Thoughts and ideas of a dyslexic designer/developer
Nizam dropped me a im to say, my Bluetooth Keyboard has arrived I just need to pick it up and pay. I'm glad its the ThinkOutside keyboard because Mobileburn just reviewed the top 3 bluetooth keyboards and it came out top. Lets just hope its at least compatable with my tablet and pocketpc. If it works with my mobile phone I will be truely amazed.
An anonymous reader writes “CPU magazine has written a very straight-to-the-point editorial on the lack of quality and innovation in software for the mainstream OS. They compare it to the Mac, which is found in a much different light. Where has all the innovation gone?” From the article: “There's too much coal and not enough diamonds within the sphere of downloads. The greatest pieces of software are plagued by unintelligent design, and very few rise to the level of ubiquity. Windows users don't have a strong sense of belonging; there's no user community rallying around the platform. We use the computer, certainly, or is the computer using us?”
You are damm right! I dont totally agree with the article but generally most of the newer software out there are just that, ugly, boring and uninspiring. Some examples…
Blogging applications: Show me a really good blogging application for Windows which was not a port of one on the mac platform? The best one I've seen and used is Ecto which was for the mac and then got ported over the pc later. Wbloggar is good, stable and works but wheres the Atom api support? Yes I know Atom is still in that unstable state but come on! Wbloggar is also a pain to use if you got multiple blogs and blog alot. I actually use Blojsom's bookmarklet because wbloggar is a pain when inserting trackbacks and technorati tags. Its good for quickly bashing out thoughts or a post but nothing else really. Compare it to Ecto and you got something very different.
Ok taking things up a notch, wheres the innovation in this area? Yes you guessed right on the mac side. Flow which Miles showed me a while ago seems to be one example of this innovation on the mac platform. Not only is it a well thought-out application but its not bad looking either (dont have a mac to try it out sorry). The nearest thing to Flow is Blogwave which is far too complex and somewhat ugly compared to Flow, but to be fair there not quite the same. Blogbridge seems to be the only cross platform aggregator which does much more than just read news.
Look at the instant messenger client field, I wasnt exactly impressed with iChat then iChatAV came out and I was unimpressed with the unknown protocal used for video and audio. But saying that, iChatAV, Proteus and Adium all work well and look good. Compare it to GAIM which Adium is actually based upon. PSI which works well but looks pretty poor (interestingly works on the mac too). Only Pandion and Neos MT looks good. However I'm starting to use Grush which I'm sure I will write more about soon.
The other area where the windows platform is so far behind is in the widget area. Konfabulator has been out for ages and the widgets on the site are pretty good and useful till Apple launched Dashboard in OSX 10.4. Now look at the differences between Dashboard widgets and Konfabulator widgets. For example, a search for google map on konfabulator and dashboard returns 1 for konfabulator and 9 for dashboard. A search for flickr returns 1 for konfabulator and 5 for dashboard. Do you see a pattern emerging here? I still wonder how hard it would be to convert between konfabulator and dashboard widgets. But honestly at this very moment Dashboard widgets are way better than Konfabulator widgets and the innovation in them are amazing when compared. I'm sure Konfabulator can do the same but konfabulator widgets are smply uninspired.
So generally Chris is so right about Windows, I dont know how this can be fixed but it seems a lot more software is going cross platform now.
Just recently I upgraded my PocketRSS software. Wow the speed difference is amazing! Honestly my 235 RSS feeds are a pain in the ass to load in the old version and it would sometimes take up to 2mins to load. Now it takes seconds and navigating around is quick and easy. If your using PocketRSS, honestly upgrade you will thank the guys at Happyjackroad for the move to opensource SQLlite.
Even I when first read that, I thought no way is it going to be that much faster? But honestly it feels like 10-15x faster is an under-estimate on there behalf. Good work guys! I've actually run out of features and bugs for them to consider.
About the Database: Previously, PocketRSS was using Microsoft Pocket Access and ADOCE as its database solution. However, it was not an ideal solution for all devices and is not support with the new WM 5.0 OS. As a result we have switched to the open source sqlite database format. Our low-level testing has shown this to be 10x-15x faster than Pocket Access and is working so much better on storage cards than Pocket Access does.
Is it safe to say Jabber support in OSX 10.4 (Tiger) is not all its cracked up to be? Apple did a good thing embedding Jabber support in not only the client (iChatAV) but also the OSX 10.4 server. But according this article it certainly sounds like it.
Apple chose to leave a few other pieces of Jabber functionality out of its client as well: Though it's able to use them if they've already been set up on another Jabber client, there's no option within iChat to do the service discovery needed to access Jabber gateways.
Off the back of this, iChat users have been sharing hacks around the gateway problem.
Whether iChat offers the ability to register with Jabber gateways or not, iChat users have been busy figuring out how to use third party clients to sign on to public servers, register with those gateways, then return to using iChat.
It was also noted by developer Missig, that iChat diverges from the XHTML-IM specification. Apple are using some kind of rich text which will need to be hacked or reverse engineered to allow for compatable applications elsewhere.
