Archive for September, 2004
Every now and then, I’m just going to post some interesting links I’ve stumbled upon, but that I don’t have time to really comment upon. So today’s picks are:
- UnitedEmailSystems - FREE 3GB Email and MORE! : Just in case the 1 Gb accounts from SpyMac and Gmail are no longer enough for you, this service claims to have not only 3 Gb available free for users, but IMAP and POP3 accounts (so you can use a regular email client like Thunderbird, Eudora or Outlook instead of webmail).
- FlexWiki: Microsoft’s Third Open Software Project: The world is just a little stranger today. Microsoft has released its third Open Source project. (Readers of tech news will recall that Microsoft’s aggressive stance against Open Source and Linux has in the past made such headlines as “Microsoft: Linux is a cancer” and “Microsoft declares Open Source to be un-American”. Oh well, if you can’t beat ‘em….) The fact that this seems to be a good-quality wiki means that more Microsofties can leap aboard the wiki bandwagon without fear.
- Wired: Campus Life Comes to Second Life: A glimpse into the future of online learning, where we are represented in a virtual world by avatars. I don’t know… I’d find it quite distracting to be endowed with wings and six arms whilst a creature spawned from Cthulhu was taking notes next to me….
- Philip K. Dick - How To Build A Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later: A facinating essay from 1978 by the great science fiction author about the nature of reality, and how it relates to science fiction. In this day of virtual everything, it’s more pertinent than ever.
- The Godfather horse head pillow: This will be lost on those people who have not seen The Godfather films. Why don’t I find this as creepy as the boyfriend arm pillow?
September 30th, 2004
The Register has one of the more interesting takes on the recent Cat Stevens as terrorist debacle: Cat Stevens midair terror incident spurs tougher measures. Anyone familiar with the story of Cat Stevens will recall that after a number of love ballads and peace songs in the 1970’s (”Morning Has Broken”, “It’s a Wild World”, “Peace Train”, etc.), he converted to Islam and devoted his life to spreading peace and denouncing war and terrorist activities. That he would not only be put on a no-fly list, but that the plane would be ordered to an emergency landing, being greeted by federal agents and snipers, is proof that the system doesn’t work.
Only a few months before 9/11, I flew to San Diego through Toronto on a business trip. Normally, I take off my Leatherman Wave (a formidable tool which I wear everywhere) before boarding flights, but this time I forgot. I passed through all the airport security and customs without even a second glance. Now, they’re stopping well-known peace advocates, ethnic minorities, and even elderly ladies that dare bring nail clippers on board. How times have changed.
September 27th, 2004
Over at the BBC Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy site, you can now (after too many long years) listen to the first new HHGTTG episodes (direct link: RealPlayer or WMP). This takes up from where the original series left off, at the end of the Restaurant at the End of the Universe. Note that the late and much lamented Douglas Adams himself appears in the series: he recorded his voice playing his favourite part before he died suddenly of a heart attack in 2001.
Also at the site, you can play the re-tooled HHGTTG interactive computer game, originally written by Adams and published by Infocom back in the 1980’s (the source of many long nights and seemingly endless laughter for me in my teens).
September 24th, 2004
Microsoft: To secure IE, upgrade to XP | CNET News.com
This makes me rather angry. Security is not something that you should have to pay for, especially if you’ve already laid down your hard-earned cash for a product. Understood, it’s not feasible for most businesses to support 10-year-old software like Windows 95, but the 200 million people still using Windows 98, ME and 2000 should not be left open to viruses, trojans and other forms of malware just because they haven’t doled out the money for an upgrade that just wouldn’t be worthwhile to them. Surely a business like Microsoft can issue patches to older versions of Internet Explorer: they certainly have the experience and the manpower to do it. This is just another “forced upgrade” with a large price tag attached.
If you’re one of these 200 million people not running Windows XP, get Firefox.
