A Career in Engineering

Yesterday's dilbert... via Dilbert Comic Strip Archive - Dilbert.com - The Official Dilbert Website by Scott Adams - Dilbert, Dogbert and Coworkers!

nothing to add.

5 Gmail features

They guys at the Official Gmail Blog were so nice to post 5 little-known Gmail features you may not yet know about:

5. "Archive and next" shortcut
4. Share mail searches with friends
3. Browser navigation and history
2. Bookmark emails
1. "Filter messages like this"

And for the last week or two I have the impression it is significantly faster now... (but maybe it's just an impression).

So, thank you, Official Gmail Blog, for the tips...

"Service provider" starts with "Service"

What does a "service provider" actually think, when they have a planned (!) mail outage for about 12 hours without prior announcement?

And then, why can't they configure the IMAP servers properly for that period of time, so that the do not complain about my password but just say that the service is down (which they can)?

And - while we are at it - what can they possibly mean with "Web 2.0 user interface" ?

So clueless...

Sun to acquire Vaau

So, Sun decided to broaden their Identity portfolio by acquriring Vaau... finally we will see some decent role management capabilities in the Sun portfolio.
Actually, this is a must, after Oracle bought Bridgestream this summer...

If you are into corporate press-releases then you might want to endure this: Sun Microsystems Strengthens Market-Leading Identity Management Portfolio with Intent to Acquire Vaau

(In the interest of full disclosure: I am a Sun Microsystems employee)

More Flickr Love

Flickr now lets me export my flickr group subscriptions as OPML.

How cool is that ?

Is it Christmas?

In case you wonder... check here at isitchristmas.com

The best part: comes with a cosy RSS feed, so you can stay up-to-date.

Bye bye "Thinkpad"

Lenovo ditches ThinkPad early | The Register: "Lenovo ditches ThinkPad early"

Book: Core Memory

A computer coffee table book ? Yes, in a way.

"Core Memory" is an illustrated book full of great photos of vintage computers, like the french minitel, the Apple II, Cray I (with all the cabling), Zuse Z3, good old IBMs, etc, etc.

IMAP for Gmail is finally really here.

Yes, now it does work. As the gmail blog pointed out it would take a couple of days for everyone to have it.

Since this night I have IMAP, too. And against my belief, I discovered it through configuring a Gmail account with IMAP in Thunderbird and wait for the error message to vanish.

So here's the proof:



And I also found the confirmation on the gmail blog here.

You actually get each Gmail tag as an IMAP folder, and the default/system and a special folder/view called "Gmail" with the

• All Mail
• Drafts
• Sent Mail
• Spam
• Starred

views in it. Looks like this in thunderbird.

Nice.

Sun wins over IBM

At least in James Governor's Dopplr challenge.

James Governor’s Monkchips: Sun wins the Dopplr 2 By A Nose:

"Sun wins the Dopplr 2 By A Nose Well the results are in folks. During the course of last week both IBM and Sun pretty much doubled their dopplr user populations, but Sun came out just ahead by close of play on Friday."

Well, I'm always glad to help.

About choice

Slightly - but not entirely - off-topic here...
but only slightly: currently IT and the surrounding industries are all about choice...

• Linux vs Solaris vs Windows
• Intel vs AMD vs Sparc vs Power
• Java vs .net vs Python vs Ruby vs ..
• Nokia vs Sony vs iPhone vs ...

to name just a few.

There are 2 great talks from TED about choice and our (=mankind's) inability to cope with decisions vis-a-vis choice:

1. Dan Gilbert: Why are we happy? Why aren't we happy?
   
   



2. Barry Schwartz: The paradox of choice
   

I recommend you stick to this order...


See my other TED recommendations here.

FlightAware

Recently I stumbled upon this great service: FlightAware.

It is a free flight tracker that comes with all available (I think) information on flights (US only, right now) and Airports.

Want to know where the plane from JKF to Austin is right now ? - look here:



Comes with up-to-date location and arrival information and a nice history of the same flight in the past days/months.

You can also see what is going on around a certain airport:




Really good and cool stuff.
Just utterly, utterly useless here in Europe...

IMAP for Gmail - here's how to wait...

Although my gmail account is still not enabled for IMAP, I added an IMAP/Gmail account to my Thunderbird.
Now Thunderbird will check, if I'm already enabled.

I'll get the following error message until my account is enabled:

Easy. And says it all.

IMAP for Gmail ! ... please hold

So the IMAP support in Gmail is not just a rumor but actually there, as the official gmail blog reports.

However, not everyone has is right now as they admit in the fine print:

(Psst. If you don't see the "IMAP" in the "Forwarding and POP/IMAP" tab, then check back soon. We are giving it to users as fast as we can).

So, I'll be checking back soon, i.e. daily...

Mozilla Lightning 0.7 has been released

Major steps for the Mozilla Calendar project:

Lightning 0.7 & Sunbird 0.7 have been released

Lightning in the plugin (or add-on as they are now called) for Thunderbird.
(There's a standalone version, too, called SunBird).

I've been using betas and nightly builds for (almost) the last year now, and it is really quite stable.
Can't live without it anymore.

Great job, guys.

Now would you please fix the bugs I reported ;-)

IMAP for Gmail ?

TechCrunch reports that Gmail [is] Apparently Enabling IMAP Support.

That'd be cool...

It's true, they talk about it in their help on how to enable IMAP, but it is not yet there in the application.

