Nokia support is getting ridiculous

So last time Nokia support told me to "have some patience. The problem should be solved in the near future."

Wir bitten noch mal um etwas Geduld. Das Problem sollte sich naher Zukunft erledigen.
[1]
When today after a couple of days I inquired what they exactly mean by "near future" I was told they "could not give me more detailed information. In the near future means 3-4 weeks or more. We ask you for patience".

Wir können Ihnen leider keine genauere Auskunft geben. In naher Zukunft bedeutet 3-4 Wochen oder auch mehr.
Wir bitten um Geduld.

Just a reminder that first, they told me I was too stupid, and then that the website and the NSU database were just not in sync. Now the problem requires a couple of weeks (or possibly months) to be solved...

Just a reminder: the problem is to sync the information on the website with the NSU database requires 3-4 weeks or more... preposterous.

Well, this time I asked for the support manager... let's see what (s)he has to say regarding answers like those.
I'm waiting...

--
[1] re-reading this: they actually say (in German) that the problem would (more like) disappear in the near future.

Still no update...

this is getting boring (for you, dear subscribers/readers probably, too).
There is still no E71 update for me, and asking Nokia Care Center if waiting from Wednesday to Monday is ample time for them to synchronize their web-query and their NSU database, they choose not to answer.

One might think, that Nokia is not under pressure from Apple and Android/G1/HTC/...

Does NSU hate me ?

I'm getting the feeling, that the Nokia Software Updater (NSU) hates me.
See what it did on August 16h, 9:34 (a couple of minutes ago):

All I wanted was to update my E71...

(No) Update on Nokia Service

So I created a ticket with Nokia Care Center for the missing E71 update for my version.

First Level just got back to me with dummy "read the web pages" instructions and how I should download the Nokia Update Software.
Duuh.
I told them my exact problem and wishes.

So I told them again, ... and that I was expecting a more specific answer.
To which they replied that it can take some time between a new version being reported as available on the web page and actually being available through the updater.

"Hier kann es vorkommen, dass die Information auf der Webseite aktueller ist, wie [sic] die Information die der Nokia Software Updater bekommt.
Wir bitten Sie daher, den Vorgang des Update zu einem späteren Zeitpunkt erneut zu versuchen."

("It can happen that the information on the web page is more current than the information the Nokia Software Updater is receiving. We ask you to repeat the Update at a later time.")

Are more than 48 hours enough? One should think so... alas, they are not.
Updater still does not find the new version.

And the Nokia guy didn't even bother to check or involve some back-office / 3rd level support ... Again just a standard answer...

Annoying.

Nokia service (?) quality (?)

I've been waiting for a v2 or v3 update for my E71 for months now - and still am.
As others have ... and already ranted about it (rightfully so).

Problem is, that I have an operator (A1) branded handset, which come with their own product code. Nokia has to release the update specifically for each product code.
Which is OK... and necessary, since the operators should have their say with what goes onto their branded devices[1]... Fair, fair.

Still, the A1 gave Nokia the OK to release 200.xxx months ago... But Nokia did not release 200.xxx or 300.xxx via the updater.

Only yesterday a version higher than v1 (300.21.12) showed up.

Nokia Software Updater, however, on Windows (v1.7.3... to be sure the latest) does not find the new update:

Still wants to keep me on 100.07.76...

So... I complained about it to Nokia...
Let's wait and see...
(mostly wait I guess)

--
[1] not the non-branded ones

Facebook acquires FriendFeed

FriendFeed Blog: FriendFeed accepts Facebook friend request: "We are happy to announce that Facebook has acquired FriendFeed."

Not sure if I like this... hm...lets see what happens.

Thunderbird 3 attachment reminder

Today I got scared by Thunderbird 3 (beta), when it brought the following pop up when I was trying to send an email:

Huh?
Well at first I just hit "No, Send Now", because I never intended to attach a file...

Hours later it did it again with a different email, still did not want to attach anything.
Couldn't find any pattern when it would come up with the pop up or not.

Then I tried it out (could've googled it of course):
When the email you send contains the wort attached or attachment (or variations a I guess), but there is no attachment, Thunderbird assumes, you just forgot it... and warns you.

Try it yourself: Send an email that says "Attached you'll find nothing" to yourself, and voila...

Cool...

Thunderbird 3 Beta 3 Released

The Rumbling Edge :: Thunderbird 3 Beta 3 Released: "Thunderbird 3 Beta 3 has been released"

I'm installing it as I blog this ;-)

Qando being really really stupid

Qando is an excellent service for quering up to date (and realtime) information about the (mainly) Viennese public transport.
I used to know it from the iPhone - or rather from my iPod touch only, where it was not THAT useful, because it only worked when I had a WiFi connection ... it does an excellent job on a fully GPRS/3G connected iPhone, though.

Found out that it is also available as a JavaME version for more or less or other handsets, including my E71.

Installs OK, starts fine, however, it could NOT access my GPS device (a common problem for JavaME apps).

But I wouldn't even let me enter station/address data by hand.
There is a search input field, but I failed miserably to enter anything there...

...except for numbers, I found out after a while.

And then I played with it a little more, and noticed that - get this! - emulate a T9 input, even when the phone has a full QWERTY keyboard!
So if I hit e.g. the 4-key 3 times it will walk through g-h-i... like it would on a 12 key phone[1].

Aaaaaa... how stupid can one be as a programmer. Who in this century (or the last 20-30 years for that mattters) codes keyboard input and key-stroke-decoding by hand! Let the opsys do that! That's what it is here for. Even on a phone.

So please, Qando programmers, you can do better! And it's a lot easier for you!
--
[1] or whatever the correct number of keys on a numeric-pad-only phone is.

No wait ...

via xkcd - A Webcomic - Estimation

XP/centrino crashes under Vbox 3.02

Just installed the newly released VirtualBox 3.02 today, and my (guest) XP started to crash after I de-installed the "old" (2.2.x) guest additions and installed the 3.02 additions.
Turned out that this is a known windows virtualization problem on Centrinos [1] like documented here.

So I rebooted (for the umpteenth time), F8-ed and selected the last known working settings, regedited the

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Intelppm

to the value 4.

Rebooted, and voila... works again.


---
[1] yes, this was on my beloved laptop.

OpenOffice.org Calc shortcuts

I just learned that Ctrl-+ and Ctrl-- add (or remove, respectively) a cell/line in Calc.

Haven't noticed that before, and I only learned it, because I wanted to zoom in/out (like in Firefox)...
Boy, I'm glad there was a popup, and I did not ruin my spreadsheet without knowing it...

Firefox 3.5 - finally

So, on Tuesday I upgraded all my machines to FireFox 3.5...
without any problems.