Yes before people start, most of these things are nitty picking and yes if Microsoft even dared to do anything like this it would likely be so far removed from the standard. Not that Jabber will ever come to the core of Windows ever, specially with Microsoft fully behind the Sip/Simple specification.
After installing it and playing with the new version for a matter of minutes, I have noticed an increase in general speed and performance. But anyhow, here's the official list of whats new…
Whats New in Konfabulator 2.0 for users
Multi-Pane Preferences dialogs for Widgets
New Widgets
Improved Proxy support for web resources (AutoProxy)
Whats New in Konfabulator 2.0 for authors
COM support
Inter-Widget messaging
Image Tiling/Scaling
ClipRects on Images
vAlign on images and text areas
Colorization (colorize, hsl adjustment, hsl tinting)
Context menu addition support
filesystem.read/writeFile (utf-8 only)
filesystem.volumes array of currently mounted volumes
filesystem.move/copy
filesystem.getFileInfo
filesystem.getDisplayName
chooseFile/chooseFolder dialog functions
saveAs dialog function
chooseColor dialog function
Trash/Recycle Bin open/empty
Multiple Window support
Multi-Click handling
New Timer object
Hot on the news that Opera 8 will have support for SVG Tiny, the Firefox team have confirmed support for SVG. This is pretty awesome news, I have to say thank you very much to the Mozilla team. SVG will be disabled as default but can be enabled from the preferences now. Beats building a new version just for SVG support.
In an update, SVG will be turned on as default and can be turned off from the preference if the person wants to use a SVG plugin or turn off SVG. Even better! I also wanted to take this chance to explain the difference between Native and Plugin. Plugin's are usually invoked by embedding the media object in the page, as in the case of Flash. However Native SVG means you can write SVG directly into XHTML code and the browser will know what to do with it (aka it does not just hand it off to a plugin). This is another huge advantage SVG has over Flash, however some would disagree and say because Flash is bundled with most of the browsers out there that its pretty much native anyway. Anyway before a Flash vs SVG debate breaks out, heres a list to consider.
I made the mistake of letting SUN install Solaris 10 on my laptop on Tuesday afternoon. The guy did say it would take about 15mins over the network because obviously my TabletPC has no CD Rom. I had to rush off before 6pm and to be fair I didnt turn up till 5pm, so I was always pushing it. And as you'd expect there was problems, solaris wouldnt detect my network card which is essential when your network booting over PXE! By about 5:30pm it was starting to install but the solaris server must have choose to transfer data at 10BaseT instead of 100BaseT. So it was going so slow that I had to switch off half way through the transfer and go. To be fair the Sun guy gave me a DVD of the Solaris 10 with wireless drivers and also instructions and contact details if I get stuck.
I didnt know my TabletPC was screwed till the day after when I switched it on and was given a cryptic message about the Master boot record. Yep, I thought – My tablet is screwed again!
A couple of good things did come out of this mistake. I now know my Sanyo 3G Camera phone supports EXIF metadata unlike a lot of the camera phones on the market which is pretty cool to know. And I also learned how to boot my TabletPC off a compact flash card. Roman swears you can boot the Tablet off a USB key chain but I tried and tried and gave up. But lets step back a second, how on earth do you create a bootable disc in Windows 2000 anyway? I remember in Windows NT and 98 you could click bootable when you format a drive, but theres no option in windows 2000.
In the end I reliased I could fake a PCMCIA CD Rom by using a Compact Flash card and PCMCIA card adapter. I then built a Custom bootable CF card using this nice HP application and this bundle of DOS tools. I then stuck the DOS version of Partition Magic 6 on the same CF card and was able to boot in to DOS by using selecting the PCMCIA CDROM and load up PMagic 6 for DOS. Where it fixed the MBR problem and set the Windows Partition to Active. Then I was sorted! The URL which helped me through all this was this tutorial – Tip: Boot from USB Key Addendum. But the key for TabletPC's is using the CF as the booter not a USB key.
Yes shock horror, I am selling my TabletPC in the hope of getting a Apple PowerBook. For everyone who knows me well, this is a very difficult thing to admit. I somewhat like Windows but cant deal with all the crazyness of Windows XP (specially Tablet edition which has this crazy bug), so I'm moving sideways and changing to a Mac. I would move to Linux but the Mac will do for now. Apple have done some good things in the laptop world and I could deal with changing to Apple for my general laptop computing. So who will take my tablet off my hands? I mean no disrespect but at somepoint Microsoft are going to dump the TabletPC (in my own eyes) and then where we all be?
However this move to Apple does not mean I will turn into one of these nerdy apple boys! Dusting and polishing there apple laptops while the playing with there Sony Ericsson Phones! Oh no, I'll use the laptop but it doesnt mean I'm part of the cult of Apple! I pledge I WILL NOT GET A IPOD, IPOD Mini or IPODSHUFFLE ever!
