Cloud rants

With the outage of the Amazon S3 storage about two weeks ago  and the downtime of the Playstation Network (PSN) due to security problems, the cloud sceptics are on the rise again.

The usual “we told you so” and “the cloud is not safe”... etc etc.

Two thoughts on this

1. Show me one internal IT operation that has an availability or up-time like S3.
2. If people would only spend the right amount of money on the cloud services and subscribe to the full package with proper redundancies, etc etc this would probably not happen.
   Well, the single outage at one Amazon site will still happen, but not the same net effect on all the other services.

I guess one of the reasons is, that IT managers or CxOs compare the cheapest price they find on the brochures for the cloud services with their internal (total) cost. And then tend to buy only the cheapest flavor of whatever cloud service they want, without any consideration regarding availability (don't even get me started on security).

Like at least one IT manager who I heard complaining how expansive 1 TB of storage is in an enterprise grade storage box (or even in a SAN) when they can get 1TB for roughly 50€ as a USB disk...

Awesome Thunderbird Plugin

So, the other day I sat down to write myself an add-on that was more than overdue for me... or for the way I use mail and Thunderbird.

At that time I called it Domain Specific Move, and it did exactly that. I took the most domain with the most occurrence in an email (scanning to, from, cc) and suggested a folder for this mail; and you were able to train it.

Through Max's comment I learned about the Nostalgy add-on. It actually is about defining keyboard shortcuts and stuff for Thunderbird:

Adds keyboard shortcuts to change folder, move/copy messages, with folder name auto-completion (using only the keyboard). 

The folder name auto-completion is the really awesome stuff. I just have to hit S (for Save == Move) and an entry field pops up at the bottom of the window and I only need to type two or three letters of the folder name and that's it.

When you really use nested folders like I do - with about 5-6 levels deep, this saves a lot of time.

Same for G as GoTo folder. And there's a nice B (whatever that stands for) that Moves the message to the folder and then goes to the folder (sort of S+G).

Great stuff. Thanks Max, for the hint.

New Google Docs App for Android with OCR

New Google Docs App for Android with OCR

Google release a (nativeff) client of Google Docs for Android. Apart way better editing of documents than the (mobile) web version does, it now also supports OCR. (optical character recognition) images directly from the camera. This feature has been in Google docs for a while, but now it is also directly from the phone. Of course I had to try this. It gives you a kind nf James Bond feeling, when you grep you phone with a hidden camera in it[1], bend over a document and take picture of it
With a click it is uploaded to Google and convened to text. With quite impressive results. The image itself is preserved through the upload and attached to the document, so you can manually correct the results.

Naturally, this post had to be created this way.

[1] ofcourse the camera in my HTC Desire Z is not really “hidden”, but part of the 007 experience

 Ok, so here's the image:

And here's the original text:


New Google Docs App for Android with OCR

Google release a (native?) client of Google Docs for Android. Apart from way better editing of documents than the (mobile) web version does, it now also supports OCR (optical character recognition) from images … directly from the camera.

This feature has been in Google docs for a while, but now it is also available directly from the phone.

Of course I had to try this. It gives you a kind of James Bond feeling, when you grep you phone with a hidden camera in it[1], bend over a document and take picture of it.

With a click it is uploaded to Google and converted to text.

With quite impressive results.

The image itself is preserved through the upload and attached to the document, so you can manually correct the results.

Naturally, this post had to be created this way.

---

[1] of course the camera in my HTC Desire Z is not really “hidden”, but it's part of the 007 experience :)

And yes, the typo ("grep" instead of "grab") was by me, not by google.

Google Calendar Goodie

Have you ever noticed that Google Calender shows the current day (of the month) as the favicon.

Therefore also in the tab (on Firefox), even it the tab is pinned.

Cool. Nice.
Not sure if it is entirely useful, but I like it.

The end of Flock

Flock Official End of Support Notice

Support for Flock browsers will be discontinued as of April 26th, 2011. We would like to thank our loyal users around the world for their support, and we encourage the Flock community to migrate in the coming weeks to one of the recommended web browsers listed below.

Our Recommendations

Since no further security updates will be provided to keep you safe on the web, we encourage all Flock users to upgrade to either Chrome or Firefox. Both are based on the same reliable technologies as Flock, and both are being actively maintained and improved. Also, each of these browsers has a broad selection of add-ons and extensions to customize and extend their capabilities.

For more information (including notes on how to migrate to other browsers), please see our FAQ.

Thanks,

The Flock Team

I de-installed it months ago anyway :(

Thunderbird hack: Domain Specific Move

One of the most frequent actions in Thunderbird is to move a message that I received from a business partner or customer to a message folder for exactly this partner/customer. Same for messages I sent to them.

However, as you communicate with more customers and partners, the folder hierarchy will become more complex and I already need about 6 clicks to select the specific folder.

Sometimes I'm lucky and it is the most recently used folder, then I can do it with the "move again" function directly in the context menu; sometimes, it is at least in the recent folder menu, still 3 clicks.

WIBNI if TB could just remember that I always move messages from domain A to the folder X, lets say from "ibm.com" to folder "/Vendors/IBM" or something like that, and then present me with a one-click option on the menu.

So I wrote an add-on for this and called it "Domain Specific Move".
It does exactly what I described.

I find the most frequently used domain in the email (counting all from sender, recipient, cc-list).
If I already find a setting for this, I create an additional menu item in the move message menu for a move to this folder.

If not, I present a "learn" menu item, that lets you train the extension on where to put mails for this extension (i.e. register a folder for this domain). You pick the destination folder yourself. No magic included there.

Once I thus learned and stored the folder for this domain, I can - next time this domain appears - present the "Move to " menu item as above.

Configuration is stored in the preferences under "extensions.domainmove.".
Currently I have no options page for this, so if you want to change or remove an entry, you have to go to the prefs.js file or the about: dialog.

