Category: Software

Custom JIRA Report Generation

I am using Atlassian JIRA at work nowadays for tracking of multiple items on our projects including tasks, feature requests, customer questions, requirements and of course bugs in our software. The key question that has come up recently was whether I could easily format the requirement type issues in JIRA so that they can form the body of a Software Requirements Specification (SRS).

At first I thought I would be able to just install a plugin into JIRA's flexible plugin system but quickly found that there were no suitable plugins that would provide the report I required. I did start think about creating my own plugin but that would have taken too long so I turned my attention to the various export formats, which includes, XML, excel and Word. The problem with the word output is that there is no way of customising the output format easily. Then I remembered about words form merge function which allows you to import data from an external data source, which includes an excel spreadsheet. So the end result is I can export the JIRA issues as an excel spreadsheet and then use the Word Merge feature to load this spreadsheet as a data source and import the data into Word using any format that I require.

Links
Atlassian JIRA

Google Gears

The web development or web engineering space has been pretty quiet as late with nothing really new being developed by anyone or any amazing ideas being put into action, until now. The Google guys have done it again with their release of Google Gears. Google Gears is an API for web developers to allow their applications to be run in an offiline mode and therefore accessible while their user's computer is not connected to the Internet. Google Gears supports both Firefox and Internet Explorer on Windows, OSX and Linux therefore supporting 99% of the Internet population. Google gears consists of three components, Local Server that stores the web application resources, and local database to store the content for the application and a WorkerPool that allows your applications to be more responsive (somehow).

If you want to see it in action head on over to Google Reader as it has been enabled with Google Gears support or if you are a web developer head on over to the Google Gears Developer page.

Links
Google Gears Home
Google Gears Developer Page
Google Reader

Google Desktop for Mac Available

Google Desktop is now available for the Mac. Although in my opinion it is not as good as using my all time favourite program Quicksilver it is still pretty useful for finding files on your computer. Best of all it contains the Google Updater so that you can make sure that all your google applications are installed and up to date on your mac. It is a free download but please be warned when you first install Google Desktop it does a complete scan of your hard disk for indexing purposes which will take quite some time to complete. I therefore recommend doing the install just before you go to bed so that it can index over night.

Links
Google Desktop For Mac
Quicksilver

Eclipse Plugin: History Flow

Here is an interesting new plugin for the Eclipse development environment. Rather than the traditional file history the History Flow plugin provides a different way to view the history of your files in CVS.

Links
History Flow Plugin

Lithium Network Monitoring Platform

Lithium is a cross platform network monitoring tool that can monitor your network components, servers and other appliances. It supports both linux, Mac OSX and Windows, with its core server components running on either OSX or Linux. It is possible to access the core server to access the various graphs and monitoring information either through the Windows and OSX console application or through its web-based user interface. There are also incident management capabilities built-in to provide support when one of the components in the network suffers a break in service.

Links
Lithium Corp Home page

Google Calendar and Apple iSync/iCal Synchronisation

A new application is currently in development called SpanningSync, which will allow two-way synchronisation between Google Calendars and Apple's iSync. This means that all you Apple Calendar Synchronisation applications including Microsoft Entourage, Apple iCal, iSync Compatible Mobile Phones and iSync Compatible PDAs can all be synchronised with Google Calendars. There is a video demonstration of the application being used on the application's blog.

Links
SpanningSync Home page

Adobe Labs and Eclipse RCP

Today I found the Adobe Labs site, which is where Adobe releases all of its beta preview software for testing and trials. There are also some developer tools such as the XML Toolkit, which allows for metadata to be stored within files. Currently XMP supports these file formats: JPEG, PSD, TIFF, AVI, WAV, MPEG, MP3, MOV. Also of interest on this site is the new Flex Builder application. What is interesting about this application is not so much that it is a new application for building Flex applications but rather than it has been developed using the Eclipse Rich Client Platform (RCP) framework. This is following a general trend for more and more applications to utilise the power of the RCP framework. For a list of some of the already developed RCP applications have a look at this page.

Links
Adobe Labs Site
XMP Toolkit
Eclipse Rich Client Platform
Adobe Flex Builder 2 for Macintosh

Midnight Inbox: Getting Things Done (GTD)

Getting Things Done (GTD) is the name of a personal time management book that describes a series of actions around the concept of creating lists to get things done. This has been picked up by the Mac community and there seems to be an almost cult following with GTD. We are now starting to see OSX applications that support the GTD principles. One of the better applications that has almost made the 1.0 version milestone is Midnight Inbox. This has to be one of the nicest designed applications that I have seen for a while, with close attention placed on typography.

Links
Wikipedia Article on Getting Things Done
Midnight Inbox Home Page

Cool OSX Apps Site

I have been subscribed to the RSS feed from the Cool OSX Apps site for quite some time now. It is a great little site that points out all the well developed OSX applications for the mac. In addition the site is well designed and has regular updates. The archive is also something else as it provides a live view of the articles against a timeline.

Links
CoolOSXapps.net

Skype For Mac WITH VIDEO

YYAAAAAYY, Skype has finally been released for mac with video support. Video has been available on the windows version for ages, but now you can download a BETA version of this popular Voice over IP (VoIP) application that also supports video.

Links
Skype with Video for Mac Preview

Sofa Control: Another Apple Remote Application

Seems like more an more people have been wanting to use Apple's Remote for more than just Front Row. Recently I blogged the Remote Buddy software, which is pretty impressive, well now there is another contender called Sofa Control. I still believe that Remote Buddy is a much cleaner produced application; however, Sofa Control has good AppleScript support allowing it to control other applications easier. Sofa Control also allows the user to add new applications and script up the actions they would like performed. In my mind open applications that allow the users to extend it's functionality is always a winner. The downloadable version allows you to operate for a full 30 minutes before ceasing to work, plenty of time to try it out.

Links
Sofa Control
Remote Buddy

Eclipse on Mac Intel

Ok so I haven't been using Eclipse on my mac for a while, actually since I upgraded to the new intel-based MacBook Pro. To my disappointment the 3.1.2 release of Eclipse that I was using crashes when trying to start it. After digging around I have found out that this is because that version of Eclipse does not support mac intel; however, the 3.2 release candidates after RC5 do. Therefore if you wanting to use Eclipse on one of the new intel-based macs then you are going to have to start using the 3.2 stream of eclipse even though it has not finished production. I hope that this will not screw up any plugins that you rely on.

Links
Eclipse 3.2 Project Plan
Eclipse Home Page

Google Browser Sync

Google has created another Firefox plugin that allows you to synchronise your browser's bookmarks, history, persistent cookies and saved passwords across multiple computers. This is great if you use multiple computers; however, Google warns that this plugin currently slows down the startup of firefox due to it synchronising the browser settings.

Links
Google Browser Sync

Remote Buddy: Enhanced Front Row Remote Functionality

Remote Buddy is a great little mac application that extends the capabilities of the Apple remote that comes with the new Front Row enabled macs. Remote Buddy provides features to control more applications with the remote and even to control the mouse. It uses a very clean and easy to use interface to lead users through the use of the additional functionality creating a pleasant experience for the user. The site has a good video of it being used so for all those who do not have a remote can dream about that new mac they want to buy :) .

Links
Remote Buddy

Apple Mail in Widescreen

I have a widescreen Apple Macbook Pro which is sweet and I also use Apple's Mail program for my home email. Well when I found the Letterbox plugin for Apple Mail I did not even hesitate to install it and what do you know, it works without any pain whatsoever. If you too have a high resolution widescreen monitor then and use Apple Mail then don't think just click on the link below to get your own version of Letterbox running.

Links
Letterbox

BEEP Networking

I was looking at the Mac application SubEthaEdit today due to an article about MacZot.com and noticed that SubEthaEdit was using something called BEEP to collaborate with other users using SubEthaEdit. This reference to BEEP peaked my interest as it was a technology/software/gadget/thing that I did not know about and therefore I had to know about it (I am bad with things like this).

After a quick search on my good friend Google I found the BEEP home page and after reading about it have found out that BEEP is a low level library for making it easier to create your own networking protocol. BEEP provides all the common functionality that most applications have to recreate whenever they need to implement their own communication protocol. BEEP makes this easier and even provides a number of predefine profiles for common protocols like TCP or even SOAP. The best way to understand BEEP is to read the article in the links section below as the Beep home pages is a little thin on information.

Links
Beep Home Page
Article describing Beep

EasyEclipse: The easy way to develop using eclipse

Are you interested in developing using Eclipse but have found there are too many different plugins and you are not sure what you need? Well the folks at EasyEclipse are trying to make your life that one little bit easier by including all the plugins in an easy to install version of eclipse or readily packaged plugin bundles. Although you can actually do this all yourself I am all for making things a little easier and quicker to use so go and check it out.

Links
EasyEclipse Home Page

Boot Camp Resource Centre

Versiontracker has created a resource page for all those mac users who have recently installed WinXP on their macs using the Apple Boot Camp program. This is a good start page for all the shareware and free software for windows that you will need to work in windows land. Of vital importance are the virus and spyware programs to keep your windows operating system free from malicious software.

Links
Boot Camp Resource Centre

Mac Mini (intel): My First Experience

My work has just purchased a Mac Mini (intel). One of the reasons for the purchase is to test out all out software so that we can test it will run fine on an intel based mac prior to purchasing more expensive machines. We bought a 1.6Ghz Core Duo Mac mini with 512Mb RAM. The first think that I noticed was that running programs took longer to start up. I put this down to the fact that all of my other systems are running a minimum of 1Gig of RAM and the Mac Mini only has 512Mb. With a quick review of the RAM utilization I did notice that there was absolutely no spare RAM. Therefore the first thing that I would recommend is putting in at least 1Gig of RAM (preferably as a single module so that you can expand later if required). The other potential slow down was because many of the applications that I was trying are not yet universal binaries and therefore there is a hit as Rosetta automatically compiles up the code to the Intel native instructions set. However, once the programs were running they responded quickly.

The next item for me to play with was Front Row, as this is the first computer that I have had a chance to play with. On first inspection I really liked the remote. It was very small without being too small, which meant that I could put it in my pocket and not notice it there but still not lose it. One thing that disappointed me was the level of responsiveness when using the remote. When starting up Front Row by clicking on the menu button there are numerous occasions when it seems to take forever to Front Row to start. Also when entering a slide show in the pictures section it would take quite some time. Some occasions it was long enough for me to start wondering if the mac had crashed so i would start hitting more buttons (always a bad thing to do). The end result is that my Front Row experience is mixed, when it does respond I absolutely love it but the occasions when it does not respond and seems to hang really taints my opinion of the software.

