warrenbutler.com

How iCloud works with a shared Apple ID

2011-06-10T13:29:00.001+10:00

Whew. What a relief. I was also wondering how this would play out. Thanks for working this out.

Live from Las Vegas - How iCloud works with a shared Apple ID

Requirements - Product Scope - Project Scope - Budget and Schedule

2011-06-09T16:39:00.002+10:00

I need to print out slide 8 and keep it handy.

Better Projects: Scope=Requirements Slide deck

iCloud Match - a win for music companies

2011-06-08T09:32:00.003+10:00

Ok, so everyone's on about how this supports piracy. Here's a different take.

A problem for music companies must be that they do not know (accurately) what music is copied and what is played often. They used to get this when physical sales were a good indicator of music appeal.

Now, with iCloud Match, the music companies can get back metrics on pirated music and, even better, metrics on which songs are played most often.

Good sales and marketing info, no?

Project Status Meetings

2011-06-07T17:05:00.000+10:00

Barney Austin lists good points in 10 Dos and Don'ts of the Project Status Meeting but I would add some specific items for a Project Status Meeting:

Depending on the nature of the project and the PM's style, I see the status meeting as a place where the PM "receives" the status (or updates) from key contributors. The alternative is the PM "giving" the status to attendees. But I'm not convinced that requires a meeting. Ensuring that the PM does not fall into the trap of talking all the time will also ensure good participation.
The other trap that participants often fall into is trying to resolve issues that have been identified in the meeting. Using some of the points in the article, this timesink should be avoided and the issue should be noted and a clear action/actor assigned. The meeting is a good place to initiate some form of escalation, but this should be managed by the PM. PMs hate surprises.

Test post via email

2011-06-06T12:52:00.001+10:00

Just testing.

Just realised that you cannot post via email and use labels/tags. Can't have the convenience and functionality together, I guess.

Time to re-awaken this blog

2011-06-03T18:08:00.003+10:00

This post from an iPad. Which didn't exist when the last post was written.

The Blogger interface for the iPad is actually quite impressive.

What I like about Google Chrome

2008-12-30T11:46:00.004+11:00

Simple.

It's clean and simple interface.
Speed, both to start up and to operate.

One thing that other (Firefox) users miss is the ability to install extensions. Initially, I did too. But then I found that a lot of what I was missing could be addressed by bookmarklets. There are a few extensions that I do miss - especially Mozilla Weave.

But, as much as extensions are a feature of Firefox, they are a limitation of Firefox. They contribute to slowing Firefox down and frustrate me when they are not always updated with newer versions of Firefox.

It will be interesting to see when Chrome is released for Linux. Until then, it's Chrome on WinXP and Firefox for the rest.

RememberTheMilk and Google Tasks

2008-12-30T11:35:00.002+11:00

Although I am a great fan of RememberTheMilk, I was interested to see Google add tasks to the Gmail interface. I try to use Google services/apps where possible, but Tasks is still a bit basic.

It did, however, make me think about the things that currently keep me with RTM:

Offline use. Being able to use RTM with Google Gears is really good. I can take my laptop to meetings or review tasks on the train.
Being able to email tasks to RTM. Work email is MS Outlook and I find the easiest way to transfer emails with actions to RTM is to email them to RTM. Once you get the hang of the email "tags", you can forward a task straight to a specific list, with a priority, due date, and tags.
RTM's keyboard navigation is also very useful.

When Gmail (and Tasks since they share the same interface) get offline support, then RTM may have more of a challenge.

Testing posting from iGoogle

2008-10-23T11:54:00.001+11:00

This recently announced feature allow publishing to your blog from iGoogle. The editor is still a bit basic.

Gwibber on Ubuntu for Twitter and Identi.ca

2008-08-02T11:54:00.001+10:00

From the launchpad homepage:

Gwibber is an open source microblogging client for GNOME developed with
Python and GTK. It supports Twitter, Jaiku, Identi.ca, Facebook, and
Digg.

It's very simple, but effective.

You'll find instructions here for installing Gwibber on Ubuntu.

Note: On first startup, no messages are shown. You need to close the application and restart.

