MacInTouch Home Page: "[Mathew] I upgraded to iTunes 4.5, and discovered that it would no longer connect to my jukebox machine, which has my entire music collection on it. The machine is a Linux box running the open source daapd software, which implements the daap protocol iTunes uses. The server also broadcasts via Rendezvous, so it works exactly like a Mac sharing via iTunes.
Fortunately I had purchased iLife, so I had the iTunes 4.2 installer on CD. I tried to downgrade, and discovered that the iLife installer wouldn't let me, even if I trashed iTunes from the hard drive. The solution to that problem was to go to /Library/Receipts and remove the iTunes.pkg and iTunes4.pkg directories using sudo rm -rf iTunes*.pkg in terminal; having done that, I was able to install iTunes.
The next snag was that iTunes 4.5 had silently upgraded my music library and iTunes 4.2 wouldn't read it any more. Luckily, since I keep all my music on a central server, I didn't need the local library, and I just trashed it. There was a file called 'iTunes 4 Music Library (Old)', perhaps that was a copy of the old version?
So, it seems that iTunes 4.5 once again makes an unannounced change to MP3 sharing. For me at least, iTunes 4.5 is a no-go until someone fixes the incompatibility with daapd.
While I'm writing, my biggest gripe with iTunes is that I can't make playlists of shared music tracks.
"
Friday, April 30, 2004
Tuesday, April 27, 2004
Monday, April 26, 2004
Beyond Megapixels: great series on digital photography
TheTechLounge - Beyond Megapixels - Part I
In the first few paragraphs it's obvious this is a cut above 90% of the writing about digital photography technologies either on the web or in periodicals.
This is the first of a three part series of editorial articles examining current digital photography hardware, as well as the author’s views of what is to come. Keep in mind that as this is an editorial, it does contain some opinion and bias, but I have attempted to be as fair and objective as possible.
In the first few paragraphs it's obvious this is a cut above 90% of the writing about digital photography technologies either on the web or in periodicals.
Sunday, April 25, 2004
Gmail - First impressions - offsite backups and file transfers and much more .... It's not really email
Gmail - All Mail
Google opened the next level of the Gmail beta to blogger customers. So, I've got mine.
Very impressive. The UI is far snappier than any webmail I've used, faster in some ways than Eudora 6 (which is, admittedly, abysmally slow for a desktop app). Lots of JavaScript. Runs fine in FireFox. Very simple UI of course, but elegant. Very Googleish.
It will come in very handy. I may set up some of my email systems to routinely copy messages to gmail, providing an accessible archive of my email. It will also be heavily used for file transfers. If I want to move a file from one system to another, I'll just sent it to myself. Unlike conventional email, when I send a message to myself via gmail only ONE message is created (not a send and receive message). So Gmail will be a highly efficient mechanism for file transfer and for quick offsite backups.
update
This is exciting. I'm finding many uses for Gmail in combination with Google's usenet postings and blogger postings. I routinely bcc items to gmail, which is becoming a kind of router for files and messages between services. Everything sits in my inbox, where I can search and sort.
Gmail represents a hard data lock though -- Google owns all the data. If there's anything I do that I don't want to lose, I copy it to my own machines. Increasingly, however, I'm throwing data out in one form or another.
Once Google starts integrating GMail (really threaded messaging > traditional email) with RSS feeds (blogger, blogines) ... Well, it's great to have an exciting and innovative company other than Apple in the world. For all his wealth and power, I wonder if seeing brilliance in other places somehow bugs Bill Gates ... probably not :-).
update
It's not really email. It's more of a message oriented file system. There's really one container -- the "ALL" container. Instead of "folders" you have "labels" -- which are categories for items. Items can be messages or files with message metadata. Threading provides a secondary way to traverse the file system. Searches are combined with "labels". The quick keys provide a UNIX like experience -- Google's UI paradigm is a cross between UNIX command line and GUI across all their applications.
Very subversive.
Google opened the next level of the Gmail beta to blogger customers. So, I've got mine.
Very impressive. The UI is far snappier than any webmail I've used, faster in some ways than Eudora 6 (which is, admittedly, abysmally slow for a desktop app). Lots of JavaScript. Runs fine in FireFox. Very simple UI of course, but elegant. Very Googleish.
It will come in very handy. I may set up some of my email systems to routinely copy messages to gmail, providing an accessible archive of my email. It will also be heavily used for file transfers. If I want to move a file from one system to another, I'll just sent it to myself. Unlike conventional email, when I send a message to myself via gmail only ONE message is created (not a send and receive message). So Gmail will be a highly efficient mechanism for file transfer and for quick offsite backups.
update
This is exciting. I'm finding many uses for Gmail in combination with Google's usenet postings and blogger postings. I routinely bcc items to gmail, which is becoming a kind of router for files and messages between services. Everything sits in my inbox, where I can search and sort.