Next to test was the new Apple Bootcamp. This has got to be one of the easiest things to do. Simply install the Bootcamp assistant like any other program and then just follow the prompts, there really was not much to do. One thing though is do make sure you have an Windows XP install CD that contains Service Pack 2 as it is an absolute pain to try and install it at a later stage. Without SP2 windows still loads and works but you do not get any network and the display drivers do not work. In addition the drivers CD from apple that is created by the Bootcamp Assistant does not work as it requires some SP2 files. Other than the Service Pack 2 issue, which is my fault, Bootcamp works with no problems at all.

After seeing the speed of running windows straight on the mac hardware I was very keen to try the beta of Parallels. The software installed with no problems and run straight out of the box. Installing windows was a breeze and once I had installed the VM addition tools into the WIndows VM the mouse worked more smoothly and could move between the VM window and the OSX desktop. The beta version does not support full screen but I still found it extremely useful. The speed of windows in the VM environment was extremely good and without doing any benchmarks I would say that it was almost as fast as running windows straight on hardware through Bootcamp; although much less memory was available.

So the end result is that both Bootcamp and Parallels ran windows extremely well with very little fuss to setup. Front Row worked but seemed a little sluggish. Running programs in generally seemed to take a little longer to startup. My final comment is get as much RAM as you can afford as with using Rosetta, VMs and everything else you will really really need it.

Apple Releases Dual Boot Application

In a weird twist of events Apple has released a new program called Boot Camp as a Public Beta that allows you to easily install and boot Microsoft Windows on an Intel based Apple Mac. This gets around some of the more painful processes that were required to use the other dual boot procedures and gives an easy to use apple-esque interface into the world of dual booting.

Links
Boot Camp Public Beta

Virtue: Virtual Desktop Manager

I have recently changed my virtual desktop manager to Virtue and I have been very impressed. Virtue is an open source developed program available on Sourceforge, which is also being regularly updated (using Sparkle developer plugin, previous blog article). It is quite complete with the ability to bind applications to different virtual screens, use multiple visualizations for screen changes and even has a popup pager that shows all the desktops in a glance with the different applications running on each. Overall it is a very clean and well put together software package.

Links
Virtue Sourceforge Home page

Sparkle: A Developers Application Update Component

Sparkle is a great little plugin that allows OSX developers to add automatic update features to their applications quickly and easily. So rather than forcing users to go and check websites for the latest version or even just notifying users that they are using an old version, sparkle can notify of new updates, download the updates and install them all through a very easy to use interface. I have already seen this plugin working in the Virtue virtual desktop application that I use. I expect that with the introduction of sparkle we will see more and more OSX applications with the same looking update components which is also a good thing for common look and feel across the Apple Platform. If only apple would allow third party developers to easily hook into the OSX Software Update Application.

Links
Sparkle

Broken Hard Disk?

Do you have a hard drive that is broken and no longer wants to mount or you believe that you have lost your files? You have tried Fdisk and it can not see the partitions anymore and now you are at a loss because you really want to get the files back. This is the situation that one of my friends was in but then found a nice program called TestDisk, which allows you to recover data off drives even when they no longer can be read by other programs and operating systems. TestDisk is available for a number of operating systems and can understand lots and lots of different file systems so if you have a broken disk and not sure what to do then give this program a go. The same developers have also created another program called PhotoRec, which has been developed for recovering photos off memory cards that are used in digital cameras. PhotoRec comes with the download of TestDisk so you might as well keep it too.

Please Note: Both TestDisk and PhotoRec are command line applications so they are not meant for the basic user.

Links
TestDisk Home Page
PhotoRec Home Page

Q: Windows on Mac Emulator

Q is an emulator to allow OSX users to run other operating systems on their Mac within a virtual machine environment. Q is a Cocoa port of the QEMU system. The system even allows you to emulate other hardware platforms other than x86 (PCs) such as ARM or even PPC. There is even an intel universal binary version although this is still being developed and is buggy. For those who have previously used Virtual PC then you can import the virtual machine images. Overall it is not too bad but the wonderful price of FREE you can not really go wrong. This project is definitely one to watch as it develops.

Links
Q Home Page
Q Downloads
QEMU Home Page

Dateline: Simple Calendar on your Desktop

Here is a great simple little OSX application that displays the current month's calendar on the desktop in a simple and unobtrusive manner. It is free to download so give it a go and see if you like it.

Links
Dateline Application

Sony DRM Packager and HID Editor

I own a Sony Ericsson K700 mobile phone on the Vodafone network and have wanted to set an MP3 as my ringtone, but it has never worked and I did not know why. Well I have just found out that Vodafone disable the ability for MP3 files to be set as ringtones unless they have DRM information. Vodafone do this to force you purchase ringtones from their Vodafone Live service. Well now sony has released a development kit that allows you to add your own DRM information to MP3 files so they can be uploaded to the phone and actually set as your ringtone. The application is simple to use and on a mac where you can use the bluetooth file browser to upload the DRM'ed MP3 file the whole process is extremely easy.

The other Development tool sony has released for the mac is an HID editor. The HID are definitions for the Bluetooth remote control feature that Sony has on a number of their phones that allows users to connect their mobile phone to a mac and control different applications.

Both the DRM Packager and HID editor are available from the Sony Ericsson Developer site (see below)

Links
Sony Ericsson Developer Site

Apple Address Book contact on Gmail

So you are a mac fan and you want to move all your Address contacts over to Gmail so that you can use it there. Well the wonderful people at google have allowed their web based email to upload files in Comma Separated Value (CSV) format. Ben Borofka has create a small little application that downloads all your contacts and creates a singe CSV file to quickly and easily move all your contacts over to Gmail. Give it a go for yourself.

Links
A to G Homepage

OSx86 Project

With the release of the new Apple computer running on the Intel processors a number of sites are starting to pop up in order to run operating systems other than OSX on these machines. OSx86 project is a nicely laid out site that is trying to keep tabs on any developments. It is already reporting the progress people are making with getting Knoppix 4 running on the Apple Intel hardware (commonly known as Macintel). What I really keen to see is the ability to run windows programs within OSX without too much of a noticeable speed slowdown. This would allow me to run the IBM software that I use for work within the elegant Apple OSX operating system. There is an opensource project called Darwine, which is trying to achieve just this and there has also been noise from Microsoft that they will update their Virtual PC software to run on Macintel; however, I will not hold my breath for that one as I would most likely go blue in the face (I expect end of 2006 or early 2007 for Virtual PC to be released).

Links
OSx86 Project
Darwine Homepage

New Domain Name: egg-tech.com

I have a new domain name now. Therefore over the next week or so I will be moving this site over to www.egg-tech.com. I will make sure that there is a redirect in place from the labf.org domain so that people can still find me. I will also post another article when the migration has been completed. The reason for the domain change is because Mof who was hosting labf.org has decided to go for an online website hosting service rather than do it himself as it ends up being cheaper and gaining better service. So we are now moving everything over to Dreamhosts, who have unbelievable prices. So what will you see as the user, well the first is the new domain name egg-tech.com and secondly it should be much faster and I will be able to do so much more. See you on the new domain.

Links
http://www.egg-tech.com/
Dreamhosts Web Hosting

Ruby on Rails with AJAX support

One of my friends and collegues has started using Ruby on Rails and has now become a complete convert, so much so that everything can be done with Rails (short name). Rails is a complete web development stack for creating dynamic web applications with very little fuss and painful configuration that is synonymous with other web development stacks, such as J2EE. I was also pointed in the direction of script.aculo.us that provides AJAX support to Rails by using the Prototype JavaScript Library. Some of the examples at script.aculo.us are drag and drop shopping carts, auto-completing text boxes and pretty JavaScript animations.

Rails is built around using the Ruby programming language, which is easy to learn and quick to develop with. Doing things quickly is the moral of the story when developing with RAILS. By adding Prototype enabled scripts on the client end greater interactivity is created and by using AJAX pages no longer need to be fully reloaded speeding up the response times as only the data is sent through the AJAX bindings. One issue with adding all this JavaScript to the client web pages is that the HTML code can become littered with <script> tags; however, this can be solved by attaching the JavaScript events by using CSS selectors. For a description and example of this approach have a look at the Behaviour web page.

Rails and supporting scripts can all be downloaded from the links below. If you are developing on a mac you can download pre-compiled binaries from here. For Windows users a quick install can be downloaded from here.

Links
Ruby on Rails Homepage
script.aculo.us Homepage
Prototype JavaScript Library Home Page
Behaviour Page
Agile Web Development with Rails Book
Programming with Ruby Book
Rico Homepage (Addition JavaScript Libraries using Prototype)

Handbook of Software Architecture

Here is a very good software architecture site maintained by Grady Booch, who is the author of many good software design and architecture books. This site is developed in support of a new book "Handbook of Software Architecture".

Links
Handbook of Software Architecture Site

New iSight

I was given a nice new Apple iSight for christmas and was wondering how I could use this to chat with people who are not on macs. Well it seems like this is possible and for an in-depth discussion on this have a read of this article. While browsing on the net I also found an interesting piece of software called iGlasses that manipulates the image the iSight camera grabs and enhances it so that less light is required to get a good picture. From the same company that creates iGlasses are the following programs to do with your isight:

PowerBoost: Allows any mac to host multi-party conferences (even if not powerful enough according to Apple specs)
Conference Recorder: Records your iChat video conferences into a quicktime file.
iChatUSBCam: Allows any USB camera to work with iChat so you do not need to have an iSight.

Links
Video Conferencing with Windows users from Apple iChat
iGlasses
ecamm Programs

iRoster: Bonjour services made easy

I have lots of macs running on the office and have recently found this little application called iRoster that allows you to register applescripts as Bonjour services. In addition the application can display other available services and quickly launch them. This allows me to expose an applescript to start a VNC server that I can then launch remotely via Bonjour.

Links
iRoster

Mac OSX GPS Software

I have a Garmin Venture GPS and am I am looking around for OSX software for mapping and uploading of waypoints. While searching around the Internet I found this great site that has a good list of commercial and in development OSX GPS software.

