Archive for 'Software'
Microsoft, You Have Made Vista Hard to Develop For!
Posted on May 5, 2008, under Development, Operating Systems, Software.
I have learned to like, even love some things about Vista. That is not to say I think it’s perfect. It’s far from perfect. It’s unfortunate that it took Microsoft this long to implement some of the great features, and they still did not have enough time to implement things well; which is what makes Vista suck in it’s own right. It’s incomplete, it’s buggy, things were not thought through or over thought.
The one thing Microsoft had going for it, was it gave developers tools to make applications for its operating systems. Microsoft did not alienate past versions, something Apple is not afraid of. All this, and more, contributes to why it is largely adopted by businesses, and why you can find an application for just about anything you need on Windows. I am afraid that Microsoft has lost sight of this with Vista.
Vista is not easy to develop for. We are extremely behind with the release of NetGrid Studio, and the outstanding issues are Vista related. User Access Control is not only a nightmare for users, but for developers as well. You have to use specific API’s to "elevate" an application whenever you need to do something that could cause harm, like accessing certain parts of the registry. Which means you have to make a specific build for Vista, and make it seamless to the end user so they do not have to download a "made for Vista" version.
Apple got it right, granted they are built off of Linux and arguably do not have as much of a security problem because they are not as widely adopted; but non-the-less they got it right. Something as monumental and important as security with an Operating System should have been priority #1 for Microsoft making it easy for users and developers. I have not enjoyed making sure our applications are compatible with Vista. And do not even get me started on the ridiculous process you need to take in order to get your application certified "Vista Ready". The whole thing just was not thought out an implemented correctly.
I am a Windows user, and as much as I praise the things Microsoft has done I am hard on them as well. They should have split the Windows division from their online, Office, and IE teams like they did when making the XBox 360. Cut out the noise, and make a better product.
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Learning to Not Re-Invent the Wheel is Hard For a Developer
Posted on April 8, 2008, under Flickr, Software, Tools and Services.
I have a backlog of things that I have been meaning to do for some time. In the spirit of cleaning house, I have started in on the list. One of the items that I have wanted to to for a really long time is get my photos organized in an online album. I have installed several PHP photo galleries on a spare domain, and they all worked OK. My logic was I had the server, I had the disk space, and I had the bandwidth. There was no need to pay for a Flickr account, no need to invest in a service I can do myself for free.
And then the hassles begin. Updating the software, staying on top of security patches, installing plugins for it to do what I want, themes to look the way I want. So needless to I signed up for a Pro account over at Flickr. At the end of the day, part of the reason this has been on my to do list for so long is because of the time it takes to get everything setup. Why reinvent the wheel, when Flickr does a very good job of providing a service I need. I now have more time to take care of other things, important things.
It’s the decision that every software developer has to make at some point in time. Being one that likes to crate things, make things better, be an inventor, and have creative control; it’s not always easy to make the right decision.
My online album is here, and will be ever updated as time goes on.
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G-Archiver Is a Scam, Don’t Blame Shareware
Posted on March 10, 2008, under Development, Software, Tools and Services.
Originating from Jeff Attwood’s blog, Coding Horror about G-Archiver being a scam. The application, meant to backup your GMail account apparently emails your username and password to the developers GMail account. You can read more about it at Coding Horror, a great blog I and many follow, but what struck me was the backlash on shareware. It hit me a little personal, being a developer myself and relying on paid software to make a living. And honestly if anyone would have taken two minutes to take a look at the companies site, it would have rubbed them the wrong way and they probably would not have installed the software. Take a minute and research the company, just as you would before you purchase something.
This kind of lash out really rubs me the wrong way, for several reasons:
1) Yes, there are spyware ridden shareware applications out there, just as there is bad everywhere there is good.
2) As a company sometime you do not even list the application on the shareware site yourself, an affiliate does.
3) We have become a society expecting everything free; from ad blockers, movies and music pirating, everyone is looking for the free tool for them to use and in turn make money off with whatever they do for a living.
I am no angel, so please do not take this the wrong way. I am simply saying that there are software developers out there that put a lot of time, money, resources, etc, into making good software. Your purchasing the software helps the development of future versions with better features that make your life easier and more productive.