Yes, I know, filters can do the same; but when I select to manually run the filter, it will not tell me what exactly it is up to... The beauty of my approach (IMHO) is, that I see it on the menu and can decide otherwise, because not always does the folder registered for this domain really match.

In essence this is only a short cut with an educated suggestion. No behind-the-scenes magic.

Todos:

• more flexibility with domains with more than 2 parts (e.g. at.ibm.com should map to ibm.com if there is no at.ibm.com)
• unlearn domains (without going to the about: dialog)
• option for domains-to-ignore; currently I ignore non-specific domains as gmail.com, a1.net, gmx.at, sun.com, oracle.com [1].
• ignore "my" domain (see comment re oracle.com)

Available for TB3+ only.

I will polish the code and implement some of the above todos, then I will post the first beta.

--
[1] well for me as an former Sun and now Oracle employee, all emails contain either an oracle.com or sun.com address and this domain contains no information on where to archive the email.

On podcasts - Not Print

Not only is a podcast not radio, it is also (not too surprisingly) NOT PRINT.

In a newspaper or journal you usually have the so called standfirst right after/below the headline summing the article to follow. Sort of an abstract, if you will.

This is quite convenient, because it allows you to learn what the article is about (not always that obvious from the headline alone), and maybe skip the article itself entirely.
Sometimes - if I know I am interested in the article - I will skip the standfirst... knowing that there is no additional information in it.

Either way, there are options to avoid the repetition.

Not so in a podcast.
In audio it is less easy to skip things.

If you provide a quick intro to a podcast, be very very brief. Only give the topic. Don't summarize the podcast. Especially not if the podcast is short (5-10 minutes). Do not repeat everything from the podcast in the abstract/standfirst.

Just don't.
It's annoying.

WebOS on my Laptop?

I sort of made fun about WebOS on a PC the other day; but after a nice chat with Max, I began to realize that there indeed is a use for WebOS on a PC... on a Laptop to be precise.

• Imagine a regular Laptop (HP in this case here, if it makes it easier for you :-) )
• Imagine also that by some magic means you'd tell it to boot WebOS instead of Windows/Linux when you power it on or de-hibernate it.
• Imagine that you'd have an excellent browser, video player, good-enough email app, good-enough word/excel/powerpoint viewer and editor, ... all that you have on regular iPads or Android-Tablets today.

That'd give you an iPad/Tablet-like instant-on-gadget with a full QWERTY keyboard and excellent battery life.

On the airport, on the train, on your daily commute, ... this sounds a lot easier than Windows for those situations

Some thoughts and pre-reqs on this:

• You'd need something like a "WebOS key" which you hold to "boot" the WebOS mode.
  Windows must not even start to de-hibernate.
• WebOS would need to be already running (hibernated to flash, or something like that), not really booted from scratch
• The laptop would need an extra power-saving mode and maybe clock the CPU down in WebOS mode so save battery life

And if you really need the full enterprisey stuff to create rich corporate boring PowerPoint presentations with pie-charts and everything, you can still boot into Windows, like you used to.

Come to think of it, I might actually want WebOS on my laptopThinkPad.

Numeric HTML Input Field and other HTML5 goodies

Some while ago I've written a little web app at home that
a) needs mainly numeric input
and
b) is used mainly from an iPod touch / iPad / other mobile device.

On all of those devices, numeric input is cumbersome, because you first have to switch the virtual keyboard into numeric mode.

Yesterday I googled around again for this, and finally found a solution.

HTML5 has some more types to INPUT fields:

type="email"	for email addresses
type="url"	for web addresses / URLs
type="number"	for numeric input

All of them have the effect on the iPhone/iPad that they switch to a virtual keyboard layout that is optimized for the input, e.g.

The email-keyboard on the iPhone will have the @-sign there
The url-keyboard on the iPhone will have the ".com" key; also the . and the / key will be placed more prominently.
The number-keyboard on the iPhone will switch the numbers in the top row.

On my Android 2.2 [1]  HTC only the number mode works, but it gives you a numeric block / phone-style keyboard, which is even better for numeric input.

HTML5 defines some more values for the type like "date", "week", "month", "time", ... and "range" for sliders, i.e. for numeric values with clear and narrow boundaries, but those are rarely implemented as of today.

See Dive Into HTML5 for an excellent overview including browser-support.

Since all of the above are defined only starting HTLM5, they are not "supported" on many current browsers, but the good thing is, that all browsers, that do not explicitely support them, revert to type="text" for unknown input-types.

Also there is a new attribute placeholder:
Placeholder text is displayed inside the input field as long as the field is empty and not focused. As soon as you click on (or tab to) the input field, the placeholder text disappears. (from Dive Into HTML)

Sort of like the search box in Firefox.

So back to my initial problem, defaulting to numeric input on mobile devices.
Just replace  input type="text" with input type="number", there is no down-side to this.
It is user-friendly on mobile devices, and works like it used to on all other browsers.

--

[1] I'll check 2.3 and 3.0 once my PC is fast enough for the SDK.

Android SDK and a new PC ?

So now that I finally moved to Android, I installed the Android SDK on my home computer plus the NetBeans plugin.
I seems to work fine, I can get the Hello World sample to compile and package and it shows up in the emulator.

The problem is that my 8 years old (!) PC with only 1.something GHz and 1GB RAM is definitely too slow and weak for this. Booting Android (2.2) in the Emulator takes longer than actually buying, charging and starting a physical Android device ...

So I guess I need a new PC now as well..

OK, I wanted to get a new one anyway, come April, so that my current PC can actually celebrate it's 8th birthday...
So proud...

So long...

So long, Nokia, and thanks for all the fish handsets.
Had a great time and fun with Nokia handsets for the last 14 years or so ... But now I'm leaving.

I'm now proud owner of my own HTC Desire Z (not only the test equipment, thanks again Richie).

