Archive for the 'IT' category
Friday, March 12th, 2010
MenuMeters is a superb tool for those who use their computers heavily.
While you are multitasking you are instantly alerted to issues in uploading, memory leaks and paging, caches being permanently to disk, core processes or user projects getting stuck.
Frankly the cost of the instant info is having a fair amount of your menu bar taken up with the four indicators.
OS X MenuMeters Raging Menace
So on my most recent two Snow Leopard installs I tried to get by without MenuMeters. Bliss in simplicity. Higher productivity.
No such luck. Without instant visual feedback, your computer will bog down on a broken Internet connection or a runaway process, slowing one down more than the milliseconds to see where the issues are.
When you notice a problem, MenuMeters helps you dig deeper very quickly. Under the connection section you can instantly open up Network Utility, Network Preferences or Internet Connect.
Under the memory pie chart, you can see full details of what is happening with your memory.
MenuMeters disk usage
Under the processor indicators, you have the option of opening Activity Monitor or Console. Console is your best friend for quickly finding malfunctioning software, often from the nominally most reliable sources i.e. HP Print and Scan drivers. Most issues are clearly logged there). So having a directly link to it is great.
Normal mortals may not need this but if you are typically running 15 plus apps with lots of open browser tabs and open browsers (you know who you are), you should have this.
MenuMeters is truly well thought out software which helps one do one's work better and faster. The kind of software which makes owning an Apple computer a better experience.
IT |
Tuesday, March 9th, 2010
For reasons unknown, Apple makes it really difficult to move around one's iTunes library.
Just moving the library to another hard drive will result in all the files being disconnected. Unlike Aperture or Final Cut Pro, there is no automated path fix. If you want to correct the paths you have to do it file by file.
There's also a hidden function inside iTunes which is really deadly (I believe it comes turned on by default) to reorder your library. If you do that, compilation albums will often be broken into the individual song. Each in their individual artist folder.
Basically if you let iTunes loose on your library, you will entirely lose Finder organisation. Guess what? Then you will be fully dependent on iTunes as no finder based album play system (the excellent Vox for instance) will work well anymore. So there is method to the madness.
Even the songs which don't have correct metatags will all get dumped in a large virtual graveyard instead of being left in their date or album structure.
Assuming that you were clever or cautious enough to turn off allowing iTunes to organise your library, you don't want to let Apple get their grasping hands on your library now when you move it with consolidation or anything else.
There is a work around which requires getting your hands dirty but indicates just how easy it would be for Apple to get it right.
iTunes library files
- Quit iTunes.
- Go into your iTunes library (probably ~/Music/iTunes) Once you are there, backup the iTunes xml and database files.
- Open up the iTunes XML (use a serious text editor like TextWrangler/BBedit or Smultron, we are talking about 10 to 20 MB of XML data for a six to twenty thousand song library)
- Do a find and replace in the iTunes xml file to update all of the song locations. They are stored as simple paths like: file://localhost/Volumes/MusicHall/MusicMovies/Music/
- Save and close the iTunes XML
- Now open the iTunes Library file in a text editor, delete everything, and save. If you don't delete the data inside the library, iTunes will prefer the data from the database and erase your XML file (be careful with this one it happened to me the first time and deleted my special hand made XML file. I didn't have the right backup: in this case, delete the new iTunes Library and iTunes Music Library XML, put the original iTunes Library back in, regenerate the XML and start again and make sure to delete the data inside the iTunes Library but leaving the file in place).
- Reopen iTunes: the library will be rebuild from the xml.
All your files should be in place now, including metadata. Apparently the date added will be changed to the current date but that's a small loss.
Why Apple must make basic maintenance so difficult, I have no idea. If it weren't for the internet (the base of this hint came from Metafilter), it wouldn't be much fun owning a Mac anymore, as it would be impossible to run it as a free machine.
One of my principle grips about iTunes is that it stores album art in a database, as well as all your song ratings, instead of in the original files as well. Earlier versions of Aperture were criticised for the same thing, but pro users were refusing to use Aperture because of the data lock-in. Apple can get away with a lot more with a free app which is obligatory for all those iPod and iPhone owners.
IT |
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010
Whatever happened to the CDDB and to FreeDB?
CDDB evolved into Gracenote. It looked like they were losing their stranglehold when Roxio moved to FreeDB in 2000. A closed settlement resulted in Roxio moving to Gracenote full time. I hope they were clever enough to get free stock in Gracenote for the pleasure.