I wonder if and how the map tags to folders ??
Or just a "plain"

• Inbox
• Sent
• Draft
• Spam

structure...

Then I'd finally have my local copy of Gmail in Thunderbird really in sync with the Gmail service, something POP3 simply cant do.

Lets (wait and) see.

James Gosling: JavaME is NOT dead

Boy, I thought I misread all the recent posts about James Gosling (godfather of Java , i.e. God and father of Java) declaring Java ME dead.
He rightfully points out that it is NOT. James Gosling: on the Java Road

Dopplr

Ok, so James Governor challenged us ("us" being Sun and IBM), and since my veins carry Sun and IBM blood (whatever colour that might yield) I had to accept.
James Governor’s Monkchips � Now its a game, an IBM vs Sun game. dopplr meets cagefightr



I now have dopplr account... I just don't travel that much these days... but I checked in my "trip" (within Vienna) to the World-of-Health-IT WHIT 2007 conference.

Ok, I'll most probably go there by underground, but it still counts as a trip, doesn't it... (please say yes).

Know what's great: dopplr accepts openID...

So finally know what I can do with my Sun openid...

Information R/evolution

The best ever explanation of tagging vs categories... since this

through Techchrunch

Sun and Samsung developing 'Java phone'

A late edition of an April Joke ???

"McNealy said Tuesday in Seoul that the companies were working on a 'Java phone' that would surpass Apple's iPhone in functionality and cost less, the mass-circulation JoongAng Ilbo reported."

Report: Sun Microsystems, Samsung developing 'Java phone' - International Herald Tribune

Oracle and BEA

The news about Oracle to buy (or bid for) BEA Systems is... well not really news, and wont really change a lot in the industry.

The funniest and news-worthiest (??) part is, that BEA thinks they are worth more... IMHO, they are lucky to be bought at all... now.

Several companies have fought over BEA years ago, but now ?
What do they stand for ?
What is their position in the market ?
And which market by the way ?
The Appserver market ? - nope, lost to IBM, JBoss (and more and more Sun/Glassfish)
The Integration/SOA market ? - too small a share.

I think, Oracle is just buying some remaining customers for their application server / integration story... to kick it off.

Wont really rock the industry... And (as usual with such acquisitions) the combined Oracle/BEA market share will shrink, they'll lose to JBoss/Sun... (I hope).

Turing Test Extra Credit

xkcd - A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language - By Randall Munroe

Finally, I got del.icio.us

Not the account, I have had that for quite some time now.

But last week - for the first time ever - I sent out a link to a del.icio.us tag instead of a list of links.

Now, whenever I add something to del.icio.us (with this tag), people (if they are smart) get the update via RSS... or (if they are less smart) when they retrieve my email with the link to del.icio.us they will still get the "new" link list there...

Finally, I got del.icio.us.
Pretty cool.

Comic: Little Bobby Tables

This is just fantastic:



xkcd - A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language - By Randall Munroe

flickr loves me

Seems to be a new feature, or maybe I just didn't look carefully enough in the last year...
On the start page the now also tell me the group/discussion updates.

That's nice.

OpenOffice as a Java Update

This just popped up on my computer...



would be even cooler if it detected my (running) StarOffice ...

Announcing the Apple iProduct

found here
thanks, Gernot

Nokia 6233 update fixes my bluetooth problem

I used to have problems with the bluetooth connectivity of my Nokia 6233 in my car.
Bluetooth connection would drop every 2 minutes or so, and then reconnect...
Unless (get this) I had the mobile "hidden" e.g. in the pocket of my jeans, ... then it would work.

With the new SW update this problem has now vanished.
Great.

Nokia vs open

Just listened to the most entertaining podcast from the O'Reilly Emerging Telephony Conference (from IT conversations): Tero Ojanperä (CTO of Nokia) made my day with the following line:

We [Nokia] have been long time advocate of the openness.

Bruhaha. And to prove my point:

Porting between S[eries] 60 and open source will be really easy...

Porting between open-source and anything... just shows their mind set

Apart from that it just shows a totally uninspired Nokia when it comes to internet and mobile.

Ballmer Peak

from xkcd.com

The OpenOffice.org Extension Repository

There is a new repository for OOo extentions.

What I like - from the first look only - is, that it is not only categorized, but also tagged.

via Erwin's StarOffice Tango

New Software update for Nokia 6233

Yet another software update for the Nokia 6233, v 5.43 to replace my 5.11
Get it here.
Not only does Google Maps continue to work, but now one can link (Java) applications directly into the GoTo Menu...

Thanks Nokia.
And yes, thanks, for having me re-configure the active standby yet again...

3365 unconfirmed Thunderbird bugs

Yesterday I opened a Thunderbird bug/enhancement. While I was in bugzilla I ran quick query and found that
3365 bugs against Thunderbird are currently still unconfirmed. (btw: FireFox has 5406 which is - relatively speaking - less)

Ahem... about time someone started to work on them...

Strikethrough in OOo vs MSOffice

Yet another nice little story on Office shortcomings. PowerPoint cannot strikethrough. They rather recommend to manually put a (graphics) line over the text.
see details at m³s online Pamphlet

Excel bug

Boy am I glad that I run StarOffice, not MS Office. A new bug was discovered in Excel that runs like this:

850*77,1 = 100.000

instead of 65535.
Of course I immediately tried in StarCalc, and it does it correctly.

