347.life

Mozilla Improvements.

Mozilla Improvements

If you are a Mozilla user (and if you aren't, you really need to think about it since Mozilla offers a solid, stable, advertising free, free alternative to Internet Explorer or Netscape 6+ / 7+).  Here are two cool things:

• Phoenix — a faster version of the core Mozilla technology. 
• Multizilla — a better version of the tabbed browsing feature in Mozilla. Tabbed browsing, a feature still not found in Internet Explorer, lets you avoid multiple browser windows by grouping them into “tabs”.  Given how multiple Internet Explorer windows lead to resource leaks (well at least for me), this is a welcome improvement.  From CamWorld.

Both qualify as recommended but bear in mind that Phoenix is still really at the techie, geekie hacker stage.

[The FuzzyBlog!]

Brian Greenstone's Guide to Austin & the Hill Countryhttp://www.briangreenstone.com/austin/index.html

Homemade Dot-Mac with OS X, Part 2

A great article by Alan Graham of O'Reilly fame.

http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2002/09/20/homemade_dotmac_2.html

In case you missed part 1

http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2002/08/09/homemade_dotmac.html

Article Review: This article was a big letdown. I was jazzed about learning how to set up a “real” homemade .Mac server, however the article only covered basics of creating a web page and publishing using FTP. What I really wanted to know was how to set up a webdav server so I could use/share information with others just like iDisk without having to rely on Apple's semi-clumsy iDisk platform. Alan's article left me wanting for more, but I don't know when he'll get around to delivering the goods. I have a feeling I'm better of Googling for it. – andy

A Welcome Weekend

I remember back in February, I had been “set free” by my former
employer for about two weeks. I was well on my way to getting my
consulting practice in full swing. I dreaded weekends. Nobody worked.
Everybody partied. It was a constant distraction. I loved “geeking
out” and ramping up during the week and building my business. A little
coding, a little marketing, and a lot of planning. Monday's were the
days when everyone went back to work and I could too. Well, a short
six months later and I too look forward to weekends. A time when I
can, like everyone else, relax a bit. Don't get me wrong – I still
like Monday's, but oh how I relish the weekend.

Today started out a perfect day. The weather finally cooled off this
week. (although this year has been relatively cool for Texas) The sky
was blue – the air was cool. The wife slept in and I had a chance to
pour through some mailing lists I had been neglecting. I took a ride
on the Harley to a little taqueria for some breakfast tacos. Oh, how I
love to ride my
Harley. It's such a great feeling.

Anna and I are headed out to Emma Long Park for a quick camping trip with Anna's
family. We're in charge of dessert – marshmallows, Jiffy-Pop Popcorn,
and Smores.

I know I'll come home tomorrow fully rested and ready for another
exciting Monday. Whatever you do this weekend – make the most of it.
You only get two days to recharge for the following five. Life is too
short to let them slip by. I'm going to make the most of mine. I hope
you do too.

Blog On,

Andy

Anytime I can do something simple in PHP, I'm all ears.

Score! Search Amazon with PHP.

Good find.  I've been wanting to experiment with this:

http://scripts.incutio.com/amazon/

Thanks http://simon.incutio.com/!  And see: http://scripts.incutio.com/ for more stuff including Google searching via PHP.

[The FuzzyBlog!]

Did I mention I love google?. Search for “go to hell” and look a the first choice.. .. or just click here…. [kasia in a nutshell]

Here's a thought.One of the big issues that small companies face (in my opinion) is losing company data when employees leave. There has been a HUGE meme floating around blogdom for months (years?) about the importance of knowledge management and knowledge sharing. While I agree that blogs are a great resource for capturing and sharing data, what I don't agree with is how to find that data once it is out and published. Google helps, but how many people are likely to catalog their findings?I, for one, choose to communicate primarily through email. In fact, this blog entry was posted via email. (Thanks Radio!) Now, imagine that all of your email, and everyone's email in your company, was cataloged and searchable via a slick web interface.Enter ZOËAfter testing this application (open source and completely free) for a day, I'm hooked. I send and receive so much damn email these days I can barely keep up, let alone remember what folder I filed it in. Since my browser is the second most used application, I simply click on my ZOË bookmark, do a quick search, and WHAM! It searches all of my email, sent and received, Google-style, and I instantly have access to the tidbit of 007-save-the-world important data.Now, imagine setting up ZOË to snag a copy of all of your company's email – incoming and outgoing. When a person leaves, don't worry about how they had their mail filed away. Most people would never bother to flip through an ex-employees email. BUT, when the fit hits the shan and you need to know what that ex-employee communicated, promised, or was supposed to be working on, ZOË will find it.So, I'm going add ZOË to my Swiss Army Knife and start pitching it to all of my clients, if only as a safety net for those “what if” scenarios. The software is free, but I'm not. (although contrary to some folks, I'm damn reasonable)

10.2.1 is out – and it's FAST!!!

I just ran software update, installed the 14 meg upgrade, rebooted and WHAM! This update is awesome! It's more of what I expected out of 10.2. My apps, especially Mail, open and run SO much faster.

THIS is what it is supposed to be like. – andy

A friend wanted to know how to get the Google search to work on a given URL (such as mine here, searching all of my Radio goodness). Google is by far the best search engine at the moment, and all of my content is re-indexed every 48 hours. That's hard to beat – especially for the price.It took me about 45 minutes to get it “just right”, but the overall code to do the search takes only 5 minutes and doesn't cost a thing.Here's the link to get started.http://www.google.com/services/free.html

Contrary to what my wife says, rarely does a technology make me stare at my screen with my mouth open, but I found myself simply awestruck as I began reading about ZOè.

I downloaded it, double-clicked the jar file, and it instantly opened my browser window to the main page. A few minutes later, I had it configured and tested my first email. Now it's importing all of my mail. I did a test search and it has already logged mail back to 2001 and is going strong.

ZOè is like having the power of Google on your desktop. It's hard to believe this is only an alpha release. I can hardly wait for beta.

Check it out. Read everything. Then download it and put ZOè to work for you.