Links
OSX GPS Software List

Mac-Mac Sync Without .Mac

If you are anything like me you will have lots of macs and you want to have the same calendar information and address book on them all. Well if they are all on the same network you can use a little program called MySync. Get it while it is still in Beta as it is Free (yes still my favourite word) but it will become shareware in the future. MySync uses the Apple sync framework to achieve the syncing which means as more programs support this framework then MySync will automatically work with those new programs, wonderful. This is the second program I have seen recently that is using the Apple sync framework as I have just recently installed the MarkSpace Palm Missing Sync Software Version 5 that now uses the sync framework and provides a much enhanced capability to synchronise my Palm organiser.

Links
MySync
MarkSpace Missing Sync for Palm

Apple Front Row for Mac Mini

When Apple released the new iMac G5 with Front Row I was very surprised to not see the software also available in the Mac Mini as this machine would have been the more likely machine to connect to your TV and use this type of software. Well someone has started an online petition for trying to get the Front Row software available for the mac mini as well (see links below). However I still believe that Front Row is lacking one more thing, TV. If Front Row was available on a mac mini and worked with the various Mac Digital TV solutions out there then I would buy it in a snap as that would be the perfect home theatre solution.

Links:
Online Petiition

Monket Calendar

Ok I already know about phpiCalendar which is a great web application that quickly and easily displays calendars, but that is all it does, display. Monket Calendar does the displaying but also allows for calendars to be edited. Monket still uses the ICS (Internet Calendaring System) calendaring format for the storing calendars but provides great client side editing which includes drag and drop capabilities.

Links
Monket Webpage

RoundCube: Web-based IMAP email client

Like my previous post RoundCube is a web application project that is using the AJAX communication model to allow the browser based interface to communicate with the server without having to refresh the whole page. What this application provides ontop of Webnote is also the ability to use drag and drop like a normal desktop application. RoundCube is a web-based IMAP email client probably one of the best I have seen so far.

Links:
RoundCube Website

Webnote - Online Post-it Notes

Here is an cure little web application that allows you to place notes on a web page. The software can be run on your own website or even on you local machine for personal notes. The web-based interface allows you to drag around the notes and even resize the notes right from within the browser. As an added bonus it uses the increasingly common AJAX communication model to save changes back to the web server.

Links
Webnote Site

Swarmcast

So you know Podcasts and you have been using Bittorrent, now get ready for Swarmcast. Swarmcast uses the concept bittorrent to spread the network load of viewing and downloading large content (such as video or software files) by enabling all clients to connect to each other to create adhoc download networks. Unlike Bittorrent that downloads parts of files randomly Swarmcast ensures that the files is downloaded contiguously so that video files can be streamed and watched while the download is still continuing.

Links
Swarmcast Homepage
FAQ on What Swarming is

VideoCasts: The next craze

So we have PodCasts, which has not become mainstream with the introduction of iTunes' inbuilt podcasting feature which makes it extremely easy to subscribe, download and transfer PodCasts to your iPod. The next craze are VideoCasts, which instead of MP3 files the RSS feeds contain videos. This allows people to subscribe to a VideoCast RSS feed and download videos. There are some people out there calling this Internet TV where you are essentially watching video on demand over the Internet, in some ways this is true.

If you are using a Mac, and I know most of the people who read my blog do, then you can download an open source program called DTV. DTV allows you to quickly and easily subscribe to VideoCast feeds, download and play the video files. The software is still Beta and they have warnings all over the application but I have not had any problems using the application. Give it a go and be one of the first in the VideoCast craze.

Links
Download DTV

XMLTV for Adelaide, Australia

I have been using a program called TVxb to download TV Guides and create XMLTV compatible XML files for use in a number of other programs. Until recently this has been working although my source provider changed so I have to recreate the settings file. This new file can be found here and works for all free to air TV channels for Adelaide, Australia.

Links
TVxb.ini - TVxb INI file for Adelaide, Australia
TVxb Home Page

Server Consolidation

At work we have just started using VMWare to consolidate the number of servers that we are running as much of the software can not run in the same operating system but does not utilise the full amount of resources provided by the server. By running Virtual Machines with our software also allows us to easily run multiple versions of the software and easily roll back to older versions when a research direction proves not to be fruitfull. While reading around on Slashdot there was an article about Xen, which is an open source virtualisation software. Currently Xen requires the guest operating systems to be compiled specially for Xen and therefore only select Linux distributions work. However, support has recently been announced by AMD and Intel to support Xen at the hardware level to enable any operating system to take full advantage of the Xen platform. Maybe in the future I will be able to use Xen rather than VMWare, it will be very interesting to compare the performance and features.

Links
Xen Source Wiki
Xen Source
Slashdot

NicePlayer: Good, small, free OSX Video Player

Like always I was trawling through some of the my favourite download sites to see what cool programs developers have been busy created when I came across NicePlayer. With the recent release of Quicktime Player 7.0.1 that no longer accepts my previous Quicktime Pro serial number I now can no longer play Quicktime movies in full screen. With NicePlayer, which is free, you can once again play movies in full screen. This player also has a number of other great features like smooth fading screen controls the ability to support all Quicktime Codecs installed in your system, playlists and borderless display. Go on give it a go, you will love it.

Links
NicePlayer Homepage

Wiki in a Browser Page

I find wiki's a really cool idea. If you are not familiar with them they are essentially a way of creating web pages using a very simple markup language, so simple that anyone can edit a wiki page, even if you know nothing about HTML. The whole idea behind wiki's is to make it easier for people to create and edit web pages. The other benefit of wikis that creating links between pages is all based on creating a wiki link with the name of the new page, that is it. Well now on the meat of this article, enter GTDTiddlyWiki. GTDTiddlyWiki is an implementation of TiddlyWiki that allows you to create and edit a web page that is stored completely in your browser. Yes that is right none of the information is stored on the server, which allows you to edit a TiddlyWiki page even without a connection to a server. In fact it does not work by connecting to a server at all. TiddlyWiki works by using CSS and Javascript to save and manipulate the page contents and then save them in the file for future reference. The GTDTiddlyWiki implements the “Getting Things Done” concept a personal productivity method by David Allen. Have a go for yourself.

Links
GTD Tiddlywiki
TiddlyWiki
Getting Things Done Book

Desktop Manager in Tiger

Well I have a copy of OSX Tiger and I am pretty happy with it. All my programs ran with no problems except Desktop Manager, although I knew prior to updating that this was a problem. There is a fix though, as there is a beta version that works in tiger and can be downloaded here.

Links
Desktop Manager Home Page

HD DVD DRM Article

One of my friends has put together this article that discusses the problems behind HD DVD, the new standard for High Definition DVD video discs. The article is reasonably long but does provide a good overview of the issues and links to relevant articles. As I am a developer and wish to sell the products that I create I can understand why DRM exists but from the sounds of it the new DRM on HD DVD will make HD DVD less accessible, which is less than favourable. If HD DVD will not be available on computers, as suggested in the article, it will severely hamper the distribution of HD DVD and a majority of content producers and users will stick with the original DVD format. The other big problem that I can see if DRM gets in the way of using the product flexibly (ie on a large variety of devices that currently exist or are developed in the future) then users will start to turn more to other means (ie illegal downloads) and therefore resulting in the incorrect effect of forcing users towards illegal means.

Links
HD DVD DRM Article

Delicious Library 1.5 Announced

Delicious Library 1.5 will be released at the same time as Apple's new operating system OSX Tiger (10.4). This new version will leverage upon some of the new technologies available in OSX Tiger, including Spotlight and Dashboard. For a quick movie of a component in Delicious Library click the links below.

Links
Delicious Library 1.5 Article
Delicious Library Home Page

Sidenote

Here is another great little mac utility that allows you to store and quickly access notes. One the biggest problems that I have with the Apple Sticky notes is that they are all over the place and get in the way. Sidenote is much better as it stores all your notes in a nice drawer that hides itself at the side of the screen. This is one slick application and well work a try. Skip down to the download link and give it a go yourself. If you can not even wait to download the application here is a screenshot.

Links
Download Sidenote

Handbrake 0.7.0-beta1 released: DVD encoding made easy

Handbrake 0.7.0-beta1 has been released. If you are unaware of Handbrake it is an excellent program for Mac OSX that allows you to rip and encode DVDs with an easy to user interface. This has got to be one of the easiest to use DVD Ripper/encoding programs available on both PC or Mac. To use simply select the title from the dvd, the encoding type and then click to encode button to start, it is just that simple.

Links
Handbrake Download Page

CenterStage Alpha Released

One of the Mac media projects has finally released an Alpha (actually been a very quick development cycle). This alpha only supports the display of movies in your movies folder of your home directory but does give and indication of where it is going. The menu is built as a 3D set of icons that rotate around. This release is definitely an alpha release as the menu is a little jumpy and there is no text display of what each icon means but does give a good example of what will be possible. Keep up the good work and I can not wait to see the next release.

Links
CenterStage Download
CenterStage Homepage

Multiple Computers – Single Keyboard and Mouse

At work and at home I have the annoying problem of multiple computers and little desk space for multiple keyboards and mice, well no longer. Introducing Synergy. Synergy allows you to run a service on one machine and clients on all other machines. With a little configuration it is then possible to move the mouse from one monitor to another like using multiple displays on a single machine. The software works seamlessly and it also shares your clipboard, all you need is multiple computers and a TCP/IP network connecting them together. But wait there is more, Synergy supports Mac OSX, Windows and Linux. Yes that is right you can seamlessly use one keyboard and mouse between all machine types. The OSX client and server is not as advanced as the windows version but still works very well. All that it is missing are some of the “nice to have” features. This software is up there with usefulness of QuickSilver, one of my other all time favorite programs. Download it now if you are using multiple computers, you will love it.

Links
Synergy Home Page
QuickSilver Home Page

Growl 0.6 Released

Growl 0.6 has been released with a whole load of new notification styles. Growl is developer notification system that allows any OSX developer to use a system wide notification rather than having all the developer produce a million crappy notification widgets. By having a single notification system allows for messages to cooperate rather than conflict and potentially overlap and get in the way. There are already quite a few applications that support growl (see growl site for complete list).

Links
Growl Home Page
Application List supporting Growl

Mac Media Projects

Since the release of the Apple Mac Mini there have been a large mac community wanting to use their new Mac Minis as the central hub to their multimedia home centre. Two notable projects are CenterStage and iTheater. Both projects are planning on creating a product that will allow you to connect a mac up to your TV and watch TV, videos, photos, DVDs, etc. all from an easy to use interface. I have subscribed to the RSS feeds from both and will be watching them very closely. Both seem to be developed along the same timelines. iTheatre is hoping to release a first version in a week or so (good luck to them). No downloads available yet ... stay tuned.

