Kim Bach . OrgAll about technology
WOW! What’s going on these days…
Dell is seriously challenging Apple with their new laptops, and I just LOVE Devo, great new track. Even HP and especially LG delivers nice and cheap sub-notebooks these days.
And now that I’m turning to the “dark side” for my new job (ASP.NET development), I might get one – now do they have them in green 😉
Freedom OF choice is what you GOT – Freedom FROM choice is what you WANT (or that’s what Apple would like us to believe)
After being AWOL from Macnyt – lurking and being EXTREMELY bored with what was going on there, I’m, Bach! (For a short notice I think…)
Poor new user BTW. I have since repented and answered on-topic. Sometimes we’re not too friendly to new users @ Macnyt – thank you for pointing that out Cathrine – and read on! This is not as boring as usual – ah maybe it is – or rather: “it has no interest what-so-ever” to you ;-))”.
Well, a common Macnyt scenario (when I’m involved;-)), unfolded:
It started by me “thread-jacking” a serious discussion about “if you should wait for the next version of Mac OS X: Leopard to buy a Mac, in order to save a few – 129 actually – bucks” (:: macnyt :: danmark :: – Leopard eller Tiger) (a frequent – and ANNOYING – asked question BTW. Come on: if you need a computer get it ASAP – Leopard will not improve your creativity significantly compared to Tiger, but a MacBook Pro most likely will – to quote Ben Hammersley: “Da Vinci would have killed for a PowerBook”).
“Hello Kitty”
Well, the thread took a major turn, and we began discussing “cats” (and Nintendo DS – but I’ll save that for another time)!
I think that Leopards are KEWL, much more so than Tigers, and I also found out that they’re TOO CUTE (for proof look here: Clouded Leopard Project – Babies, from where the picture for this article was taken).
But “we’re” running out of names for “cats”: Puma, Cheeta, Jaguar, Panther, Tiger and Leopard already in use , so I began throwing ideas for new names for Mac OS X around, suggesting Felix, Norwegian Forrest Cat – and indeed it turned out that a lot of people already had ideas like that (and one I – and others – had in mind actually feel victim to self-censorship ;-)).
Mac OS X 10.6 – “Garfield” (LOL) would be great, and a computer that refused to start on Mondays would not be such a bad idea after all, even though edible drives made from Lasagna might not. But really: the current batch of Macs are “obese” as it is, they need to go on a diet, something Garfield will NEVER do.
Anyways…This made me think that Apple should create a CUTE version of Mac OS and call it:
Mac OS X 10.6: “Hello Kitty”
Here kitty, kitty, kitty…Ubuntu killed the cat
My good buddy Esben was quick to point out that Gibbons and Fawns are WAY KEWLer than Cats, and would have a brighter future, if some big players like Adobe agreed.
Shuttleworth could maybe “forget some boxes” at Adobes offices, if there’s still room next to “boxes” Steve already has “forgotten” there.
CS on Linux would be the ultimate “Cat killer”. Actually I think this is bound to happen, Adobe is looking for new markets, and ways to distance themselves from Microsoft and Apple, and with the increasing support for Linux that Adobe is rolling out (Flash and Apollo), I’m optimistic, and Shuttleworth can keep spending his money on Ubuntu.
Apple should fear that day, all they will be left with is Microsoft Office.
A discussion on the Danish Macintosh community, Macnyt, about the missing native Danish spell-checking in Mac OS X, let me to speculate on what it would take to implement it. Apple you’re more than welcome to steal it, and I’ll even post bail ;-).
NOTE to Danish Mac users: What follows will not give you native (Danish) spell-checking in Mac OS X, but it describes what I believe would be required, by Apple, to implement it.
What? No Danish?
Apple’s Mac OS X comes with a very nice, integrated spell-checking service. Unfortunately there’s no support for the Danish language, and this omission hits all Mac OS X applications that plug into Mac OS X for their spell checking services. This excludes Microsoft Office:mac and most open source software like Open Office and NeoOffice, that has their own spell checkers, but it hits all system applications as well as Apple’s own iLife, IWork and most other 3rd party applications.
I know from experience that this is a major issue with Danish Mac users, the question surfaces again and again.
cocoAspell to the rescue
The current solution is to install cocoAspell, a Mac OS X wrapper for the Aspell open source spell checker, and download the Danish dictionary. If you understand Danish, you can also get help from Æbletræet and this detailed guide (ZIP file) made by a Macnyt user.
Unfortunately that is not something the average person knows how to do, and it’s relatively complicated.
