JavaScript: a modern update

Coding Horror reviews JavaScript. The links are particularly interesting for up-to-date sources. CH is somewhat Microsoft friendly, so I'm surprised they missed the chance to point out that Microsoft (gulp) made two very large contributions to AJAX. They established the asynchronous XML data exchange and they forced JavaScript into the standards world.

It's one of the great ironies of computing history that Microsoft's actions, which were in part efforts to torpedo Netscape, instead enabled Gmail.

Google on the move: Flash slideshows and way better book search

The shredding and digitization of a 2025 UCSD library was one of the central events in Vinge's recent novel, Rainbows End. In the book Vinge refers to Google's digitization efforts, and today the Memex company ("all knowledge all connected") has another big book announcement.

Note especially that Google Book Search is now integrated with local library services. Wow, what a slick way to mollify librarians ... (I'm now subscribing to Google's book search blog.)

Also, Flash slideshows -- which I'll certainly be playing with ...

Official Google Blog

... Now when you search you'll get both digitized book results as well as records for millions of other books that still just exist in the analog world.

When you view these new added [jf: analog] book records, you can often read reviews, a summary, or see what other people had to say about the book around the web.... we offer links to buy the book or find it in a library near you.

To find out more, check out our post on Inside Google Book Search.

and on another Google front today

... You can use our free photo sharing service, Picasa Web Albums, to create nifty portable Flash slideshows that you can easily embed in any blog or web page.

I tried the book search on my son's favorite book "So Others May Live", but our local libraries are not onboard yet. I'll have to see if I can encourage them to participate.

How to move a domain name

Moving a domain name from Network Solutions to the OpenSRS service used by my service provider (Lunarpages) was surprisingly complex. For the sake of anyone having to do this, these are the key steps:

1. Go to Network Solutions and login in to my account there.
2. Find the domain name, click on it, and find the control that locks the domain. Unlock it.
3. Now there's another obscure link on the same page that, confusingly, says "lock" or get "transfer code". Click on it and request the code. It's emailed out.
4. Now to to Lunarpages and fill out their form. They needed all kinds of things, including my credit card info (for verification - yes, it's stupid), domain information, copy of domain record, password for my cpanel access, etc.
5. Now it should hopefully transfer ...
   

Google search views: map and timeline

Google has opened their Experimental Search to the public. The cool ones are timeline and map, and you can use them for any Google search (they work best for people, organizations, places):

timeline: use the search term "view:timeline"
map: use the search term "view:map"

Try these:

"dark matter" view:map
"bill clinton" view:timeline

The standard view is "list view" but view:list doesn't work. I tried some other views but didn't find any easter eggs ...

Google redoes their search: Integrated search

The announcement suggests we try the new improved steve jobs search. I took more notice of the the new top menus associated with personalized search. They produce an odd fusion between search and Google services associated with my Gmail username. I'm not sure I see the point, but I'll keep playing with it.

Word 2007 XML File Format Converter for Mac

TUAW has the story. Alas, we all need this. BTW, TUAW is being quite impressive lately.

Disable the 'delete go back' booby trap in Firefox

macosxhints.com - Block the 'Delete goes back' action in Firefox.

It's an OS X hint, but of course it works everywhere. I just disabled it on XP. It's a booby-trap, not a feature.

Best Finder tip ever ...

In column view names are often truncated. There's a fix

Mac 101: Viewing long file names - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

...At the bottom of the column, you'll see two short, vertical "pipes" (pictured above). Double click the pipes, and the window will instantly expand to accommodate the longest file name in the window...

Excellent, but in comments it gets better: "if you option+double-click it will expand all available columns!". Now I'll switch to a very narrow default column view ...

Spanning Sync: the uninstall

Spanning sync had worked pretty well in my limited testing, but I couldn't solve the rest of my gCal sync challenge. Without the whole solution Spanning Sync just didn't offer enough.

Time to uninstall. But wait -- how to uninstall? Uninstalling the very best OS X apps is a drag-and-drop operation, but Spanning Sync includes a PrefPane. I started looking for uninstall directions.

At first things looked bad. The Spanning Sync FAQ doesn't mention uninstalling. One blog post suggested the process is pretty ugly. A search on the Spanning Sync site for "uninstall" returned four irrelevant hits.

I downloaded 1.04 again, and that's where I found an uninstaller. It seems to have worked. So they have one, even if they don't document it.

OS X really ought to have an uninstaller, even if most apps can be uninstalled by deleting them. (Though apps typically leave support data scattered around, you can use spotlight to find them. In the case of an app like Spanning Sync, you need to switch to each user's account and run a search if you want a full cleanup.)

Update 9/4/08: The iPhone made me a Spanning Sync customer after all. Meanwhile, a year or so after I posted this, Spanning Sync finally added a note to their FAQ about uninstalling. I'm glad they relented, but why did that take a year?

Beginning of the end for the dSLR?