Links
CenterStage Home Page
iTheater Home Page

Heavy-weight Thin Clients

Here is another article in the series of articles that I have posted about using Javascript, CSS and XHTML to create a more responsive web-based application. This article is better than most as it describes the environment and technologies used much better than others and also contains a quick analysis of why this approach is good. The author seems to refer to something called Ajax, which I believe is what he calls this approach to web development. The confusing aspect is that it talks about Ajax as though it is something that you can download and program to. Nevertheless it is still a good article that discusses the technologies and why you would use this approach to web development.

Links
Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applications

IBM Web Tools for Eclipse

IBM has released their initial release of J2EE development tools for eclipse free to the public. This is a subset of the tools found in IBMs new Rational Application Developer 6.0 tool suite (also built on top of eclipse).

Be ready to download lots of things for this as there are about 5 different support packages that need to be installed for the toolkit to work within Eclipse. In addition to these there is also a large number of third-party support downloads so be ready for quite a large download if you do not have these files already. There must be an easier way to install this plugin.

Links

IBM Web Tools for Eclipse Page

JSON: JavaScript Object Notation - Lightweight Data Inter-change Format

I have been given a link to JSON (JavaScript Object Notation), which is a project to create a data interchange format that is as language independent as XML but not as heavy in the bandwidth and parsing requirements. JSON is based on the JavaScript Programming Language and has bindings in the following programming languages:

• C
• C#
• Java
• JavaScript
• Objective CAML
• PHP
• ML
• Ruby

Here is a sample JSON message:

{
"glossary": {
"title": "example glossary",
"GlossDiv": {
"title": "S",
"GlossList": [{
"ID": "SGML",
"SortAs": "SGML",
"GlossTerm": "Standard Generalized Markup Language",
"Acronym": "SGML",
"Abbrev": "ISO 8879:1986",
"GlossDef": "A meta-markup language, used to create markup languages such as DocBook.",
"GlossSeeAlso": ["GML", "XML", "markup"]}]}}}

The same text expressed as XML:

<!DOCTYPE glossary PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook V3.1//EN">
<glossary><title>example glossary</title>
<GlossDiv><title>S</title>
<GlossList>
<GlossEntry ID="SGML" SortAs="SGML">
<GlossTerm>Standard Generalized Markup Language</GlossTerm>
<Acronym>SGML</Acronym>
<Abbrev>ISO 8879:1986</Abbrev>
<GlossDef>
<para>A meta-markup language, used to create markup languages such as DocBook.</para>
<GlossSeeAlso OtherTerm="GML">
<GlossSeeAlso OtherTerm="XML">
</GlossDef>
<GlossSee OtherTerm="markup">
</GlossEntry>
...
</GlossList>
</GlossDiv>
</glossary>

Links
JSON Home Page

Google Suggest Ripped Apart

Since Google Suggest first appeared on the Internet everyone in the web development community has been beside themselves in how well it works. I have always been a big advocate of developing “light weight” user interfaces (ie not using applets or plugins and just using JavaScript and DOM) to create interactive and fast user interfaces to sights and web tools. Google is achieving these light weight web interface more often now, first with GMail and now with their Google Suggest feature.

For all you developers out there Chris Justus has extracted the JavaScript from Google Suggest and has gone through and commented everything so it is easy to understand. This will allow many others to use similar functionality in their own web development projects. Have a read here.

Links
Google Suggest
Google Suggest Dissected Blog Article
Google Suggest Dissected JavaScript (for the impatient people)
Previous Google Suggest Blog

Command Line Encryption (BORK)

One of my friends has created his first sourceforge project called Bork. Bork is a command line encryption tool written in Java that has been designed to be small and self contained so that it can be included with the encrypted data. This is great for storing encrypted data on CDs, DVDs or USB Drives.

Links
Bork SourceForge Page

PalmOS to go Linux

In this TheFeature article PalmOS announces that it will change direction with the development of its operating system for organisers and other mobile devices. This is a very interesting move and could either spell the death of PalmSource (organisation in charge of developing PalmOS) or its rebirth. The key is to develop this new operating system so that existing applications can either be run directly on the new platform or are easily recompiled.

I am very interested in seeing PalmOS stay alive as it is a more elegant operating system for mobile devices than Microsoft PocketPC that requires a great deal more processing power and memory just to run. Also being a mac fan I have always like PalmOS as it fits cleaner in my whole computer ethos.

Links
PalmOS to become Linux based Article
PalmSource Site

JBoss Formally Enters Middleware Market

JBoss is formally announcing its move to expand its capabilities into the middleware market. By expanding its capabilities JBoss will start to compete against the BEA and IBM giants. One capability that interests me is support for a Business Process Engine developed by Tom Baeyens called jBpm (Java Business Process Management). This expands JBoss' components to include:

• JBoss Application Server
• EJB 3.0
• Hibernate (Object/Relational Java Persistence and Query Service)
• Javassist (Java class library for editing Java bytecode in Java)
• JBoss AOP (Aspect Oriented Framework)
• JBoss Cache (Replicated and transactional Cache)
• JBoss IDE (Development Environment built inside Eclipse)
• JBoss jBPM (Process Engine)
• JBoss Mail (email server)
• JBoss Portal (Portal implementation)
• JGroups (Reliable multicast communication)
• Tomcat (JSP and Servlet Engine)

It will be interesting to see how tight a package is created and whether it works easily without too much hair pulling.

Links
ComputerWorld Article
JBoss Site
JBpm Site

Firefox and Thunderbird Extensions

With the recent 1.0 release of both Firefox and Thunderbird many new extensions are being created for both applications. You can always access these extensions from the Mozilla site but the Extensions Mirror site has the same extensions plus many more in a more user friendly site design. You can even subscribe to their RSS feed to be notified when new extensions are created or existing ones updated.

Links
Extensions Mirror Site
RSS Feed Page
Mozilla Extensions Site

Searching for Open Source CMS Implementations by Feature

If you are looking for an open source content management system you might have been confused by the sheer number of choices out there. I have previously blogged the opensourcecms.com site that contains running demos of most open source CMS implementations. However this needs you to browse through each CMS one by one looking for the implementation that meets you needs. CMS Matrix is another site that keeps track of the open source CMS implementations but provides search facilities to find the right solution based on required features.

Links
CMS Matrix Site

Where is IBM WebSphere for OSX?

I have been using Apple Macs for the past three years since OSX operating system was first released. Since my switch from PC to Mac I have been very happy. My day to day work mainly involves the use of email and office-based applications, however my other part of work is the development of middleware solutions using enterprise-grade application servers. The problem that I have is that many application servers available run on windows, linux or Solaris (plus other mainframe environments) but not OSX which makes it very painful for me to try out ideas, especially while traveling and using an Apple Powerbook.

Currently I am using IBM WebSphere on a windows platform and it made me start to think about IBM and the way it is marketing its products. IBM is the manufacturer of the G5 PowerPC chips as used in G5 PowerMac and in G5 XServes. IBM also develops the WebSphere application server. You would think that if it wants to sell more G5 processors it would allow its premier application server software to also run on their own hardware (namely Apple XServes). I realise that IBM makes its own server class machines (zSeries) and in the latest version of WebSphere 6.0 also contains support for a new processor on the zSeries machines to run WebSphere even faster, but why miss the XServe market. I would love to be able to move my development environment over to OSX so that I could use either Eclipse or IBM's development IDE and run WebSphere all on my Powerbook or on an XServe (for deployment). I have even queried local Apple representatives about this and had no reply.

So why doesn't IBM provide an OSX version of its application server as this will truly boost Apple's profile to create an enterprise grade application server. I hear you say that Apple does support JBoss, but this application server is not really recognised in corporate and government circles. It makes sense to me for this fusion as Apple wins by having a truly enterprise class application server, IBM wins by selling more of their PowerPC processors and application server products and mac developers out there also win by not having to mix their development environment with those evil windows machines.

Advanced Configuration in Firefox

Want to be able to configure everything in Firefox 1.0? Well from reading the Wikipedia page on Firefox I have found that if you go to the page “about:config” a special configuration page is displayed. This page contains all the variables used within firefox and filter text box so you can easily find the variable you need to change.

An example use of this configuration page is to change the Firefox behaviour to display an alert box and display an error page, similar to that used by Microsoft Internet Explorer. First open the “about:config” page by typing the text (without quotes) into the address text box at the top of your browse and type enter. This will display the configuration page. Next type error in the filter text box, this will automatically filter the list to only display the “browser.xul.error_pages.enabled” preference. Double click the value to change it to “true” and that is it. You can test it by opening another window and entering a bogus address, an error page should be displayed rather than the common alert box.

Links
Firefox Wikipedia Page
Firefox Home Page

Mac OSX Searching: LaunchBar vs Quicksilver

I have been using Objective Development's LaunchBar software for quite some time to quickly launch applications on my Macs. LaunchBar is a brilliant piece of software, but today one of my friends told me about Quicksilver that provides a very similar capability but for free (really it is donateware). For the price do not think that this is a shoddy piece of software as it is not this at all, in fact it is much better than some software you can pay quite a lot for. Quicksilver also has the concept of plugins that allows for additional modules to be added so as new application are developed and people want to search through files in these applications or connect to the application's internal database these plugins can be used. Already quite a number of plugins are available including ones to connect to iChat, Apple Address Book, Firefox, iPhoto, Sherlock, Entourage and many more. In comparison Quicksilver is much faster to use than LaunchBar and the ability to extend quicksilver means it will be more capable over time and support many more applications than LaunchBar could hope for.

Links
LaunchBar Site
Quicksilver Site
Quicksilver Plugins

Scrolling on Mac Trackpads

While browsing through the new software on MacUpdate I found SideTrack, which I have seen before but this is the newest and latest version. SideTrack is a replacement driver for the Mac trackpads on all Apple laptops that provides some of the more advanced features that the PC users take for granted. One of my favourite features is ability to use the side of the trackpad for scrolling. SideTrack also has corner tapping, which allows you to select an action to occur when you tap the trackpads corner area. It is very flexible and allows you to customise the speed of scrolling and even the size of the special areas. If you are using a Apple laptop I would extremely recommend giving this a go.

Links
SideTrack Home Site
MacUpdate Site

Prettier Form Widgets in Firefox on Mac

Firefoxy 1.1 has just been released that allows you to easily change the widgets used on the mac firefox to the a much prettier set. The new widgets look like this:

And are easily applied by dragging your firefox application onto the firefoxy application. To undo you simply follow the same dragging process. I have also noticed that these same new widgets are already installed in the G5 Optimised build that I blogged earlier.

