blog

I won't list any provider or server here, but I just wan to share this uptime output:

[xxx]$ uptime
09:00:03 up 4:16, 7 users, load average: 524.02, 470.36, 446.18

Labels: english, rant, web

A while ago I started using GTD with my two tools of choice - Toodledo and Todo - and so far I'm very satisfied with the "results" and the progress. Time to recap my experiences with GTD, the tools and the process as it might help others, you, to get up to speed with Getting Things Done more quickly. Please note that these recommendations reflect my personal experience when adopting myself to Getting Things Done using modern tools, compared to paper files and folders as described in the de-facto standard book from David Allen.

It works!
Now that I used GTD for some time I can really say it works - my friends and peers sometimes might say "he is writing everything down - he can't remember anything on his own", but that's not what should hinder you from using GTD. Writing everything down in a structured way really frees the brain from thinking about things it should not think about. Some of the lists I have are very long but I'm confident at any time that I know what I have to do so I don't have to think about it anymore. Time you save and can spend on thinking about more interesting stuff.

Not everything should got to the "next actions" folder.
Per GTD definition almost everything should go through the Inbox - and in the first weeks I discovered that most stuff immediately after that goes to the next-actions list. Which does not make sense for two reasons:
1) If you next-actions list is very long you have to remember manually what tasks are more important than others, which wastes Brain-Processing-Unit (BPU) cycles.
2) If stuff remains in the next-actions list for a week or so it was no next-action in the first place.
After some time I became more confident that moving stuff to other categories also works fine and that I can also move items off next-actions as needed.

Do not review the inbox in the subway.
At least for me doing reviews of my list in the subway did not work out that well - most of my tasks are somewhat computer related - sending a mail, doing some quick research of a Web site, fixing a script or updating some text. These and a lot of other 2-minute items which require a computer do not work out in the subway. (Sorry Apple, but writing long mails on the iPhone is not what I want to do!)
Doing the review in front of a computer is way more efficient and faster, at least for me. And it is more efficient than to move those items from "in" to "next" before executing them...

There is also a medium priority.
In the beginning all my tasks had either no priority (90%) or a high priority (the remaining 10%) which does not really add any benefit regarding sorting. I see this problem as related to iTunes ratings - I don't want to rate poor songs with a single star, as they don't deserve it... so most songs remain unrated. Great songs on the other side get 5 stars, as they are great, aren't they?
What I want to say is - find your way to use priorities - i.e. high if your life depends on it and it had to be done yesterday, medium for stuff that can is urgent, but not already overdue, low for important things and no priority for all other stuff. But use more than just high and none.

The context can save your ass (multiple times).
Use the context to store meta information about the tasks, i.e. "manager", "girlfriend", "call"... not for everything, but where it makes sense. That way you can easily access all items you want to discuss with your manager independent of the list they are in. And you can do that right now, as needed. Works great if your manager stops by and asks something - you can, within seconds, tell him all the new gadgets you need *right now* to survive your job! :)
Finally Appigo's Todo also supports the context and tags it really makes sense to use that information as well!

Waiting-for is really useful.
The second-most used list is waiting-for - in there I drop stuff that I have delegated, where input from others or action of others is required. This is great as I cannot forget to follow up on actions or input - no more slipping of deadlines because there was no follow up on time. Also this list tells you what others are working on for you (or should be working on...).

Review the list regularly. The full list.
To have a working GTD system it is also important that you review your full list regularly. It is not sufficient to just review the next actions and the Inbox, you have to go through every single item at least once a week. This helps you to clean up the waiting for list and maybe some other actions have been resolved in the meantime. Also it helps you to be confident that your system works and you have everything "in there".

Delete tasks if needed!
When you do the regular review also remove tasks - don't let something stick around just because you added it a while ago. Feel free to remove things as needed. Especially if something is on the next actions list for quite some time - drop it or at least move it to any other list.

Is it actionable? If not - rewrite or drop it (or put it on a list).
I also learned the hard way that actions have to be actionable - which makes it sometimes hard but is a good chance to clean up your projects. On the other side there are some items which don't make sense to be actionable - i.e. "buy milk" - I don't want to write it that way, instead have a groceries and a shopping list, where you know it is a list with items that are similar important and that are no actions.