It really is a lot faster (still in the final, not only in the betas).
And finally also my twitter performance (as ranted about here) works smoothly again...

Go and upgrade.

OpenOffice 3.1 finally working

So after a debug and (re-)install marathon yesterday, I finally got OOo 3.1 to properly run on my laptop – it did run fine on my desktop and in my virtualboxes. Only on my laptop Calc (scalc.exe) would refuse to work.

Turns out that when trying to fix the Java-UNO-bootstrap problem under OOo 3.0 I manually copied a couple of .DLLs to different locations, which were now interfering with with the 3.1 installation.

I only noticed after completely removing 3.1 for the 2 ^nd or 3 ^rd time that there still were .DLL files in the OpenOffice directory. So I manually removed that, re-installed (must have been the 5 ^th time) 3.1 and – voila – it finally worked. Calc now runs fine, even controlled from Java through UNO.

Should have thought of looking into the installation directory earlier... grrrrr...

ORF vs BBC

BBC - the public broadcasting corporation - is widely regarded as the one broadcaster who managed to "get" new media [1] ... e.g. by opening up their archives, streaming their program (or should I say programme) , ...

Compare that to ORF - the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation, public as well, mainly funded by public license fee as well: not even close: hardly any streaming (except for FM4 alternative radio afaik) , some podcasts, no public archive...

One nice indicator of this difference is that on a BBC podcast like the Friday Night Comedy on Radio 4 they start with thanking you for downloading the podcast... whereas on ORF e.g. OE1 Digital Leben ("living digital") at the end of the podcast they tell you that "this show is also available as a podcast"... duh...

Just shows they don't even care to slightly change / cut a program in post-production for podcast... they just "copy" the radio show... instead of using the place/time on the podcast to refer to other podcasts or "real" radio program or in any other way directly address the podcast-only listeners (like myself).

Yet another chance missed.

[1] or rather "the 21st century" ;-)

After the cluetrain has arrived

If only companies were getting the Cluetrain Manifesto...

via Geek&Poke

btw: here's the book:
The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual

Facebook, Friendfeed, Xing and Twitter

Since Facebook became more stream-oriented there is an ongoing discussion (or rather a fight, it sometimes seems) on whether Facebook is better then Twitter or the other way round? If geeks are present then FriendFeed also comes into the discussion. So I'd like to share my thoughts on those tools, and I'll include Xing for completeness and to have a rather different platform here as well. [1]

1. Noise
One way to differentiate those platforms is noise or the concept of the signal-to-noise-ratio (for the engineers amongst us), short SNR.
As Wikipedia puts it quite well:

"In less technical terms, signal-to-noise ratio compares the level of a
desired signal (such as music) to the level of background noise. The
higher the ratio, the less obtrusive the background noise is."

In yet other terms for social network streams: "How much crap is there on a stream/feed in relation to the interesting stuff."

It of course depends on you and the platform (Facebook, Twitter, ...) what to consider noise and what to consider the signal.
Lets take the "status updates".

• On Twitter the status updates *are* the signal... so the signal-to-noise is 1:1 or 0 dB :-)
• On Facebook the status update are part of the whole point of Facebook, but not the only one... they are not strictly noise, but also not the only signal... SNR > 0 dB, but not too high either.
• Xing does have status updates, but - fortunately - they are rarely used. The stream on Xing that I'm interested in is "Who changed job?" "Who got connected to whom?"... Compared to this signal, the status-update-noise is fairly low... excellent SNR there.
• Friendfeed to me is somewhere between Twitter and Facebook.

2. Persistance

• Twitter is only a stream. What you don't see when it floats by, you'll miss. Yes, you can search (thanks to the acquisition and integration of summize into twitter), but that's it. And as far as I saw, only a couple of weeks of history.
  So Twitter only consists of triggers, and does not really have a state.
• Facebook has both, the stream of status updates and more static content like Group memberships, Fan-ness, etc.
• Xing is totally static and is actually designed to keep historical data (if you wish so). On Xing I can look up which companies a person worked for in the past years. I don't have to search through status updates to find that out, it's just there on one neat little page.
• Friendfeed like Twitter, does not really have a state, but is more browseable, again somewhere between Twitter and Facebook.

3. Relationships

• Twitter and Friendfeed are insofar unique as they support (and are actually designed for) unidirectional relationships. I can follow you, but you still don't have to follow me. Neither technically, nor is it socially mandated. If I follow you on Friendfeed, and you still choose not to follow me there, I hold no grudge against you.
  This also means I can unfollow you anytime.
  Also, this relationship does not have a quality associated with it ("Business", "Family", "Friend").
• Facebook and Xing require confirmation from both parties to start a relationship. Ignoring or even denying a friend-request or link there is visible to the requester and thus considered rather impolite. It is therefore also rare to unfollow ("unfriend", "unlink") someone, once the connection is established.

So those 4 social platforms have quite different qualities, and that's totally OK with me.
I use them for separate purposes.
I use them at different times.
I think I do have a different style on those.

However, I'm still not quite sure what to do with FriendFeed - a service that I really love... but whatever I do with it, I could also do with Twitter or Facebook. Currently, it's just the better and more complete userinterface into Twitter for me. I guess the main reason is, that more people/friends are on Facebook and Twitter than on FriendFeed.
So sign-up ... and follow me there.


[1] yes, I know there are others like LinkedIn, Plaxo, ... but I rarely use them, or not at all (like myspace)

Wolfram|Alpha only half-intelligent

There are numerous posts about the failure of the "computational knowledge engine" Wolfram|Alpha, just launched.

I don't consider it a failure - at least not yet.

However, one thing that I noticed: they tend to be very intelligent around your input and interpret it in the most meaningful way...

Still - they failed on an easy one.

Try to enter an ambiguous date like "4.5.1980" to find everything for May 4th, 1980... at least that's what you'd expect when you are in central europe (or more generally speaking: outside the U.S.)
Wolfram|Alpha's interpretation, however, is April 5th. ... well, that's not to uncommon for U.S.-centric sites.

What strikes me as odd, is that on the very same page, they show me the weather for Vienna, Austria for that day... nice feature... Yet, they are telling me, that they exactly know that I'm not from the U.S. and the date should be interpreted as a European date, i.e. day.month.year and not the other way round.

Guys, how could you miss that one???

OpenOffice 3.1 is available - really ?

and ready for download.

However, after installing OOo 3.1 I could not longer work with Calc. Neither thru starting scalc.exe or opening a .ods document, or creating a new spreadsheet from within a running openoffice instance.

Through the UNO/Java API I saw that there is a problem in loading the SCMI.DLL library, but no further indication on what exactly fails there.
Removing and re-installing did not help.
Using the US English version instead of German didn't help either (could've been a build problem with the German build). No hint on google either.