Wonder, if Microsoft users consider this an incompatibility between Calc and Excel...

See the explanation and discussion here, and also the explanation by Joel Spolsky.
So, it is a display bug only... and it is (I fully agree) extremely rare and unlikely...

But still fun ...

Thanks to m³ for the pointer.

eCommerce how NOT to...

I spent the last 30min of my online life ordering to tickets to a Toumani Diabaté concert in Vienna.

Now - I love to be able to do that online... but I think it would have been faster through a booking call center - that usually takes only 5minutes.

Walking through the order application took about 1-2 minutes per page -- but not user time, no. HTTP Response Time.
And the worst part - guess what...

The final message, where the final confirmation should appear was an asp error...
That's bad.

Real bad.

StarOffice 8 now includes Google Search

Update 8 of StarOffice 8 - released just this week - now includes what I'd call the 2nd part of the Sun/Google deal around StarOffice:

It comes with google search integrated.


Both Web and Destkop - Cool.

Btw: Sun still kept their branding in, because the web search runs through
http://www.sun.com/software/star/staroffice/search-en.xml

StarOffice 8 Update 8

... just arrived.
Get it from SunSolve.

Best order confirmation - ever

Here's the order confirmation I just received after I placed an order for MOO cards for my flickr photos:

Hello Roman

I'm Little MOO - the bit of software that will be managing your order
with us. It will shortly be sent to Big MOO, our print machine who will
print it for you in the next few days. I'll let you know when it's done
and on its way to you.

Please do not remove the photos you have chosen from your account until
your order has been printed, or some pictures may come out blank.

You can track and manage your order at: http://www.moo.com/account

Please note, as your order will be shipped via Royal Mail First
Class/Airmail, it should be with you in around 10 working days, but it
won't have a tracking number.

Remember, I'm just a bit of software. So, if you have any questions
regarding your order please first read our Frequently Asked Questions
at:

http://www.moo.com/help/

and if you're still not sure, contact customer services (who are real
people) at:

http://www.moo.com/service/

Thanks,

Little MOO, Print Robot

MOO "We love to print"

Order details as follows:

It is clear. It has all the information necessary. It tells me what to do and what to expect.

And its fun...

How to kill a dragon with various programming languages

There's a beautiful princess, prisoner in the highest tower of a castle, guarded by a mighty dragon, and a fearless knight must rescue her…

This is how each language would manage to rescue the princess from the hands of the dragon

• Java - Gets there, finds the dragon, develops a framework for dragon anihilation with multiple layers, writes several articles about the framework… But doesn't kill the dragon.
• .NET - Gets there, sees the idea of the Java developer and copies it. Tries to kill the dragon, but the monster eats him.
• C - Arrives, looks down at the dragon, pulls out his sword, beheads the dragon, finds the princess… And ignores her to see the last checkins of linux kernel cvs.
• C++ - Creates a basic needle, and gathers funcionality until he has a complex sword that he can barely understand… He kills the dragon, but gets stuck crossing the bridge because of memory leaks.
• COBOL - Arrives, sees the dragon and thinks that he is too old to kill a monster that big and rescuing the princess, so he leaves.
• Pascal - He prepares for 10 years to create a dragon anihilation system… When the moment comes, he discovers the program can only take lizards as an entry.
• VB - Builds a dragon destruction weapon based on several components, jumps to the back of the dragon and in the most critical time he discovers that the sword works only on rainy nights…
• PL/SQL - Gets data from other dragon slayers, creates tables with n ternary complexity relations, tridimensional data, OLAP, takes 15 years to process the information… And by then, the princess became a lesbian.
• Ruby - Arrives with massive fame, saying he is the best at anything and when he faces the dragon, he shows a lame motion picture of himself killing a dragon… The dragon eats him out of boredom.
• Smalltalk - Arrives, analyzes the dragon and princess, turns around and leaves, they are way too inferior.
• shell - Creates a very powerful dragon slaying weapon… But in the moment of truth, he can't remember how to use it.
• shell(2)- The guy approaches the dragon with a two line script that kills, cuts, disembowels, impales, chops to pieces and packs the beast, but when he runs it the script grows, it fattens, irritates and puts alcohol in the fire of the dragon…
• Assembler - He thinks he's doing the right and most efficient things… But he writes an A instead of a D and kills the princess to end up f***ing the dragon.
• Fortran - Arrives and develops a 45-thousand-code-line-solution, kills the dragon, meets the princess… But she calls him a weakling and runs after the Java programmer who was elegant, and also rich.
• FOX PRO - Develops a dragon killing system. It's gorgeous and works on the outside, but it's really patched inside, so when he runs the dragon anihilator, he realizes he forgot to index the DBFs.
• PROCESS ANALYST - Approaches the dragon with two tons of documentation, develops the unified dragon-killing process, he develops a DFD to free the princess and marry her, convinces the dragon that it's the best for him and it won't hurt. When he executes the process, he estimates the effort and the damage he will cause with a plan signed by the Pope, Buddha and Michael Jackson. Then he buys a couple of nukes, 45 cannons, an aircraft carrier and hires 300 heavily armed men… When all he needed was the sword he was holding in his hand in the beginning…
• CLIPPER: Sets up a routine that loads a codeblock array to insult the dragon, serenade the princess, load the sword in memory, beat the crap out of the dragon, clean the mess, prepare a raspberry milkshake for the princess, make love to her, take a bath, start the car, put it some gas and come back home. When he runs it, he gets a "Bound Error: Array Access" and the dragon eats him with fries.
• Lisp, where the famous knight-errant, after speaking with numerous experts in dragon-killing, and modeling the knowledge they posess, he programs the system, and when he runs it he realizes he forgot a bracket (bender the offender).
• HTML: Mounts a web on famous swords used to kill dragons, but he ignores the W3C standards. When he meets the dragon, he finds out the code isn't compatible with his browser, so he's left swordless. The dragon eats him as an appetizer.
• Prolog: Thinks he needs a weapon to kill the dragon. Searches in a catalog for 182014 weapons. By the time the princess dies of her age, he's achieved to know how to make every weapon starting with A: Atomic Bombs, Anti-Air Weapons, Arches, Ammunition, Axes...
  
