This post is part of a series of posts where I share my experiences developing, testing, and debugging the new implementation of my website, including this blog and my home page.

When I made the new implementation of my website, I included a file browser for my file repository with files that I would like to share. With NGNIX, this is extremely easy to achieve. Just enable autoindex for the given …

This post is part of a series of posts where I share my experiences developing, testing, and debugging the new implementation of my website, including this blog and my home page.

When I developed my new website, I used OrbStack to run a virtual developer version of the site on my development computer (the host). I recommend this setup since what you run in development can be very close to the sit …

This post is part of a series of posts where I share my experiences developing, testing, and debugging the new implementation of my website, including this blog and my home page.

In this post, I will describe how I did the setup of a Debian Linux computer for my web.py web applications served by NGINX and Gunicorn. The same setup is used both on my live site hosted on Linode and on my OrbStack vi …

This post is part of a series of posts where I share my experiences developing, testing, and debugging the new implementation of my website, including this blog and my home page. At the end of this post, you will find links to the other posts.

I've had a side project re-implementing this blog and my web pages for a while. In January 2021, I moved the blog and web pages to a Linode-hosted web platf …

My first blog post on this blog was posted September 14, 2007, just titled «The first posting». The whole content of the post was this:

This is my first posting on Blogger. This blog (feed) is my private blog where I will post stuff not related to work. This posting is also a test of MarsEdit, the blog publisher I've started to use today. I have a license for MarsEdit 1, but I will upgrade to ver …

This post is part of a series of posts where I share my experiences developing, testing, and debugging the new implementation of my website, including this blog and my home page.

In web development, I have started to use Beaker (documentation) to handle session data (e.g., current logged in user in a session). The data for a given session can be stored in files, in a database, in memory (does no …

In 2012, I wrote about coding fonts, and still, my preferred programming font is Source Code Pro. I have updated the post from 2012 a couple of times with new interesting fonts for coding, and I continue to look for new fonts that could be a replacement for my preferred programming font. Yesterday, via Charles Roper, I came over the font Intel One Mono designed by Frere-Jones Type for Intel. I th …

I do almost all my programming and scientific writing in Emacs, and I am a Mac user running a recent version of macOS (usually the latest release available). I try to install most of the third-party software I use with Homebrew. It makes it much easier to install the software I need (including Emacs, BSD make, OpenSSL, Python, and Qt) and keep the software updated (regularly running the command «b …

Mailspring is a free mail client for Mac, Linux, and Windows (a paid Pro version is also available). Mailspring's user interface (UI) is open source (GPLv3). It is built on a plugin architecture and is designed to be easy to extend.

I have started using Mainspring on macOS recently, and since I find keyboard shortcuts important when using an email client efficiently, Mailscript's highly configurab …

I prefer to produce documents using LaTeX (and other TeX friends), and draw figures using MetaPost. A long, long time ago (when I did my PhD), I even created a MetaPost package, aaobj (documentation).

Recently, I have moved towards using the Lua implementation of TeX (see also the LuaLaTeX documentation). I will not discuss why in detail here, but one of the reasons is that inline MetaPost in LaTe …

In November 2019, I wrote about this:

Qt for Python (and plotting with Matplotlib)

Since then, Qt 6 and PySide6 has been released (see Qt for Python 6 released). Currently, I install both Python and Qt on my Mac with Homebrew, making the steps much easier than described in the post from 2019:

brew install qt
brew install python

At the moment, Homebrew does not install Python 3.10, the latest a …

I just converted a lot of home videos from VHS to MP4 files. I planned to upload and view the resulting files on my iPad. I used HandBrake to reduce the size of the files and WALTR PRO (remember to turn of Automatic Content Recognition in the Preferences) to transfer the videos to my iPad. But, before I transferred them to the iPad, I wanted to add a title and an artwork image to the metadata of e …

I'm using several email services, but most of my private email is on an IMAP-based service. A lot of the received emails should be automatically moved to a sub-folder on the server without my involvement. In most email clients, you can easily create rules to do this. However, I would like to do this even when I have no email clients up and running. For my work email service (Outlook) this can be …

I have been using Apple Notes for all my note-taking since 2016. For not-so-interesting reasons, I recently had to change to Microsoft OneNote. However, I did not want to leave all my meeting notes behind. I had to find a solution to get all my notes out for Apple Notes. And as many times before, AppleScript (and Python) was part of the solution.

My first attempt was to search for possible tools o …

Differential privacy is an interesting tool when doing privacy-aware analytics. This is a topic I have been working on for a while, and one of the great challenges is to implement generic tools for this. However, developers at Google are using this a lot internally, and they have also made their libraries available at GitHub. Since I often prefer Python, I am happy to find a Python wrapper for the …

In a previous posting, I explained how to use Apple Script to automate an action and connect it to a keyboard shortcut. Recently, I changed the approach for several such actions on my Macs. The new approaches are all based on Keysmith. My experience is that the resulting actions from Keysmith are executed much more efficiently than my previous solution.

Update, June 25 2024

Sometimes, I experience …

Last January, I moved this blog to WordPress. The main reason for the move was that MarsEdit stopped supporting Blogger (where my blog was hosted for years through Blogspot). I was never happy with the WordPress hosting, and this December, I decided to build my own blog platform hosted on a Linode server. I got it up and running before the annual WordPress bill was due on December 31st. The goal w …

I prefer to program in Python, but for automation on the Mac, AppleScript is still a great tool. Especially paired with a good AppleScript editor/debugger like Script Debugger. For many projects, it would be nice to do most of the scripting in Python and only do the interaction with the different programs (GUI) in AppleScript. The obvious solution is PyObjC and its ScriptingBridge framework (wrapp …

I am currently on my Mac using the Microsoft Outlook application for email. For a lot of reasons, I have turned off automatically downloading pictures from the Internet (see Preferences→Reading→Security). But sometimes, I want to see the pictures included in the email message I am reading. I can push the button Download pictures to see them. However, I prefer to use the keyboard. I have not found …

In macOS, it is easy to create new keyboard shortcuts to a menu item. Just go to System Preferences → Keyboard → Shortcuts, select App Shortcuts, press the plus button, select the application (or All Applications), type in the menu title of the menu item, and choose a keyboard shortcut:

The menu title can be from a sub-menu item. However, if you have more than one sub-menu item with the same tit …

I write these blog posts with MarsEdit. And, while I am writing, I preview the blog post with Marked 2 (start Marked 2 and choose Preview → MarsEdit Preview from the menu). And since my writing usually is about programming, the blog posts might contain source code. My approach is similar to how I include source code in papers, and I was writing about it back in 2015. So, this is an update on how I …

In march 2015, I wrote about using Pygments when including source code in papers (and on the web). I still use Pygments, but I have never updated the description on how I do it now. In most cases, I use Pygments implicitly without interacting with the program myself. I leave it to the LaTeX package minted. You still need to install Pygments, but you do not need to interact with it. The minted pack …

To able to develop GUI-based Python programs using Qt you need to install Qt and PySide2 (Python mapping for Qt 5, see Qt for Python). A good place to start is the Qt for Python getting started document.

Install the software

I have Python 3.8 on my Mac. I have also installed numpy and matplotlib with pip (since I have many different Python installations on my Mac, including 2.7, 3.7 and 3.8, I wil …

Until recently, I have been an Aquamacs user on the Mac. However, recently, I have been switching back to a more standard Emacs distribution for Mac. After some time of research, I ended up with the Emacs Mac Port. This distribution is easily installed and updated through Homebrew, and since I am already using Homebrew for other important software on my Mac (including bsdmake), this was an obvious …

Previously, I have discussed How to open Emacs from a link in an HTML file on Mac OS X. This post is just to give a complete overview of how this can be done without too many manual tasks. My complete AppleScript program and its Makefile is available for download. It should only be used with your own modification.  It includes the usage of cvs to commit the changes in the bib files to my local cvs …

I currently use Airmail as my Mac (and iOS) mail client. With many email accounts I found that Airmail fits my needs OK. And I have created a large number of rules that are automatically performed on new emails in my inbox. However, for different reasons I would sometimes like to perform all my rules manually. As far as I know this is not possible in the Mac version of Airmail. So, I had to implem …

Since I do most of my writing in LaTeX, I have all my references (publications I cite when I write papers) in a series of bib-files (for BibTeX). To easier browse and search these references I have created a small Python script that generates a HTML document with all these references. Each reference also includes a link to the bib-file this reference was found in. In the link, I include the key of …