The next death knell (although no one knew how important it was at the time) for FreeDB was that Apple went with Gracenote and then disabled any ability for users to submit to FreeDB (for a couple of years it was possible to use the FreeDB servers instead by monkeying around in one's hosts file, but it was a pretty techy solution). Without iTunes or Roxio's Toast, FreeDB was cut off from any oxygen in the Apple ecosphere.
Gracenote was recently sold to Sony for $260 million. The venture capitalists and the thugs at Gracenote managed to get something for their trouble.
In the meantime in about 2006, the FreeDB had a melt-down between the project owner and the lead developers. In the meantime, the horribly named Musicbrainz hit the scene with a music recognition algorithm. Terribly complicated, terribly slow. Apparently it works. But there is no easy way to submit data.
MusicBrainz
My inspiration here? There isn't a single tagging client I can find for OS X which will allow me to upload to either FreeDB or Musicbrainz!
There should be a client (free) which will grab the Gracenote/CDDB info which iTunes collects and resubmit it to both FreeDB and Musicbrainz. iTunes can't do something like that as part of its own license but the new client can.
If Gracenote wants to shut this client down, it begins as open-source and goes offshore. The client should include a manual option so that not all of the data is polluted. The client should allow itself to identify itself as alternative software (to make sure that the database recipient can't be faulted for accepting the external data).
Personally, I'd resubmit all my music info to Musicbrainz and FreeDB if this app existed. And I know a hundred more who would do so as well. Litigation is likely to drop off at this point, as the aggressive thieves at Gracenote have been paid out now.
I can't imagine Sony wants to go whacking through the bushes, snatching at end users.
The CDDB story is one of the best examples I've seen of how human beings can turn any act of grace (pardon the pun) into loathsome slavery.
This sad saga worries me as it suggests that Apple is more than prepared to turn our computers into corporate property. For the moment, OS X is very free and my data is my own, but frankly the rumours of DRM on the iPad for ebooks worry me.
If Apple thinks its core audience (hey remember us, we're the guys who kept you alive through that huge trough at the time of the clones) will put up with proprietary data formats and heavy DRM, they are very wrong.
In the meantime, I want a client to let me submit track and album info to FreeDB and Musicbrainz.
Business, IT |
Thursday, February 25th, 2010
Apple Mail is the email client I use as it looks good and has a great search function. But it doesn't matter if you use Apple Mail or something else, if you don’t want your every move tracked, you have to prevent your email client from loading external images. On OS X, I use Apple Mail and the way I block external images is with Little Snitch.
The way to do it is to block all connections except the ones you allow.
deny all connections Apple Mail Little Snitch
But for some services you do want to see the external images.
In my case one service for which I do want images though is Basecamp. 37signals finally upgraded their email notifications to html and they look a whole lot better and are arguably functionally better as well – as the presentation of information is clearer.
Basecamp html email notifications
So how do I get the thumbnails in Basecamp?
If you’re on OS X with Little Snitch and Basecamp, unblock:
- asset3.37img.com
- asset2.basecamphq.com
If these two don’t work, what you need to do is open the source of the email (in Mail command-option-U). Unfortunately 37signals chose to use Base 64 encoding for the html part (absolutely no need to do so).
You want to copy the part of the document that comes after this:
--mimepart_4b8295ce1ce1d_4f231be02701438a6 Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: Base64 Content-Disposition: inline
and before this:
--mimepart_4b8295ce1ce1d_4f231be02701438a6--
and then take it to ToastedSpam’s Base64 Decoder and plug it in.
You’ll now have plain html and you just have to search for asset or img in the html. Add those domains to Little Snitch to allow connections in Mail.
Allow Mail connections asset Basecamp HQ
If there are any other html emails for which you would like the images, you can use a similar technique to allow their images. Keep in mind most newsletters have a link to allow you to open the email in a browser which is a quicker and easier solution.
IT |
Friday, January 29th, 2010
At Foliovision, we still plan to build a dual load balancing open source router on one of our old computers someday soon. In the meantime, our trusty old D-Link DI-804HV router was misbehaving a couple of weeks ago with all kinds of routing errors and slowing down our work. Another consequence was lousy Skype communication. Happily enough after a full reset, I was able to get it back to normal.
D Link DI 804HV
Our router has to look after about eight to fifteen computers at a time so it's no longer the load of just a few computers. Our primary connection is 3 MB/sec download from Chello.