• PHP: Creates a web page that when he executes it would eliminate the $dragon selecting from a weapons databese in MySQL over an Apache server. Nevertheless he forgot the WHERE in the DELETE query and kills the princess, the dragon, the peasants, the witch, the sorceror and the programmer himself.
• JavaScript: The programmer tries to kill the great green dragon that spits fire throug his mouth. He creates a script that will delete the dragon when he loads a webpage, to create seconds after, some damsels to throw him flowers and make clapping sounds. Unfortunately he didn't take into account the DOM structure of the lizard, also known as Mozilla, and the only thing he gets is to fill his console of errors and that the Book of Mozilla tells how he was devoured.
• ActiveX: The programmers create a tunnel to enter the dragon's lair from the castle and run a program that will kil the dragon from a safe and prudential distance. The dragon discovers the tunnel, eats the workers who dug, the dragon slayers, and enslaves every servant in the castle. The castle becomes a dragon-breeding place, full of little dragons that the dragon sends in pop-ups to other castles. The untasty remains of the knights are put in cans of Spam and sent to other castles as well as a warning. (aquelquesiente)
• Basic. He creates a weapon able to kill paper dragons, but no matter how they improve it, they discover it's not good enough to kill any dragon bigger than a baby poodle.
• Matlab: They create a loop that calculates the trajectories to shoot a giant arrow at the dragon. The program works flawlessly. What they need now are the voluntaries caoable to launch tha arrow with the necessary strength and accuracy.
• Videogame Programmer : Spends two years programming a state-of-the-art sword with shaders and all. When the time comes to kill the dragon, he finds that half the knights aren't strong enough to raise the sword. Then someone programs a patch that reveals the sex scenes with the princess and Hillary Clinton makes it a scandal.

via Roumen's Weblog

Is an application server needed for transaction processing? (Eric Newcomer's Weblog)

Excellent thoughts by Eric Newcomer...
Is an application server needed for transaction processing? (Eric Newcomer's Weblog)

Any by the way - he's updating his book.

iPhone in Austria on T-Mobile

Rumors and media reports are growing that in Austria (as well as in Germany) T-Mobile will be the exclusive partner for the iPhone.
Which is
a) not good, because I'm on A1 mobilkom (but I'm not really sure if I want to convert to the iPhone anyway)
and
b) quite exciting because it might eradicate the paradigm #1 of the Austria mobile operator landscape, being that "mobilkom will always be #1".

With T-mobile having acquired tele.ring and they got quite close to mobilkom in regards of number of subscribers. For Q1 the regulator reported mobilkom at 3.7M subscribers and T-mobile/tele.ring at 3.2M. The trend for Q2 and Q3 I personally expect is that the gap would become narrower.

Now if T-Mobile had the iPhone exclusively the one customer segment they never managed to get from mobilkom is getting more available to them: the business users.
Which in turn could make them #1.

A thrilling fall is ahead... ;-)

Do Banks use the Internet?

From a recent discussion, I wonder whether financial institutions acutally make use of the internet when rating customers.

Does my bank google for me when I apply for a loan/mortgage?

Or do they check Xing or LinkedIn to see how I am connected in my job? It might be possible to find indicators on how secure my job (in general) is, or how easy I find a new one, etc...

Does my insurance company check the internet? E.g. flickr to find out how much I'm travelling abroad?

Does anyone look at myspace or (more likely) facebook?

Do they learn from the information I give them anyway?

RSS becoming dominant

I just noticed, that RSS (or rather the RSS reader, google in my case) is becoming more and more important as a means of accessing content.
I really "read" more Flickr updates through Google Reader, than directly in Flickr. One reason is, that it is easier and faster to navigate in a feed oriented reader.

Hell just froze over

Microsoft Windows and Sun x64 Servers and Workstations:
"Sun and Microsoft Expand Strategic Alliance Sun and Microsoft have announced an expanded relationship including Sun becoming a Windows Server OEM. Sun will soon resell Windows Server 2003 with select x64 systems."

Dilbert 2.0

so true...


via Dilbert.com

IBM to join OpenOffice.org

IBM joins the OpenOffice.org community to develop and promote OpenOffice.org technology

Welcome, guys.

from OpenOffice.org and Simon and CNET

emacs

UserFriendly Strip Comments

From one to many

Last weekend I (again) discovered what every programmer / architect knows anyway:

The step from doing something on ONE item to doing it on MANY items is the hardest.

And there's an add-on:

Moving from ONE to TWO (in the above sense) is more complex than from TWO to MANY (unlimited).