I prefer TeX and friends (LaTeX, MetaPost, BibTeX) when writing papers. But sometimes I have to use Microsoft Word. One annoyance I have observed in many documents written in Word is line breaks (word wrapping) in the wrong places. Not all spaces are the correct place to break lines in a text. In TeX, I would write the tilde (~) character instead of a space, and in HTML, I would use the character …

In 2012 I posted a post on using PyCrypto with Python 3 and some AES and RSA examples. Now, I usually use the cryptography Python library (implemented for both Python 2 and 3). I have ported all my PyCrypto examples from 2012 (see the README file) to the cryptography library.

pycryptex.py / pycryptex-cbc.py

pycryptex.py [src] is a small example using AES to encrypt and decrypt a text:

> python3 pycry …

In the last post we demonstrated how to automate a task using AppleScript and the Fake scriptable web browser. Often, I use Automator included on every Mac to perform such tasks. To activate them, we bind them to a keyboard shortcut in the given application. The example we will use today is to press a keyboard shortcut to load the remote content of an email in Mail.app (you have of course turned o …

You can make life a lot easier on your Mac if you learn how to automate things. The standard approach to do this on Macs is to use Automator (see How to use Automator: What Automator is and how it works from Macworld UK). If you include AppleScript, Fake, and the keychain in your toolchain, you can achieve even more. As an example I will develop an automated task to create a new email alias using …

I've written many papers and a lot of web pages that includes source code. Since Python code was an important part of my Dr. thesis, I even wrote a tool to generate a pretty-printed Python code for LaTeX (this was written in 1997, but since I've been using it ever since it has had a few minor bug fixes since then; however, it needs Python 1.6 and it was the first Python program I ever wrote!). Jus …

The language announced at WWDC yesterday came as a big surprise to almost everyone. At Chris Lattner's Homepage you can find a short summary on the history of the Swift programming language. He started work on the language in July 2010, and it became a major focus for the Apple Developer Tools group 3 years later. Other people started to contribute to the project in late 2011. He mentions Objectiv …

I've just developed my first application in Swift, the new language announced by Apple yesterday. I downloaded the Swift book on my iPad during the Keynote, and started programming immediately. When I got hold of Xcode beta 6 I got it running in seconds.

My first impression: Swift is a modern language. It is closely related to popular scripting languages, like Python and Ruby, but is is a compiled …

When programming Python, I prefer to use native GUI on OS X. Very Simple OS X Cocoa Application using Python and Interface Builder is a good place to start. The example works with Python 3 on OS X 10.9.2 when PyObjC is installed following the instructions in one of my earlier posts: Python 3 and PyObjC.

I needed a few Perl modules that weren't installed on the standard Perl installation on my Mac (OS X 10.9.2). In How to install Perl modules on Mac OS X in 4 easy steps I found all the details needed. I didn't need to do step 1 (and 1.5) since this is the first thing I do on every new Mac instance. To summarize what I did in 3 steps to install the two modules I needed:

sudo perl -MCPAN -e 'install …

A lot of options for backup on your Mac exists. I use Time Machine, Backblaze, Crash Plan, Transporter, Carbon Copy Cloner, and other tools for different types of backup on different Macs. The challenging backup for me are my pictures. I want at least one backup not in my house. The size of this backup is large, and since I am using Aperture, the meta-data of the file-system has to be preserved. L …

These are my steps to install PyGame for Python 3 on OS X Mountain lion:

1. Download (and unpack) the following:
• PyGame 1.9.1 source: http://www.pygame.org/
• XQuartz-2.7.4: http://xquartz.macosforge.org/
• libpng-1.6.2: http://downloads.sourceforge.net/libpng/
• jpegsrc.v9: http://www.ijg.org/
2. Install the png and jpeg libraries:
• (cd libpng-1.6.2; ./configure; make; sudo make install)
• (cd jpeg-9; ./configure; make …

My new bash shell prompt:

Matching the large amount of snow outside. A more detailed picture of the snowman:

Inspired by put a burger in your shell.

Just a short follow up to The future of Apple is bright and I am not a fan boy. Why is it that users of Apple products by a large number of tech journalists are called Apple fans and not Apple users? The intention is to give the message that the user has not selected the product because it is a better product for the user. The decision by the user is irrational. If the user had not been a fan he o …

I'm now in my third period as a Mac user. The first period was in the late eighties working with Word (and later Aldus PageMaker) to create a bulletin for the students computer club (Tromsøstudentenes Dataforening). The next period was in 1997 when I visited Lancaster University for six months and a Mac was put on my desk. However, my main computer (where my programming has been done) has always ( …

My main programming platform is OS X 10.8 and Python 3 (currently Python 3.3). In earlier blog posts I have discussed installing and using PyCrypto in this environment. My next attempt was to find a GUI solution for this platform. I usually prefer native approaches when programming, and for OS X, the Cocoa framework is the native approach. To get access to this from Python, we need a bridge, and t …

Earlier today I wrote about installing PyCrypto for Python 3 on OS X 10.8. I will use the opportunity to provide a few examples using PyCrypto to do AES and RSA encryption and decryption. I have created 3 programs. The first one, pycrypto-mkkey.py [src], generates an RSA key and saves it in two different files. One including the private key and one with only the public key (using the .pub extensio …

On an updated Mac (in my case 10.8.2) with an updated version of Xcode  (in my case 4.5.2) compiling and installing PyCrypto for Python 3 (in my case 3.3) is not just simply running the setup.py script. The latest release of PyCrypto is 2.6 and it supports Python 3 (it has supported Python 3 since version 2.4). But my earlier attempts using Python 3.2 on OS X 10.8 failed since it couldn't locate t …

I consider myself a programmer, and to perform this task I rely on a set of tools. I need a text editor, compilers and/or run-times, build-systems, code repositories, documentation, and sometimes even an IDE. Since the late 80s my text editor of choice has been Emacs (and Aquamacs on OS X), but I am also comfortable with vi (including Vim) and ed. Currently, I am investigating time in newer text e …

Based on the previous script generating HTML from Cristin data, I created another script generating a BibTeX file from the same JSON data. The script has the same limitations as the previous one, but it should be easy to modify for your needs. Have fun!

Yesterday I wrote a small Python script to fetch and generate a publication list for web-pages. I use a web-services (ws) provided by Cristin (Current research information system in Norway). Cristin is a research information system for hospitals, research institutes, and universities and university colleges. From the provided ws I use the method hentVarbeiderPerson (see Brukerdokumentasjon Cristin …

I restart my blog today.  November 16th 2010 was my last post (on Beatles available in iTunes). Since many of my old post were dated, I've deleted them all.  The main reason for the silence is that other tools have replaced the purpose of the blog for me. I used the blog to remind myself on interesting software, web-pages, music and articles/text that I wanted to dig into later. Kippt and Instapap …

Apple news of the day: The Beatles on iTunes.

Some keyboard shortcuts and a two games: Kindle 3: Some Hidden Features

Every programmer should read Why you should know just a little Awk. And when you are there, see this presentation by Brian Kernighan: Random thoughts on scripting languages (pdf). It is also awk relevant (Kernighan is the K in awk).

From PCMag.com: Best free Mac software 2010 [via]

Fra NetCom sin iPhone blog: Rapport fra den norske medierevolusjonen.

I'm interested in concurrency and Python, and gevent is an interesting approach to this. gevent is a coroutine-based Python networking library that uses greenlet to provide a high-level synchronous API on top of libevent event loop. See this presentation from EuroPython. [via]

At Titanium's Software 3 nice tools to control your Mac is available:

• OnyX is a multifunction utility for Mac OS X which allows you to verify the Startup Disk and the structure of its System files, to run misc tasks of system maintenance, to configure some hidden parameters of the Finder, Dock, QuickTime, Safari, iTunes, Login window, Spotlight and many Apple’s applications, to delete caches, to r …

New video from Department of Computer Science, University of Tromsø: SegWay vs LegWay.

Robert Bringhurst’s book The Elements of Typographic Style is well known (a classic), but can it be applied to the web? A web site called The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web demonstrates this.

