Posts filed under 'technology'
I have to say, this is fairly interesting news. Flash was adopted early by many web-shops wanting to give the user an “integrated media experience” that couldn’t be provided by straight html sites. Since then, the tools have been developed to do site analytics of flash web applications, and flash and the flex framework have come a long way toward optimizing development work-flow. Unfortunately, one of the big things that has been missing is search, or rather search recognition; ironically, many Flash sites are really marketing driven advertising sites, yet their content has not historically been searchable through search engines such as Google. A flash site for “Product XYZ” would likely get less of a ranking on search engines than a blog entry discussing XYZ or a flickr image of someone’s dog named “XYZ.” Looks like Google is looking to level that playing field by now making the move to crawl flash sites as well. Should be interesting to see how this effects search, and where this takes advertising and adwords technologies and the like.
Tue, 2008 Jul 01, 2:25pm
The biggest problem I’ve ever had with PDF files is the fact that I don’t own Adobe Acrobat Pro. So when it comes to making multipage designed documents, I’ve either been stuck doing some creative artboard configuration in Illustrator, or stuck “printing” documents (such as from Photoshop, etc.) to PDF and then using a command line script to merge the files together.
I found this nice MacWorld article that discusses some of the newer (or at least new to me) functionality in Preview for OSX, which details some really nice features, including document merging and annotation, as well as some nice formatting features. Looking forward to using this for making designeriffic podcast/mix PDF booklets, multipage Illustrator-formatted resumes, and whatever else.
Thu, 2008 Jun 19, 3:36pm
I saw several references to the problem I was having with the Triggers preferences in Quicksilver in different blogs. At issue? Well, the Triggers preferences would give me a spinner and never load. All the posts I read discussed how the app is not currently in active development and kind of left it at that so at first I thought maybe I was just out of luck. Today, I finally got around to trying a couple of things. I don’t know what the exact cause was, but for some reason the Triggers.plist file in the Application Support/Quicksilver directory was wonky. I changed its name and restarted Quicksilver and that seemed to fix the problem. I then re-added the same triggers in the prefs pane and was back to work. I *think* it had something to do with conflicting trigger id’s or something in the plist file, though I am not sure. In any case, removing the old plist file fixed the issue.
Wed, 2008 Jun 18, 5:46pm
Until I actually redesign this site and create a way to manage postlets or miniposts or nanoposts… I just thought I would repost this nice little story from the New York Times on blocking SMS spam. As the author points out, the solution is not totally ironclad, but it’s good to know that the mobile carriers at least recognize the issue and are starting to act on it. I feel truly weird saying it, but kudos to ATT and Verizon for getting with the program … and come on, Sprint and Tmobile, get with it!
Fri, 2008 Jun 13, 10:26am
Having just acquired the phone, and having finally upgraded to Leopard last weekend, I started using Safari a little to get some bookmarks I wanted on the iPhone. It seemed pretty snappy, although I wasn’t really putting it through any grueling paces. Since I was going through the trouble of upgrading my computer, I decided to go ahead and do some early spring cleaning as well, cutting files and unused applications, and applying a draconian filter to my process of eliminating music from my machine. (down to about 22gb of music on an 80gb drive - I promise I am trying) One BIG target for trimming on my machine was my Windows XP virtual machine that I run through Fusion. Fusion has come a long way since I started at VmWare, and I have to say, its a pretty great product (no I can’t claim any credit, wrong group). I use this VM everyday at work developing and testing WebAccess (beta 2 just released last Friday), but I swear, for a fairly basic installation, it was taking up nearly 10gb of space on my drive. I was running some tests with a slim XP vm that ran at about 3gb or so (see the article on LifeHacker: http://lifehacker.com/374376/trim-down-windows-to-the-bare-essentials). This slim vm also happened to have Safari 3 (and every other browser you might want to run tests with) installed on it, and since we recently got WebAccess running well on Safari I thought I would give it a spin. I was pretty amazed at what I found.
I ran some comparisons of Safari 3 running WebAccess *in a VM* on my MacBook against Firefox 2 running in OSX. I had heard Safari was fast, but I didn’t really believe the hype, and I figured that Safari on Windows would probably be relegated to the land of second class software, like IE always was on the Mac. In all the operations managing a Server 2.0 instance, Safari was by far faster, and in most cases was nearly 3 times faster than Firefox 2. I know that Firefox 3 is supposed to be fast also, but from what I’ve seen so far its still fairly buggy.
This got me re-evaluating what to use for my daily browsing. I’ve been using Camino, which I switched to because it used the Gecko rendering engine, but was an OSX native application, so it played (more) nicely in the Mac environment. I had originally switched to Firefox a few years ago because it was the better alternative on the Mac, and well, out of principal, because it wasn’t Safari. However, the speed of 3.0 and integration with my new mobile device has got me using it again. Now if only delicious played better with iPhone…
Fri, 2008 Apr 04, 11:45pm
I decided to try out a couple of 3rd party apps for the iPhone that have to do with taking photos. The ability to glean the location of the phone and the fact that it has a built in camera makes it the perfect candidate for easy geotagged photos. I previewed a few apps. One of them was iFlickr, which provides the user with the ability of shooting the photo up to the user’s Flickr account as soon as it is taken. This was the only one I could find with this feature, but I was still pretty excited. I was a little disappointed to find out that no Exif data was actually saved (so no date or time info, no camera data, etc.), but I thought it would still be great. Well, it was pretty interesting, although the photo I first took in my apartment was about 5 blocks off, moreso a discrepancy that you would get using the iPhone Maps application.
