Sonntag, August 26, 2007

buying a iMac?

I like the concept of the new iMac. What I'm a not sure about is the Mac OS X. As I had to switch between system not only over time but also between work and home, I started using programs that run on all platforms.

At this time all platforms for me is Linux, Windows and sometimes OS/2 and IBM 370/MVS. Adding an other OS to this, needs some good reason and all the tools I use 99% of the time. As OS X is based on BSD it should not be a big problem.

First quick draft of the programs I use:

  • zsh

  • emacs - moving more and more to eclipse

  • perl

  • Java

  • mutt

  • ImageMagick

  • ssh

  • mpd/mpc


To add programs as I use them, I will look up the home page and add the tag useprg and osx if it runs on OS X on del.icio.us.

And now some hardware I should be able to use:

  • external USB drive with ext2

  • Palm Tungsten

  • SD card or SD card reader (USB)

  • mobile phone

  • ISDN phone

  • scanner

  • ham radio



Not everything will be usable from OS X directly. Most of this should run in VMware or parallels. Problematic will be the RS232 and IEEE-488 equipment.

eclipse installation

For the update of eclipse 3.2 to 3.3, I downloaded Eclipse IDE for Java Developers from the Europa Packages. Unpacked it into a different folder as 3.2 is located. This enables me to use 3.2 and 3.3 till all the packages I use work with 3.3.

Started the new eclipse and installed all the plugins I used with 3.2.
Help / Software Updates / Find and Install .... Select Search for new features to install. Include all sites into the search. First I selected only the ones I had installed with 3.2.

  • C and C++ Development

  • Database Development

  • Web Standard Tools


Now I installed the plugins I used with 3.2 but which are not part of Europa.

Not installed, because not needed at this time.

Download of eclipse exists for linux, OS X and Windows. None of the installed plugins are OS dependent.

Sonntag, August 12, 2007

what rss feeds should I read?

Quite often you find a blog that looks interesting and you subscribe to it. Not long and you are unable to read all new post a day. Worse if you stayed a weekend of the Internet.

The google reader Trends page will show you how many posts and the percentage you read of a subscription. Also how many posts you starred and shared. There is also a list with items a day (over the last 30 days) and in reverse order the date of the last post.

For me I defined some rules to use the statistics to find feeds I

  • need to read

  • my read if I have some time left

  • could unsubscribe


Process the whole feed in one pass. This prevents me from looking at the same post twice. An entry I've read and found interesting will be marked as read. An article of more general interest to my friends, will be shared. If it is only of interest to one or two, the post will be mailed directly to them.
If I'm in a hurry and not able to read an interesting post complete or need more time to follow all links referenced the post will be stared.
At the end of the feed mark all as read. This will remove the posts from the list and add they as not read to the statistic.

The art of reading feeds like this to keep the list with stared posts near zero.

Regularly you should delete feeds where the number of read posts is under 10%. Or could this number be higher? Lots of posts I'm interested in get posted to several feeds I read.

At this time google reader will display only up to 40 feeds in the statistic and it is not possible to change the order. If you subscribed to more than 40 feeds you can't see the ones you haven't read even one post from :-(
Also missing is the date you subscribed to the feed. As the statistic is for the last 30 days, the numbers are bogus if you subscribed less than 30 days ago.

Donnerstag, August 09, 2007

share files on the net

The ExtremeTech article 5 New Ways to Share Files compares web services that provide storage space. The idea is instead of sending somebody a large file as mail attachment you only send the link.
I'm a big fan of this. At work I get lots of mails with huge presentations as CC. Quite often the subject line tells me that I'm not interested in this mail.

So far I used my own web space to share the attachments or rsynced the files to a friends server. The alternative of this web services is more to tell friends about without a web space and/or computer knowledge.

A quick look at the comparison table gave me the winner: FileCrunch.

  • no login for the recipient

  • no extra client to install

  • storage time 30 days


The recipient will see some advertising before the download starts.
An alternative is YouSendIt. But the storage time is only 7 days. This could be to short in case of an vacation or a delayed download at busy times.

Montag, August 06, 2007

download google video onto my palm

I started to watch Inbox Zero on my PC. Stopped it as I didn't like to watch this 58 minutes inside. But how do I get this google video onto my palm to watch it in the park?
I found a description about linux tools and a d.i.y description.

As I was in a hurry, I followed the diy instructions.

  • went to the google video page

  • pressed the download Windows/Mac button

  • this revealed the link to the gvp file I downloaded

  • used wget to download the url inside


The url was to long to be used as the filename on my windows notebook. Therefore I used -O to name the output file myself.

The size of the downloaded video is 480x360.

In the suggestion area of this google video side lists a lot of educational videos. This looks like to be worth investigating.

optimise firefox useage

del.icio.us
Starting to optimise my bookmark usage with del.icio.us I find my self more and more using firefox instead opera. The reason for this is the del.icio.us Bookmarks extension for firefox. Use this instead of the one you could install during the del.icio.us registration. This makes the del.icio.us usage so much easier. There is nothing comparable for opera (del.icio.us Opera Buttons).

search
One feature I used in opera a lot is the address field search. I didn't know this works in firefox too. Like in opera you right click into the search field and choose Add a Keyword for this Search.... This will add it to your bookmarks and you are able to edit the entry like any other bookmark - as it is only a bookmark. Please find a detailed description in the mozillaZine.

