Nontrivial Exercises

CocoaDevHouse Dallas - Saturday March 4

Are you a Mac fan / enthusiast / developer, have great ideas on collaboration or collaborative apps? Do you live in or near Dallas? Are you available this Saturday, March 4, from late morning until …. whenever? Do you want to meet other tech-minded people in Dallas?

If you answer yes to one or more of these questions, be sure to check out the CocoaDevHouse Dallas event this Saturday. You can find out more on the wiki, and RSVP on upcoming.org. I’m planning on attending, and I don’t even use a Mac! But, as you possibly can tell, I am a fan of the Mac and the Mac community.

Technorati Tags: cocoa, cocoadevhouse, Dallas, mac, development

Been a Wheels Off Week

I haven’t posted at all this week – I’ve had several things going on. Lots at work, lots at home, been very tired. Now I am able to start writing again – yay!

I want to take the opportunity now to give a shout out to my sister, Allison, a very prolific blogger and purveyor of unique insights on the world of pet hospitals, California, and all things twenty–something. Check out her blog, and notice the picture of our dad, who gave us the wonderful gift of abnormalcy. We love you, dad!

Flock Releases v0.5.11

Flock release 0.5.11 is here!. This next version of the open-source browser that aims to deliver an entire on-line experience, and not just a browser, adds some stability, bug fixes, and cleans up some of the features. I had been casually playing around with the previous version, 0.4.10, for the past few weeks on a machine that I do not regularly use, and found it very intriguing, but somewhat buggy.

I just installed 0.5.11 on my main laptop, my M200, and have been using it for the past couple of hours and really like what I see so far. It seems much more stable and overall cleaner than 0.4.10.

A couple of very intriguing features in Flock are the blog editor and the "shelf". The shelf is essentially a way to capture almost any type of content from the web and make it available for you to use later, e.g. in a blog post. The blog editor is a pretty straightforward yet very functional utility that supports categories, direct html editing, multiple blogs and tagging.

I actually wrote this post entirely from Flock and I used the shelf. I first went to the Flock Art group pool in flickr and found the icon above. I then clicked on "All Sizes" in flickr, and got to the largest size. I then clicked and drug the image up to the shelf in Flock. Next, I opened the blog editor and connected to this blog. I then drug the image from the shelf down into the blog editor, and here it is! One note, I was almost done writing this post when I pressed some key combination that closed the tab. It offered to save the post as a draft and I just closed the dialog box rather than clicking on Save (shame on me). My post was gone, so I’m writing it again. Perhaps mostly a user error, but it would be nice to have an option to "cancel" the closing of the tab when there is an unsaved blog post.

There is one obstacle that will keep me from using Flock extensively, however. Roboform, an excellent utility that works like a plugin to IE and Firefox, does not currently work with Flock. I have tried several different ways of making the Firefox version of the Roboform extension work with Flock, but to no avail. I have opened a support request with Roboform, and hopefully they can update the application quickly to work with Flock (which is based on Mozilla anyway).

You can get the latest release of Flock on their developer page.

technorati tags: flock, browser, roboform

Being Purposeful About Your Privacy - Part 1

There are not always heroes looking out for our best interests, waiting to come to our rescue when someone has done us wrong. Protecting ourselves is something we all have to learn how to do. The digitally-connected life, however, lends itself to new issues of protection and privacy, and we need to be purposeful in how we share “ourselves” when online.

It occurred to me this afternoon that I have set-up myself to interact in four distinct ways on the Internet. I have, and still do, wrestle with how much of myself to share on this most public of public places, and quite without foresight have found that I have organized my interactions into four distinct profiles, or faces, to others on the Internet.

After thinking about what I did, I believe this is a reasonable way to structure your interactions and your “publicity” or “reachability” or “sharability” – however you want to see it – as you work with others on the Internet. We already do this with other forms of communication – we have a home address and phone number that we don’t give out to just anyone, we have a business address and phone number that we give out with less discretion, and perhaps we have a cell phone or other means of contact that we give out to only a few people (though that is not so much the case anymore with cell phones).

