Free FullWrite Professional is still out there

Free FullWrite Professional™ Document Processor

Dave Trautman's site allows one to download a full copy of the last version of FullWrite Professional. If MORE 3.1 was the ultimate outliner (OmiOutliner Pro 3.x may rival it now), then FullWrite Pro was the ultimate wordprocessor. Like MORE, it's now available for free.

It apparently runs in the OS X classic emulation mode, though it gives a FOND error message that can be ignored. I remember FW Pro as a monster -- it required megabytes (at least one) of hard drive space and maybe 1-2 megabytes of memory. It really strained my SE/30. It was also buggy when I used its full features in the earlier versions, but it was an astounding wordprocessor. It was also a quite decent outliner.

iPod sound quality: Shuffle > iPod 3G > iPod Mini > iPod Photo?

Opinion Column: Shuffle's Got a Secret

Fascinating. There's more to an 'mp3 player' than a hard drive.

The iPod shuffle's near-perfect rendering of the square wave means that it uses push-pull output instead of the single-ended, capacitor-coupled output found in just about every other player. You just can't get this kind of audio performance from a single-ended circuit. I find Apple's audiophile approach exciting on several different levels. You can hear the improvement; will Apple incorporate the same technology in future hard drive players? And technologically, it's fascinating. My inner geek wants answers to half a dozen questions, including how they're generating the negative power supply voltage and whether they've gone with a capacitorless design. I've asked Apple, but so far the company is mum.

I believe I proved that my ears were right: Several other hard drive players edge out older Apple players, but the iPod shuffle does them all one better. I think I also proved conclusively that the iPod mini's output capacitors are woefully undersized, as some audiophiles have been saying since Apple introduced the device. I also found that the iPod mini has lots of harmonic distortion—everywhere but at the industry-standard 1-KHz measuring point.

A Macintouch article claims the newer iPod Photos have sound quality substantially worse than the older iPods. I'm glad the audiophiles are starting to test these things out.

Freeverse : Bumpercar 2.0 OS X WebKit Child-safe browser

Freeverse : Bumpercar 2.0

via Macintouch:

Freeverse Software's BumperCar 2.0 is a web browser for children. The browser filters objectionable web content, limits the sharing of personal information, forces Google to use a "Safe Search" mode, includes parental controls, and more. This release has been completely re-written using Apple's WebKit for enhanced stability, speed, and compatibility. It also adds new home page options for a wider age range of children, safety settings available across all accounts on the computer, and other changes. BumperCar is $29.95 for Mac OS X 10.3.

I want this. I also want the old, long lost, aftermarket shell that put a fun and childproof wrapper around Mac Classic. Alas, that company went under.

Home PBX: Asterisk

Asterisk

Jacob Reider directed me to this one:

Asterisk is a complete PBX in software. It runs on Linux and provides all of the features you would expect from a PBX and more. Asterisk does voice over IP in three protocols, and can interoperate with almost all standards-based telephony equipment using relatively inexpensive hardware.

Asterisk provides Voicemail services with Directory, Call Conferencing, Interactive Voice Response, Call Queuing. It has support for three-way calling, caller ID services, ADSI, SIP and H.323 (as both client and gateway). Check the Features section for a more complete list.

He's put a home PBX in his basement. This is one of the more astounding Linux developments I've come across; it feels like the start of something quite interesting. I wonder if we'll see an array of low cost embedded Linux capabilities of this sort.

No wonder the phone companies are working hard to destroy VOIP telephony.

PowerPoint crash when attempt to insert an image from the desktop

When I attempt to insert an image into a PowerPoint 2003 file and navigate to the desktop, PowerPoint crashes with this lovely message:

Runtime Error!

Program C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office11\POWERPNT.exe

This application has requested the runtime to terminate it in an unusual way.
Please contact the application's support team for more information.

A few google postings seem to point a finder at Adobe Acrobat and its infamous spyware like installation of an array of Office extensions.

This Acrobat article doesn't mention the bug but I'm going to try some of its suggestsions ... PDFMaker is unavailable in a Microsoft Office application (Acrobat 7.0 on Windows) - Support Knowledgebase.

I'll post an update when I figure this out.

Update: When I examine the Adobe certificate VeriSign certificate used by PPT it's listed as having expired over a year ago. Interesting.

Update: I rebooted and found that trying to open ANY file from the Desktop (ONLY the desktop) caused this error. This time I was asked to send a report to Microsoft, and on doing so was directed to a web form asking for my name and phone number. Curious! I also discovered that I'd somehow set my PPT open dialog box to the "Preview" mode. I switched it back to "Details" and the error went away. So it's something about the code used for "Preview" by Microsoft Office 2003. THAT makes me wonder not only about Acrobat, but also about Yahoo Desktop Search (YDS), a product licensed from X1 that includes a variety of file viewers. Sometime I'll look at my XP error logs ...

Update: I'm increasingly suspicious that this bug is from Yahoo Desktop Search and it manifests when using the preview mode of the Office 2003 open file dialog box. YDS is in beta and I checked the filename for the current download -- I'm many versions behind. I'll update.

Plug-ins and Extensible Architectures - the view from Eclipse

ACM Queue - On Plug-ins and Extensible Architectures - Extensible application architectures such as Eclipse offer many advantages, but one must be careful to avoid

I've long wanted to see some of the products I've worked on launched as platforms rather than applications. This discussion is very relevant.

TCP and UDP Ports: Apple's view

"Well Known" TCP and UDP Ports Used By Apple Software Products: "'Well Known' TCP and UDP Ports Used By Apple Software Products"

This is a good list for all platforms, but it also covers apple products and their special ports.