In My Experience: Software

Billy Gates why do you make this possible?

2003-08-13T09:30:28-05:00

Two machines in my office were booted from the network yesterday when they were found to be infected with MSBlast. The worm itself is not malicious (yet), but when your machine is banned, you can't get much work done. That worm yesterday cost me, my office mate, and many others time and money, and none of us did anything except run Windows. Look ma, no attachements!

I actually patched my Win2k machine before this worm could knock on its door ("hey! come on in!"). The other two Winblows machines were not so lucky.

My Mac and our Linux box had 0% downtime yesterday.

DivX to DVD.

2003-03-03T09:22:44-05:00

We all know how to pirate MP3s right? Sure! Everyone (who's evil) knows how, but modem users like myself don't really get that much out of that system, and even worse, pirating movies is pure hell. The downloads are huge, and all of the formats are confusing, but TechTV wants to help you take those DivX files you have and pump them onto a DVD. All of the apps involved are freeware too.

What the hell is Quark's problem?

2003-02-19T20:03:10-05:00

I've been using Mac OSX since the first public beta, which is what, 2 years ago? Ever since then, Quark has been the one big hold out on migrating to the new operating system, and now the rumors say the new OSX version will be OSX ONLY. What part of the word 'migrate' does Quark not understand... oh wait, they're a dead tree applications provider. Nevermind.

In other, more relevant news, I saw a presentation on upcoming AOL software/products/strategy, and I have to say I'm very encouraged (even if the time tables seem a bit aggressive). The training wheels are coming off, and I think the 'reset year' is going to be better than people think.

I bought Transmit.

2002-11-15T14:23:35-05:00

For what it's worth, I thought I'd mention that I bought Transmit 2 yesterday, and I love it. Between this version of Transmit, and the new version of BBEdit, my life is much easier. This is the way software is supposed to be; well written, targeted, non-bloaty and interconnected (eg, the Edit in BBedit comment in Transmit).

In OSX, write your app in the language you like.

2002-09-16T11:31:59-05:00

Two recent developments in the OSX software world make me believe lots of good stuff is on the way. The first is Camel Bones "is a framework that allows many types of Cocoa programs to be written entirely in Perl". So, you don't have to write your app in Objective C (or Java); you can write all the logic in Perl and wrap it up in sheep's clothing. If you are a Ruby coder, you can look like a sheep too.

The salient language agnosticism of OSX makes me hopeful that more and more applications written by individuals or small teams of people will emerge. Why would I be hopeful of that? Well, IMHO, small groups of people make the most innovative, timely and bloat free software, instead of 38 meg application binaries. This was true of Quicktime which was originally written by five developers. NetNewsWire is written by one guy.

Transmit 2.0 beta looks good, very good.

2002-09-13T11:06:57-05:00

I was a lucky Mac user today and got in on the private beta test of the next version of Transmit. Back in the day, I bought Transmit when it's name was Transit (no "m") because I liked it so much (I was a reformed Fetch user). The short story for this new version is that it's cocoa native, has a much improved tool bar, and can show unix file permissions inline. That's great stuff, and so far, no crashes. Here's a few more vital features in the new version...

The icon is cool (ok, this isn't vital, but it's cool)
native long filename support
significantly more flexible interface
supports fully secure and encrypted FTP connections to via SFTP/SSH
You can queue downloads
There's a built in text editor, but BBEdit it ain't (but it's still nice to have)

There's a lot more in there, but who knows how long the beta test will last, so you may have to wait a while to get the goodies.

MT-Search updated.

2002-08-06T13:06:41-05:00

A third party search interface for MovableType blogs was updated yesterday. Like the author says, let's hope this search code makes its way into the official distribution, but I'm guessing that might (?) be one of those value-added bits of functionality that may be a premium (read: pay for) service.

Anyway, this will help out on the usability front at this site. Google referrers have been finding monthly/category archive pages on this site instead of the individual archives, and I think has lead users astray. Who wants to scroll all the way thru an entire category of posts to find the one they were interested in? No one.

Will there ever be RSS/RDF in (X)HTML and have it validate?

2002-07-31T00:11:26-05:00

There have been complaints/worries that MovableType's RDF data inserted into HTML files makes the HTML un-validatable (that can't be a real word). Someone else had the idea to put RSS in XHTML for 'one file nirvana' but it didn't work out, but not for a lack of trying.

So, do we need to port all (X)HTML files into RDF and use a new class of software as resource browsers?