WebOS on my PC?

With HP To Include WebOS on Every PC Shipped From 2012 Onward
and that the WebOS Emulator is built on Virtualbox, I assume that I could soon have a copy of WebOS running on my PC?

Book: iWoz - by and about Steve Wozniak

A couple of weeks ago I read iWoz: How I invented the Personal Computer and had fun doing it by and about Steve Wozniak.
Only I forgot to blog about it then. So here you go.


Fascinating book... well, when I say that, it will not win the Nobel prize, but it is so full of memories.
That is,

• if you ever did something in hardware;
• if you ever (like I did at TechU Vienna) designed some chips (integrated circuits - not crisps or fries)[1] 
• if you ever designed a small computer system, with CPU, memory, and all the device controllers
• if you ever had to write BIOS functionality or at the operating system level
• if you ever wanted to do more with some gadget than the manufacturer intended you to do
• if you ever spent[2] days optimizing some machine instructions / assembler programs to use 2 cycles less

If you ever were a geek, if the name Steve Wozniak has any meaning to you... go and read this book.
An experience quite close to time travel

--

[1] by the way my first contact with SunOs

[2] read: wasted

And Nokia?

Nice observation (by my wife, actually), that - until half a year ago - we used to be a pure Nokia family... for years.
Me, her, the twins... only Nokia.
If there is such a thing as a Nokia fan boy - I probably was one.

Now we are pure Android family (2x HTC, 1x Samsung, 1x Sony Ericsson; see here and here).

IMHO, this says a lot about Nokia.

I Became Assimilated...

So, the (Android) Collective got me.
On Wednesday I got a HTC Desire Z to play around with...

Tomorrow I'll finally buy one.

Resistance has never been more futile.

--

btw: Thanks, Richie.
btw2: and that's about the most StarTrek references you'll ever get from me.
btw3: Thanks, max.

Sort order ?

I wonder what the (intended) sort order was here ?

This is the iPhone/iPad app from Austria Airlines...

Is it really that hard ?
How can you sort on the first letter (obviously, because it is sort of grouped by the first letter) but not on the rest ?
The list is neither sorted in English, nor local language, nor the airport codes.

I don't see any sort order here (apart from the initial letter).

Odd.
Stupid.

Dinosaurs mating

So... Nokia and Microsoft seem to mutually feel that they need each other to survive in the mobile / smartphone world.

I guess there is some truth to that, and it will play out to some extent:

• Microsoft needs every hardware manufacturer they can get for their Windows Phone 7.
  In that regard, Nokia is very important and helpful to them: they still do have a huge base of followers, and they do have the operator connections.
• Microsoft will gain a lot by the uni-lateral exclusivity: every Nokia smartphone will come with Windows Phone 7. So if you want Nokia (and a smartphone) you have to go Windows.
• Nokia needs a good OS... Symbian was OK  - years ago, but would never stand up to iOS, Android or Windows Phone.
• On the other hand: there's a good chance that Nokia smart phones will become just another HTC/LG/... phone.

There are still good reasons to choose Nokia:

• They have robust hardware design - even Windows can't take that away.
• They do know a lot more about radio and the phone functionality than Apple and the Android folks combined - but lets see if this can make it into a Windows phone
• If you only want a feature phone, Nokia (with Symbian) is still an excellent choice.

What I'm not really sure about is: Do people explicitely want an iPhone or an Android phone ... or do they "just" want a nifty smart phone, and don't really care about the OS (and app ecosystem). The lackluster 2010 sales of Windows Phone 7 (despite all the push from Microsoft and others) and the decline of Nokia Symbian smartphones indicate that it really is about the OS (iOS, Android).

Let's see.

And one more thought:
Remember that Palm with the Treo once thought the found their salvation by giving up PalmOS and being embraced by Microsoft?

Sad.

On podcasts: Not Radio!

Yesterday I had to explain "podcast" to my in-laws, who are neither very computer nor internet savvy.
We[1] used the radio analogy, since we both are actually listening to a couple of radio shows / podcasts from Ö1 (national radio in Austria) her parents know from the radio.

Now podcasts and radio share many rules like

• audio quality & leveling
• pace of speech
• structure and complexity of sentences.

Still a podcast is not a radio show.

So please:

1. Avoid references to dates like "this Sunday" or "Tomorrow you will hear..."
   because not everyone (I'd even say hardly anyone) listens to your podcast on the day it was published.
2. Also do not use the intro for the next episode as the outro of the one before.
   This might be OK on radio, but it is annoying when you listen to the episodes of one format in sequence.
3. And bear in mind that the level of expertise of your audience is probably better on a podcast than on radio, at least more homogeneous.
   So, know your audience and their knowledge. Don't talk to newbies if your audience are hackers & nerds.
4. Also remember: most (if not all) of your podcast listeners know the internet and how to use it.
   They already managed to subscribe to your podcast! So if you have additional material just mention the URL (or just the domain) where your show resides... This is where you should place all the show notes, episode list, additional presentations or documents or wikis. Your listeners will easily find it.
5. Then again: don't assume they know your show's homepage.
   They might have found your podcast on iTunes or through other aggregating sites/tools... So be sure to mention your home base once in a while.
6. Final one for today: There are no links in podcasts.
   So don't read out or spell long URLs. I can't write them down when listening to a podcast anyway. Consider a rather unique search term and an additional hint for finding said URL in the search results. And provide the link in the show notes.

Thanks for listening; next week on "on podcasts" you will... oops

--
[1] actually my wife did half of the explaing, since it all began by her telling how she is using her Galaxy S to listen to podcasts.

A Geek is Born

via Geek&Poke

Sharing Thunderbird Address Books... some experience

This is a follow up to my post on Sharing Thunderbird Address Books Between Computers with Dropbox.
I've been using this for 3+ weeks now, and here's the experience.

