Technology on Godlike Nerd

Quick iPhone time-saving tip: App Store

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 17:18:52 +0000

Put you App Store icon on a less frequented page. You’ll feel less compelled to check for updates and look for new apps.

Fighting Stupidity with Stupidity

Fri, 02 Apr 2010 19:07:24 +0000

Cory Doctorow wrote a piece on why he won’t be buying an iPad (which extends to why you shouldn’t either. I don’t agree with his article, but the vehement arguments against some of his have been equally asinine.

Joel Johnson wrote an otherwise brilliant piece that says:

So what if you can’t make iPad programs on an iPad. I don’t complain I can’t make new dishwashers with my dishwasher.

Doctorow doesn’t outright call this out as an issue, but it fits with the theme of what he wrote. The problem is this is analogy is flawed. Let’s see if you can tell the problem with it if I put it in mathematical format.

Behold the wonder of IMAP caching

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 10:01:00 +0000

I’m a fan of Low End Mac‘s Mac catalog. It’s a quick and easy way to go look up vital stats about old computers, such as when they were released, the original specifications, and the original price. I’ve settled many quibble’s using its information.

However, their other columns present sometimes out of date, and sometimes even wrong information. For example, Charles Moore often writes about the failure of IMAP. This goes back years, but let’s check out the latest installment.

Google Gears maintenance isn't a priority for Google

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 22:04:31 +0000

The recent Firefox 3.6 update made me re-examine my add-ons as always. What struck me as odd was that Google Gears wasn’t compatible. Clearly that was a mistake. Google couldn’t possibly ignore the chosen browser of most of the tech elite.

It’s not totally ignored no. Indeed there’s a ticket for the problem. It has a Medium priority. Medium? Not working with Firefox isn’t that important?

That got me thinking. The last time I checked, the latest Safari in Snow Leopard wasn’t supported. Still true. Also has a Medium priority.

Gmail Filters Changed?

Wed, 29 Nov 2006 12:10:32 +0000

I’ve been using Gmail for most of my mailing lists. There’s a very good reason for this. It groups things into discussions beautifully. I also subscribe to several mailing lists that reside on the same server. For example, I subscribe to BBEdit Talk and Yojimbo Talk, both of which are run by Bare Bones (shocking, considering they develop them).

They don’t have a domain that’s dedicated to mailing lists, so the addresses are productname-talk@barebones.com. I’m also a compulsive filer, so I apply labels to these messages for quick manipulation. One label is “mailing lists”. Rather than map email “To:” each of these email addresses, I’ve been using the fact that filters work on a contains instead of match basis to simplify. For the longest time a filter that looked for “To: talk@barebones.com” worked perfectly. It’s suddenly stopped working. It’s now an exact match.

A Visit from the Cable Guy

Sat, 23 Sep 2006 12:36:49 +0000

While I’m going on and on about utility companies (because let’s face it, Verizon and Comcast are rapidly becoming nearly the same), how about I write up the experience I just had.

I don’t normally expect visitors on a Saturday unannounced. Further, I don’t get packages. When I got to my front door, it was a Comcast employee. He warmed up by asking if I had Verizon home phone service. Well, seeing as I don’t like getting taken advantage of, the answer is no. He then asked me if I had a home phone. It’s clear where he was going, so I played along. Yes, I have internet phone service (Vonage in particular). He guessed that it was Vonage.

Verizon needs to stop jerking me around

Sat, 23 Sep 2006 01:02:46 +0000

Verizon FiOS is looking real good, $44.95 for 15 Mbps down/2 Mbps up. My Comcast cable access is 8 Mbps for $52.95. Verizon sends me advertisements in the mail multiple times per week advertising their fiber internet service.

Given, it’s lumped in with those mass mailers that clog my mailbox, but it’s getting sent directly to my house. They proclaim in big proud letters:

The limitless fiber-optic power of Verizon FiOS Internet is now here.

Von-Age; the tele-fon works!

Sat, 18 Mar 2006 19:43:34 +0000

Von-Age; the tele-fon works!: Vonage has sent me dozens and dozens of advertizements and free phone deals for months lately. Seems like they’re stalking me out after Verizon mentioned how I threatened to go into their Manhattan office three years ago in order to cancel my line faster (really it was a simple request they couldn’t/wouldn’t understand, cancel my line as of that day, they took 40 days to cancel my phone)

Bias and Reason

Wed, 08 Mar 2006 23:29:40 +0000

If you’re thinking about sound software right now, you’re way off. Instead I’m talking about the literal words. VOIP (Voice Over IP) is a really hot technology right now because it makes phone calls much cheaper than using traditional telephone service. I’ve pondered whether IP network use is cheaper than maintaining traditional phone networks, or if the telco’s were simply sticking it to everyone. Considering recent more aggressive pricing by the telco’s, I’d suspect it was the latter.

Using Gmail on your Domain

Sun, 12 Feb 2006 21:10:26 +0000

A little while back, Google announced it was hosting San Jose City College’s email. Prior to that, rumors started circulating that Google would be licensing its Gmail technology to others due to clues in the code.

Honestly, I could not see a downside to this arrangement (paranoid delusions are not considered). Most college students don’t want to fiddle with email client configuration. A webmail interface is perfect for campus wide availability. The over 2 gigabytes of storage space works great for students to send files back and forth on a regular basis. Because it’s maintained by Google, it also means it’ll be available to students even after they graduate. And yes, I am still a little bitter that U-Mass is too damn cheap to give lifetime email addresses to graduates.

Webmail, now in beta

Fri, 10 Feb 2006 14:02:25 +0000

Ever since Google released Gmail to the public, Yahoo and Microsoft have been watching the hipster geek crowd move away from their webmail systems (Yahoo Mail and Hotmail respectively). Gmail shows users that webmail doesn’t have to suck. It lit a fire under the ass of webmail providers. Ultimately, it prompted the two companies to actively develop their offerings, and adopting the Google model, release them as “beta”. “Beta” in this case can be read as “if something don’t work, you’re on your own.”

Hotlinking

Tue, 07 Feb 2006 21:30:01 +0000

Because Mike still doesn’t have comments, I’m forced to respond over here to another of his posts. The gist of the article is that some punks at myspace were using his images on their profile pages, sucking up his bandwidth. I had the same thing happen with a punk at Xanga. The conversation I had with him was:

“Hey, could you either attribute my photo or take it off your site?” (My site address was given.)

Gmail Has Lost Its Focus

Sat, 21 Jan 2006 12:08:21 +0000

I use my Gmail account to manage several mailing lists I’m subscribed to. I also regularly re-evaluate it for use as my main email address. So far, no dice. I just like desktop email clients much more.

One of the more compelling things about Gmail is the amount of space allotted for each user (2686 MB at the moment). With most emails being only a few kilobytes big, users aren’t going to fill up that space (particularly because that allotment grows every day). There are exceptions, such as Adam Curry (who receives lots of audio files in his email), but other users aren’t going to have an issue.

Pushing Gmail to the limits

Thu, 19 Jan 2006 21:10:24 +0000

Over at Mike’s blog, he’s redirecting all mail from a domain that gets over 3000 pieces of spam a day. I’m really looking forward to his results because he usually puts together pretty visual results that are fun to look at.

I’m still waiting for an objective comparison of the various spam filters out there, particularly the ones built into the big webmail services like Yahoo and Hotmail. I’ve found those services perform pretty terribly. Despite trying to “train” their filter, I regularly get mail with similar subjects dropped right into my inbox. I’ve heard Google’s is better, but I’d rather not pollute my own account for experimentation.

