October 2007

Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop

by Volker Weber

Somebody from Novell not only sent me three Open Collaboration Client Solution DVDs but also an evaluation copy of Suse Linux Enterprise 10. All I need now is a serial for updates. ;-)

The last Windows machine has now officially left my office. Accounting is still on Windows but has been relegated from a VM running on Windows to one running on VMware Server in the basement.

IBM Open Collaboration Client Solution Live DVD

by Volker Weber

IBM Open Collaboration Client Solution

Compare the clock between the time the splash screen appears and after the client is fully loaded:

Notes 8 has finallly loaded

Windows Mobile 6 für Treo 750 (ohne v)

by Volker Weber

treo updater

Palm hat Windows Mobile 6 jetzt auch für "unbranded" Geräte freigegeben. Man beachte das Kleingedruckte.

More >

T- wie teuer

by Volker Weber

Nun traut sich T-Mobile also mit den Tarifen für das iPhone vor die Tür:

iphone

Macht in zwei Jahren:

399 + 25 + 24 * 49 = 1600
399 + 25 + 24 * 69 = 2080
399 + 25 + 24 * 89 = 2560

Aus dem Kleingedruckten:

Ab einem Datenvolumen von 200 MB (Complete M), 1 GB (Complete L) oder 5 GB (Complete XL) pro Monat wird die Bandbreite im jeweiligen Monat auf max. 64 kbit/s (Download) und 16 kbit/s (Upload) beschränkt.

Mit anderen Worten: Ab dann gibt es nur noch GPRS aber kein EDGE mehr. Wer träumte da bei der Einführung des iPhone noch von UMTS oder gar HSDPA?

Insulting

by Volker Weber

generic pc

This is the Leopard icon for a generic PC. I can only assume it is meant to insult the user of a run-off-the-mill PC. Not only does it show a BSOD, but it also shows a redesigned version with a blue swoosh on a Taiwan-style CRT in beige. Very much like your beautiful 30" screen you did not buy from Apple which screams DELL at you every time you sit in front of it.

The mother of all Leopard reviews

by Volker Weber

After reading John Siracusa's review, I don't see any reason to write another one:

I started this review talking about expectations. As I've learned more about Leopard, it's become increasingly clear where, exactly, those two-and-a-half years of development time went. Leopard is absolutely packed with improvements. It seems that not a corner of the OS has gone untouched.

So far I have only used the new O/S for a day or so. There have been zero difficulties so far, and I have yet to try any of the new features like Time Machine.

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Neither 8 nor 4294967274

by Volker Weber

quite a few drafts

Raven is now running on Leopard, Lucy is still on Tiger until I have a patched image which lets me install on 800 MHz.

Update: Lucy is now also running Leopard. And quite well, I might add.

lucy on leopard

Update: There is a bug I still had to discover. Lucy does not sleep. If I put her to sleep, she never really wakes up again. The display remains black. There obviously is an unresolved bug in 10.5 which led to the 800something MHz minimum requirement that I worked around.

Notes performance tuning

by Volker Weber

Problem:

You notice an increase in the time it takes to open a form containing several subforms, when some of these subforms load script libraries.

Workaround:

It was found that adding the LotusScript "Print" statement to the 'Initialize' event of each of the subforms resulted in a return to normal performance levels.

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New poll: when are you going to install Mac OS X Leopard

by Volker Weber

I am aware that a large number of readers do not have a good answer for this poll. Still I would be interested how fast Mac users will be upgrading to Leopard:

The results:

when leopard

New York Times: The Outsourced Brain

by Volker Weber

Until that moment, I had thought that the magic of the information age was that it allowed us to know more, but then I realized the magic of the information age is that it allows us to know less. It provides us with external cognitive servants — silicon memory systems, collaborative online filters, consumer preference algorithms and networked knowledge. We can burden these servants and liberate ourselves.

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[Thanks, Richard]

Same goes for my Ex wife

by Volker Weber

Don’t over pay and you will be fine on a resale, that’s the key to any stepping stone aircraft. Buy it and fly it, don’t spend any money on it (other than gauges). If my old 172 A wasn’t so ugly I may have flown her a couple of more years…same goes for my Ex wife . The only money I lost in the 172 A was a bunch of unneeded upgrades that I spent on her, same goes for my Ex wife….. But I still like that old 172 A…and same goes for my Ex wife.

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[Thanks, Hajo]

Schwachfug

by Volker Weber

Liebe Journalisten und Journalistinnen,

Es geht noch schlimmer: Liebe JournalistInnen. Oder JournalistAußen.

Wireless setup completed

by Volker Weber

wlan

With concrete walls and floors separating the rooms at vowe's magic flying circus I needed a more elaborate setup. Instead of fiddling with different settings, I set the Netgear access points to automatic and they spread nicely around the frequency range. The fourth access point Bridge provides Internet access to my neighbor who has been out of service ever since he attempted to switch providers.

