December 2003

In memoriam

by Volker Weber

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To my friend Torsten who died ten years ago in a car accident: Today I talked to Ed about the time we were spinning records and I had to get out some of Your CDs and import them into iTunes. You are not forgotten.

Fasten your seat belts before proceeding

by Volker Weber

An amateur video (104 MB .wmv) of a Porsche chasing the Ring Taxi, a 400 hp BMW M5 sedan with three passengers and a professional driver, around Nürburgring, the acclaimed most demanding race track ever, as well as a professional video (66 MB .mpeg) of rallye champion Ari Vatanen storming up Pikes Peak in a Peugeot 405 T16. Yes, there are motorcycles, much slower cars as well as a motorcoach circling Nürburgring. :-)

Prognostications: Apple in 2004

by Volker Weber

In exactly one week from now, Steve Jobs will be halfway through his keynote at MacWorld San Francisco. Time for a look in the crystal ball. Joe C. Carson has some reasonable prognostications for 2004.

New IBM Redbook Drafts

by Volker Weber

Lotus Security Handbook

This redbook provides best practices and guidance towards building a secure "collaboration" infrastructure utilizing IBM Lotus technologies. It is actually the third Lotus Security? oriented Redbook to be published. However, unlike the previous two Redbooks in this series, The Domino Defense: Security in Lotus Notes 4.5 and the Internet? (SG24-4848) and Lotus Notes and Domino R5.0 Security Infrastructure Revealed (SG24-5341), this third book focuses not just on Notes/Domino - but on all IBM Lotus collaborative products, as well as general security best practices for any infrastructure. This book should be considered essential reading for anyone responsible for Lotus technology based applications, systems, and infrastructures.

IBM WebSphere Portal for Multiplatforms V5 Handbook

This Redbook positions the IBM WebSphere Portal for Multiplatforms as the solution that best address building scalable and reliable business-to-employee (B2E), business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) portals. The IBM WebSphere Portal for Multiplatforms V5 Handbook will help you to understand the WebSphere Portal architecture; how to install, tailor and configure WebSphere Portal; and how to administer and customize portal pages using WebSphere Portal.

Portal Application Design and Development Guidelines

This Redpaper is a compilation of various IBM publications combined with the authors experience with large Portal implementations. The intention is to give you an comprehensive overview of Portal design/development concepts and coding guidelines that will ensure successful implementations. We also included a performance section to help you avoid common performance pitfalls. Our experience is, that performance and scalability aspects are often underestimated, when starting Portal development projects. Following a few easy guidelines and a good understanding of basic Portlet concepts will help you to be more productive, right from the start of your Portal development project.

Architecting Portal Solutions

This IBM Redbook is focused on architecting and building WebSphere Portal Server-based Dynamic Workplaces. It addresses the needs of SWG Architects, Business Partners, and customers for building skills in architecting solutions by identifying themes that can be applied across multiple SWG Industry Solutions. This includes using e-business infrastructure solutions maps that apply across multiple industries: for example, the On Demand Workplace solution, the e-business integration stack from SWG that provides capabilities for integrating the enterprise based on both business and technology drivers, and the IBM Patterns for e-business from SWG that provide the basis for understanding the best practices for supporting e-business integration.

Domino Web Access 6.5 on Linux

This Redbook provides a detailed technical overview of Domino Web Access 6.5, while also discussing how to install, configure and deploy an end-to-end Linux solution for Domino. In addition to setting up DWA 6.5, it also discuss how to integrate Lotus Sametime for real-time collaboration and awareness. Finally, we discuss key deployment considerations, integration points between Domino Web Access and IBM WebSphere Portal, as well as some possible approaches and techniques to customizing Domino Web Access 6.5

Enderle, Dvorak NextGen

by Volker Weber

Often wrong, never in doubt. A lot of people think that Rob Enderle is an idiot. Can't say that, but I have often read his reports with a strong sense that he doesn't get it. In a way, NextGen John Dvorak. Nevertheless Enderle is quoted often by fellow US journalists.

Of all the people dissing Enderle, nobody does it better than Will Parker, a Mac head working for Microsoft.

Irreführend

by Volker Weber

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In the beginning there was Microsoft. Then it exploded.

by Volker Weber

Charlie Demerjian has an opinion piece in the Inquirer:

Every so often, there is a big shift in an industry. The shifts are not usually visible until long after they've happened, making you look back and say: "Oh yeah, things were different back then".

We are experiencing a major IT industry shift right now, and if you know where to look you can actually see it as it happens. This shift is all about Microsoft and open source.

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A short trip through the city

by Volker Weber

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Another brief stroll around the neighborhood. This is only three quarters of a block.

T minus three weeks

by Volker Weber

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Nobody will make money

by Volker Weber

Roland Piquepaille tries to open some eyes:

This special report from CNET News.com carries an eloquent subtitle: "Wireless expectations rose in 2003, but growth was hobbled by security concerns and unproven business models." It's much more worse than you think ... The main problem with Wi-Fi is not a technological one. The technology works fine, but in so few places that it's practically irrelevant. Technology columnists are usually looking at their own part of the world, in Silicon Valley or on the East Coast of the U.S. And obviously, their opinions are largely biased. Our world is much bigger than that. Let's take a look at two real-world examples ... Paying $10 an hour for Wi-Fi access is almost twice as you pay for a movie. Would you pay $20 to see a movie? Probably not. So will you pay $10 to use a Wi-Fi connection for one hour? Certainly not. As long as prices will remain that high, the utilization will remain very low. And of course, nobody will make money.

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Condolences to Bruce Elgort

by Volker Weber

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Your loss saddens all of us. You are in my thoughts.

Hillarious

by Volker Weber

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Experience

by Volker Weber

Captain Hajo points me to a list with 25 rules for flight. Three of them are worth noting for non-pilots:

Learn from the mistakes of others. You won't live long enough to make all of them yourself.

Good judgment comes from experience. Unfortunately, the experience usually comes from bad judgment.

You start with a bag full of luck and an empty bag of experience. The trick is to fill the bag of experience before you empty the bag of luck.

The last one is our favorite.

Dangerous hospitality

by Volker Weber

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Deutsche Telekom is pushing one particular router into the market that once again has proven to be very hospitable. Lots of people seem to buy this device without having an immediate need for its wireless capabilities. Since they don't use the wireless access they probably don't feel an urge to secure it. However, the wireless network is switched on by default. It uses WLAN as its SSID and gives out IP addresses in the 192.168.2.x range.

So, while visiting my mother for Christmas I had access to more than one of those access points in the neighborhood. Having free internet access is a nice thing. However I wish that the firmware would force the user to change the default password before you can enter your ISP username and password.

This particular router has the default password 0000 and I have yet to find a device where the owner has changed it. Leaving this password at the default value is very dangerous because one can save and download the configuration. I have not yet tried to do so, but I assume that it is possible to recover the password from this saved configuration. At least it does allow any bypasser to clone your settings onto his own machine. It is rather easy to steal a number of these configurations and use them to access the Internet on someone else's contract.

