number 9

So Google are now selling apps which I suppose is good news for people who don’t believe software is worth using unless they have to pay for it.

I only use Gmail (and analytics – They are watching you right now) but that’s proof they can make it work – the only webmail system that doesn’t stink (threading, ‘conversations’, keyboard shortcuts, taggable messages, anti-spam that works, stop me when I find something Groupwise/Squirrelmail can do).

I’d jump at the chance to edit word docs/excel spreadsheets online with a decent ajax interface (openoffice is enormous, memory hungry and, frankly, shit).

Rather than wasting time writing a client with ‘enhanced’ functionality, they get the webapp right.

the wonderful thing about Tiggers Gmail

It’s the only one.

You add a feature once and it’s everywhere.
Google talk just appeared one morning, so did spellcheck.

Fixing the recent contact list vulnerability didn’t involve deployment frameworks, software updates or remote imaging.

All users get the fix at once (the number of machines infected with 4 year old outlook viruses is unbelievable). You don’t have to worry about supporting old versions. Piracy is an impossibility.

And people still wonder if Microsoft should be worried?

It’s taken a year, but Google Earth finally went Linux.

The installer is pretty neat – you don’t need root, and everything goes into one folder with all dependencies, so it’s easy to deinstall. It worked acceptably on my crappy asus laptop too, which was a big surprise.

When I stuck it on my desktop, I got warnings that performance would stink because I had no hardware OpenGL (judging by the number of questions on ubuntu-users, I’m not the only one).

I have an Nvidia card, I just never needed 3D before (shows how lazy I’ve got, I used to regularly handbuild DRI support into FreeBSD4). So thought I’d enable DRI:

$ sudo apt-get install nvidia-glx
$ # needs linux-image-386 instead of the 686 image
$ # (hyperthreaded p4, but haven't noticed a performance hit)
$ sudo nvidia-xconfig
$ # tweaks your Xorg.conf (makes a backup, don't worry)
$ sudo reboot

When X next starts, I get an Nvidia logo and the desktop is a whole lot snappier.
More to the point, Google Earth now flies (and xscreensaver does’nt intermittently DOS the box any more)

Still no Sketchup for Linux, so I can’t build Isengard in my garden yet. Bah.

Sticking religiously to my can’t someone else do it? philosophy, I switched on Google Analytics yesterday.

Setting up awstats on textdrive was non-trivial (largely due to webmin) , and I’m not that happy with it.
I suppose it’s for ‘trend based’ analysis ( and sites with more than 6 or 7 readers a day ) but it lacks basic features like a proper daily view, or telling you who clicked on what (or which IPs mod_security is catching).
The Hives offering is based on urchin5 and therefore very purdy indeed (telling SFA that Urchin wasn’t on textdrive anymore was like telling my daughter Santa had died).

Piece of piss to install on typo:

1. signup (you probably need a gmail account. they are very good.)
2. paste the 4 lines of javascript just before </head> in typo/themes/yourtheme/layouts/default.rhtml
3. empty your page cache (so this gets into all your public pages)
4. Put some kind of ’WE PROUDLY CONSPIRE WITH THE ILLUMINATI (and google) TO READ YOUR BRAINWAVES’ disclaimer in your sidebar (GA sends info to google, so this is required by the Ts & cs)

As always there are annoyances.

• once you paste the js into your site, google will check you
  installed it ok, and say you didn’t. This is a lie (they’ll check after about 6 hours.)
• when they’re happy, they say it will take 12 hours. This is a lie (they do it whenever they feel like, gosh)
• it uses Flash to render the reports. My Flash (on Firefox on Etch) can’t handle exotic output like, oh, text. That’s a shame. (think it’s arial – installing msttcorefonts from multiverse on Breezy fixes it. Debian appears to be sulking)

But my god, the piecharts. Such piecharts…

Go procrastination!

Didn’t buy a gumstix – found out yesterday they’re shipping new ones in ‘06 based on PXA27X chips (mini-itx speeds with integrated sdram and flash, usb host, speedstep, and so on) for the same price (american economy not yet collapsed, but was looking very shaky about a fortnight ago….)

Didn’t buy a nano – turns out the screens fall apart if you look at them too hard .

While I’m here, I’d like to draw your attention to further evidence of Rasputnik’s Law

I mentioned project C.H.E.E.S.E . Hilarious.

Guess who just moved in with NASA?

"Our planned partnership presents an
enormous range of potential benefits...
collaborations on bio-info-nano convergence"

bio-info-nano convergence???? a.k.a. ‘having things inserted into orifices’. And not in a good way

Firefox just went batshit while using gmail. I clicked a link, firefox sat spinning with the status bar flashing.

I killed the tab, went in again and got a lovely error saying:

Lockdown in sector 4!

Our system indicates unusual usage of your account.
In order to protect Gmail users from potentially harmful use of
Gmail, this account has been disabled for up to 24 hours.

If you are using any third party software
that interacts with your  Gmail account, please
disable it or adjust it so  that its use complies
with the  Gmail Terms of Use.
If you feel that you have been using your Gmail account according
to the Terms of Use or otherwise normally,
please contact us at gmail-lockdown@google.com to
report this problem.

Contact you? With what?