Privacy in the ever-more-connected world is a significant and worthy topic to consider, and worthy of a well thought-out strategy for yourself the more connected you become. Consider the recent commotion over the Google Desktop 3 release, and the feature that allows the archiving of your computer’s index on Google’s servers. Marc Orchant has an excellent analysis and discussion of this feature and the ensuing hubbub (BTW, check out Marc as he now writes for ZDNet: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Orchant/). Marc writes:

Continue reading ‘Being Purposeful About Your Privacy - Part 1′

Using a Bluetooth Headset on my Toshiba M200 Update

After declaring victory in my effort to use a Bluetooth headset with my M200, I must now retreat. It seems that the Toshiba Bluetooth stack version 4.00.23(T) does indeed work, but only for a while. Usually, after rebooting, it then fails to connect to the Bluetooth radio and renders the whole thing useless.

If you have tried this and it works, or if you have another workaround, please let me know! I’m going to try to open a support ticket with Toshiba to get their official response on this. Pretty frustrating.

Here are some screenshots of what happens when I try to reconnect after rebooting.

Continue reading ‘Using a Bluetooth Headset on my Toshiba M200 Update’

New Feeds for This Blog, and Eliminating Chicklet Overload

Since moving this blog my very own domain – http://nontrivialexercises.com/ – I have also set-up a new feed. While I’m still using Typepad to host my blog, I want to customize my feed and platform-proof it, so that if I change blogging platforms the feed can remain.

So, the new feed is below – please update accordingly:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/nontrivialexercises

Also, you may have noticed this little orange icon in websites or blogs recently. It is a new standard icon to represent syndicated content / feeds on a site. The idea is that we can agree on one look and feel for a feed icon, and eliminate all the various chicklets and associated “chicklet overload” for different feed readers. For example, here are some of the chicklets that I could show to subscribe to this blog:

Overload. You really don’t need them anyway, as they all grab the same feed and just stuff it into the appropriate feed reader / aggregator.

Feedburner makes it easy to use the standard feed icon – they have a pre-created button you can use. You may have noticed that I have put the new feed icon in my Subscribe section on the right column a couple of weeks ago, but I have kept some of the other chicklets. Well, I’m taking them off today and just keeping the standard icon. I encourage you to do the same and help eliminate chicklet overload!

Technorati Tags: rss, icons, feed, design, blog

Smart Design for …. Thermometers?

This past Sunday morning I woke up and couldn’t open my eyes. I also couldn’t go back to sleep, so this was a problem I had to deal with. I knew, after finally prying my eyelids open and feeling the burning in my left eye, that I had pink eye.

I went to a local emergent care place (I will trust them to treat anything that I already know I have, but not to diagnose anything new) and was rewarded with some nice eye drops. When the nurse was taking my vitals, she ran this tube-like device over my forehead and then wrote something down on her chart. I asked her what she did, and she told me she just took my temperature with that device, which measures heat emitted from the temporal artery in your forehead. I was amazed, especially since the device only contacted my forehead for about 1 second.

This is the first I had ever experienced or heard of such a device, but it turns out you can get one on Amazon for fifty bucks!

I wondered how accurate this is, but thought that this could be revolutionary for taking a child’s temperature – no more sitting on the couch for 5+ minutes with a glass tube shoved under your tongue, or even the 30 seconds or so for the digital version of the glass tube under the tongue. It turns out that it is considered at least more accurate than ear thermometers.

A recent BusinessWeek article highlights the design efforts that are currently focused on this narrow but obviously near-ubiquitous vertical product market. The article does not mention the device that I experienced, but shows that thermometer design can be a serious and lucrative business.

Technorati Tags: design, thermometer, medicine

Send Me an Odeo Voice Message

I just found out about Odeo - a great new way to communicate with people using your actual voice over the Internet. Odeo is a service that allows you to send and receive audio to others for free in a simple and free way. It’s not podcasting – although you could use Odeo for podcasts – but it can be much simpler and more individual. You can subscribe to your Odeo inbox (the messages people send you) via RSS and consequently, via iTunes if you like. Think of it as your personal voice mail box on the Internet that’s free.

You may have seen the “chicklets” on various websites or blogs saying “Send me an Odeo” – I did, and finally checked it out after seeing Blake set it up for Cocoa Radio.

I’ve put a link on the right to contact me via Odeo if you are so inclined. So please, send me an Odeo, and I’ll send you one back!

Technorati Tags: odeo, voice, communication, web2.0

I Won!

The OnTheRun with Tablet PCs podcast is a favorite of mine, which I’ve mentioned before. Two weeks ago James and Marc interviewed Michael Linenberger, author of Seize the Work Day, the de facto standard for learning how to productively use a Tablet PC. Michael has just released a new book, Total Workday Control Using Microsoft Outlook, in which he discusses some very specific workflow concepts and customizations for Outlook to make it a more useful productivity tool.