Scribefire 2.1 Released

2008-05-02T14:04:00.001+10:00

As per the Scribefire website:

New features

* Added MySpace support. (issue #33)
* Added Tumblr support.
* Categories will now be available for Blogger blogs (issue #201)
* Entering a YouTube URL in YouTube search field will now return that video for embedding. (issue #182)
* Added the "Keep Content" button back. (issue #195)

Interface changes

* Made publishing buttons shorter
* Made right sidebar resizable
* Fixed bug where note icon overlapped with note title

Bug fixes

* Fix for users who could not delete notes. (issue #193)
* Fixed some bugs with "Blog This Page" (issue #205)
* Fixed issue where "more" button was not being enabled. (issue #210)
* Fix for broken image uploading when using ScribeFire in a tab (issue #214)
* Fix for "Blog This Page" not working with non-ASCII characters (issue #211)
* Various "can't login"/"can't add blog" issues fixed.
* Better error reporting when account setup fails.
* Fixed bug where "Save note" button would be hidden when it shouldn't be.
* Fixed double encoding of ampersands (a.k.a. the & or problem)
* Reorganized note-handling code
* Fixed broken RTL support (issue #228)

Translations

* Available in the following languages: Bulgarian, Czech, German, Spanish, French, Hebrew, Indonesian, Icelandic, Italian, Korean, Dutch, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, Thai, and Chinese (both China and Taiwan).

Will have to do some testing of the new Blogger category support.

Nice Ubuntu Hardy Wallpaper - test from Scribefire

2008-04-26T09:03:00.001+10:00

Courtesy of Sebatian Heit.

Wallpaper Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04

2008-04-26T09:00:00.001+10:00

Wallpaper Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04 Please comment!
Originally uploaded by Sebastian Heit

Nice wallpaper by Sebastian Heit!

And a test of blogging from flickr.com.

ktxbye

Testing video insert from Scribefire 2.0.2

2008-04-26T07:53:00.001+10:00

Google AJAX APIs go RESTful

Another test from Scribefire

2008-03-19T19:42:00.001+11:00

This is to test how Scribefire handles blogging on an existing webpage.

Facebook adds privacy features - web - Technology - theage.com.au

Facebook is tweaking the privacy settings on its popular online hangout to let users exert greater control over which of their friends are allowed to see personal details they post. The Palo Alto-based company said it would add features Tuesday night that will give its 67 million active users the option of selecting individual users who can or can't access certain parts of their pages.

A second test post from Scribefire

2008-03-19T18:43:00.001+11:00

Test now with tags.

Technorati Tags: test, scribefire, stkilda, beach

Another test from ScribeFire

2008-03-19T18:35:00.001+11:00

Test post from ScribeFire

2006-11-21T15:09:00.000+11:00

Test post from Google Docs & Spreadsheets

Performancing 1.3.5 for Firefox now works with Beta Blogger

2006-11-14T16:50:00.001+11:00

Performancing 1.3.5 for Firefox has just been released. This now works with Beta Blogger, which is just what I need. Unfortunately, Google Docs can write to Beta Blogger, but doesn't publish a title. Will wait a bit longer for that to work.

Technorati Tags: performancing, firefox, betablogger

I couldn't take it anymore - Digg had to go from my RSS feeds

2006-10-10T19:16:00.000+10:00

Recently, I realised that the quality of digg.com was degenerating to unpalatable levels. A number of articles contained inaccurate information or were duplicates of the same stories already published. I had to wade through too much gumpf to find the same articles worth reading, which generally also appeared on slashdot.org. So, digg.com has been removed from my RSS feeds.

I also judge quality, not only by content, but also by the responses to the content. In digg's case, this was also getting worse. I know this might sound snobbish, but it just ended up wasting too much of my time.

Ah, the relief.

New Google Reader takes over from Flock

2006-10-06T13:17:00.000+10:00

One of the things that won me over to Flock was the ease and efficiency of reading RSS feeds. It is still very good and at one stage I was hardly visiting any actual web sites, instead reading the feeds.