Pretty Dynamic DNS Names

Thu, 05 Jan 2006 09:54:59 +0000

I regularly SSH into my desktop at home to both run things from the command line and also set up tunnels to connect via VNC. The problem with this has always been knowing your IP address. Consumer broadband connections have no guarantee of retaining an IP for any amount of time. As a result, so called Dynamic DNS services were created. These services allow one to regularly change a domain name to match your current IP.

Create Your Own Planet

Wed, 04 Jan 2006 09:25:19 +0000

I’d hope that readers of my weblog would be familiar with Planet d00dism. It’s a website run with Planet Planet that uses my various RSS feeds to construct an aggregation of what I’m doing online (stolen wholesale from Erik Benson). There’s even an RSS feed for it. However, installing the software (which still hasn’t had a formal release), is a bit much for most people. Some don’t even have proper web hosting.

That’s why I was so excited to read that 43People has added this capability. By default, it includes your 43Things, 43Places, 43People, and All Consuming.

FeedFlare Rocks

Sat, 31 Dec 2005 17:30:59 +0000

Heather noticed that I turned on several of the FeedFlare features for my RSS feed. I fall in love with FeedBurner more and more every day.

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December 2005 tis the Season of “Best of”

Sat, 31 Dec 2005 15:50:03 +0000

I’ve become really addicted to Digg. Slashdot has simply become too slow and excludes far too many worthy stories. The unfortunate side effect is that some stories get more attention than they really deserve.

This month, it was a whole class of stories: “Best of”. Pseudonyms include “things you didn’t know about”, “things you should download”, and “things for new blank users”. They’re just lists of things that people like. They’re not noteworthy and usually, they’re not even original.

Standardizing the Feed Icon

Sat, 24 Dec 2005 18:30:56 +0000

A big ado was made when the Microsoft Windows Internet Explorer team announced they would use Firefox’s feed icon. I guess it’s better than yet another icon, but I never what the problem was with the original XML icon, etc. was in the first place. Mozilla seemed to create the icon because “RSS” wasn’t considered kosher considering the number of Atom feeds out there.

As an aside, what’s even more maddening is that Safari still opts for Atom feeds over RSS feeds despite ordering in the source when one clicks the RSS subscribe button. Not only is that an inconvenience for webmasters, but it confuses the hell out of users.

WRT54G(S), I Think I Love You

Fri, 23 Dec 2005 13:30:15 +0000

Next to my TV, I have an EyeHome and a Playstation 2 (with ethernet adapter). I originally bought a D-Link DWL-G810 wireless to ethernet bridge. That way, devices with only an ethernet port could join the wireless network I had running out of my loft. It worked, but only for one device because it only had one port. To remedy this, I bought a D-Link DSS-5+ switch. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, that don’t work. It seems the bridge will recognize only one MAC address at a time.

Gmail Gains Groups

Thu, 15 Dec 2005 15:51:01 +0000

Google, little by little, is trying to draw me into using Gmail full time. The latest round of feature additions include a vacation auto-responder (something I think ends up being unintentionally annoying) and contact groups. I was so excited to see the latter feature. I thought it would end my auto-filing problems. The truth be know, I filter my email more than anyone I know. Half of my email is auto-filed away from my inbox. The other half is colored according to who its from, allowing me to color prioritize. Purple is family email. Blue is from friends. So on and so forth.

Second Time's the Charm

Thu, 01 Dec 2005 14:35:35 +0000

We may have finally reached the final chapter in the Linksys Compact Wireless router (WRT54GC) saga. The replacement arrived today. I started first by upgrading the firmware with Firefox. It went through without a hitch.

So far, I like it, but what I’ve read about poor range looks to be true. That said, it may not be the fairest comparison when matched with my DI-624, in whose review on CNet was noted for long range.

Firmware Meltdown

Wed, 30 Nov 2005 17:31:54 +0000

So, the WRT54GC router arrived on Monday. Seeing as it was my birthday, it was like a gift to myself. I immediately started playing with it, turning on WPA2 and putting in a password from Steve Gibson’s excellent WPA password generator.

Being the obsessive compulsive software upgrader that I am, I decided to flash its firmware. Keep in mind that I’ve flashed many network devices including an original Airport Base Station, a Linksys BEFSR41, a D-Link DI 624, a D-Link DI-524, a Motorola WA840G, a D-Link DWL-G810, and a couple other routers. I can’t list the others because usually I was upgrading the firmware of some stranger’s unprotected router over the wireless connection. Yes, I am a daredevil.

I'm a Sucker for Networking Equipment

Sat, 26 Nov 2005 16:17:35 +0000

This is going to sound like a terrible plug. I know it.

I’ve been having some issues with my D-Link DI-624 router. In particular, now that I’m using WPA, my Powerbook will suddenly lose connectivity even though the signal is full. It’s frustrating. Disconnecting and reconnecting restores connectivity for varying amounts of time.

I’ve always had good experiences with Linksys routers. However, because of that record, they tend to cost more than the competition. The WRT54G has been hovering steadily at $40, while the WRT54GS is sticking at $60. I was beginning to give the WRT54G some serious thought (particularly because of the ability to use alternative firmware). However, that ability has been lost in the latest revision of the product.

Spam on del.icio.us

Sat, 05 Nov 2005 21:11:08 +0000

It’s no surprise that Digg became a target for spam, but would you believe that del.icio.us is now a target? Check this guy out.

Don’t click his link. It leads to a dummy Blogspot page containing nothing but an ad for Google’s Firefox toolbar extension. Blogspot is fast becoming a playground for spammers. Google needs to get a tighter grip on that.

At any rate, the guy labeled that single link with every technology buzzword out there in order to pollute del.icio.us. It’s amazing the stupid lengths these jackasses will go to.

The New Yahoo Maps Beta is a Real Drag

Thu, 03 Nov 2005 22:44:24 +0000

Yahoo Maps is back with a new vengeance with their new beta. It’s like Google Maps, but with some new features like a tiny overview map showing what your context is from a farther perspective. That’s slick.

Even better, you can superimpose current traffic conditions. Finally! This is going to hold my attention over Google Maps, at least for a while. I like. Now if only I could get my hands on that Yahoo Mail beta to see if it really beats Gmail.

Understanding Good RSS Use

Tue, 25 Oct 2005 19:32:10 +0000

I love RSS. I subscribe to 243 feeds. I’ve curbed my reading though, so I miss most stuff during the day. However, that doesn’t stop me from being driven nuts on a regular basis.

The first is Day by Day. First, it doesn’t put the comic in the feed. That alone is forgivable. Lots of comic RSS feeds do that. The problem is that new entries show up before the cartoon is uploaded. Hello? This isn’t a once in a while thing. This happens every night. Message received by this reader: I will unsubscribe and stop reading.

Google Reader

Fri, 07 Oct 2005 16:21:38 +0000

Just when I was getting ready to drop Bloglines for NewsGator because it will soon have NetNewsWire syncing, Google released its own RSS reader.

I’m going to check it out soon, but unfortunately, I can’t share anything now because its OPML import facilities aren’t working for me.

Fighting Email Spam

Fri, 07 Oct 2005 14:49:53 +0000

A recent Digg submission listed disposable email services. It’s a great idea especially now that spam can overrun your inbox.

I don’t use any of those services personally. I recently made a domain and when I sign up at a new site, I use the name of the service in the email. When I start to receive spam at that address, I have a good idea of who sold my address (though it’s not perfect). Mike takes it a step further. My only qualm with Mike’s method is that because you use a hash, you need to record which hashes match up with what services.

Digg Spamming

Fri, 30 Sep 2005 08:58:55 +0000

I wrote about Digg, the social news site, a while back. However, for all the cool stuff it affords, it’s also beginning to show some signs of the pitfalls of a fast growing site.

