Loghound.com Development Blog

A bunch of small items

2008-08-07T11:12:00.000-07:00

I've had a bunch of small things I've wanted to blog about but I've never quite gotten the energy up to start. In the interest of you, my dear reader, I decided to pull a few smaller things together into one blog

First a bit of news. The Pope is still catholic, bears do their business in the woods and Apple is planning a September Special Event that will involve ipods. It boggles the mind that anyone would expect apple NOT to have a special event as they have clearly demonstrated a yearly cycle for iPods and quite frankly for consumer products like this they *have* to follow a yearly cycle, 'nuff said.

Next up: 3G or not to 3G? I purchased a 3G iphone (white) and like most folks discovered it runs through batteries faster, and I mean much faster, than my 2G. Now as it turns out I know a bit about cell phone design and RF stuff and I can provide a bit of insight into why this is. You see a '2G' iphone is GSM based which is also known as constant modulation. What this means is that the processing of the signal is very simple and power amp (the part of the circuit that boosts the signal when you talk) can be very, very efficient because you can run it highly compressed.

Enter 3G: 3G is none of these things, it's a very complex signal that requires a *lot* of baseband processing (that's one of the ways they get the zippy speeds) and the power amp is not nearly as effecient becuase you need to operate it in a mode that wastes more power. The unfortunate thing is that for voice there is *no* difference between 3G & non 3G talking (it doesn't sound any better at all) but it's all or nothing if your radio is in 3G mode for data it *has* to be in 3G mode for voice which means you loose power even though you don't get any benefit (sad really)

Of course Apple thoughtfully added a switch to turn off 3G and it *does* return the phone to it's good old power situation but that sort of defeats the purpose of buying a brand new 3G phone, no?

What I'd like to see them do is add a turbo feature. Look, if I'm not talking and the phone notices a *lot* of internet traffic, I'd like the phone to switch from 2G to 3G.. If after a while it notices no more traffic it can switch back. It takes some time (5-20 seconds) to switch between modes but that strikes me as a very reasonable way to allow for good battery life and fast data transfers when I need it.

Then there is Apple TV vs. the Roku Netflix box. Honestly I've used them both and they both have pluses and minuses.

On the Apple TV the only Minus is the fact that you have to pay for everything -- Look I only want to watch Weeds season 2 episode 3 one time in my life I really don't need to purchase it. I would happily pay a subscription fee to get unlimited access to movies & tvs.

That is where the netflix box is brilliant. For the cost of membership you get access to lots of content unlimited -- to be sure not all of it is first run content but a suprising amount of it is useful (for example you can watch the aforementioned weeds on it)

Finally the app store. Is it just me or does it feel like working in a windows environment? Lot's of stupid apps useless apps, shady developers (such as the 'one ebook per app' guy and the unit conversation that switched to paid or the fellow with the $1000 "I am rich"), toss in the user rating system with such witty ratings as "Epic Fail", "This app is way overpriced at $1.99, should be free", etc. -- I'm actually in development of two apps for the phone but that marketplace really turns me off, on the upside I have a new appreciation for my mac customers who are in general a much better breed of person than the average iPhone user...

Ok, 'nuff for now.

WWDC

2008-06-06T13:13:00.001-07:00

I'm headed off to WWDC starting Monday so support (both in the RW forums as well as email) will be slower than usual. I'll try my best but it's a pretty intensive week.

Everyone loves doing predictions so I thought I would throw out a few to the googlesphere.

The only sure bet is a 3G iphone. I'm willing to bet serious money on this, I mean comeon -- Apple is out of stock, AT&T is out of stock, rumors are rampant and it's been a year. I do hope beyond 3G they get a GPS in there along with more memory (32GB) and (ideally) I'd like to see video camera functionality (to capture short clips) with perhaps a upload to youtube?

In term of OS's when I first heard the 'snow leopard' rumors I thought "This sounds crazy, 10.6 has no features, just stability & performance?" but when I sit back it makes a certain amount of crazy sense. Security is increasingly important and in the mobile space even more so. Also, Apple has been really pushing scripting languages for development (Leopard has this cool scripting bridge for instance) and it's 'widely reported' that the iPhone SDK includes a LLVM version of gcc so it's clear they are thinking of changing the compiler technology -- why not go to something like bytecode LLVM for 'most' applications to allow easier sandboxing?

