Dec 30, 2003
First steps with Microsoft Smartphones.
First steps with Microsoft Smartphones.
First steps with Microsoft Smartphones is an article worth reading.
Dec 28, 2003
Spybot - free trojan horse detector and remover for Windows.
Spybot - free trojan horse detector and remover for Windows.
I just ran Spybot (a free software that detects and removes trojans and other nasty stuff) on my Windows XP machine. It detected a bunch of things worth fixing. Most of them were benign, cookie-related things but some of them were more serious. The bottom line: I feel better about the security of my PC after running the check and fixing the problems. I plan to run Spybot in the future (evil never sleeps!).
Dec 26, 2003
PilRC 3.0 released.
PilRC 3.0 released
If you’re into Palm OS programming, you should know that PilRC 3.0 has been released.
PilRC is a tool for defining UI in Palm OS programs. As a public service here’s a list of changes in 3.0 (otherwise only available in history.html file in the distribution):
- Enhanced bitmap family support
- 108dpi (1.5x) and 144dpi (2x) density support
- Handspring PalmRC bitmap syntax support
- Unified bitmap parser
- resources too large
- icon bitmap sizes don’t follow PalmSource specifications
- forms with edit fields lack Graffiti State Indicator
This version has been long in cooking so the upgrade is recommended.
Playing with M2, Opera’s e-mail client
Playing with M2, Opera’s e-mail client
I just installed Opera and curiously it comes with a bundled e-mail client called M2.
I’m not entirely satisfied with Thunderbird 0.4 so I decided to give it a try. First impression was very favourable:
- its IMAP support is good (detected and imported my folder hierarchy)
- it’s snappy (unlike Thunderbird that routinely stalls) e.g. I could comfortably
browse and read messages while it was downloading the rest of my e-mails in background - M2 has some interesting e-mail management ideas
The interface was a bit strange but I would get used to it eventually.
it of playing with it I found one show-stopper: it automatically
flags e-mails as spam (good) but doesn’t allow me to manually un-flag messages that were mistakenly flagged as spam (bad). Its spam detection engine generated too many false positives (non-spam messages flagged as spam) and for that one reason I just can’t use it. A
spam filtering that I can train by pointing spam messages that were not recognized
as spam and correcting false positives is a must in e-mail client. M2 seems to
only have fixed, automatic spam filterting that cannot be re-trained and it
does have too many false positives.
It’s back to Thunderbird for me.
Dec 23, 2003
What people want?
What people want?
According to download statistics at SourceForge people have a built-in, irresistible desire to share files. Don’t believe me? Look at the list of top downloads for the past 7 days. On December 22, 2003, it looked like this:
| Rank | Project Name |
Downloads | Last Rank | Change |
| 1 | eMule | 1213564 | 1 | Same |
| 2 | BitTorrent | 340263 | 2 | Same |
| 3 | DC++ | 218712 | 3 | Same |
| 4 | Azureus - BitTorrent Client | 131230 | 6 | Up 2 |
| 5 | eMule Plus | 103294 | 4 | Down 1 |
| 6 | VirtualDub | 100261 | 5 | Down 1 |
| 7 | CDex | 83987 | 7 | Same |
| 8 | Webmin | 65633 | 9 | Up 1 |
| 9 | Gordian Knot | 64971 | 8 | Down 1 |
| 10 | guliverkli | 45325 | 11 | Up 1 |
Top 5 entries, eMule, BitTorrent, DC++, Azureus and eMule Plus are file-sharing applications. Then we have 4 apps whose purpose is mainly creating files to share. CDex rips music CDs and converts them to MP3 files that we so love to share. Gordian Knot converts movie DVDs to more easily shareable files in mpeg4 format (using xvid or divx encoders). VirtualDub is a video editing app but its required by Gordian Knot and mostly used as part of aforementioned encoding process. Also guliverkli is a set of apps to help in movie encoding process.
The only lone, non-sharing-related, ranger is Webmin.
Dec 22, 2003
Death to slides.
Death to slides. Why would anyone do something like that is beyond me. A (probably) interesting article rendered useless by delivery method: 59 slides, each of them a 10 KB+ gif. HTML markup would would take less than 200 bytes. It could be searched. It could be indexed by Google. It would download much faster. It would be so much better.
Dec 18, 2003
Myths Open Source Developers Tell Ourselves.
Myths Open Source Developers Tell Ourselves. Described in this O’Reilly article.
Dec 13, 2003
Wiki roundup.
Wiki roundup. Short and sweet, from PC Magazine. Compares 5 wikis.
NY Times compares Motorola MPx200, Sony Ericsson P900 and Treo 600.
NY Times compares Motorola MPx200, Sony Ericsson P900 and Treo 600.
Smartphones are all the rage those days. NY Times has a short comparison of Motorola MPx200, Sony Ericsson P900 and Treo 600.
Dec 12, 2003
Better threaded view in Thunderbird.
Better threaded view in Thunderbird.
I wrote that in Thunderbird “there’s no way to get a threaded view that combines e-mail that I’ve sent with the one that I’ve received”. Paul corrected me:
Actually, there is. Go to tools -> account settings -> copies & folders, uncheck “place a copy in” and check “BCC these addresses” and put your own address in there. Then everything you send shows up in your inbox instead of a sent folder, and you can sort the entire inbox by thread, with your messages in with the ones you’re replying to.
So I lied, there is a way to do it. Of course it would be much better if Thunderbird just looked into my “Sent items” folder and did it automatically.