The reason for the latter is that (to me) "2" is still not as generic as "n", or as I like to put it:

2 is just a special case of 1

quite often if you (in code) have to do something specifically twice, you don't use any loop or iteration construct, you just do it twice.
E.g.
foo.doSomething();
bar.doSomething();

only if you have to push beyond 2 people start to use collections and iterations.
for (Object o: somecollection)
{
o.doSomething();
}

just for 2 objects, no-one bothers to create a collection, they just instantiate two objects.

At least thats what I usually do - and I know others as well.

But - as I said - I experienced the "from 1 to n" problem last weekend - let me elaborate:

In our neighborhood we have a great service that delivers a box of vegetables right to our home.
There's also a website, where you can check this weeks contents of the box.

Unfortunately, though, the site does not offer an RSS feed.
No problem, I just create(d) my own, with a simple job, that runs daily:

1. connect to the site
2. scrape the contents of the site
3. re-format them
4. and put them into a (static) RSS file, hosted on my homepage.

Put that RSS URL into iGoogle and have the contents right there in my personal google portal.

Easy.

Just 2 weeks ago, we decided to have 2 boxes (one with vegetables only, one with vegetables and fruit) on alternating weeks. So I had to re-write my little thing to handle two different "boxes" instead of just one.
(Frankly, I just went for the n-solution, not the 2)

I more or less had to totally re-design the whole hack... About the only thing that remained quite stable was the core RSS handling (through Rome) and the scraping/parsing of the HTML (using HTMLparser).
What I had earlier looked more like a classic C (not C++) program, with almost everything done in main()... I knew it was a bad design... but I did not anticipate the initially.

So, this was a really good lesson for me again, to "design for n" early.

Google reader finally searches

or rather; lets you search.
Official Google Reader Blog: "We found it!"

Thank you.

How not to do Social Networks

Mashable is reporting a disgusting (for lack of other words) behaviour of social networking website Quechup: namely, sending out emails to your contacts (in your name) without your explicit permission, or without even telling you, it does.

Cardinal sin/offense

Ugh!

Steve Gillmor vs Jonathan Schwartz - live ?

looking forward to it...
Steve Gillmor’s GestureLab � BRIC Schwartzhouse

ISBN cross referencing

A couple of weeks ago, m³ posted a rant, on how Amazon webservices don't have a consistent ASIN accross amazon stores. He gave a book example, where I retorted in my comment on this blog, that this was not Amazon's fault, but simply the fact, that different editions of the very „same“ book simply have to have different ISBN (and Amazon relies on the ISBN for book, and I'm glad they do).

Now I just discovered a service, that cross-links the various ISBNs for what we consider the „same“ book:

OCLC Openly Informatics

xISBN

The service is quite simple – you pass in an ISBN and get a list of ISBNs that reflect related editions of this book. There's a nice FAQ ( pdf) for it.

Try this link for the latest (and hopefully last) Harry Potter.

It is not a total solution to m³'s problem, but seems to be an incredible useful service by the OCLC – the Online Computer Library Center.

Do get Arrington'd

When I said "Don't ge Arrington'd" I - of course - implied "without being prepared."

So here the perfect example of getting on Techcrunch and have Michael Arrington drop his jaw.

Adobe Hires Co-Inventor of Image Resizer Technology - the technology that amazed me as well.
(Thanks m3 for the pointer)

Content aware image resizing

This is just incredible - when can we see this in webbrowsers...


via go2web2

Thumbalizr

So, here's an update on the Thumbalizr service I could not report on earlier - see IT conservations: Don't get Arringtoned.
Whatever the reason for the failures earlier today (CET) was, the service now runs - and I'm to humble to attribute this to my rant... ;-)

The purpose of Thumbalizr is to enable you to make "screenshots" of web pages of virtually any size. You can choose between 2 modes:

1. screen - you only get that portion of the page/document, that would fit on a screen
2. page - you get the whole page/document

IT conservations would look like this (screen) or this (page).

From the latter you can tell that blogger and my list of tags don't make a great layout...

Don't get Arrington'd

As a new (Web 2.0) service usually the best thing that can happen to you is to get on Mike Arrington's Techcrunch - and get a good review there.

However, you should to be prepared for this.
Yesterday saw a review of a very promising sounding service called Thumbalizr, that make screenshots / thumbnails from web sites; you just provide the URL of the site and pick the resolution you want. That easy.

Alas, it does not seem to be able to cope with the load it gets, since its review. It constantly fails even to bring up the start page within a reasonable response time, let alone give me a thumbnail of yours truly blog site here.

Well I guess the author on Techcrunch chose the title "Thumbalizr: A Really Good Idea, If It Worked" not by chance.

Well, I'll give it another try in a couple of days.

Paul Graham: Holding a Program in One's Head

The latest essay buy the wonderful, always insightful Paul Graham:

A good programmer working intensively on his own code can hold it in his mind the way a mathematician holds a problem he's working on. Mathematicians don't answer questions by working them out on paper the way schoolchildren are taught to. They do more in their heads: they try to understand a problem space well enough that they can walk around it the way you can walk around the memory of the house you grew up in. At its best programming is the same. You hold the whole program in your head, and you can manipulate it at will.

Read the whole essay Holding a Program in One's Head.

Correcting false statements by Microsoft

Erwin Tenhumberg corrects a couple of statements Microsoft usually brings forward against ODF as their common ODF/OOo FUD in Erwin's StarOffice Tango.