Then a strange thing happened. I took a photo at work using iFlickr, and I discovered a mysterious place in cyberspace that to my knowledge was never disclosed by William Gibson. This place is a field outside of rural Lebanon, Kansas, known by some on Google as the Cowboy Stencil Capital of the Universe. In the 2000 census, this small rural town had a population of 300. It is also apparently known as a community suffering from rural flight as documented in a 2006 New York Times article. However, to date, 836 photos have been geotagged to a field about a mile and a half to the northwest of the town center, 3 or more photos probably for each of the remaining citizens of Lebanon. Ostensibly, this is some bug in the iFlickr code where the app gets confused and default to this quaint locale, or, perhaps it is a little joke by the creator of the app. I would like to think that there is some more profound reason, and that this could be a William Gibson plot unfolding before our eyes. Regardless, this is an interesting spacial meta-tagging glitch - when you view my photo on the map, it looks as though tall buildings have sprouted from a field…
Sun, 2008 Mar 30, 7:52pm
Here is a really quick and rough tutorial for enabling the Japanese keyboard on your iPhone, which allows you to type in hiragana, katakana, and kanji. For some reason, even though there is rumor that the iPhone will be making its way sometime not too far from now to Japan, the Japanese language keyboard is not enabled on the device, though its functionality is clearly working and arguably ready to go. (Thanks to the info http://web.mac.com/mac_scott/ and some others for getting me the necessary steps to get this working.) This assumes that you aren’t afraid to get your hand a little dirty with some command line action on your iPhone. I also claim no responsibility for what *may* happen when performing this task. I’m not sure what damage you could do if things get ugly, so proceed with caution. This addresses the problem that I ran into, wherein I cannot login to the Term-vt100 app for the iPhone, so I had to get creative about how to change a file to enable the Japanese keyboard. My phone is running firmware version 1.1.4; it seems that somewhere 1.1.3 or later, this login problem arose.
The first steps are to jailbreak your phone, and install a few of the necessary apps, including BossPrefs, the BSD Subsystem package, and the OpenSsh client. Once you do this, you can disable Edge, make sure WiFi is enabled, and enable the SSH service. You will want to do both, as the “alpine” password is well known, and you might as well be as safe as possible about this.
I found the file I needed to change under the /var/mobile directory on the iPhone. When you have started SSH on your iPhone and connected to your wireless router, check the ip address in BossPrefs under WiFi. Fire up the Terminal on your computer also connected to the same network, and enter the following (replace xx.xx.xx.xx with the IP address of your iPhone):
scp root@xx.xx.xx.xx:/var/mobile/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist ~/Desktop/GlobalPreferences.plist
You will need to enter “alpine” when prompted for the password. Now check to see if GlobalPreferences.plist is now on your Desktop. Now you can edit this file in two ways. Most importantly, in this file, you need to change the “AppleKeyboards” node to also include a node for “ja” in addition to “en_US”. You can convert the plist to an XML text file by running the following in the Terminal, and edit the file in your favorite text editor:
plutil -convert xml1 ~/Desktop/GlobalPreferences.plist
Change the block of text that looks like:
<key>AppleKeyboards</key>
<array>
<string>en_US</string>
</array>
and add the “ja” node so it looks like:
<key>AppleKeyboards</key>
<array>
<string>en_US</string>
<string>ja</string>
</array>
Then to convert it back to binary (the format that it was in), run this in the Terminal:
plutil -convert binary1 ~/Desktop/GlobalPreferences.plist
However, the *easier* way to edit the file, is to double-click it, which in OSX, should open the file in Property List Editor. Once in there, click the triangle next to “AppleKeyboards”. You will see one String with the value “en_US”. Click the “New Sibling” button in the editor and type “ja” in the new field provided. Then save.
Once you have edited your prefs file, you need to stick it back on the phone. Run this in the Terminal:
scp ~/Desktop/GlobalPreferences.plist root@xx.xx.xx.xx:/var/mobile/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist
You will again be prompted for the same password. Once the upload is complete, go to BossPrefs, and turn off SSH and turn back on Edge. Restart your iPhone. You should now be able to type Japanese characters. Go to Notes. You should see a little globe icon next to the space bar. If you click this it will squash the keyboard down some and when you type, you will see options in Japanese charaters for what you are typing. It behaves similarly to typing Japanese on your Mac keyboard. For example, when you type “hanashimasu”, you will see “はなします” as an option in the space above the keyboard. Click the globe to toggle between modes.