This has a number of unintended consequences. The original owner of a comprised account may not only find himself paying for somebody else's use of the Internet, he also may become a target of a criminal investigation if his account is abused. If I understand the Telekom infrastructure correctly there is no way to tell from which DSL line an account has been used, so it may be next to impossible to prove your innocence.

This is why I am asking to enforce a password change before one can enter the account data.

Thank you

by Volker Weber

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This is the best time of the year. In my life, at Christmas everything seems to halt. I don't have busy days as many other people. Things are really getting quiet and I have time to think about many important things. Those that you can only really appreciate if you are not busy. It is those idle times when you are able to make the all important decissions.

I want to take this opportunity to thank you for your friendship and support. Have a Merry Christmas, a magic time with your families and thanks again for stopping by.

Use Keyboard Viewer for those obscure key combinations in Mac OS X

by Volker Weber

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Keyboard viewer seems to be one the best kept secrets of OS X 10.3 Panther. This is a floating palette that I keep on my second screen open at all times. When I hunt for a specific key, I press Alt, Shift or Alt-Shift to find it on the keyboard.

I have often bitched about the stupid location of the @-sign on the German keymap. O Windows that would be AltGr-Q which of course translates to Alt-Q on the Mac, immediately killing the foreground application. After one year of using the Mac this hardly happens any more.

Travelling Palm

by Volker Weber

I wanted to tell you about Palm applications that I use for a long time, but never got around to doing so. Let's start with a longer one on applications for travellers. This is going to be long so you need to hit "More >" at the bottom once it is finished to read it all.

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MetrO is the number one on my list. This program will route you through public transportation systems all over the world. A concept not very well known to our US-friends who would rather use a cab or a rental car. :-) You tell the program where you want to get on and where you want to get off and it tells you which trains, trams or busses you need to get on, how many stations to travel, where to connect and gives you a rough estimate of the time the trip will take. Since the program does not know the exact time table it cannot tell you when to start and how long connections will take.

MetrO is a small program with a large following of supporters. It is free to use, published as open source and has hundreds of data files contributed by users. This is a major point since the data is very accurate as it is supplied by locals. MetrO turned out to be so popular that it was ported to PocketPC. Highly recommended.

More >

Sametime on a Mac

by Volker Weber

David Schaeffgen announces version 0.2 of his Sametime client for MacOS X:

I am proud to announce the second publicly available alpha version of Mercury for Mac OS X. The v0.2 release contains basic functionality as described in the previous release along with some new items which allow users to auto-connect on launch, auto-reconnect, and auto-idle. Users are encouraged to download the client, use it, and I would love to hear from you about any issues that you may run into. This is the first release so there are bound to be bugs. Mercury should run just fine on either Jaguar or Panther. If there is interest I may look into supporting older versions of OS X, at the moment 10.2 and 10.3 are the only operating system versions supported. The icons and buttons used in this version are a bit rough, but they should be getting better in the future as I have a much more talented artist working on revising and enhancing them. For the technically enclined out there the client is written mostly in Objective-C using some Java code to bridge the gap from the client logic, to the Sametime toolkit provided by IBM. It has proved to be a versatile and powerful combination. Welcome to Mercury, attempting to give Mac OS X users a first class Sametime experience one line of code at a time!

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Gebührenfalle bei Vodafone

by Volker Weber

Vodafone hat sich was neues ausgedacht, um Gebühren zu kassieren. Kunden, die bislang keine Mobilbox nutzen, bekamen automatisch eine Gebührenfalle programmiert. Der Anrufer hört bei Nichterreichbarkeit des Angerufenen nicht mehr die kostenlose Ansage "Der Teilnehmer ist vorübergehend nicht erreichbar", sondern statt dessen eine siebensekündige kostenpflichtige Ansage "Der Vodafone-Teilnehmer ist zur Zeit nicht erreichbar, wird aber per SMS informiert." Anders als verschiedentlich berichtet, funktioniert bei uns die Servicenummer 121314 zum Abschalten dieser "Dienstleistung" nicht.

Es hat sich jedoch herausgestellt, dass Vodafone ohne Rückfrage beim Kunden eine Umleitung "bei Nichterreichbarkeit" auf die Nummer +4917233094391 programmiert. Mit *#62#[senden] kann man sich diese Umleitung ansehen. Mit ##62#[senden] löscht man diese unfreiwillige Umleitung, mit ##002#[senden] löscht man alle Umleitungen auf einen Schlag.

Mark your calendars

by Volker Weber

January, 6 will be my next work day. And I intend to be finished by 18:00 CET. Watching this live is always great fun. :-)

Amazing

by Volker Weber

First I started to giggle about the question. Then it got me started thinking about the answers, especially the "never" types. What else do these people have to hide from the person they have to trust.

Belle de Jour wins a blog award

by Volker Weber

One of my favorites has won the best written category in the The Guardian's second British blog awards:

The winner in this category however is Belle de Jour, the diary of a London call girl. There's obviously a prurient and titillating element, but the quality of her writing took her blog well beyond that. Some judges were concerned it was a work of fiction, but even if it is, it remains an impressive piece of writing.

As Bruce Sterling, one of the judges said: "Archly transgressive, anonymous hooker is definitely manipulating the blog medium, word by word, sentence by sentence far more effectively than any of her competitors. It's not merely the titillating striptease aspects that are working for her, but her willingness to use this new form of vanity publishing to throw open a great big global window on activities previously considered unmentionable ... She is in a league by herself as a blogger."

Interesting side note: Rob Gardiner won the best use of photography category with this picture. I reminds me very much of a picture I took at Tate Modern after Simon recommended the place. This is one extreme art installation by Olafur Eliasson. Go take a look when in London.

More >

T minus four weeks

by Volker Weber

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I almost forgot to start the countdown :-)

Targus PowerTip for the iBook

by Volker Weber

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Targus has some interesting power supplies. You buy one device and can use it to charge a number of gizmos, notebooks, phones, pda etc. I have one universal auto/air adapter with plugs for a small number of devices. So far I have only used the plug for Charlie, the StinkPad.

As I am planning to travel next month, I was looking for Snoopy. Talked to Targus Friday afternoon. Saturday morning PowerTip #91 was in the mail. Thank you, Targus!

This is a clever design. You can keep your peripherals as you switch machines.

You have been warned

by Volker Weber

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Instant messaging spam

by Volker Weber

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This seems to be the latest trick that spammers pull. Someone opens a conversation with "whos this". Of course you do not reply. I can't make up my mind whether the offenders are robots, whether they try to make first contact with a bot and then hand it over to a person or what else is going on there.

Any insights?

Since iChat does not display a second mesage unless you "Accept" this is not too annoying so far. There are a number of things you can do to avoid those spammers but they all lead to a loss in service. The easiest escape route is to ignore anyone not on your buddylist. The software can handle that.