Two RSS aggregation apps.

2002-07-30T11:45:49-05:00

I look thru my server logs every day and have found a few RSS/RDF aggregation apps thru referral urls. I wouldn't have known about them had I not seen these referrers. So, read your server logs folks, there's lots of great stuff in there. As for the aggregation apps, these two are the best I've seen so far (imho)...

AmphetaDesk (all platforms): "AmphetaDesk is a free, cross platform, open-sourced, syndicated news aggregator - it obediently sits on your desktop, downloads the latest news that interests you, and displays them in a quick and easy to use (and customizable!) webpage. With thousands of channels available, AmphetaDesk can shave hours off your day - and you'll look smart to all your friends! Egotism never had it better!"

NetNewsWire (OSX only): NetNewsWire is an easy-to-use news reader for web sites. It uses a familiar three-paned interface�like that of Outlook Express or Mailsmith�to display websites and their news. It reads RSS files. (It's not a screen-scraper.)

SquirrelMail.

2002-07-13T22:52:19-05:00

Well, I saw that Cam got SquirrelMail installed without too much fuss, so I figured I'd give it a try. Thankfully, he was right and the install and config was pretty easy, and it all just works. One important side note is that co-hosted site webmasters will likely want to go with sendmail over SMTP in the configuration (because of spam issues).

There are two other reasons to install it if you think you may want your own web based email access. First, there is SpamCop integration. Second, Red Hat says they'll be integrating SquirrelMail into a future release, so I expect it will see continued active development.

(ps, this would be a perfect opportunity to do a TrackBack ping on Cam's entry if he was using MoveableType)

Semantic access to music.

2002-06-07T07:41:55-05:00

MusizBrainz is sort of like the CDDB, but in a W3C sort of way (instead of a, sue the pants off of the competitors, sort of way). Here's an overview of the service and what it can do for you, and what it means to the Semantic Web. I think the part about the RDF based Metadata Initiative is what's going to make it interesting.

Real glad to see you go.

2002-03-05T18:55:16-05:00

In this C|Net article, Rob Glaser of Real Networks says "The PC is the most flexible platform today. But five or 10 years from now, the majority of our users won't be on PCs." To which I say, good luck and good riddance. TV/PC convergence is as popular today as push technology (read: not!) and Real Video is, at best, a misnomer. Moving the biz plan to the world of television (no boubt in a internet like way) is going to be tough. The really scary thing is this Microsoft-ian comment from Glaser "We want people to look at the payment like their water bill, electrical bill or phone bill."

Don't ask me for my life's story.

2002-02-19T23:09:13-05:00

I would really like to beta test Norpath Elements, and it seems like many others would like to as well. They note that "Due to overwhelming demand, we can only offer the beta to applicants who qualify." Which is surprising considering it has gotten zero press outside of the weblog community.

After looking at the info required for registering for the beta, I've decided to wait. Making a phone number a required field for a beta is ridiculous. Name, email and a field for adding any comments (and perhaps soliciting reference info) is a pretty low threshold, but my life's story isn't. My favorite field is the 'Usage' field, which is a text area that I couldn't fill due to NDA's on the projects I work on.

Spyware sucks.

2002-01-24T15:22:51-05:00

Seriously, Spyware is one of the worst things to come along on the Internet in the last year or so (the Nimda and Code Red viruses would be my other pick). What is so offensive about it is that YOU intstall it without your knowledge or approval, and then it reports various bits of information back to the creator of the software.

The experience the user gets from this sort of thing is terrible and does not lend itself to a viable business plan. People will actively fight back against these sorts of activities, and news articles will cover it, which only underscores the need for positive, user oriented, product experiences. AudioGalaxy failed at that, and has shot iteself in the foot. If you use their software, or a produce internet software, please learn from their mistake.

Solutions for removing perfectnav (aka find4u ?) have been posted here recently. Scroll down to see those solutions and to see a comment from what seems to be a perfectnav representative (offering uninstall info). I had never heard of perfectnav before people stated posting comments about it here (I'm a Mac OSX user) and cannot vouch-for/verify anything in the comments posted below. Swim at your own risk.

A killer app this way comes.

2001-12-28T20:06:29-05:00

Lots of blogs and other sites that syndicate their content via XML/RSS means that cool things like Klip, from Serence, can exist. There is a beta available for Win98 and Win2K with "cooler OSs soon to be supported." I suspect this app is going to be a big thing in the blogging community. (First seen @ Cogworks)