Sun Microsystems to Change Stock Ticker Symbol to JAVA

As Jonathan Schwartz (CEO) announced earlier on this blog and Sun official PR confirmed a bit latter, Sun will change their stock ticker symbol from SUNW to JAVA. Just to make that point that Sun is no longer about Workstations (the W in SUNW still means workstations, today).

JAVA is a technology whose value is near infinite to the internet, and a brand that's inseparably a part of Sun (and our profitability). And so next week, we're going to embrace that reality by changing our trading symbol, from SUNW to JAVA. This is a big change for us, capitalizing on the extraordinary affinity our teams have invested to build, introducing Sun to new investors, developers and consumers. Most know Java, few know Sun - we can bring the two one step closer.

And no, it is not April 1st.

Spolsky says no to Vista

Right from the office of Excel and Microsoft defender #1 Even the Office 2007 box has a learning curve - Joel on Software:
"I've been using Vista on my home laptop since it shipped, and can say with some conviction that nobody should be using it as their primary operating system -- it simply has no redeeming merits to overcome the compatibility headaches it causes. Whenever anyone asks, my advice is to stay with Windows XP (and to purchase new systems with XP preinstalled)."

(via m³s online pamphlet)

New vs old media

Common (if not so recent) wisdom says, that the „old media“ (esp. newspapers) don't like the „new media“, esp. everything that brags about „ user generated content“.

Today, however, I noticed that my favorite newspaper, Der Standard, uses the Flickr Camera Statistic to pimp up an article about the new Canon dSLRs.

No that bad after all, the Web 2.0, right ?

Sun to integrate Synchronica SyncML solution

Sun and Synchronica just announced that they are about to add Synchronica's SyncML solution to their communications software portfolio ... at least that's how I read the press release:

Sun plans to use the core SyncML synchronization engine and the back-end connectors of the Mobile Gateway product to synchronize SyncML enabled devices with the Sun Java System Communications Suite or Sun Java System Application Platform Suite. Furthermore, Sun intends to use the provisioning module (OMA CP) enabling over-the-air configuration of mobile devices, reducing the need for manual device configuration. In addition, Sun is planning to use Synchronica's SyncML clients for Windows Mobile/Pocket PC and Palm OS enabling industry-standard synchronization on Smart phones that do not support SyncML out of the box.

That would be great, especially given the huge installed base of the Sun communications products (mainly the Mail Server) with ISPs and Telcos.

The man who collects Apples - CNN.com

The man who collects Apples - CNN.com: "The man who collects Apples"

should spell "freak" not "man"...

"[...] they are always gonna be making new stuff, so I'm always gonna be buying new stuff."

Sun IBM Solaris Deal again

Why is it that a good share of the media coverage of the Sun IBM Solaris deal got it wrong.

E.g. Der Standard (my favorite print newspaper) talks about a „server alliance“ between „rivals Sun and IBM“ ...

Others do as well (maybe Der Standard just copied from AP, with a similar line

„Two longtime rivals in computing, IBM Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc., plan to cooperate on server technologies, a move that could put pressure on their joint competitor Hewlett-Packard Co.“

If you haven't read of the agreement before, you probably think hardware... right ?

But its not about HW, its only about IBM reselling („OEMing“) the Solaris Operating System for its x86 line of servers. It is a big deal, but not a HW collaboration. And it will put preasure on HP (at least I hope so).

Path Copy

Thanks to Gernot for suggesting this great tool the other day.
Ninotech Path Copy
What it does is soo simple but it really helps. I've just been using it for a couple of days and can hardly imagine myself living without it.
Well, no, not that bad, I do still have a life (he said while posting to his tech-blog on a weekend ... nudge, nudge). Yes I do.

Anyway, here's what PathCopy does:

Ninotech Path Copy is a shell extension for Windows 95, 98, NT4, 2000, and XP that enables to copy the path of a file or directory to the Clipboard. You can then paste the path in to your document, e-mail, etc. You copy the path of a file or directory by right-clicking it in the Windows Explorer and choosing Copy Path from the context menu. The context menu then offers nine standard ways of copying the path, in addition to the user defined copying methods that you create yourself:

and you can pick whether you want to shortname or longname of the file, or the full path, or the full network path (UNC), ... Great.

Thanks, Gernot.

IBM to OEM Solaris

Yesterday Sun and IBM announced, that IBM is going to OEM Solaris on System X and BladeCenter, so its Solaris x86.
Jonathan Schwartz's Weblog: Momentous Day for Solaris

This is great news for Solaris, and frankly for IBM. Bad news for HP (IMHO). I wonder if we will ever see a Solaris on Power...

Review of the Austrian ID system

Found a good review of the Austrian Identity system, a.k.a. "Bürgerkarte" (="citizen card").

Austrian ID system � Identity and Privacy Blog

A good point (with a false assumption) is at the end:

Finally, as with all smartcards used for online authentication, the need for smartcard readers to access the digital certificate. However, it may be that widespread availability of smartcard readers (one for every computer) is not a problem in Austria.

Given the current acceptance of the Bürgerkarte with citizens (or rather lack there-of), one can easily see that the burden of the card reader is indeed still a problem in Austria.

Citrix to buy XenSource

The week of (HW) virtualization (companies) ?

Hm, too many brackets for a good title, ... anyway, just hours (ok, I'm still exaggerating) after the VMware IPO, Citrix (of all) announced that they are to by XenSource, maker of Xen, which is a rival to VMware and favored by like half of the techies. It's one of those tech-religious things, I guess.