But one could also tie up some of the ressources. How about an Eliza-bot? iChat is scriptable so you could hand over the conversation to the bot. The most simple bot would be a simple echo. What ever you receive you just send back. The next better choice would be like the original Eliza which lets the other side believe they actually found a person.

Again, any insights?

Temperature Monitor

by Volker Weber

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Temperature Monitor is a Mac OS X application that displays the current processor temperature of selected Macintosh computers.

Simple, Private File Sharing

by Volker Weber

MUTE File Sharing is a new peer-to-peer network that provides easy search-and-download functionality while also protecting your privacy. MUTE File Sharing compiles as a fast, native application for many platforms (no Java, no Python, etc.). Linux, Mac, Unix, Windows.

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Fräulein Bohr und Herr Weber

by Volker Weber

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And her Rock & Roll Parents. :-)

NetNewsWire with favicon support

by Volker Weber

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Full image

NetNewsWire is out as 1.07 beta. It adds a very nice touch: Favicons for your feeds. If the site that hosts the feed has a favicon then NetNewsWire shows it alongside the feed name. Nice.

Is your fan constantly on after the 10.3.2 upgrade?

by Volker Weber

Some people report that with the original Powerbook 12" (887 MHz) the fan never stops running while on AC power. This keeps the machine cooler but also noisier. It looks like this is the cause:

In MacOS X 10.3.2 a few System Extensions handling the temperature readout and the fan control have been changed. To be more precise, the fan turns on when the CPU temperature reaches 51 degrees C (64 before) and turns off again when it falls below 47 degrees (57 before). As a result, on some PowerBooks the fan does not turn off at all after the update, most notably the PowerBook 12". This might be just a bug, but probably it's Apple's answer to the temperature problems these models have (in hot weather, the palm rest gets too hot to touch).

You can get back to the old behaviour, if you must, with this fix.

Which Finding Nemo character are you?

by Volker Weber

You are BRUCE!

Site seems to be working now.

Season's greetings

by Volker Weber

This is evil. And this is even more evil.

How does this look?

by Volker Weber

SAT 17JAN04 DL0027 FRA-ATL 0945-1355
SAT 17JAN04 DL1251 ATL-MCO 1615-1738

WED 28JAN04 DL1096 MCO-ATL 1605-1732
WED 28JAN04 DL0020 ATL-FRA 1835-0910 (+1 day)

Treffer, versenkt.

by Volker Weber

Mark Spörrle, im Volvo V70R, R wie Racing:

Aber wenn man mit dem V70R irgendwo auf einen Parkplatz fährt, schleicht keiner ums Heck und schielt nach Typenbezeichnung oder Auspuff. Man wird auch nicht angeguckt, als habe man 300 PS unter der Haube oder als fahre man einen Sportwagen, an dem allein schon die Stoßdämpfer schneller denken können als man selbst; wer ein Auto nötig hat, um seine Persönlichkeit aufzuwerten, wird vom V70R vermutlich enttäuscht sein. Man wird einfach angeguckt, als sei man ein vernünftiger Brillenträger, Familienvater, Lehrer oder Redakteur, der einen sicheren, zuverlässigen, gut aussehenden Kombi hat.

Aber dafür, ganz ehrlich, reicht doch immer noch der normale V70.

Great fun

by Volker Weber

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Play

[Thanks, Nico]

Play with your iSight

by Volker Weber

Now, you just have to make sure, you don't fall over:

Toysight is set of cool games and toys to play using your iSight or similar firewire camera. Using a system of object and motion detection to track your position, Toysight allows you to control buttons, sliders and perform gestures on the screen, putting you right in the action!

More >

[Thanks, Martin :-)]

Mac updates available

by Volker Weber

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Mac OS X 10.3.2 is out. This is the first major update to Panther, replacing almost 40 meg of stuff. The .1 update was only an emergency fix.

Then there is Battery Update 1.1, which is supposed to give you even more battery life. It seems to update something in the battery firmware itself. After installation and reboot it started immediately to top off my already fully charged battery.

Quicktime is now at 6.5 and iTunes at 4.2. There is an obscure Java update that I won't need. When does this madness stop? This frequency puts Windows to shame. :-)

A Library Musical

by Volker Weber

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A wonderful prank. Watch it.

Exchange 2003 Tops ND6 in Latest TCO Report

by Volker Weber

Last year, Ed was very fond of the Radicati TCO study. I wonder what the message is this year:

The Radicati Group, Inc., a leading market research firm, released today a new study analyzing Microsoft Exchange 2003’s total cost of ownership (TCO). Based on detailed customer interviews, the study also compares and contrasts the TCO of Microsoft Exchange 2003 to that of IBM Lotus Notes/Domino 6 (ND6), from an earlier study conducted in March 2003 by The Radicati Group, Inc., “Messaging Total Cost of Ownership 2003 - in Enterprise and Service Provider Environments.” This TCO study shows that Microsoft Exchange 2003 offers a significant TCO advantage over IBM Lotus Software Notes/Domino 6 (ND6), on the order of 41%. There are cost advantages in a number of key areas, including downtime and training.

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Lotus stuff

by Volker Weber

Ed Brill writes:

David reminded me that he maintains a pretty interesting Team Workplace site on Lotus's extranet. David's site contains just about every customer-facing document Lotus has put in writing in recent years...organized by product and document type. He also has monthly newsletters, tips, information about user groups, and some fun, too.

Take a look at the fun stuff. Lotus affiniados will find lots of unseen desktop wallpapers, some of them really good (192k Quicktime). Sample:

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Now I have a big request for Lotus. Can you please eat your own dogfood and put all of the Lotusphere 2004 artwork and the 5 megapixel images those photographers take on site and put them in a site like this? I really have no use for the "high resolution" 640x480 images from the press kit. Gif is not a good format for screenshots. And this is also not good enough for printing. :-) You've got the stuff. Share it with us.

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Apple QuestPart XI - The Happy End

by Volker Weber

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What a brilliant idea

by Volker Weber

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Block visitors by filtering on IP addresses. How about removing that www from the address?

Mike Golding: Today I'm writing ASP

by Volker Weber

Mike Golding of notestips.com reports:

... as I start work building another web reporting portal, I began to think that ASP might be a better and faster way to get the summary data from the three different systems I required the data from.

To be honest it was very simple and everything, especially when dealing with Domino, was like coding in LotusScript. I was surprised. In less than an hour I had an ASP page that contained live data from Oracle, SQL Server and and several Domino databases on one page.

So far, so good. And here is the part that should wake up a few marketing heads at IBM:

I was really quite impressed by the speed, ease and consistency of it all. It's a far cry from J2EE and considering the similarities to LotusScript maybe ASP.Net is better transition for Domino developers thanWebSphere Lotus Workplace or J2EE.

If existing developers with Mike's deep knowledge can't get the work done with IBM's tools, the end is near.

December 17, 1903 in Kitty Hawk, NC

by Volker Weber

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Another Christmas present

by Volker Weber

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Must have been a good boy this year. Thank you, Ben!

