2005 September | The Tlog - a technology blog

Archive for September, 2005

Software I like #2: Mozilla Firefox

Friday, September 30th, 2005

(NOTE: this is part of the “Software I like” series)

This was an obvious one, right?

After Netscape opened their old browser’s code, work started on creating a new open source web suite. Years later, the Mozilla suite was born, and was a viable alternative to Internet Explorer (and, at the time, virtually the only option for non-Microsoft Windows systems). However, the suite was often criticized for being too slow and bloated, and many people had no need for an email client and only desired a browser. Due to that, some Mozilla developers began work on a fork of the suite, which was going to be simply a quick, efficient, lightweight browser.

After being called “Phoenix” and “Firebird” for some time, it was finally re-christened “Mozilla Firefox” (often simply called “Firefox”).

You’ve probably heard all the reasons for using Firefox a million times, so I won’t repeat them here. It’s a great browser, and you should certainly try it, if you haven’t done so already, or if you haven’t done so since some pre-historic version such as 0.6.

If you’re using Internet Explorer, please change immediately – IE is a terrible, insecure, non-standards compliant browser. If you’re using Opera, Konqueror or Safari, you’re OK, but why not test Firefox for a while, anyway? It’s free, after all. (Conversely, if you’ve used just Firefox for a while, why not try one of the 3 I’ve just mentioned? You may find that it is more to your liking. Browsers, after all, aren’t a religion…)

A great, unique feature of Firefox are extensions. There are so many that I don’t know most of them, but it seems that each day I learn about a new, interesting one. For instance:

logging in automatically to “registration-only” sites like the New York Times
weather information
integration with sites like del.icio.us
Google Pagerank level for the page you’re browsing
a new one I discovered yesterday: it shows your AdSense click rates, and money earned for the day, in real time

and many, many more.

Pros: probably the best browser in the world. Very much supported everywhere, these days – IE-only sites are becoming rarer and rarer. Extensions. Great tabs support. Fast (especially the new 1.5 version, now in beta). Open source. Multi-platform (Windows, Linux/Unix, Mac). Secure. Stable. Easy to use.
Cons: still not as blazingly fast as Opera, especially in old computers. The gestures extension can’t compete with Opera’s gestures.

Posted in Browsers, Unix / Linux / *BSD software, Windows software | 1 Comment »

Software I like #1: Agile Messenger

Friday, September 30th, 2005

(NOTE: this is part of the “Software I like” series)

First, welcome to the second series in the Tlog.

Agile Messenger is, as the name implies, an Instant Messaging (IM) software for mobile phones. It supports MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, ICQ and AOL Instant Messenger (no Jabber, though. ). Very easy to use, with “helping” features so you can, in a short time, write almost as fast as you do with a real keyboard.

It has, both on my N-Gage and on my 6630, helped me through a lot of boring times, such as when dealing with Portuguese bureaucracy (that means waiting for hours and hours…). Yes, there are other ways to keep oneself entertained when you only have a cell phone (and maybe I’ll mention some of them in a future part of this series), but sometime you’re really not in the right frame of mind to read a book or play a game… but a quick conversation with a friend or two can be fun.

It can be left running in the background, so you are warned when you receive a new message, but can, meanwhile, use the phone for other things, or simply put it in your pocket.

It’s not free, though – it costs 3 euros a month, paid by premium SMSs. Or you can pay 20 euros and use it forever.

It has versions for Series 60 phones, Series 90, UIQ, PocketPC and Windows Smartphones.

Pros: works as advertised , nice interface, easy to use, cheap, includes smileys, can also send and receive voice messages, can run in the background.
Cons: no Jabber , only one account per service (that is, you can’t connect to 2 MSN accounts simultaneously, for example).

Posted in Mobile phones software | Comments Closed

Well, there’s spam egg sausage and spam, that’s not got much spam in it.

Thursday, September 29th, 2005

Due to a lot of spam attempts (which were blocked, but were annoying), I’m now using the Bad Behavior plugin. Please let me know (probably by mail – see the “about me” page) if it refuses a legitimate comment of yours.

No, “great blog, here’s my site!” comments are not legitimate.

Posted in Spam, The Tlog (site) | 2 Comments »

One of the few times I wished I lived in the US…

Wednesday, September 28th, 2005

… if I did, I could have just met a living legend:

Miyamoto

If you don’t know who he is (shame, shame…), here’s the Wikipedia link.