Had to revert back to 3.0.1 - calc now works again.

I'm quite angry - mostly at myself, because I usually test new versions in my virtualbox... This time I did not,.... argh!!!

Mozilla Firefox 3.5 Beta 4 is out

Mozilla Firefox 3.5 Beta 4
has been released April 27th, 2009.

"This is the sixth development milestone and fourth beta release of Firefox 3.5, the upcoming version of the Firefox web browser."

Coward that I am, I only installed it in my virtual box... quite some extensions still not ready for it, e.g. Cooliris, Context-Search and Delicious, so keeping it contained in the vbox is OK for now.

Rejoice: Ancient Greek Spell Checker for OpenOffice

So the last reason that kept you guys from using OpenOffice.org is finally gone:

Ancient Greek Spell Checker | OpenOffice.org repository for Extensions:

Spell Checker for Ancient Greek based on Morpheus word list (provided by the Perseus Project).
This is an alpha version.
Known issues:
1. Hyphenation is not yet supported.
2. Apostrophe is considered an 'ignored character'.
3. Retrieval of long words is quite slow.

At least it proves that OpenOffice.org DOES have proper language support...

OpenOffice Reader for S60 smartphones

officereader - Google Code:

"For the first time ever, it is now possible to read your OpenDocument files from OpenOffice.org, KOffice, AbiWord and Lotus Symphony on your Symbian Smartphone using Open Source software"

So there ... I've downloaded it to my Nokia E71 and managed to open various OpenOffice documents (presentation, spreadsheet & text) and it works quite well so far, especially on text and spreadsheets (presentations don't really make a lot of sense on the small display).

So, if you are an OpenOffice.org user (or you work with OpenDocument documents) and have an S60 phone, go an get it here.

24 bit RDP under Windows XP

Just recently during (probably my last) Sunray/VDI demo installation I ran into the problem that we could not get 24bit color depth on the virtualized Windows XPs.

The SunRay part of the installation (i.e. the Desktop Unit (DTU, aka. ThinClient) itself could not be the problem, because they always are 24bit (incl their respective X session on the SunRay Server),
we also ran the RDP client (uttsc) with the -A 24 option to force it to 24bit (which it would default to anyway) ... but to no avail.

Of course as always google is your friend; several people have posted and blogged this already: under Windows XP you have to explicitely enable 24bit for RDP. So in the Windows XP image (or template) open the registry and change

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server\WinStations\RDP-Tcp\ColorDepth

to the value 4.
Not sure if you have to reboot the virtual machine (VM) then, but since rebooting a virtualized XP is quite fast anyway, just reboot it...

Did Nokia learn from Palm after all ?

Just found this tip for my beloved Nokia E71 (via twitter):

A Few E71 Tips For Sending Texts, Music Player, Contacts, And More:

"Type To Start A Calendar Or Alarm Entry
Lastly, when you launch the Calendar or Clock application don’t fiddle with options to start what you need to add. If you’re adding a calendar entry start typing the subject and it will begin your entry. When setting your alarm just start typing the time you want and push OK. Done!"

Sounds remarkably like the unmatched ease-of-use of Palm to me...

[comic] Under stress ?

via geek&poke

New tupalo search plugin

Since the guys at tupalo.com seem to have changed their search URL/syntax, I had to update the mycroft/opensearch plugin for Firefox accordingly.

The plugin is still limited to Vienna, because the search URL/syntax at tupalo.com is... once they change that, I'll follow suit.

Btw: the Tupalo Tools & Widgets page links to the search plugin, too.

Geek And Poke: Business-IT Alignment

via Geek And Poke: Business-IT Alignment

Search is not about wisdom, ...

... it's about mankind's stupidity.

Or how else can you explain that a Google search for the term "indiduell" yields 20 million results, about 14 million only in German.

Results 1 - 10 of about 13,700,000 German pages for indiduell. (0.18 seconds)

The word does not exist.
Its a misspelling and mispronunciation of "individuell" (=individual [leo]) - which interestingly only has "...13,800,000 German pages for individuell. (0.11 seconds) " on Google...

--
I know, those figures are not accurate, but still...

Bloggers Anonymous

from Non Sequitur — Gocomics.com: Comics, editorial cartoons, email comics, comic strips
via M3 - thanks, Martin

Flickr GreaseMonkey script

For the flickr users amongst you:
if you are/were using the GreaseMonkey script for icon replies (the one where you place an icon of the person you reply to next to your text) has been updated to v3.5; the old version did not work anymore.
For details see here.

VirtualBox networking on Windows

I guess this was the third time I fell into this trap, so I document it here (mainly for myself):

As long as you have any kind of LAN type interface/adapter active under Windows VirtualBox will try to use this[1] to do its networking (NAT in my case). This is true for LAN/Ethernet as well as WLAN/Wifi.
This also happens quietly, so you don't get an error message (from VBox), just the errors from the guest OS, usually DNS errors, because thats likely the first thing to fail.

In my case I frequently run on 3G/HSPDA only, but still have an active (yet disconnected) LAN and WiFi interface. In order for VirtualBox to work properly, those two have to be disabled.

Annoying...
Hope I remember it next time.

-----
[1] or so it seems.

Will the money scam emails ever stop??

Now even in German... (although I received it on a .net address).
Will this ever stop ?
Will people ever stop falling for this ?

Anyway, I consider this great fun...

Whenever you receive such a nigerian/african/russian/whatever money scam, please, please, please listen to Ze Franks rendering of those scams at TED.
You cant help but laugh at this, then.


Guten Tag,

Ich habe Ihre Kontaktadresse nach eigenen Nachforschungen erhalten.
Ich mochte Ihnen ein, fur Sie profitables geschaftliches Angebot
unterbreiten. Es handelt sich hierbei um den Transfer von 20.5
Millionen US Dollar . Wie Sie sicher verstehen werden, mochte
ich Sie hier um ausserste Diskretion bitten.

Meine Name ist Mrs.Diana Meier Vandrift. Ich bin die Witwe von Herr.
Peter Vandrift.Ich wurde in Sudafrika geboren, meine Grosseltern sind
jedoch Deutscher Herkunft.

Mein verstorbener Mann hat das Familien Unternehmen seiner Eltern
geerbt, darunter mehrere Hotels in Sudafrika, Warenhauser und einige
Landwirtschaftliche Betriebe. Ich habe diese zusammen mit meinem
Mann,bis zu seinem Tod, am 25. April 2002, gefuhrt und verwaltet.
Die Vandrift Familie (Familie meines Mannes ) war beteiligt an der
Politik in Sud Afrika, zu Zeiten der Apartheid. Mein Schwiegervater
war Mitglied und ranghoher Offizier der Apartheidsregierung unter
Premierminister Hendrik Verwoerd.

mein schwiegervater war nicht verantwortlich fur menschenrechtsver-
letzungen.Jedoch ist es schlimm genug, das er fur das damalige
innenministerium gearbeitet hat.