Es geht auch ohne

by Volker Weber

Des einen Freud:

GDL freut sich über bundesweite Zugausfälle

Des anderen Leid:

Millionen Pendler sind von den Behinderungen betroffen

Die Konsequenz:

Wegen des Streikrisikos müssten Unternehmer zudem künftig den "optimalen Mix von Schienen- und Straßenverkehr" zugunsten der Straße verschieben.

Mich wundert nicht so sehr, wie präzise sich die Bahner in den Fuß schießen. Erstaunlich ist, wie schnell sie nachladen.

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RIM releases Facebook application for BlackBerry

by Volker Weber

Research In Motion (RIM) (NASDAQ:RIMM)(TSX:RIM) today launched Facebook(R) for BlackBerry(R) Smartphones, an exciting new BlackBerry software application that enables fast, streamlined and optimized mobile access to the popular Facebook social utility using a BlackBerry smartphone. The application leverages the push-based BlackBerry system architecture and Facebook Platform to create an unparalleled mobile experience for Facebook users.

Download here >

Sonos gets a decent search

by Volker Weber

sonos 2.5

One of the things I have not mentioned in yesterday's post about Sonos 2.5 is that the new software finally has a decent search across the music library and music services.

Google Mail to support IMAP

by Volker Weber

gmail imap

Google is rolling out IMAP support to Google Mail accounts.

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[Thanks, Malte]

Gute Idee

by Volker Weber

ich werd logitech mal ne email schreiben
die sollen ne tastatur erfinden mit krümelschublade !

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Sonos 2.5 with Napster support

by Volker Weber

Sonos releases version 2.5 of their software today. Biggest news is Napster support for Germany and the UK. For 10 Eur a month you now have access to 5 million tracks on Napster. There is a 31 day trial for existing and new customers attached. You don't even need to register with Napster — it works out of the box.

zonebridge

In related news Sonos announces the 99 Euro ZoneBridge which extends the Sonos WLAN to fill gaps in the mesh or to connect the Sonos network to your Internet router if the first ZonePlayer is nowhere near a router.

Sonos 2.5 now also supports share level security (not that you should ever use that) on Windows Home Server and the Netgear ReadyNAS as well as drives connected to the Apple Airport Extreme.

Führungswechsel

by Volker Weber

Jena, 22. Oktober 2007 - Jürgen Wege, Mitglied des Vorstand seit 1998, verlässt die DNUG. Auf der Mitgliederversammlung, die unmittelbar vor der Herbstkonferenz am 12. November stattfinden wird, gibt er seinen Rücktritt offiziell bekannt. Als Nachfolger von Wege kandidiert als bisher Einziger Jürgen Zirke (PAVONE AG), der bereits Mitglied des erweiterten Vorstands ist.

Das ist nur konsequent. Seit dem Group-Verkauf hat Jürgen Wege nicht mehr viel mit Notes am Hut.

Widsets Is Coming Out Of Beta

by Volker Weber

WidSets Team has been busy lately to revamp the service! We have been redoing the whole thing: database, software, web pages and mobile client. And next week we will be bringing it all alive for you! On Tuesday 23 October, we will close the old system, and start ramping up the new one. The migration will take some time and we are assuming a service break for Tuesday. You will get an upgrade of your WidSets client on your phone when you log in the first time after migration. Your old username and dashboard will remain, only the order of widgets could be a little bit different, but the dashboard can be easily rearranged by logging in at www.widsets.com.

More >

Autumn is here

by Volker Weber

Frankfurt, Germany Current Conditions - 10:00 AM CEST Oct. 22

Temperature: 38°F / 3°C | Humidity: 77% | Pressure: 30.40in / 1030hPa | Conditions: Scattered Clouds | Wind Direction: NE | Wind Speed: 7mph / 11km/h | Updated: 10:00 AM CEST

The beekeeper has delivered the new 2007 honey

by Volker Weber

honey

And it is tasty as ever. Thank you, Pieterjan.

From Islay

by Volker Weber

fromislay

I am finding lots of presents at my doorstep. Today there was a particular nice one. Thank you, Vesey.

8888

by Volker Weber

8888

We have moved

by Volker Weber

tuerschild

The movers are currently schlepping boxes. We will be busy for a few more days unpacking them. Sometime next week everything should be back to normal.

Find the new address here. Please also note, that our regular phone number will temporarily be unreachable as we are switching providers from Arcor back to Telekom.

It has been 20 years since I last moved. Luckily we did not have too much stuff accumulated. And still, my back (and some other parts of my body) hurt from packing boxes and moving essential equipment. The new house is fully operational. We are just waiting for books, clothing, and miscellaneous stuff.