My other thought on 10.6 is the first release of the OS without PPC support will bring howls of pain from folks. If you make it a 'feature lite' version release people will have less room to complain. Finally factor in apple actually *wants* you to upgrade your computer so it's in their interest to kill ppc as fast as they can.

What about the rumored 'slate' computer? To me it sounds pretty nice in concept and I'd buy it (I love the iphone but the screen is small) -- My ideal would be something about the size of the Amazon Kindle with a long battery life that can be a web browser/e-book reader/mail client. Having said that I don't think they'll introduce it next week..

iPhone 2.0? Probably not next week but it will be out in june so no biggie there.

Apple TV updates? They'll announce 48hour rentals

iTunes? Nothing to see here, move along folks.

Macs? Maybe a small bump but nothing big here.

"one more thing"? -- I don't expect much here -- I'd love to be proven wrong however.

Regardless of what they announce I'm still pretty excited about WWDC -- I really enjoyed it last year and I expect this to be as much fun.

Roku Netflix box rocks

2008-06-04T13:28:00.000-07:00

Got netflix? Live in the US? have a spare $99?

Get the roku netflix box. this is a little box that attaches to your network and to your TV and lets you watch any one of netflix's 'watch instantly' titles (currently 10,000 are available)

Previously this feature of netflix was not terribly interesting because

It was PC only (you had to run IE)
Watching movies on a Computer in general sucks

With the addition of this little Roku box you can watch movies on your nice flat panel. You just add the movies you want to watch to your 'instant' que and they show up on your box.

I hesitated ordering it since I've heard the netflix streaming service is poor quality and I already own a apple TV but at $99 (with a 30 day return policy) I figure it was worth a risk. I'm so glad I took that risk as it's really exceeded my expectations.

First the setup: The box attaches to your TV over HDMI or composite or regular RCA and attaches to your network wirelessly or wired. In my case I used HDMI & wireless. After booting up it asks you to enter you wireless password and then downloads an updated firmware, installs the firmware and then reboots -- This entire process took perhaps 3-4 minutes.

After rebooting it tells you to go to netflix.com/activate and enter a code (while logged into your netflix account) -- This takes perhaps a minute and now boom! You can watch movies.

The movies you add to your que show up in a coverflow'ish layout that you scroll across, as you add more movies they sort of 'magically' appear (I wonder how often they check for updates? It seems to pick them up pretty fast) When you click on a movie you get the option to watch it, rate it, delete it (from you que) or (for series) you can change which in the series to watch.

Once you hit 'watch' it starts streaming. On my network over a cable modem it takes maybe 20-30 seconds to start up --- you get a little quality indicator as it's buffering and then the movies starts.

Once concern I heard about was the lack of hard drive and fact that it was pure streaming meant you can't FF/Rewind. This is (strictly speaking) true but it's not really an issue. When you hit FF/Rewind thumbnails pop up of the different scenes -- you can scroll backwards and forwards to find the scene you want, hit play and resume watching. It's not quite as nice as a DVD or apple TV but honestly it works fine.

The big concern I had, however, was the quality -- I had this horrible vision of poor quality really making it unusable. I'm happy to report that the quality is really quite good. They claim 'near DVD' and I tend to believe them. To my eye it's better than standard definition TV but not quite as good as HD -- however the main point is it's totally watchable. We qued up a few shows last night and with moments of starting you forget you are streaming this over the internet -- it's that good.

The nice thing is the box is HD equipped so when netflix slips the switch it'll start output HD quality (right now it outputs in standard def) -- I've not seen publicly them commit to delivering HD movies but the hardware is capable of it (they even mention in the roku faq that it's ready for HD -- I'm looking forward to that switch happening but even if they never do it I'm still pretty happy with it.