Er beendete seine Laufbahn als Offizier mit dem Ende der Apartheid
und begann sein Kariere als Geschaftsmann. Er investierte und
erwirtschaftete in kurzester Zeit ein betrachtliches Vermogen.
Nach unserer Hochzeit, ubernahm mein Mann die Geschafte seines
Vaters. Sein grosser Traum war es jedoch, Politiker zu werden. Er
wurde Mitglied der Oppositionspartei, Demokratic Alliance ( DA ) und
unterstutzte diese auch finanziell.

Die regierende Partei ANC ( Nelson Mandela ) war nicht glucklich uber
diese Situation,trat an meinen Mann heran und forderte ihn auf,
jede finanzielle Unterstutzung einzustellen. Er gab jedoch nicht nach.
Im Marz 2002 , erschien ein Artikel in der Guardian Newspaper, in dem
die Familie meines Mannes, der Zusammenarbeit mit der
Apartheidsregierung beschuldigt wurde. Offenbar eine Aktion des ANC,
gegen meinen Mann.

Am 25. April 2002, um 4 Uhr Morgens , versammelte sich eine Gruppe
von Schwarzen vor unserem Haus und versuchte auf das Grundstuck zu
gelangen. Wir riefen die Polizei, die jedoch sehr lange auf sich
warten liess. Als mein Mann am Fenster stand wurde er von funf
Gewehrkugeln todlich getroffen.

Er starb noch in meinen Armen,bevor die Polizei und der Krankenwagen
unser Haus erreicht hatten.

Fast Sieben Jahre nach dem schrecklichen Ereignis, bin ich immer noch
depressiv, mein Herz ist gebrochen und mein Leben schein zerstort.
Ich habe sehr viel Angst. Aus diesem Grund habe ich mich entschlossen,
das Land, das mir so viel Kummer und Leid gebracht hat zu verlassen.
Ich werde gehen und nie wieder zuruckkehren. Ich habe das gesamte Erbe
meines Mannes veraussert und verfuge nun uber eine betrachtliche
Summe von 20.5 Millionen US Dollar. Diese Geld mochte ich nach Europa
senden.

Hierfur bitte ich um Ihre freundliche Unterstutzung. Ich mochte das
Geld investieren und wurde auch hierfur um Ihre Hilfe bitten. Fur
diese freundliche Unterstutzung mochte ich Ihnen 10% des Geldes
zukommen lassen.

Bitte senden Sie etwaige Antworten auf meine unten angegebene Email
Adresse.

Ich hoffe auf Ihre baldige Antwort und verbleibe hoflichst

Mrs.Diana Meier Vandrift

Function Follows Platform

With a bit of hands on experience with the most recent generation of mobile phones (or smartphones, I guess I should say; iPhone/iPod touch, E71/S60, X1/Windows mobile), I noticed that it is more and more the platform that dictates what and how the phone does things.

E.g. my rant about the X1/Windows not being able to handle an alarm like every other phone on this planet.
Or that with some functions I feel that the E71/S60 is - as a phone - way behind my previous Nokia 6233/S40: Can't schedule a call on the S60, I could on the S40 (which is supposed to be inferior).

I haven't had any experience with the G1/Android so far, but from what I saw with those other phones, it will most probably be the same:

Function Follows Platform.

The (downward) stack now dictates the (upward) user experience.

As much as I like open platforms with easy and open developer access and app distribution, I hate what it sometimes does to user experience.

Sad, somehow.

Johnny Lee: Creating tech marvels out of a $40 Wii Remote

Wonderful TED presentation that demos the power of open systems, open minds and innovative people who want to achieve something

RTFM 2.0

Just learned of a cool web service that totally replaces the good old RTFM [1].

It's called "Let me Google that for you" ... and does exactly that.

You enter a term in letmegooglethatforyou, get a link in return and send this link to your RTFMee [2].
Who, will get animated instructions on how he/she should have used Google in the first place.

I guess those RTFMees will get the message, then!

And no, in the spirit of this tool, I wont post the URL of this service.

Enjoy.
--
[1] RTFM = "Read the f*cking manual"... something you tell people who ask stupid questions that could be answered by simply looking it up in the manual. A bit outdated... Kind of nineties...
[2] I like that term ... even though I just made it up.

Media mess up

Odd how "old" media drives behavious in/with new media.

1. when there is nothing on TV, I usually watch The Daily Show online - or The Colbert Report (same same).
   - or -
2. I get inspired by the TV program - like yesterday with P.T. Anderson's wonderful Boogie Nights - and watch exactly the same movie, just on DVD, because I get the original version then, not the crappy German translation.
   
   
3. I totally give up on movies and watch some TED talks on my iPod.

Either way, the TV is more and more becoming just the trigger, not the media itself.

Skype for S60

Finally there is a (beta) Skype for Symbian/S60 (or more importantly: my E71).
It is a JavaMobile app, and can be found here.
Looks promising and - from the first glimpse - a bit easier to use than Fring. [1]

Let us all rejoice...

--
[1] not sure if it will really make my life easier...

SMS delivery report problem confirmed

Finally got confirmation that the broken delivery reports are indeed a problem on mobilkom's SMSC and they are working on a fix.
And I already blamed my poor little innocent E71... how could I?

Hope they won't charge for those broken message ...
(I know they will charge, but I never give up hope).

More on the SMS report problem

Seems that the SMS delivery report problem (by hint of Max) that this is not a E71/S60 problem, because it happens with other handsets (SE K580i in his case), too. The problem started to surface for him at exactly the same time as it did here.
The only commonality is the operator, hence the SMSC...

So, dear mobilkom austria, kindly look into this.
Looks like you are loosing the DLR flag or whatever it is...(software change 2-3 weeks ago ??)

Problem on E71/S60 with SMS delivery receipts

For the last 2 weeks or so I noticed that on my E71 SMS [1] delivery receipts (or reports) quite frequently (~50% of the time) are displayed as plain text SMS, instead of hidden and just used to update the delivery status of the message.

Such a report then looks like this:

id:0010520070 sub:001 dlvrd:001 submit date:0812311708 done date:0812311708 stat:DELIVRD err:000 text:Test

This is
a) not very readable
and
b) totally useless (since the message will stay as "Pending"...)

Most annoying is, that my operator (A1) charges for the delivery receipt (equivalent of 1 SMS).

--
[1] "texting" for the native speaker amongst my readers.