Gmail represents a hard data lock though -- Google owns all the data. If there's anything I do that I don't want to lose, I copy it to my own machines. Increasingly, however, I'm throwing data out in one form or another.
Once Google starts integrating GMail (really threaded messaging > traditional email) with RSS feeds (blogger, blogines) ... Well, it's great to have an exciting and innovative company other than Apple in the world. For all his wealth and power, I wonder if seeing brilliance in other places somehow bugs Bill Gates ... probably not :-).
update
It's not really email. It's more of a message oriented file system. There's really one container -- the "ALL" container. Instead of "folders" you have "labels" -- which are categories for items. Items can be messages or files with message metadata. Threading provides a secondary way to traverse the file system. Searches are combined with "labels". The quick keys provide a UNIX like experience -- Google's UI paradigm is a cross between UNIX command line and GUI across all their applications.
Very subversive.
Friday, April 23, 2004
Project Planning & Scheduling Software -- Project KickStart
Project Planning & Scheduling Software -- Project KickStart
KickStart integrates with Outlook -- sort of. KS projects become Outlook task categories, and KS tasks become Outlook tasks. There's no synchronization -- KS is always the source of truth and it overwrites the Outlook categories. Without Outlook that tasks must be treated as "read only" or moved out of the KS categories.
I'm going to experiment with this a bit. I'll preface each KS project with the prefix ks_ so I know not to touch those tasks in Outlook. They will also display on my Palm (unfortunately, due to PalmOne's failures, Palm synchronization is not what it used to be ...).
john
KickStart integrates with Outlook -- sort of. KS projects become Outlook task categories, and KS tasks become Outlook tasks. There's no synchronization -- KS is always the source of truth and it overwrites the Outlook categories. Without Outlook that tasks must be treated as "read only" or moved out of the KS categories.
I'm going to experiment with this a bit. I'll preface each KS project with the prefix ks_ so I know not to touch those tasks in Outlook. They will also display on my Palm (unfortunately, due to PalmOne's failures, Palm synchronization is not what it used to be ...).
john
Wednesday, April 21, 2004
Topix.net and mangled advertisements
Digital Cameras News - Topix.net
Topix.net is a largescale news aggregator. I prefer Google's front page, but Topix has a very large ontology (knowledge structure) of news topics. That's not evident from the front page, but if you search on a topic you can quickly get long lists of topic domains -- about 250,000 according to an NPR show.
This is their topic collection for digital cameras. They do some kind of limited RSS feed as well. I'll experiment with this and probably link from my news page to very specific Topix.net domains -- such as digital photography.
They seem to use the targeted advertising business model, which could be a great fit to these focal domains. It doesn't work so well when searching on domains that aren't in their ontology. Here's an ad associated with results from a search on "plague":
Topix.net is a largescale news aggregator. I prefer Google's front page, but Topix has a very large ontology (knowledge structure) of news topics. That's not evident from the front page, but if you search on a topic you can quickly get long lists of topic domains -- about 250,000 according to an NPR show.
This is their topic collection for digital cameras. They do some kind of limited RSS feed as well. I'll experiment with this and probably link from my news page to very specific Topix.net domains -- such as digital photography.
They seem to use the targeted advertising business model, which could be a great fit to these focal domains. It doesn't work so well when searching on domains that aren't in their ontology. Here's an ad associated with results from a search on "plague":
Buy Plague Products
We link to merchants which offer Plague products for sale.
PC Magazine: Top 100 Lesser Known Web Sites
PC Magazine: Top 100 Web Sites
PCMagazine (I fondly remember the original ZDNet BBS ...) has a list of 100 web sites -- but it's not the usual list. These are "lesser known gems" divided into 12 categories (lifestyle, photography, etc). At the top right side of each page there's a short list of the entires, so you don't have to navigate the entire page. I may comment here on the one's I end up liking, but they're worth a review. Many, but not all, are familiar to me.
The persistent URL for this page may also be: www.pcmag.com/top100websites
PCMagazine (I fondly remember the original ZDNet BBS ...) has a list of 100 web sites -- but it's not the usual list. These are "lesser known gems" divided into 12 categories (lifestyle, photography, etc). At the top right side of each page there's a short list of the entires, so you don't have to navigate the entire page. I may comment here on the one's I end up liking, but they're worth a review. Many, but not all, are familiar to me.
The persistent URL for this page may also be: www.pcmag.com/top100websites
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