Citrix to buy virtualization company XenSource for $500 million | Tech news blog - CNET News.com: "Citrix to buy virtualization company XenSource for $500 million"

I wonder, why Sun haven't bought them....

Windows: add cmd to folder

Yet another windows customization reminder:

Since I frequently have to open a command prompt right from the folder that I'm on in explorer, I'd like to have a context menu entry for folders that does this.

Here's the way to do it:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Folder\shell\Command Prompt]

@="Command Prompt here"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Folder\shell\Command Prompt\command]

@="Cmd.exe /k pushd %L"

Other ways to do it and more tipps in that category can be found here.

"Compiling"

is that still true ? what size projects are people working on these days ...



from xkcd - A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language - By Randall Munroe

URL Fixer update

There is an update to URL Fixer that
a) seems to handle the .gov not more correctly when it is part of a national TLD, i.e. .gv.at used to be "fixed" to .gov.at by the default .gv -> .gov rule, which was wrong, at least for Austria.

but more importantly
b) you can now control it better.

"By right-clicking on the address bar, you can set it to auto-correct your errors, or you can have it ask you before making any corrections."

Thanks.

Customize Placesbar (Folderlist) in Windows File Dialog

And while I'm in the "knowledge preservation" mode - this is some piece of information I was look for years (well, not constantly, but every once in a while). I simply did not google for the right thing.

Task: How do I get any (arbitrary) folder into the short-cut bar in the Open/Save-As Dialog in Windows (XP) ?

Not just History, My Documents, My Computer, ... no one needs those.

Answer: First of all, one has to know (i.e. find out) that this short-cut bar is referred to as "places bar" and those folders listed there would then be places.

This way it is much more effective to google for.

The places bar is defined in the registry under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Software\ Microsoft\ Windows\ CurrentVersion\ Policies\ comdlg32\ PlacesBar
and consists of 5 entries (this seems to be fixed in the code, I could not find any reference to changing the number of entries),
called Place0-Place4.

For each place you can (read: have to) define its location in the filesystem or a handle to well known or pre-defined windows places.

You must enter the predefined places as numeric values (DWORD), e.g. My Pictures=39, Desktop=0, etc.
There are places on the web, where those values are listed.
I show an excerpt from here. at the end of this post.

Now I'm pretty sure that - like me - you don't just want to have any of those folders there, but something
else, like "D:\download" or whatever. In that case you make a String (instead of the DWORD) and just enter the name of the folder ("d:\download") as the value.

My placesbar at home looks like this (on my business laptop I have more "personal" places defined than just one) and the
registry (ready to import ;-)) like this:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\comdlg32\PlacesBar]

"Place0"="d:\\download"

"Place1"=dword:00000000

"Place2"=dword:00000005

"Place3"=dword:00000011

"Place4"=dword:00000012

There are also tools on the web that help you create the respective registry entries. All you have to do then is, copy/paste those to your computer and import the resulting file into the registry.

There you go, quite easy actually.

Here are some of the folder definitions:

Folder	Hex	Decimal
Desktop	0	0
My Computer\Control Panel	3	3
My Computer\Printers	4	4
My Documents	5	5
Favorites	6	6
Recent	8	8
My Music	d	13
My Videos	e	14
Desktop	10	16
My Computer	11	17
Network Neighborhood (My Network Places)	12	18
All Users\Start Menu	16	22
All Users\Start Menu\Programs	17	23
All Users\Startup	18	24
All Users\Desktop	19	25
Application Data	1a	26
USERPROFILE\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\CD Burning	3b	59

Enabling directory listing in Tomcat

One and for all --- this is mainly for myself, because I tend to forget it and have to google it everytime I need it:

To enable/disable directory listings in Tomcat (5.x at least) I have to change the property listings of the default servlet in conf/web.xml

<servlet>
<servlet-name>default</servlet-name>
<servlet-class>org.apache.catalina.servlets.DefaultServlet</servlet-class>
<init-param>
<param-name>listings</param-name>
<param-value>false</param-value>
</init-param>
<load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
</servlet>

Tomcat FAQ - Miscellaneous Questions

Google Pack now comes with StarOffice

This is great - google nows includes StarOffice in their Google Pack.
Not just a copy of OpenOffice, but specifically Sun's StarOffice...

Summer of storage

Seems to be the week of network storage: both Google and Microsoft launched storage related services; with Google it is just the option to buy (!) extended storage for Gmail and Picasa. Microsoft's Live SkyDrive is a „regular“ network storage offering, like XDrive and others already offer – just smaller.

Sounded more promising when I read the headlines ... ;-)

Dilbert on opensource

via Dilbert Comic Strip Archive - Dilbert.com - The Official Dilbert Website by Scott Adams - Dilbert, Dogbert and Coworkers!

Burton interop report on user centric identity

Burton Group Identity Blog: Recapping the Catalyst user-centric interop:

The Burton Group hosted a User-Centric Identity Interop at the Catalyst Conference in San Francisco during the week of 23 - 29 June 2007; a public demo session was held on the evening of Wednesday 27 June to showcase the accomplishments of the participants in this event.

Read the whole story here.

eWeek reviews Sun ODF Plugin

Sun Plug-in Brings ODF Support to Microsoft Office: "Sun Microsystems' ODF Plug-in for Microsoft Office won't usher in an era of universal document interoperability, but eWEEK Labs believes it is the best option currently available for adding Open Document Format support to Office's massive installed base."