Overall it works quite well, however:

1. I noticed 2 occasions where the filesystem link from the address-book in the Thunderbird profile to the one in the "My Dropbox" folder got lost. The abook.mab in the profile folder then all of a sudden is a real file with not connection whatsoever to the dropbox file.
   
2. Dropbox deteced one replication error and marked it accordingly, by renaming the "older" file as "abook (computername's conflicted copy date).mab"

In both cases replication of the file to and from other computers then fails.
The latter is easy to avoid - at least in my case: Don't have Thunderbird open at the same time on both computers.

Sometimes however, this is tricky, because you need Dropbox to replicate the file before you start Thunderbird on the other computer. So e.g. when you hibernate one PC whilst Thunderbird is still running (keeping the abook.mab file open and locked), the file will not get uploaded to Dropbox. When you then start Thunderbird on the second computer and modify the address-book... voila... replication conflict.

I still don't know what caused the link failure from problem #1. Will continue to monitor this.

OpenOffice 3.3

OpenOffice 3.3 has finally arrived.

Not Oracle OpenOffice (the former StarOffice), not LibreOffice (the true Oracle-free open source spin off of OpenOffice), but good old / plain old OpenOffice from openoffice.org

Installing as I type this...

Power of XSLT

Just recently we changed the ERP system in the company I work for. Amongst other (more important) things the structure and format of product quotations has changed significantly.

The good news however was, that we finally had an XML export of those quotes.

It only took my 30 minutes to create an XSLT Template that would not only convert the XML to a really readable form (in HTML) but also add nifty features like totals per product type etc etc.

Quite frankly, it took me about 7 minutes to create the pure formatting XSLT and the remaining 23 minutes to figure out how to do sums in XSLT.

So, the two things I learned from this little exercise:

1. How to format a number using XSLT:

Use the format-number function as in:

<xsl:value-of select="format-number(amount, '#.00')"/>


2. How to add (sum) values (node-sets to be precise)

You have to use the sum function as in:

<xsl:value-of select="format-number(sum(//lineItem[@isSupportLine='true']/price), '#.00')"/>

For me this very line shows the power of XSLT:

It is adding all values of the "price" element of all "lineItems" that have an attribute "isSupportLine='true'".
In other words:  build the sum of the price of all support lines in the quote.

Or in SQL: select sum(price) from lineitems where isSupportLine="true"

On podcasts - When, Where and How?

I'm starting a mini-series here where I jot down some ideas and observations on podcasts.
I'm not a podcast producer, but I do listen to some. I'd say 10+ hours a week.
So this will be entirely from a consumer/listener perspective... my consumer/listener perspective.

Here we go:

---

When, Where and How?
I listen to podcasts

• in the car
• sometimes on the train / subway
• on the treadmill in the gym

Interestingly, I don't listen to podcasts when on the stationary bike at home... (this is when I watch TV shows like Sopranos, etc etc).

My "listening span" is everything from 10 minutes to 4 hours in a row.

Recently I also found myself going back to reading on the train / subway instead of listening to podcasts. Or let's say the ratio reading / listening shifted back to 70/30 from (10/90).

One of the reasons is, that while listening to podcasts I start reading emails on my mobile or playing Bejeweled on the iPod...because I just cannot sit and only listen. Talk about ADHD :-)
Driving the car, or exercising is seemingly enough activity.

Also, going back from listening to reading is somehow odd: take the distractions on the train... just looking up when someone takes the seat next to you. Add to that the interruption when changing trains; all this does not really allow for a smooth reading experience, whereas they are no problem when listening to a podcast... Still, I seem to prefer reading.

So, lesson #1: As your podcast listener, you do not have my undivided attention, well not all 100%. But a fair share. Structure your contant and pace around that.

Sharing Thunderbird Address Books Between Computers with Dropbox

In the previous post I described how to synchronize your Thunderbird signature (file) across computers using Dropbox.

This was a fairly easy task, because Thunderbird let's you specify the signature file as an absolute path, so you can put your signature anywhere on your computer.
For whatever reasons, the address book has to reside in your profile folder.
So if you want to synchronize Thunderbird address books across computers using Dropbox, this is a bit more tricky.

First, we have to somehow have the address book file in the "My Dropbox" folder, and still in the profile folder.
Luckily, Windows XP (and later) do have links in the NTFS filesystem - contrary to what most people think/know.
Technically they are called NTFS junction points, but usually referred to as links.
You can create them with the FSUTIL utility.

So what we'll do is.

1. Find the "master" address book
2. move it to the Dropbox folder
3. replace the original file in the profile folder with a link to the file in the Dropbox folder
4. repeat step 3 for all computer.

So, assuming you already did register for Dropbox and install it, here are the details:

1. In Thunderbird check the name of he address book you want to synchronize. In the Address Book window, select the address book of your choice and then properties. The only property there is the name.
2. In the Config Editor, locate the file name for your address book. This can easily be done if you filter the view on "ldap_v2.servers.*.descr". This will list all the address book names you have, including the one we are looking for (from step #1).
3. Find the id of your address book.
   It is is right behind "ldap_2.servers.".  Something like "pab" or "default".
4. Once you have that identifier, you can get the file name from "ldap_2.servers.yourid.filename". It is most likely abook.mab. [1]
5. Then locate your Thunderbird profile folder.
   This is (as a default) in the Thunderbird folder of your personal Application Data directory. The fastest way to get there is via Windows Start Menu → Run → "%appdata%" (literally with the percent signs). Then go to Thunderbird, then Profiles and then pick the profile you want to modify (if you have more than one).
6. Now find the file from step #4.
7. Be sure to exit Thunderbird now, so that all files are closed and available to you.
8. Move the file from step #6 to your "My Dropbox" folder (again, this can be easily opened by double clicking on your Dropbox icon in the task bar).
9. Open a command line (Start → Run → "cmd.exe" ) and change directory to your profile folder form step #5.
10. Find the "My Dropbox" folder in your file system. It's quite close to the Application Data folder. Try something like a "dir %homepath%\abook.mab /S /B" to find the exact location of the file.
11. Create the symbolic link with the following command:
    

    fsutil hardlink create abook.mab "..\..\..\..\My Documents\My Dropbox\abook.mab"