Infographics is a powerful tool to visualize data and information. One example is The Semantic web Infographic I wrote about earlier. This story from The Future Buzz (Adam Singer) discuss Infographics in more details: Data Visualization And Infographics To Tell Your Story (including reference to 5 blogs that frequently feature data visualizations and infographics). [via]

Update: Creative Exampl …

Two articles to read:

Poetry of code: New expressive languages pursue simplicity, consistency and play. (by John Labovitz)

In my last article, I wrote about safety in the emerging computer languages presented at OSCON — how some languages focus on reducing failures by tightening up a language, restricting or regulating how code interfaces with other code, with data, and with system and network resou …

At tuaw: iBooks love: free e-books worth reading (with quick links to iBooks-compatible downloads).

Mount your iPhone to your Mac or PC? Grab Phone Disk. And for a limited time it is free. [via]

Infographic: WTF is the Semantic Web and why should we care? [via]

And the editor is critical: OAuth 2.0 (without Signatures) is Bad for the Web by Eran Hammer-Lahav.

Må nok bruke min D80 en stund til, men det er lov å drømme: Nikon D7000: Camera Road Test with Chase Jarvis.

Pear Note records audio, video, and what you do, including typing notes and changing slides, on a timeline. Since keystrokes and slide changes are kept on this timeline, you can easily find what was being said during typing or a particular slide.

From the home page:

CoffeeScript is a little language that compiles into JavaScript. Think of it as JavaScript's less ostentatious kid brother — the same genes, roughly the same height, but a different sense of style. Apart from a handful of bonus goodies, statements in CoffeeScript correspond one-to-one with their equivalent in JavaScript, it's just another way of saying it.

See 20 Cool Reasons to Hack Your Apple TV [via]

A nice pice on iPhone multitasking at furbo.org (by Craig Hockenberry).

What is fast app switching on the iPhone and what does it have to do with multitasking? You can read What is Fast App Switching? at TidBITS to find out. [via]

John Nagel presents newthreading for safer concurrency in Python. See also the Improved concurrency for Python paper and the actual announcement.

So true. From Rob Pike Responds on http://interviews.slashdot.org/.

Dive Into HTML 5 seeks to elaborate on a hand-picked Selection of features from the HTML5 specification and other fine Standards. I shall publish Drafts periodically, as time permits.

Inspired by Google's encrypted search option, EFF and the Tor project are providing a new (public beta) Firefox extension called HTTPS everywhere. [via]

Booktorious is a proof of concept EPUB reader implemented in JavaScript. [via]

This article presents four solutions to screen capturing: Kool Toolz: Catching Up with Screen Capturing. Camtasia and Voila are new to me.

Read this from EFF: How to Get More Privacy From Facebook's New Privacy Controls.

The Facebook Open Graph Protocol is an interesting new take on semantic web.

Jacob Waller has created Golingo, a word game for iPhone implemented without a single line of Objective-C (all logic in JavaScript) and only one image (CSS3 instead).  Read how: Golingo: a great Titanium mobile Web game, open sourced for you.

Nå når det virkelig nærmer seg innlvering av selvangivelse så kan jo dette være av interesse (fordi du kan levere den elektronisk på Altinn, og en av innloggingsmulighetene der er Buypass-kortleseren du har liggende fra Norsk Tipping): Slik får du smartkortleser fra Buypass til å fungere på Mac.

The best implementation I have ever seen: A Turing Machine.

This is an impressive HTML5 demo, a presentation of HTML. Be aware that your browser has to support HTML 5 (or at list part of it).

Good one (and recognizable): 5 Stages of Programmer Incompetence. I remember my «budding genius» phase, but I think I am pass it now (and at that time, the late eighties, my curiosity made me dig into functional languages and Miranda).

To have some use of (perform computation on) the ciphertext without decrypting it might have many possible applications (the notion of processing data without having access to it may seem logically impossible, but for example in this article, new algorithm for homomorphic encryption described). The following posting is a good start on this topic: What is Homomorphic Encryption, and Why Should I C …

The graph theory book by David Joyner, Minh Van Nguyen, and Nathann Cohen is avialable for free (PDF). Theory and algorithms are illustrated using the Sage open source mathematics software.

In 8 Ways to Better Understand the Internet of Things they took the list of suggested topics for papers at the second Internet of Things Conference and rounded up their ongoing reporting and analysis for each of the eight topics as a way to help us understand how vast and far reaching IoT will end up being.

Nice one: The end of publishing.

The Pro Git book is available online.

Now available: Kindle for Mac. See press release. [via]

This will help you: Creating iPhone and Mac icons using Inkscape

Recommended reading: Best practices in web development with Python and Django. [via]

In the March/April 2010 The Functional Web column, Developing RESTful Web Services with Webmachine (PDF), Justin Sheehy and Steve Vinoski evaluate Webmachine against the RESTful Web Services Development Checklist. To quote Steve Vinoski:

Webmachine is a highly innovative web application framework, and it can teach you a great deal about the specifics of HTTP and the details of REST. It’s also writt …

A book on Cryptography is available from Wikibooks. Not complete yet, but a nice resource on the topic. [via]

Programming Clojure and want to find a good IDE? Read Clojure IDEs — The Grand Tour by Lau B. Jensen. The article also remined me about ELPA, the Emacs Lisp Package Archive.

Ted Leung has finally updated his Macintosh Tips and Tricks page. A very good source of what software to check out if you're a Mac user. [via]

The movie Welcome to Macintosh is available from SnagFilms. [via]

Bruce Eckel hast written this pice on «Programming in the Mid-Future». It contains a list of «breakthroughs required» (and his first point is «extremely dynamic»).

From EFF: The Beginning of the End of Data Retention.

I've been using Instapaper to save web-pages for later reading. Why? I agree with this article on that topic. I just discovered an alternative to Instapaper, the Read it Later application/service. [via]

In LaTeX vs. Word vs. Writer Eyolf Østrem (in 2007) compared the result of typesetting the same document with these three tools. He also discuss the features of these tools (and why the results differ). The Beauty of LaTeX (2010)presents similar results, but also include a nice updated list of available LaTeX resources.

A funny take on «Why DRM Doesn’t Work». See also this this illustration (from Piracy: The Benefit Of Not Paying For Things). [via]

A nice list: Best OS X Utility for programmers who use the command line.

Make the web pages readable: Readability is a simple tool that makes reading on the Web more enjoyable by removing the clutter around what you're reading. Go to the Readability webpage, select your preferred style (settings), and drag the bookmarklet to your browser's bookmark toolbar. [via]

This article describes how: Mail’s Email Aliases, and Complexity Hidden.

See Kindle: more than an e-book reader, it's a development platform.

Some of us still listen to music using the old-time record players. However I have never seen the grooves in this much details: Record grooves under an electron microscope. [via]

See this BBC video on a man-in-the-middle attack against chip and PIN. [via]

See also How online card security fails. [via]

From MacRuby homepage:

MacRuby is a version of Ruby 1.9, ported to run directly on top of Mac OS X core technologies such as the Objective-C common runtime and garbage collector, the CoreFoundation framework and the LLVM compiler infrastructure.

HotCocoa is a thin, idiomatic Ruby layer that sits above Cocoa and other frameworks.

On your Mac you have multiple (work)spaces, but you can not name them or make their appearance stand out. Hyperspaces will do this for you.

NRK anbefaler Silverlight for å se nett-tv fra dem på Mac: NRK Nett-TV på Mac. Flip4Mac skal også virke (altså uten å endre instillinger hvis du har Flip4Mac installert på din Mac). For radio så finnes det en god oversikt her (bruk M3U-filer i iTunes for eksempel). [via]

VLC lacks Mac OS X developers, so future Mac versions is not guaranteed. One alternative is Movist. See also IUseThis.com for more information [via,via]

I want to do some demos of some software developed for the iPhone. How does I display my iPhone screen on my computer (Mac). My first approach was VNC. I installed a VNC server on my iPhone (Veency installed from Cydia) and then used my favorite VNC client to access the phone (JollyFastVNC). This gives me the opportunity to both see the iPhone screen on my computer and to manipulate the iPhone …

Where is the Nike+ data located on your iPhone? Check out this directory on your phone (either ssh to it or use the Terminal program):

/var/mobile/Media/iTunes_Control/Device/Trainer/Workouts/Empeds

In his December 17 blog post, David Pogue asks Should E-Books Be Protected? And since he is a very successful author that recently has some experience releasing a DRM free e-book (and selling books is his main income) it is an interesting read. [via]

It is not easy to predict the future, so I guess it in not fair to put up a list like this. But it is a nice example on how difficult it is to predict the what will do well in the market, and that the user experience is not only tied to the specifications of the device: iPhone Death Watch. The 2007 ones are maybe most fun to read today.