Links
Download Firefoxy
G5 Optimised Build Blog

Kevin Gerich Widgets

Firefox Mac Optimised Builds

Do you have a G4 or G5 mac and use Firefox? If you do then you will like the following links. Neil Lee has created a build of Firefox 1.0 that has been optimised for use on the G5. Users have reported that there is noticable difference to the original version. I will have to wait to monday as my G5 is at work, but my powerbook uses the G4 chipset and there is also a version created by Kai Rune optimised for the G4. Got to love geeks and the pursuit for ever faster processing.

Links
G4 Optimised Firefox Link
G5 Optimised Firefox Link

Delicious Library Released

Ok this has got to be one of the most gorgeous software packages to be released for the mac. Delicious Library by Delicious Monster is a Book/CD/DVD/Games library that allows you to categorise and manage your collections. The key features of this application are:

• Gorgeous user interface
• Connects to Amazon to get the cover images of items and description details
• Can use your iSight or Bluetooth scanner to read the bar codes of items when importing
• Allows you to manage others who borrow items from your library

For a very good (and lengthy) article about Delicious Library head over to Ars Technica and for you visual people out there it has screenshots.

Links
Ars Technical Review
Delicious Library Site
Download Applications

Mozilla Firefox 1.0 RC2 Available

Mozilla Firefox 1.0 Full Version has been released. This is the final 1.0 release of firefox ready for primetime.

Links
Download Firefox 1.0
Firefox Home Page

Java Server Faces Console for Eclipse

Just reading the RSS feed for the Eclipse plugins and I noticed this program called Faces Console. This application is a standalone Swing application that can manage your JSF applications and tag libraries. The console can also be used within Eclipse by right clicking on the JSF file and selecting to open it in the Faces Console.

Download Faces Console

Clipboard Sharing (OSX and Windows)

That have been numerous occasions where I have needed to share small amounts of text or images between multiple computers that are running different operating systems. I have just found a cool little program by Porchdog Software called Spike. Spike allows you to copy anything to share areas so that any other user also running spike on your network can access these shared items. All items are encrypted and are shared automatically. The discovery of other Spike users happens automatically via the use of Zeroconf, otherwise known as Rendezvous. Spike is available for OSX and Windows and can be downloaded here.

Links
Spike Homepage
Spike Download

Mozilla Firefox 1.0 RC2 Available

Mozilla Firefox 1.0 Release Candidate 2 is now available on their FTP server. The developers believe they have fixed the bugs with the software update feature and are requesting users to test heavily the site authentication features and extension installs from update.mozilla.org. Download it today and support Firefox's spread around the Internet and overthrow the badly implemented Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Links
Download Firefox 1.0 RC2
Firefox Home Page

OSX Tiger to have Burnable Folders and Smart Folders

AppleInsider is announcing that the latest beta of OSX Tiger released to developers has one new feature and a revised feature. The revised feature was present in earlier beta releases, this was to create smart folders that are now integrated with OSX Tiger's Spotlight searching capabilities. This allows users to create folders that can automatically fill themselves with the files that meet the smart folders capabilities. The second new feature is a Burnable folders. These allow for files to be dropped in a burnable flagged folder that creates a link to the original file rather than copying (or moving) the original file. By only creating a link to the original means that if the original contents change then when you initiate the burn the updated contents will be used. This feature will allow me to create release CDs for software that I build and then I can just update the original files and whenever I burn the CD I will always get the latest versions.

These are two of the new features in a long list of amazing capabilities to be seen in the future version of Apple's OSX operating system. I do not know about you but I can not wait for this next major release, I am already thinking of the cool ways that I can use some of these features.

Links
AppleInsider Article

Google Desktop for Mac!

Google has announced plans to release it s Google Desktop software for the mac, although no date has currently been set. Google Desktop allows users to search through their emails, files, documents, chat messages on their home computers much like good searches through the Internets content. This is essentially bringing the power of search engines to your desktop. Currently Google Desktop is only available for windows machines as it needs to hook into the operating system to search for the required files and to bring this capability to the Mac will required a complete overhaul to Google Desktop.

It is very curious why Google is going to provide Google Desktop for the mac as Apple's new operating system codenamed Tiger, due early 2005, contains a similar technology called Spotlight. So if the mac is going to already have a powerful searching capability built right into the operating system why is Google going to go ahead and still provide their own tool? Maybe Google has a much bigger plan to bring more and more of their Internet based tools like news, GMail, Image searches to the desktop so that your complete working environment is actually Google Desktop. For now though you can only download Google Desktop for windows but stay tuned for more interesting developments.

Links
REUTERS Article
Google Desktop
Apple's Spotlight

Actual Example of a “Rich” Web Client

One of my friends and colleagues (Matthew Phillips) has sent me a link to a page about an application that has been written using Mozilla's XUL. As I have previously written XUL is the XML markup language used by the Mozilla-based Browsers (Mozilla and Firefox) to render the user interface. This site talks about using XUL to develop a “rich” web application to search for products on Amazon.com. You can run the rich client as either an extension or online (like a web page). I believe this type of rich client is the future for all web-based applications that require a centrally managed application repository while retaining highly interactive client-side capabilities.

Have a go for yourself. (You will need to install Firefox or Mozilla)

Links
MAB Rich Client
Download Firefox
Download Mozilla

Gmail Address Import from Apple Address Book

Want to import your Apple Address book into Google's Gmail service? Here is a great blog article that contains a simple Perl script that converts VCard files (what Address book exports) into a CSV list with the name and email of your contacts. It is extremely easy to use:

1. Download the script from here.
2. Open Apple Address Book.
3. Select all your contacts.
4. Drag contacts to your desktop. This will create a file called “vCards.vcf”.
5. Open the Apple Terminal application (found in /Applications/Utilities directory).
6. Change the directory to your desktop (“cd Desktop”).
7. Type “perl parsevcf ./vCards.vcf ./gmail.csv” (this assumes that the script you downloaded in step 1 and the Address Book vCards file are in the same directory).
8. This will create a new file called gmail.csv on your Desktop that you can now upload to Gmail.

Links
Gmail Perl Script Conversion Blog

“Rich” Web Clients

I am a keen advocate for “Rich” internet clients. By “Rich” I do not mean Java Applets, but web pages that provide a more complete user experience without having to request new pages from the server whenever the user clicks a button or link. There are few different approaches that provide this type of functionality including XUL (Mozilla Platform), Macromedia Flex and traditional JavaScript and DOM. Many web developers do not exploit the powerful capabilities provided with JavaScript and DOM. A recent example of this type of “Rich” client is Google's new Gmail capability that uses JavaScript and DOM to create a very quick and snappy user interface. By using JavaScript Google has been able to only send the basic requests and data transfers rather sending whole page changes back to the client. This of course takes quite a lot more client-side JavaScript development but does create a very powerful user interface. If you are interested in more information about the Gmail Agent API have a look here.

The Mozilla Platform is a more developer friendly approach as you define your application's interface in XUL and then link it together with JavaScript. However this approach requires your users to use a Mozilla-based browser (Mozilla or Firefox).

For the most interactive “Rich” client experience that will work on any browser Macromedia Flex is your product. Flex is based around a similar concept of Mozilla by defining your interface using XML documents and then linking it together with a scripting languages (Macromedia ActionScript). The difference is that Flex's client is built inside the Macromedia Flash player (available on almost every platform and browser), which allows for highly dynamic and pretty user interfaces. Flex is deployed using a J2EE server and can communicate back to the server by making Web Service calls or exchanging Java objects.

Gmail's approach works on all browsers but is technically much harder to implement. Mozilla's approach works well but requires a Mozilla-based browser. Macromedia's approach provides the best of both worlds but is not free and requires extensive server support. So if you are a web application developer please consider one of these options and provide a more advanced experience for your users.

Links
Mozilla Web Site
Firefox Site
Gmail Agent API Article
Macromedia Flex Site

CherryOS May Not Be What it Claims

Wired has an interesting article about the new CherryOS that I blogged about previously. According to the Wired article a number of people have accused the CherryOS developers for stealing code from PearPC (open source emulator) that provides very similar functionality. The CherryOS makers claim that they have not done anything of the sort. One of the reasons why the CherryOS site has been down a number of times is because of crackers breaking into the site and maliciously damaging or disrupting the site. The true test to see if CherryOS is unique or not will be clear once it has been officially released and source code is provided to the PearPC developers to check, which will occur in a few days time. From my point of view I do not really care as PearPC has been released as open source under the GPL license that does not preclude the use of code for commercial products, but does retain a few restrictions. What I really worry about is wether CherryOS works better than PearPC and is easier to install and use and therefore worth spending the money on.

Links
Wired Article about CherryOS

MS Office 2004 Service Pack 1 Released

Microsoft has released Service Pack 1 for its Office 2004 software. This is the first major update to the Office 2004 software and it installed with no problems although it take quite sometime to search the hard drive while installing. If you are installing on a mac that contains multiple LARGE hard drives then be ready for a long wait as the installer searches all these drives to find the location of all Microsoft Apps that are installed so it can update them.

Links
Download Office 2004 Service Pack 1

Mac OSX on PC

If you own a PC but really want a Mac then a cheaper way of doing this is to use an emulator on the PC that emulates the PowerPC architecture so that you can run Mac OSX in the emulation environment. PearPC is one such emulation environment that has been around for a while but is still not quite there and has that OpenSource feel to it, otherwise known as hard to install and get working. Another option available is CherryOS that provides a similar emulation environment. I went to the CherryOS website earlier today and I was able to look at a few demonstration videos and screenshots of the emulation environment in action, however I just had a look again and the site seems to be missing all its contents. I can say that it looked quite impressive and looked quite easy to install and get running so might be quite a good option for all those PC users who envy the Mac community (you know who you are). I am guessing that they are just updating their site so have a look for yourself in a couple of days.

Links
CherryOS Website
PearPC Website

BluePhoneElite: OSX Bluetooth Phone App

I have used a number of different bluetooth applications that can connect to my Ericsson T39 mobile phone but BluePhoneElite is one of the best for connecting with a mobile phone. BluePhoneElite will automatically connect to you mobile phone and unlike other similar programs can actually display your phone signal strength and battery levels. It also contains a very good SMS management interface that can display the actual contents of your phone (both the phone and SIM card). This SMS management interface allows you to manipulate the SMS messages saved on the phone. This is great for me as the Ericsson's T39 phone interface is very slow and cumbersome so using this software I can quickly view or delete messages stored in the phone. If you want to see screenshots of the application running then continue reading.