How to implement native Danish spell-checking in Mac OS X
So here it is: This is what I have found out, that it would take to implement native Danish spell checking in Mac OS X.
From an implementation point-of-view, it looks like it is quite straightforward.
Everything is located in the AppleSpell.service package, that is located in /System/Library/Services.
The file is organised like a .app package, first a Contents folder, that contains a Resources and a Mac OS X folder, along with a PkgInfo file and some .plist files.
Each supported language is represented by an entry in a .plist file called info.plist located in Contents, and a .lproj folder located in Contents/Resources.
The .lproj folder contains two files, one is called bindict, the other Dictionary.dat.
Problem: bindict and Dictionary.dat are binary files, and I haven’t been able to locate ANY documentation of the formats.
Step-by-step guide (for the Apple engineers):
I estimate that it would take no longer than 1 man-week to implement and test this – so Apple come on…
p.s.. do you really need to reinvent the wheel?
In many ways cocoAspell, is a better and, not least, open solution, so Apple you should really consider the alternative: drop the native spell-checker and embrace cocoAspell, there’s really no need to reinvent the wheel is there?
I’m obviously not done writing about Jaiku, the remarkable microblogging web-application, that you can use to stay updated on what you, and your contacts are “up-to”, by following the so-called presence streams, or log of “Jaikus”, that are maintained by your contacts.
A “Jaiku” is a short message, that could be a link to a weblog entry, a photo or a TEXT message sent from your phone. Each “Jaiku” become a “presence message”, i.e. something you produced – indicating that you’re “present”. As written earlier, I love the concept.
The reason I’m writing about Jaiku again, is because they have released, in closed beta-testing, integration with the instant messengering (IM) protocol Jabber. Jabber is, for instance, the IM protocol that is used by Google Talk.
Besides the possibility of receiving presence updates as IMs, you can also update your presence by simply sending an IM to the Jaiku bot.
It works great, and it’s really convenient to have your presence stream pushed as Instant Messages, instead of having to pull it manually, by updating the web-page.
The only problem I had was that I couldn’t sign up for the beta from the web-based Google Talk client, so I had to fire-up my favourite IM application, Adium.
After I sent the activation code from Adium, I immediately began receiving messages from Jaiku in both Adium, web-based Google Talk and on my Nokia N800 Internet Tablet.
You can track progress on “Jaiku-Jabber-Doo” on the #imku Jaiku channel.
I just discovered that Apple has launched a new section of the iTunes Store, called iTunes U – the U must be short for University.
Promising and FREE
My first impression is that iTunes U looks very, very promising.
iTunes U features video and audio lectures, lecture notes etc. from major US universities, like MIT; for instance an entire course on “Electromagnetism” from MIT with titles like “What holds our world together?…”, all organised in the familiar iTunes Store.
And the best is that the content is FREE – yes FREE.
Where are the Danish Us?
So when will we get content from Danish Universities on iTunes U? I’m not optimistic!
The reason I’m pessimistic, is the ongoing debate over “e-Learning” in Denmark. As usually, when it comes to anything remotely related to ICT, the debate is mostly about technology and ICT-skills.
STOP TALKING! Get producing!
I say: STOP TALKING: Get the infrastructure in place, and you can immediately begin producing and distributing lecture notes, audio and video content. It requires almost no ICT-skills to use an application like iTunes – all students has the skills to do so today.
Later on, more advanced e-Learning applications could be made, even though I doubt that they’ll ever work – I’m a firm believer in the fact that you’ll never be able to replace the teacher, and with the infrastructure in place, we can all become teachers as well as students.
Benefits of partnering with a commercial infrastructure provider
A major benefit of partnering with a commercial infrastructure provider like iTunes Store, is that it removes the hassles of making the technology work from the institutions, leaving them to worry about what they do best, producing content.
I’m sure that the content offered on iTunes U is available elsewhere, and that there are downsides to trust Apple with distributing the content, most likely in their proprietary formats, but the convenience of having it all show up in iTunes, which makes it so easy to access the content, and have it synced to the iPod, means that I can live with it – for now.
Despite concerns iTunes U is a wake-up call
I realise that Apple also is doing this to draw traffic to the iTunes Store, and to sell more iPods, Macs and Apple TVs, iTunes U is actually one of the biggest selling points for Apple TV I’ve seen so far.
Despite my concerns over iTunes U, it remains a great initiative – they’re getting so many things right – and it’s my hope that it will serve as an inspiration to the Danish Educational System: WAKE UP!