A nice script to copy an email to your Evernotes. [via]

A nice discussion on the topic (with reference to the original posting it is commenting): iPhone Web Apps as an Alternative to the App Store

Sometimes you might need to mount a (decrypted) DVD. Use Fairmount (you need to install VLC, and be aware of the problem that currently VLC 1.0.3 and the included libdvdcss is 32-bit only).

The Closure Library from Google is a powerful, low level JavaScript library designed for building complex and scalable web applications. From Google Closure: A New Way of Developing in JavaScript (you should read this article):

What makes Closure different from other libraries available nowadays is its goal, its structure and its approach to client side developing with JavaScript. [...] Coding in C …

This is a nice read about Google Wave: How Google Wave is Changing the News.

Her er et nytt alternativ: Norske iCal-kalendere. [via]

OCZ now offers 3 different flash express cards (8, 16 and 32 GByte, at approx $20, $50, $110). Save a USB slot and finally use the express card slot for something useful. You can connect the express card to a Mac/PC without an express card slot using the included USB cable. Read 18 MByte/s and write 12.5 MByte/s [via]

Maps interests me, and I like to read all kind of maps. Strange maps is a great source of just that. One of my favorites found here is The Road From LONDON to the LANDS END Comencing at the Standard in Cornhill and Extending to Senan in Cornwall from 1675 and made by Iohn Obilby.

Do you want to disable sleep mode on your Mac laptop (downloading lecture notes to your laptop when running to the lecture room). InsomniaX does that. [via]

From the home page:

Combining the power of Aperture and Google Maps (the mapping engine you know and love), Maperture is a powerful, new edit plug-in that makes geotagging your photos a snap.

• Import GPS Tracklog data files (GPX, KML, LOG, NMEA & TCX)


• Reverse Geocode location information


• Copy, Paste, Remove & Show Location menu options


• Add custom Keyword(s) t …

A nice site with discussion of computer science publications: Papers in Computer Science

Do you want to understand AES? Try this stick figure guide.

When traveling, the ability to view maps on and navigate with the iPhone without being connected to the network might be good for your economy. Downloading a lot of data using 3G when you are traveling can be very expensive. Your unlimited data plan only works at home. At least two approaches can be used on the iPhone.

A few programs provide the possibility to prefetch the maps before the trip ( …

It is possible to install software and manage your iPhone without being dependent on iTunes and App Store only. To do this you have to jailbreak your iPhone. The best source of knowledge doing this is the dev-team blog. Currently the iPhone software version is 3.1.2, and this version is possible to jailbreak using PwnageTool 3.1.4 (thanks to the usb control msg hole). If you also need to unloc …

This has always been annoying, that no keyboard shortcuts locks the screen on my Macs. Different approaches were presented in Quickly lock your screen, but the best approach I have found requires you to install LockTight (now compiled for 10.6 too, see also How to lock your Mac with a keyboard shortcut).

This is good: 10 Basic Rules Of Twitter.

If you want to know:

howstuffworks

ehow

The Grand Central for concurrency and thread scheduling in Mac OS X is now open to all. [via]

No need for cocoASpell: Kom i gang med stavekontroll på norsk i Snow Leopard. Spell checking dictionaries have to be downloaded from the OpenOffice project (see also Åpne kontorprogram på norsk).

Check out Snow Leopard Compatibility. [via]

Today I use Twin from App4MAc to backup one of my iMacs to another iMac (located in a different building) over the network. I've also done some minor testing of Mozy, Dropbox, JungleDisk, and a few other online solutions that also provides storage. CrashPlan combines the possibility to do backup to an external disk or a remote (friend's) computer (like Twin), and to online storage provided by th …

The best review available is the Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard: the Ars Technica review. 23 web pages stuff with deep knowledge about the new incarnation of Mac OS X.

On my iMac at home I use Boot Camp and VMWare Fusion to make it possible to use Widows (Vista). After I moved all media files to an external disk (Drobo) I got a lot of available disk space on the Mac partition of the disk. The Windows partition has always been to small (32 GB) for all the games and maps installed on it, and I decided to make repartition the disk with a larger Windows partition. …

I want the paste keyboard shortcut (Command-V) to insert non-formated text jump to this posting: Setting Paste and Match Style as default.

I got my Android developer phone a few months ago (for projects at the lab), but this summer I also have to use it as my phone. First thing I did was to upgrade it to 1.5 following these instructions. I then reactivated myself as a Spanning Sync user to sync my iCal and Address Book with the Android phone. Since tethering now i easy on the iPhone (if your mobile provider allows it), my first ta …

I just upgraded my iPhone 3G to iPhone OS 3.0. A nice upgrade, but Netcom in Norway does not currently support tethering (MMS is supported). A few possible hacks are available to make tethering work for Netcom users (see iPhone 3.0 firmware release and tethering for NetCom, or point the Safari browser on your iPhone on this or this page), but it does not seem to be a permanent solution. Be awar …

Good monospace fonts for programmers are listed here. Inconsolata seems to be a very good choice (and it's free). Anonymous Pro is also a good option (see Anonymous Pro: a programming font with style). See also Menlo / Vera Sans Mono Comparison (Menlo is the new system font in Snow Leopard).

Opera claims it reinvents the web with Opera Unite. See also An introduction to Opera Unite and Taking the Web into our own hands, one computer at a time. See also this critical remarks (or analysis) from Chris Messina: Thoughts on Opera Unite.

With Google QSB you can perform searches of anything on your Mac or the Web with a few keystroke. You can also launch applications and perform actions on files (e.g. open files). [via]

3 Numbers is more than just a pretty face, though. It has some unique features, such as being able to keep up to 3 numbers in a holding area for future use, writing notes to accompany calculations, and being able to access those notes from any Bonjour-enabled computer on your wi …

Vacation season approaching and we might need help to do the packing. Packing Pro ($4) seems to be one of the good iPhone based solutions. [via]

Steve Vinoski has a new Internet Computing Functional Web column (first posting) and a new Functional Web Podcast (the podcast).

A few AppleScripts (17) that can be useful for the average Mac user (by Diogo Terror). [via]

As part of an introduction to Atmosphere CPR (Comet Portable Runtime) Jean-Francois Arcand wrote Writing a REST application with Comet support. [via]

How to set up Django on the Google App Engine: Using the Google App Engine Helper for Django. See also the 2 part tutorial on a Django based blog on the Google App Engine: Part 1, Part 2.

When you need it it is important: Read Recover Erased Photos from a Memory Card by Jeff Carlson.

Today we're announcing Spanning Tools for Mac, a suite of utilities that analyzes, reports, and fixes dozens of problems with iCal, Address Book, and Apple Sync Services — problems ranging from the obvious, such as duplicated calendar events, to the subtle, such as in …

An alternative way of doing presentation slides (zooming in and out and moving around a giga-poster): Prezi. You have to watch the demo to see what it is. [via,via]

I have used Menu Master to add keyboard shortcuts to menu items on my Mac. Spark from Shadow Lab is a feature rich free alternative (not limited to only menu items). Spark supports plugins (only one currently listed). [via]

I've written about Clojure before (in November and March), but now 1.0 has been released. Clojure is a dynamic functional language for the JVM, and it is a dialect of Lisp. The main reason it will gain momentum is it match to multicore CPUs. With its immutable datatypes, lockless concurrency, and simple abstractions, Clojure makes multithreading (parallel programming) simpler and more robust. J …

This is good: Foundations of Complexity (Lance Fortnow).

From the iSubtitle home page:

The first and only application to take full advantage of Apple's soft subtitle technology. The subtitle tracks are resolution independent and they are rendered in real-time as you watch the movie.

The Plex Media Center for OS X is a good alternative to Boxee. Both can show Hulu shows (see this posting on the Boxee work around for Hulu). See different Screencasts on Plex.

Update: Hulu releases software client for Mac, PC.

Now available (iTunes store). [via]

Whether I would recommend ShareTool depends heavily on what you’ll need it for, and whether yo …

I've seen a few Mac application to update your pictures with location information based on a GPX tracklog (or similar, see also Remember That Great Hike? My iPhone Does). You can even do this when uploading your pictures tom some of these GPS tracking sites (I have used EveryTrail for this). Geotagalog ($20) is a new Mac application where you can update your pictures with location information ba …

BankID på mobil (inklusiv iPhone) er på vei, foreløpig kun for Telenor kunder som har nettbank hos DnB NOR eller Skandiabanken: BankID på iPhone.