But we aren't doing much VPN work so our needs aren't extreme. It would be nice if Skype didn't drop off on us in the middle of work. Our main concern is redundancy. With 8 to 15 people working at any given time, even 15 minutes downtime is too much now. Four hours downtime would be nearly 40 hours work as most of our work requires Internet access at this point!
So we were shopping for a backup router, really as our workhorse was back in action. A router which would allow us to work for a few days in the meantime. We don't use any WIFI (or Bluetooth) at Foliovision as wirelesss is the biggest IT time sync and security risk. WiFi is also quite possibly unhealthy.
Most modern routers include the WiFi station whether you want it or not so there is a limited selection of basic routers without WiFi.
We bought two to compare and to keep one or both (I need one at home as well). We bought ZyXEL Prestige 334 and a D-Link DIR-100. I've had good experiences with D-Link and Asanté (not easily available in Europe) and horrid experiences with LinkSys and SMC (defective wireless cards sold in knowledge that they didn't work, useless return policy). We wanted something that would work properly out of the box.
ZyXEL Prestige 334
The ZyXEL cost about €30, the D-Link €25. In each case, less than $50. Not much for relatively full-featured boxes.
I prefer the classic D-Link look of the DI-804HV but the DIR-100 is very small, every elegant and very discreet. No complaints. The flashy silver ZyXEL looks like a refugee from a Star Trek set. Still, its silver shell is perfectly serviceable if a little bit more attention seeking.
D Link DIR 100
To test, we set each router up with its default setup with ports closed and ran SpeedNet tests.
I expected the D-Link DIR 100 to be not up to the test as it has just 2MB of RAM memory plus 8MB of additional flash. No problem. Handled our 3MB/sec cable connection perfectly, identical speeds to the D-Link 804HV.
D Link DIR 100 speeds
To my surprise the ZyXEL could only handle 1.4MB/sec download.
ZyXEL P 334 failure
The D-Link was very easy to configure with full features, so we didn't even bother wrestling with ZyXEL interface which has a reputation for being a little tougher to use as the other router/firewall manufacturers.
For an advanced router in the multiple hundreds of euros category (an area where ZyXEL has lots of candidates), the best way to go is with a custom built load-balanced solution. It will be more powerful and configurable and the software is all open source anyway. Based on what I've seen from ZyXEL's entry-level Prestige 334 unit, you are paying for brand and not performance.
For instance, the D-Link DIR-100 is open source. The operating system is MClinux. For the VPN section, the software is FreeSwan. D-Link is playing fair and releasing their source code. You can download the D-Link source code for their routers.
We run a Mac and PC mixed network now and the D-Link DIR-100 was easily configurable in Safari on Mac. No issues running it with both Mac and Windows running at the same time. In fairness, the ZyXEL didn't appear to have any issues either.
For a backup or basic router, the D-Link DIR-100 is the clear way to go. I might look up at picking up DIR-130 for its QoS (quality of service) priority filtering for our Skype calls. What's interesting about D-Link is the entry level DIR-100 is that it keeps up with their former mid-level 804HV. That's impressive and a wonderful migration of capability across the range over time.
IT |
Thursday, January 21st, 2010
We buy and use a lot of software here at Foliovision. We have all kinds of weird stuff running for checking web rankings and logging backlinks in our SEO business. We don't like Adobe much for price gouging so we buy all kinds of graphics bits and bobs to
Basically our rule is that if a software program can do it faster, then have a software program do it. This approach allows us to offer our clients more service within their budget. So we have contact with a lot of software. While out shopping online (how's that for a pleonasm) I've often seen sterling awards pages for what looks like really rubbish programming.
inventory builder bogus software awards
Where do these ugly little banners come from and how the software developers earn them?
It turns out just by submitting software. No, you say, impossible. Somebody's looked at the software. No, no one has ever looked at the software.
Prove it, you ask.
I don't have to. A gentleman by the name of Andy Brice already has.
He submitted a bogus piece of software to 1033 sites. His bogus soft included a screenshot like this:
bogus software submission screenshot
Andy's fake app was approved and listed on 218 software directories. Incredible. Even more shocking, he won 16 awards. Sixteen 5 star awards would be enough to give even the worst piece of malware a veneer of respectability.
So what is a shareware purchaser to do?
Buy a Mac. In the Mac universe, there are only three software download sites of any import with VersionTracker.com and Macupdate.com battling for top dog for the last three years, with IUseThis.com trailing.
The ratings and comments on all three are legitimate and minimally censored in favour of the developers. Even I'm aghast at some of the things I read on Macupdate in particular (Nate, for the most part, please keep them up, following the profiles of some of these curmudgeons is incredibly entertaining and keeps people coming back to Macupdate).