Once again: GTD works!
As I already stated on top - Getting Things Done works and will make you more productive and save you a lot of time. Getting started is not easy but there are good resources out there that help you (I can recommend this one).
Also it is important to find your way - there is no wrong or right way of doing it and also GTD is not a strict process but about giving you a general idea of how it might work - then go ahead and adopt the process as needed!

I hope these practical hints helped you implementing GTD on your electronic device of choice, iPhone preferred :)

Labels: english, gtd, help, projects

Since the review of Todo and Things a lot of things happened (and I don't mean the US elections!) and recently a new Todo application has been added to Apples AppStore - the Remember The Milk app for the iPhone. Time to compare it with Appigo's Todo application, which I use since September and was updated several times since then.

Remember The Milk for iPhone
It was just a matter of time until RTM would launch their own application. And while Todo can also sync with RTM this app is of course highly optimized for the own service. It features everything needed for GTD so I just want to outline the postive and negative highlights:

• RTM supports tags, locations and searching for tasks.
• It even allows saving the searches ("smart searches") and re-use them at a later time - a very handy feature!
• The biggest drawback is the requirement for a Remember The Milk Pro account which costs USD 25,- per year. So while the application seems to be free it requires yearly payments to keep the service up and running.
• Another feature I was missing is "quick adding", which is available in Todo. In RTM you have click many more times to simply add a task without further options to the Inbox. In Todo just click the quick-add button, enter the task title and press "Done" to add the task (with the default settings) to the current list. Very handy to take quick notes at any time.
  
• Also I dislike the blue title bar, which perfectly fits with the RTM corporate identity but makes the app look like any 99 cent todo application out there...
  

Todo (Appigo)
Since the last review two new releases have been published by Appigo. While the first one "only" contained bug fixes and translations the update to version 1.4 introduced a lot of great new features:

• Todo now supports contexts, which are automatically synced with Toodledo.
  
• It also syncs tags, which are a very handy way to categorize tasks even further.
  
• Todo learned searching tasks, unfortunately it does not offer to store the search like RTM does. Maybe this is included in a future release?
  

Whom to choose this time?
Based on the pros/cons above the USD 25,- price tag for the Remember The Milk application seems a bit high to me. Certainly you get a lot of options and access to one of the best GTD list managers out there. Nevertheless if you already have a working system it is not worth switching and migrating all your tasks, especially because both Appigo and Toodledo are updating their products constantly.
If you start from scratch also check out Toodledo for the iPhone, which supports all features available but yet has to proof that it is working as reliable as Todo.

Labels: english, gtd, iphone, mac, tech

Almost every Apple-fanboy would agree that during the last few releases (i.e. iPod nano, new MacBooks) something was missing. The (positive) shock of something that no-one had imagined - not like for the new Nanos, the iPhone 3G or the new MacBooks, where images and almost all specs leaked before the official event took place.
So what is Apple planning in the near future? Why are there so little great announcements?

One more thing, please!

So I'm gonna tell you what Apple is working on and what the strategy of their MacBooks is - and it is relatively simple and obvious to everyone who follows the news. It is:

Multi-Touch.

Yeah, right! Or why do you think Microsoft is focusing on MultiTouch in Windows 7? They already announced it, but I'm sure Apple already has it already ready for production. Or why do you think there are only "performance increasements" in Snow Leopard? They will have it ready long time before Microsoft will be able to react and it will work perfectly because of the iPhone experience. Or why do you think all of the new MacBooks have a full glass front? Glossy screens suck but on the other hand it is the only option to implement a large touch screen that also can be cleaned easily.

Enough reasons, let's see what happens in January, if Apple will have "one more thing" and there will be another big bang when they release Snow Leopard and new MacBooks with a full multi touch enabled screen. I would hope so, otherwise their releases this year have not been that impressive...

PS: Please note that I'm not working for Apple nor am I affiliated with them in any way!