September 24th, 2004
Techworld.com - Microsoft server crash nearly causes 800-plane pile-up
What is especially ironic is that, when I viewed this page, it had two giant ads proclaiming “Make a name for yourself with Windows Server System”:
September 23rd, 2004
Where do a get one of these for my home office? 
I only have two questions: is the guy part of the package, or is he an add-on peripheral; and is that thing to the right of him a steering wheel, or a valve for its depressurisation chamber?
Update: This is a hoax, and a very funny one (see snopes.com). Apparently, Scott McNealy (head of Sun) and Mitch Kapor (founder of Lotus) were suckered by it, too: Internet hoax hoodwinks McNealy.
September 22nd, 2004
A Wikipedia press release states that Wikipedia has now reached one million articles, that 2500 new articles are being added each day, and that 25000 changes occur daily. That is an incredible amount of information! The press release also announces a fundraising drive, and gives a nice encapsulated overview of the project. Congratulations to the team on this amazing milestone.
On a related note, an article at kuro5hin gives some insights as to how the Wikipedia has come to be as well-written and accurate as it is. An interesting glimpse at human dynamics, culture and technology.
September 21st, 2004
I’m always on the lookout for bridges between English (and in particular, literature) and technology. However, the articles I come across usually concern how technology is applied to the study of literature or creativity. On Groklaw today, I found a well-written piece coming from the opposite direction: literature applied to technology.
For those who haven’t been following technology news, the story thus far in this strange soap opera: Linux is a product created by thousands of volunteers around the world, and is born of the Open Source philosophy of freedom of speech and the spread of knowledge. Last year, a firm named SCO (nee Caldera), a failing provider of Linux, and now a staunch advocate of its own UnixWare OS, claimed to own the intellectual property and copyrights behind the UNIX operating system, upon which Linux is modelled. They accuse IBM of “stealing” their code and contributing it to Linux, which has been growing by leaps and bounds in recent years (to the dismay of Microsoft) and is a major focus of IBM, it all but decimating the market share for SCO UnixWare. SCO has threatened to sue Linux users all over the world for using their “property”, and has levied a lawsuit at IBM for several billion dollars (and well as initiating lawsuits against others such as Daimler-Chrysler). SCO stock, initially soaring to over $20 upon announcement of the longshot lawsuit, has been plummetting in recent months to now under $4, and the two major investors (the Royal Bank of Canada and BayStar Inc.) have cut their losses and walked away. The CEO, one Darl McBride, has been mouthing off about the legal issues quite regularly in the press, and is probably the “most hated man in IT” right now, due to the popularity of Linux among techies and advocates of freedom. SCO has been suffering many losses lately, and the courts, media, customers and investors have not been kind to them. The story gets far more complicated than that, and experiences twists and turns every day, but that is the gist of it. Groklaw is the community site set up to carefully watch and dissect the case, often digging up information that slowly puts nails into the SCO coffin.
That being said, here is the wonderful and hilarious send-up of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven”, entitled “The Nazgul, A Derivative Work of the Intellectual Property of Edgar Allan Poe” by the Groklaw enthusiast Alanyst: The Nazgul.
September 21st, 2004
It seems that every techie blogger is sharing his or her list of essential applications, and is inquiring what everybody else is using. Coincidentally, I’ve received four personal emails this week from people who probably don’t even read blogs, and they’ve asked me my personal opinions about what software I recommend. So who am I to buck the trend? Forthwith, my list of current essential software (at least for today):
- Text editing: My first choice is definitely Emacs. Depending on my mood and what system I’m on, you’ll catch me using GNU Emacs or XEmacs. This “kitchen sink” of text editors goes back decades, and its maturity and range of functionality (as well as complexity) shows it. Besides text editing, it handles file management, FTP, news reading, mail, wiki stuff, planner/calendar items, web browsing, code writing, IRC, instant messenging, shell/OS interfacing, coffee making, etc. Not for the faint of heart, but once you’ve learned how to use it, you’ll never actually need another application.