I’ve hosted a wiki on my website (https://www.kimbach.org/wiki) for some time now, and in keeping with my ideals, that states that participation should be as easy as possible, it was totally open. Notice the past tense: this morning I decided to edit the configuration files, and I now require registration if you want to edit articles on the wiki.
“Low maintenance”
The old, and totally open, setup was partly inspired by the “Co-Creation Rules” session @ reboot 8. In the discussions I had “post-boot” with the hosts of the session, we discussed that “low maintenance” was key to running a successful, participatory, site.
“Low maintenance” means that you create as low barriers as possible to avoid turning users away, e.g. allowing updates and comments without requiring the user to register, or in any other way surrender personal information.
There’s a major problem with “low maintenance” however: Even an uninteresting wiki, like mine, received an increasing amount of vandalism and spam, so I had to spend more and more time reverting vandalism. That’s the reason I’ve decided to require that you register and login, before you can contribute to my wiki.
I’m quite sad about this, but it’s out of necessity – I just don’t have the time to keep it clean.
Spammers beware: The Karmic laws will “haunt” you
So “thank” you spammers and vandals – I don’t really care too much – since it’s your “karma” that will be taking a serious beating for your actions.
Yes to “Low maintenance”, but for me.
If I was running a corporate wiki, and had the resources to patrol the articles, I’d still recommend as low maintenance as possible for the users. However, for personal websites – like mine – it’s just too stressful.
Spam prevention tools should be in the MediaWiki core (and they might be in the latest and greatest versions – which I can’t use because my host doesn’t support PHP5 :-(), and it should work much like Akismet integration in WordPress, which quite simply, is amazing. Akismet is a webservice, that you can query and update to prevent spam comments on weblogs, and it really (understatement) works in WordPress.
Akismet of hope
Without Akismet I would seriously have considered closing my website, since I received something like 1 spam comment every minute – instantly that disappeared when I activated Akismet.
But for now my wiki will remain high-maintenance for users and low-maintenance for me.
You’re still more than welcome to participate in my public Projects through the wiki, but it does require registration now.
2 years ago I had this crazy idea: “How do we get rid of phones” – I thought hard about it, asked friends for ideas, but I concluded that it was just too early – or maybe I didn’t have the vision at that time. People that know me would agree that my vision was somewhat blurred 2 years ago (understatement).
Synchronised “swimming” – because a-synchronous has failed
Synchronous one-on-one tele-communications, i.e. using phones and instant messengering (IM) is, in many ways, a terrible invention, it’s so stressful, at least to me, when people expect immediate answers.
To top it off, it is so rare that you really need to establish “synchronous contact” with anyone far away. “Asynchronous contact” is so much better.
Unfortunately the current batch of asynchronous communication technologies (i.e. e-mail) has failed, mostly due to lousy implementation.
Community service for “Big Brother”
Thanks to recent technologies, I believe that it is almost possible to do away with the phone and IM.
So what recent technologies shows this promise:
I believe that it’s the so-called “presence services” like Jaiku and Twitter that are paving the road towards asynchronous Nirvana.
If you inform people, about your whereabouts and what you’re “up to”, and make it possible for them to “pull” that information on demand, they don’t really need to call or TEXT you.
What they do instead is check the log (“pulling” information), usually by subscribing to it in some way (having information “pushed”), so that they’re automatically updated, this means that they rarely have the need to call, TEXT or IM you.
I know that there are problems with the presence services. The biggest problem is that the majority of the world, isn’t ready to volunteer personal information to the public. It’s a bit like doing community service for “Big Brother”.
Another issue that many people will have, is that you, by telling the world,that you’re not at home, also are providing would-be thieves with the same information.
Finally you run the risk of becoming too personal in your presence, because you believe that you’re engaged in a conversation with friends, not realising that the entire world could be listening in.
How I stopped worrying, and learned how to love “presence”
Currently I use the presence services like a public notebook, and it’s so convenient that you can update the log simply by TEXTing the server, most of my presence messages on Jaiku can only be understood by yours truly and, sometimes, people that know me well.
The rest of the world might gain some insight later, because I tend to use the presence messages, as a stepping stone to a blog-post, like the one you’re currently reading, or it might serve as an inspiration for posting some pictures. The positing of a presence message, can also act as an inspiration for what pictures I actually take.
Think of my Jaiku presence stream as a (public) brainstorm.
Here’s my presence messages (“Jaikus”) for yesterday (the 14th of June 2007):
As you can see the last of these messages, resulted in this blog-post – strangely enough, I got the inspiration from an IM session!