Labels: apple, english, mac, rumor

A new IM for the iPhone is out - Fring. It even allows to make calls using Skype - great! Unfortunately I used a very poor password (no, it's not test123) because I was to lazy to type and remember something long when I signed up on the phone. Can change it later anyways. Can I? At least the iPhone client does not offer any way to change the password. The Web site does not offer anything. The support wrote me:

Unfortunately, it is not possible to change the password you registered with.
We apologize for the inconvenience.

If you are not satisfied with the password you used, we suggest opening a new account.

Not very smart... so I stopped using the application - if I cannot change my password to protect my account, what else will not work?

Labels: english, iphone, rant, web

Maybe this works better than the Viennese initiative which does not explicitly talk to the dogs...

Seen in Boston, MA.

Labels: english, fun, travel

Wow - check out these amazing pictures of The Sun.

Labels: art, english

Yesterday Apple announced a new MacBook and a new MacBook Pro. While the overall design and the attention to detail is again amazing and sets Apple apart from its competition, the event itself and the amount of buzz was... missing? different? wrong?

I remember a while ago when Apple announced the iPhone - speculations around the Blogsphere, lots of self-drawn images, buzz everywhere. Will they? Or won't they? What will be included? And finally Apple delivered an amazing phone, that still beats all of its competitors in terms of usability and design. But since then - a mess with MobileMe, unresolved security bugs and missing features. Apple seems to loose its buzz?

Murphy Mac writes:

If you were looking for the blockbuster announcement you were at the wrong event. If there is one, we’ll know about it some time in December, when the Macworld rumors start leaking. Personally, Murphy hopes Apple has something big, and that they manage to keep it under wraps until the keynote. It’s more fun that way.

I could not agree more - let's hope Apple finds back to its roots, keeps it promises and "shocks" us positively with new, amazing gadgets!

(Image from apple.com)

Labels: apple, english, mac, rant

A great conference is over! The Ajax Experience took place from Sept. 29 to Oct. 1 2008 in Boston and was packed with great talks - sometimes four of them in parallel! So it was very hard to decide between learning about security (beyond XSS and SQL injection!), the newest Ajax frameworks (i.e. Cappuccino - check out 280Slides, it's worth it!) or performance improvements (Steve Souders had great stuff again!).

So it's really hard to give a recap of what happened - so much things have been going on. One item I take for me as programmer is about how to improve my designs - it's all about CRAP.

• Contrast
• Repetition
• Alignment
• Proximity

A lot of different effects can be achieved by just focusing on these four items and that's one of the reasons why this Website is now a bit lighter than it was before the conference ;)

Another interesting session has been "Top 10 browser issues" with quirksmode.org creator ppk. On stage with him the persons behind the four major JavaScript frameworks Prototype (Andrew Dupont), Dojo, YUI and jQuery (John Resig).
This session was a pretty good overview about where the projects will be heading and what you can expect from them in the future - because in the end it depends on a single person...

Regarding performance improvements I want to highlight SmushIT.com, a new Web application (and a Firefox plugin) that automatically optimizes images for Web sites. Great, simple and just working. It's good to see new tools coming up that simplify tasks which had to be performed manually a year ago - another great sample is Hammerhead. Also note that Yahoo added 20 additional rules to their existing 14 "golden" performance rules.

Finally I wanna restate the sentence from the beginning of this post - "A great conference is over!". It gave a great overview about what is happening in the Web 2.0 world and fostered networking with other developers outside of the own company!

Labels: conference, english, tech, usa, web

Now that Google is 10 years old they offer to search within an index from 2001 (on a total of 1,326,920,000 pages). Try it on your own, have you been in their index back in 2001?



(via Heise)

Labels: english, fun, google, web

Apple pays around 70 cents in every dollar to the record labels, who then hand across nine cents to the music publishers who control the copyrights to the music.

No wonder that music is so expensive and that most people still try to download it for free... 60% of the money is paid to the big four! Music could be so much cheaper and lots more people would actually by it if it would be only around 40 cent per song....

Read the full story.

Labels: apple, english, music

The jQuery Camp 2008, which has been held today at the Stata Center at the MIT, is over. It has been organized by the creator of the library, John Resig - who did a great job - with the library and with the conference!