That being said, sometimes Emacs is overkill. I still use vi or vim for super-quick editing (such as config files), or TextEdit (on Mac OS X) if I need a quick drag-n-drop.
- Web browsing: Firefox, without a doubt. A lean, mean and extensible web machine. With a few extensions added (current favourites: Gmail Notifier, Adblock, Web Developer, BugMeNot, Diggler, and Image Zoom), this browser does everything I need it to do, exactly how I want it.
A web developer does need other browsers to check compatibility, have multiple identity sign-ins, etc., so for these purposes I use Safari (OS X), Mozilla, Internet Explorer, Camino (OS X), Epiphany (Linux), Opera, Lynx/Links (Linux) and whatever else is handy.
- Mail: For web-based mail (which I need for mobility), Gmail is the best service I’ve ever seen, bar none. (For the reasons why, see my previous post.) For email clients, I use Evolution (Linux), Mail.app (OS X), Mozilla Suite and Thunderbird, though I’d have to give my nod to Thunderbird for being my favourite of the bunch. I have also used Outlook, Outlook Express and Entourage, mainly to keep on top of the Microsoft world, but none of these have presented me with any bonafide reason to stick with them (although the Entourage Project Manager does have some nice features… too bad it slows my systems to a crawl). SpyMac does provide a really good webmail account, although not nearly as full-functioned as Gmail, and as an added bonus, you can also use the account in Thunderbird or whatever client you wish. Recommended, if you don’t already have such a mail account.
- Instant Messenging: Gaim on Linux and Windows, and Fire on OS X, because they are Open Source (i.e., free) and let me speak to all my friends, no matter if they are using AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Jabber, IRC, and who knows what else. (You try running multiple “traditional” clients at the same time, and watch your system resources get eaten away to nothing.) Both are filled with neat bells and whistles that make tracking your buddies and conversations much less of a chore.
- File transfer: Most of the time, in true geek fashion, I use the command-line ncftp client, which seeminly comes pre-packaged with every Linux distro, and is available via Fink on OS X. The rest of the time, I’ll use whatever is handy, whether it’s a stand-alone client like Transmit, Fugu or CuteFTP, or a built-in transfer system like Dreamweaver’s. Special recommendation: Filezilla for Windows.
- Calendar/Planning: I need multiple systems to sync with my Palm Tungsten E –my primary source of planning and scheduling– without messing up entries, duplicating items, or randomly deleting things. The best combination I’ve found so far uses the Apple Mac OS X iSync/iCal on my G4 and Powerbook, and Evolution on my Linux boxes. The Mozilla Calendar project is very cool, and lets me synchronise various machines, but so far it doesn’t sync with my Palm. Once it does, it will certainly be my planning application of choice.
- Contact management: Palm for my hub, Apple iSync/Address Book on Mac, Evolution on Linux, and Palm Desktop on Windows. (Experimenting with Thunderbird for the latter.)
- Graphics: Ah, there are multiple applications I use, depending on the need and the machine I’m sitting at:
- Adobe Photoshop CS, on Mac OS X and Windows boxes, when I need photographic retouching or bitmap graphics work
- The GIMP, on Linux, for same; also available under Windows and OS X as well, although I often fall back on PS there because I also use…
- Adobe Illustrator CS, for my OS X and Windows illustration and page layout needs
- Inkscape and Dia for my Linux illustration and diagram needs
- Adobe inDesign CS and Scribus for my publishing needs on OS X/Windows and Linux, respectively
- ImageWell: This free little image-handling application just blew me away with its cleverness: behind a simple little interface, it handles two-click drag-n-drop resizing and uploading to remote servers… perfectly attuned to blogs and website development, and a heck of a lot faster than toggling between Photoshop and an FTP program
- Apple iPhoto, for organising, importing, printing and viewing my thousands of digital pictures on my Mac
- Office Suite: OpenOffice.org, for almost everything. I fall within the 90% of people for whom OpenOffice is a perfect (and free) replacement for Microsoft Office. Microsoft Office 2003 (Windows) and Office X 2004 (OS X) definitely have their strengths –especially the latter– but the bloat and cost aren’t really justified for what I do. I occasionally try other applications like AbiWord, Mellel, AppleWorks, WordPerfect Suite and Gnumeric, but OpenOffice provides everything I need (with little I don’t), and so I keep coming back to it. It does help to own a great book like the OpenOffice.org 1.0 Resource Kit, though.