BluePhoneElite Menu

BluePhoneElite SMS Manager

BluePhoneElite Preference Pane - General

BluePhoneElite Preference Pane - Phones

BluePhoneElite Preference Pane - Calls

BluePhoneElite Preference Pane - SMS

BluePhoneElite Preference Pane - Proximity

BluePhoneElite Preference Pane - Customise

Links
BluePhoneElite Website
VersionTracker Site for BluePhoneElite

GMail and OSX

Are you using GMail and Apple OSX well then this is for you. GMailStatus is a little program that appears in your menu bar and checks your GMail account for new messages and displays the unread amount. To make it even better GMailStatus also supports Growl notifications, which I blogged about earlier. Now for the best stuff, screenshots:

GMailStatus Menu Item

GMailStatus Preferences

GMailStatus Preferences

Australian Maps and Directions in Apple Address Book

Stephen Withers has released a couple of scripts on VersionTracker that allows Australians to display the mapping location of Australian addresses from directly data contained in Address Book linked to whereis.com.au. There are also scripts for connecting Microsoft Entourage with Whereis. This is a great little script filling a gap for Australians using Address Book, good work. There are two versions of the scripts, one for displaying the map of the selected location and the other to display the directions to the location. The directions script uses your own personal address card to determine the starting location. Check it outside for yourself with the links below.

To install just copy the scripts into your [home directory]/library/Address Book Plug-ins/ and then restart Address Book.

Links
Version Tracker Site
Stephen Withers Script Site

IBM WebSphere 6 Announced

IBM has announced that its new version of WebSphere Application Server Version 6 will be available in December 2004. This is a key release from my point of view as this will be the first release of IBMs J2EE application server to support the J2EE 1.4 standards and of most importance includes Web Services as standard. In the previous J2EE standard Web Services were not included as a core technology, therefore each handled Web Services differently. This created a nightmare when moving code between J2EE servers implemented by different vendors. A pre release of WebSphere Application Server Version 6 has been available to developers for quite some time on the IBM website and is still available if you want to try it out before the official release in December.

Links
IBM Website
The Register Article on WebSphere 6
ZDNet Article on WebSphere 6
CNet Article on WebSphere 6
IBM WebSphere Developer Pre-release Download

Nvu Mozilla-based HTML Editor

Mozilla is not just a great browser/email/news client but it also provides a good application development platform. For example Firefox has been developed using the Mozilla platform and Gecko layout engine. Another great application is Nvu, which is a graphical web page editor to rival programs like Macromedia Dreamweaver and Microsoft Frontpage. Even though Nvu is only up to version 0.50 (due out this week) it already provides quite some capability and it will be interesting to see this program grow. The current version of Nvu is quite yet good enough for me to throw away Dreamweaver but it is definitely on the right track.

Screenshot of Nvu Editing My Home Page

Links
Nvu Home Page
Macromedia Dreamweaver Page

Making Better Open Source Systems

Jeffrey Veen has a good article that talks about ways to improve Open Source Content Management Systems (CMS) although many of the comments made in this article could actually be applied to many Open Source developments, not just CMS. So if you are one of those Open Source developers this article is a MUST READ and take all these comments on board.

I can not stress that the easy to use installer point that Jeffrey makes is extremely important, because if it is hard to use you will lose half your audience. Do not think that you are too good for installers and that you only want to cater for the elite programmers. Even a hard core programmer likes a good installer that is going to allow them to spend more time working on their core projects.

Another big problem with a majority of Open Source software is that the interface designs need some serious work. I am not advocating the Apple creates the best software but everyone should have a hard look and see why apple does do so well, it is all because their software interfaces are simple but still provide incredible power and flexibility. Anyone who has designed software knows that creating a good user interface is probably THE hardest thing and is ignored by many developers out there. Instead of a SpreadFirefox.com site we really should have a site SpreadGoodGUI.com to promote better GUI and design in software applications (ps. Support Firefox download it now).

Links
Jeffrey Veen's article on Open Source CMS

NewsTicker: RSS Feed Ticker

NewsTicker is a great little program that displays you RSS feeds in a ticker at the top of the screen (see the screenshot to the right - click for larger version). It is a pretty simple program, which I like. Some of the great features it has are:

• Change the ticker font.
• Choose the colour for the font and background.
• Change the speed of the ticker's scroll speed.
• Can change the level of display (above/below other windows or as a normal window).

There are a few features that I would like to see in future versions:

• Ability to remove RSS feeds once they are clicked (read) or using a modifier key to mark as read without opening the page.
• Display the contents of the article (from the RSS feed) when you mouse over an entry. This could be displayed in a popup window so that it does not get in the way.
• Ability to customise the colour of the link once read rather than just using a darker colour.
• Drag RSS feed URLs to the ticker to add new feeds.
• Have the ticker disappear when there is no news to display.

So now you must think that I hate this program, not correct. I believe that this is quite a good program and I am surprised that we have not seen other ticker style RSS feeds with the minor additions identified above I believe that this will be a great program to monitor news and other feed-based information.

Links
NewsTicker Home Page
VersionTracker NewsTicker Page

Stop wasting those keystrokes with typeit4me

I am always looking for ways to speed up how I use my computer and I have just stumbled across typeit4me. typeit4me allows for shortcut text to be entered into any mac application and have it automatically replaced with the complete text. For instance all the instances of the “ typeit4me ” text was entered using typeit4me and the shortcut text of “t4me”. My initial impressions of this program is that it is very easy to use but I am not quite sure how often I will use it. I think that it would be great for people who often write the same text over an over again or use it in instant messaging clients. Give it a go yourself and let me know what you think and the novel ways that you use it (use the comments below).

Links
Typeit4me Web Site

PHPStar: PHP for Mac OSX with everything

PHPStar 3 has been released that contains everything that you need to run PHP on a Apple Mac running OSX. Other installations are available for OSX but this one is unique because it contains ALL the necessary libraries (and ones that you may not use) in an easy to use installer. Oh and the best thing is that it is free.

Links
PHPStar Web Site

Opensource Virus Scanner for OSX

VersionTracker has a interesting program in its newly release software list, ClamXav. ClamXav is GUI interface for an opensource command line virus scanner called ClamAV. To make it easy ClamXav includes a version of ClamAV so you do not need to install the two programs separately. Below is a screenshot of the application, as you can see it is not the most appealing of interfaces but it does what it needs to, scan files. In the current version there is no way to set up automatic scans or scan files downloaded from the Internet (maybe in future versions). ClamAV does allow you to easily download new virus definitions but again this can not be automated.

To install open the disk image that contains a couple of files including the application file and a script to install the scanner utility. First double click on the install file to run the installer. Next drag the application ClamXav application to your application folder, you virus scanner is now installed.

Overall I believe that ClamXav has a lot of potential but requires some work in automating scanning tasks, allowing to save scans so they can be run again at a later time and provide a more "aquafied" user interface.

Links
Mark Allan's ClamXav GUI Interface Site
ClamAV website

Growl - Application Notifications on OSX

Ecto (my blog editor) now supports Growl. If you are wondering what growl is then you are not alone as I also had never heard of this little program. A little closer look I have found out that Growl is system wide application notification system that allows any application of Apple Script to display notification messages. Ecto uses this notification system to display messages when activities (like posting) are complete. Growl was developed by James Cox and he even provides an API for application developers to use so that more applications can be created that utilise the Growl notification system. If you are an OSX developer then I strongly recommend having a look at Growl.

Links
Growl Website
Ecto Website

WeatherDock 1.0

WeatherDock 1.0 has been released and it is FREE, yes these are my favorite words as well. WeatherDock uses The Weather Channel's website XML feeds to get weather information and can display the weather details for almost anywhere in the world. The software allows you to choose a single location and will display the current weather information in the dock icon and will also display a 5 day forecast in a new window if you click on the dock icon. Another nice feature is that it uses OSX's built-in speech facilities to speak the weather automatically (timed interval) or manually. Download it for yourself and see what you think.

Links
WeatherDock website
The Weather Channel website

Alternatives
WeatherPop
Konfabulator Mini Weather Widget (requires Konfabulator)
Meteorologist (VERY GOOD)

Wonderful Squares Flash Game

Here is another one of those really addictive flash games. For this one you have to try and get the black squares and miss the orange squares (well I think they are orange as I am colourblind). Have a go for yourself.

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/squares2.php

ESRI embraces J2EE in ArcGIS 9

The recently released ESRI ArcGIS 9 includes support for the Sun Java Application Server which is the Sun Microsystems own J2EE server. By integrating ArcGIS with the Sun J2EE server it has allowed ESRI developers and users of their software to leverage upon the power of web services to seamlessly integrate geographic data with existing applications and business processes.

This is a profound step forward and can be leveraged upon in the recently started DSTO work on the Joint Command Support Environment (JCSE) that is ramping up support to the Geospatial and Imagery projects run under the Command Support Systems Branch of DMO. This DSTO work involves the development of a complete enterprise architecture for exposing and disseminating Geospatial and Imagery data within the ADF allowing such agencies as DIGO, DIO and DSD to share their products (normally distributed as individual files or hard copies) as digital products. This new architecture and use of integration technologies will allow the ADF to more seamlessly integrate Geospatial and Imagery data directly into existing and new applications and allow for a quicker and easier mechanism to distribute information. These advanced integration architectures will also allow for tighter control on the use of the data and more traceable security capabilities impossible with the current implementation methods.

Links
Sun Press Release
ESRI ArcGIS Product Page

iPodDownload iTunes Plugin: Apple vs Inspiration

A great little plugin for iTunes called iPodDownload has been created that allows users to easily download music from their iPod into iTunes directly from within iTunes. However this program is no longer available from the developers own site as Apple has accused the developer that the program is violation of something (not identified by Apple directly) and was requested to be removed from the Internet. This is most likely due to the Digital Rights Management software apple has incorporated into iTunes and the iPod to stop users from easily sharing music files illegally, however if you are like me where you use multiple machines being apple to use the iPod to move you music between machines is very useful. If you are now reading this thinking that you have missed out then because of the wonderful Internet community it is already being hosted by others here.

Links
iPodDownload web site
iPodDownload mirror site

Internet Chat with the Internet Explorer Development Team

On the Mozilla ezine was a quick little article about a recent Internet chat with the development team from Microsoft working on the Internet Explorer browser. Posted in this blog are the chat logs so that you can read for yourself the questions and answers written in the chat session. Unfortunately the chat session did not reveal any amazing tidbits of information although does identify that work is under way for a new version of IE to be released in the future (no dates were given).