The sites are not perfect. One developer had friends inside Macupdate whom he tried to use to censor commentary (Misha, I believe). In the end, after some comments being pulled and the tempest in a teapot rising higher Nate finally intervened and put the review back online and warned off the developer.
In any case, these three sites don't hand out prizes. They allow developers to display user ratings badges on their sites like this:
If a developer posts an incorrect Versiontracker or MacUpdate badge he or she will be asked to pull the badge down immediately. In any case, it is standard practice for the badge to link directly to the developer's site. If a developer encourages sock puppet votes he's blacklisted. Unfortunately the list is only three developers long, so I'm not inclined to believe it's complete. On the other hand, perhaps Nate and team have caught and warned 200 developers but it didn't get to blacklist levels.
A couple of years ago, I had the feeling MacUpdate might become a bit smug as VersionTracker atrophied. IUseThis.com came along just in time and made MacUpdate pay more attention to the convenience of users of the site first. What kind of nuisance am I talking about? There was a period of six months where it was impossible to search MacUpdate from outside the site - you had to load their overly busy, distracting home page to do so. Finally they quit that about a year ago.
So in the Mac universe there are just three sites of any import. On any of them fake feedback is likely to be called quickly. There are no fake awards. If a Mac user sees any other award badges, s/he will ignore those banners.
Straightforward access to high quality shareware is another reason I decided to take Foliovision Mac-centric at the end of 2009. Previously we had only had one and then two Mac users in the company. Now we have moved to fifty-fifty. We do have some very bad copycat developers like Koingo Software (from beautiful BC just like me) who hawk their second class wares everywhere, but you can usually suss them out pretty quickly.
It would be nice if CNET would pull about three quarters of the javascript and half the ads off of Versiontracker so we could go back to a two horse race. I'm not quite sure what ails IUseThis.com but at least they are there as an insurance policy if MacUpdate starts to go off the same overly monetized rails as Versiontracker. But all in all, as Mac users we are quite fortunate in our developers and our shareware sites.
Especially in comparison to the Windows world.
IT |
Sunday, January 17th, 2010
Everyone who works on the web should have a keylogger. Browsers crash often enough when you are writing into a form or browsers have hot keys (especially forward or back) which will reload the page on you at an unexpected time, just when you are in the middle of a very long post.
The question is not whether to use a keylogger but which keylogger
for Mac OS X to choose. If you value your time. Photo jgarber.
I've heard all the privacy arguments against keyloggers but I'm not sold. If you are typing into a computer, particularly one which is near constantly connected to the Internet, you need to accept that there is very limited privacy. For very private writing, it should be done on paper or on an old computer which is no longer capable of being hooked up to the Internet easily or at all (i.e. missing a network card and wifi and/or automatic DHCP).
Read the rest of this entry »
IT |
Wednesday, January 13th, 2010
In this day and age, running a computer without some kind of an outgoing firewall is like driving your car with your eyes closed.
There are so many malfeasors - from phishers to corporate spies - trying to track you and place you and grab you every time you check your email or you browse the web, that everyone needs a firewall.
You can test this on OS X by installing Little Snitch and scrolling through your messages. A few of the outgoing calls are for innocent images, mainly they are for tracking tags and tracking images.
Little Snitch - a few of the Edgesuite calls on one week fresh install!
Little Snitch is free for 3 hour periods at a time so it can be installed to test and find out what domains you'd like to be blocking.
For long term blocking of nasty sites OS X, your solutions are threefold:
- buy an outgoing firewall, i.e. Little Snitch. A bit pricey at $30 a license but it's Little Snitch or go hungry
- configure your hosts file to block most of the major offenders (people do keep lists)
- use GlimmerBlocker control panel to block the baddies via internal proxy (works on all browsers)
Of the three, GlimmerBlocker was the best and the simplest. Until after a year and a half GlimmerBlocker decided to seize up and prevent me from editing Wordpress sites. Apparently it's database got full or something. I lost eight hours trying to troubleshoot this mystery when I desperately needed to work so GlimmerBlocker is banned now. A pity as GlimmerBlocker is free.
A hosts file is also great. By adding bad sites to the hosts file and redirecting them to localhost (127.0.0.1) you stop them dead in their tracks.
One of the more complete lists of domains to block via hosts is kept online here: http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.txt
To edit your hosts file on OS X, the quickest way is to use Terminal to give TextEdit root access to the hosts file.