- Text processing: LaTeX. Rather than using a word processor, I much prefer to use LaTex, Emacs and AUCTeX (an Emacs add-on), for almost all my reports, specifications, dossiers and other (non-collaborative) documents. *cough* *geek!* *cough*
- Note-taking: Ah, my eternal quest. I quite like some hiearchical outliners like Tinderbox, and also some “notebook”-style applications like NoteTaker and Microsoft OneNote, but their lack of cross-platform availability makes it difficult to make and transfer notes wherever I am without the fuss of constant importing and exporting. For ages, I’ve been toying with my ideal of the perfect outliner/notetaker, and I think I might write up some specifications for a Java-based network-aware application when I get a breather. In the meantime, I use my Palm and its wireless keyboard as my “notetaking hub.” Syncing with MacNoteTaker (OS X) and gpilot (Linux) on my main computers, I’m able to have quick access to all my notes in standard text format whenever I want, and can synchronise full directories of them. As my father used to say, “Better than a kick in the teeth.”
- Web design: It depends on the site, and how much of it is dynamic or code-driven. I often do initial designs in Dreamweaver MX+ or GoLive CS, and then do further coding in Emacs. Really large sites, however, I stick mainly with Dreamweaver, since I find it the best with site management.
- Web development: (by this, I’m referring to dynamic development) Zope, Python, Perl, PHP, Apache, MySQL and *nix (Linux/OS X/Solaris/etc.) are my tools of choice. Zope is perfect middleware for large-scale sites and heavy prototyping, and has never let me down when I’ve had to do something big and complicated under a tight deadline. It’s Open Source, extended by hundreds of great add-on “products”, easily extendible using Python, connects to MySQL and other databases flawlessly, and is easy to learn (I even used it to teach web programming and databases to beginners).
- Web-based applications: Way too many. The chief ones I’m using today are WordPress for blogging, Gallery for my photo gallery, and twiki for my wiki. I’m also implementing COREBlog and ZWiki, setting them up for educational purposes. Learning more about Moodle is definitely on my to-do list.
- Audio: iTunes for OS X and Windows, and Rhythmbox and xmms for Linux. I have so many albums ripped that a music management system like iTunes is a virtual necessity.
- Video: vlc is a wonderful cross-platform video player that works on all my systems, and has been able to play every single video file I’ve thrown at it so far, no matter what strange combination of codecs and file formats are involved. Also has to the ability to display subtitles (I like foreign films), play DVDs and VCDs, and play files from over the network. MPlayer OS X 2 (OS X) and mplayer are also recommended, and sometimes seem a little smoother than vlc. For video editing (mainly on the Mac), I prefer iMovie for quick jobs, and Final Cut Pro for more intense editing sessions.
- Programming: NetBeans + Java, Emacs + everything else, especially my favourite language, Python.
- Backup: rsync all the way. For true geeks. (I’d also throw UNIX “dd” into this category, which tends to leave mere mortals quaking, and which has been known to appear in my more surreal nightmares.)
Whew. Punters, take note: whenever possible, I use freely-available Open Source software. Not necessarily because I’m a cheapskate (although my wife might choose to differ on this point 
), but rather because I believe in the philosophy behind the movement. I also believe in open standards and open formats, because years from now I don’t want to find that I can no longer read my data: this has happened to me one too many times, either because formats change, I haven’t paid for endless upgrades, or because the software company went out of business.