The same thing can be said about web sites that you turn over a username and password to. The majority of people use the same username and password for most all of their needs. You do not know what, if any, encryption or data storage methods these web sites are using. What kind of security they have on their servers. If any employee can get into the database and look up a username and password. This type of stuff can happen with web sites, you just do not know about it because you can not reverse engineer the source code on the server.
Don’t blacklist everything just because there is one bad egg.
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Eliminating the Need for Common Desktop Apps
Posted on March 6, 2008, under Adobe AIR, Browsers, Development, Software, Tools and Services, Windows.
As a desktop software developer, it is hard to admit that I have enjoyed moving my common applications to web services. Like many these days, I am not tied to just one computer. A desktop, laptop, and computer at work are just some. I eliminated the need for Outlook, as I use Google Apps for all of my mail, calendar, and most documents. The convenience of having access to your data from anywhere is huge. However, when I am at the desktop I want to use some of my web services like a desktop app.
For example Meebo. I have been using Meebo for my IM needs for some time, I love it. However having a full screen browser open all the time kind of sucks. There is a project called mebone written in Adobe Air, however it looks like it has since been abandoned. I ran into a version restriction of Air, an annoyance I have highlighted before about Air. I am not going to go and install a beta version of Air just to run a specific Air application.
I ran across a link to Prism, a project from the Mozilla folks. At it’s current state, Prism is little more than an isolated Firefox browser. You can install any URL as a "Web App" and run it stand alone. The road map looks really good for the project, and I can’t wait to see what comes. There is a lot of potential there. I like Prism for several reasons. The main reason is it allows me to run my mail, calendar, docs in a stand alone quick to launch browser that acts like a desktop application. This works great for Meebo, and my mail.
There are some applications that I personally would never see feasible to use as an online service. Photoshop, podcatchers, backup software, are some on my list. But the connection from the desktop to web services via applications like Prism are priceless.
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How To Add a System Tray Icon For TortoiseSVN
Posted on February 27, 2008, under Development, How To, Software, Tools and Services.
TortoiseSVN is arguably the best SVN client for Windows, my favorite for sure. The only negative aspect he program comes with is that TSVNCache.exe becomes very large in memory over time. This process keeps a cached state of your folders under source code control.
There is a way of putting an icon in the system tray which allows you to gracefully exit this app from time to time, not allowing it to get that large. This trick is documented in the hidden registry features of TortoiseSVN.
Fairly simple if you know your way around the registry. All you have to do is create a DWORD value under "HKCU\Software\TortoiseSVN\CacheTrayIcon" and set it to 1.
Presto! A System tray icon.
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Easy MySQL Backups on a Windows Server
Posted on February 27, 2008, under Code Snippets, How To, IIS, Software, Windows.
During the re-launch of BlueCrestStudios we moved to a Windows server. It was part of our initiative to take things back to our roots, and make things simpler. Because we run a fair amount of PHP applications we went with MySQL as our database. MySQL comes with a great little application called "mysqldump" which simply enough dumps your data to a SQL file. This little tool, combined with the free and great 7Zip makes for simple and great database backups. It’s best to dump your database onto a separate drive then where the data is stored, offers a little redundancy.
Now before we get started, I know some of you are thinking there is no need for this if you hosting company does backups. True, yes any good hosting company should do regular backups of all your data. However, I find it good to have a dump of our databases for that oops situation, and not involve the hosting company if we need to recover a database or table or row. In addition, you can schedule dump every other hour, or more regularly then your hosting company does backups.
So here is our script, let’s see what we are doing here:
1: set ARCHIVE=E:\Backups\MySQL\%DATE%.zip
2: set FILE=E:\Backups\MySQL\Backup.sql
3: DEL %ARCHIVE% /f /q
4: "C:\Program Files\MySQL\bin\mysqldump.exe" –all-databases –user=YOURMYSQLUSER –password=YOURMYSQLPASS > %FILE%
5: "C:\Program Files\7-Zip\7z.exe" a -tzip %ARCHIVE% %FILE%
6: DEL %FILE% /f /q
Basically we are dumping the database daily here, to an archive that holds the day of the week. The variable "ARCHIVE" holds to archive for today that will be created. The "FILE" variable holds the temporary dump file before we compress it, it is deleted after the compression just to clean up after ourselves.