Why Microsoft should not do phones

1. See today's news about the dying Zunes (they are not phones - I know - but the same category of devices)

2. A coworker and friend just got an Sony Xperia X1 ... cool phone, if it were not for the Windows Mobile inside. What he (a long time Nokia user) discovered was, that you should not switch off the phone when you rely on the alarm to go off in the morning, because it then wont.

Yes. True.
With Winodws Mobile, the d*** phone is stays switched off and the alarm just wont sound.

The ipod did it again

Just a couple of days ago, my iPod touch put me in panic mode, because the downloaded apps would not start.
The solution was to install one (any) additional app from the store (a free one, preferably).

Yesterday, he's done it again [1].

Again I had to install a free app.
First time it was the cool (but pointless) "Night Stand".
Yesterday it was the "WiFinder"...

This is getting annoying...

---
[1] speaking of "he's done it again" - reminds me of the good old Pepsi ad.

My new iPod touch

So – for about 3 weeks now, I'm proud owner of an iPod Touch. I was not unhappy with my old iPod nano, but it was a good chance and a good deal.

In brief:

1. The Nokia E71 is most definitely the better input device. With anything you have to write (no matter what), you are better off on the E71.

2. The iPod (touch) is the superior reading or consumation device. Emails, web pages, feeds, ... everything. Just better.... and cooler.

3. iPod (and iPhone) are the first mobile devices, that display an email primarily in its HTML alternative (if there is one), and not just in plain text. I know that the verdict is still not out on whether HTML emails are a good idea, but the display on the iPod is excellent... more fun to read emails this way, than on the Nokia. Then E71 is able to display the HTML part, but only if you open the “attachment.html”.... cumbersome.

4. The lack of running programs in the background or in parallel on the iPod/iPhone is annoying. The E71 is far superior in that respect. E.g. having Gmail, Twing (=Skype) and Twitter client run in the background – can't do that on the iPod.

5. The lack of a clipboard has already been widely ranted about, so I will restrain myself from joining in. Since I use the clipboard on the E71 about once every 2 weeks or so, I don't really miss it on the iPod

6. Ah, yes, and the nano was easier to carry around - as his Steveness already demonstrated years ago.
   

Still a great device. Especially to watch TED through iTunes.

Weird iPod touch behaviour

Proud owner of an iPod touch that I am for about a month now (more on that later), I noticed something odd today:
All of my downloaded apps (twitterific, facebook, rememberthemilk, ...) stopped working. They would sort-of-start but immediately return to the home screen before doing anything. The build in apps did all work nicely.

I googled for this, and found that I actually had to install an additional application from the app store, and lo and behold this did solve the problem. Whatever the reason...

Sxipper

There's a great podcast/interview on IT conversations with Dick Hardt about Sxipper.

Sxipper is a free Firefox add-on that saves you time by keeping track of an unlimited number of usernames and passwords as well as the personal data you share every day over the web. The company's mission is to make your interactions with the Web simple, keeping your data private and secure.

Dick Hardt, founder of Sxip, joins Phil, Scott, and Ben, to discuss the product, as well as the entire issue of privacy and identity on the web, as well as how to market plug-ins as products.

Find it here or on iTunes

Note to Microsoft

thanks to martin

This site is optimized ...

Just found this:

Copyright © 2008 ... [This site is optimized for Mozilla 1.7]

Who in 2008 is using Mozilla 1.7 ????

So I surrendered...

... and signed up on facebook.

Not sure if I really wanted this.

Update on Access Point Groups for the E71

Just to report back on what I recently posted about the lack of Access Point Groups on the E71 or rather (third party) replacement thereof ("Access Point Group equiv for the E71")

I've been using Psiloc Connect ever since (and of course paid for it, in the meantime) and it works like a charm.

Glassfish and MySQL event in Vienna

As one of my last tasks as a SW guy in Sun Austria, we'll do a Glassfish and MySQL breakfast tomorrow. Starting at 830 at the "Salzberg". See details here and here.
Alexis will do one of his great glassfish presos/demos.
Looking forward to it, hope to see some of you there.

What I dislike about the E71 / S60

As much as I like my Nokia E71, there are some regressions vis-a-vis the previous Nokia pure-phones I had:

The 6233 could schedule a call - you had a calendar entry that represented a call to another person.
When the notification would pop up, you just had to press the green button to actually call this person.
Quite handy.

Not on the E71. Does only know of "Meeting, Memo, Anniversary, To do", but not of "Call".

Quite disappointing.

Didn't we have a SOA?

via Geek&Poke

I'm done with Palm

So, with my new E71 I'm now really done with Palm - thank you very much.
On the T|X, email was unusable, browsing was awkward, it was unstable, and Palm did not fix any of the issue.

I first started out in about 1999 with Palm Vx, then moved to an m500, later to a Tungsten T, T5 and T|X.
I did have the bluetooth adapter, the Wifi adapter and the wireless keyboard (I really thought I'd use the palm with the keyboard instead of a laptop when travelling... ).
I used it for data entry (offline and online/web, spreadsheets), for taking notes, as a pure PIM of course (i.e. address book, calendar), for email (wireless), and for playing simple games.
It never was much of a music player (not at all,a actually).

That's all past now.

I still love the Palm as a concept and what it did for they industry years ago. But I hate the attitude of the company.

Access Point Group equiv for the E71

Recently one of my first rants about the Nokia E71 was, that Nokia dropped Access Point Groups from connectivity options:

"its predecessor, the E61i had the concept of access point groups , where you could group e.g. your home Wifi, your office Wifi and your 3G connections (i.e. access points) into one group, and then assign this access point group e.g. to your email connection settings. So email retrieval would work on any of those networks, but go over the faster and cheaper Wifi first.
No longer possible with the E71."

However, there is a 3rd party tool called Psiloc Connect that does exactly this: re-introduce access point groups, or rather a single access point (which you then can configure in email, fring, synch ...) which itself checks and decides whether to you WiFi or fall back to 3G/GPRS.

I'm testdriving this for a couple of days, to see if it is worthwhile the 9.95 €.

Shapes from the crowd

Here's an excellent post from Christian about flickr (geo-) shapes - derived from crowd-sourced tags.

Shapes from the crowd - Christian Spanring

The 2 examples he gives (Vienna boundaries, and Vienna inner city) to me are typical examples of the "wisdom of crowds" effect: quite accurate with a large enough sample and good mixture of people within the crowd (Vienna boundaries) and sometimes "totally off" with a specific narrow topic and (therefore) a badly composed crowd (Inner city vs Stephansdom).

It also highlights the problem with tags, that - especially on flickr - it is unclear what the are used for: the place where the picture was taken from, or the motif...

Thanks.