Wikipedia notes a few criticisms, the worst of which seems to be recurring stories. Wikipedia doesn’t note what I think will become an overwhelming problem in the very near future: Digg spam.

I’m not talking about traditional spamming by bots that submit URLs to porn sites, debt consolidation, or poker. It seems like Digg’s staff has that quite well in hand. Rather, Digg spamming (or Damming) for my purposes is a practice by wherein the author of a blog signs up on Digg and submits every single article they write. Sound familiar? It should.

Pen Failures

Sat, 24 Sep 2005 02:28:43 +0000

My HP Deskjet 5150 suddenly decided to stop printing the other day. It reported a “Pen Failure”. The little ink light on the front of the printer started blinking as well.

It happened just before I went to print out some driving directions, so it was rather inconvenient. I decided I’d try HP’s website to explain the error, because it’s rather cryptic, even for me.

That was totally fruitless. I resorted to fruitless Google searching. A couple people complained about it, but no definite answer was found. The best I could find was an ink module issue.

Get Opera Free

Tue, 30 Aug 2005 05:19:31 +0000

Opera is giving away their excellent web browser away for free today only.

Go get your registration codes now!

D-Link DCM-202 and Firmware How-To

Fri, 26 Aug 2005 14:55:57 +0000

Because I’m a cheap bastard, I decided to buy my cable modem instead of rent or buy from Comcast.

Review

It’s hard to review a cable modem really. Sites like CNet can do group comparisons, but I have neither the cash nor the time to do a full comparison like that. I can use it for a bit to see if I need to reset it and what kinds of speeds I can get.

Google Talk

Wed, 24 Aug 2005 11:01:30 +0000

After many rumors, Google has released its own IM and VoIP system, Google Talk (in beta).

Google decided to use Jabber as the backbone. That means you can IM Google Talk users with any Jabber client using their Gmail address as their username. You can even do so using iChat. If I gave you a Jabber account for godlikenerd.com, you can use that as well. Update: Or not. I can’t seem to connect to chat via anything but a Gmail name. That’s not cool. According to Google:

Digg It, Dugg It, Good

Mon, 22 Aug 2005 18:40:26 +0000

The next big thing in Internet news is digg. According to the site it is:

Digg is a technology news website that combines social bookmarking, blogging, RSS, and non-hierarchical editorial control. With digg, users submit stories for review, but rather than allow an editor to decide which stories go on the homepage, the users do.

That’s a lot of buzzwords to be sure. It’s much easier to explain in another way. Digg is a site where people post what they consider interesting stories. Other users can agree by “digging” the entry. Each user can “digg” a story only once.

Wait to Merge Your Flickr and Yahoo Accounts

Sat, 20 Aug 2005 22:41:46 +0000

When I first read that Flickr was merging accounts with Yahoo! accounts, I thought it would be a good idea.

As of now, anyone can log in to Flickr using their Yahoo! ID. New users will have to use their Yahoo! ID (or create a new one if they don’t have one); older users can continue to use their existing Flickr.com account details to log in, or choose to merge their Flickr.com accounts and Yahoo! IDs together*. One note: Existing users will be able to keep their existing screen names on Flickr whether they choose to merge accounts now or not – you don’t have to change your name.

Getting Connected

Wed, 17 Aug 2005 09:51:37 +0000

So, the essential part of moving has been accomplished. I’ve got my cable modem and Vonage working. Screw food and hygiene, net access and phone capabilities are what really matters.

Despite hearing grumbling about Comcast service issues, so far my experience has been great. The installation was quick and easy. The installer simply needed my cable modem’s serial and model number to register it and I was off. I even applied a Comcast specific firmware update to my D-Link DCM-202. I actually flashed it using my Mac, which isn’t supported by D-Link. In fact, because you can’t simply upload the firmware via a form as is normal for most network devices, it’s hidden. Look forward to a how-to with my method. I’m even experiencing 800 KB/s downloads, faster than any other connection I’ve ever used.

The Dangers of Email Addresses in RSS Feeds

Mon, 01 Aug 2005 17:00:33 +0000

There has been an update, so please read to the bottom of the post. I leave the original entry above for posterity.

Frassle is a neat service. What is not neat is that they seem to resell email addresses. My domain allows me to use any address at it (they all get redirected to a central address). This allows me to tailor a name to each service. The old tact was to use a Yahoo or Hotmail account (which didn’t have any accountability). My convention right now is either service1 or service.login1.

Konfabulating Your Life with Yahoo!

Mon, 25 Jul 2005 21:24:53 +0000

Along the lines of their other recent moves, like buying Flickr, Yahoo! has acquired Konfabulator. Longtime Mac fans should recognize the product and its author, Arlo Rose, for his role in creating Kaleidoscope. Recent Mac fans should recognize the debacle surrounding Apple’s creation of Dashboard.

This brings the immediate benefit of making Konfabulator free. Previously, the framework itself cost $20 to register. When comparing Konfabulator to Dashboard, the price difference (Dashboard being free with Tiger) gave Dashboard the edge. Yahoo! effecting this price change will have a dramatic effect upon its market share. Mac users will feel free to compare it directly to Dashboard without feeling obligation. As for Windows users, the new Yahoo! association should bring lots of attention. Those two effects should stimulate Widget developers into developing for Konfabulator again. That’s a good thing because as I write this, there is still no working package tracker. Very lame.

Cable Modem Ordered

Fri, 15 Jul 2005 08:10:37 +0000

Those of you that I talk to daily already know why I’m ordering a new D-Link DCM-202. Please don’t mention it in the comments. I’m going to be all superstitious about it and write a big post about it later.

{.float-right}Anyway, at about $40 with mail-in rebate at Amazon with DOCSIS 2.0, this was the modem to get. I won’t be posting a review for a while, but I’ll do all kinds of testing when I do. I’ll use Skype, Gizmo, Vonage (as I’ll likely be getting that too), Bittorrent, and so on. There won’t be anything too formal (as switching between a couple cable modems isn’t really an option, nor something I want to do), but I will be able to definitively say whether I think it sucks.

43 Places

Wed, 06 Jul 2005 17:32:03 +0000

I recently added a 43 Places page to the site. 43 Places is yet another website that’s under the Robot Co-op umbrella. You can track where you’ve been and where you want to be, something that many people were doing with 43 Things.

However, as it wasn’t designed for destinations, lots of duplicate goals were registered at 43 Things. For example, you might have “See Germany”, “Visit Germany”, “Go to Germany”, and so on. 43 Places is much more exact and allows for places within other places be entered that way (such as having Fenway Park in Boston).

Your Mac Jerks

Tue, 05 Jul 2005 23:57:25 +0000

I’ve been subscribed to Your Mac Life‘s podcast for some time now. I subscribed a long time back before I knew what to subscribe to. Basically, there was a single show, which was a rant by Shawn. It was all right.

Now, after I noticed that another show never made it self available, I did a little digging and found out that they didn’t because they made all their money on Audible, charging just about $4 a show, or $45 for a year’s subscription. Saying that he didn’t want to change their business model is a fine justification. That’s cool.

Gizmo, the Open Skype Alternative

Fri, 01 Jul 2005 16:55:44 +0000

Looking through my del.icio.us inbox I came across a link to the Gizmo Project. Basically, it’s a nice face for the SIP protocol, similar to Skype (though Skype doesn’t use SIP).

Skype has always served me well (though I’ve admittedly only played with it). It’s a good OS X citizen, sporting a great interface and utilizing some neat OS X software like Growl. However, you have to pay for the voicemail service. You don’t have to with Gizmo (an interim name). Gizmo has both a Mac and Windows version. A Linux version is in the works.