- Open a terminal window and type the following: sudo /Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit /etc/hosts
- Hit return and enter your admin password when prompted and again hit return.
- Your Hosts file should automatically open in TextEdit.
- Copy the hosts from http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.txt or ssomewhere else (mvps wastes a lot of space on the x-rated zone for those of us not into: alternative suggestions to mvps welcome)
- Paste it into your text hosts file.
- Save.
- Test that hosts is working by browsing to one of the domains listed in mvps.
- Continue to edit and save at your leisure (at each save the hosts file is updated and live: well done Apple).
Unfortunately both LittleSnitch and the hosts file suffer from the same fatal flaw. They don't allow wildcards. So for instance, one of the worst bits of spyware around is Infusionsoft. Every time you get an email from a subscriber of infusionsoft they want to know if you opened it. Therefore every image is specific to you. But each user has his or her own subdomain, i.e. empowered.infusionsoft.com.
If you block infusionsoft.com in hosts with 127.0.0.1 infusionsoft.com, you will only block the homepage. You would have to block 127.0.0.1 empowered.infusionsoft.com for each and every Infusionsoft subscriber who sends you email.
Little Snitch automates this process and allows you to make the block application specific. I use Apple Mail exclusively as my email client (looks great, full feature set and very fast, btw) so Little Snitch and I pick off these offenders one by one.
What I really want though are wildcards in Little Snitch so that I can ban all infusionsoft.com subdomains with a single *.infusionsoft.com within Apple Mail. The same applies for edgesuite.net within Apple Mail (Edgesuite is for corporate email spies like Apple and eBay, Infusionsoft is for slippery marketers like Rich Schefren and friends like Mike Filsaime).
When is the Objective Development team going to get off their backsides and improve Little Snitch by adding wildcards? There is a three page thread in their forum which goes back to 2004 asking for subdomain blocking in Little Snitch. What's particularly galling is that ObDev have not even bothered to answer our concerns.
Until Objective Development add a subdomains/wild card feature to Little Snitch, you may want to hold off on the purchase. Managing outgoing requests one subdomain at a time is very tedious work.
In the meantime, if you'd like to block certain domains or you have doubts about a certain piece of software, there is a free solution. You can turn Little Snitch on for three hours while you deal with spam email or install new software, take note of the domains you'd like to block and then add those domains to your hosts file.
IT |
Sunday, January 3rd, 2010
I ended up with thousands of these ghost messages after moving from Eudora to Apple Mail with the help of Andreas Amann's brilliant Eudora Mailbox Cleaner. I didn't worry too much about it, as the messages were there in duplicate.
But after a while I got tired of seeing double messages when searching the old archives. I couldn't find any way to scare away these ghosts. Rebuilding the mailboxes didn't help. Nor did running duplicate message scanners.
Even the fantastic vacuum command line cleanup routine wouldn't get rid of the ghost messages with their "Show in Mailbox" in the top right corner. But vacuum did get speed up Apple Mail (highly recommended).
sqlite3 ~/Library/Mail/Envelope Index vacuum;
But finally I found the solution on a long dead Omni mailing list archive.
Here's how to stop the haunting. The issue is with the Envelope index. It needs to be deleted. Steps:
- Quit Apple Mail
- Open up ~/Library/Mail
- Delete Envelope Index
- Restart Apple Mail
- Sit back and wait as the full index is rebuilt
Don't do this if you are in a hurry. For my 270,000 messages, it takes about twenty minutes to index them all (pretty spiffy coding Apple Mail Team, getting through that many messages that quickly).
But when it's done, your messages will all still be in place, but your index will be a whole lot faster. I don't know why vacuum only partially cleans and why Apple Mail doesn't have an effective built-in cleaning mechanism. But I'm happy that all systems are go again. Now that you know this trick to, you won't have to care either.
As a footnote, I should say that I was initially a reluctant switcher from the poor departed Eudora (the most robust and configurable email client ever). But Apple Mail handles my huge database of messages astonishingly well and looks quite a bit better doing it.
IT |
Sunday, December 20th, 2009
Yes, everything awful you've heard about these adapters is true. They don't really work right, under Mac OS X. The strange thing is that those who've turned their Mac Minis into either Windows XP or Linux rigs do not have trouble with the adapter. So it's not really hardware related. A bit embarassing that the Apple engineers can't get their own gear working. Another senior engineer transferred to the iPhone video driver department?
