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July 25, 2003
Bug using Firebird/Phoenix
I have run into a few -relatively- minor, yet annoying, bugs using Mozilla Firebird, both "Milestone 0.6" and various Nightly Builds. Mostly relating to tabbed browsing.
1) If I try load a page that fails (for example, a slashdotted server when I say "open in tabs"), the tab hangs and I can't get rid of it using control-w. I think my ability to use the keyboard to control Firebird is just dead while I'm on that tab. Even if I've gone off the tab and come back to it (either by closing the other windows, or switching back to it). I have to explicitly MOVE THE MOUSE (poor Alan) and click the "X" to close the tab. Or explicitly mouse up to the menu bar, choose "file", "close" (window or tab, I don't THINK it matters). Dude, the only reason I use the PC instead of the Mac is so that I NEVER have to take my hands off the keyboard... This looks like 140119 in Mozilla's bugzilla.
2) the same behavior happens on many popup windows (e.g. blog 'comments' windows). I can close the "page", but that leaves the "window" open with a blank content region, and control-w won't get rid of that. I have to go click the close box to get rid of it. Aah ok this seems to be known; bug 45369. But maybe not, because I didn't get any javascript errors because of it.
3) Help->About -- the "OK" button should be set as default so when I hit return, the window goes away. :-) Not a huge deal, 'escape' sends the window away. But "Return" should, with only one button on the page. That's a minor issue, of course, but 5 minutes to fix, no?
4) Typing into my "Entry Body" input field on Movable Type 2.64 causes one javascript console error to be logged per character. That's pretty strange...
5) Ok I think many of the problems I've been having are because of Tabbrowser Extensions, which is what lets me pretend that Firebird is Safari. *grin* I just checked his "forums" and found that he has a new release, today, that fixes one or two of the things I've seen. So I'm going to stop complaining [about this] now. :-P
Posted by aland at 4:57 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
July 22, 2003
Radio UserLand is cool but not for me.
I think Radio UserLand is a really cool product, however it's not the product that I'm looking for.
Details below.
While I think the concepts behind Radio UserLand are great, it isn't the appropriate product for me.
I am looking for something that will primarily act as a RSS Feed Reader. I've found two good solutions for the Mac and one decent app for the PC (see other posts). What's missing is some cross-platform, client/server basis for the application, so that the state of my reading is updated on a server, and whatever particular machine I happen to be sitting in front of knows what the last thing I've seen was.
rss2email is proving disappointing, mainly because a number of feeds I read (scripting.com, Doc Searl's blog, etc) get updated very frequently - which is good - but the way I'm checking the feeds doesn't reflect this well. so the 'exceprt' is basically the whole page, which I then have to scan to see what changed.
Actually, I'm not sure that this is a factor of the sw I'm using. I think the only difference is that I get multiple "site changed" emails "too quickly"... Because my sw checks hourly for updates, and so I get 3 emails for the same site. Also sometimes the sw doesn't know why it thinks a page changed so I get the same posting showing up multiple times. Again, I don't know whether this is a valid bug or an issue with the sites themselves...
Sigh. As Seth would say, I have to roll my own. But I don't want to. :) Oh well.
Posted by aland at 2:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
USB Radio for PCs
D-Link DSB-R100 USB FM Radio for PC (at CompUSA)
I haven't tried this but it looks like it does similar things to the RadioShark. Of course, being a Mac device, the RadioShark MUST be better. *grin*
Does anyone have one of these? I'm curious how well the software works...
Posted by aland at 1:55 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Synaptics Trackpad scroll with Mozilla Firebird
Just a quick note - I know I've done this before but it takes me forever to find it each time I have to reinstall my machine...
Add to the file C:\Program Files\Synaptics\SynTP\SynTPEnh.ini:
[Firebird]
WT = "*Firebird*"
SF = 0x10000000
SF |= 0x00004000
down near the bottom. Then either reboot the machine, or kill & restart "SynTPEnh.exe". Then the scroll region of the touchpad works on Mozilla Firebird.
Posted by aland at 1:02 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 21, 2003
Radio Shark Wish List
1) Fully AppleScriptable
2) Timed Recordings
3) Streaming Audio
4) Scan & set (an infinite number of) "buttons" (presets) for lockable stations.
4.5) Self-setting ('know' what the call letters & format are for the current station/all strong stations)
Also, some integration with http://www.yes.net/ would be very cool ("What's playing right now?").
Details below.
Here are some details on what I want. I will probably keep editing this entry as I think of things.