- Line 3, we are deleting the current backup archive just incase.
- Line 4, we are doing the actual dump. You need to set your mysql user and password , a note do not use root!
- Line 5, we are doing the actual creating of the archive. SQL dump files compress very well, so this is a space saver step.
- Line 6, we are deleting the temporary backup file as mentioned above.
The tactics above can be enhanced greatly, as you can do dumps based on database, time, and get very elaborate on this. As an extra step I am using my Windows Home Server to download the dump nightly via FTP. Simple, elegant, fairly robust, and useful.
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Adobe’s AIR: The Good Comes With Bad
Posted on February 25, 2008, under Adobe AIR, Development, Software, Tools and Services.
One my favorite morning reads, ReadWriteWeb has a great article about Adobe’s AIR technology. For those not familiar, AIR stands for Adobe Integrated Runtime, and is a cross platform, code once run everywhere, light weight platform for applications. It holds a lot of advantages over other similar platforms. It’s two strong points in my eyes are: 1) it’s sexy looking, which is always a plus for end users. 2) It is easy to program in, especially for those who have worked with other Adobe products and technologies.
However my first experience with AIR was similar to some of my frustrations with .NET desktop applications. I was on the beta program for Pownce, which is written completely in AIR on the desktop side. I went and downloaded AIR, and naturally got the latest version from Adobe. Went to install the Pownce application and it said I needed an older version of AIR, immediately I was derailed. This happens more often than not with these "platforms", developers compile to a certain version of the platform and managing more than one version is a nightmare. Additionally, the last thing you want for a potential customer or user of your product is one more step before they can use your application; especially if that step is going to download another version of .NET or AIR. It’s the main reason I do not code in .NET for BlueCrestStudios.
I understand that with AIR it is just getting it’s official start out of Adobe labs, so it may not hold much weight here, we will see in the future. I hope that Adobe learns from others mistakes and makes the platform backwards compatible, easily distributable within AIR applications, and able to have more than one version installed if developers are going to be compiling against a certain version.
All in all, I think it has great potential, and will definitely be working it into future projects.
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Is There No "Try" in "Free Trial"?
Posted on February 19, 2008, under Software, Tools and Services.
With the revamp and release of BlueCrestStudios product line right around the corner, I am paying extra detail to user experience as we polish off the corners and get things ready to go. When you are in development mode, user experience can slide a little as you are mainly concerned about just getting the software working. I would rather be late to the market and get it correct, then early or on time and wrong.
Free trials and demos are a key part to new customers, something that I will admit I have taken the wrong approach on over the years. It’s natural to release a trial application that is locked down, doesn’t have all of the features, and only gives you a glimpse of how the application will behave if and when the user becomes a customer.
I recently had this experience with Stamps.com. I have be eyeing up stamps.com for about three months now. Lately I have been backlogged on items I need to mail out. Free welcome package to get me started, free digital scale, and 30 day money back. What could be better? Well then I get the welcome email. My welcome package has been sent, and I should get it in as soon as one business day. The digital scale, however; well I have to wait 30 days for my voucher and then pay shipping and handling. I understand that this is to prevent customers from canceling the service and making off with the scale, but I also find out that even if I wanted to stay a customer and keep using the service happily for years to come; I would still have to wait 30 days to apply for the scale.
Why is this a big deal? Well because I have packages to mail… now… not in 30 days. And in 30 days if I get the scale, and find out it’s a huge pain to mail packages, and the scale doesn’t work, and it killed my dog, and my girlfriend left me; and this whole Stamps.com thing just isn’t working out; I can’t get my money back.
Solution? Send the scale out, get the customer that still has an easy out using and loving the software. Get them thinking that it’s the best thing since slice bread. Then if within 30 days on the off chance that they do not like the service, let them know they have to return the scale or they will be charged for it.
It saves me from having to go to Amazon.com and use my Prime account to get a certified scale sent overnight to me. The only reason I did this was because it was a certified USPS scale vs. the one that Stamps.com gives you, and it had a higher weight tolerance. Still, not something you want customers to have to do.
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Amazon’s New MP3 Download Service is a True iTunes Competitor
Posted on October 2, 2007, under Media, Podcasts, Software, Tools and Services.