I was one of the winners of the Total Workday Control books that Michael gave away on the podcast, and I’ve received my new book! I am excited to read through it, and will write about what I learn and how Michael approaches this subject. I literally use Outlook all day, and have dealt with both its power and its shortcomings since it was first released, so I am passionate about how to make it better.

Watch for updates soon!

Technorati Tags: linenberger, tabletpc, tablet+pc, podcast, outlook, email

Using a Bluetooth Headset on my Toshiba M200

To use a Bluetooth headset on a Toshiba M200, you will need to install the latest Toshiba Bluetooth driver, but it isn’t listed on the U.S. Toshiba support site as applicable to the M200. In stead, the latest version shown as compatible with the M200 is 3.00.32, dated 9/2/2004. This version does not support the Bluetooth Headset service, however.

After a lot of digging around, I found that the European Toshiba support site lists Bluetooth driver version 4.00.23(T), dated 1/12/2006, as applicable to all Toshiba laptops that support Bluetooth. This driver supports the Bluetooth Headset service, and allows you to successfully pair and use a Bluetooth headset with a Toshiba M200.

You can download this latest driver on the U.S. Toshiba support site, but it does not explicitly say that this version is applicable to the M200. You can also see and download the driver from the European Toshiba website. I have successfully installed and am using this version of the driver on my M200.

I’m using a Motorola HS850 Bluetooth headset, and when I connect it, the driver automatically makes the headset the default audio device for both speaker and microphone. It’s a great way to have the benefits of a decent headset (which I already carry with me for my mobile phone) on my laptop.

For a step-by-step explanation of how to pair a Bluetooth headset with a laptop, see the BluetoothPCHeadsets webpage.

UPDATE: I have found some problems with this driver on my machine. I have a more recent post about the specifics.

UPDATE2: I have resolved the issues and this now does indeed work. See my final update for details.

Technorati Tags: bluetooth, m200, laptop, headset, hs850, toshiba, support

See Some Tablet PCs In Action

Want to see some real-world applications demonstrated on a real person’s Tablet PC?

James Kendrick, of JKOnTheRun has created a video demo of several Tablet PC-enabled applications, including Sticky Notes, OneNote, inking an email in Outlook, ActiveWords Inkpad, and a great section on my favorite, MindManager. Check out the video in his JKOnTheRun podcast.

Also, Rob Bushway, another Tablet PC MVP, has a short video on his CutMeLoose blog demonstrating the Tablet Enhancements for Outlook (TEO) application and the ActiveWords InkPad. It shows the power of combining these two amazing apps to integrate ink in more of what you do on a computer.

Both James and Rob used TechSmith’s Camtasia app to create these videos. Camtasia appears to be a very powerful and useful tool; however, it is also priced powerfully, so it will be a while before I produce any demos of my Tablet PC usage with it.

Technorati Tags: video, tabletpc, mindmanager, activewords

Chris Messina on Whether He Would Do Anything Differently at Flock

I recently called attention to Chris Messina’s interview on CocoaRadio, where he talked a bit about how Flock came about and the vision that the Flock team has about changing the way we use the web. As you probably know, Flock has endured the equivalent of a public caning for supposedly raising expectations so high and then failing to deliver. Mind you, they’ve been at this for under a year and have released very-beta / developer versions of the software, but a lot of the tech community was up in arms about the state of the application when they released the first version last fall.

Today, Chris reflects on his blog about all of this excitement, recognition, and backlash that he and the team have experienced. He wonders – would he do it again the same way if he had a chance?

Another great statement in his post that I believe epitomizes the goals of Flock, when Chris reflects on how he… 

“…was able to get the job I currently have now, doing what I’ve always dreamed of doing: taking back control over technology and putting it to work for regular folks (myself included!).”

What is Chris’ conclusion? What would he change? … Read his whole post, it’s a good one!

I have a growing admiration and excitement for the Flock team and the goals they are pursuing. I know we will all see more from them soon.

Technorati Tags: flock, web2.0

Automating Technorati Tags in BlogJet (and other HTML editors)

I have been using BlogJet as my blog editor for almost a year now, and am very pleased with the clean, simple interface. Although it does lack some features that other editors have (e.g. ecto, MarsEdit), it is very solid and reliable and has some advantages over these other apps.

