On the unreliability of AMEX services ...

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This is the 2nd time in four days I've tried to pay my AMEX bill and found their system is down. I'd like AMEX to owe me $10 every time this happens to compensate for the hassle. Multiply that by a million customers and maybe they'd invest in better systems.

GraphicConverter beta fixes OS X induced duplicate EXIF orientation tag

GraphicConverter beta release

context menu item to remove double orientation tags added

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This is the 2nd or 3rd feature I've asked Thorsten Lemke about that he's added to GC. You don't get that kind of service from Photoshop! I hardly ever get the chance to send the guy money, since he asks for a pittance of an upgrade fee only once every few years.

One of the previous requests I had was for a quick way to create copies of images that were cropped for printing. Thorsten added a feature that makes quick work of chopping large numbers of images for making 4x6 and other print styles.

This new feature fixes a problem Apple inflicted on users of their Image Capture utility. In several versions of OS X the Image Capture utility duplicated the EXIF orientation tag while auto-rotating an image. So images ended up with the original tag plus an EXIF=1 (top left) tag. This confused some image editing and printing software. Basically Image Capture corrupted the JPEG EXIF header on cameras (Canon for example) that sensed image orientation and modified the orientation tag. Some versions of iPhoto tried to rotate the image a 2nd time and really mangled things.

Apple quietly fixed this in an OS X release, but they never released a utility to repair all the images with corrupted tags. Now there will be one with the next release of GC.

What a great piece of software. Please charge me an upgrade fee Thorsten!

My adventures with Blojsom

Quick Notes Blog: October 2004

Ok, I give up. I burned about 4 hours learning about the state of blog servers. I liked Blojsom because it installed under a java web server (Tomcat) and because it's the starting point for the future OS X Tiger integrated browser.

Ultimately though I gave up on it. I can see why Apple is going to use it in Tiger, but for now:

1. This is WAY too raw for a non-engineer to setup and run safely -- unless one has a lot of time to learn about it. For example -- there really doesn't appear to be a way in the GUI admin console to DELETE a post. Hmm. That's kind of a major omission. I also removed the "default" user since I wasn't using it -- uh-oh, That destroyed my site. I'm sure it's easy to fix by editing the config files directly -- but that's not going to work for me.

2. Most of the blog clients I tried had one problem or the other working with it. I think everything in the XP world of blogging is raw. OS X apps are much more mature and better tested.

3. There don't seem to be any true bookmarklets for Blojsom. That's critical. My potential users are NOT going to install software and they are NOT going go to a special site to create a posting.

I've spent way too much time on this problem -- including running through a few open source syndication servers. I think there are some good solutions, but they require far too much installation overhead for my uses. I suspect the integrated Tiger server will be JUST what I want, but I'm not going to buy an OS X server for my employer (even if they permitted it!).

Really, what I want is something that combines the brilliant simplicity of Google's Blogger with the ease of installation & initial setup of Blojsom.

Update: Just as I was about to pull the plug I saw very quick responses to my inquiries from the Blojsom's developer. They may address some of the key issues and are evaluating the problems I ran into. Maybe they just needed a grouchy end-user like me.

I think Blojsom has the right approach. Tomcat/JBoss with a WAR web app is the right deployment for a lot of small business and corporate settings -- and only Blojsom does this. If they can address the key issues they'll have a product they can sell, as well as provide free via the BSD license.

So I won't quit just yet -- especially if they can build me the bookmarklet they've promised!

Chronicle Lite Supports Blojsom

Chronicle Lite Supported servers

Blojsom Mailing Lists

Mailing Lists - Confluence

Ok, here's where support is!

WordPress: A bit more support than most

WordPress Support

This is really the wild west.

Blojsom: Blogging client setup

Blogging client setup - Confluence

I've been trying to figure out why it's hard to answer obvious questions about Blojsom, such as how does one #$@ post.

The answer seems to be:

1. This is a really new project. This page was updated 9/22.

2. Since OS X Tiger has incorporated Blojsom that's probably taken a lot of resources.

3. The author is working on 'Confluence' which seems to be a commercial derivative of Blojsom.

Anyway, I'm still looking for a bookmarklet, but I'm beginning to suspect the blogger BlogThis! bookmarklet could be reworked to handle Blojsom. Except if it were that easy, why can't I find a hundred examples?