One question that I have that was not answered was when Internet explorer will be using the same DOM as other browsers so that the same JavaScript can be developed and used in ANY browser. The day that this happens I will be a very happy boy.

Links
Internet Explorer Chat Blog
Text Version of Chat Log
Rich Text Version of Chat Log

Ecto 2 Beta Released

The initial beta release of Ecto 2 has been posted. Ecto is a blog client that alllows blog owners to easily create blog entries and post them to their online blog. This latest release sports a brand new graphical editor that allows the user to quickly create a blog using a familiar WYSIWYG editor. This first beta release seems pretty stable other than a few formatting errors in the editor and preview windows. The addition of the graphical editor is a major change from the previous version and will be great once the initial bugs are fixed and a full public release is made.

PS. This blog entry was created using the new Ecto 2 beta version.

Links:
Ecto Website

Installing Baldur's Gate II on OSX 10.3.5

I have had Baldur's Gate II - Shadows of Amn for quite some time and just decided to install it on my new Powerbook G4 17“ running OSX 10.3.5 and found that the installer would crash with an error that you do not have the correct permissions. This is happening because at some stage Apple has locked down the permisions on the root directory of your hard drive which is where Baldur's Gate wishes to install itself. This is how you fix the problem so the installed once again works:

1. Open the Terminal Application (found in the Utilities folder in your Applications folder)
2. In Terminal type the following (each line is a command and must be followed by pressing ENTER):

cd / sudo mkdir ”BGII - SoA“ [enter your password] sudo chown [username] ”BGII - SoA“

1. You will need to enter your short username (same as your home directory name). This will have created a directory that Baldur's Gate can be installed into.
2. Install Baldur's Gate like normal.

This will create the directory required and set the right permissions on the directory so that Baldur's Gate can installed correctly into the folder. You might also want to download the latest patch for the software also.

Links
MacPlay Home Page - makers of mac version of Baldur's Gate II
Patch Download

Server-side RSS Feed Aggregator

While going through the logs of this site I noticed that someone is connecting up to the RSS feeds produced by a client called FeedOnFeeds. Not knowing this client I decided to find out what it was, to my surprise I found out that it was a RSS reader that ran as a piece of server software rather than a desktop application. The idea behind having a server-side application is that you can use a single RSS reader even if you use multiple computers or work in different locations. By only having one client means that you know exactly which feeds you have and have not read, an idea that has great appeal for me. I have not yet installed the software so I can not comment on the use of the software and how well it works but once I have it up and running I will put up another blog.

Links
FeedOnFeeds RSS Server-side Aggregator Website

The Best Mac OSX News Reader has turned 1.5

Panic the company that has brought you great applications like Transmit (FTP client), Audion (MP3 Player) and CandyBar (icon customisation utility) has released a new version of Unison probably THE BEST OSX news reader available. The best way to see all the features of Unison is to download a trial copy and give it a go. One of the great features of Unison is the ability to cleanly and easily browse news posts by the content (eg images, files, music) rather than just viewing the messages like the more traditional email client type view, which is also possible.

Links
Panic Home Page
Unison Home Page

Mac: Tabbed browsing for all your Desktop Applications

Do you like the use of tabs in your browsers like Firefox and Safari? Sticky Windows is a new application by Donelleschi that allows you to dock windows to tabs displayed at the side of your display. The best way to understand is to go to the Stick Windows website that has a quick animation showing Sticky Windows in operation.

Links
Sticky Windows Website

The Next Generation in Computer Games Is Coming - Half-Life 2

At the recent Siggraph conference Viktor Antonov presented a series of Powerpoint slides containing images of the new Half-Life 2 visuals. These have to be seen to be believed as there is incredible detail and lighting effects to make one of the most immersive games I have ever seen. The most incredible thing is that these images are generated realtime using some of the most advanced commercial graphics cards. Many of the images are of such high quality that they rival those created in many computer generated movies where it takes hours to just render a single frame of video. The best way to understand is to view the images for yourself.

Links
Half-Life 2 image slideshow

Receive RSS feeds by email

If you would like to receive your RSS information via email instead of using your own RSS reader then you can use ERA (Email RSS Aggregator) available at http://era.indecorous.com/

If you are interest to know what the emails look like here is a sample email for the Slashdot RSS feed:

-- START OF EMAIL --

<http://slashdot.org/>

Plans for International Space Station Cut Back
<http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/23/230240>

Sajma writes “Reuters is reporting: NASA and its space partners on Friday
approved a scaled-down International Space Station with fewer astronauts
and less science so the United States can meet a 2010 deadline for ending
shuttle flights, a top NASA official said. Space agencies in Russia,
Europe, Canada and Japan gave unanimous approval to a NASA plan that
means the orbiting platform, now about half completed, will never become
the beehive of scientific and commercial research once envisaged.”

First seen: 2004-07-24 14:00:00
Last updated: 2004-07-24 14:00:00

---

History Of Doom Movie Debuts
<http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/24/0340252>

Rogerpq3 writes “A G4/Tech TV feature on DOOM 3, offering a history of
the DOOM franchise in the words of the folks at id Software. The clip can
be found on the air on The DOOM Franchise, episode 310 of a series called
'Icons.' The piece offers clips from DOOM 3 and other games, interview
footage, analysis and more, and for those without access to the program.
You can download the movie at: 3DGamers, Doom3HQ, Doom3.de, Doom3maps.de,
and FileShack. It's really worth the download for any Doom and id fans
out there. (Thanks: BluesNews)”

First seen: 2004-07-24 15:00:00
Last updated: 2004-07-24 15:00:00

---

Peter Gabriel: Digital Music Downloading's Future
<http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/24/1336208>

securitas writes “CNN International's Becky Anderson interviews musician
and OD2 online music service co-founder Peter Gabriel about the future of
digital music downloads. The interview covers Gabriel's motivations in
starting OD2, how technology has changed the music industry business
model in the favor of artists and away from the big record labels, and
where the small, independent artist fits in. Gabriel's words have weight
because of his insights as both a musician/artist and a businessman who
guided a digital music on demand distribution (OD2) and download service
to success.”

First seen: 2004-07-24 16:00:00
Last updated: 2004-07-24 16:00:00

---

Marian The Robot Librarian
<http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/24/145208>

nusratt writes “BBC reports on robotics researchers in Spain, who have
developed a prototype which can retrieve books from library shelves while
patrons are present. 'When it receives a request for a book, its voice
recognition software matches the titles with the book's classification
code to identify which bookshelf stack to go to. The robot navigates its
way to the bookshelf, using its infrared and laser guidance system, and
scans books within a four-metre radius. Once the book is located, it has
to grasp it and take it off the bookshelf, which is not a simple as it
might seem. For this, the team had to develop special fingertips like
nails, with one nail longer than the other. 'For me that was the hardest
part. All the other things were current state of the art technology,'
said Professor Pobil.' The article also discusses using robots to assist
in digitizing library materials.”

First seen: 2004-07-24 17:00:00
Last updated: 2004-07-24 17:00:00

---

Are You Annoying?
<http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/23/2129250>

cweditor writes “This Computerworld article looks at some habits of
people in general and IT pros in particular that can drive co-workers
crazy.”

First seen: 2004-07-24 18:00:00
Last updated: 2004-07-24 18:00:00

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
This e-mail was sent by era, the e-mail RSS aggregator, using content from
<http://slashdot.org/slashdot.rss>
The content is subject to any copyright restrictions expressed in the file at the above URL.

Comments, queries, and complaints should be sent to <era.info@indecorous.com>. More information can be found at <http://era.indecorous.com/>.

-- END OF EMAIL --

In using the service you have to first send an email requesting an account and then subscribe to the RSS feeds you would like delivered, it is possible to both of these in the same email. After sending any email with commands a response email is generated to confirm the command which you need to remove a string and respond to, which I found a little annoying as you have to do this ever time you send a command.

The system works well and provides a clean and fairly easy mechanism to receive RSS feeds via email. The makers are also working on a web front end so that you can set up your subscription via an easy to use web page but this has not been released yet.

Links
Email RSS Aggregator

Web Standards coming to a desktop near you.

Web Standards like JavaScript, DOM, HTML, CSS, XML are starting to become more common place in desktop applications. Mozilla already uses XML to define its GUI using their XUL markup language and then use JavaScript as the glue. Apple has also previewed their new Dashboard capability that will allow developers to create widgets that are quickly displayed or hidden by entering a hotkey shortcut. These new capabilities are becoming more and more prolific and signifies a paradigm shift of using these standards in desktop-based application development rather than relegating their use in web based applications using standard client-server architectural designs.

The reason that these standards are becoming more prolific for desktop applications is because of their flexibility, ease of use and platform independence. As more and more applications are becoming network enabled it is a logical step for these web-based applications to be run directly on the desktop. These standards are also very powerful and could be used to develop applications that run both as web-based applications accessed by a standard Internet browser or as fully fledged desktop applications.

The common uses for these standards include:
- Use of XML to define and build GUI components
- Using javascript and other scripting languages as the runtime glue to build the application
- providing lightweight user interfaces that provide a quick access to information that can also be skinned so that users can select the overall look and feel of their application.

I foresee that over the next couple of years you will see a greater number of these localised web applications appearing that support and use web-based standards to provide standalone or network centric applications.

Dual Home Page on Firefox

Have you ever wanted to have two home pages, now you can with Firefox if you put a “|” (pipe) character between the two URLs in the home page text box when configuring the browser. The other way is to first open the two pages in separate tabs and then click the “Use Current Pages” button (never noticed the “pages” text before). Then when you next click the home button or open a new browser the two home pages will open in two tabs. Give it a try.

Oracle ventures into Web Services, SOA, BPEL and J2EE

Oracle has been involved in J2EE application servers for quite some time now with their Oracle Application Server but with their newest release they are surfing the web services and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) wave. The newest version of JDeveloper supports full Model-View-Controller (MVC) implementations using a selection of technologies/standards including Struts, Java Server Faces (JSF), Enterprise Java Beans (EJB), Java Server Pages (JSP) to develop your applications. To support SOA Oracle is supporting full development of Web Services and now includes BPEL support for services process execution modelling and execution via the recently acquired Oracle BPEL Process Manager product. All these technologies can be combined and developed using the graphical JDeveloper environment that also allows the developer to view the underlying XML structures. For more information about Oracle's Web Services support and the components supporting SOA, BPEL and MVC development go to this page.