1) Fully AppleScriptable. I want at least the following functionality to be applescriptable (and, of course, built into the app itself):
* Return the currently tuned station.
* Return the currently recording program, or that there isn't one.
* Return the next scheduled recording info (time & station).
* Return the list of presets (frequency, call letters, ?url?).
* Return the currently playing song (integration with www.yes.net).
* Tune to a particular station right now.
* Initiate/stop streaming audio
* Set/clear a preset
* Schedule a recording (with a return value for conflicts)
2) Timed Recordings
* Record station 1030AM from x:02 to x:05 every hour between 6am and 9pm M-F unless there is a higher priority recording (e.g. "save my traffic reports") to A SPECIFIC FILE. (I only care about the latest update...)
* Record station 1030AM from x:02 to x:05 every hour unless there is a higher priority recording (e.g. "save my traffic reports") to a NEW file named 2003-07-25-08-02-00-1030am. Keep
* Record station 98.5FM from 5am to 9am every M-F unless there is a higher priority recording.
* Record station 100.7 for 2 hours at 4pm on Thursdays
In an ideal world I'll be able to set up the sw to poll a web site (e.g. TiVo's online central) to set a remote recording. This isn't important for early revisions of the sw. :-)
3) Streaming Audio
* I should be able to stream the audio - live - to at least two remote sites.
* Being able to access it with iTunes would be great; with standard browser sw (e.g. quicktime streaming audio) is fine.
* It's perfectly acceptable for me to have to download and configure new sw to do this, but Griffin Technology should be able to tell me how. :)
4) Scan and Set 'all' strong enough stations.
* I want multiple 'sets'. If I bring my RadioShark from Boston to NYC I want to save the "Boston" presets and have it able to scan the NY stations.
* I'd like a ranking system similar to iTunes, where I can set the priority of the stations. E.g. 98.5 is *****, 100.7 is *****, 100.3 is ****, etc.
4.5) Self-setting ('know' what the call letters & format are for all strong stations)
* Some tuners are able to read the radio station data over the air. This is really important to me, though links to e.g. newspaper listings for metro areas that'll tell me what the stations are is acceptable. The radio data has frequency, call letters, and 'format'.
* I should be able to hit 'scan' and have the sw cycle through each of my top rated stations for
* I should be able to scan all stations of the same genre as the one I'm currently listening to.
Other neat features -
* If I hover over the icon in the dock it should tell me the current station.
* Context-clicking on the dock icon (when the app is running) should pop up a list of my
* Auto-compress to MP3 or AAC format after recording.
* Auto-entry of compressed file into iTunes playlist after recording.
* Auto-email of compressed file to me after recording (see "traffic reports") if I so desire.
What do you want to see in a computer-based radio? If anyone from Griffin Technology is reading this, I've already ordered my RadioShark and I hope to hear from you about some of these ideas... :-)
Posted by aland at 1:29 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
What's playing on your radio now?
check out http://www.yes.net/ to find out!
Posted by aland at 1:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
RSS Reader woes
I've been playing a lot with various RSS feed readers on MacOS X, Windows XP and Linux.
I've found ONE that I -love- (NetNewsWire on MacOS X from Ranchero Software), one that I am reasonably comfortable using (NewsDesk on Windows XP from WildGrape, and one that I will probably end up using the most, rss2email.
Details (including what I do and don't like about each) below...
rss2email is a cross-platform application that will run on a Linux server (for me), and when run (out of cron) every hour or as scheduled, it will read each of the sites I have a feed for (around 86 at this time) and email me each "new" posting.
It will be annoying to get the hundreds more email messages a day, however I have the messages tagged so Eudora will put them into an "RSS Feeds" folder and I can deal with them if/when I so choose. If I used IMAP instead of POP it would be even easier to filter them into another server-side mailbox and deal with it that way. But for now this is what I'll do.
One site I 'scan', Javable.com, does not work - The software claims that every article on the site is new, each time that it runs. So I might need to stop reading that site. I'm sure there's sufficient overlap between that and the other sites I read that this will not be a huge problem for me.
NewsDesk is the best Windows RSS feed reader that I've found to date. In the past few days I've tried almost all I could find. I tried "effbot", "Novobot", FeedReader, FeedDemon, AmphetaDesk, and about a dozen more that I can't remember at the moment. The reasons I didn't like them are varied; some didn't split articles so that it knew which I saw. Some didn't automatically recognize that I'd viewed and passed over the article. Many didn't allow me to use the space key to page through articles, moving to the next unread article at the end of each. None was particularly good at allowing me to simply queue up articles to read after I finished going through the feeds (by opening the browser in the background). Basically, I think I'm spoiled by the combination of NewNewsReader and Safari on OSX.