Update for Nokia 6233

Finally there is a new software version for the Nokia 6233 out: V 05.10 (check it at http://www.nokia.com/A4305060).

This fixes my problem with the previous release (4.91) which would not allow Google Maps Mobile to connect to the network. Now it works again...

Details on upcoming PDF changes in OOo

GullFOSS: "Completing PDF support in OOo"

Scott MacGregor's Thoughts On Thunderbird

Thoughts On Thunderbird

One of our most important goals is to enhance the lives of Thunderbird users. We don’t know if we’ll ever have, as Mitchell states, “enough [people] to compete with other players for a consumer based product.” But we do know that millions of people use and depend on Thunderbird every day, and with dedicated resources and focus, we know that we can enhance the lives of millions more.Additionally, we want everyone to know that each developer, localizer, and tester means a great deal to us, and every contribution to Thunderbird is valued and important. Adding just one person to the effort, for example a dedicated Thunderbird build engineer, will make a huge difference. In fact, just that one person would have enabled us to release Thunderbird 2.0 a couple of months earlier.

FF extention: DocumentMap

DocumentMap is a great FireFox extension that lets you see the heading structure of the current document (not the DOM) in the sidebar... So you essentially get the same effect Acrobat Reader has with the what they call the bookmark view , but for web/html pages.

This is quite useful for huge (unstructered) HTML documents that are still structured enough to have proper headings defined (i.e. the h1, h2, ... tags)

I found this thanks to GullFOSS who use it as a better way to navigate the OpenOffice Developer's Guide:

Try it out and browse for example the Text Documents chapter of the Developer's Guide and press alt-o. I am sure you will like it.

Thanks...

.. and yes, the OOo Developer's Guide needs some more structure.

Mozilla Foundation to spin off Thunderbird ?

A recent post by Mozilla CEO Mitchell Baker (mitchell's blog: Email Call to Action) call for a something like a vote on what Mozilla should be doing with Thunderbird:

"Mozilla has been supporting Thunderbird as a product since the beginning of the Foundation. The result is a good, solid product that provides an open alternative for desktop mail. However, the Thunderbird effort is dwarfed by the enormous energy and community focused on the web, Firefox and the ecosystem around it. As a result, Mozilla doesn't focus on Thunderbird as much as we do browsing and Firefox and we don't expect this to change in the foreseeable future. We are convinced that our current focus - delivering the web, mostly through browsing and related services - is the correct priority. At the same time, the Thunderbird team is extremely dedicated and competent, and we all want to see them do as much as possible with Thunderbird.

We have concluded that we should find a new, separate organizational setting for Thunderbird; one that allows the Thunderbird community to determine its own destiny."

And she gives 3 options:
Option 1. Create a new non-profit organization analogous to the Mozilla Foundation [...]
Option 2. Create a new subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation for Thunderbird [...]
Option 3. Thunderbird is released as a community project much like SeaMonkey [...]
(find the details at the original blog post).

Interestingly none of them reads "keep it as it is"... so this looks like they are abandoning their child... I'd hate that. Been a long time Netscape/ Mozilla-Mail / Thunderbird user. Especially now with the progress they made with TB 2.0. And now that SunBird / Lightning is finally (though still slowly) becoming a decent calender.
Forking TB into its on entity would probably weaken Firefox as well (gut feeling, can't really say why, but I think so).

Maybe Option 2 is the one to go to keep Thunderbird and Firefox really close.

EU's AntiGoogle

As reported, the EU has approved Germany to fund/subsidize the new European search engine, commonly known as the "AntiGoogle". Details here at EU OKs German online search-engine grant - Yahoo! News

In the details you will find that the money (120MEUR) goes mainly to SAP and Siemens (and other big companies)... So this really proves to be the Anti-Google: instead of letting innovation happen we give money to big over-managed corporations to "plan" for innovation... Totally the opposite of how Google came to life.

OOXML Fails to Gain Approval in US

An Antic Disposition: OOXML Fails to Gain Approval in US

via Rob Weir

Sun ODF Plugin tips

For hints, tips and issues with the Sun ODF Plugin for MS Office, consult Malte Timmermann's Blog.

WebCrash2007 - The Entire Internet has Crashed

Great fun...

via m3s online pamphlet

Google docs new user interface

Just noticed that Google docs has a more advanced user interface and layout.




Seems a lot more well arranged now.

IT Conversations: Simon Phipps

Great interview...

IT Conversations: Simon Phipps: "Simon Phipps, Chief Open Source Officer for [Sun Microsystems], joins Phil, Scott, and Ben to discuss Sun's activities. "

JTRES 2007 in Vienna

JTRES 2007:

The 5th International Workshop on Java Technologies for Real-time and Embedded Systems - JTRES 2007

Institute of Computer Engineering
Vienna University of Technology
26-28 September 2007
Vienna, Austria

Sun ODF Plugin 1.0 for Microsoft Office FAQ

to be found on Malte Timmermann's Blog

Wikipedian Protester

via xkcd

Microsoft Office users can now import and export to ODF

StarOffice 8:

"The Sun ODF Plug-in for Microsoft Office allows users of Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint the ability to read, edit and save to the ISO-standard Open Document Format. The ODF Plug-in is available as a free download from the Sun Download Center (SDLC). "

Download the ODF Plug-in.