Apple Mini DisplayPort Dual Link DVI Adapter MB571Z
Here's what recent reviews on Apple's own store say (just two of two hundred):
Flicker two or three times a day – GM, Dec. 9
I am a totally MAC fan. I love their stuff. It is always quality. This thing is awful. I depend on my monitor as I do a lot of photo work. I had an older macbook pro which had the DVI output. Ok, so I have buy a 100 adapter now, I am sort of ok with that. Then I find it takes up one of my USB ports as well. A little less happy, but give me a product that works. Now this… Two or three times a day I need to cycle this thing. Very poor. I really hope they fix this.
bad, bad, bad – VC, Dec. 9
This thing is junk. Sadly I have to re boot or put my computer to sleep at least three or four times a day because it goes out and comes back with the dreaded TV Snow we all hated as kids when the cable went out. Apple should have gotten this right by now. As a consumer and big spender on apple product I'm disappointed again. Windows 7 anyone? (Joke) Is Apple listening?
Read the rest of this entry »
IT |
Tuesday, December 15th, 2009
Until recently, Apple had no good inexpensive computer in its lineup. There was the Mac Mini but the graphics were crappy built-in on-board Intel adapters. As an ex Macbook owner, I knew how weak that chip is.
On the other hand, the Mac Mini with the 9400GF is a real computer. A Core2Duo processor at 2 GHz can handle anything except gaming and high end video editing.
I hope to hell my staff are not gaming and I know we aren't doing high end video editing these days. If we decide to start, I'll get a more powerful computer.
I know that when we do go to video editing, there are no audio and video sync issues on Macs (sync issues are the historic bugaboo of video editing on Windows computers).
We've just bought a total of six Mac Minis and Macbooks to switch Foliovision over to being primarily an Apple company. Here's why.
How Apple Won Our Mini Enterprise Contract
- What is great about the Mini is that it is small and silent and powerful. We spend a huge amount of time finding and configuring custom power supplies and fans to make our Windows computers silent. Minis are silent out of the box (the power supply is on the floor). Silence is goal number one for our computers. That Macs used to be loud (even the G5 towers, I had one) was one good reason they didn’t have our business earlier.
- We can move the OS around from computer to computer without going through a complicated and painful . I.e. we will build a standard setup for our Minis with all the software and extras onboard that we want and just clone it from one machine to another.
- All hardware is compatible (limited choice but what exists works)
- I know all the software so whatever software anyone needs I can tell them off the top of my head which one to install
- We are all licensed software. Which means we are paying for our work tools anyway. As we are paying for our tools, we’d like nice ones. We’ve tried Linux but it is too widely configurable (i.e. too much choices so you end up spending time fiddling) and suffers from the same issues as Windows (driver and hardware compatibility issues).
- Maintenance is minimal and I don’t have to dedicate a staff member to working just on the computers (adding 5 more Windows boxes means that the IT guy would be almost unavailable for anything except computer maintenance).
- I want my programmers to write simpler, more attractive software which means they shouldn’t be on Windows or Linux as Windows is ugly and complicated and Linux is just too complicated. We aren’t writing for other programmers but for real estate agents and best selling authors. Simple and attractive are Steve Job’s watchwords and ours too.
How Apple Almost Lost Our Business
- Minis are very difficult to get into. We almost didn’t buy them at all as it is so difficult to change RAM and hard drives. I figured we are buying enough of them that we will get good at opening up the little devils.
- The warranty period is inadequate. All computer makers in Europe are offering two years. Apple is trying to offer one, along with a paid upgrade to three years. Yes for a laptop, no for a desktop. By the time you buy the extended Apple-Care on a desktop, it’s no longer a cost effective solution.
- There is no reasonable step up. iMacs are lovely computers but it’s next to impossible to change the hard drive. Guess what? We just won’t buy a computer in which we can’t change the hard drive ourselves. Crashed hard drives are the number one hardware issue and we expect to be able to deal with it without lugging a heavy iMac around town. Moreover the top of the line new quad iMac was issued without an external SATA port. For no good reason Apple has limited us to FireWire 800. Even FW 800 raid with 80 MB/sec throughput is not fast enough for HD video and just adequate for heavy duty photo processing.
- Custom video ports. We have to buy five mini-DVI adapters and five miniDisplay adapters for our dual head setups. Fortunately there are third party solutions now which come in at €8 to €15 per adapter instead of Apples €25 to €29. Tell me again why Apple are not using DVI and displayport instead?
Conclusion
The computers are arriving this week. We'll be setting them up over the holidays. I'll be back with some tips on how to set up Macs for enterprise use straight out of the box.