No more email SMS notifications

So, after 8 years or so I finally switched off the SMS (=aka text) notifications from my private email account to my mobile, since 95% of those notifications are pure spam.
I sick and tired of being told by sms that my penis is to short...

Being overconnected

Yesterday while I was travelling from Graz on the train back to Vienna a good friend and colleague (Chris) was trying to contact me to arrange for a meeting (a.k.a. beer) later that evening.
He was actually trying almost each every means of communication available to him, so I received (within 1 minute):
a) a voicemail
b) an email
c) a tweet

I cannot escape him.
(and I don't really want to)

Extension from Thunderbird to Shredder

I now updated my extension to also work with Shredder (the Thunderbird3 beta).
Seems like - again - the internals of the mail popup menu changed:

• First of all the user agent now reports "Shredder" instead of Thunderbird.
• Then - after a lot of debugging - I had to replace the
  document.popupNode.getAttribute('emailAddress')
  with
  document.popupNode.getAttribute('text').
• Problem there is , that text contains more then just the emailAddress used to, and I had to parse it...

And XUL on Thunderbird/Shredder is still not easy to debug.

My new Nokia E71

The Noka E71 is probably the best Nokia (smart) phone I ever laid my hands on.

And I have to admit that I hated Symbian based phones in the past... the communicator series, etc.

They were slow, hard to use, had a bad form factor (ok, that's not really related to Symbian), and so forth.

And when the iPhone was first released I really thought, I'd never move from my POMP (plain old mobile phone) to a Nokia SmartPhone...

Enter the E71.

• It is fast.

• It is lean (SW wise I mean)

• It has an excellent form factor.

• The display is brilliant.

• It comes with Wifi, Bluetooth, 3G, GPS (my order of importance, should be more space between 3G and GPS … ;-) )

• Email actually works:

  • not just „ POP over IMAP“, but the phone client and the server actually stay in sync.

  • I can actually read an email (ok, more display size related, then phone OS)

  • I can see and open attachments … and read or work with them too

• The camera is OK (not really important to me, but still; see this for a test)

• Gmail, Gmaps, Skype (via fring), flickr-upload work amazingly well for a phone.

• The tiny QWERTZ (the german layout for QWERTY) keyboard does work well. Better than the virtual keyboards on iPhone and friends.

Still, there are some classical Nokia goofs (you did not expect me the ever stop ranting about nokia, did you?)

• its predecessor, the E61i had the concept of access point groups , where you could group e.g. your home Wifi, your office Wifi and your 3G connections (i.e. access points) into one group, and then assign this access point group e.g. to your email connection settings. So email retrieval would work on any of those networks, but go over the faster and cheaper Wifi first.
  No longer possible with the E71.

• Automatic email retrieval is a cool thing, but can you spot the missing item here ?
  
  Why - oh why - just not every (1) hour ?
  

• I can no longer schedule a call in the calender. That's really a loss to me... I used that feature a lot for “scheduled call backs”. I still can set a reminder of course, but there is a lot more typing involved – both when entering the reminder as well as later when doing the call. It used to be just one click (on the green button).

And I get a full new set of typos when SMS/texting now that I moved from T9 to QWERTZ ;-)

Wow - Mobilkom austria and fring launch partner program!

The only part where mobilkom austria seems to "get" the post PSTN/incumbant/closed-network era is VOIP...
Now they partner wirth fring (mobile skype et al client)

Mobilkom austria’s A1 and fring launch partner program!

via japhy.at - thanks

Sun Ray and Austrian Smartcards

Together with a good customer and active member of our Sun Ray community we finally got the Austrian Quick cards (sort of a nationwide e-Purse solution for Austria) to work in Sun Rays.

So you can now use your Maestro (“Bankomat”), University Campus Card and other cards of the same type and layout as a Sun Ray token.

Together with the Austrian health care card (“eCard”) we can now claim “100% pop coverage” - as mobile operators do – for Sun Ray compatible cards. Great. I love it.

I'm still unsure how willing users are to actually use a payment card for IT authentication. I know that we don't read any data from the card other than the serial number, but does an end user trust IT equipment with their “money“?

Let's see over the next couple of months.

Here's the way to get it to work:

Download the two smartcard configuration files that Niki Waibel was kind enough to create:

AustrianECard.cfg for the eCard and AustrianQuickEPurse.cfg for the Quick card (or most likely both).

Store them to the /etc/opt/SUNWut/smartcard/ directory on your Sun Ray server(s), and place them on a prominent position with the probe_order.conf (they are #1 and #2 in my configuration here ;-) )

utrestart the Sun Ray Server to make it pick up the change, and voila, you should be able to use the new cards as proper and valid Sun Ray tokens.

Feel free to use it. Should you experience problems, just post a comment here.

Warning: a new Sun Ray Server software patch will most likely remove those files or overwrite the probe_order.conf.

Gadget week

Last week I got my new Lenovo Thinkpad T500 to replace my (still IBM) Thinkpad T43p (disk and fan already made noises like a bad diesel engine).
2 Days ago I got my Nokia E71 to replace my 6233.
And coming weeking I guess I'll buy me the Nikon D300 to replace my D70.

Expect postings on all of this next week.

We opensource my ponytail

via 1938 enterprise

[TechCrunchIT] Selling the Downturn: Schwartz and the Silver Lining

Excellent analysis of Jonathan Schwartz's latest blogpost and Sun internal memo by Steve Gillmor

Selling the Downturn: Schwartz and the Silver Lining

The question now becomes: What insight does Schwartz bring now to the conversation with customers. If they are, as he writes, under stress, and therefore “open to change”, what combination of leading edge hardware and system integration of virtualization will produce immediate results in a climate where Sun’s focus on financial services is likely to be challenged by a wave of mergers, buyouts, and outright collapses. Schwartz and Sun have blazed a trail to the cloud computing enterprise, but now they have to defend themselves against having done perhaps too good a job of turning the market toward the new reality.

Firefox 3 and Twitter

... don't work well with each other.

For some days now (I feel that it was with the 3.0.2 or 3.0.3 update from FF) whenever I type into the twitter status input field, it slows down, grabs 100% of the CPU and I can type at a rate of 1 character per 2 seconds !!!

It seems that the javascript for updating the counter for the remaining characters (just right above the input field) is doing this, but I cannot really prove this.

Strangest thing is, it does not do this with IE or with the very same FF version running in a virtual box (different profile, though). I also started FF without any extensions (firefox -safe-mode) and disabled spell-checking.
No difference.

Could not find any hint or reference to this behavior on Google.
Strange.

Delete nor Not Delete

I noticed a strange co-incidence between Lightning (the Calendar plugin for Mozilla Thunderbird) and the crappy mail client of my Nokia 6233...