Grokster Loses

Mon, 27 Jun 2005 18:16:07 +0000

In yet another landmark decision, the Supreme Court has ruled against Grokster. Now, upon first examination, I thought this was a very bad thing. However, reading the Groklaw article on the ruling has put some of my fears to rest.

In fact, the Sony decision isn’t infringed upon. From the decision:

We hold that one who distributes a device with the object of promotion its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties.

EyeHome Review

Sat, 25 Jun 2005 21:59:26 +0000

Earlier this week, my El Gato EyeHome arrived. It doesn’t come with any AV cables. So I had to march down to Wallyworld to pick up some cables. Then the fun began.

I had a few choices when it came to cables. There’s composite, S-video, and component video outputs. For audio, there’s component and optical. Now, if I had the right equipment, the right connections would be the component video and the optical audio. Optical audio: isn’t that an oxymoron? I don’t and I need the most flexibility, so I went with the component video and audio. Note that there is no RF coaxial output, so if that’s all your TV has, you may have to route it through a special adapter box or through your VCR.

EyeHome Coming Home

Sun, 12 Jun 2005 20:36:33 +0000

So, after a lot of hemming and hawing, I’ve finally gone ahead and ordered an Elgato EyeHome. Dealnews alerted me about a deal to get a D-Link 5-port switch for $10. That was a good deal, so I ordered it.

Now, I’ve been looking for a good deal on a switch to attach to my DWL-G810 wireless bridge. Right now, it’s only attached to my Playstation 2. It only has a single ethernet port and because I’m too lazy to switch the cable over between the two devices.

Growl 0.7 and the Endless Loop

Fri, 27 May 2005 21:28:57 +0000

Growl is an awesome piece of freeware that supplies a universal event notification system. Sounds complicated, but basically, it gives applications alternate ways to tell you things.

One of the new features in the 0.7 version is the ability to send these events to networked computers via Bon Jour. For example, let’s say you have a downloading application that issues events upon completion. However, you kicked that download off at your desktop and you want to use your laptop. You don’t want to babysit your desktop to know when it reached completion.

All Consuming Consumed by 43 Things

Wed, 25 May 2005 08:08:14 +0000

One of the neatest things I’ve found lately is the proliferation of websites to manage aspects of your life publicly. Seeing as I’m not totally privacy paranoid, it’s a fun hobby. I recently discovered All Consuming which was created by Erik Benson. It’s a neat way to track books, music, and movies that you’re reading, listening to, and watching respectively.

Robot Co-op, the company that runs 43 Things, bought it up. This means that the two services will soon be intertwined. 43 Things is one of the sources on Tag Central but unfortunately All Consuming is not because they don’t supply RSS feed for their tags. Hopefully that will change.

Dave Winer, an Appropriate Name

Tue, 17 May 2005 05:47:48 +0000

People that are big into blogging will recognize Dave Winer as a hugely important figure. However, like many great people, he suffers from an ego problem.

Wired ran an interview by Xeni Jardin of Boing Boing fame with Adam Curry, famous for various reasons, but currently because of the wildly popular Daily Source Code podcast.

In response to which, Dave Winer threw a fit. You know when people are taking the mature approach to an issue when they say things like:

New AIM Mail

Sat, 14 May 2005 20:32:20 +0000

I recently added a link into the supplement about AOL giving free email to AIM users. I saw Slashdot cover the same story and one comment gave information about how to access it. Naturally I had to try it out for myself.

Now, as far as I’m concerned, Gmail has the ultimate interface (I still have plenty of invites if you want one). So honestly, my expectations for AOL’s new mail service weren’t that great. However, the question is if it’s better or worse than the other webmail providers, such as Yahoo or HoTMaiL.

LowEndMac Moves Moves into the 21st Century

Mon, 25 Apr 2005 14:50:53 +0000

I’d like to congratulate LowEndMac on moving into the era of modern web page code, using XHTML and CSS. I guess my old criticism about their website (in reference to them judging the state of web browsers in OS 9) will have to fade into the background, but considering that they recognized that iCab was deficient (putting it kindly):

On the down side, pages may not work as well in older browsers once we fully implement our CSS design. And iCab really shows its noncompliance. But with 98-99% of our visitors using modern browsers, we figured it was time to make the switch.

New Hard Drive Hotness

Wed, 13 Apr 2005 20:24:49 +0000

Tiger being released on April 29th was enough incentive for me to rationalize buying a fancy new Serial ATA hard drive. For a while now, I’d been eyeing the Western Digital Raptor, which is still the fastest SATA hard drive you can buy. However, it’s only 74 GB big and costs $185 (lowest price I could find).

Then I saw a Barefeats article comparing the Raptor to a Maxtor DiamondMax 10. The question was which was the ultimate G5 boot drive. Well, I don’t have a G5, but I figure the question is just as valid for a G4 (and I’ll be moving to a G5 eventually). The verdict was that the Maxtor drive was the better drive because the performance was comparable, it was much larger (300 GB), and a little cheaper ($180 at ZipZoomFly).

Call Me Sometime

Mon, 11 Apr 2005 20:49:07 +0000

So, I’ve heard lots and lots about Skype, the free Internet telephony service. Macworld noticed it early on, but that wasn’t enough for me to perk up. I mean, with iChat AV (which is full video conferencing), why would I care?

I didn’t realize how cross-platform, flexible, and feature-filled it really is. Whether you use Windows, Linux, or a Mac, you can call your friends across town or the globe for free. Remember your hot French penpal that you got tired of writing to? Now you can talk ~~dirty~~ to them without thought of a huge phone bill. In fact, it’s so easy that even your tech stupid relatives can use the software.

Now, what if you want to call someone without an Internet connection or computer? You can buy for a modest fee phone time to any normal phone number. That’s cool, but what if they’re not around when you call? You can buy a phone number for your Skype account (a flat yearly fee). Let’s say you’re not in. You can buy voicemail service from them.

Now I ask you, how cool is that?

The Problem with Podcasting

Fri, 08 Apr 2005 12:48:33 +0000

After listening to Adam at MacCast rant several times about the lack of student discount for high school students (which I think is a banal argument, but I won’t get into that here), a thought occurred to me. There wasn’t a good way to rebut his argument. Now, I could have visited the site after and posted a comment. However, seeing as most podcasts are listened to away from the computer, that’s not an easy or natural thing to do.

Podcasting is Neat

Tue, 29 Mar 2005 10:25:52 +0000

All right, so I’m way behind the curve on this, but one of the neat side-effects of widespread RSS adoption is a phenomenon known as Podcasting. RSS feeds (at least as of version 2.0) allow for a field called enclosures. It’s a bit of a misnomer, but a useful part of the spec.

It basically specifies the location of a file that’s associated with a post. At the current time, it’s generally an audio file (MP3, WMA, AAC, etc.). In some cases it’s a video file (but that’s much less frequent due to increased cost associated with production and bandwidth). The natural extension of this capability is transfer to iTunes and then one’s iPod (hence, podcasting). New RSS readers aim at handling these feeds (and in particular, the enclosures). There are the open-source iPodder and iPodderX (which are free and $20 respectively).

Firefox Inline-Block Frustration

Thu, 24 Mar 2005 06:53:32 +0000

I’m making Tag Central prettier. I can do all the colors and styling I want just fine. I think it’ll look super when it’s done (but then again, I’m not an artist and that will probably be painfully apparent). Anyway, I want the Flickr pictures to line the right side of the page. Then I want all the other sections to be contained within their own boxes, two per row.