Idea Jam for the IBM Lotus Community to launch in November

by Bruce Elgort

Before you read on to the announcement below, I want to say a big thank you to all of the Idea Jam beta testers including one of vowe.net's editors - Ragnar Schierholz. Their constructive feedback has proven to be extremely valuable. Idea Jam will officially launch on November 20th. And now on to the announcment:

Today Elguji Software announced their new “Elguji Ideas” software that will be used to support a new social networking site for the IBM Lotus Community called “Idea Jam” (IdeaJam.net). The site will officially launch on Tuesday November 20, 2007.

Idea Jam is a site where users of IBM’s Lotus software products can exchange ideas on how to improve Lotus products. Others can help promote and/or demote ideas, as well as, providing feedback through comments. Popular ideas will rise to the top. The Idea Jam, unlike blogs and discussion forums, allows a single place for the Lotus community to share and promote ideas and suggestions on how to improve IBM Lotus software.

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Nokia sagt "Akku lädt nicht"

by Volker Weber

Habe meiner Schwester ein Nokia Handy geschenkt. Hat hier bestens funktioniert. Nun sagt das Handy nach kurzer Zeit "Akku lädt nicht", wenn man es an den Strom anschließt. Ich kenne das Problem nicht, weil ich es immer mit einem anderen Netzteil geladen habe — ihres war noch originalverpackt. Kennt jemand das? Was kann man dagegen tun? Wo ist der Fehler zu suchen?

Technologies we're glad are dead

by Esther Schindler

Okay, so this is blatent self-promotion, but I'm pretty pleased with the way this article turned out. Because I think it's important to remember, in our daily complaining about technology that is still imperfect, just how far we as an industry have come.


It's easy to cry over the products we loved and lost. But let's take time to appreciate the many ways in which technology really has improved, and the many geeky things we no longer need to worry about.

What technologies do you think I left off the list?

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Besta #1 and #2

by Volker Weber

besta 1 besta 1

Powertool

by Volker Weber

metabo

Genau die richtige Kombination von Leistung und Handlichkeit. Dicke Empfehlung.

Convenience Wins, Hubris Loses

by Volker Weber

Hello. My name is Ian Rogers. I’ve been building digital media applications since 1992, dropped out of a Computer Science PhD program to tour with Beastie Boys in 1995, and have been purchased by both AOL and Yahoo! in the ten years since then, with a stint running the new media department for a record label in the middle. Currently I work at Yahoo! Entertainment on Yahoo! Music. ...

While running “New Media” at Grand Royal I released the first day/date digital/physical release with At The Drive-In’s “Relationship of Command”. Thanks to EMI requirements (hi Ted! hi Melissa!) it was DRM’d WMA and we sold about 12 copies in the first month, probably all to journalists. Years later I helped Yahoo! build Yahoo! Music Unlimited, a Windows Media Janus DRM-based subscription service. Record labels for their part participated in no end of control experiments: SDMI, Liquid Audio, Pressplay, Coral, etc, and they continue to this day....

I’m here to tell you today that I for one am no longer going to fall into this trap. If the licensing labels offer their content to Yahoo! put more barriers in front of the users, I’m not interested. Do what you feel you need to do for your business, I’ll be polite, say thank you, and decline to sign. I won’t let Yahoo! invest any more money in consumer inconvenience. I will tell Yahoo! to give the money they were going to give me to build awesome media applications to Yahoo! Mail or Answers or some other deserving endeavor. I personally don’t have any more time to give and can’t bear to see any more money spent on pathetic attempts for control instead of building consumer value. Life’s too short. I want to delight consumers, not bum them out.

Repeat after me: DRM is bad for the customer.

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Kleines IKEA-Diplom

by Volker Weber

Ich schraube gerade einiges IKEA-Holz zusammen. Das kann man für wenig Geld machen lassen, aber ich will es selbst machen. Körperliche Arbeit erschöpft mich zwar, macht mich aber auch zufrieden. Einige Erkenntnisse:

Can anybody explain this?

by Volker Weber

Konstantin has posted one of those error message, that had me shaking my head in disbelief when I first saw them:

notes zen

I don't really want to know what the error message means — ok, I want to know it — but who in their right mind would even want to display it? Does this work as designed? If so, has anybody shot the designer?

And there are more people stupefied.

Automated Home: Sonos ZoneBridge 100

by Volker Weber

Automated Home.com has the skinny on a new Sonos device which does not play music, but extends your mesh network. The device is supposed to be called ZoneBridge BR100. A picture suggests that it has two Ethernet ports.

