPL v2 license and is available for download immediately at http://code.google.com/p/openqwaq

Some more infos here and here.