    Before you do this, you might want to check with dir, if the abook.mab file can really be found with the above path. Correct your path as appropriate. You can also use the absolute path from step #10.
12. With a "dir abook.mab" verify that the "logical" file is back again with the correct size.
13. Start Thunderbird and verify that your address book is available and correct.
14. Go to computer #2 
15. Repeat steps #1-12 as above, just do not copy the abook.mab (or whatever the name is) to the Dropbox folder. Only delete (or rename) it in the profile folder, before your create the link with fsutil.
16. When you start Thunderbird you should now have all the addresses from computer #1 available.
17. Repeat #15 for all remaining computers

ONE BIG CAVEAT:
I haven't been using this method for long, so I can't really say how stable this works, especially if there are "replication conflicts", i.e. when you update the file on both computers before Dropbox has a chance to synchronize. Should there arise major problems with my setup, I'll post them here.

Comments section is of course open for your findings.

--
[1] in the following paragraphs I will - for brevity - only call it abook.mab; please substitute your file name as appropriate.

Sharing Thunderbird Signature Between Computers with Dropbox

Granted, having the signature file for your e-mail in sync between two or more computers is not amongst the top IT problem of the century.
However, if you change your signature frequently (because you include some simple banner message or seasonal greetings, etc etc) it suddenly becomes important.

In my case this is between my company laptop and my home desktop. Both have the same IMAPS access to our corporate mail server. But as IMAP and Thunderbird[1] go, you are in sync with your mailboxes, but not with all your other data, like address book and signature.

Let's take a look at the signature first, since this is easier (from a Thunderbird perspective).

First we need some file location that can always be accessed from all participating computers. Preferably not only online, but also when offline.

Dropbox is the ideal solution for that: it synchronizes folders of your computer to the (cloud) storage of Dropbox. From and to multiple computers. That's the trick here.

Let's for this use case here ignore all the photo album and public sharing or collaboration features dropbox offers. We just use it for file sync to the cloud (and back again).

So obviously, you have to register for Dropbox and install the software on all participating computers.
[waiting for you to do so ... ]

The default folder is a newly created folder called "My Dropbox" in your home directory. This folder will be in sync across all computers, then.
So let's put our signature file there:

1. Start on the computer, where you have the most appropriate or up-to-date signature file.
2. In Thunderbird go to your account settings (Tools >> Account Settings) and pick your account there.

3. Check where you current signature file resides... 
4. Go there in Windows Explorer and copy (or move) the file to your Dropbox folder.
   You can easily open your Dropbox folder with a double-click on the Dropbox icon in your status bar.
5. Once the file is there, on the Account Settings page change your signature file to the new location. 
6. And then - in Thunderbird - create a new email to check if it has been picked up correctly.
7. Now the other computer. The signature file should already be in your Dropbox folder. If not, trouble-shoot that first.
8. Once you find the file there, only change the location of the signature file in Thunderbird- as above - to the one in the Dropbox folder.
9. Again, create a new email to verify.
10. Repeat for all remaining computers...

Now you can update your signature on any of those computers, and it will be picked up by the others.

Neat, isn't it.
And it didn't cost us a dime.

I started this about 2 months ago and had to change my signature (a least) 3 times or more in the meantime. Works like a charme.

The synchronization of the address book is a bit more complicated, and will be covered in a separate blogpost.

--
[1] and other IMAP clients

X10 mini pro replaced

As I reported, my son's Sony Ericsson X10 mini pro did not charge. The A1 shop accepted the complaint as a DoA and today we got the replacement device (was out of stock).
Charges as expected.
Insert SIM.
Enter Google details.
Sync.
Back again.

Nice....

A Humble Request

So now that the iPhone is finally officially announced to come to Verizon, can we please go on to real news.

Thanks.

Just a thought

Would Facebook have as many daily views and time-spent-on-site if it were not for tabbed browsing?

Judging from my own behavior and what I see from friends and co-workers, we usually have Facebook reside in one tab, which we jump to from time ti time. Only a few of them deliberately go to facebook.com ...

Just a thought.

Android Honeycomb Showcased at Verizon's CES 2011 Keynote

Not only is my question of yesterday's post answered - obviously Google chose Android Honeycomb for tablets - but I also think my next tablet will be an Androidish one:

Google's reference gadgets

With the Nexus One (by HTC) and the Nexus S (by Samsung) Google clearly wanted to publish a reference implementation and hardware for the respective Android versions.

The same is true for the Cr-48 as a reference hardware for their Chrome OS netbook operating system. Or Browser... or whatever it is now.

None of them is about about having a product out in the market, nor is their (main) purpose to have vanilla Google devices, which are not soiled by nasty vendor or operator code and customizations...

No, it's about setting a standard.
Having a reference.
For all the manufacturers, vendors, operators, reviewers (and bloggers).

I wonder when they will release such a reference device for tablets (with Android).
Or will they ever?

Currently it seems they haven't made up their mind about the tablet space... should it be Android (=tablet as a large phone, like Apple did) or should it be Chrome OS (=tablet as an even more reduced netbook, like everyone thought, before Apple did it the other way a year ago).

I guess this years CES will show.

Thinkpad with more power

So I finally got myself a new battery for my ThinkPad... Now I can work 3.5hrs again on battery instead of only 20 minutes.
Life's good ;-)

Should have done this earlier.