Someone had their laptop (Mac) stolen and learned from that: What I Learned from Having My Laptop Stolen. Maybe we should learn from that?

Erick Newcomer's take on OSGi influence on the future directions of Java: OSGi and future directions for Enterprise Java. [via]

See also Neil Bartlett's post Enterprise OSGi Is not bloated OSGi. [via]

And this posting by Eric Newcomer (currently working in the office of the CTO at Progress Software to complete the enterprise edition of OSGi): Enterprise OSGi - "Not List". [via]

A tutorial on the Git version control system: Understanding Git Conceptually.

Quote from the home page: «InstallerApp is a native Mac OS X application (soon — for Windows too) that allows you easily download applications from Installer and Cydia directly onto your computer, and install them to the iPhone connected with USB cable». Nice, but not free. I think it is worth the $7.

A short and good description on how Skype handles NAT/firewalls (with its UDP audio traffic between two Skype clients): The hole trick
How Skype & Co. get round firewalls.

A web server in your browser? Is this the best approach to implement push to the client side in a web application (as an alternative to Comet)? ReverseHTTP does this.

I did find this very good 30 min introduction to Clojure by Rich Hickey (the creator): Clojure, A Dynamic Programming Language for the JVM. Getting started is also a good place to start. Clojure is a Lisp dialect running on the Java Virtual Machine. It is a functional language (good match for concurrent programming: not need for locks), but is has thread-safe mutable references to objects (dyna …

Clutter-free YouTube with Quietube.

That's what GNEVE (Gnu Emacs Video Editor mode) is all about. A video editor mode for editing video using Edit Decision List (EDL). Depends on the MLT framework.

I've been using Jumpcut, Clips and iClip to manage (and create) a clipboard history on my Macs. Today I have tested CopyPaste Pro ($30), and its seems like a good alternative. I'll test it for a few days and then decide if it is worth the $30. See also the iKey from the same developers (iKey is an automation utility, a program that creates shortcuts to accomplish repetitive tasks). [via]

My hikes/runs (some) are available at TrailGuru (rss) and EveryTrail (rss). EveryTrail tracks includes photos (if any).

With rubiTrack ($39) you can keep track of all your activities done with a GPS (hiking, running, cycling and so on). Read the latest track from your GPS device or sync with your iPhone (iPhone application available). I have tested it with a few hikes this weekend, and I impressed. Nice user interface that packs a lot of information on each activity without making it overloaded. Maps (Google, V …

From the home page:

PhoneGap is an open source development tool for building fast, easy mobile apps with JavaScript.

If you’re a web developer who wants to build mobile applications in HTML and JavaScript while still taking advantage of the core features in the iPhone, Android and Blackberry SDKs, PhoneGap is for you.

Yesterday I did the Fairfield horse shoe:

Map created by EveryTrail:GPS Geotagging

Apple has announced file sharing via iDisk. [via]

I have earlier referred to Securing Mac OS X Leopard by Daniel Cuthbert from Corsaire. Apple also have its own Mac OS X Security Configuration (now in second edition). [via]

Where to find iPhone applications (to many just to browse iTunes tore). These 7 websites is a good start. [via]

The point of this story, I think, is that you should consider spending less time talking, and more time prototyping, especially if you're not very good at talking or powerpoint. Your code can be a very persuasive argument.

Copy and paste on the iPhone? The best approach today is Clippy. Be aware that most comments found on this application is related to the previous version (including this detailed overview). The 0.93 version includes many improvements addressing issues raised in those comments. Available in Cydia (you have to jailbreak your phone). [via]

In an earlier posting I gave a (now outdated?) description on how to convert audiotracks to audiobooks. iTunes 8 makes it easy without any tools. [via]

iPhone your life is a new source of iPhone related information from Apple. [via]

See also:

• 46 Tips for the Business iPhone User [via]
• 10 reasons to jailbreak your iPhone or iPod touch now [via]
• iPhone Offline Map Switcher (see MapsOffline guide and in7ane)
• Flight Status for iPhone
• Great iPhone applications for parents (inluding Baby Monitor)
• 101 Most Essential iPhone Apps of 2008 [via]

Update: One final …

The current wordle of this blog (click to enlarge):

«Wordle is a toy for generating "word clouds" from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text.» [via]

To make spotlight more useful on your Mac you should install plugins matching your applications. For me this includes the Delicious Library plugin. [via]

This I didn't know about: Install software updates from the command line. Try this in your terminal window:

  man softwareupdate

  sudo softwareupdate -i -a

I've been using the Flickr export plugin for iPhoto (and Aperture) to keep a copy (backup) of my photos on Flickr. I'm struggling to keep Flickr side updated. Maybe PhotoCopy is a solution for me. [via]

A few articles/presentations on current and future web: The Ajax Revolution: From UI responsiveness to functionality and beyond, Fixing the Web, Part I, and The Ajax Universe [via], On the future of SproutCore [via SproutCore: From MobileMe to 1.0].

Download the Livestation player (Windows, Mac and Linux) and enjoy live, interactive TV and radio streamed direct to your desktop.

Norsk (Norwegian) TV-Guide for iPhone (NOK 11,-).

When you take a photo at a given location the value (potential usage and availability) of the photo can be enhanced by including the position where the photo was taken in the meta-data of the picture itself. Some digital cameras can do this (either by including a GPS or by getting location information from an external GPS device). Another approach is to add this information later (see Geocoding …

A list of 20 sources for free HD videos.

I've been a Menu Master user, but for a while (see this 2006 posting) it hasn't been installed on my different Macs. Several applications I now use doesn't have an easy keyboard shortcut for often performed operations, so now I'm considering using it again (currently it is installed on my office iMac, and if I'm not experiencing any problems it will be populated to my other Macs).

Sometimes it is possible to get real high quality videos from YouTube (if the original video had the sufficient resolution). See this version of Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) (720p). Read more in High quality YouTube video hack an High Quality on Youtube.

I've played with Bean, a free (and open source) word processor for Mac. A good alternative to TexEdit, but my conclusion is that I either want a featureless (read TextEdit) or a feature-full (read Pages or LaTeX) text editor, and not something in between (read Bean). It could be a good alternative (to both featureless and feature-full text editors) if it was a possible to create pre-defined (hie …

A great how-to guide from Gizmodo on on installing Boxee on your Apple TV (quote from the guide: «… unchain your Apple TV from its cruel iTunes tether, turning it into the useful living room conduit of music, video and web-based content it should have been all along»). You need a Mac (actually, the Mac-only software ATV USB Creator), a USB stick (flash drive, 512MB or larger), an Apple TV (versio …

Both Parallels Desktop (4.0) and VMWare Fusion (2.0) has be upgraded recently. What I prefer? I have not decided yet, but other have compared these two products: VMware Fusion 2 vs. Parallels Desktop 4: Let’s Dance (theAppleBlog) and Comparison of VMware Fusion and Parallels Desktop (Wikipedia). [via]

The Xiph QuickTime Components (XiphQT) is, in short, the solution for Mac and Windows users who want to use Xiph formats in any QuickTime-based application, e.g. playing Ogg Vorbis in iTunes or producing Ogg Theora with iMovie. See also vorbis.com and The Mac OS X Guide to Ogg Vorbis.

This kill the Dojo myths posting includes a lot interesting Dojo information for starters. See also Why choose Dojo?. [via]

The HTML spec Web Sockets for bidirectional communications. See WebSocket is neither Web nor Socket and HTML5 WebSocket and WebJneering. [via]

Need a printer driver for your Mac? If the manufacturer doesn't provide the printer driver, you might find it using Gutenprint (formerly called Gimp-Print). They claim to provide high quality printer drivers for Canon, Epson, Lexmark, and PCL printers. See supported printers. [via]

This is very nice: Introducing Google Earth for iPhone [via]

Recently I tested Clips, and now The Escapers have released Stuf. Stuf (used to be called Shadow) also support network sharing (on local network), search and a nice GUI. $12 is cheaper than Clips. The Stuf GUI is slicker. Clips group based on applications (manually in Stuf). [via]

A feature rich data recover application from Stellar: Phoenix Macintosh Data Recovery ($129). [via]

Create posters or postcards from your photos: Posterino might be the right application ($25). [via]

I use MsgFiler to move emails quickly to the appropriate folders. In earlier versions of Mail Act-On you had to create rules for all possible move operations. In Mail Act-On 2 you have functionality similar to MsgFiler, but from the description (and screenshots) I think the MsgFiler approach matches my needs better. However, the possibility to create rules on the outbox is a nice feature I coul …

I bought the iPhone to have a gadget that matches my needs for a device I have on me (almost) all the time, but it will also be used in projects at work. So how is development of software done on this iPhone? A nice start is the following articles: A touch of Cocoa: inside the iPhone SDK (John Timmer), and Cocoa Touch Tutorial: iPhone Application Example (Matt Long).