Finally the selection. Netflix claims 10,000 movies and they do have a lot -- it's a bit of mismash, tons of older movies and TV shows but a sprinkling of newer things. They probably won't (ever) have hot new releases (like the Apple TV) has but even with the current lineup most people should be able to find something worth watching -- Assuming they continue to gain the rights to add shows this should not be a huge problem (for the record last night we watched snippets from "The Music Man", "My Girl","Heroes Season 1" and (for the kids) "Scooby Doo Hawaiian adventure")

I'd love to see the Apple TV get this kind of functionality -- While I enjoy watching video podcasts on it and I've enjoyed a number of movies (gotta love the ability to zip new DVD releases) there is something so freeing about being able to pick from a huge library in an all you can eat plan like netflix gives you. Given that the netflix subscription for the DVD rentals includes the instant access for free it's a winner.

Highly recommended.

Loghound Plugins & RapidWeaver 4.0

2008-05-29T04:29:00.000-07:00

First of all I'm using a new feature of RapidBlog -- I set the 'date' in the future (4:30 to be exact). Because of RapidBlog's dynamic nature that means at exactly 4:00 in the morning my time (which is no doubt some reasonable hour in the UK) this post will appear. This is good for two reasons.

I don't want to spoil the launch of RW4.0
I don't want to be up at 4:00 in the morning

The main point of this post is to point out that all of my plugins have been upgraded to work with RW4.0. With the exception of RapidBlog they all needed some sort of change (RapidFlickr seems to work perfectly as is!). I'll also point out that all plugins work fine in RW3.6 and RW4.0 so if you want to upgrade the plugins but don't want to upgrade RW4.0 right away you should be safe.

So just for reference here is the list of plugins and required version numbers for use in RW4.0 (again they all work in RW3.6)

RapidBlog	Version 1.54 (or greater)
RapidFlickr	Version 1.29u (or greater)
Lockdown	Version 1.76u (or greater)
PlusKit	Version 1.40 (or greater)
FaqMaker	Version 1.08 (or greater)
SiteMap	Version 1.61u (or greater)

Of course as the RW4.0 floodgates open up it's possible that other problems will be found, so keep an eye on the loghound plugin RSS feed for any critical updates.

Happy Weaving!

Thanks Adam!

2008-05-26T22:49:00.000-07:00

I've mentioned a few times that I came to the mac late in life (so to speak) and for the longest time described myself as a 'switcher' but I've been involved for a few years now and don't think that way much anymore (unless of course i'm hanging around someone like Isaiah and he starts talking about 'system 7' which makes me glaze over -- system wha?)

The point to the above (and I do have one) is that when I first got involved with the mac was around the time podcasts started getting big (this is before they were in iTunes) and the first podcast I listened to on a regular basis was a little one called the maccast. It was a godsend to help me figure out which way was up on a Mac and I even emailed Adam a few times (to which he always answered -- a real class guy)

So imagine my suprise when he started talking about mac blog clients and he starts talking about choices, yes you have blogger, or wordpress but for mac specific you might consider Rapidweaver with (ta da) the RapidBlog plugin! I was driving back from monterey when I heard this and I practically hit the car in front of me (not recommended by the way)

Good fun -- check it out here (toward the end) -- by the way, I'd recommend you subscribe to the maccast (as well as Macbreak weekly) if you are inclined towards podcasts.

Will there be any charge to upgrade loghound plugins to work with RW 4.0?

2008-04-29T14:54:00.001-07:00

Just in case there was any concern or confusion all plugins will be 4.0 compatible for existing customers free of charge.

fun with Gform

2008-04-15T23:28:00.001-07:00

In February the day after (or perhaps that night) I introduced @gform to integrate google forms with pluskit -- At the time I tossed up a sample page to show people what was possible and then didn't think much about it (the page is at http://loghound.com/test/form/)

Tonight I was working in Google Docs and I saw that spreadsheet and decided to take a look at it -- 84 responses from a 'throw away' page I created. While I was mostly ignoring it google was steadfastly gathering data and putting it neatly into a spreadsheet for me - I read through the comments tonight and really enjoyed them (so thanks if you commented)

It's really astounding what is now so easily possible that used to require a bunch of custom programming, database and reporting tools. Now "Anyone" can manage data easily on the web.

If you have any need at all to collect form data on the web @gform (or using the raw google form) is your friend -- I'm a bit biased toward @gform since you can keep your look and feel better but whatever you choose it's really painless so go enjoy

Lockdown Hosts

2008-04-11T22:55:00.001-07:00

Hi All,

I'm trying to collect a list of known 'good' lockdown hosts and 'bad' lockdown hosts -- If you have any experiences (good or bad) could you shot me an email (or leave a comment) so I can add them to the list.