Now if anyone wants to donate an SSD for my TP500 to replace the slow rotating disk, I'd be grateful... :-)

My Android Family

So, now my whole family (sauf moi) now has Android phones:

Relation	Model
wife	Samsung Galaxy S (i9000)
son	Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 mini pro
daughter	HTC Desire

And myself still with the old Nokia E71... (not for long, I guess).

So after a couple of days of use here's the quick breakdown:

Galaxy S	(Android 2.2) The largest of them...excellent display. Worst PC companion software (Kies). Updates only through the PC software.
Xperia X10 mini pro	(Android 2.1) Not really my kind of phone, mainly because it is too small. OK-ish PC-Software (Sony Ericsson PC Companion 2.0) installable from the phone.
HTC Desire	(Android 2.2) Best body/housing and general haptics. Also quite fast (to me it seems faster than the Galaxy). Also I prefer the mechanical 4 buttons over the soft buttons of the Galaxy. OK-ish PC-Software (HTC Sync)installable from the phone, but this does not really matter, because it updates over the air (!).

My favourite: The HTC Desire .. can't see why, but it seems to beat the Galaxy S.

Also the Xperia X10 did only last one and a half battery cycles. Simply does not charge ever since. Seems to be a bad contact in the USB/charging plug. I hope to be able to register this as a DoA. I'll be posting the results here.

The activation experience was the same and excellent for all of them [1] - as long as you are not paranoid of Google. Just exporting the contacts with the good old Nokia PC Suite from their old Nokia phones, import the .csv file into their Google contacts, and have the phone sync. Done.Gmail is there, market place is there.  No fussing around with iTunes etc etc...

I guess I should try the HTC Desire Z because of the physical QUERTY keyboard. But I have to test this first; I do have my doubts about Android with a physical keyboard... does not seem to fit (from my brief X10 mini pro experience). See how this measures against the near-perfect keyboard on the E71 (probably the best feature of the E71... along with the phone stability and battery lifetime).

--
[1] Well I can only guess for the Galaxy, because my wife activated and personalized it herself while she was on vacation during summer. I guess this is quite a good benchmark.

One safe prediction for 2011

2011 will be the year we run out of IPv4 addresses.
As was 2010.
And 2009.
And 2008.
And 2007.
...

iPad/iPhone date dialog anomalies

It is really odd how developers use the iOS datepicker[1]...

The built-in calendar app - which has many other shortcomings  - only lets you enter the time in 5 minute increments. Which is - usually - OK, but when you want to enter e.g. the departure time of a plane or train, you might want to enter the exact time.

On the other hand, there is Qando, a service (with an app) that lets you check the timetable of public transport in Vienna. Oddly enough, when I want to specify a (rough) time for departure (or arrival), it lets me pick the time in 1 minute increments... the one place where e.g. 15 min resolution would be fine....

This really is annoying - it make the time selection (e.g. when you want to jump to 17:30 = 5.30pm)  a lot slower, because it makes you scroll through 30 values...

Did you also notice that the datepicker is not correctly localized? Almost everything here is proper German ("Jän" = Jänner for January, "Di." for Dienstag = Tuesday), but it still quite prominently says "Today" instead of "Heute".

--
[1] the dialog/control which lets you enter date & time on your iPhone/iPad/iPod

"Got an image enhancer that can bitmap?"

Standard Hollywood plot device #17b: The infinite image enhancer.

via pharyngula

Reading 2.0

The iPad and a couple of additional tools (not 100% related to it) changed my online reading habits a lot.

Here's my "Reading 2.0" or rather: as of December 2010, it will probably evolve further:

1. I have Google Reader as the central management point for the RSS feeds (blogs, news, ...)
2. about 30% of those articles I read online while I'm in front of a PC.
3. the rest I scan on my iPad using Reeder.
4. Most of the interesting articles and postings I save for later reading with Read it later, also on the iPad with their app.
5. Item with more "eternal" value might then get save to delicious, but that's only one or two a week.

So basically I separated the consumption phase (step 4) above from the discovery phase (step 3 above).

Samsung did well

So, only 5 weeks after its "unbranded" arrival, the Android 2.2 update for the Samsung Galaxy S (i9000) is finally available for the A1 branded version. Quite frankly, not too bad, considering how long it takes Nokia to get the branded versions out.

Then again, the Samsung Kies software is the worst PC Suite type of software I have ever encountered.

Update went well without any errors; just that the home screen was reset to whatever A1 thinks it should be is not really nice, and that all apps/icons are now sorted alphabetically... hmpf... apart from that... fine.

ATM design flaw

I just noticed at a local ATM that there was a sign right next to the slot for the cash reading:

Don't forget your money!

Though it never happened to me personally, I do know some friends who actually forgot either their bank card or the money in the ATM. So the warning does make sense.

However, isn't there a fundamental design flow in the user interface or process of an ATM when you have to remind the users of the very one thing they came here for in the first place ??

Quite frankly, I'm not sure how to fix this, maybe glue the card to the money?

Singleton

Oh, yes, faux singletons... haven't we all had them.

via Geek&Poke

The Case for Social Search

An interesting and well written article in the NY Times about the owner of the online shop decormyeyes caught everyone's attention: the owner actually admits to willfully create negative ratings for his shop by actually giving crappy customer service... because this actually pushes him up in Google search results, due to the nature of the page rank algorithm. And thus the bad reputation actually brings him additional business.

Why?
Because everytime someone has a problem with him and posts this to a blog or a consumer feedback site like getsatisfaction.com there is a link to his site (with a mention of the product they purchased), and each of those links counts in the PageRank alogrithm, which is primarily based on the number of incoming links to a site. The more links point to your page, the more relevant this page is considered.
Due to the large number of complaints, he actually made #1 for many of the goods he sold on his site.
And shoppers searching for the item were likely to shop there, because it was #1 search result. Organic search result - that is - not a paid ad.