Enter the new version of Google Reader. This is a giant step forward from the first version. The things that I like the most are the fact that I can read from any computer and it remembers what I have read (this is something that Flock currently can't do) and the different views available. Being able to import OPML made it very easy to bring all my feeds in from Flock. This, together with Firefox 2, means that I have a tab open for Google Reader and just go there when I want to check on any feeds.

2006-10-06T13:02:00.000+10:00

Notepad2 is a fantastic Notepad replacement. Some of the features that have already come in very handy are line numbers and syntax highlighting. If you need something more than the normal Windows Notepad, I would recommend trying this. Small, fast, useful, free, and doesn't provide registry installation litter!

There are also instructions for replacing Notepad. Scroll to the bottom of the FAQ.

Loving Xubuntu 6.06

2006-07-26T19:13:00.000+10:00

I have a couple of older (senior?) laptops at home that I use to play with different versions of Ubuntu. They can just run Ubuntu itself and I had been following Xubuntu for a while but found it hadn't quite reached the level that I needed. Performance was good, but the aesthetics/ergonomics of the setup and list of applications was just shy of solid.

So, I forgot about it for a while.

Recently, I downloaded and installed Xubuntu 6.06 and was very pleased to see how things had changed. Now there are a decent set of basic apps, performance is good, unplug LAN cable and plug in WiFi card and it works. Also, a few applets that make things more useable have been included, such as network manager and the update manager.

I also prefer the look, which is now more in line with the Ubuntu standard desktop. I never really liked the narrow panel at the bottom. Another thing that I like is that there are not a lot of games installed that I never use.

technorati tags:xubuntu

Flock NewsReader

2006-07-26T19:00:00.000+10:00

I have been using Flock as my main browser for a few weeks now and, as much as I love Firefox, Flock has some extra ingredient that makes it more...um, useable? Not sure what it is exactly, but I love it.

I have also noticed that since using Flock, I hardly actually go to as many websites as I used to. The news reader is good in the way that RSS aggregators normally are, but is so much more useable. That word again.

Visible, but not obtrusive, notification of updated feeds. One-click access and good summarisation of feeds.

technorati tags:flock

Flock OPML Export

2006-07-25T07:23:00.000+10:00

I had been trying to hack a way to copy MyNews FrontPage setup from Flock, on one machine, to another. I managed to get it working when moving to an Ubuntu machine, but not to a Windows PC.

Anyway, the latest release of Flock, 0.7.3, solves this with export to OPML feature. Cheers to the Flock developers!

technorati tags:flock

Copying my FrontPage setup from one Flock Browser to another

2006-06-30T18:41:00.000+10:00

I was converted to Firefox a while ago, but recently I have converted to Flock. I had never been a blog-poster, picture-Flickrer type, but the recent release of Flock just makes me think that this is a higher level of web interaction than plain, old browsing. Now I'm playing with all of this web functionality.

Anyway, I have set up Flock on a few machines and can synch my Favourites, but not my FrontPage settings. Setting up the same FrontPage subscriptions on every machine is tedious. A bit of hacking around led me to find that you can replicate them by copying the flock_subscriptions.rdf file between the machines. It's in the Browser\Profiles\xxxyyyzzz.default directory. A quick refresh should bring everything back to life.

I imagine that this would be something that someone could write an extension to handle.

EDIT: Hmmm. It worked moving from my XP laptop to my Ubuntu laptop. But now I can't get the same to work from my XP laptop to my XP PC. Needs a little more investigation.

technorati tags:flock

Blogged with Flock

2006-06-30T18:22:00.000+10:00

Now testing the panorama capture feature and software to stitch the pics together. Looks quite good, except for a join at the top of the cupboard, just to the left of the microwave.

2006-06-30T18:13:00.000+10:00

Playing around with my new camera (Nikon Coolpix S3) and testing the longer exposure settings.

Now I need to find something more worthy of capturing besides a car driving past in the neighbourhood.

Skiing at Mt Buller

2006-06-26T22:42:00.000+10:00

We are off to Mt Buller this weekend and looking forward to some snow. This is a shot from last year - which wasn't great - and there is even less snow at the moment.

DVC00441.JPG on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Blogged with Flock