While John opened the day with news about the current jQuery status, planned changes, internals and not-so-well-known features of the core he also mentioned:

"I haven't done any serious Web development in a long time..."

Which obviously nobody in the crowd believed.

Afterwards other speakers talked about scalable applications, jQuery UI and jQuery Plugin development. At least in the advanced track the quality of the talks was pretty high, except for one exception, where downloading and installing the framework would have had the same effect... completely wrong for an advanced audience to just explain the basic samples delivered with the framework. Punished by typing noise (80% MacBooks, 20% others).

One of the highlights was the talk about processing.js, a port of the Processing visualization language, which clearly showed what is possible with todays JavaScript and current browsers (including IE!).

Overall a great day together with the jQuery community and the jQuery developers at the MIT! Looking forward to next years conference!

(Photo source)

Labels: conference, english, jquery, travel, web

John Resig announced today that the jQuery library is going to be integrated into new mobile phones by Nokia and into Visual Studio by Microsoft.

Microsoft and Nokia aren’t looking to make any modifications to jQuery (both in the form of code or licensing) - they simply wish to promote its use as-is. They’ve recognized its position as the most popular JavaScript library and wish to see its growth and popularity continue to flourish.

This is great news for the future of the jQuery library! Congratulations!

Read the full announcement.

Labels: english, jquery, news, web

Eepybird, the same company that brought you a series of professional level Diet Coke and Mentos clips, have created an equally if not more remarkable video of 280,951 Post-its submitting to gravity while simultaneously creating some sort of new genre of office art. It's worth a click...and then another.

(via gizmodo.com)

Labels: english, fun, video

Since the Apple AppStore launched I was looking for a ToDo application - the iPhone itself does not synchronize iCal ToDo's and it also only offers a simple list. No way to implement GTD with iCal. Until now all free applications in the AppStore turned out to be very basic and a one-way solution. Enter task on the iPhone, view them there, that's it. But it would be great to have a Desktop app to also manage my tasks, synchronization and an open interface to my data.

Finally there are two canditades which I'm going to review - Appigo's Todo and Things from CulturedCode. These candidated have been chosen because of their price tag and because they had a lot of positive reviews within the AppStore. Please note that I did the review without actually buying the apps as only the winner will make it onto my iPhone.

Things (CulturedCode)
According to the screen designs a very clean, iPhone like interface is offered; not like some free apps which hinder the workflow and look... Java based. More important, what else is offered?

• Things stores its data as XML which allows to re-use it easily.
• CulturedCode offers a native desktop application for the Mac to sync the data with.
  
• The data is synced locally and not stored on an external server.
• The costs for the desktop application are pretty high - 49 USD.
• The application is Mac only right now.
  

Todo (Appigo)
The screen design of Todo looks very similar than of its competition - it's "just" a Todo application, so there is not a lot of room for innovation (but a lot can go wrong - check out the Freebies!). Lets talk about the unique features of Todo:

• Todo is able to sync its data to Remember The Milk (pro account only) or Toodledo.
• Syncing is done over the air, so it's not as secure as a local synchronization.
• I had a deeper look into Toodledo - even in its free version it offers a lot of features including a simple, open API, a Firefox plugin, Dashboard integration etc.
• Toodledo is free, the Pro account is reasonable priced ($14.95/year!), but not needed.
  

Whom to choose?
Based on the bullets above I'm going to invest my money into Appigo's Todo application. The main reason is the synchronization with Tooledo, which offers an API and seems to have a larger community behind it. Yes, I cannot store confidential information there, but in days of social networks a secured Todo account with a strong password is not that much of a problem compared to public profiles at social networking sites. And I can access my Todos whenever I have a browser available, no need for a Mac. Let's see how it goes!

I'll blog more about Todo, GTD and Toodledo in the future, just subscribe to the RSS feed to stay up to date. And another wish for Apple - would be great to test apps out of the AppStore for i.e. a day without any payment!