Old friends never die

by Volker Weber

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In search of secure storage on PocketPC

by Volker Weber

Does anyone of you have suggestions for a secure password/pin storage on PocketPC? I am trying to replace YAPS that Ute used on her Tungsten. I need something similar for the XDA2.

Faces

by Volker Weber

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Groove orphaned

by Volker Weber

Chad Dickerson of InfoWorld:

It would be great if Santa could have his elves port Groove Workspace to Mac OS X. I finally saw the light with OS X, but as I migrate my applications over from Windows XP, Groove sits orphaned outside of OS X, peering in from Virtual PC with its nose pressed against the OS X window, longing for the warmth inside. I really like Groove, but it's a second-class citizen within my new environment, so I have a feeling I won't use it as much in OS X. That's too bad.

Richard Eckel picks up from there on the Groove company weblog (sans comments) and quotes the old Ozzie interview:

Steve Gillmor: How's the Mac version coming?

Ray Ozzie: [laughs] The Mac version is great. I am so happy that Microsoft bought Connectix.

That would be one complete virtual Windows machine for running one application. He goes on saying:

Steve brought iTunes to Windows. How about bringing Groove Workspace to OS X?

What am I missing here? Is Richard really trying to say that Apple should bring Groove to the Mac? Or is he asking whether Groove should do it? While the company is sold on .Net and busy rewriting the client again for version 3. Ah, and please explain once more, why it is a great idea to run web services at the edge.

Chad, trust me: You won't use it at all. It has been weeks since I last loaded up Groove.

Another member in the iSight family

by Volker Weber

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Congratulations, Bruce.

You know you`re in hell ...

by

... if you are involved in an IT project and you have to use this tool for implementation testing.

Zitat des Tages

by Volker Weber

Heute bei Spiegel Online:

Peters betonte, die Gewerkschaften müssten ihren tarifpolitischen Beitrag zur Stärkung der Binnennachfrage leisten.

Da hat der Herr Peters bestimmt Recht. Nur, ob er das richtige Mittel im Blick hat, darf bezweifelt werden.

Gender Matters

by Esther Schindler

This site claims to identify if the author is male or female based on writing samples (of 500 words or more). It says I'm male, in 3 of 3 samples, but then I never did fit the gender stereotypes.

It's interesting, though, to see which words it chooses as "male" versus "female" -- and to note that it seems to be right 2/3 of the time. With, if, and not are female; around, what, and more are male.

Deine Leser wissen immer mehr als Du

by Volker Weber

Dan Gilmor bringt es auf den Punkt: Deine Leser wissen immer mehr als Du.. Und telepolis erklärt das Blogphaenomen mit einem netten Zitat von Sascha Kölsch:

Du hast doch sicher schon mal Raumschiff Enterprise gesehen oder? Da schreibt doch der Captain jeden Tag so ein Logbuch, richtig? Und da wir uns ja alle kein Raumschiff leisten können, gibt es da so, wie die Maus sagen würde, Webseiten, die machen das für einen. Nur die Einträge muss man noch selber tippen. Und dann kommen ganz viele Leute und gucken das an, und dann ist das, wie wenn eine ganze Flotte hinausfährt, hin zu neuen Ufern, die noch nie ein Mensch gesehen hat.

Sehr lesenswert.

Rettet dem Intel

by Volker Weber

Hach, wie ist das schön. Stefan läßt die Schreibmuskeln spielen:

Guten Abend, liebe Prozessorfreunde. Ich darf Sie wieder einmal zu einer Folge unserer Serie "Ein Herz für CPUs" begrüßen. Die possierlichen Tierchen hier neben mir auf dem Sofa haben sie sicherlich auf den ersten Blick erkannt: Es handelt sich um einen Xeon MP (lat.: pentium quattro multiplis) und einen Itanium (intel crassus monopedis), zwei Spezies aus der verbreiteten Gattung der Intels. Viele von Ihnen werden sicher selbst zwei oder gar vier der entzückenden Rechengesellen im eigenen Server halten.

More >

It's showtime folks

by Volker Weber

After months of hiding and having nothing to do but watch american-fed television, Saddam enters the world of entertainment. ZZ Top is the first to bring him in on a project.

Beautiful

by Volker Weber

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GCam records videos on Mac OS X

by Volker Weber

Ever wish you had a simple little application for recording video clips from your Apple iSight, another web cam, or a DV camcorder? With GCam 1.2, you can do just that: record QuickTime .mov format files with selectable video and audio compression, save the clips to your Mac, and then edit them, email them, or just watch them at your leisure... for free!

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Was würden Sie für ein SonyEricsson RS-232 PC-Datenkabel DRS-11 bezahlen?

by Volker Weber

Dietmar schreibt:

da freue ich mich ganz entspannt über mein neues t610 für schlappe 49,95€ dank neuem o2 vertrag und surfe ein bisschen auf der entsprechenden infoseite von sony. was es da alles gibt... MEIN GOTT! serielle kabel sind offensichtlich seit der einführung von irda, bluetooth, usb und wie sie auch alle heissen mögen nur noch handangefertigt und als echte unikate zu bekommen. und mehr als 10 stück bekommt man auch nicht pro bestellung - sehr verdächtig!

Schluck. :-)

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[Großes Bild]

PowerPoint Makes You Dumb

by Volker Weber

Clive Thompson in The New York Times:

In August, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board at NASA released Volume 1 of its report on why the space shuttle crashed. As expected, the ship's foam insulation was the main cause of the disaster. But the board also fingered another unusual culprit: PowerPoint, Microsoft's well-known ''slideware'' program.

PowerPoint is the world's most popular tool for presenting information. There are 400 million copies in circulation, and almost no corporate decision takes place without it. But what if PowerPoint is actually making us stupider?

This year, Edward Tufte -- the famous theorist of information presentation -- made precisely that argument in a blistering screed called The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint. In his slim 28-page pamphlet, Tufte claimed that Microsoft's ubiquitous software forces people to mutilate data beyond comprehension.

[via /.]

TipsForWardAtMicrosoft

by Volker Weber

Ward Cunningham of Wiki fame signs up at Microsoft.

Reviewing the O2 XDA2, part 2

by Volker Weber

[continued from part 1]

After I was able to sync the Palm address book into the XDA via XTNDConnect PC, an unpleasant surprise was waiting in the wings.

I have to go back to a discussion about two years ago to explain the source of the problem. While I write my phone numbers with the pattern +country-area-number (+49-6151-25631) Ute has decided she would rather like a combination of just extensions for people in the office, 0area/number (06151/25631), +country/area/number (+49/6151/25631) and few other creative patterns. There is actually one that I still don't get, where the number starts with an asterisk. We had a discussion about this but eventually I let her have it her way because I thought it was rather cosmetic. It now turned out that it was not.