Both cannot delete the item you are currently viewing.
Strange.

In Lightning (and I guess in Sunbird as well), when you open an event (or todo item) you cannot delete this very item from the menu or toolbar.

There is simply no delete function.
Only in the various calendar views, but not on the item itself.
This annoys me, because here is exactly the place where you see and know most about the potential delete candidate... what better place to delete it ?
(btw: I already filed bug #392021 against it, but it does not move... maby I'll grab it myself one day)

Same in the email client on my Nokia 6233:Not that anything really works there... The 6233 does something I dubbed "POP over IMAP", since it uses IMAP as a technical protocol layer but only offers POP like features.

There also, I cannot delete the mail I'm currently viewing. I have to go back to the inbox and delete it from there. Crappy.

Daily Show Full Episodes

Finally, the Daily Show with Jon Stewart publishes the full episodes (not just snippets) on the web.
This is most important for Europeans without satellite or cable TV... finally.

Thanks.
A bold move for traditional media, I thought.

Geek And Poke: The iPhone Generation

thanks to Geek And Poke: The iPhone Generation: "The iPhone Generation"

Thunderbird compose HTML vs plain-text

I just noticed that there is a short-cut to kinda toggle between HTML and plain-text in Thunderbird when composing a message.

You just have to hold the shift-key when you "launch" the compose/editor window, and it will use the opposite mode of your profile.

So, when you have HTML on per default, and want to compose a new mail in plain-text you just hold the shift-key while you hit the "Create a new message" button.
Or when you hit Reply, ...

Nice.

Does not work inside the composer window though.
Since I have not found a toggle button (extension) for it so far, and always going through Options->Format->Plain Text Only is a bit cumbersome, I'll write one ...

Someday. But for the time being, the shift-key helps.

Dopplr's obsession with planes

Dopplr - the great and cool travel social network - has an obsession with traveling by plane, that I cannot share.

Since they started recording the means of transportation for a trip (by car, by train, by plane, ... on foot) to calculate your carbon footprint, the default setting is "by plane" no matter what the trip.

Even for a trip that is only 200km... or less.

I checked if I could overwrite this in my traveler profile, but I cannot (or at least I did not find the setting for it)

When you tweet or email a trip, dopplr does not even parse a string like "by car" - which would be easy to parse, given the clear and narrow dictionary "by plan", "by train", "by car", "by bus", ..., "on foot". One could really look for those strings literally.

Some Flickr Observations

Just some random thoughts and observations around flickr.

• I don't get explore – or the interestingness.
  I do have (or did have) a couple of my pictures in explore in the past, but – quite frankly – I only see the explore-worthiness of 2 of the 5 - guess which.
  
  
  I don't really want to understand the algorithm, really, I just don't get it. That's all.


• Why for example are my 2 personal favorites (of my own pictures) not in explore ?
  
  
  That's what I really don't understand.
  


• Why did flickr change their start page?
  I now cannot distinguish that easily between activities on my pictures (comments, favs) from activities by me on other pictures. That used to be separate, and I quite liked it.
  
  
• News drive(s) flickr views... [2]
  I do have a couple of pictures of my next door (or rather vis-a-vis) building, the "Stadt des Kindes" (read: City of/for children) - an abandoned former children's home and/or orphanage in Vienna. Used to be quite progressive 30 years ago - both, from a pedagogical and architectural point of view. Now the building is about do be demolished and the demonstrations against that of course made it into the local news... All of a sudden the stats on my Stadt-des-Kindes picture went significantly up, which google-image search being the #1 referrer[1].
  Strange ... but feels good.

So, thanks for listening.
Good night.

[1] I know that the HTTP header is called "referer", but don't blame me, if the standards guys don't know proper English.
[2] Does not really rhyme well, but what the heck.

New flickr home page

Flickr has upgraded (or is just about to upgrade) their homepage with more dynamic and community oriented features. More details here on the flickr blog

GUI broken ?

Isn't a GUI utterly broken, when the status bar (of the main window (!)) says "Opening Main Window..." for half a minute ?

Windows file type registration for OOo 3.0 Beta for Windows

Just installed the latest OpenOffice.org 3.0 build over the previous one, and all the Windows Explorer integration was lost.
I googled around a bit, and found this on GullFOSS:

"If you test the OpenOffice.org 3.0 Beta on the Windows platform, you might be wondered about the missing system integration. Well, we decided to avoid the system integration in the Windows registry, because it conflicts with an existing system integration of an OOo 2.x, that you are probably using for your daily work. But if you know, what you do, you can of course get the complete system integration for your Beta tests. You only have to set the global property WRITE_REGISTRY, that is used as condition in the Windows Installer database. So please use

setup.exe WRITE_REGISTRY=1

or if you prefer the direct call with Windows Installer service:

msiexec.exe /i WRITE_REGISTRY=1"

I reinstalled with setup.exe WRITE_REGISTRY=1 as stated above and it worked like a charme.

VirtualBox 1.6.4 released

There's a new maintenance release for Sun's VirtualBox: 1.6.4

Firefox 3 - finally

I finally moved to Firefox 3.

Because one of my favorite extension (add-on) was not FF3 compatible, I was still using FF2 only.

ConQuery was (is) the culprit. It is only 2.0.0.* compatible, and even if you "patch" the max version to 3.0.* it of course does install and run, but cannot parse the opensearch plugins from mycroft. So it was unusable.
Interestingly is was working with those search plugins nicely under FF2 ... odd.

I had FF3 only running in my virtualbox, but not on my "main" desktop. And once you get used to the speed of FF3 you will get annoyed when you have to repeatedly go back to FF2.

Only yesterday, I found out that I was kind of using the wrong extension in the first place, since there is a Context Search add-on for FF as well, which runs perfectly with opensearch, FF2 and FF3.

So there was no more obstacle...and I'm on FF3 now.

So much faster.
And the awesome bar is really awesome... or at least better than the old one.

As an IT guy ...

via Geek and Poke.

Dopplr and Twitter problem fixed

A couple of weeks ago, Dopplr (the social travel network) announced support for twitter (and email and sms). That is, you can send a tweet to the dopplr user on twitter with your travel details, and it will automatically get added to your Dopplr account as a new trip.

Of course you first have to register your twitter user with your Dopplr account... (why this is, and why the number of identity silos as ever increasing is a different story, and I'm sure I will rant about identity in social networks soon here).

You do so, by sending a (private/direct) message to the Dopplr account with a secret key (kind of thing) that you get from Dopplr. Once you sent this, the link between your Dopplr account and your twitter name is established, i.e. messages from this very twitter name will be associated with your Dopplr account.