Sonntag, August 05, 2007

personalised homepage

In dl.tv Episode 186 they showed the online todo list and task management Remember the Milk. I'm not interested in using an online calender. I'm not all the time in front of the computer to receive the alarm. OK I could send the alarm to my cell phone but I sink my phone with my calendar any way.
They used Netvibes as the frontend for Remember the Milk. This is a web service providing you with the possibility to create your own personal homepage with an Ajax Drag&Drop interface.
There page looked quite nice with weather, webmail, digg, del.icio.us, rss feeds, ... all arranged in small boxes.

On Friday during my search for a new rss reader I used yahoo's personalised homepage for this. It didn't impress me as a rss feed reader. Using it for some other features is restricted to yahoo services. Also it is slow.

iGoogle is for rss feeds more limited than my yahoo - max 9 instead of max 30 entries for each feed. For most feeds I use a real rss feed reader and would display only some, like traffic news, 10 is enough. For non feeds/news the selection on google is not restricted to google own tools. There are games, calculator, wiki, IM, ... to chose from.

Netvibe allowed me to build my own homepage without an account. This is great to test the service. The design looks better to me than that from yahoo or google. There are as many tools to be added as by iGoogle.

So far I'm not really convinced that I need a personal home page. To keep it clearly laid out the tab features is to be used. So you will end up with a tap for news, one for podcasts, one for finance, ...
But if you use the tab feature of your browser you could get even more. E.g. your personalised bank site in one tab could also be used to instantly buy or sell stocks.
Rss feeds are much better read in a real feed reader. With the google reader it is in a browser tab also.
The only disadvantage I can think of is, if you are using a lot of different computer. Or even more if this computer are not yours and have different settings or browsers installed. On the other hand will you really use a public internet access to log into your personal home page? As you can't be sure what spy ware on the PC is installed and your personal home page will send login information to all registered services, it's to scary to use for me any way.

Freitag, August 03, 2007

rss reader

Bei RSS-Feeds gibt es auch wieder Probleme, wenn man mit verschiedenen Rechnern arbeitet. Zum einen müssen alle Feeds auf jeden Rechner extra aboniert werden, zum anderen gibt es keinen update der schon gelesen Mails.
Ein weiterer Nachteil ist, dass bei längerer abwesenheit Post verloren gehen. Einen eigenen Server laufen lassen, der immer alle Feeds liest möchte ich auch nicht.

Als Lösung bieten sich hier Online-Reader an, die meine abonierten Feeds periodisch abfragen. Diese halten die Posts vor, bis ich mich wieder einlogge. Eine weitere Möglichkeit ist Rmail. Dieser Dienst sendet mir alle neuen Posts als Mail zu.

Von den vielen Online-Reader habe ich mir zum testen erst mal My Yahoo! und google reader ausgesucht, da ich bei beiden Diensten schon einen Account habe und mich nicht extra anmelden muß.

Bei Yahoo kann ich maximal 30 Post für einen Feed anzeigen lassen. Dies reicht bei lifehacker für einen und bei heise für einen halben Tag.

Der google reader gefällt mir hingegen sehr gut. Er ist von der Bedienung her wie ein offline reader. Auch kann ich hier mir nicht nur alle neuen, sondern auch alle Posts anzeigen lassen. Und alle sind hier wirklich alle. Bei twit.tv hat er auch noch ein halbes Jahr alte Posts angezeigt. Weiter bin ich erst mal nicht zurück gegangen.
Bei diesen alten gibt es aber keinen Haken mark as read.

Donnerstag, August 02, 2007

Community-Plattformen

Auf heise online gibt es einen Eintrag vom 01.08.2007 mit Zahlen zu den verschiedenen Social-Networks. In Podcasts aus den USA und Kanada ist ständig die Rede von diesen. Persönlich kenne ich keinen (oder weiß davon) auf einer dieser Plattformen.
Um mal einen Einblick zu gewinnen, habe ich mir noch die Wiki-Einträge durchgelesen.

myspace

facebook

friendster

bebo


Den Nutzen für mich konnte ich nicht erkennen. Mal abwarten, ob irgenwann jemand den ich kenne, mir einen Link zu seiner social-Seite sendet.

Alle Seiten, wie es mir scheint vor allem aber myspace und bebo, sind super Startpunkte auf der suchen nach neuen oder Indi-Bands.

Dann gibt es da natürlich noch die ganzen "wo bin ich/was mach ich" Seiten, wie twitter, jaiku und pownce.

Mit etwas Glück, kann ich die alle aussitzen.

Mittwoch, August 01, 2007

digg - me too

Nachdem digg nun einen extra Bereich für podcasts hat (noch beta), habe ich mich nun doch da angemeldet. Dies ist die beste Stelle um auf einen neuen Podcast aufmerksam zu werden.

Die Rangliste der Podcasts die ich kenne stimmt weitestgehend mit meiner überein. Dies hilft beim erkunden von Podcasts, die ich nicht kenne. Was noch fehlt ist eine einfache Podcast-Verwaltung um neue Podcast einfach zu erkennen. Da es noch kein API für den Podcast-Bereich gibt, kann ich mir da noch nichts selbst stricken - zumindest nicht auf die sanfte Tour ;-)

Reingefallen bin ich beim erstellen meines ersten Kommentars. Dies digged nicht automatisch. Ich konnte/musste die Episode dan nachträglich diggen.

Da der Computer Club 2 noch nicht gelistet war, habe ich den als neuen Podcast eingetragen. Dies war ganz einfach. Ich musste dazu nur den Link zum RSS-Feed angeben und die Kategorie setzen. Mal sehen, wie lang das verfy dauert.


[update 20090520]
Haven't used digg for quite some time, also deleted all RSS subscriptions. Deleted user account.