The other two are somewhat cryptic, the first one can’t be understood by anyone but my colleges at work, the second is the name of a group and an album, that was being played at “Kaffe & Vinyl” in Skydebanegade, Copenhagen, when I was there yesterday. Both messages will likely result in blog-posts and the second one, a music purchase.
I predict that the “presence services” will migrate into mainstream business applications, like e-mail and IM has already done. These implementations will likely address, and solve, the privacy issues.
A-synchronous “swimming” revisited
Synchronised “swimming” is SO 80’ies. Welcome to the Nirvana of a-synchronous “swimming”, where the majority of synchronised “swimming” will be performed in the same “swimming-pool”, the “swimming-pool” called IRL.
Now why didn’t I come up with that idea two years ago?
Photo from Wikipedia (Image:Synchronized swimming – Russian team.jpg – originally uploaded to Flickr by Jesus de Blas and released under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 license)
As you might remember, I just found a surprising winner in the contest to find the device best suited for basic Internet access – like Jaiku presence checking – at a public hotspot: the Nintendo DS, with the Opera browser. Since all my “computers” have “names” – a practice I learned from Jerry Pournelle @ Chaos Manor – my DS is now officially baptised “Tölva”.
For the last week I’ve been carrying my “weapon of choice”,”Tölva”, around town, and I’ll be maintaining a list of “Tölva” friendly hotspots on my web-site (most likely the wiki).
Copenhagen:
I’m still amazed at the battery-life of the Nintendo DS. I hope to be able to compare it to other highly mobile Wi-Fi capable devices like the Nokia N95, in the future.
Jaiku is the best thing since sliced bread, and SelinaAlouette, my Nabaztag/tag agrees.
After I treated her to an upgrade to Full Friend Rabbit, she can read ANY RSS feed, and thus my Jaiku presence feed http://kimbach.jaiku.com).
With a Nabaztag (/tag) you can stay in touch with your friends, even without a real computer, how KEWL is that.
And my beautiful Yasmine is starting to bloom, that’s almost a month early.
My garden is actually my slice of heaven, I’ll begin to appreciate it more, and SelinaAlouette will keep me updated while I do productive things, like reading a book.
Marie Østerbye fra Urbans bagside kommer med nogle spændende og relevante betragtninger i hendes klumme Indtast venligst…Øh? fra Urban den 11-Juni-2007.
Uden at vide det (tror jeg) rammer hun faktisk hele den digitale verden hårdt og præcist, og hun giver os da en klar udfordring, der kan opsummeres med dette:
“Hvorfor skal vi have alle de kodeord, et burde da være nok”.
Vigtigheden af at have et sikkert system til vores digitale infrastruktur kan ikke undervurderes, og det er uhyggeligt at folk føler sig så utrygge, og det med god ret, ved at gemme kodeord på deres computere.
Problemet skyldes egentlig web-browseren, der aldrig har været tænkt som en platform til at køre deciderede programmer, og problemet er at stort samtlige hjemmesider har udviklet deres egne systemer til login, uden at tænke over standardisering.
Til jeres og Marie Østerbyes information, kan jeg oplyse om at der foregår en hel del standardiseringsarbejde på dette felt, bla. i offentligt regi, hvor det også hører hjemme, selvom løsninger det offentlige tidligere har promoveret, som f.eks. digital signatur, ikke fået den udbredelse som forventet.
Der forgår bla. et godt arbejde i projekter som OpenID, der er et åbent, decentralt og frit system til bruger-centreret digital identitet, der får stigende støtte i f.eks. open source miljøet, og listen over software der bruger OpenID vokser.
Så der er håb forude, selv om jeg nu ikke tror det kommer fra folk som Janus Friis, William Henry Gates III og Steve Jobs – som Marie Østerbye håber på – men man kan jo håbe at de følger trop, eller tvinges til at gøre det, hvis der kommer nogle åbne standarder.
De nævnte mennesker er ganske vist meget interesseret i at folk kun bruger et enkelt kodeord, men det skal naturligvis være til de tjenester de selv tjener penge på (hhv. Skype og Joost, MSN og iTunes).
Så jeg tror virkelig på at Marie Østerbye meget snart kan nøjes med at huske et kodeord, nemlig det til hendes computer, men lad os tage os sammen og sørge for at det sker.
Der er i øvrigt intet mere kedeligt end at udvikle systemer til bruger identifikation – je’ ve’ det je’ har gjort det – så kære udviklere: spar besværet, sæt jer ind i standarderne og nyd det gode vejr, i stedet for at sidde inde og genopfinde hjulet.