One noticeable feature that it lacks, however, is the ability to automatically generate the html code for Technorati tags. Many people (Judi, Tommy for example) have written about how they use the AutoReplace feature in the latest version of BlogJet to generate either pre-made Technorati tags or generic html code that they go back to and fill in the specific desired tags. However, I wanted to more fully automate the process and make it easier, until BlogJet supports this. I have created a simple tool that you can use with any editor that allows you to edit html code – i.e. even the on-line web interface that most blogging services offer.

I’ve created a script using the AutoIT scripting language (freeware), and compiled it to a Windows executable. I then use ActiveWords to call this script from within the “Code”, or html editing, portion of my blog editor. The script opens a dialog box prompting you to enter a list of tags, separated by either spaces or commas, and then generates the entire html code to put the Technorati tags in your blog.

So, you activate the script (ideally with an ActiveWord), you enter a list of tags in the dialog box

and then, after pressing OK, the script will generate html code for your tags (colors are from my editor, not the script):

A couple of notes:

• This script is Windows-only; however, feel free to use the script file to create something similar on the Mac if you so desire
• This script will generate the html code just as if it were being typed in from the keyboard; therefore …
• You have to be in the HTML editing portion of your blog editor, whether that is BlogJet or an on-line blog tool that is provided by most blog services.
• It is therefore only practical to start this script via some sort of hotkey; I use ActiveWords, but you can also do this through Windows:
1. create a shortcut to the executable file (right-click, create shortcut)
2. edit the properties of the shortcut (right-click on the shortcut, select Properties)
3. in the Shortcut tab, click in the Shortcut Key box, and enter a key combination (e.g. <CTRL><SHIFT><t>

The Windows executable of the script; note, if you don’t want to use this executable that I created (I don’t blame you if you don’t trust it), you can create one on your own by installing AutoIT, then right-clicking on the script file (download below) in Windows Explorer, and choose Compile Script.

The actual script file (can edit with any text editor)

I haven’t been tagging my blog posts with Technorati tags just because it was too hard to enter all the HTML code, but now it’s easy – see the bottom of this post! Please try it out and let me know your feedback.

Want to know more about tags and Technorati? Check out T.L. Pakii Pierce’s post from last year about using tags, or see the Technorati tag help page.

Technorati Tags: blogjet, technorati, tags, software, script, hacks, AutoIT, blogging

BarCamp Dallas Presentations Now Available

Several presentations from BarCampDallas are now available on the wiki: notes and soft copies and audio (mp3’s).

There is audio of Chris Messina’s presentation on the overview of Flock (see my previous post for an interview with Chris on CocoaRadio), but the audio level is extremely low and very difficult to hear.

Flock Deconstructed

Blake Burris, my friend and Mac podcaster extraordinaire, has a fascinating podcast called CocoaRadio, where he interviews developers of Mac apps. This is a great podcast even if you are not a Mac developer or even a Mac user, as it provides some excellent perspectives on how these applications come about and some interesting stories about the people involved.

On a recent podcast, Blake featured an interview with Chris Messina, lead developer on the Flock team. For those who did not catch the public buildup and subsequent let down that many expressed when Flock released their first developer version in the fall, Flock is a new browser, still in the early stages of development, but with some innovative approaches to how a browser will work.

Although Flock is not a Cocoa app (Cocoa is a new object-oriented development framework for Mac OSX) since it is built on Firefox, the conversation is very relevant to Mac developers specifically, and all those interested in the growing interactivity of web services in general.

Chris talks about how the idea for Flock came about, starting with his early work on Mozilla, and some of his ideas for Flock. One statement Chris makes in the podcast really captures the essence of what Flock is about, in my opinion: he said that Flock “allows you to express things on the web rather than just consume them” and “breaks down the barrier between the browser and websites”. One of the central concepts of Flock is the integration, or convergence, of various web services and web information into a central “experience” that Flock provides. You can not only access, but update various web services like Flickr, 43Things, email, your bookmarks / your del.icio.us bookmarks, your blog, etc. from Flock.

Chris also has some fascinating thoughts on potential revenue models for Flock, models for continual software development for Flock and the concept of microformats and how they can potentially integrate information on your computer and the web.

The Flock public beta should be coming soon, but you can download the developer version from flock.com. I encourage you to check out this great interview, and to listen to the other interviews on CocoaRadio.com.