PlusKit ScreenCast

2008-04-07T22:36:00.000-07:00

One of the biggest issues I face with PlusKit is that people get a little overwhelmed with it. It's got so many little nooks & crannies that can really help solve some tough RW problems but people don't know where to start.

To that end I've teamed up with Kevin Burns at CRM Technik in what I hope is the first of many screencasts -- This one provides a gentle introduction to the major features of pluskit but even if you are a 'pro' I suspect you'll find one new item.

Please note that this was based off of PlusKit 1.35 so make sure you have the latest & greatest, grab some popcorn, sit back and enjoy.

(edit: Fixed the broken link)

RapidBlog 1.5b7

2008-03-19T23:40:00.000-07:00

RapidBlog 1.50b7

Fixed up a bunch of warnings in the PHP code and a few other defects. Big change is Gravatar Support (it should be turned on for this blog to get a feel of how it works) -- As always the 1.5 series are not getting much testing as I'm looking for feedback -- It's pretty safe to try them but be a little careful before you put it on a product blog.

To use the Gravatar Support get a (free) Gravatar Account and enter your 'blogger' name and 'gravatar email' in the setup menu (under 'display'

Get it here

And yes before you ask -- I realize the setup menu GUI is a bit of a mess right now, I"m planning an overhaul before 1.5 final goes out but things are changing fast enough that I'm willing to let it slide (for now)

Pirates Vs. Ninjas

2008-03-16T20:23:00.001-07:00

Hi All,

You can now refer to me as "The award winning director" as I've just received a honerable mention in my documentary efforts to capture the struggle between Pirates & Ninjas.

At my dinner table a constant source of discussions goes like this "Dad, which is better? x or y?" -- Where (x,y) = (superman, batman) or (basketball, baseball) or (Pirates, Ninjas)

As it turns out we were not the only ones asking said questions -- On YouTube similar questions were asked

We of course had to express our opinion and along with 700 other people we voted, here was our vote

After the voting was in the winner was declared.. Ninjas! -- However when you watch the award video, if you wait to the very end you'll see list of 'honorable' mentions -- look who is 4th on the list!

-John "Award Winning Directory" M

LogDocs 0.2

2008-03-15T22:37:00.000-07:00

New version of LogDocs -- Fixes a nasty race condition and adds sparkle and growl notifications -- Future version of LogDocs will be delivered via Sparkle.

If you had a problem with 1.0 working (e.g. it comes up but displays nothing) this should fix it.

Get it here:

Introducing LogDocs

2008-03-14T21:14:00.000-07:00

Hi All,

I wanted to share a new toy I've been playing with. It's a small application that 'mounts' your google documents on your mac. Once you've done this you can interact them much like any other drive (copy to and from, delete, etc.).

It's fun and useful in it's current state but be aware it doesn't do everything for everyone. Specifically it has limitations around renaming files (you can't) uploading new versions of files (you can't) and it occasionally needs a restart. It also only supports documents & spreadsheets -- No presentations for you!

It does require that you install MacFuse and it's Leopard only but it's pretty painless beyond that -- Just double click, fill in your credentials (stored securely in your keychain) and your good to go.

let me know what you think.

Download

Summer "Vacation" Plans

2008-03-13T16:44:00.000-07:00

I've been working with my wife on our summer plans -- when & where to go. As it turns out Apple helped make part of them today. I know where I'll be June 9-13

For the most part it's a 'non' event -- we all kind of 'knew' there would be something either June, July or August with the good money on June. Furthermore it was no surprise that the iPhone would feature so prominently (especially after they announced 'iPhone 2.0 in June') -- In the invite they specifically mention 'three tracks': Mac, iPhone & IT. While I'm excited about the iPhone as a platform to develop for I really hope they don't shortchange the Mac side -- What I really hope they can talk about is 'what's next' for OSX after leopard but I'm a little worried they are so focused on iPhone that they won't have much to say.