The XDA does not understand numbers with a slash inside. It cuts them off at the first occurance. So after Ute collected a 1000+ business cards inside her Tungsten, they all turned out to be pretty useless inside the XDA. Since neither the phone nor the desktop have a bulk search and replace feature she was stuck.

I deciced I wanted to do this in a text file so I exported the address book to vCard which preserves the connection type like cell, home, office even if you have more than one each. The other choices would have been CSV and tab delimited. After some creative pattern replacement with a text editor the vCard file was ready to be re-imported. I tried a number of times but the Palm desktop just blew memory through the roof. Something was wrong inside this file. After a lot of guessing I found the error. Palm desktop exports everything that has line breaks as type QUOTED-PRINTABLE but then forgets to escape inline equal-signs as =3D. Instead it just leaves the = in there. On import it then tries to find the ASCII value behind the equal sign and bombs. Now that was easily corrected once I knew what was going on.

Next showstopper was the fact that the desktop does not import a vCard file containing 1000+ business cards in one batch. You need to split them up into smaller units. A lot smaller actually. I did not test this thoroughly but it is around one dozen cards per vCard only. It turns out that Outlook requires a single business card per file so vCardSplit to the rescue. It lets you split out the vCards.

Re-imported them and now the address book in the XDA is neat. Yes, this is going to cost her. :-)

While I was at it, I tried to fix XTNDConnect which would no longer sync tasks. After I switched the log to debug mode, the phone threw a message "BatchWrite error". A quick Google search revealed that this is being taken care of by a hard reset of the phone. Did that, and once again threw out all the O2 customizations that automagically install after a hard reset.

I hope that this is it for now. Did I mention that I don't like PocketPC? I guess I did.

Groove Networks company weblog

by Volker Weber

Richard Eckel, VP of Marketing Communications at Groove Networks, starts a company weblog, sporting an RSS feed right of the bat. And he explains why.

Beautiful

by Volker Weber

mattstuart.jpg

Photo: Matt Stuart

Don't browse through his pictures too quickly. Each of them tells a story and you need to let it sink in a bit. This is a testimonial that it doesn't take a 5 megapixel image but rather an excellent photographer.

Festplatten-Tuning mit Lego

by Volker Weber

legofestplattentuning.jpg

So geht's.

[Danke, Stefan]

Stupid interface design in Palm OS 5.21

by Volker Weber

tungstenbirthday.png tungstendatepicker.png

The address book in Palm OS 5.2 adds a few new fields, including a new Birthday field. You can chose to show these entries in the calendar. Fine, or should I say finally?

However, the designer of this feature seems to know only 5-year-olds. Maximum. Because you have to use the date picker, which forces you to thumb through all the years. For a 45-year-old you need 48 clicks --1 tap to get the picker, 45 to roll back the years, one for the month, one for the day, which closes the picker. Sheesh.

Stefan is a happy camper

by Volker Weber

tungsten_t-thumb.jpg

The Tungsten T has found a new home. I just love these win-win situations.

The Ultimate Sophistication: Simplicity

by Volker Weber

zappata.png

This may be in your future and you don't even know it yet. Raphaël Szwarc of ZOË fame is working on ZAPPATA Personal Groupware. Although I discussed a few of the ideas behind his project with him it is too early to disclose details. But rest assured that he is not making the same mistakes that a few other players made.

Due next year.

A short look at the iTrip

by Volker Weber

prod_itrip.jpg

Received a box from Marco Foellmer today. He is one of the authors of an upcoming Redbook on IBM Lotus Workplace. While he was staying with Lotus in Cambridge he got me this iTrip.

So today was the big day to try it out. My first impression was that it was complete crap. I simply could not get it to work at all. I had prepared Woodstock with the iTrip stations already but the iTrip would not switch stations. As Hajo uses to say: "If all else fails read the instructions". It turned out that you have to play the appropriate sound file and then as soon as the iTrip LED starts flashing you have to stop it. I played the sound 'til the end which seems to cancel the switch. Once I knew how this works I was able to change frequencies at will.

You need to find a frequency that does not have any other strong signal. And you have to be close to the receiving radio. So it works quite well in my car where the antenna is inside the windshield. Your mileage may vary depending on frequency and antenna placement.

Thank you, Marco ! :-)

In Pursuit of Grossness

by Esther Schindler

I thought the Gallery of Regrettable Food was the epitome of food entertainment -- in the opposite way of the Food Porn on, say, the FoodTV network:

They're not really recipe books. They're ads for food companies, with every recipe using the company's products, often in unexpected ways. (Hot day? Kids love a frosty Bacon Milkshake!) There's not a single edible dish in the entire collection. The pictures in the books are ghastly - the Italian dishes look like a surgeon got a sneezing fit during an operation, and the queasy casseroles look like something on which the janitor dumps sawdust.

This was actually a printed book. I bought a copy, because, after all, Web sites can go away.

Now, though, one of my coworkers has found a companion to The Gallery: a collection of Weight Watcher's Recipe Cards from the 1970s.

These cards mystify me. None of them have calorie or nutrition information of any kind, and in some instances it's hard to tell what's dietetic about the recipes at all, except that they're unspeakably grim. And yet also, completely insane. They appear to be from a much kookier era of Weight Watchers. There's a certain serve-it-at- your-next-key-party freakiness to a lot of these dishes.

Dehydrated onion flakes are in almost everything here. Apparently Weight Watchers dieticians depended heavily on dried onion flakes, and pimientos, too.

Enjoy. But not before lunch.

Dino day with Philipp

by Volker Weber

senckenberg.jpg

I shall be busy today with Philipp, son of good friends Barbara and Thomas. :-) This is going to be a big day for both of us. A number of "firsts" are going to happen. Him riding with me without his parents. Me going to the museum with a young kid.

Reviewing the O2 XDA2, part 1

by Volker Weber

o2_xda_ii_org.jpgLast night I had a hard time going to bed because I had a new toy to play with: The all new XDA2, a follow up to the successful first version, now also sporting a camera.

This is one neat hardware. Solid shell, good screen, feels heavy but not too heavy, triband GSM phone(900/1800/1900), 128 meg of RAM, 32 meg of ROM, Bluetooth, IR, VGA-sized camera. It comes with a lot of accessories out of the box, including a stereo headset. A nice touch: You don't have to carry the docking station when travelling because it has a litte adapter plug from the connector to the charging cable. It replaces the cradle when you are on the go.

While the hardware is excellent the software is so Microsoft, that it becomes almost useless if you do not subcsribe to that religion. The first thing I tried was to actually install Outlook 2002 (which required activiation) with ActiveSync 3.7. It turned out it was next to impossible to move data from the Palm desktop to Outlook. Example: You can export from Palm as VCF but Outlook only imported the first contact from the file. The device also failed to receive a 1000++ contacts via Bluetooth. It would always only pick up the same four of them. And contacts are really easy compared to appointments.