This screencast is also a po …

OK, I admit it, I bought an iPhone a few weeks ago. A few postings should indicate some interest on the topic recently (PhoneGap, iPhoneModem, PDAnet, VNC for iPhone, GPS Kit). And I am very happy with this terminal. It works well as a phone, a lot of nice applications are available, and workarounds exits for all (most) of it shortcomings.

The first thing I did was to order a new pair of heads …

A completely redesigned Web Inspector is now available (see nightly WebKit builds). [via]

Several options including Jaadu VNC ($25), Mocha VNC ($6) and Mocha VNC Lite (free). I'll try the last one. [via]

Not new, but a nice tool for Apple TV owners: ATV USB creator. See also ATV-BootLoader, ATV-XBMC-Launcher and xbmc/boxee on Apple TV. [via]

A simple approach to file sharing: Papaya (€20). Files shared through a web-server running on your local machine. Nice and simple GUI to drop and manage files (and directories). No encryption, but you can add access control to files (authentication with username/password). [via]

Google have made the Update Engine available. It is a Mac OS X framework that is used to keep products (all type of software) up-to-date. See the presentation video and the HelloEngine sample program walk-through.

I've been using Jumpcut to manage a lot of cut-and-paste content. Currently its sourceforge site is not responding, and then I discovered Clips. Clips is an overkill for my usage and it isn't free ($35). But its UI is impressive (and maybe again an overkill for such an application) and it includes features like abbreviations (like TextExpander's snippets), keyboard shortcuts (for pasting clips) …

Two applications named iPhoneModem are available. Both makes it possible (in a limited way) to use your iPhone a a modem for your laptop computer (MacBook or MacBook Pro or PCs). Both are based on SOCKS proxy and an ad-hoc WiFi network between the iPhone and the laptop computer (works OK for browsing, but it is not a general solution). I only got the iPhoneModem.com version ($9.99) to work, but …

Check out info (and introduction movie) at Google. [via] Update: HW available. [via]

One of Apple Mail's shortcomings are how it treats long URLs (in plain text emails). You can insert line breaks into long URLs. To avoid that one solution is to replace long URLs with TinyURLs. Rachel Blackman's Shrink URL (download) is a Mac OS X service that uses TinyURL to create short, unbreakable hyperlinks. Read more here. [via]

From First Look at Cappuccino and Objective-J: Cappuccino is re-implementation of many of the basic parts of Cocoa, and Objective-J is a language which looks nearly identical to Objective-C and "compiles down" into JavaScript. You can also use JavaScript right inline with Objective-J, similar to how you can use C in Objective-C. Objective-J and Cappuccino are used to implement 280 slides (an excep …

The Google Safe Browsing API enables client applications to check URLs against Google's constantly updated blacklists of suspected phishing and malware pages (more). To get the Apple Safari browser to use this API, install (and buy) Saft and read the instructions in the Saft usage document (see the Google Safe Browsing section).

A good article on web designers as information cartographer (and not information architects): Mapping Memory: Web Designer as Information Cartographer.

En 1881 plugin for Apple adressebok er tilgjengelig fra mac1. Denne gjør det mulig å velge et telefonnummer i adresseboka og hente adressen til dette nummeret rett fra 1881. Opprinnelig fra Sverige, men tilpasset Norske Mac brukere.

Landon Fuller about the SoyLatte project (Java 7 implementation for Mac OS X): SoyLatte, Meet OpenJDK: OpenJDK 7 for Mac OS X. [via]

Check ou this Terminal tips from tuaw.com: Make hidden Dock icons transparent.

Noen gode norske Dashboard widgets. (Translation: a few good Norwegian Dashboard widgets.)

Read The ESB question by Steve Vinoski. A quote from the text:

I can’t understand anymore why anyone would subject themselves to writing integration systems or frameworks in imperative compiled languages like Java or C++.

Nu is an interpreted object-oriented language. Its syntax comes from Lisp, but Nu is semantically closer to Ruby than Lisp. Nu is implemented in Objective-C and is designed to take full advantange of the Objective-C runtime and the many mature class libraries written in Objective-C. Nu code can fully interoperate with code written in …

The Dojo developers provides the arguments. One of the good features of Dojo is events (pub/sub). [via,via]

Interesting: «Apple's secret "Back to My Mac" push behind IPv6». [via]

I recently changed from NewsFire to NetNewsWire as the RSS reader I use. The main reason was syncing (I read news on different computers at home, at work and when traveling, and I do not want to see old news again). Actually, originally I used NetNewsWire, but when I bought my first MacBook Pro (when it was announced) NewsFire was the best reader that worked with this Intel computer. Moving bac …

I use stickies to keep information that I often need easy available. Then Command + Option + F is nice to keep those notes on top of other windows, and Command + Option + T makes them transparent. [via,via]

Need firmware upgrades on your Pioneer burners (on your Macs)? DVRFlash is the right tool. [via]

I had a Vista laptop that I needed to run XP on occasionally. The How to dual boot Vista and XP (with Vista installed first) — the step-by-step guide with screenshots gave me some tips, but I didn't use the command line tool (DISKPART) to shrink the original Vista partition. I used the Vista Disk managment tool (under Administrative Tools in System and Maintanence section of the Control Panel se …

It is a good advice to have some real experience with the software/product/concept you are arguing against: You Have to Experience It (e.g. Erlang, Rest and Test-First development).

The info you need is here: How to jailbreak iPhone 2.0 with PwnageTool for Mac (the win version), the applications. You will still be apple to buy and install apps from the App Store (some non-entertainment apps). See also 12 iPhone Tricks You Might Not Know, and 8 More iPhone Tricks You Might Not Have Known. [via,via]

A Comet and Bayeux podcast. [via]

An introduction: part 1 and part 2.

In his Spot On posting Steve Vinoski references articles and postings you should read if you are interested in critical thinking about the design and construction of distributed systems.

See also his Convenience Over Correctness Internet Computing column and his other writings on these topics.

Is Das Keyboard the best keyboard around? It works (is supported) on your Mac.

The usual answer to access windows media content on your Mac is Windows Media Components for QuickTime (by Flip4Mac, the standard edition is free). EasyWMA allows you to convert wma, wmv/flv audio, asf and ogg vorbis files to aiff, mp3, m4a or wav ($10). Another audio conversion software is Switch. The standard version is free and the plus version (suports more encode-to formats) costs $30 (cur …

This was in my inbox today: The most well known Nordic content providers - now on Joost. The Nordic content includes a few shows from NRK (Halvseint, Nordkalotten 365). An joost? Its free TV on the Internet. For Windows and Mac.

The Firefox 3 PDF Plugin uses PDFKit to display PDFs in the browser.

I've been looking for a Apple Mail plugin like this, but I've not worked hard to find a solution. But then suddenly I found it in a posting of a new Mac user (thanks for sharing). MsgFiler makes it possible to move messages from my inbox to existing mailbox folders with a couple of keystrokes. I have the Mail Act-On plugin installed (and MailTags that I use a lot), but MsgFiler is a much better …

The Google App Engine might be the perfect tool for a Python programmer that want to build and find a home for a web site (application). Before you start experimenting, you might have a look at other Google App Engine experiments. Bret Taylor's Experimenting with Google App Engine is one place to visit. You should also visit Teh, the minimalist blog tool using Google App Engine.

In an earlier posting (Appscript: MacPython to Apple event bridge) I mentioned appscript and py-appscript. I prefer Python to AppleScript so this is a nice tool for me on my Mac. [via]

s a powerful and fun new audio recorder for Mac OS X Leopard.
It’s just like your old analog tape recorder, only better. A lot better.

SproutCore is a framework for building applications in JavaScript with remarkably little amounts of code. It can help you build full “thick” client applications in the web browser that can create and modify data, often completely independent of your …

Linus Torvalds has an alternative to cvs/svn: git (documentation). This is not news, but a reminder of a nice tool that deserves more attention. And the reason I wrote this now was that I saw this article by Matt Long: Version Control Makes You A Better Programmer. Recommended reading, and he uses git in the examples.