Links
Oracle Web Services Page
Oracle Application Server
Oracle BPEL Process Manager product
JDeveloper

Virtual Desktops on Mac

Over the years I have used many different virtual desktop managers on both PC and Mac, but now I have found Desktop Manager by Richard Wareham. For those who do know know what a virtual desktop applications are, this type of application allow you computer to have multiple virtual screens, even if you only have one monitor. These virtual desktops allow you to organise applications on your screen but not just one screen as you can do this for all the virtual desktops that you have. Richard Wareham's Desktop Manager is a very well built application (even if it is still only beta). The application works seamlessly and very fast, even on my 600Mhz iBook. To top is all off it is FREE, well not quite as the developer does ask to donate money if you really like his application.

Links
Desktop Manager Home Page
Download Desktop Manager

Signed and Encrypted Mail on a Mac

One of my friends from LabF pointed me to a great article that identifies how to install an X.509 certificate so that I can send and receive emails that use the S/MIME and X.509 encryption and signing capability.

Go to Article

The article describes using Mozilla or Firefox to actually get the certificate from Thawte but it is also possible to use the latest version of Safari to download the certificate. The benefit of using Safari is that it will also automatically download and load the certificate into your keychain where Apple Mail will automatically pick the details up. The process is pretty simple and only took me 30 minutes from start to finish, although I am pretty familiar with email encryption and the use of keys so it may take a general users about 1 hour to install and read the documentation (there is plenty of it).

To compare a competing technology is PGP or the open source version is GPG. If you would like to install GPG on your mac go to http://macgpg.sourceforge.net/. The integration of GPG with Apple Mail is not as good as the X.509 integration but is still pretty good. I also know that GPG/PGP is more common (well at least with my other email contacts) than X.509. The different between GPG/PGP and X.509 is that X.509 depends on an issuing certificate authority like Thawte to provide the certificate while PGP/GPG rely upon a web of trust that is built up by the users accepting certificates from others.

I believe that the X.509 integration with Apple Mail is much better than PGP/GPG but that is most likely because Apple built X.509 support directly into the application. GPG was a little more involved to installed and takes a little more know how to get it working but is still fairly straight forward. The biggest benefit with GPG is that you do not need to rely on a third party for your certificates.

Quick Poll
I am very interested to know what are the numbers of who uses what so please provide a comment on this blog about you choice in email signing and encryption choice X.509 or PGP/GPG,

The coolest little game

This has got to be one of the most addictive flash games I have seen for a while:

http://www.kiteretsu.jp/on/tontie/tontie.swf

Blog Editing Client

I have tried a few different clients that allow me to edit my blogs but have not been impressed, until I met ecto. Blog clients allow the blog writer to edit and create blog entries using a standard desktop application rather than using the web-based interface. This allows for entries to be created while not connected to the internet or if you have a slow Internet connection it removes the painful waiting for each page to load.

ecto is a simple client for Mac OSX that provides full capabilities for editing and adding blogs. I use MoveableType of the blog system on the net and when I first started ecto is led me through a VERY easy wizard to set up the client, it even guessed correctly what blog system I was using. Once set up you are able to download a list of current entries so that you can edit them. As the editor in ecto is using the standard OSX text components spell checking is automatically provided (extremely useful for me!). The complete list of features are:

• View and edit existing entries
• Supports multiple blogs from one or more sites
• Support categories
• Preview of entries before saving
• Upload of files
• Full editing of entries (main text, extended text, summary, keywords, trackbacks, pings, date settings)
• Integrated with iTunes and iPhoto
• Advanced photo upload facility

ecto and other blog clients work by using the XML-RPC interface provided by the different blog systems. This simply allows clients to connect to the blog system by sending and receiving XML documents over HTTP requests. This is not the same as SOAP as it does not wrap these XML messages in SOAP messages.

From using ecto for a while I can not find any problems and would recommend it to any OSX blog user. You can download ecto from their home page which allows you to use the software for 2 weeks in the demo period before you have to purchase the software.

BluePhoneMenu: Bluetooth Phone Application

I have a bluetooth phone and a mac also with bluetooth, using the Apple Address Book I can pair my phone up with my mac and allow Address Book display callers when they ring or send SMS messages and that is about it. If you would like more functionality like keep a log of SMS messages and calls (like email) then have a look at BluePhoneMenu. BluePhoneMenu has all these additional features:

• Show signal strength
• Show phone battery status
• Advanced caller ID to monitor incoming calls
• Run Applescript when receiving calls (eg. to mute iTunes)
• Dial or SMS missed calls

For more information go to the BluePhoneMenu web page.

When You want a prototype system to look like a prototype

How many times have you displayed a new piece of software to your boss or customer that is clearly a prototype with a response of “great, now we will use this as out production system”. Well now you can make your prototypes actually look like prototypes (well for java programs). Have a look at this.

Google Results as RSS

Ever wanted to subscribe to search results? Now you can with the Find Forward search engine. This search engine can also search through blogs or even exclude them from your search results.

http://www.findforward.com/

Semacodes - URL Images

Wired is running an article about the use of mobile phones and semacodes to bridge the gap between the real world and the web. It works by using semacodes (square matrix that represents a standards web URL) and mobile phone cameras. Users take a photo of the semacode and then use a semacode reader to translate the image into a URL that can be used to access the web using the mobiles own browser. A sample of a semacode is shown on the right.

This creates other interesting ideas of how you could use this for other applications. It would allow clickable links on posters, buildings, pamphelts, anything essentially allowing for any physical item to be linked with the Internet. One application that could occur is the use of heads up displays and small cameras to provide augmented reality type capabilities. This could allow information to be downloaded and displayed by using the semacodes as reference points in the physical world. This has been done before but there has never been the standard to support this. If semacodes and the use of mobile phone cameras takes off then we could see these icons around more often allowing for augmented reality capabilities to become easier.

Simple Tech

One of my hobby horses that I keep spouting to people around work and in the software community is that software should be simple, easy and pleasant to use. No software program should be overly complex, look ugly or unintuitive. I have found an article on Mac Daily News with comments from Dr. John Maeda from M.I.T. Media lab about his opinions of software and hardware development. He is also of the opinion that more software and hardware products should be easier. A perfect example of an easy to use interface is the older stlyle iPod or the new mini iPod, both have a highly intuitive user interface and layout. The new iPod is not as good on the location of the buttons but is still light years ahead of many other MP3 players on the market today.

User interface and product design go beyond just hardware and software for your PC, similar guidelines must also be applied to web sites, information kiosks or even paper print products. If you look around the web all the best commercial sites are simple, easy to use, visually appealing and provide the required functionality with little fuss or confusion.

Oracle 10g on Mac OSX

Apple has a page that anounces a roadshow by Oracle on the use of Oracle 10g on Apple's OSX operating system.

Go to Page here

After looking around the internet I have not been able to find any more information about the OSX version of Oracle 10g. The only information I could find was use of Oracle JDeveloper 10g on OSX, nothing about their database or application server.

Enterprise Information Portals (EIP)

I have been interested in portals for a long time since the days when microsoft was offering their Digital Dashboard product that provided portal like functionality. Web portals now being called Enterprise Information Portals (EIP) are available everywhere and all major application platform providers have their own EIP software. EIPs started from their humble beginnings with web portals like myYahoo that allowed users to view a web page with multiple sections displaying content from around the web. This initial portal offering provided the beginnings of the capabilities that you see today in the large portal offerings like personalisation, layout management and the display of syndicated data feeds.

EIP capabilities have expanded since then with many additions anc capbilities. Now there are two flavours of EIPs, content mangement systems and portal frameworks. Content-based EIPs like Microsoft Sharepoint concentrate on providing portlets and a default configuration for storage, organisation and searching of data. EIP framework solutions like IBM WebSphere and BEA WebLogic have been developed to provide a basis so that the enterprise can customise and further develop their portal installation to better meet their needs. Most framework based EIP solutions also provide content management type solutions.

An area of portal development that has not been fully explored is the concept of building complete applications using the portal framework. I will explore this concept further in a future entry.

Links:
Microsoft and the Portal, Article from Line56.com
IBM WebSphere Portal Server
Plumtree Enterprise Information Portal
BEA WebLogic Portal
Microsoft Sharepoint Portal Server
Apache Jetspeed

OPML and MoveableType

I have a number of blogs set up at work with another blog used as an index page to all the other blogs. On this index blog I have also set up a link to an automatically generated OPML file. OPML is used to define multiple RSS feeds that can be loaded into an RSS applications. This allows the easy import of multiple RSS feeds. Below is a MoveableType template for creating an OPML file that contains the RSS feeds for all the blogs in the current instance of MoveableType.

• <head>
  <title>c2dweblogs.opml</title>
  <dateCreated>Thu, 15 Apr 2004 17:46:39 GMT</dateCreated>
  <dateModified>Thu, 15 Apr 2004 17:46:39 GMT</dateModified>
  </head>
  <body>
  <MTBlogs>

  <outline text=“<MTBlogName>” description=“<MTBlogDescription>” htmlUrl=“<MTBlogURL>” title=“<MTBlogName>” type=“rss” version=“RSS” xmlUrl=“<MTBlogURL>index.rdf” />
  </MTBlogs>
  </body>

To use create a new template and name the file with a .opml extension. Then copy and paste the above XML into the details section of the template. Save the template and rebuild the site. You will also need to create a link to this file so users can download it. Hey presto you now have an automatically generated OPML file for use within RSS applications to subscribe to all blogs on your site.

Web Services Standards

Interested in using web services for a new or existing systems. I have been using web services in my work projects for over a year. Over that time the standards have slowly progressed. Most people know about the three basic standards that make up web services (SOAP, UDDI and WSDL). This article discusses some of the lesser known web services standards that have been agreed upon or are currently in development.

Security Standards
SAML
When it comes to securing your web applications there may be the need to share your security setting with other systems, this is where the SAML standard helps out. SAML allows for security information to be packaged up in an XML document so that it can be transmitted between systems.

WS-SecureConversation
WS-Security
WS-SecurityPolicy

WS-Rel*
comprises: WS-Reliability and WS-ReliableMessaging

Web Services Choreography
WSRP - Portlet
WS-I: Basic Profile
WS-Addressing
WS-AtomicTransaction
WS-Attachments
WS-Context
WS-Coordination
WS-Eventing
WS-Federation
WS-Routing
WS-Transaction
WS-Trust
Search/Retrieve Web Service Version 1.1 together with CQL (Common Query Language)