The solution to this problem was uninstalling Outlook (MS, you can scratch one activated product from your database) and install the swiss army knife a.k.a. XTNDConnect PC. This is a product that lets you sync across a multitude of devices and applications. In my case I simply hooked up the XDA2 with Palm Desktop. All the data was there anyway. There were a few glitches with old repeating calendar entries creates eons ago with Notes but other than that it worked really nice.

Next step was to dumb down the device to its core funtions. Disable all the clutter from menus and "New" popups. It turned out that you can set the input to a Graffiti lookalike that I am much more comfortable with than with the new Graffiti 2 in my Tungsten T3. I expect it is going to be kind of difficult to remove all this O2 customization that forces the user onto O2 territory. I need to do that because the device is going to be used with Vodafone instead.

One of the things I could not get to work was to connect the machine to a BT access point and from there to the internet. It only seems to support outgoing "modem" type connections. If you know how to connect to a wireless network other than GSM/GPRS, please let me know.

Would this machine earn the editor-refuses-to-give-it-back award? The hardware would but definitely not the software. WinCE (or whatever MS calls it this year) is just so much worse than PalmOS that I don't know where to start. You simply need a lot more clicks to get things done.

On the other hand this machine is a perfect match to Ute's needs: Calendar and contacts, a very usable phone, an MP3 player for audio books and finally a camera. Instead of carrying multiple devices (PDA, phone, camera, MP3 player) -- which she never did -- she can now have it all in one machine.

I will keep you posted how things are going in a few weeks.

Turning off your SSID is dumb

by Volker Weber

Good, short white paper explains why turning off your WiFi access point's SSID broadcast is not only bad for security, it's also bad for performance.

Contrary to a common belief that the SSID is a WLAN security feature and its exposure a security risk, the SSID is nothing more than a wireless-space group label. It cannot be successfully hidden. Attempts to hide it will not only fail, but will negatively impact WLAN performance, and may result in additional exposure of the SSID to passive scanning. The performance impact of this misguided effort will be felt in multiple WLAN scenarios, including simple operations like joining a WLAN, and in significantly longer roaming times.

[via WiFi Net News and Boing Boing]

AppleQuest Part VIII

by Volker Weber

Irgendwo bei Apple im Lager gibt es einen Stapel iSight Kameras. Eine davon hat Stefan vor gut einem Monat bezahlt, aber nie bekommen. Mittlerweile hat er am Telefon schon ein paar Stündchen mit Apple und TNT telefoniert. Sicherlich hat die Aktion auf der Apple-Seite schon mehr gekostet als die Kamera selbst.

Ich denke es wäre langsam billiger, wenn sich bei Apple Deutschland einer ins Taxi setzt und eine iSight nach Buchloe bringt. Vielleicht gibt's ja auch einen Kaffee und ein Erinnerungsbild. :-)

More >

No, this is not a casemod

by Volker Weber

palmminicradle.jpg

This is a mini cradle that just came out from palmOne. Sells for 50 bucks. It says it is powered by USB. So you will see the blue glowing light and the hotsysnc button in the dark. It does not say whether it is also charging the device. Works with Tungsten C, W, T, T2, T3, m500 series, i705, Zire 71.

Looks cool but is not on my wanna-have-this list. This thing however is.

Reviewing Tungsten T3, part 3

by Volker Weber

[Continued from part 2]

After upgrading the firmware to production level and then applying the first fix pack, the T3 has been working without a single glitch. Its operation is simply perfect. I feel safe now with this machine and have passed the T on to Stefan. No need to accumulate machines.

I am still a huge fan of the Tungsten T line. They do exactly what I need. The hardware feels rock solid without being too heavy. Is there anything missing? Not really. Obviously one could add a GSM phone and a WLAN interface and I am pretty confident that palmOne will do this in the future. You may recall that I already had a Tungsten W here, that I did not particularly like because it was lacking Bluetooth. So combining BT and WLAN into one device is most likely the next step. The Treo 600, combining a Palm with a mobile phone is already out. palmOne has all the piece parts and needs to build a good package with enough battery life to make it worthwhile.

For now I am really happy with the Tungsten T3 and you will hear more about it in the future since it definitely positively has earned the editor-refuses-to-give-it-back award. :-)

Bling

by Volker Weber

bling.jpg

Watch it. And another one.

Mozilla Thunderbird 0.4 released

by Volker Weber

Index of /pub/mozilla.org/thunderbird/releases/0.4

DynDNS and Linksys Routers

by Volker Weber

After I received and installed my Linksys router, it turned out that it was updating DynDNS too often and got me blacklisted. Linksys has finally resolved this issue with firmware 1.42.3, according to this bulletin issued by DynDNS:

For the past several months, DynDNS.org has been monitoring a significant increase in the amount of resources consumed by automated updates originating from Linksys WRT54G routers. We have worked with Linksys to resolve this issue, and the conclusions section at the end of this page provides information on how to help us correct this problem. All Linksys WRT54G owners should read that information and take the actions described as soon as possible.

I was somewhat confused by the fact that the US firmware has been updated whereas the European version is still at 1.42.2. The router does work with both firmware branches. This is my router with 1.42.3:

linksys1423a.png

However, WLAN is restricted to channels 1 though 11. This is the main downside if you apply the wrong version. The firmware will also allow the router to send with 1 W (max) which is outside of our specs that only allow 100 mW sustained.

linksys1423b.png

Since the router does not use the maximum output when it is not required, there is in fact no change other than the lower number of available channels.

As the router software is published under the GPL, there are a number of modifications that work around other bugs in the software. In the current official release PPTP is broken but has been fixed by third parties. Find modified versions here. The usual disclaimers apply: At your own risk, batteries not included, void where prohibited, yada yada.

Stop what you are doing

by Volker Weber

... and read Things My Girlfriend And I Have Argued About. Within two hours I have hardly finished half of that page. I have been laughing so hard that I had to put Snoopy down because I could not balance him anymore on my belly. Will continue tomorrow.

Fun with NOTAMs

by Volker Weber

Capt. Hajo berichtet ein Bonmot aus den NOTAMs (Notice to airmen), das sind die Bulletins, die von Piloten gelesen werden müssen:

In EDHL Lübeck sollte man im Moment aufpassen, wenn man im Behelfs-Terminal auf seinen Abflug wartet, ich würde mich da nicht in die Nähe der Scheiben setzen ;-). Original-Text:

Q) EDWW/QMNLT/IV/NBO/A/000/999/5348N01043E005

JET ACFT PARKING ON THE MAIN RAMP IN FRONT OF PROVISIONAL TERMINAL BUILDING. USE CAUTION WHEN STARTING TXI. AVOID JET BLASTING THE BUILDING.

Mit anderen Worten: Gegenüber von der Halteposition steht ein Behelfsterminal. Man möge aufpassen, das beim Anlassen nicht wegzupusten.

Generating PHP Applications... with Excel?

by Volker Weber

Harry Fuecks takes note of Jedox Worksheet-Server:

Just as you thought you'd seen it all, you run into something like Jedox's Worksheet-Server and cant help but be impressed. Not only is it a novel and ingenious approach to working with PHP, it's truly an Enterprise Level solution which could directly benefit organisations using it.