No-one saw all the negative feedback, because Google does not show it (or actually know about it).
However, if you do a search on the site's name you will also see a lot of complaints about decormyeyes on the first results page. So searching for the site/shop does work as expected.

Odd that it took about 10 years for anyone to notice this flaw...

The problem there is, that Google search results are not recursive... i.e. you do not see the results of a result.
(Maybe this would actually fix the problem).

Google is not to blame for this, and the PageRank algorithm is still fine. If Google were to implement some semantic magic in their algorithm that would treat a positive reference different from a negative reference, it would create an altogether different problem: for all the controversial topics (or persons) out in the world, you simply will always find negative and positive references, and in many cases the negative will outnumber the positive. The system would be gamed with as easily as the current.

That's what Google said in reaction to this story:

As it turns out, Google has a world-class sentiment analysis system (Large-Scale Sentiment Analysis for News and Blogs). But if we demoted web pages that have negative comments against them, you might not be able to find information about many elected officials, not to mention a lot of important but controversial concepts. So far we have not found an effective way to significantly improve search using sentiment analysis. Of course, we will continue trying.
[...]
Instead, in the last few days we developed an algorithmic solution which detects the merchant from the Times article along with hundreds of other merchants that, in our opinion, provide an extremely poor user experience. The algorithm we incorporated into our search rankings represents an initial solution to this issue, and Google users are now getting a better experience as a result.

In other words, for the time being, Google will - on a very high level - curate the search results.


What worries me (if only slightly) here is that Google will use "their opinion" to determine which merchants (in this case) to filter.

Although I consider this is the right solution for now, it has two flaws:

1. It can only work a posteriori,
   i.e. only after you find the next merchant (or content provider, or ...) who games the system like this, you can remove him from search results, but this means that they already did damage.
2. This is the by-far #1 search engine - let's call them a monopoly for the sake of this argument - applying their opinion/judgement....worrisome, isn't it ?

The solution:

Take the opinion out of Google's hands. Crowd-source the opinion.

Let the wisdom of crowds or rather the opinion of crowds do the work.

Which crowd? My crowd of course. For me.
Your crowd for you.

In other words: Social Search

So the decormyeyes incident - apart from being disgusting from a customer care perspective - can finally help make the case for social search.


---
Did you notice that in this entire post I never linked to the actual site, just to avoid contributing to the problem ;-)

Blogging from the iPad

I just installed BlogPress in my iPad and will test blogging from the iPad with it. Expect even more typos and strange autocompletion errors from now on.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Updated my iPad to iOS 4.2

Finally, yesterday the 4.2 update for the iPad arrived. Well for other devices as well, but the iPad I cared most for.
I had to install it immediately... well when I say immediately, the 500MB download took 5 attempts to finally get through (networking problems, not Apple's fault I guess).

First impression: multi-tasking and app-switching is awesome :-)
I wonder how long it will take me to get used to the screen rotation lock being software only now.

Folders, AirPrint and AirPlay I have to digg into a bit more, I'm not sure I even have a demand for it ... yet.

Attachmate to buy Novell

That Novell is up for grabs (or rather was) is not the news here.

The actual surprise is, that Attachmate - who bought them - is still around. Most of my colleagues don't even remember them. Last time, I had to deal with them was with their 3270 Emulation... not really a 2010 kind-of-business model.
Well, find your niche and hide there ... :-)

How to sync photos FROM the iPad...

This is a bit embarrassing, but I still post it here... so you others don't have to admit you didn't know this... of course you knew... everyone knew... except for me.

So for a while I was wondering why a sync of my iPad through iTunes did not store the images generated on the iPad to the specified folder on my PC. Here's why:

In iTunes select your iPad, then click on the "Photos" tab and select a folder there.
This will then (everytime you sync) copy all the images from this folder on the PC to your iPad.

OK.

However, for the other way round it does not work through iTunes, but rather like this:

One thing that bugged me about my iOS devices is that everytime I hook them up to my PC, Windows prompts me to select an action or application for this device... Quite annoyed me because... hey... you're supposed to connect to iTunes... duuh.

So iOS devices register themselves to your PC as a camera as well. Still I thought: How stupid, my iPad does not have a camera. And neither does my iPod touch.

Well, in some weird way it is a digtial camera: from a Windows / interface perspective the iPad is a device that creates and (more importantly) stores images. Just like a digital camera.

So images you create on your iPad (e.g. as a screen shot, or email attachment, ...) can easily be sync'd to your PC through this interface then. Windows (or the program of your choice) will do the transfer for you.

Odd, though, that Apple suddenly relies on Windows features...

So, this is how you sync photos from your iPad to your PC... but of course, everyone knew that.

App Store Quality ?

So this is the rigid quality control on the Apple App Store ??

How could that pass?

So, Samsung...

... now you can prove that/if you are any better than Nokia :)

The Android 2.2 update for (my wife's) Galaxy S finally arrived. But of course not yet for the operator branded version she own (A1).
This is/was to be expected, because the operator will have to test and approve the official/final update and then apply their branding on it again

Last time on my Nokia E71 it lasted until forever and it was Nokias fault.
I sure hope that A1 and Samsung can get this done in 2-3 weeks.

RPN

Oh yes.
Sooooo true.

via Geek&Poke

Are there Fictitious IP addresses?

A recent rant from a friend of mine about the utterly wrong representation of IP addresses in a science/tech show on Austria public TV (ORF) made me think.

What worries Martin, is that they use internet addresses like 156.284.632.715, which are obviously fake, because the are not made of 4 8bit values (octets).

I really like to defend the ORF in this case[1]: as with car license plates or telephone numbers, it could be considered a breach of privacy to pick one that exists for real. So you have to revert to numbers that do not exist in reality.

The US, for example, have reserved the part of exchange code 555 for such fictitious telephone numbers, meaning that you can pick any 555-xxxx number without running the risk of bothering anyone or being sued over it[2].