You may recall that Sonos runs its own wireless network, which is easy to setup as pushing two buttons. It does not connect to your Wi-Fi network, so you need to run (at least) one wire from your internet router/switch to one ZonePlayer. For many people this means that they have to place a ZonePlayer into a room where they do not want to listen to music, such as the home office for instance. The new device however would allow you to connect your Sonos network to the Internet without sacrificing one ZonePlayer.

Waiting for DSL

by Volker Weber

netgear bridge

A wireless bridge to my neighbor, courtesy of Netgear, provides Internet connectivity while I am waiting for the DSL line.

Formula 1 Championship still open

by Volker Weber

After Hammilton dropped out of the Shanghai race, and Raikkönen and Alonso finished first and second, the championship is still open:

Lewis Hammilton 107
Fernando Alonso 103
Kimi Raikkönen  100

Brazil will be the showdown.

Hoeflichst

by Volker Weber

hoeflichst

Hier schreibt der Chef. Er versteckt sich nicht hinter einem Mitarbeiter, Lieferproblemen, widrigen Umständen oder ähnlichem. Er sagt einfach "ich habe einen Fehler gemacht". So was liebe ich.

Die Verspätung ist völlig unproblematisch, also brennt nichts an. Fehler passieren, und sie sind entschuldbar. Vor allem, wenn man höflich bittet.

Apple updates software for iPod nano 3g and iPod classic

by Volker Weber

ipod nano coverflow

Apple has issued software version 1.0.2 for the 3rd generation iPod nano and the iPod classic. Suddenly Coverflow becomes usable on both devices. With the previous version you would find many duplicates of album art, because Coverflow was strictly sorted by artists. If you had any compilations in your library, you would find them multiple times, one for each artist. With 1.0.2 every album appears only once.

Lotus Component Designer, RIP

by Volker Weber

Don't expect a press release about this, but Lotus Component Designer (LCD) has been put into maintenance mode, read: will die a slow and horrible death. A few weeks ago the development team was dismembered and reassigned.

LCD is the artist formerly known as Workplace Designer. Parts of it were originally developed by Trilog and it was designed to bring document centric applications to Websphere. At IBM it was meant to open portlet development to Notes class developers. Lotus tried several things to get developers interested, with entitlements for instance, but apparently not too many people were interested. Those who were, are now SOL. IBM is still trying to figure out how to migrate data stored in the LCD XML document store.

If you want to do Portal development, you are now stuck with Rational Application Developer or Portlet Factory, originally developed by Bowstreet. IBM's spin on this is that Portlet Factory and LCD are development tools with significant overlap in functionality. Well, yes, they both build portlets. But that's about it.

Introducing the BT FON Community

by Ragnar Schierholz

British telecom (BT) and FON Community today announced that BT is partnering up with FON. While many telco's run their own networks of wifi hotspots (e.g. Swisscom Mobile, T-Mobile) and probably consider the community their competitor, BT apparently goes a different route.

"We have integrated FON in BT and now more than more than 3 million Total Broadband customers are invited to join the enormous global community of people sharing their WiFi."

3 million new Foneros just like that? At first that sounds like a smart move for Fon. But has BT really thought this through? Are customers actually asked whether they want to join and do they have choice to say no? Then probably those 3 million will turn out to be significantly less. As usual, I'm not a legal expert, but this sounds to me like a change of contract conditions which would mean BT's broadband customers could more or less immediately terminate their contract if they don't want to become Fonero's and BT doesn't want to keep them as non-Fonero's. And what if these BT customers choose to become Bills, does BT get a share as well?


And of course one would hope that BT really makes sure that the WLAN routers they deliver are properly secured. With such a deployment they should soon become an interesting target for all those blackhats out there.

Update: Well, on the new communty's btfon.com website there's the answer to the question. Existing BT broadband customers must opt-in to become Foneros. And if they don't, they can buy vouchers via BT and so BT does get their share. Thanks for the hint, "verum blogatis"

Hanging out in RL

by Volker Weber

Posting on vowe.net will be sparse in the next two weeks. I have tons of things to take care of, and none of them are related to the internets.

UKLUG 2007 update

by Bruce Elgort

Stuart McIntyre and Neil Burston give a short seven minute update on the UK Lotus User Group meeting which was held on September 26, 2007. It sounds like the organizers Warren, Kitty, Matt White, Julian Woodward, Mike Smith, Bill Buchan, Paul Mooney and Darren Adams put on a wonderful event.

More >

Something really useful

by Volker Weber

When Paul asked me about Ute's mail address, I knew something was afoot. When he asked me last week, to which address to post something, I knew something was AFOOT. Today I received something I can put to really good use:

mb_poweradapter_125

A second Macbook power adapter. And it arrived at exactly the right day. Thank you Paul and Lynne!

Old vowe.net archive pages

I explain difficult concepts in simple ways. For free, and for money. Clue procurement and bullshit detection.

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