Microsoft had our business until they lost it with complicated licensing.
IT |
Sunday, December 13th, 2009
We are moving half the office to Mac computers this month.
Originally I was in the market for a couple of quads with Microsoft Windows. But to be able to buy those two computers, I had to figure out all the troublesome licensing of Microsoft. Originally we just wanted to say with XP, as that's what we know and like. On the way, here's what I discovered about Microsoft Licensing:
- licenses are extremely confusing (8 license levels? come on)
- licenses are not portable
- licenses are restricted to a single language
- licenses have to be activated
- hardware changes require reactivation
- you need antivirus software for every Microsoft computer (we've actually bought it for all ours from Avast)
We were relatively happy Microsoft Windows XP users with five XP licenses and four Windows 2000 licenses. We planned to stay that way, but it's difficult and expensive to buy XP licenses these days and they don't point forward.
Microsoft does offer Windows Professional 7 licenses with the option for downgrade.
When we called Microsoft's telephone numbers for volume licenses, they were very coy about telling us what we could expect to pay. I'm sorry I don't like hidden prices, which can only be revealed after review of your contract. If you have to hide your prices, there's a scam in there somewhere. Moeover, we were also told that volume licenses would not allow us to do XP downgrades.
Apparently with Windows XP, a license is good regardless of what language you choose to install in the end. In Windows 7, unless you choose ultimate version, you have to keep the computer in the language for which you bought the license.
Which brings up the issue of versions. There are over 8 license versions. Guys, make it a lot easier, please. I.e. Ultimate shouldn't exists. Starter shouldn't exist either. Home and professional cover the two usage scenarios. If I buy a license, I should have the right to move it to another computer if I take it off the first computer.
In contrast, with Macs you just install the software. Of course you need the computer, but once you have that you can just copy a working OS from one computer to another.
We spent ten man hours just clarifying what Windows 7 licenses were available and which would work for us.* That's a good start on explaining why we just don't want anything more to do with Microsoft.
Go back to selling software, guys in Redmond. Complicated licensing to confuse and shaft customers is no way to do business. You've just lost ours.
* Once you are done with the licenses, you still have to configure and troubleshoot your own custom computers, downloading and debugging drives. There are hours to be spent here as well. Enough.
IT |
Wednesday, October 14th, 2009
We are working on some major upgrades to our Foliopress WYSIWYG this month. Our wonderful client Richard Nikoley kicks the pants out of his Macbook Pro and he does the same thing to Foliopress WYSIWYG. He's given us a laundry list of small issues to fix, most of which have to do with minor misbehaviour in the Safari browser.
Given that Safari is webkit and Google Chrome is based on Safari, getting webkit browsers right is a priority for us.
We've fixed the text issues (no need to click the source button and back for proper display) but still have to do our SEO Images upgrade to take us from KFM 1.2.1 to 1.4.3 which will give us full Safari support for image upload and insertion.
While we were at it, Martin and I had a discussion about whether to be using code or pre tags for code extracts.
I advocated both, wrapping slapping an unescaped code tag inside the pre tags. It turns out that wreaks havoc in Foliopress WYSIWYG, stripping the line breaks. So our recommendation for Foliopress WYSIWYG users is just use escaped code inside pre tags.
While I was tracking this down though, I decided to chase down the W3 recommendations for the use of code and pre in the HTML 4.01 specification.
Imagine my surprise to find out that poetry their code example:
The following example shows a preformatted verse from Shelly's poem To a Skylark:
<PRE>
Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.
</PRE>
Here is how this is typically rendered:
Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest
I hadn't read Shelley for years, since I wrote a couple of long papers on wife Mary's Frankenstein. It was a joy to find something so exquisite and uplifting in an otherwise long and dry technical document.
Unknown anonymous specification writer, thank you for bringing this fragment of poetry into this coder's day.
Code is poetry and as the deconstructionists would say poetry is code.
But what does the W3 specification reveal about the code and pre mystery?
It turns out that code is a phrase element and pre is a visual presentation element.
In the end, code is a bit of redundant information unless you are searching a document for code fragments (which honestly could be just as easily done and more certainly with some nice rules looking for certain patterns). Your search could just as easily use pre to bring up most of the fragments for which you are looking.
Visually both code and pre by default render in a fixed-width font, with code tending to get a typewriter style typeface like courrier and pre tending to get a sansserif fixed width font like Monaco. I think I prefer seeing my code in courrier but there is nothing preventing me from adding a typeface for pre to my stylesheet.