Not sure how it is done with license plates, but since they tend to be centrally registered, I guess there is a range of numbers that can freely be used in fiction.

However, with IPv4 addresses being on short supply anyway, one would have to revert to IP addresses that 100% cannot by owned by anyone (else), like 127.0.0.1 oder 192.168.x.y.

You would be kind of safe from a legal perspective, but nor from Martin's rants.

Had the ORF shown 127.0.0.1  or 192.168.1.1 to actually be resolved through DNS, Martin would still have ranted about it. Not because the IP address is wrong, but rather because the name used would never be resolved to this address.

So, Martin, this is an OK use of "wrong" or rather "fictitious" internet addresses, not an "Epic Fail" as you say.

--
[1] I very rarely do so.
[2] at least in the US

4G - Which is it?

I'm a bit confused now; both LTE and WiMAX seem to be labelling themselves 4G...
But which one is it really?
Any idea?

Facebook Phone ?

So the last 10 days or so saw a lot of rumors, denials, half-hearted confirmations and semantics about a Facebook phone.

Current state: they are obviously not manufacturing the hardware (what a surprise) but teaming up with INQ mobile to integrate facebook into (or rather:onto) the software stack.

Does it make sense to have a Facebook feature phone?
Not to me.
The Facebook apps for the various smart phones are powerful enough. Just to have your (phone) contacts synced with facebook[1], does not require or justify a Facebook feature phone. Much less the crappy Facebook chat.

Does it make sense for Facebook ?
Sure  - Three words:

mobile.
ad.
revenue.

As I'm saying, the are a (only) marketing platform...

I rest my case, your honor.

--
[1] if you want that at all - I don't.

Moleskine Covers for iPhone and iPad

I don't know... to me this is a cultural clash:

Moleskine introduces two new hybrid tools designed for making it easier the simultaneous use of paper, phone and internet utilities: a Smartphone Cover compatible with iPhone 3G and 3GS, and a Tablet Cover, iPad compatible. Both Covers are combined with blank notebook pages. They are conceived as analog-digital ultra-portable workstations for the contemporary nomads.

The analog darling embracing the digital darling...
How strange.

Enabling Multiple Google Calendars for iOS

Found the following tip recently:
iPad Quick Tip: Enabling Multiple Google Calendars: Apple:

quick version: if you go to http://www.google.com/calendar/iphoneselect you can select which of your Google calendars will be visible on your iXxxx (iPad, iPhone, iPod, ...)

Previously I had to manually copy/paste the various caldav URLs from Google to the iXxxx, which is quite cumbersome.

This here is a lot easier.

Feeding the iPad

The top use of my iPad is reading the tech news - through RSS feeds.
There is an excellent RSS reader for the iPad called Reeder.
Here are my favourite bullets about Reeder:

1. makes full use of iPad geometry
2. uses Google Reader as the feed list;
   not only import, but actually works with it; so everything I read on my iPad is automatically marked as read in Google Reader; perfect way to stay in sync
3. easy to step through articles.
   there are scroll buttons on at the left edge in the middle of the screen; I first wondered, why they had been position there, but once you get used to holding the iPad in landscape mode, this is exactly the position where your left thumb is... tricky,ey ?
   Scrolling is a lot more convenient this way, then with the mouse or the J / K buttons in Google Reader
4. it's a lean back experience.
   This - to me - is new for news consumption via feeds and I really prefer it over the laptop / desktop experience.
5. You can easily (one click) save/share articles to Delcious, Twitter, email, ...

Quick summary: perfect feed reader on the perfect news device.

Got my iPad

So I got my iPad yesterday...

No - actually I got it Tuesday, but I managed to hold back until yesterday evening to unbox and activate it.

Cool device... great form factor. Super fast (compared to an iPod touch or Galaxy S)
A weird mixture of lean-back browsing (like TV) and lean-forward browsing (like PC).

Still amazing how many apps are only available in the iPhone/iPod compatability mode... and not yet optimized for the iPad.

But those who are (optimized for the iPad), like the internal Mail app, or the excellent imdb app, really make great use of the touch interface on the "big" screen...
Keyboard is a lot better and more easy to type on than on the iPhone/iPod...

Can't wait for the iOS 4.2 Update.
 
Stay tuned for more.

Cisco to buy Skype?

TechCrunch rumors that Cisco might acquire Skype right before their IPO.

If they really do, that'd make for quite interesting Linksys boxes with Skype built in... Just add your Skype Phone, or TV, ...
Skype by Cisco on Linksys by Cisco ...

Then you'd no longer need to have your PC running to place or receive Skype calls - or video calls.
Bad for the Telcos...

I like it :-)

Fantastic error message

You just have to love digg for this error message:

Facebook vs Identity - again

Well, it should read "Facebook vs Privacy - again"... but the point I want to make is, that Facebook could have been an Identity platform.
In a way they are... not only in a way, if you go and count the sites that allow you to login with your facebook account. But that only makes them an Identity provider.

An Identity platform needs more than just a secure single sign-on.
For example authorization: you should be able to finely tune who has access to what. That's why the social graph (or your address book, if you will) is so valuable. Facebook does have most of the data and means to enable proper authorization: who can see my wall-posts, who is allowed to contact me, ...

It would have been easy to extend from there.

But with Places they once again proved that they rather go the pure marketing platform way, instead.

1. Places is mostly opt out. It is somewhat (but not fully, it seems) enabled by default, until you disable it.
   Not a good default - privacy-wise.
2. Other people (your friends) can check you in at any place they want.
3. You can't control your places. Anyone can check in at your home...[1]

This is all good and fine for a geo platform (like foursquare)... but not for an identity platform

To Facebook (the company) it seems more important to publish stuff about you (and make money from the ads) than to have you properly manage your identity. That's fine, too, but that makes them a marketing platform only...

Sorry.

--
[1] different issue, I know, but it still troubles me.