Time will tell....

iPhone SDK

2008-03-07T19:54:00.001-08:00

Like every other developer in the known world (where known means 'Apple world') I've been playing with the SDK ever since the servers let me snag a copy. "Our" reaction has been pretty consistent: It's a lot (and I mean a lot) more than any of us expected. I was honestly expecting the "SDK" to be embedded javascript applets you could run (and honestly that would have been ok for a lot of stuff -- see the weather widget, that's nothing more than a glorified dashboard widget)

Instead they give us a real API in a real language with a really nice toolchain... It was stunning.

Now the question is what to do? Do you jump on the bandwagon and furiously code to release something in June or do you sit back, let the tools mature (although brilliant they are still beta) and then swoop in after the initial wave where you see weak spots.

It's something I'll be thinking about over the next days.

RapidBlog 1.50b6

2008-02-20T23:45:00.000-08:00

RapidBlog 1.50b6 -- mostly defect fixes too numerous to count

Download 1.50B6

RapidBlog 1.50b3

2008-02-16T22:24:00.000-08:00

This is just a 'quick fix' to some defects in 1.50b2 -- Specifically RSS feeds weren't working reliably and the div ordering showed the wrong graphic. Recommended for anyone who was using 1.50B2

Download 1.50B3

RapidBlog 1.50b2

2008-02-11T22:36:00.001-08:00

It's been a while since I posted a update to my blog but I've been working on this one for a while (not non stop which explains why it's taken so long)

I've just pushed up a beta of RapidBlog 1.5 -- This includes most of the feature requests I've had in the last few months (well, most of the requests that are implementable)

Upgrading the blog rendering to be more consistent with the built in blog
Permalink can now be the title of the post
Show/Hide comments can optionally be placed
Error message improvements
The blog comment introduction "Jack said...." can now be customized
Setup now uses the standard RW setup method, not it's own window
And you can re-arrange the order in which the blog renders out -- want the date below the body? no problem, just re-arrange it from the setup menu.

If you are brave and feel like playing give it a try. Of course you can always go back to the current shipping version so it's pretty safe to play with. If your favorite feature request is not included let me know as I'm still working on it and (of course) let me know what problems you see.

Enjoy Download 1.50B2

Insight to my Psyche

2008-01-23T21:40:00.000-08:00

I got two new toys on virtually the same day (Monday)

a new 40" LCD TV (Samsung LNT4061F for those of you keeping score) and a Amazon Kindle

To date I've spend about 30 minute watching the TV and 4 hours reading e-books. I suspect I'll spend a lot more time on my e-book reader than on the TV.

MacSanta

2007-12-13T20:18:00.000-08:00

You might want to keep an eye on the Mac Santa Deals around the 14th..... Especially if there is a plugin you wanted but haven't purchased yet.

A sad day

2007-12-05T20:41:00.000-08:00

Today is a sad day -- My long trusty friend, Net News Wire, was removed from my dock. I've been increasingly using Google Reader and with some of the recent improvements I just wasn't using NNW very much anymore.

I never thought a web app would displace a desktop app but I was apparently wrong...

User deserves better

2007-11-21T23:21:00.001-08:00

I was working on a new project tonight -- It's still early days so I don't want to talk about it yet but I came across one funny thing (which I think is new in leopard) -- If you ask for an alert panel and don't pass it a good message you get

A generic error message will be displayed, but the user deserves better.

Gotta love the appkit guys at Apple

Blogger changes & RapidBlog

2007-11-13T23:54:00.000-08:00

Hi All,

Blogger pushed up a new version which changes their documented behavior. Since I'm not sure if this will be fixed or not (or more importantly when) I've pushed up a new version of RapidBlog (1.26)

You can get it here

http://loghound.com/rapidblog/changelog/index.html

Dogged Determination

2007-11-08T08:20:00.000-08:00

So the iPhone is being released in the UK. MacWorld UK has a story about it and the regency street store

It's not the longest queue - yet, but two people have arrived outside the store equipped with warm weather clothing, folding chairs and grim, dogged determination to be among the first people in the UK to get hold of an iPhone.

Care to guess who one of those two is?

Worlds Biggest French Fry!

2007-11-01T23:36:00.001-07:00

Worlds Biggest French Fry!

We had fish n' chips the other night -- much to our suprise we found this monster french fry mixed in -- Can you imagine the potato?