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