Labels: english, gtd, iphone, mac, tech

Everyone is writing about the new 2.1 firmware that Apple released for the iPhone - about improved battery life, increased 3G reception and so on. It is definitely a fine release with a lot of good improvements. But more important - what's still missing in the 2.1 firmware? Here is my (incomplete) list of items that Apple should add to the next iPhone firmware:

• Copy & paste across applications (see comic)
  
• Synchronize Notes and TODO items with iCal and me.com
  
• Push notification service for applications (promised for September!)
• Usage of the phone as modem ("tethering")
  
• Allow developers to talk about iPhone development in the public
• 3rd party syncing through iTunes
• Access to the iDisk through the iPhone
• Support for stereo Bluetooth headsets
• Real navigation (and a Bluetooth GPS extension for the first generation iPhone)
  

Don't get me wrong - the 2.1 release is the best iPhone software they have delivered so far, but there is still a lot of room for improvement. Not only for the iPhone but also for me.com, which is insecure and lacks features like the iDisk sharing.

(Image from Geek And Poke)

Labels: apple, english, iphone, mobileme, rant

This morning I discovered that I have more than 1000 contacts in my "Personal Address book" within Thunderbird. What the he*k? Why are there so many duplicates, addresses from spammers, mailing lists etc. I definitely never added to my Personal Address Book? Seems to be mixed with the "Collected Addresses", where Thunderbird collects all this crap for me. But why?

I'm using the Sync Kolab plugin to sync my addresses between various computers using IMAP - a smart way of using the protocol to keep contacts in sync. Unfortunately I made a mistake when I setup Sync Kolab on a new computer - I mixed up "Collected Addresses" and "Personal Address book" which caused the mess. Not a big deal to fix - just change the settings, remove unwanted addresses and sync again. But wait - Sync Kolab does not really sync! It just adds addresses, but it never removes them. It also does not seem to detect obvious duplicates (same name, same address, same fields!). As soon as I start the sync process the locally removed addresses are added back to my Address Book. Not very smart. Resetting all the IMAP data does not work as well - the other computers will again add all the addresses.

So what are the alternatives to Sync Kolab? One option is to wait until Thunderbird 3 is released (end of 2008), as it supports the usage of the Mac Address Book. Which syncs itself using me.com. Which does real syncing including deletions and works flawlessy so far. There are costs involved, but that's fine as the syncronization between the Macs and the iPhone is really worth the money. Of course then switching to the Mac Mail application is an option as well, unfortunately it does not support everything Thunderbird does - Mac Mail seems to be more "basic" - but I'll leave that open for a future blog post. In the meanwhile feel free to research on your own.

Labels: english, mac, rant, sync, tech

Do you regularly create backups of your data? Just in case the harddisk decides to die? Or anything else happens to your computer?
I sort of do. "Sort of" means that I used to run a backup only about once a month - then I started iBackup and waited for about 3-4 hours until it finished the backup to my NAS system (which I bought exactly 2 1/2 weeks before Apple announced its TimeCapsule :( ). Way too long for just an incremental backup. The reason for this lengthy incremental backup is that iBackup uses SMB to connect to the NAS - which means it transfers too much data to just check if it has been changed since the last backup.

Time to create my own script - a bit of Bash scripting, rsync with an exclude file and an Automator workflow - voila, my incremental backups are now executing in about 5 minutes! Perfect for daily backups via cron and way better than the old backup "process" which took a few hours!

Here is the script: rsyncbackup.sh.txt. Feel free to adopt it as needed!

So my recommendation to everyone - review your backup process, it has to be simple, painless and fast. Otherwise you are not going to use it! Which brings up Mozy - why not using this great, unlimited online backup service? My personal reason is that I don't want my Mac to be running to do the uploads - that's what my NAS does in the background - and that I already own a me.com account as well as a 50GB Bingodisk account. No need for another service...

Labels: english, mac, security, tech

Last week I had a lot of fun - imagine me sitting in the same room with 24 project managers, talking about how to manage projects, risks, scheduling, sizing etc. All other attendees have been project managers, I was the only specialist who just wanted to learn the basics. And get a check mark. But that's another story.