The Canon PowerShot S5 IS has very impressive specifications. We'll see how well that thumbnail sized sensor does at higher ASA ratings, but this feels like the beginning of the end for the dSLR. Many pros will use this as a backup camera, and many prosumers who might have bought a dSLR will choose an S5 instead. Current prosumer dSLR owners will hold off on major lens purchases, anticipating a possible future switch to an S6, S7, etc.

The dSLR has always been, very obviously, a transitional technology. Mechanical prism? Sensor dust? Ummm, no. The only question was when. Now I'm thinking dSLR sales will start to decline by late 2008.

Cmd-Opt Drop: force open file

Finder Fu: Force an Application to open your Document - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW):

...By holding Command Option while dragging, you tell OS X applications to open files regardless of whether they 'support' that file type...

AOL Pictures for iPhoto?!

When did AOL suddenly get interesting? I just registered for AOL's xdrive, and I saw a link to their xdrive photo service. There I read:

AOL Pictures - Create Album:

... Free, unlimited storage of your photos in original resolution.

... Download the AOL Pictures uploader and management tool for Mac. It also allows you to upload directly from iPhoto ...

I use Google albums because of the elegant iPhoto integration, and I've used SmugMug for years. Neither are free, I've used half by Picasa web album (google) quota, and SmugMug is not serious about OS X support.

So this is interesting, especially because of the upload speed I just saw with xdrive. Uploads to SmugMug is very slow, and Picasa Web Album is no speed demon either.

It would be hilarious if I returned to using AOL. I used them back when they were Mac only, before their was a publicly accessible net. I gave up on them in the 80s ...

Update: download the application here. It looks kind of crude and the install is a bit odd, but it respected admin rights and it uses the keychain. Drag the app to your Application folders. Then launch it, it will ask about installing the iPhoto plugin. It does a proper install with privilege request. There's even an iPhoto plug-in uninstaller built into the desktop AOL Pictures app, and the app is easy to remove. It doesn't work with all AOL/AIM names but it worked with mine, I suspect older AIM uses might need a full AOL account. The upload was smooth and quick.

Alas, that was the end of the good news. The iPhoto plugin doesn't transfer metadata. No title, comments, keywords, etc. Oh well, I'll uninstall but keep this in mind. Maybe they'll fix it later.

PS. iPhoto wasn't built to handle more than 2-3 plugins. There's no room to display all the names of the plugins!

Xdrive by AOL - I'm using it

I've been using Google Page Creator to move files back and forth, but it's kludgy and uploads are excruciatingly slow. I looked around a bit and found AOL's
Xdrive is now offering 5GB for free. It's PC centric, but I tried the browser applet with Camino and it was pretty efficient. Not quite drag and drop or webdav, but good enough.

I had an AOL screen name (my AOL username from 18 years ago is unavailable, AOL does not recyle screen names and there's no way to reclaim them) so I just used that. When I signed in I got a "service unavailable" message, but I just clicked for a while and eventually it let me in.

Upload was incredibly fast using their fancy uploader. I've never uploaded anything to the web that went so quickly.

Worth a try.

Microsoft's free "hobbyist" development tools

I'm not an XP hobbyist so I'd never had of Microsoft's free development tool suite. I came across them only because I was evaluating SQL Express 2005 for a small project. I knew about SE (first released 2005, doesn't run on Vista so unclear future), but I gradually realized Microsoft was packaging it as part of a "hobbyist" suite. A free hobbyist suite.

Visual Studio Express includes "hobbyist" editions of their web development environment, a robotics development toolkit, a game development suite, SQL Server 2005 (of course) and "hobbyist" editions of VB, VC#, VC++, VJ#. Not to mention a learning center.

Did I mention the free part?

The oddest thing, for me, is that none of this is new. These were all released at the end of 2005 as an experiment, but Microsoft made it unlimited in 2006. VS Express has a product manager with an active blog and it seems to have a future.

I suppose I need to get out more.

This fills an odd gap in the world of software development. In the 90s Borland (later Symantec) sold a wide range of programming tools accessible to the hobbyist or student. Many were used for small software products inside corporations. All of these tools are gone now, replaced by high-end, very expensive and very complex tools that are aimed at the professional market.

I suppose I should express my gratitude to Microsoft for this seeming act of enlightened generosity, but that would make my keyboard explode ...

PS. OS X development tools are free for everyone, and they're pretty accessible. No free database platform though ...

Zimbra Calendar and sync

I ran into a brick wall with my integrated family calendar project. I probably have to wait and see if Google implements Outlook synchronization, but I see that Zimbra Calendar has an Outlook Connector. This blog has more discussions, I'll try following it for a while.

I liked this claim:

... Zimbra, the enterprise, open-source-based Exchange competitor that runs e-mail services on top of Mac OS X and a variety of Linux flavors, already with over-the-air (OTA) sync to all popular PDAs, and quality desktop connectors to sync iCal, AddressBook, Entourage and Outlook, has now released the very early version of their own Desktop Client.

So if I were to run Zimbra on one of my ISPs ....

Update: Ouch. The sync stuff requires the very expensive non-open source solution. Ok, forget that ...