Most commercial applications have very good Open Source alternatives, and I tend to switch over to these applications as soon as possible (e.g., OpenOffice.org vs. Microsoft Office, the GIMP vs. Photoshop, Gnumeric vs. Excel, Gaim vs. MSN Messenger, Firefox vs. Internet Explorer, Evolution vs. Outlook, etc.). Although these applications are generally programmed initially for the Linux platform, most are making their way to Windows and Mac OS X too. If you haven’t tried them, go ahead: you have only a few hours to lose, and quite a lot to gain –including the cost of expensive software licences.
(Well, I wouldn’t recommend applications like Emacs and rsync unless you’re very technically inclined, but then you would probably know how to use these already.)
September 20th, 2004
For those who don’t read anything in the technology news, Firefox is a new free (Open Source) web browser created by the good folks from the Mozilla group. Lately, they made available version 1.0 PR (Preview Release), and stated the goal of achieving one million downloads in ten days. According to the Spread Firefox community site, they have passed that goal in just four days! Congratulations to the team!
Meanwhile, if you haven’t tried it yet, you owe it to yourself to take Firefox for a spin. Once you’ve tried tabbed browsing, the new find bar, the pop-up ad blocking, the enhanced speed and standards support, and the tonne of really cool add-ons (extensions), you’ll never go back to the dinosaur that is Internet Explorer.
It’s also worth noting that IE market share has been steadily declining for the first time in many years, eaten away by the Mozilla browsers. Let the Browser Wars recommence!
September 19th, 2004
September 16th, 2004
From the New York Times: In the Classroom, Web Logs Are the New Bulletin Boards (try BugMeNot if you want to avoid registering).
Like most NYT articles, this one may soon disappear into the “pay-for” archives. Save or print the text if you want to keep it.
Also, an excellent and detailed article on educational blogging (with a Canadian slant, to boot), from the Educause Review: http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm04/erm0450.asp.
September 15th, 2004
An interesting article comparing the development process and future directions of Wikipedia and the Encyclopedia Brittanica:
Spreading Knowledge, The Wiki Way.
The part of me that forever proclaims “All knowledge should be free!” is certainly in agreement with the philosophy behind the Wikipedia, all the more so because one of the established goals is to produce paper and CD-ROM versions for third-world countries. However, the part of me that is aware of the commercial necessity of making a buck in order to stay in business, well… my sympathy goes with the EB folks. But the times, they are a-changing. True, it is worth paying for quality, and the EB is certainly a quality product, but it is a commodity whose full merits must be realised before most people would bother paying subscription fees. Why would most people bother paying money for something that has a free version which is more convenient and easily accessible? While the EB has consistently higher quality per entry, many people are not aware of this difference because they want a quick “knowledge fix” and, accustomed to the rapid-fire nature of the Internet, they want it immediately: they have an assignment due the next day, or their neighbours are thinking about Yucatan and want to know more about the country, or they want to know what souvaki is, or they want to know if the cat is in any mortal danger because of the venus flytrap. Why bother going through the hassle of subscribing and paying money for something when that “fix” is easily satisfied elsewhere? (I must reiterate here that I trust the Wikipedia far more than 99% of Internet sites.)
I am not trying to cheapen the value of knowledge, nor the fine efforts of the EB crew, writers and editors; I am merely musing the unique value propositions that differentiate EB from the Wikipedia. Personally, I’d love to have a full EB in real, honest-to-goodness dead tree form, filling an entire bookcase with its heavy leather-bound tomes. Alas, I doubt that day will ever come: as much as I love real books, I cannot justify its cost among so many of my other needs and expenses, especially when I can purchase it in digital form for a tiny fraction of the price of the set.
In the meantime, I need an educational resource that is timely, constantly expanding to keep pace with changing events and discoveries, available anywhere on a moment’s notice, filled with the collective knowledge of thousands of individuals, and free for students: despite the occasional shortcoming, the Wikipedia fills that description in spades.