Old school webmonkeys would immediately think of using a table based layout. It seems natural and it would be very easy. The problem is, this is an abuse of HTML tables (and heresy when making an XHTML page). Only actual tabular data is supposed to go into tables. All presentation must be managed using CSS. There are many, many good reasons for this, not the least of which is that it makes the site more accessible. Besides, I’m new school.

Yahoo! Buys Flickr

Sun, 20 Mar 2005 12:54:20 +0000

I honestly had no idea that Yahoo! was interested in buying Flickr. I’m not entirely surprised though. It’s the business model that was born out of the Internet bubble of the 80’s. Almost.

At any rate, the folks at Ludicorp announced that Yahoo! has bought them up.

Yahoo actually does acquire Flickr

Holy smokes, SOMEBODY out there is bad at keeping secrets!! Yes! We can finally confirm that Yahoo has made a definitive agreement to acquire Flickr and us, Ludicorp. Smack the tattlers and pop the champagne corks!

New Beta Versiontracker

Fri, 11 Mar 2005 10:01:13 +0000

As I am a .Mac member, I get a free Versiontracker membership. That was the main reason that I stuck with it over MacUpdate. Lately though, I’ve been getting fed up with the rendering bugs of the site.

Those of you who also use the site might remember its earlier designs. Back when I first started visiting, it was extremely simple. It came up fast and there was no complicated code that screwed up. Over time, the site has slowly gotten more complicated and not for the better. Today I noticed that they have put up a new beta version of their site. It’s much improved. It loads faster, looks cleaner (though extremely similar to MacUpdate), and makes me feel better about visiting.

My Formac, My New Radeon, and a Whole Lot of Cuss Words

Fri, 11 Mar 2005 09:19:22 +0000

Yesterday evening started out wonderfully. The video card had arrived and dinner was pastrami sandwiches. Delicious. I probably wolfed it down too quickly to actually enjoy it, but that’s what happens when I get a new toy. Ask Dana how much attention I paid her after I used her student status to get my Powerbook.

So I ran upstairs to my room and carefully installed the new card. I plugged everything back into my computer, removed the ADC to DVI adapter on my Formac display and plugged that in, and let her rip. The computer seemed to start up as normal. Good.

Google Desktop is Now Wicked Cool

Tue, 08 Mar 2005 11:28:51 +0000

When Google Desktop first came out, it was moderately cool. You could search Outlook Mail, your files, Internet Explorer web history, and AOL IM chat history. I use Windows at work, so I tested it out. It worked from what I could tell, but I use Thunderbird for mail, Firefox for web, and Gaim for AIM chat. I totally forgot about Google Desktop.

Then Google Desktop came out of beta. Not only did they add Firefox and Thunderbird support, they supplied a plugin interface. This is huge. That enables developers to add Google searching to any product. For example, someone could write a plugin to search Gaim logs. It’s tempting to get a free t-shirt, but as I don’t have a Windows box at home, I doubt I will even attempt making a plugin.

Radeon 9800 Pro Ordered

Fri, 04 Mar 2005 22:36:38 +0000

After spending a lot time surfing the net looking for the best upgrade for my Powermac, I decided on an ATi Radeon 9800 Pro Mac Edition video card. It’s the best video that will ever work in my Dual 1 GHz G4 Powermac. I know you’re all very excited for me.

What’s even better about it, is that it will likely correct the KotOR problems I was having. There was an update that was supposed to correct it, but I was too disheartened to try it again. Besides, I barely have time for anything lately. I haven’t even been playing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

Tag Central

Thu, 03 Mar 2005 09:18:48 +0000

I’ve already run this idea by a couple people, but I thought I’d write about it so there’s some record that it was my damn idea. If you’ve read someone write about this or actually do it already, let me know in the comments.

Tag, You’re It

Many of you are already familiar with tagging, or folksonomies. Popular services use this categorization/organization paradigm to help users manage their content. For example, there’s del.icio.us for bookmarks, Flickr for pictures, 43 Things for goals, and even Technorati for blog posts such as this one. Some of these services are even beginning to list content from these other services when browsing tagged content.

Reason 10,467 that Wired is Losing Respect

Tue, 01 Mar 2005 10:51:54 +0000

Wired magazine has been steadily losing favor in technology circles. This isn’t because they’re a commercial giant. It’s because of piss poor reporting. In New Browsers, Same Unwanted Ads, we get to read all the same FUD that has been spread by Microsoft about other operating systems, just in the sphere of web browsers now. In other words, Firefox (and others) are only more secure now because of security through obscurity. You’re only safe because you’re using something that attackers don’t know about (yet).

Firefox Updated to 1.0.1

Fri, 25 Feb 2005 08:21:48 +0000

Mozilla has updated Firefox to 1.0.1. This is primarily a bug and security fix release (recommended for all users).

If you’re familiar with bittorrent, please use the Mozilla provided torrents. If not, visit their main download page.

There is an unofficial changelog for the update.

Microsoft Shuts Off External Access

Wed, 23 Feb 2005 19:41:54 +0000

Truth be known, I do have a HoTMaiL account just for registration to sites that almost certainly will spam me. There have been rumors that access to Hotmail accounts through things like Outlook Express, Entourage, and third party plugins, such as the one for Mail.app would be shut off. You’d be forced into using the web interface (which still sucks).

It became official today:

Dear MSN Member,

Recently, Hotmail announced that in order to improve customer experience and reduce spam and junk e-mail abuse on MSN services, Hotmail will no longer allow new e-mail accounts to be accessed via Microsoft Office Outlook and Outlook Express.

Maps Done Right

Wed, 09 Feb 2005 09:06:34 +0000

Google‘s services are growing quickly. Very quickly. First it was just a web search engine. Then they added image searching (of course, it still has its kinks). They added newsgroups, news, and price searching, aka Froogle. That wasn’t enough though. They added a free email service (I have 6 invitations sitting around doing nothing for anyone interested) and desktop searching which still doesn’t support Macs, Firefox, or Thunderbird. I’m still leaving out countless other products and services.

Very recently, their new “local” service added things like finding restaurants and other businesses. As I played with it, I noticed something. They had their own maps embedded in those searches. It wasn’t Yahoo Maps or MapQuest based. I personally preferred the former to the latter. My suspicion was well founded as Google is publically beta testing their new Map service. It uses some very new browser tricks (standards based) to make the maps interactive without any heavy Java or endless page loading. My words can’t do it justice, so check it out for yourself.

I'll Show You Mine if You Show Me Yours

Thu, 03 Feb 2005 22:04:13 +0000

Just a quick one today. I’m sure most people have already heard of Flickr and so had I, but up until recently I hadn’t done anything with it. The buzz is well deserved. They fully support RSS, Creative Commons, as well as a million other features. I’ve barely scratched the surface. They’ll always have a free version in addition to premium accounts. I’ll probably stick with Gallery for some time to come, but this is definitely a more than worthy replacement for WebShots. So boys and girls, put up some pictures and let me see the goods.

An Open Letter to the Web

Wed, 02 Feb 2005 09:32:54 +0000

Dear Web Community,

Hard wrapping is stupid. This is important. Hard wrapping is stupid.

I’m begging everyone to stop doing it. Allow me to be a bit pedantic for a moment and explain what I mean. Essentially one of the first features added to computers when they were being made was to automatically start printing text onto the next line once the current line was overfilled. This is known as wrapping. When people used typewriters, it was necessary to manually wrap and a little bell told one when to do so.

Mac mini, Meet Google Mini

Thu, 13 Jan 2005 11:55:30 +0000

It’s but a few days since Apple released the Mac mini and we already have a product from another cool company with a similar (ok, exactly the same) name. Google has released the Google Mini.

Before you plunk down $4,995 to get one of these neat blue boxes, you have to know that this isn’t a consumer device. Rather, it’s a server to index a business’s documents and facilitate searches of those documents.