Nevertheless it turned out to be a lot of fun - our instructor Darryl (who reminded me about Matt) teaches project management since he is literally 3 years old and he is really (and I mean really really) good at it! So even "the programmer" in between the serious project managers learned something about how projects *should* be managed.

In the evenings we went out for some beers - actually and unfortunately the only sightseeing I did. No time for anything else, one evening it was too late for a walk, the other day it was raining... no luck this time. At least I had a great view out of my hotel room.

So there are many valid and good reasons to come back to the beautiful city of Amsterdam, maybe in spring next year?

Labels: english, ibm, travel

Migrating an existing, running and working Thinkpad (from Lenovo :) ) into a Parallels image is relatively easy - just download the Transporter for Windows, install it and reboot. Afterwards select the computer from the Mac Transporter and wait.
Wait.
Wait.
Finally reboot your newly created image. If you are lucky it just boots, if you used a Thinkpad as source computer you might end up with a Blue Screen Of Death (BSOD) as shown in the image to the right. PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA. In this case follow these steps to get the issue resolved:

1. Boot the image in Safe mode
2. Open up the Device Manager
3. Enable viewing of hidden devices in the menu
4. Find a device tree called "SM DRIVER"
5. Uninstall all devices (SM BIOS) below that tree
6. Reboot and hope :)
   

At least for me this worked fine and I could boot the image. And begin uninstalling all the Thinkpad software.

(Original instructions)

PS: doing the migration over a Wireless connection is no good idea. Will take veeeery long. Instead use a direct, wired connection between the Thinkpad and the MacBook and enter the IP directly (169.x.x.x) in the Transporter Wizard. No need for a router. No need for a cross-over cable, the Mac is capable of auto-sensing.

Labels: english, help, mac, tech

Discussing about telnet usage in a forum:

> Who the heck is still using telnet? It's the same as
> with FTP - the password is transmitted in plaintext...

Considering that the wifi connection is encrypted (if using wep/wpa), it really makes no difference.

Outch!

Labels: english, security, tech

In 2006, Matt took a 6 month trip through 39 countries on all 7 continents. In that time, he danced a great deal.

Look at Matt how he dances around the world (I love Korea!):



See more videos from Matt.

Labels: english, fun, video

I was once been told by an IBM HW engineer that one of our System 38s "had ceased to be operational because of an AMD failure"

"A what?" i replied
"An AMD failure" He restated
"Woz that?" I asked
"An Air Movement Device" He said
"Oh you mean a fan" sayz I
"No I mean an AMD, Fans just blow air, AMD's move air in a predefined and expected way"
I beat him soundly with a dead haddock sadly this only resulted in yells of
"Hit the BRS!"
"What is the BRS?" I enquired as the haddock once again smacked up side his head
"The Big Red Switch" He replied spitting scales from between his teeth
"The Big Red Switch? What Big Red Switch would that be"
"The Big Red Switch that stops you battering me on the bonce with a dead haddock"
"Oh" I said continuing to belabour him with the haddock only stopping when he promissed me a boondoggle, mind you he did have to explain what that was aswell

From Steve McDonagh. I'm not going to comment this, but read on:

A "stretch target" is defined as a "goal that probably is impossible" as in: "We're setting stretch targets next year".

Read more about the fact that "IBM employees are said to have a language of their own" but "have a 'Can Do' attitude taking personal responsibility for resolving issues and urgent service requests"...

Labels: english, fun, ibm

well, i reckon your girl is worth more or less 33 camels, 1 goats and 0 sheep

Check out how many camels (and goats and sheeps) you can get for your girlfriend...

How many camels

Girls, check this out.

Labels: english, fun

The PHP development team would like to announce the immediate availability of PHP 4.4.9. It continues to improve the security and the stability of the 4.4 branch and all users are strongly encouraged to upgrade to it as soon as possible. This release wraps up all the outstanding patches for the PHP 4.4 series, and is therefore the last PHP 4.4 release.

Finally. PHP5 is out there since quite some time and finally the old, legacy version is gone. Hopefully all hosting providers out there will upgrade in the next few weeks so all users can start leveraging the new, great features of PHP5. It's worth it and upgrading is really simple!