Anyway has anyone got a clue of where I can actually just swap the tabletPC for a Mac laptop? Ebay does not seem to have the greatest range of TabletPC's which could be a good thing or a bad thing. And no matter how tempting, I'm not going to sell it abroad through ebay.com. I've also been thinking I must beable to get a educational or some kind of discount, as I should just buy the Mac new from Apple. I mean 1100 for the G4 powerbook, I'm sure the price wont go down much 2nd hand. I'm really hoping I will get about 1000+ for the TabletPC which is a little less than half of the street price.
So after a super humorous conversation with Harry on the phone where I almost laughed to death of hysterical choking. Why have I made the change? Well let me explain a little more.
I will buy a Apple Mac, but it doesnt mean I will love or like it *smile*. Now who will take this TabletPC off my hands?
I was talking to Ben on instant messenger tonight and he sent me a link to the Demon 1meg and 2meg broadband services. I couldnt believe it. Just at the point when I was considering getting NTL cable 750k on top of my Demon ADSL Ben comes along and saves the day. Will miss having 2 xboxes but damm I cant believe Demon never informed there customers of the new 5 pound upgrade for double the speed. However the upload is still only 250k (usually get up to 300k with demon). I will happly pay 30 pounds a month for 1 meg but not 78 pounds a month for 2meg! Come on Demon sort it out! Thanks Ben….
Ok I didnt give up, I just got a point where I had to make a decision. Yep thats right, I'm back to using Windows on my main workstation. Its dual bootable with Hard drive installed Knoppix 
ebian) but honestly its pretty messed up and almost unrecoverable. Anyway, I decided that I didnt want to go back to Windows XP Pro just yet so installed a old version of Windows 2000. And spent the next few days installing this huge list… Inspired by Bill de Hora
Zone Alarm
Windows 2000 Service Pack 4
Windows 2000 updates
DirectX 9b
Tons of Hardware Drivers
Java 1.42_06 (was tempted to install 1.5)
AVG
PSI
Firefox
Thunderbird
Wbloggar
BlogMatrix Jager
iTunes
Winrar
Azureus
FFmpeg
VLC
ActiveSync
Audacity
Quicktime
GIMP
DVD Shrink
DVD Decrypter
Mpeg2Schnitt
Windows Mediaplayer
DrDivx
Audioscrobbler plugin for iTunes
Irfanview
Nero
CCXstream
Skype
KeePass
Partition Magic
Acrobat Reader
Xlink Kai Evolution
Ad Aware
Open Office
Xmpeg
Inkscape
XMLSpy
Putty
WinSCP
Resin
Smart FTP
What I'll be installing soon…
Icecast server
Zoe
Textpad or Uedit
Opera
Winamp
Mozilla SVG build
SDP
Matroska Pack
Atomix Mp3 or Virtual DJ
BS player
Blogwave
Spike
VNC
Remote Desktop server/client
Installed Synergy on my dual screen work pc and development mac. Works so well that one of the designers commeted that …Its like god has come down to earth with this software
. What more can I say? I do know I will get a slap down at some point for installing
software on a work machine. But seriously theres no douht its worth of the slap because its so damm useful. Just from a ergnomic view, having one keyboard and mouse to control 2 machines is a god sent for sure.
A couple of tips I learn along the way. Use the windows machine as the server, as its quicker, more stable and has a simple gui. And on the mac run the command like this ./synergyc -n MacScreen -f PcScreen. If you try it without the name, synergy will use the rendez-vous name not the mac computer name, and dont forget to run the command on a mac you need to add your ./. Very cool, anyway… Cant wait to add redhat box to the synergy configuration.
I was browsing around today and found this page for unixness.
This page has been removed because it was being stored on an unliscensed Linux server.
Dont let this happen to you!!
For information on purchasing a SCO liscnese for your Linux server, click here.
For information regarding lower-cost alternatives to Linux, click here.
I'm wondering what the hell? Is this for real or somekind of joke. And if its for real did the ISP upload the page or what? I've never seen this before, anyone else?
Ok my move to Linux is going better than before. I've actually made a lot of progress, till I decided to try the Gatos ATI drivers again. After a few days I worked out that X wouldnt start because it thought the TV output was the main monitor. So now when I start up Linux I have to unplug my composite out then plug it in again. Luckly I'm not using the TV-out no more because of the Xbox media centre, so I just leave it unplugged.
However since using kxconfig
, the display seems to be stuck on 16bit which goes really funky when you load up Mozilla, Firefox or Thunderbird. The screen goes Purple and Green and makes it very difficult to see my email.
On the Samba front, I still cant get other machines (pocketpc, xbox or windows pc's) to connect via samba. But with tests I've also found I cant even connect via samba to while on the exact same machine – hence somethings wrong with my configuration.
By the way I've also started adding parts to my experimental wiki to do with learning unix and linux.
I found I could Apt-get Bit torrent using the stable Debian packages but never knew how to get it running till I came across this page.
First do a – apt-get install bittorrent
If you get no errors and all goes to plan, you can grab your .torrent file from where ever. if like me your using KDE or Gnome then find the file and open with. Then type bittorrent.
From a shell you can do the same by typing – btdownloadgui /home/yourusername/thefile.torrent.
You may get a error like me about a Python lib not being present you can fix that by – apt-get install libwxgtk2.4-python.