CNN Goes RSS

Fri, 07 Jan 2005 10:57:37 +0000

All I can say is finally. Paul Beard brings us the news that CNN has finally joined the rest of modern online society and started offering their content in RSS feeds. It works great. I find it particularly useful because although the New York Times offers feeds, they’re woefully inadequate. The Front Page feed is only six long. That means for most people that unless they continually check their RSS reader, stories are likely to slide off the feed before you get a chance to look at them. Such a fast moving page needs more history in the feed. CNN’s is much longer and I honestly prefer their reporting.

Knights of the Old Republic Performance Problems

Wed, 01 Dec 2004 10:04:58 +0000

It’s no secret that my birthday was last weekend. My parents were nice enough to get me several gifts. I got a Waterfield Powerbook sleeve, Medal of Honor: Breakthrough, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. You can look forward to a full length review of the bag and a short review of Breakthrough. In the mean time, you can get a review of Breakthrough from Inside Mac Games.

However, I soon discovered to my own displeasure that Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR) ran rather poorly on my Dual 1 GHz Powermac G4 with 1.25 GB RAM and Radeon 9000 Pro video card. The very first scene (which is a simple tutorial) stuttered. If the game weren’t turn based, I wouldn’t have been able to play it effectively. The problem only worse when I got to the game’s first cantina. This isn’t a very intense scene (unless you count the moderate amount of people as intense). This Powermac has handled all the other games I’ve played on it (Halo, Medal of Honor series, Call of Duty) expertly. I was so disappointed that I decided to put the game away for a little while and go back to Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

WordPress 1.3 Closes In

Thu, 18 Nov 2004 10:44:40 +0000

The WordPress Development Blog has been updated with information about WordPress 1.3. It looks like they’ve been making some great strides and good improvements, but consipicuously absent from their goal list is per-post formatting support. This makes me very sad.

Blog Change Bot

Thu, 18 Nov 2004 09:42:04 +0000

Some may have noticed the Blog Change Bot button I added to the sidebar some time ago. It was part of an experiment to see how well it worked. Until recently, it simply didn’t work at all. Sure, I could IM it at blogchangebot. I could even send commands. It even seemed to recognize my subscriptions and list their last modification.

The problem was that it never notified me of changes (and I’m online more often than not). I was just about to remove the button and link when, this morning I actually got an update notification from blogchangebot8. Recently, I noticed that the bot had gone down frequently and I’m guessing that the developer was having scalability issues (though you couldn’t tell this from the website).

Phishing Can Happen to You

Sun, 14 Nov 2004 20:19:41 +0000

Phishing (which is explained at Wikipedia) has become very commonplace, particularly on the Internet. It even happens over the phone.

Up until this morning, I thought only morons became the victims of these scams because they were so obvious. However, this has changed somewhat. Not only has it become much more common (hell, more than half of my spam is phishing attempts), but they’ve hidden themselves very well.

My father received an email this morning from Amazon.com supposedly asking to verify his credit card information. Yesterday, he had placed an order for him. The email even had an “@amazon.com” return address. It contained a link that was of the structure: {http://www.amazon.com@service02.com//exec/obidos/subst/home/home.html/102-9382243-7140932}. Looks like Amazon, right? Wrong. Everything preceding the “@” is considered a username for the domain that follows, which is our scammer.

Firefox 1.0 Tomorrow

Mon, 08 Nov 2004 20:06:23 +0000

I don’t care what you are doing tomorrow. You’re going to make the time to get Firefox 1.0. Places that will most likely have download links:

It’s likely to be a bandwidth bonanza, so be sure to find a mirror or BitTorrent feed.

BitTorrent Finally Getting Used

Mon, 08 Nov 2004 10:52:01 +0000

As reported on MacCentral, MacGameSeed is starting to distribute Mac game files via BitTorrent. Blizzard has been doing this a little while now (primarily with the upcoming World of Warcraft beta).

It’s good to see more companies embracing this content distribution model (with 35% of the traffic on the Internet coming from BitTorrent). What I am surprised by is the lack of attention companies like Akamai have paid to it. Instead of paying these companies for mirrors for new files, they can simply set up a BitTorrent feed with a few seeds and let it rip. It may be that because BitTorrent is still a little rough around the edges for novice users (who don’t know about opening up ports to facilitate greater speeds, etc.) gives them reassurance. However, this will change (and already is, as Azureus has made some incredible strides into diagnosing performance problems for newbie users).

Firefox 1.0 RC1: Tabs Done Right

Thu, 28 Oct 2004 15:53:48 +0000

I recently dumped Safari on my Macs in favor of Firefox. Nearly everything worked as I wanted, but one very important function was still misbehaving (at least as far as I was concerned). Every, and I mean every, link I clicked on in an external program would open a new window. This was slightly annoying at work with Windows, but it was a genuine PITA on my Macs because Firefox would attempt to offset the new window, inevitably resulting in part of the window being off screen.

Help Firefox Get a Full Page Ad in the New York Times

Tue, 19 Oct 2004 12:15:12 +0000

I’ve been preaching about Firefox for some time now. Most everyone I know has switched from Internet Explorer and loved the change.

With the Firefox 1.0 release fast approaching, Spreadfirefox.com (caution, it’s currently being slashdotted, so you may not be able to get the page) is raising money for a full page advertisement in the New York Times to gain even more users. $30 will get your name in the ad (only $10 for students; I’m looking at you Dana, Katie, and Scott). Donate here.

More Google Stuff

Fri, 15 Oct 2004 16:00:45 +0000

Picasa and Hello! are cool!

PithHelmet, Shareware Fees, and Update Site Backlash

Thu, 14 Oct 2004 11:23:13 +0000

The author of PithHelmet recently wrote a short piece on shareware fees and software update site feedback. It’s disheartening to think that this is becoming increasingly common. Mike worked very hard on PithHelmet 2 to make it far suprior to the open-source, free PithHelmet 0.7.3. He added quality features like Machete (which allows you to filter web pages through a perl or Python script) which I have not seen on any other browser. He continues to distribute 0.7.3 for free, but apparently that’s not good enough for some users.

My New Favorite Firefox Extension

Wed, 13 Oct 2004 22:21:36 +0000

I’m big into Firefox right now, but I’m still a fan of Safari (if only they’d speed it up). I still miss (among other things) the reload/stop button. Apple was so clever as to realize that they were mutually exclusive (you can’t choose both at the same time at any time). That reduced them to a single button.

My prayers were answered with the Stop-or-Reload Button extension. Do it up.

My Theme Will Be Bundled with NetNewsWire

Wed, 13 Oct 2004 21:38:28 +0000

I can’t quite explain how excited I am, but Brent Simmons likes my NetNewsWire theme and will be including it with NetNewsWire. I’m quite thrilled and didn’t expect it to be worthy of that honor. At any rate, I’ll be referring to it as Autumn from now on.

Trackback Ethics

Wed, 13 Oct 2004 09:12:28 +0000

Trackback Ethics But this isn’t about squabbling between bloggers. I’m more interested in the question, “What is trackback for?” or “What is ethical Trackback?” I’m not sure. From what I’ve read, Trackback is just a ping to tell someone that you’ve written / blogged / quoted something similar or on the same topic (Wikipedia). I was continuing Scoble’s discussion of blog promotion. I tracked back discussions of it. Was that wrong? Elliott Back asks some interesting questions about trackbacks. I think the concept and its appropriateness is all too often not explained well. I’m new to the blogging game so I won’t pretend to know everything. I will say that this problem is likely to get much worse as blogging packages are becoming increasingly accessible to laymen. It might be time for blogging package makers to take a little responsibility to explain these concepts better to new users.

mozparty2: It's 1.0 time… again!