Nice bookshop: zoomii books. This is maybe the closest to a real bookshop you get in a web browser. Amazon.com in the background. [via]

Integration between your Mac and your cell phone is not necessary easy. You can sync the address book, the calendar and more with iSync, but it could be that your phone is not (yet) supported. You might want to use your cell phone as the modem to connect your MacBook (Pro) to the Internet, but this is not straight forward to set up (see Ross Barkman's Home Page). In earlier versions of Mac OS X …

My Mac Setup

The Aperture as a Layout Program article is a good start to learn more about the power of the custom layout option in the book-making tool in Aperture. [via]

I am Growl user (I like those small notification messages on my Mac screen). What about Growl for Windows and a Web notification API (growl from JavaScript). Read Growl for Windows and a Web Notification API for more details.

The Geolocation in Firefox and Beyond is a posting on thoughts on an geolocation API (for web browsers). The Gears community is also discussing a Geo Location API. Apple is also doing some work here. [via]

Since upgrading to Leopard I've stopped using Quicksilver on most of my computers. Spotlight does the work and Quicksilver was unstable. Maybe its time to reconsider. The SilverFlow plugin is worth a try. [via]

A few chapters of the Mastering Dojo book is available online.

A comet (see my earlier posting «Comet (and Bayeux)» for more information) based chess game (implemented with dojox.cometd and Jetty [Jetty Cometd/Bayeux/cometd-java]) at live.chess.com. More information at Comet Daily and ajaxian.

I often prefer Python as the server side language, and Twisted based comet implementation exists (cometd-twisted).

The Time Machine Command Line Tool tms provides cvs style operations on Time Machine volumes. It is a read-only tool. It does not modify any Time Machine files or settings. Why? Well let me quote the developer:

As someone who is often in a Terminal environment I become frustrated with the Time Machine GUI and found it totally inadequate for when I needed to quickly determine what had been backe …

The image editor Acorn seems to balance well ease of use and feature richness. I've not tried it, and the price is $50.

I do not have a iPhone, but its user interface seems to be one of its main advantages. Its scrolling mechanism is one of these improved user interface mechanisms. Smart scroll offers smooth and easy iPhone-like scrolling on your Mac. Smart Scroll includes Super Scroll (smoother scrolling, with less work), Grab Scroll (move any window's contents around with a simple mouse drag), Universal Scroll …

Lately I've been reading about semantic web-services and ontologies. The reason is both projects I've been involved in, and a course I've been teaching. This reminded me of some of the original publications about the semantic web. The Scientific American article from May 2001 is one of them.

I also stumbled over the Wilbur Semantic Web Toolkit for CLOS. Ora Lassila's blog is also a nice resourc …

The Create good queries in Spotlight article at Macworld gives a lot of good Mac Spotlight query tips. The tips includes phrase queries, boolean operators (in capital letters), usage of metadata, Spotlight's keywords, and more.

See these two postings on exposing the Apple Time Machine (what is in the backup): Time Machine Exposed! and Psyching Out Time Machine (you should read both since the last corrects errors in the first). You should also read Prune Your Time Machine Backups Selectively.

I'm using TextExpander for similar functionality on my Mac today, but RapidoWrite is free. [via]

In an earlier posting I've talked about High Dynamic Range photos and Photomatix Pro. An alternative to Photomatix Pro is Hydra. The main unique feature of Hydra is its Aperture integration (including an Aperture plugin). The UI is also more OS X slick (from tuaw.com: Hydra's UI is the epitome of OS X slickness). The price tag shows $60 (Photmatix Pro is $99).

Ajax and Web 2.0 have moved the spotlight on JavaScript. See The Resurrection of JavaScript. [via]

Screen capturing, both video and images (and sound), is something I do now and then. The right tool makes my life better. For movies I have used SnapzProX (see also this posting) and for images the built in mac stuff or the Dashboard widget Screenshot Plus. Jing (both video and images) is another (free) alternative. Another one is ScreenFlow ($99). It seems to be feature rich and a productive …

Another Erlang posting, but I had to save this pointer to Bob Ippolito’s Exploring Erlang video (1 hour and 10 minutes). A good kick start before you dig into the book. This Shaving with Occam (1 hour and 14 minutes) presentation is also good. (And what is the connection between Occam and Erlang? I have left it as an exercise for the reader.) [via]

I have had a link to Yaws in an earlier note (see also RESTful Services with Erlang and Yaws). I added this posting because Yaws seems to be a very interesting web-server implementation, and I want to dig into the details on how to use it as a web-service platform. The detailed example of a RESTful web service implemented using Erlang and Yaws by Nick Gerakines is a good start. [via]

When you want to solve a (programming) problem you might sketch a solution in some sort of programming or pseudo-programming language. The consequence is that your solution will be affected by the expressions provided by the language of your choice. To learn more (programming) languages gives you a greater set of tool to express your solutions. Steve Vionski has written a blog post on this topi …

Often you find such list. This one lists 100 Mac OS X applications.

I have discussed this topic earlier, but now I have an iMac that is dual-booting with Vista. I want to be able to read from and write to my NTFS partition from Mac OS X on my iMac. The opposite way works well with MacDrive, but to get more than read access of the NTFS partition from Mac OS X I need NTFS-3G (see this blog for Mac version, my experience is that it works well with 10.5.2) and MacFU …

I tested Keyboard Maestro long ago, but Keyboard Maestro 3 seems to be a much more feature rich tool. Keyboard Maestro is a powerful macro program where you can design a custom action sequence with your own shortcuts. You can even record your actions. Macros are usually triggered by hot keys, but they can also be triggered by opening an application, by time or event (login), by clicking in the …

The Google App Engine can be used to run your web applications on Google's infrastructure. Currently only a limited (500MB of persistent storage and about 5 million page views a month) free service is available, and at the moment it is a wait list. Later you will be able to buy additional computing resources. But if you want to experiment with this platform you do not have to wait for available …

I have a bunch of Region 1 DVDs during our one year stay in San Diego. Living in DVD Region 2 makes it difficult to watch them. I have a PowerBook, a MacBook Pro, a Mac mini and an iMac, and when available I upgrade the firmware on their DVD drives to make them Region Free. This weekend my Mac mini and iMac got the upgrade. However, in OS X Leopard (10.5) the DVD Player has become Region sensi …

Do you write a daily journal or do you want to organize notes, references and pictures with a calendar when you are traveling? If you use a Mac, Mémoires from Coding Robots is a nice journal application. A simple and intuitive user interface, just the way we like it. Maybe some of us should use such an application instead of posting everything in a public blog? With Mémoires, your journal cont …

Finally I installed Microsoft Office for Mac. I started with the original install script that had some issues (se fix from MacWorld). But instead of fixing those issues I did the two rounds of updates that the install now will initiate. The final of these rounds (the Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac 12.0.1 update) seems to fix the file permission/owner issues introduced by the original installer.

I finally got around and ordered the 2.0 Aperture upgrade. I'm currently installing it on my home iMac, and I used the occasion to read some blog postings on Aperture 2.0 that I've saved. The first one is on plugins (Extensible Aperture, Micah Walter). Connected Flow's FlickrExport I already have and use. See more plugins at AperturePluggedIn.com. Aperture 2.0 is also extremely AppleScriptab …

The move from EJB with strict rules and a lot of have-to-implement methods to POJO (Plain Old Java Objects) in enterprise Java applications has gained popularity recently. The main reason is that the use of annotations in Java to hook the Java objects into the enterprise infrastructure makes the code cleaner and more readable (and maintainable). JSR 181 is an example of such an approach. With …

Matthew Russell, the author of the soon to come book on Dojo, has written a series of articles on Dojo at his blog. Four Dojo Goodness articles so far: Part 1 about Dojo Base, part 2 about Dijit (Dojo widget), part 3 on animation, and part 4 on Ajax.