From then on, you send messages like

“I'm going to munich from Sep 23rd to Sep 29th“

to Dopplr and the trip will be added automatically. Confirmation is sent both via twitter and via email.

In my case, however, the registration failed.

Dopplr just would not react to my registration message. Simply ignored it. I first thought, that I did something wrong, but today I got an email from Matt Biddulph , the CTO of Dopplr:

Subject: Apologies for a recent problem in Dopplr's Twitter support

This morning we discovered a bug that has affected about 60 Dopplr accounts, including yours. It meant that when you sent us a message to associate your account with your Twitter account so that you could send us trips, it didn't work correctly.

We've just fixed the bug and deployed new code to our servers. If you'd like to try again starting at http://www.dopplr.com/account/twitter then the process should now work.

I'm sorry for this problem, and hope you enjoy using our new Twitter feature.

Matt Biddulph,
Dopplr CTO.

I tried the registration again, this time it worked.

Dopplr replied with

Thanks, now we know who you are on Twitter. Full usage instructions are at http://dopplr.com/account/twitter

within a minute or so, and then I was able to add my sample trip to Munich (this is just an example, don't expect me in Munich at that time).

Which is then confirmed by an email:

Subject: Re: Your twitter message to Dopplr

Thanks for sending us a message by twitter.
We automatically created a trip to Munich, Germany (from Vienna,
Austria) between September 23rd and September 29th

We won't share coincidences from this newly-created trip with your
fellow travellers until August 13th. This is to give you a chance
to check and correct any problems in interpretation.

If you'd like to check, go to
personal link deleted

Yours sincerely,
The Dopplr Team.

I love the idea to put the new trip into a kind of quarantine for 10 days, but still publish it then by default.

So it works great now.

I was so surprised by Matt's email, that (I guess for the first time ever) I replied to him thanking him for the service.

Unusual... even for cool startups.

(email published with Matt's consent)

Update on gmail mobile vs https

As reported earlier, I had problems with both the new "Always use https" option on and still use gmail from my mobile.

So, first of all, I installed v1.5 of gmail mobile for my 6233. This did not go through the JavaME update process, because it seems Google changed the download URL for it. Just point your (built in) mobile browser to http://gmail.com/app and you can download from there.

According to the gmail blog and help center there should be a way to have "Always use https" on and still use the mobile app.

If you have the latest version of the app (1.5), you can work around these errors by also enabling the app's own 'Always use secure network connections (slower performance):' setting from your device and then signing out:

1. Select Menu > Go to > Settings.
2. Check the Always use secure network connections (slower performance): option.
3. Make sure the 'Always keep me signed in' option is NOT checked (in order for you to sign out).
4. Save your changes.
5. Select Menu > Exit Gmail.
6. Restart the app and sign in.

(from help center)

I tried this, i.e. activated both, the "Alway use secure network ..." on the mobile and the "Always use https" on the web (and turned "Always keep me signed in" back on again after a while.

Now I always get signed out of the mobile application whenever it tried to connect to gmail with a

Username and password do not match. You provided (...)

error message.

So, still does not work.

Had to turn "Always use https" back off again...

Gmail mobile fails when "always use https" is turned on

So, of course, when Google released the "Always use https" feature in gmail I (paranoid as I am) turned it on.
At a seemingly unrelated time later my mobile Gmail on my Nokia 6233 failed to connect with the (misleading) error message

"This program requires a working data connection... Please check you signal stength."

- whilst the GPRS/data indicator is active and all other apps work.

I did not get the correlation to the https setting, but a couple of days later (yesterday) it struck me... and it turned it off again ... voila, gmail mobile wors again.
(and turned it on again -> fail ,turned it of -> works).

Turns out, that this is well documented:

Some products that connect to Gmail, like Google Toolbar, are not yet compatible with https. We're working to identify issues like this and get them fixed, so visit your product's Help Center if you encounter problems after enabling this setting. In particular, check out this Gmail Help Center page if you use the Gmail mobile app, as you may initially hit an error when you try to use it (we're working on a fix).

(from the gmail blog)

Bad thing is, my 6233 is running with gmail v1.1.1 and there does not seem to be an update for it...

Fighting with XUL in Thunderbird

For some strange reason that I have not figured out yet I totally fail to reference the „Move“ menu in the Thunderbird Message menu... odd.

Have to dig deeper into this.

Finally a Thunderbird bug fixed

One of the TB "bugs" that bugged (no pun intended) me most was that a couple of controls (menuitems etc. ) did not have an ID associated with them , and so were not really (or not really easy) for extensions do overlay.

But since 2.0.0.16 (hot of the press) this should be fixed:
Bug 411481 – Make it easier for extensions to overlay the TB menubar by adding IDs

Let's see how complete....

Vacation vs email

After a 2 week vacation (a "near offline experience") I managed to reduce my business email inbox from 450 unread items to 17... Those 17 I really have to act upon.
(And I'm not talking to email I receive from a maillist, or other inboxes like Flickr, Friendfeed, Google Reader, ...)

Which means that in 2 weeks time I have <4% meaningful emails ?
Ok, I've read about 80% of the emails - at least the subject and the first couple of lines - on my Palm through my bluetooth/6233/gprs connection. But that was trouble enough.
a) VersaMail on the Palm T|X does not successfully delete emails on the (IMAP)Server, not matter how often you tell it to...
b) Neither das the Nokia 6233 built-in email client; though it says it does IMAP and it from a pure protocol level does it of course, it simply only offers POP functionality, though; i.e. retrieve, mark-read on the server (always on retrieval, how annoying) , but no delete.
c) more and more emails tend to be HTML, so neither the Palm nor the Nokia is a good interface to read them - unless you can get actual information out of a "Your email-reader does not support HTML...."

Time to get an iPhone or Blackberry ???
Or are the above stats (<4%!) telling me, I should not even bother with mobile email anymore (after I successfully have worked with it (and implemented it earlier myself) since 1999...
My god, that was last century ...

Offline... how strange

As followers of my Dopplr profile already know, I'll be offline for 2 weeks, and I guess totally offline.
I'm not really use to that anymore, hasn't happend in the last 3 or 4 years...

Lets see how I can cope with it.

Now all presentations from JavaDeus08 available for download

Well, the <title> kind of say it all... here's the link.

OpenOffice.org 3

I've been playing around with the latest OpenOffice.org 3 builds for a couple of weeks now...
One of the nicest changes in the Writer is the zoom functionality, which (quite frankly) s^h^h ^h was not that good in previous releases.

Now it looks like this:

You can actually zoom by dragging the slider... as expected.

A lot better than in the old dialog:

So lets forget about that.

btw: you can safely run OOo 3 (developer builds) alongside an older version (e.g. StarOffice 8 in my case).