September 9th, 2004
I’ve been so busy lately that I didn’t notice that a new version of Moodle was released a few days ago. For those of you who are involved in education or training, it’s definitely something that might pique your interest, “A Free, Open Source Course Management System for Online Learning.” A month or two ago, I spent a full weekend weaving my way through the capabilities of the older version, and I was very much suprised to see that such an incredible product with so many capabilities had escaped my attention for so long. I’m really looking forward to experimenting with this version when I get a chance, especially the new and improved add-on modules.
September 8th, 2004
Recently, I finally received an invitation into that secret world known as Gmail, or Google Mail. For those of you who have been hiding from technology news this year, it’s Google’s foray into web-based email. One of the reasons for its popularity is that it’s “by invitation only,” and invitations were very difficult to come by, at least at first. Only well-known techie celebreties received them at first, and they could only invite others on an occasional basis.
It was a coup for viral marketing: the technology was so well-received and talked-about on news and review sites that everybody dreamed of becoming one of the “elite few” to own an account. Besides some interesting ways to manage your email (basically, they are threaded to group both sent and received mail together, like a forum), Google also gave you a full gigabyte of storage (huge, in email terms), access to legendary Google search mechanisms to search and group your messages, and (most important of all) a chance to actually get yourname@gmail.com, as opposed to douglasjohnston2641isalinuxgeek2@hotmail.com. Accounts were being sold off on eBay for as much as $500 US ($234,534.97 Canadian), and swap sites popped up overnight to see what people had to offer in exchange for one. It wasn’t unusual to find on barter such things as iPods, website development, copies of Microsoft Office, nude pictures of wives and, shall we say, certain favours, depending on your locale.
It’s changed lately: it seems every techie and his pet python have accounts to give away, and so it is lately that I finally found the heart-stopping invitation in my inbox. Almost immediately, I received the notification that I could give away six more invites, and so my friends were brought into the fray.
I haven’t had this much fun with email in years. Is it that I’m finally tasting the forbidden fruit? Perhaps, but it goes deeper than that. Gmail is actually an effortless and enjoyable way to handle your email.
I mentioned that the mail is handled through threads, much like a forum: Gmail calls this “Conversations.” While threaded message handling is nothing new, Gmail takes it a step further by bringing everything together on on page, including your sent messages, and hides all the frequently-requoted cruft that makes long threads so difficult to get through (you can unhide them with a mouse click). At any point in the conversation, you can click on the Reply or Forward link at the base of a message, and a little box opens beneath it. Type in your message, press Send, and it’s done. Like I said, effortless. If conversations become too long, Gmail will compress several of the older messages together so you only see the most recent ones, unless you want to Expand All again.
Other little time-savers further involve getting rid of the complexities and information overload that comes with email. For example, you don’t see full headers (unless you want expand them with a mouse click): you see headers like “Rick Norman to me - Sept. 2 (2 days ago)”, which tells me everything I need to know at a glance. Simple keystrokes can be used to function just like a real mail client, too. J and K move your little selection arrow up and down, N and P move through conversations, X will select an item, ENTER will jump into it: the *nix-luvin’ folks at Google chose keystrokes that seem very natural to me.
For the first time since my old UNIX terminal days nearly 20 years ago (eek!), email no longer seems like a chore. In fact, I constantly watch my Gmail Notifier in Firefox, hoping for another message so I have an excuse to use it again. And for something that is normally so much of my daily grind that it wears me down, finding an interest in it again is a good thing.
So watch those inboxes for invites, and keep an eye on the tech news to see when Gmail opens up to the general public (soon, is my guess). In the meantime, check out the unofficial Gmail FAQ for more information about this really cool service.
In case you want to email me at my new address, you can reach me at my full name (see my domain name), without periods, at gmail.com. (Sorry for being cryptic: I want to avoid being automatically spammed on this account as long as possible.)
September 4th, 2004