NetNewsReader is the best RSS Reader I have found, bar none. I am in awe (only slight exaggeration) of how quickly I adjusted to working with it, and it has set the bar WAY too high for me. The only reason I'm not sticking with it is that I spend about equal time on my Mac and my PC laptops, and I want to be able to read the same feeds, synchronized, on both machines.
Things I love about NetNewsReader:
1) It has a 3-pane window, containing the feeds on the left, the articles from each feed (or for a "group" of feeds) in a top pane on the right, and the text of a particular article in a bottom pane on the right. I don't know why but this just seems "natural". NewsDesk has a similar layout, but has other issues I'll mention below.
2) Hitting space takes me through articles and groups, paging through the article in the 'reader' pane and then to the next unread article. NewsDesk does let me 'space' through articles, but if an article extends beyond the visible area in the reader pane, I then need to click in that pane to space through the article, and back in the 'titles' list to resume paging to the next unread article. It's close, but not quite 100%.
3) I really like the fact that NetNewsWire is able to update its icon on the OSX dock to tell me how many unread articles are waiting to be read.
4) Integration with my web browser. If I want to read the full article that I'm scanning (the excerpt from), I hit return. That's it. The article then opens in Safari. I have Safari set to open URLs in the background, and in a new tab. Tabbed browsing is the ONLY way to fly when you're reading many sites...
The only PROBLEM I have with NetNewsWire is a big problem with many pieces of client software. Synchronizing with other computers is a difficult problem. I've only been using it on one of my Macs, but when I move to the PC laptop I'm "stuck". I don't have access to the current status of which articles I've read and which I haven't gotten to yet. I have to go from memory, which is really NOT an option, or I need to wait and let them all queue up on the Mac, which means it'll take me an hour to go through them (yes, I read too many feeds). Or I have to "immediately" upon clearing out NetNewsWire, VNC over to my PC laptop and start NewsDesk, and mark all articles as read (and vice versa when moving back to the Mac). That does the trick, as long as I've manually synchronized the feeds I'm reading.
That is why I'll probably keep using rss2email. It's not as pretty, but it lets me "tune" my fingers for Eudora, which I'm already using constantly; it keeps my 'master feed' in one place (on the server) and it pushes the data to whatever I'm currently using to read email, which is also a method I'm used to dealing with. It's not my first choice, but unless I find something equivalent to NetNewsWire for the Windows platform, and/or find a way to sync the 'last viewed' dates for my news feeds, I'm stuck.
I SHOULD try Radio Userland by Userland Software. The problem I have with it is that it's more expensive than the other products I've tried, and while I am a big fan of Dave Winer whose company built it, I don't know if I'm willing to make a large investment in software that I will likely stop using due to time constraints once I'm working again. *grin*
I will post an update once I've tried Radio Userland as an RSS reader...
Posted by aland at 12:30 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
July 16, 2003
It's not Hubzilla, but it's cool.
Another awesome new product that's coming out soon is the D-Link DFB-H7 QuickMedia USB 2.0/FireWire 7-port combo hub. At $50, it's beyond awesome... This despite my insane frustration of the last few days in trying to get their DWL-900AP access point to act as a range extender for the other D-Link wireless devices I have here in NJ (their DWL-614+). Which rates a *sigh* since I -only- bought it to use as a range extender (and spare access point). Oh well I'll use it at my father's office instead of his house...
Update: the product has a page of its own now, and the report on MacInTouch says that it will be $59, not $50. Still $10 less than the competition, though the competition has more Firewire ports and no USB2 ports.
Posted by aland at 11:49 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Land Shark!
Check out the shark!
http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/radioshark/index.html
It's basically TiVo for AM/FM radio. I have no idea what the software will be like, as it isn't out yet. The guy at MacWorld (Sorry, "CreativePro") Expo who was showing the unit didn't have the software installed yet. And I'm sure they wouldn't get great reception in the middle of the Javits Center. *grin*
It looks amazingly cool. I'm probably going to get one when they come out, if I don't bite the bullet and pre-order it instead of waiting.
Posted by aland at 11:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 3, 2003
This is a test.
I'm playing with NetNewsWire, since I'm using my Mac for a bit. It's cool.
This posting is going out from the NetNewWire Weblog Editor. I like, if it works. :-) It should.