Wed, 13 Oct 2004 08:51:58 +0000

mozparty2: It’s 1.0 time… again! Remember the Mozilla 1.0 Release? Mozilla supporters were partying all over the world! But now, it’s 1.0 time again – for Firefox and Thunderbird! Join the parties and help making the next browser statistics way different 🙂 Needless to say, I find the impending Firefox 1.0 release very exciting. What’s even more exciting is the number of people I’ve turned on to it and can no longer stand Internet Explorer. Take that, subspace.

Hoax or Reality?

Tue, 12 Oct 2004 16:30:59 +0000

The current Internet buzz is about CherryOS (Cheerios?). They claim to have a Mac on x86 hardware emulator that runs at 80% of the speed of the host processor with full hardware support.

I was almost tempted to make a new category to file this under: Bullshit.

Late to the del.icio.us Party

Mon, 11 Oct 2004 20:26:13 +0000

I’ll admit it. I read about del.icio.us several times, but I largely ignored it because it wasn’t immediately obvious what it was. Explanation by others and even the site itself left me even more confused than I was already.

I had largely given up on figuring it out before scriptygoddess mentioned it in her blog. It was enough to prompt me to give it another shot.

I finally figured out what it was, despite the impossibly vague description on their site, which reads “a social bookmarks manager”. What the hell does that mean? The “social” part of it threw me. It simply means your bookmarks are public and processed by their system. You categorize them with tags (which are simply labels) and their servers compile lists of who linked to what, the top references for a tag (category), supplies RSS feeds of your bookmarks, basically all kinds of neat stuff.

My NetNewsWire Style

Sat, 09 Oct 2004 22:07:11 +0000

The new NetNewsWire 2.0 (currently in beta) allows for definition of your own style sheets to define how news is displayed. I made my own (which was mean to be a fall styled theme, but ended up looking more like a Southwestern theme).

Install the expanded archive at ~/Library/StyleSheets/. Enjoy my theme.

Unfortunately, in order to connect and download from my FTP server, you need to attach “@godlikenerd.com” to “anonymous”. The password is your email address (or any email address). My webhost seems to have missed the entire point of anonymous FTP (every browser assumes just “anonymous” as the username). I’ll deal.

Addendum 1: Apparently Brent Simmons found this post. Color me flattered. Someone requested that I post a screenshot and considering that I now have high visibility on this item, I’m definitely going to have to. I should also warn that I haven’t cleaned this up for the combined view. I’m also going revise it for that today.

Addendum 2: I’ve updated my theme to 1.1. Below is a screenshot. I’ve moved the picture to the extended entry to keep homepage load time light.

Addendum 3 10/13/2004: Changed the name to Autumn for inclusion with NetNewsWire.

Gmail Atom Feed

Sat, 09 Oct 2004 17:27:02 +0000

Like RSS/Atom feeds? Have Gmail? Let’s combine the two!

Fire up your RSS reader and plug this URL into it: https://gmail.google.com/gmail/feed/atom

If your RSS reader is done right, it should probe you for a username and password. Plug _username_@gmail.com (the entire thing) into the username field and your password in the, no surprise, password field.

Please note that any changes you make in your RSS reader will not be reflected in your Gmail inbox. This feed is simply a listing of the currently unread contents of your inbox.

A Beginner's Introduction to Blogs

Wed, 06 Oct 2004 10:15:45 +0000

My obsession as of late has been RSS and blogging in general. To that end, I’ve been preaching about getting an RSS reader, etc. For most people, that’s a bit daunting. I think I may have found the solution. Check out Bloglines. There are other websites that give web access to RSS/Atom feeds, such as Blo.gs.

Let’s face it though, Blo.gs’ interface Blo.ws. It’s ugly, slow, and hard to deal with. It also assumes, for the most part, that users are already familiar with RSS and how it works. It also relies on the authors of those feeds pinging those services (though Ping-o-Matic has made this easy for conscious bloggers).

Ballmer: “I don't know what I said exactly, but it was bad”

Wed, 06 Oct 2004 09:41:41 +0000

Following a lambasting on the web normally reserved for politicians, Steve Ballmer has conveniently forgotten what he said. Nevermind the fact that his comments are recorded in nearly every iPod, Mac, and computer based new source, or the fact that they are also in perhaps hundreds of blogs, he just can’t remember what exactly was said.

This says two things:

He knows he was wrong.
He doesn’t have the balls to stand up and admit that he said it.

“I don’t recall” doesn’t hold up in court and it certainly doesn’t hold up in the media. Microsoft’s public relations people should tackle and wrestle him to the ground before he makes another colossal blunder.

Gmail May Never Go Public

Tue, 05 Oct 2004 10:04:09 +0000

This is a strictly opinion piece and I have no inside knowledge as to Google’s plans.

I think Google may have hit on a great idea when they designed Gmail and the way in which their “beta” distributes Gmail addresses. It may be too short lived because of attempts to circumvent the system.

Perhaps one of the most prevalent problems with free email addresses is that it takes minimal effort to get that account. As a result, we get AOL syndrome. There are too few string combinations to go around. Instead of getting simply “derik” as one’s login, you’re forced to come up with an obfuscated version, with the most obvious one being attachment of numbers to the end of it (such as one’s birthday). So, instead of “derik” you’d end up with “derik112881” (please send presents).

Google Fight: How does it work?

Mon, 04 Oct 2004 12:17:47 +0000

Another good way to waste one’s time is to play with Googlefight. Type two things, and using Google, it will proclaim the winner.

Neat, now how does it do that?

Google spits out approximate matches for any query (you know, 1-10 of about some number). One method would be to parse this from Google’s pages. That’s a kludge though which may break.

A better idea? Use Google’s SOAP interface once again (just as I did for my Google cache utility, and as I will use for my custom search interface). One of the results fields is this value. This can be captured quickly and compared. Part of Google’s appeal for now and some time to come is the fact that it not only has a great and accurate engine, but it supplies all imaginable information to third-parties. That may be it’s saving grace as monsters such as Yahoo! come charging like a bull.

Slashdot | Ballmer Says iPod users are Thieves

Mon, 04 Oct 2004 11:19:02 +0000

Slashdot | Ballmer Says iPod users are Thieves

I think this speaks for itself. Ballmer is crying that the iPod and iTunes Music Store are doing so well. boohoo

Make Any Mailing List into an RSS Feed

Mon, 27 Sep 2004 17:54:20 +0000

I love keeping track of my favorite news sources in NetNewsWire by using RSS feeds. However, a lot of stuff I read is still distributed via email. This isn’t too much of pain with a mail client that does threading or Gmail.

That said, it’s not nearly as convenient as using NetNewsWire (or your favorite RSS reader). The solution? It’s a neat, new, novel, free idea called dodgeit. There are no passwords or setup involved, but it’s easy to sign up and you instantly have RSS access to email there. This is perfect for mailing lists whose content can be publicly accessed by anyone. It can even be used by mailing list administrators to instantly add RSS access. Nifty!

Units, Units, Units

Sun, 26 Sep 2004 22:26:21 +0000

We’ve now reached a time where most people are fairly computer savvy. However, despite knowing how most of the parts of a computer interact and work, the units are still seemingly impossible to master. Let’s review shall we?

Hard drives and memory are measured in storage units. They based upon the unit byte (which is in turn 8 bits). A long, long, long (did I mention long?) time ago, hard drives were measured in MB (megabytes). Once they reached one thousand megabytes (or 1,024 depending on how anal you are), they started measuring them in GB (gigabytes). This has been true for the better part of a decade. It’s time to force yourself to type GB. As for memory, most people don’t get this wrong yet. Most users still have less than 1 GB and as such, will refer to it in MBs.