Sun, 2008 Mar 30, 7:18pm
Here is an applescript solution for grabbing the html code from a page online. This is particularly handy if you are trying to grab the code from a page that you need to login to. I am sure there is a much better solution out there, but this one seems to work for me ok.
CODE:
-
-- Define the page to save the document and the url
-
set the pageFile to "/Users/yourUserNameHere/Desktop/safariSource.html"
-
set the pageUrl to "http://www.plasticstare.com/"
-
-
-- define the applescript to run
-
-
tell application "Safari"
-
activate
-
make new document at end of documents
-
set URL of document 1 to pageUrl
-
end tell
-
-
set web_page_is_loaded to false
-
--check if page has loaded
-
repeat
-
delay 0.5
-
tell application "System Events" to tell application process "Safari"
-
if (name of static text 1 of group 1 of window 1 as text) begins with "Contacting" or (name of static text 1 of group 1 of window 1 as text) begins with "Loading" then
-
-- do nothing
-
else
-
exit repeat
-
end if
-
end tell
-
end repeat
-
-
tell application "Safari"
-
set siteSource to the source of document 1 as text
-
set theFile to open for access (pageFile) as POSIX file with write permission
-
set eof of theFile to 0
-
write siteSource to theFile
-
close access theFile
-
end tell
Sun, 2008 Mar 30, 6:19pm
Yes, I am now one of those people I said scare me in an earlier post, having recently acquired a 16gb iPhone. I have to say, out of the box, it has been a pretty interesting experience, as the device very nearly fulfills what I pretty much have wanted for a long time in a mobile network connected device. I hesitate to gush; there are still some unsettling aspects of it such as the slow Edge network speed and the occasional crash. In fact, the when it crashes it is really annoying because the OS continues to run, but several applications will just refuse to work. Granted, I don't want an iPhone blue screen or that crazy OSX multilingual black shroud crash, but the first time it happens is very unsettling.
I also had a difficult time getting my contacts and calendars to sync. If you are viewing this post with that same problem, I was able to remedy the problem by opening iSync, going to the iSync preferences, and under Advanced - click the "Reset Sync History" button.
The best part about the iPhone is its ability to connect to the internet via any available WiFi hotspot. I navigated all around SF last weekend using the maps functionality and 511.org and hopped around multiple hotspots in the city. Using Muni in this city has never been easier. I have to say, this more than makes up for the lack of speed on the Edge network (at least in a place like SF). AND, I say this with moderate excitement -- BART WiFi is available in some BART stations. I don't know if it is available in all stations, and I don't know why I would ever pull a laptop out of my bag at a station, but its pretty great if you have a WiFi enabled phone.
Of course, the first thing I had to do, mostly out of principal and secondly out of burning curiosity, was to jailbreak the phone. I kept reading posts about "bricking" one's phone that made me a bit timid, but I am 90% sure now that unless you do some serious mischief on your phone, everything is fixable with a restore. I ended up using ZiPhone 2.6b for my jailbreak operation, which was super smooth. Note: I used only the "Jailbreak" option, the one that says "Best choice for 'official' carriers;" that is all I know, and I can't help you past there. It did work for me, however, and worked very well. The next thing that was required was to install the community sources in the Installer application loaded onto the phone, which gives you access to the "official" list of 3rd party apps for the iPhone and iPhone Lonely Edition (iPod Touch).
I have to say though, with all the booing that enthusiasts did regarding the iPhone not yet enabling 3rd party apps other than web apps, the web app functionalities are rather nice. More on that later, but just to say, my favorite web apps so far for Home bookmarking are the most simple, such as google, AA.com (kudos to American Airlines for getting that one right), and although I don't use it, Twitter has a nice simple interface. Most of the third party native apps are still in their infancy and not terribly impressive. There are a couple that are pretty nice though.
BossPrefs and PocketTouch I think rank as my number 2 best third party apps. PocketTouch aptly allows for simple iPod functions for volume and next/previous functionality using swipe gestures on the touchscreen. It also features a silly but kind of cool function that allows you to play a random track by shaking the phone. (so the next time you see someone on the train shaking their hand in their pocket, don't be so quick to judge...) BossPrefs is great. It does what it is supposed to do, namely that it allows you to turn off and on various network services on your phone, including OpenSsh, if you have that installed.
My number 1 pick so far, however, is MobileScrobbler. If you participate in the whole LastFm thing, you already know what LastFm is and I don't need to explain it; if you don't check it out -- you may or may not like it, but anyway... MobileScrobbler is one of the the most mature apps I have seen so far, and allows you to stream radio via WiFi. Very nice. It probably kills your battery life, but hey...what are you going to do...
Sun, 2008 Mar 30, 5:36pm
Props to Rick for this simple way for adding recent delicious bookmark postings to your wordpress sidebar. Download Delicious for Wordpress here: http://rick.jinlabs.com/code/delicious/
It was the simplest way I could find to do this. It isn't customizable, other than editing the code yourself, but it does a great job out of the box, and does pretty much what you would want it to do anyway, which is post things to your blog that you found interesting, without having to actually write a post about it...hooray for industrious laziness!
Sun, 2008 Mar 30, 4:50pm
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