The Cobra programming language is a Python/C#/Objective-C inspired language with a lot of nice features (including Eiffel like contracts). [via]

I've earlier talked about Erlang, and now I've installed it on my Mac. I found the necessary steps here. The only difference is that I installed Erlang R12B-1 and had to add the --with-gd=/usr/local flag to configure when compiling Erlang (see this thread for the details, or if you decide to compile Erlang without gd [using the --without-gd flag], and as a consequence without percept, see this p …

Marc Andreessen has an interesting blog posting on Level 3 web applications. See also Lisp in Web-Based Applications (and The Other Road Ahead/Beating the Averages) by Paul Graham.
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I use two Safari plugins, Saft and PithHelemet. Saft is an extension to Safari that adds a lot of new features to the browser. A new version supports Safari 3.1 (the latest Safari upgrade). See the home page for the complete list of Saft features (auto save and restore opened browser windows at quitting and start and crash protection is two features that are important for me). PithHelmet is an …

Java doesn't have closures, but a closures for Java proposal exits. And James Gosling expresses his support for it. What a closure is? This is what Wikipedia says: a closure is a function that is evaluated in an environment containing one or more bound variables. [via]

The final release of the 1.0 spec was released in February 1998. The XML People is a nice introduction to the people behind it. The posted comments also includes interesting bits and pieces.

OS X Leopard new screen sharing feature has some hidden features that can be activated editing a plist file. HardMac has the details.

Finally, a (beta) version of MapSource (aka Bobcat) for Mac is available. A dedicated page for Mac software from Garmin is also created. See also the Apple-Mac blog. [via]

Finally available, and now for personal use (the first information from this start up, more than a year ago, suggested a different approach). DoubleTwist desktop makes it easy to sync all your media files with different popular devices (get your iTunes content on your other mp3 players). DoubleTwist also supports sharing among friends. Currently Windows only, but a Mac version will be available …

I didn't know that I needed this application, but after watching the demo movie I decided to give it a try ($30, but they claim to have a 100% money-back guarantee). This application actually makes my online life much easier. It helps me to remember passwords and keys, but it also help me with different forms and profiles (identities). And all this can be synced with .Mac between all my compute …

I've once implemented a two-player game that works in your web-browser. The two players start up their favorite JavaScript (including some version of XMLHttpRequest) capable web-browser, jumps over to the game site, pick (or create) a game and starts playing. When one player has done his move, the other player does his next move. This is were the problems begin. The web server has no way of in …

I just upgraded my MacBook Pro to 10.5, and I guess there will be a few Leopard specific postings the next couple of weeks. The first one is about Spaces, Apples multi-workspace solution for your Mac. Now, I can throw away Virtue Desktop and the rest of the bunch of applications I have used to get multiple-workspaces on my Macs for more than 5 years now. I changed my desktop environment from U …

I am a SnapzProX user, but other options for video and still screen captures exists. Earlier I've talked about iShowU, but Screenium is another alternative. Which one to pick? No idea. Try all and pick the one that fits your needs best (both iShowU and Screenium is only $20 - SnapzProX is $69 for the video edition).

Update: ScreenFlow is another option ($100). It is not cheap, but according to …

QuickLook is a nice feature of OS X 10.5, but it has some limitations (e.g. file types it recognize). But limitations can be fixed with plugins. A reference to some of them can be found here, inlcuding folder, zip and eps (Encapsulated PostScript) plugins.

At Apple Matters Tanner Godarzi has presented a series of articles on building a (Power)Mac media center. Part 4 lists the applications you need, including FrontRow replacement, Bittorrent client, and Automator/Apple scripts. One application he talks about is TV Shows, a Mac OS X application that automatically downloads TV shows (torrent files) based on subscriptions.

Rory Bowman has written Learning to Love Leopard Mail where he discuss getting things done (GTD) with the Leopard Mail and its new features. [via]

As a Mail Act-On user I found the MailRecent and MailFollowup useful. [via]

I've been annoyed with the way Apple Mail handles attachments (pictures, pdf files and so on). The Mail Attachments Iconizer from Loki Software provides a fix for this. [via]

I use the iCal Duplicates Script often since syncing my calendar with phones, .Mac and Spanning Sync often creates duplicates. It is now available for Leopard. [via]

CamMail (available from Anarchysoft) is a stand-alone application that works with Apple Mail to quickly create and send video and audio clips by email. [via]

You can play full-length tracks and entire albums for free on the Last.fm website (player available for Windows, Linux and Mac). [via]

Colors are difficult, and most of us would gain from some support when we select colors in our publications, web pages or similar. If you are a Mac user, mondrianum is a nice plugin for your Mac that lets you access kuler (the online tool for all things color) combinations from within any app that has a color palette available. [via]

The father of Unix, MULTICS, was an extremely advanced operating system at its time. Unix was strongly influenced by it (Unix was originally a simplified successor of MULTIC). The source code is now available here. You can also read more at Jos Kirps's Popular Science and Technology Blog. [via]

When you want to access a Mac remotely, VNC is a good option. Mac OS X (10.5) has a built in VNC server (on non-Leopard Macs you have to install a VNC server, like the VINE server). Open System Preferences and go to Sharing. Turn on Screen Sharing and add a password for VNC users. To access this computer you need a VNC client. On the Mac I used to prefer the Chicken of the VNC, but just now I …

I want to learn more on Mac OS X internals. This book seems to be the right source for the dirty details. Amazon next.

In an earlier posting I quoted from Backup Strategies with Aperture. In part 2 he also covers online backup solutions, and in A New Online Backup Solution SpiderOak is discussed. Both Mozy and SpiderOak encrypts the data at the client side, and could be god alternatives to Amazon's S3 and Flickr that I use today.

Steve Vinoski's blog often includes comments worth reading. This time he talks about dynamic languages and REST. See also these Answers for Sergey.

I've been thinking on how to do backup of my Aperture work. Since I grab my pictures from the camera using iPhoto (iPhoto is a good choice for the rest of my family), and then import those pictures to Aperture as referenced, the vaults in Aperture is not a good backup solution for me (they will not include the referenced image, only changes and meta-data). In Backup Strategies with Aperture by J …

The Aperture Plugged In is a great source for plugins for Aperture. This time the DNGExporter plugin got my attention (see also the announcement). It can export any RAW format photo to DNG, possible with the original raw format photo embeded in the new DNG file. DNG (The Digital Negative) is Adobe's publicly available archival format for the raw files generated by digital cameras. You will als …

Not the town, but Microsoft's next big wave of products. Read more in the press release from Microsoft: REDMOND, Wash. — Oct. 30, 2007 — Attendees gathered at the fifth annual Microsoft SOA & Business Process Conference today, where the company shared its vision and road map to simplify the effort required to design, build, deploy and manage composite applications within and across organizations. …

David Pogue lists a few of the not so obvious goodies in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. Find the Menu was new for me. See also his other article on Leopard goodies.

A nice list of emacs packages. Not listed here, but also nice is the smooth scrolling implementation by Adam Spiers (the code).

My first mobile phone was a Nokia (the 5110, released in 1998 [more on wikipedia]). Then, the next two phones came from Sony Ericsson (a T610 and a K610i), and on sabatical in San Diego I had a Motorola (V330 T-Mobile, used in parallel with the T610). Now I got the new Nokia 6500 classic. I like this phone a lot. It is thin and heavy, it looks OK, and the functionality includes everything I ne …

I've used a pre 1.0 version of TextExpander (then called Textpander) a long time. When I type a short key sequence (in any application) Textpander expands it to a longer text predefined by me (this text can include graphics, date and time, and more). Now a new version of TextExpander is available. TextExpander 2.0 includes a lot of new features, including .Mac sync, AppleScript output as result …

This posting is written with MarsEdit (version 2.0.3). I bought a license for an earlier version of this software a long time ago, and now I want to upgrade to 2.0 (this is written on the last day of the trial period). From MarsEdit I got a pop-up window that would forward me to the web site where I can by the upgrade. This is normal in most software that I've bought after a trial period. The …

The new Amazon MP3 store provides DRM free music. Quality is good and it includes a lot of music from major record labels. At my first peek I found a lot I want (including Pixies and Turbonegro). A quick review of the store is available from tuaw.com. I have already installed the Amazon MP3 Downloader on my Mac. Nice, but how is it compared to its competitors (e.g. iTunes and eMusic [see also O …

A public beta of Adobe Media Player (more) is available for download. Based on Adobe AIR technologies and available both on Windows and Mac computers. [via]

At an appearance on The Lab with Leo Laporte, Rick Yaeger how to make 3D images out of common, everyday 2D images taken with a digital camera. He has also made the show notes available. [via]

View your PDF document in Emacs with doc-view.el. You need Git to get this. A package with git pre-compiled for mac (via) is available.

This is my first posting on Blogger. This blog (feed) is my private blog where I will post stuff not related to work. This posting is also a test of MarsEdit, the blog publisher I've started to use today. I have a license for MarsEdit 1, but I will upgrade to version 2. The Flickr support in MarsEdit 2 is a good reason to do the $10 upgrade.