Looking for a Job at Google?

Thu, 16 Sep 2004 11:14:20 +0000

Slashdot | Google’s Math Puzzle

It’s too bad I already have a job. I’ll have to keep this in mind for a few years down the road though.

Windows Internet Explorer Bug

Thu, 16 Sep 2004 09:38:30 +0000

Katie revealed a bug in Windows Internet Explorer that WordPress exposes. The comment box following articles will span the entire length of the page instead of the box, and as such, the sidebar covers over part of it.

The solution is either to wait for Microsoft to fix it (*snicker* *snicker*) or get pretty much any other browser. Safari and Firefox both render it correctly.

The funny part is that even Internet Explorer for Mac handles it correctly. It’s pretty amazing how Microsoft’s Mac Business Unit got so many things right when writing that browser that didn’t get passed along to the Windows version.

Firefox 1.0 PR and Thunderbird 0.8

Wed, 15 Sep 2004 17:40:45 +0000

Mozilla has once again updated its software offerings. The new Firefox Preview Release (PR) gives us a taste of what we can expect in the fourth quarter when the full version is released.

New features include:

RSS Sensing If the page you are visiting has set the right tags, an RSS button will appear in the status bar, listing available feeds (RSS 0.92, RSS 2.0, Atom 0.3).
Live Bookmarks Once an RSS feed is found, it is captured as a Live Bookmark. The bookmark then looks like a folder with the contents being that of the feed. Slick!
Improved TypeAhead Find which now shows an unobtrusive search bar at the bottom to help control your searching.
Slight UI Improvements Although the changes are slight, overall they much improve the experience of using Firefox. The URL slot turning beige when at a secure site is a nice touch.

Thunderbird also sports some great new features. In particular, it adds RSS feed support. You may think: So what? You just told me about Firefox’s Live Bookmarks. Well, hold on a second. While it’s a nice new feature, it still doesn’t address the problem of managing many feeds and keeping track of what you’ve read. Thunderbird lets you treat them like email, with each article being a message. You can make them read, move them, copy them, and even delete them. Sweet.

Software Piracy: Fighting Back

Mon, 13 Sep 2004 17:00:02 +0000

The Unsanity blog recently featured an entry on a shareware author that took a slightly more aggressive stance on software piracy.

Slightly might be the wrong adverb for this case as the mechanism employed had the ability to wipe out the offending user’s entire home directory. The author reportedly decided this was too harsh and removed the code a few hours later.

Why do I bring this up? Well, Unsanity wanted to keep quiet what the product and who the author was, but Slashdot ran a story today revealing the identity. The cat is out of the bag, as they say.

Perl and Shell Scripting: More than just for geeks

Fri, 20 Aug 2004 22:10:37 +0000

My work requires me to work on a Unix box for a good part of my time. For some of you, that may sound daunting, hard, or archaic, but really it isn’t. It sure beats trying to develop things on Windows every hour of every day.

It actually makes working with others exceedingly easy. We all look at essentially the same filesystem thanks to the wonders of NFS. One can log into another machine if their machine is loaded, or even into much larger computers that have no physical terminal. Very handy.

No More EyeTV Functionality with Watson

Thu, 19 Aug 2004 22:38:30 +0000

For some time now, I was using Watson to look through TV listings, look at show descriptions, change the channel on my EyeTV, and schedule recordings.

Due to changes at TVGuide.com, all those features have been lost. I originally bought Watson solely for those features. I’ll be surprised if the EyeTV support is kept for the product that is succeeding Watson due to its cross-platform and Java nature.

I know the changes to TVGuide.com are outside of Mr. Wood’s hands, but the sudden disappearance of the EyeTV features just smacks of the lack of support that I expected to come after he announced the end of support in October.

Rant: How do I do this? X does it.

Thu, 19 Aug 2004 10:51:59 +0000

A large part of my time is spent reading and responding to posts at Macworld’s Forums. I enjoy learning new things, helping others, and generally raising the level of knowledge. It’s all very fulfilling.

All except a few select kinds of posts. Some of my personal pet peeves are fairly evident, cross-posting, repeatedly posting “It’s not working” and nothing else, calling a (forward) slash a backslash, etc.

Much less evident and I don’t mention because most people would interpret it incorrectly. That is the fabled “Windows does this” line. To give a little perspective, let me give an example:

From Maccentral: Netscape 7.2 improves pop-up controls, security

Tue, 17 Aug 2004 16:51:27 +0000

Netscape 7.2 improves pop-up controls, security: “Netscape Communications released on Tuesday Netscape 7.2, an upgrade to the company’s Web browser that improves control over pop-up windows and adds security enhancements. This is a free download for all users; you can also order it on CD, with a guidebook, for US$14.95. System requirements call for Mac OS X v10.1.x or higher, a G3 running at 400MHz, 256MB RAM and 60MB free hard drive space.” (Via MacCentral.)

Ghost in the Machine

Mon, 16 Aug 2004 15:27:52 +0000

For any of you using an EyeTV, be wary of its automatic recording checking. This feature will check your TitanTV account for any remote scheduling you’ve done. That sounds well and good. It even works as advertised.

The problem is how persistent it is in trying connect to the site. Current EyeTV users are familiar with a feature that allows one to wake or start up the computer to record a show. Unfortunately, the TitanTV account checking function also uses this mechanism. You may wonder why I would warn about such a thing. Well, if you turn it on to do it hourly, it will start up every hour if it is off. My computer has been keeping me up at night, freaking me out for several nights now.

Spell Checking with Firefox

Sun, 15 Aug 2004 21:40:08 +0000

I’ve recently started using Firefox instead of Safari. My two leading problems are spell-checking and the fact that Firefox insists upon opening external links in a new window.

I finally a solution for spell-checking. Although it’s not nearly as nice as OS X’s system spell checker (which checks on the fly), this is an acceptable stop-gap solution. Long term I think I may have to go back to Safari though (if only PithHelmet would accept new rules from me, damnit).

CSS is Cool!

Sun, 08 Aug 2004 14:10:41 +0000

I wanted to add some neat appearance effects to my resume’s page without having to make images and use tables, etc. Instead, I thought I’d try my hand at CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) as it seemed to do a good job with both this blog and the FAQ.

It turns out CSS is a lot easier than I’d originally thought. Using objects and inheritance to propagate style changes, it’s a natural language (and I use that term loosely in this case) to pick up for an OO programmer.

From MacMinute: Linux on the Rise

Thu, 05 Aug 2004 09:47:14 +0000

Linux on the Rise

Macminute has a couple stories on Linux in relation to Macs.

The first is that Linux has surpassed the Mac as the second most prevalent desktop OS. It’s not entirely surprising as Linux combines the low price of x86 hardware, the low cost of the Linux OS, and the hard stability and functionality of a *nix operating system. It’s ideal for many corporate and software development settings. Despite looking like a loss for Apple, this is actually a win. Increased use of Linux will lead to the necessity of all businesses needing a cross-platform solution. It will also decrease the amount of web pages that are Windows IE only as more and more customers will not have that as an option. Additionally, most software being developed for Linux is also being made available for OS X through the terminal and X11. This is a major win for Apple.

Scam of the Week: FreeiPods.com

Wed, 04 Aug 2004 23:16:36 +0000

I hope that no one falls for this classic pyramid scheme, but in case you were thinking about it, please take five minutes, calm yourself down and realize that it is too good to be true. Please do not fall for this scam, nor should you let any of your friends do the same. It’s worse than falling for the $1000 Microsoft tracking email scam because you are willingly giving your address to spammers and you will receive nothing in return.