Labels: development, english, php, tech

Upgrading the iPhone (i.e. to the latest 2.0.1 firmware) while being in Flight mode is a bad idea (tm). The upgrade works fine, but as soon as the iPhone reboots and needs to be activated through iTunes it complains:

The iPhone cannot be used with iTunes because the information required for activation could not be obtained from the iPhone. Check that the SIM card is inserted in your iPhone and that it is not PIN-locked.

Ok. There is a SIM in the phone but it can't be activated. Because it is in Flight mode and therefore never requests a PIN for the SIM. Bricked my iPhone? Need to recover :( ? No, just get out of Flight mode by going to the "emergency call" screen, entering any number and trying to call it. The phone will complain about being in Flight mode and request the PIN for the SIM card. Voila, activation works like a charm!

So, please Apple, make your error messages a bit more descriptive!
And users, get out of Flight mode before upgrading the iPhone!

(Original instructions can be found here; but be aware, there is no need to reset the phone!)

Labels: apple, english, iphone

Last night I had an idea about a project I'm working on and how to make this extensible and flexible by using JavaScript code snippets which are to be added to the Java code. Sounds like a crazy idea but I remembered Mozilla Rhino which allows executing JavaScript from within Java. Issue 1 solved.

Also I'm a great fan of the jQuery library and would most probably like to use it on the server side to perform modifications - saves a lot of time in working with the DOM. Luckily I also remembered a post of John Resig which explains exactly that issue (ok, Google helped me to find it :) ) - executing jQuery inside of Rhino. Using an application server like Jaxer is no option as the server environment is given. Issue 2 solved.

So, downloading Rhino, downloading env.js, downloading jquery.js, putting the sample together and, guess what, nothing worked. Uff. Even simple selectors like jQuery('div').length always returned 0. After a little investigation I figured out that up to jQuery version 1.2.1 it worked like a charm, but the newer versions did not work anymore. But why? Hard to figure if there are not error messages shown.

What to do? Firing of a note to John Resig and - surprise - he wrote back within a few minutes, pointing me to a new version of env.js which also works with newer versions of jQuery.

THANKS John!

So grab the new version of env.js and start using jQuery 1.2.6 on the server right now!

Labels: english, jquery, projects, tech, web

There are 11 tips from Apple for increasing the battery life on the iPhone:

• Turn off 3G
• Minimize use of location services
• Fetch new data less frequently
• Turn off push mail
• Auto-check fewer email accounts
• Minimize use of third-party applications
• Turn off Wi-Fi
• Turn off Bluetooth
• Use Airplane Mode in low- or no-coverage areas
• Adjust brightness
• Turn off EQ

In a nutshell? Use it as an iPod. But not too often.

Agreed... :(

Via 43 Folders.

Labels: apple, english, iphone

Wow, finally Apple has launched MobileMe together with the iPhone 2.0 software. So time for a first test.

But wait - the so called "launch" itself was a fiasco. Apple had so much time to prepare everything and then users of the old .mac service have not been able to access their Mail and data for over a day! Wow.
After so much preparation and with so much media attention this must not happen. Not to Apple, no way.

Anyways, it happened. And there are other issues as well.... despite the fact that Apple integrated MobileMe with the iPhone 2.0 software (which is buggy and needs to be fixed as well) and it is super simple to use there are some issues:

• Missing encryption - only the authentication pieces are encrypted using SSL, everything else runs unencrypted. I don't want to transfer my mails, my contacts (!!!) or my calendar information unencrypted, so unless they use https for all of their tools this is a no-go.
• Announced features like file sharing are missing; Apple definitely has to deliver these promised features and has to continue improving the service.
  
• Buggy like hell - after working with the (smart and beautiful) Web interface for a while I already discovered a lot of display bugs where data is not rendered or settings are not persistent.
• I'm forced to buy iLife 08 as the gallery is not supported using iLife 06. Another 80 bucks to pay.
  

So... right now MobileMe is does a great job when syncing data between the iPhone and various Macs, as I don't need to sync manually, but the Web interface is insecure to use. A no-go. For now. Let's see how it evolves.

Labels: apple, english, iphone, rant, tech