(photo from Aussie-Nintendo)

Posted in Console games, Consoles | 1 Comment »

Firefox usage in Europe (September 2005)

Tuesday, September 27th, 2005

Firefox usage in Europe - September

Got it from XiTi (in French), though I first saw it at SpreadFirefox.

This analysis (also in French) estimates the number of Firefox users in Europe at 37.4 million!

So, my little pointy-haired fellows… still want to lose 37 million potential customers just so you don’t have to bother with those pesky standards and are able to use something like FrontPage, and thus save a few days?

Posted in Browsers | 4 Comments »

Internal Jabber servers

Tuesday, September 27th, 2005

Some more “enlightened” companies, and some companies in which the sysadmins show initiative , have been looking into internal Jabber servers. Jabber is an open source instant messaging (but expandable to do more than simply IM) system – more precisely, it’s a protocol for those messaging systems.

It’s relatively easy to install and configure a Jabber server. It has several advantages over using some external IM system like MSN Messenger or ICQ: encryption, central control, and security (because users can’t, for instance, receive a virus or trojan from outside). Managers also tend to be easier to convince, even those who try to ban IM in the company, because it all stays inside the company, so they believe (and sometimes it even happens) than people will use it for work.

I’ve tried out a couple of servers, and I’m quite satisfied with this one: Jive Messenger. Ridiculously easy to install (uncompress the files to /opt; cd /opt/messenger/bin; ./messenger/start; then browse to the server’s address, on port 9090), with a web administration interface, can use the company’s directory server (using LDAP) for authentication (instead of having to create accounts, or allow users to create accounts and be vulnerable to all the likely abuse), supports features like a group chat and saving user info on the server, and it’s expandable through plugins. It doesn’t even require an external database. And, naturally, it’s open source. It uses Java, but installing the JRE isn’t a lot of work.

Posted in Unix / Linux / *BSD software | Comments Closed

Caching Google Earth with Squid

Monday, September 26th, 2005

I saw this one in the Squid mailing list, in a post by Rodrigo Freire.

Google Earth doesn’t “like” to be cached. However, doing so can save a lot of bandwidth, especially in a company where a lot of people use it – users can share the proxy server’s cache.

Here’s what you should add / change in your squid.conf file:

acl QUERY urlpath_regex cgi-bin \? intranet acl forcecache url_regex -i kh.google keyhole.com no_cache allow forcecache no_cache deny QUERY

---- refresh_pattern -i kh.google 1440 20% 10080 override-expire override-lastmod reload-into-ims ignore-reload

refresh_pattern -i keyhole.com 1440 20% 10080 override-expire override-lastmod reload-into-ims ignore-reload

Warning: it’s only 2 lines after the "----". Both begin with "refresh pattern" and end with "ignore-reload". Your browser may have split each of them in two, so…

Note that you will probably need to change some of it to adapt it to your configuration – especially the "acl QUERY" line.

Posted in Unix / Linux / *BSD software | 3 Comments »

Top 50 Science Fiction shows

Sunday, September 25th, 2005

Boston.com has a Top 50 Science Fiction TV Shows of All Time list. (saw it here)

My opinion: a pretty good list, although not having Star Trek: Deep Space 9 in the top 10 – even worse, not having an entry for it at all (it’s only mentioned in passing in the Babylon 5 entry) – is absolutely unforgivable. DS9 was brilliant.

And they do have one for Voyager, which I’ve only watched the first season of (I don’t watch TV, and I don’t download this kind of stuff, so it has to wait until I have money for the DVDs), and, while quite nice, from what I’ve seen of the first season, DS9 was much better. Oh well…

Posted in Science Fiction | 1 Comment »

Speed runs

Sunday, September 25th, 2005

What is a speed run (or “speedrun”)? Wikipedia says it’s “a play-through of a computer or video game, the whole game or a selected part such as a single level of it, with the intent of completing it as quickly as possible.” That’s their competitive usage.

But I like to watch them for fun and “education”, as well. Especially older games, which I may have played a lot of, at a younger age but which I am relatively unlikely to invest the time into playing again. Some speed runs skip a lot of the game, and/or show a “perfect game”, but others are more “human-like”, and show the entire game. It’s like watching a great player play the entire game for you.

Of course, that would spoil current games, or games I still have the intention of playing through. But, as I said, for older games… it’s fun.

Here’s a link with a lot of movies at The Internet Archive. Some are small, some are huge, but all I’ve seen so far are very interesting… to me, at least.

Posted in Console games, PC games | Comments Closed