Hey, I told you so more than a year ago.

When Technology Is Heartwarming

by Volker Weber

David Pogue of the New York Times talks about his iSight moment:

And then, suddenly, there it was: My wife Jennifer's live image and her voice, transmitted in real time 3,500 miles across the globe -- instantly, crystal clear, and (by the way) free. I paraded around the coffee shop with my laptop and the iSight, showing her the local ambiance. (Jennifer, grinning: "Hey, buy me one of those chocolate croissants!") Maybe I was just overtired and sentimental, but it was an almost overwhelming experience.

She rounded up the kids. They didn't seem to grasp the full scope of the technological miracle before them, which I found tremendously reassuring; I could see for myself that none of the traveling dad's worst nightmares had come true. We caught up for awhile; I told a silly bedtime story to the kids; we showed each other how it was dark out in England, but still bright at home. Finally, after about 20 minutes, we "hung up."

There's a lot of junk in technology, a lot of hassle and frustration, a lot of disappointment. But this moment was like a TV commercial. It was an emotional, powerful, simple, perfect example of how technology can change a moment, solve a problem, and despite the gulf of time and distance, bring you face to face with the people you love.

Somewhat related, but of course less emotional: :-)

I talked to Simon Phipps this week for my story about Sun dropping the Eclipse bid, using an iSight on both ends. It does make a huge difference in trust when you can see someone you are talking to. Luckily both of us use a Mac.

Ein Weihnachtsgedicht

by Volker Weber

Kam heute per Mail von Schweppes:

Denkt Euch ich habe das Christkind gesehen,
es war beim Finanzamt zu betteln und fleh'n.
Denn das Finanzamt ist gerecht und teuer,
verlangt vom Christkind die Einkommensteuer.

Das Amt will noch wissen, ob es angehen kann,
dass das Christkind so viel verschenken kann.
Das Finanzamt hat so nicht kapiert,
wo von das Christkind dies finanziert.

Das Christkind rief: "Die Zwerge stellen die Geschenke her",
da wollte das Finanzamt wissen, wo die Lohnsteuer wär.
Für den Wareneinkauf müsste es Quittungen geben,
und die Erlöse wären anzugeben.

"Ich verschenke das Spielzeug an Kinder" wollte das Christkind sich wehren,
dann wäre die Frage der Finanzierung zu klären.
Sollte das Christkind vielleicht Kapitalvermögen haben,
wäre dieses jetzt besser zu sagen.

"Meine Zwerge besorgen die Teile,
und basteln die vielen Geschenke in Eile"
Das Finanzamt fragte wie verwandelt,
ob es sich um innergemeinschaftliche Erwerbe handelt.

Oder kämen die Gelder, das wäre ein besonderer Reiz,
von einem illegalen Spendenkonto aus der Schweiz.
"Ich bin doch das Christkind, ich brauche kein Geld",
Ich beschenke doch die Kinder in der ganzen Welt."

"Aus allen Ländern kommen die Sachen",
mit den wir die Kinder glücklich machen."
Dieses wäre ja wohl nicht geheuer,
denn da fehle ja die Einfuhrumsatzsteuer.

Das Finanzamt von diesen Sachen keine Ahnung,
meinte dies wäre ein Fall für die Steuerfahndung.

Mit diesen Sachen, welch ein Graus,
fällt Weihnachten dieses Jahr wohl aus.
Denn das Finanzamt sieht es so nicht ein,
und entzieht dem Christkind den Gewerbeschein.

Silke Herbst, Weihnachten 2002

Miserable failure

by Volker Weber

I don't know whether I should laugh or cry. Look what Google lists as number one for the search term miserable failure.

[Thanks, Sebastian]

Vielen, vielen Dank

by Volker Weber

Aber ich habe wirklich schon genug Einladungen zu Kontaktbörsen wie dieser:

openBC: Die erste deutschsprachige Online-Kontaktbörse für Business-Professionals, die schnell, offen und unkompliziert Business-Kontakte on demand liefert!

Business-Professionals klingt auch schon richtig deutsch. Aber nur on demand. :-)

Alles wird knapper

by Volker Weber

Da spart man, wo man kann.

Weird link of the day department

by Volker Weber

lixus.jpg

Certainly the most useless Linux port out there.

English - ze second language of Germany

by Volker Weber

Random Stuff:

One of ze nice sings about us Germans is zat we are extremely fluent in Englisch. Listen, for example, to zis gentleman talk about ze nice city of Dortmund.

ohmygawd ...

Works as expected

by Volker Weber

Long and winding story @ The Register. Conclusion:

Microsoft is, as we keep hearing, serious about security, and it's also very serious about automating its systems so that they magically, painlessly, helpfully keep your systems up to date. Microsoft, however, is demonstrably incapable (see above) of automating its own systems to the extent that the automation itself is up to date. Therefore, the more automated it all gets, the more likely things are to break, and the less likely it is that you'll be able to dig yourself out and fix it by hand.

More >

2 Hertz awol

by Volker Weber

Snoopy:~ vowe$ sysctl hw.cpufrequency
hw.cpufrequency: 799999998
Snoopy:~ vowe$

New trends in advertising

by Volker Weber

Holy cow!

Lunch anyone?

by Volker Weber

See the video >

Sun drops bid to join Eclipse

by Volker Weber

Ending several months of negotiations, Sun Microsystems has decided not to join the Eclipse open-source tools effort backed by rival IBM.

In addition to dropping the plan to join Eclipse, Sun said Wednesday that it will no longer try to merge the Sun-sponsored NetBeans.org open-source Java tools project with Eclipse. The Eclipse open-source project, founded by IBM in 2001, is an IBM-owned consortium which has gained the membership of several development tools companies over the past year.

More >

Groove Networks Webcast Addresses Distributed Project Management Challenges

by Volker Weber

Groove Networks Inc. [...leading bla bla...] today made available a webcast showcasing the benefits of using Groove Workspace Project Edition to manage distributed projects. Featuring two customer case studies and a demonstration of Groove Workspace Project Edition, the on-demand webcast is available at http://www.accelacomm.com/jlp/PR/0/10001142/.

The webcast requires you to sign up which I did not bother to fill out. It never ceases to amaze me to what length you can go to have people not look at your stuff.

Nice Wallpaper

by Volker Weber

killbillwallpapertn.jpg

Larger image. Download here>

Mehr Platz, weniger Geräusch

by Volker Weber

kathrein_ufd554_g.gif

Wie schon einmal berichtet haben wir einen Satellitenreceiver mit Festplattenrecorder Kathrein UFD 554 (technische Daten), der auf eine 40 GB Platte ca. 22 Stunden Fernsehprogramm aufnehmen kann. Da ist man schon etwas damit beschäftigt, regelmäßig Gesehenes und Ungesehenes zu löschen, damit er nicht überläuft. Wir haben so ein paar regelmäßige Aufzeichnungen, etwa täglich die Nachrichten, am Freitag die Talkshow im NDR3, dann c't Magazin, die Harald-Schmidt-Show und so weiter.