Many have tried to steal part of the large market share that Apple owns of the digital music market. Many have also failed. Amazon was in a perfect position to take on this challenge, but it’s biggest point of failure could have been itself. Amazon failed with it’s Unboxed service for movies and TV shows, with too much DRM, no mac support, and just a user experience nightmare. So what makes the new MP3 service from Amazon a true iTunes competitor, bottom line it works and works well!
Amazon is not playing any favorites. You have to download a small piece of software just to download the purchased music, after that the music works with iTunes, iPod, Zune, and any other media player or software. It also is available for Mac and Windows.
The prices are good, better than Apple in most cases. I hope that they will continue to be this low. It seems like Amazon might be initially taking a cut of revenue to get their foot in the door. If they do raise prices I can’t see it going higher than other digital music stores out there.
The music is DRM free! Yes, they are watermarked, which really is not a form of DRM just a little meta data that says where it was purchased from. The music is clean, which really would have been a show stopper for this new service and made it unusable for most like Amazon’s Unboxed service.
Amazon has been getting more into the service department, with it’s A9 offerings. These services line them up great for offerings like this new MP3 service. The downloads are fast, taking just about two minutes to download an entire album over broadband.
Amazon integrates the service very well into it’s store, again giving Amazon a leg up on competition and threatening Apples market share.
I have downloaded about three albums from the new service, and honestly it is so well done it might even convert the pirates. I truly hope that the record labelssee this service working and do not try to pull the stunts that they have pulled with Apple. Amazon needs to push back on the MPAA and get it’s Unboxed service working as well.
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How I Dropped Outlook Like a Bad Habit
Posted on September 26, 2007, under Email, How To, Software, Tools and Services.
I have had a couple questions lately on how I handle all of my emails, so here goes:
Like many out there I have used Outlook for the longest time, longer than I can remember actually. I had a huge PST file with emails dating back to college. When I got a PDA for work purposes, all of a sudden having my email in one place on my desktop did not work unless I wanted to setup an Exchange server. It has always upset me that Outlook does not support IMAP completely, and they have made it difficult to use; so this wasn’t an alternative. I had fears about giving up control of my mail server, which I have always chosen to run myself. Lastly, how was I going to sync up my calendar? After testing many setups, this is how I dropped Outlook like a bad habit.
Let Go of Mail Server Control:
I always ran my own mail server because I didn’t have to worry about spam signatures being attached to my emails, running out of storage space, or any of that other crap. GMail came along and changed the game with Google Apps, and Yahoo has been ramping up it’s offerings as well. I needed my email in a central place where any of my devices could hit it. An Exchange server was too pricey and with it came support problems, and any other software was just going to be something else I would have to set time aside to get up and running and keep running. I finally let go control of running my own mail server, and haven’t looked back since. Gmail is fast, works with my domain, has plenty of storage, improves it’s services without me having to upgrade anything, requires no time investment from me, has a mobile portal, and just keeps getting better.
Got Used To Using WebMail:
It was hard to get used to using a webmail client as my only email client. Especially with GMail which uses tags instead of folders. Breaking out of the mentality that my email is here, I can physically handle it, and it’s mine proved difficult and I almost reverted at several points.
Mail Notification:
With a webmail client, unless you want to keep it open all the time, you need to know when you have new mail so you can stay on top of it. I found a little gem by a company called MassGrid called GAlert. I paid a hefty $20 for this little shareware application, which sits in the system tray and lets you know when you have new mail for more than one GMail account. This was actually a hard application to find, yes there are a lot of GMail notification tools out there but not that many work with Google Apps and even less that work well.
On The Road:
As mentioned before, GMail has a slick mobile interface which is easy to use; just point toward your regular login and Google knows you are coming from a mobile device. Calendar was the next problem. Right now there are limited API’s available for GMail and Google Calendar, so it was also a task trying to find a way to synchronize my mobile calendar with Google Calendar. GooSync does just that. A little application downloads to your Mobile device, and lets you sync with the mobile calendar. They have both a free and paid service. Perfect!
Conclusion:
I haven’t been happier. In the process I dropped having to invest time in running a mail server and manage my mail and calendar, made myself more mobile and able to grab my data anywhere, and dropped ActiveSync which is a blessing of it’s own.