For the sake of simplicity, our recommendation is to just use pre for your larger code blocks. We won't be doing further debugging of the double nested pre and code tags as just getting pre not to add unnecessary angled brackets was a formidable task. One of the downsides of WYSIWYG editors is limited capability in handling code samples in text.
Unlike basic written text, in code formatting even a single changed space can render the code useless or even destructive.
When writing a major article about programming, we'd recommend turning WYSIWYG off completely which is also a per post option with Foliopress WYSIWYG. There's nothing more depressing than seeing a carefully built article filled with elaborate code examples crumple and scatter into visual dust. Code samples are tough to rebuild.
For basic use on html or CSS code samples though, pre alone with escaped brackets will take you or us as far as we need to go.
Is there a use for the code tag then?
We do recommend using the code tag for single code elements as in this article.
IT, WordPress |
Sunday, August 9th, 2009
A question which constantly comes up on forums and recently on TidBits talk is how to choose a web hosting company.
The rules are surprisingly simple.
Number one: avoid the bottom tier budget webhosts: they sell on unlimited bandwidth and disk storage. It's simply impossible to fulfill those unlimited promises with quality service
This would include popular hosts like
- BlueHost
- Dreamhost (enter promo code FREEIPFORLIFE to get a dedicated IP for life: $4/month value)
- Hostgator
The above names are actually the best of a bad lot and at least try to serve some customers sometimes unlike the real fly-by-nighters. If you insist on cutting your hosting budget to the bone, your chances of not losing your website or your business go up if you use one of the three above.
How do the unlimited guys try to make it work?
- they limit CPU usage ("sure you have unlimited bandwidth but your website is using up CPU minutes serving")
- they slow down your site (if your site is serving slowly, many users will abandon it - not what you want to do with your hard-earned, valuable traffic)
- they slow down larger downloads (large images, video: who wants to sit around and wait for video to come down at 20 KB to 80 K/sec)
As a web design and marketing company we have a lot of experience both on hosts of our own and the hosts chosen by our clients (I've had first hand experience with all of the hosts I mention, including an active account on one of them) run our own hosting for our clients and chose CartikaHosting.com as our hosting partner.
It's not the cheapest but server loads are always under control, downtime is non-existent and the IP's are clean (no porn, no spammers).
For business hosting the following five issues are the big issues:
- speed
- reliability
- availability of tech support
- competency of tech support
- clean IP's for search engines
You want your site serving fast.
You don't want downtime.
You want to be able to reach tech support when you need them by both ticket and telephone (or online chat).
You want the right answer fast, not the wrong answer which will send you on a weeklong goose chase.
You do want to rank well for Google. Which means clean IP's.
By choosing Cartika Hosting as our partners for Foliopress hosting, our own clients get the benefits of CartikaHosting.com but with our additional expertise in Wordpress.
IT |
Tuesday, June 30th, 2009
Quotes (form systems) that have multiple forms can be a nightmare for a PHP programmer. You have to deal with data carry-over in addition to secure data storage. And these are only programming troubles, not counting quote lightness (in terms of easy and understandable content and questions) and design that makes it perfect.
Yes, I know that nothing is perfect, but in Foliovision we try to make it like that. Making the web work for you and all that.
To ensure the carry-over of data, you have two choices: 1. to use some hidden inputs in forms (therefore using post data to maintain client recognition), or 2. introduce sessions (using cookies). The first solution may be preferred, but in big CMS like Joomla, Drupal or Wordpress may be almost impossible to do.
In Foliovision we use Wordpress and to specifically to manage forms we use John Godley's Filled-In (some Filled-In trivia: Filled-In was originally coded for Foliovision clients and the betas were very bloody - since then Filled-In has become a fantastic tool). Since Filled-in stores the data as one request maintaining hidden inputs between form pages is not possible.
The only solution for us was to use PHP session. We created some useful extensions for Filled-In to make such a quote systems possible. But then we ran into a problem with quote that started on HTTP and continued to HTTPS. When changing from one protocol to another, PHP session is not carried over.
There are two solutions on how to fix this. You can redirect to a link that will contain session ID as GET parameter and then start session with that ID on HTTPS (terribly insecure), or you make the whole quote use HTTPS. Of course second solution is preferred, since it's a lot more secure way to run your site.
If you'll work with sessions and experience similar problem remember that sessions are not carried-over when switching protocols, or from www.domain.com to domain.com. You need to pay a lot of attention to detail.
IT, WordPress |