Letzte Woche habe ich nachgefragt, wie man die Maschine aufrüsten kann. Ergebnis: Bis 100 GB werden erkannt. Man suche sich also eine leise Festplatte, die etwas größer als 100 GB ist (von wegen 1024^3 > 1.000.000.000). Nachdem mir eine Samsung SV1203N empfohlen wurde, habe ich die heute bei einem kleinen Laden um die Ecke gekauft (lokale Wirtschaft unterstützen ist gut für's Karma).

Der Umbau ist denkbar einfach. Vom Strom trennen (Vorsicht: offenes Schaltnetzteil!), vier Schrauben lösen, Deckel abnehmen, zwei Schrauben am Plattenträger lösen, Kabel abziehen und Plattenträger raus. Dann die Platte tauschen und alles retour. Software muss nicht aufgespielt werden, da der Receiver seine Software im EPROM hält. Die neue Platte wird automatisch neu angelegt, so dass das Gerät sofort einsatzbereit ist.

Die neue Samsung-Platte ist un-glaub-lich leise. Vorher war eine IBM Deskstar (a.k.a. Deathstar) mit 40 GB und 7200 U/m eingebaut, jetzt sind es nur noch 5400 U/min. Wir haben also nicht nur gut 50 statt 22 Stunden Kapazität, sondern auch ein unhörbares Gerät. Sehr, sehr nett. :-)

Now playing

by Volker Weber

didolifeforrentharaldschmidtshow.jpg

Fixed this problem. Thanks for your help.

Lotusfürth

by Volker Weber

Für alle Daheimbleibenden: Eine Lotusphere-Nachlese in Deutschland. Nicht zum ersten Mal und sicher wieder nicht schlecht.

From: awasserer@edcom.de
Date: 2. Dezember 2003 15:38:22 MEZ
To: pr@vowe.de
Subject: Lotusphere Review 2004 am 10./11. März 2004

Sehr geehrter Herr Weber,

die Lotusphere Review hat bereits eine große Fangemeinde und findet am 10./11. März 2004 zum 9. Mal in Folge statt. Auf der Lotusphere Review 2004 erwarten Sie die komprimierten Inhalte der Lotusphere Orlando als 2-Tages-Veranstaltung in deutscher Sprache.

Termin: 10./11. März 2004
Ort: Fürth

Themen: IBM Lotus Notes / Domino 6.5.1/7, Lotus Workplace, eMeetings, Third PartyNews im Umfeld von Lotus Notes. Eine ausführliche Agenda finden Sie ab Anfang Februar 2004 auf der edcom Webseite*.

Highlights werden auch in diesem Jahr die zahlreichen Hands-On-PCs mit den neuesten Softwareversionen aus den USA sein, sowie das Come-Together am Abend des 10. März 2004. Dort können Sie den Informationsaustausch mit Gleichgesinnten in den Räumen von Softwerk in angenehmer Atmosphäre ausgiebig nutzen.

Anmeldung über www.edcom.de oder per Mail an die info@edcom.de.

Ich war 2002 einmal eingeladen, und habe sogar noch Ed mit hingeschleift. Wir kamen wegen Verspätungen im Flugzeug und auf der Autobahn auf den allerletzten Drücker. Mir hat's damals gut gefallen und ich fahre sicher nochmal wieder hin.


*) Stefan würde sagen "Helden der Technik". In Safari ist diese Webseite komplett leer.

AppleQuest Part VII

by Volker Weber

stefanohneisight.png

Stefan hat zwar seine iSight immer noch nicht, aber endlich mal jemand am Draht, der sich auskennt. Es besteht Hoffnung.

[Fortsetzung von ...]

Site redesign

by Volker Weber

What do you think?

Apple Store boss: 'crisis under control'

by Volker Weber

Apple has admitted that its European Apple Store has experienced 'teething problems' this year following the implementation of a new logistics system. It admits that at one time 39 per cent of its online customers experienced delivery delays, it said.

Crisis under control? A fire under control is still burning full blast. It just does not burn down the rest of the neighborhood.

More >

Reviewing Tungsten T3, part 2

by Volker Weber

[continued from part 1]

Received a call from palmOne support. It turned out I had a preproduction unit that did not yet have the golden master ROM. We quickly exchanged a flash utility and two ROM files via my Quickplace.

I moved those files to a SD card, then flashed the two ROMs, first the small one, then the large one, and I am now on a production level machine.

t3romupdate.png

More >

Palladium: Ein Chip, sie alle zu knechten?

by Volker Weber

Michael Voregger in Spiegel Online:

Wer seinen Rechner in fremde Hände gibt, verrät sehr viel über seine Persönlichkeit, und kaum jemand möchte einem Wirtschaftsunternehmen wie Microsoft darüer etwas mitteilen. Bis der schlüssige Gegenbeweis erbracht ist stehen Palladium, NGSCB, TCPA und TCG noch für ein Sicherheitssystem, da(s)s auf der Kontrolle der Anwender aufbaut und den Interessen der Industrie dient.

Normalerweise nennt Microsoft seine Produkte und Projekte immer recht griffig: Windows, Word, Longhorn (remember Cairo). Nur in diesem Fall heißt sowas plötzlich NGSCB (Next Generation Secure Computing Base). Ich denke, man soll sich das nicht so leicht merken können. Und wenn man es dann merkt, ist die Klotüre zu und der Schlüssel runtergespült.

Ähnlichkeiten mit diesem Cartoon von Clay Bennett sind rein zufällig und nicht beabsichtigt.

85 bounces

by Volker Weber

Just downloaded and installed Milestone 5 of Eclipse 3. It takes 85 bounces of the dock icon to load it, with only one Hello World sample in the Workspace.

I like to take this as a measure, since the icon stops bouncing when the application is done loading, not when the first window appears. Just for comparison: Safari, Word and NetNewsWire Lite take six bounces each. SubEthaEdit takes two.

On heavy rotation

by Volker Weber

dido.jpg

Today was the first day I was missing a feature on our DVB recorder (Digital Video Broadcast). I was watching a recording of Friday's Harald Schmidt Show. Two days ago Dido sang Life for rent, live and unplugged.

But if my life is for rent and I don’t learn to buy
Well I deserve nothing more than I get
Cos nothing I have is truly mine

While my heart is a shield and I won’t let it down
While I am so afraid to fail so I won’t even try
Well how can I say I’m alive

Her performance was not perfect but still very beautiful. I am going to watch this a few more time before erasing it. But I would seriously like to catch the soundtrack. I simply don't have the equipment to go from DVB to the Mac or PC.

On related news Simon reports that Norah Jones is coming out with a new album. He also points to out that Norah recorded with Wax Poetic before she hit it big time. Their song Angels is available for download. Whereas I found the original quite strange, I like the remix.

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