It’s time for a new smartphone. I admit habits die hard and this is the first time since 2000 I am actually considering changing mobile platform. Not because touchscreens were “non-existent” before multi-touch, as Apple fans would put it, but because Microsoft has, or is close to managing what seemed impossible: lose in the software availability arena. Most new mobile applications for new Web 2 needs are created for the iPhone and Android first and for Blackberry and WM later.

Microsoft clearly failed to recognize the mobile devices market trends in time and doesn’t even seem to do anything serious about it. WM updates are drugged by hardware and other developments and are nothing to write home about. Devices are still best-of-breed, thanks to HTC and others, but this can’t be credited to MS.

So, these are the lists for and against staying with WM:

Stay with WM

• 10 years of usage (habit)
• It does work, most of the time
• I have almost all the applications I need
• MS Outlook synchronization. What about Outlook synchronization with Android? Android Market’s web interface is bad to useless. It’s a Google product with no search!
• HTC HD2

Leave WM

• WM is not open. Android or Maemo would be candidates as open platforms
• Most hip programs and services are first available on other platforms. Android is the only candidate here as the iPhone is closed, regulated and not the best hardware around
• All else being equal, open platforms are also hosted by cheaper devices

Any thoughts would be appreciated!

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Localizing everything can some times be a waste of effort. In other cases, localization (ie. of an infrastructure) can be well worth its while. Ning is such a case. In terms of multilanguage support prolepsis, as english is a simpler language than greek and others, building localization mechanisms is no easy task and translation can be tricky…

The case in point is four terms in Ning Forum’s messages greek translation. When Forum conversations grow long, pagination is introduced at the bottom of the page with the english messages “First”, “Previous”, “Next”, “Last”. The greek terms used for these messages are “Όνομα” (”honoma”), “Προηγούμενο” (”proeghumeno”, in Ning notation, where “h” shows where the word is stressed), “Επόμενο” (”ephomeno”), “Επώνυμο” (”ephonymo”) respectively. However:

• “Όνομα” is greek for “First Name”, not “First Page”. The correct term would be “Πρώτη” (”prhoti”, “first in order”)
• “Προηγούμενο” and “Επόμενο” are basically correct. In greek, however, adjectives have a gender. In this case the term refers to a page, which is “η σελίδα” in greek and has a she-gender. Therefore, the correct terms are “Προηγούμενη” (”proeghumeni”) and “Επόμενη” (”ephomeni”) respectively
• “Επώνυμο” is greek for “Last Name” (or “Surname”), not “Last Page”. The correct term would be “Τελευταία” (”telefthea”, “last in order”)

Ning first-last messages in english

Ning first-last messages in greek (translation error)

Thanks, Ning, for allowing us to built our own social networks. Please keep improving!

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Pros

• The PeopleBrowsr people listen and respond
• Multiple Stacks
• Very Strong Search
• Multiple networks support (alphabetically): Bitly, Digg, Facebook, Flickr, FriendFeed, Identica, LinkedIn, MySpace, Photobucket, PingFM, Plaxo, Seesmic, Trim, Twitter, Webpage, YouTube etc.
• Multiple accounts on each supported network
• Both a Web and an Adobe Air version
• An impressive list of Options in Settings, including but not limited to:
  • Auto refresh rate in seconds
  • Auto sync Following/Followers
  • Auto Refresh
  • Show real names
  • Show Location
  • Persistent Stacks compression for more information in the same space (Stacks can be individually set to be compressed or not, but the setting is not saved when the session ends)
  • Show absolute times instead of how long ago posts were posted
  • Added value among PB users
• Combination Stacks like DM+Replies+Stacks for Twitter
• PB Groups can contain accounts from different networks, thus not becoming obsolete after Twitter introduced Lists
• Color-coding and custom names for Stacks
• Twitter threads (when available)
• Posts can be delayed, repeated and post on multiple networks at once

Wishlist & Shortcomings

• Trim down the top


PeopleBrowsr top part

The top “Post”, “Search”, PBIDboxes, PBExpet and Logout boxes/buttons/choices are too wide and actually takes a 1030pixels wide window for it to display properly! When narrower than that, the Search box goes down and sits on top of these stacks’ titles. Very annoying.

• Improve non-latin text support: Sometimes Greek, Cyrillic etc. text decoding fails to display properly
• Keep Twitter Lists up to date: My lists seem to have been read once and have not been updated since
• Keep FriendFeed Lists and Groups up to date: They seem to have been read once and have not been updated since
• Friendfeed Lists and Groups cannot be managed at all
• Improve the Twitter Lists and PB Groups manager: As it is, it leaves a lot to be desired; see the “Twitter Lists Support: Management Status & Optimization Wishlist” post
• Fix the “Font Size” setting to work in both the Stacks and, while it used to work properly, now (v1.5) only sets the Quickstrip’s font size and is not persistent between sessions
• Improve the memory management: PB keeps allocating more memory while running, eventually bringing any system down on its knees
• Fix program exit: When I close PB Air, it remains resident withholding large amounts of RAM & virtual memory and can’t start again until its previous process is killed
• Prefill #hashtags and all @twitterers in replies
• Add a “delete post” feature
• Update the database when posts are deleted from other clients, so deleted entries do not keep showing
• Support OpenID

I like PeopleBrowsr; a lot! And I’m impressed with the work done so far. Which is why I expect even more from the development team

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• Clients that support Twitter Lists
  • Seesmic for Windows now offers read only support
  • SocialWhale offers read and add support on a per user basis, like Twitter
  • PeopleBrowsr initially offered read only support and now also supports additions
  • TweetDeck was the last to market but offers the best support so far, including read, easily add and export of its own Groups to Twitter Lists
• Export the application’s Groups to Twitter Lists
  • SocialWhale asks users to import their preexisting Groups to Lists at login
  • TwitDeck fully supports copying Groups to Lists
  • PeopleBrowsr initially did the opposite; it copied Twitter Lists to PB Groups. It does not do it in the right direction
• Bulk-add accounts to Twitter Lists
  • Twitdeck shows a selected Group, List or the complete list of followed accounts and allows to multiple-select-and-import any account from all friends, TweetDeck’s own Groups or Twitter Lists to a Twitter List
  • PeopleBrowsr shows 16 accounts already in the Group or Twitter List with an “x” next to each one for one-by-one removal. To add an account to the List, one needs to manually type (part of) the names one by one and can’t bulk select them from a full list or PB’s own Groups
• Applications’ own Groups vs. Twitter Lists management tools
  • Oddly enough, both TwitDeck and PeopleBrowsr have different Managers for their own Groups and for Twitter List

The winner, so far, is TwitDeck; hands down. The race is not over, though and neither is my work, as I still have the PeopleBrowsr and PockeTwit groups to convert to Twitter Lists. So, I am waiting for them to add a competitive Lists Manager that not just gets the job done, it also removes some of the pain that goes with it. Some optimization suggestions to that extend:

• Show the avatar, full name, site’s URL, following and followers along with account names

Long lists are difficult to handle just by a nick name.

• Make the list auto resizing with the size of the window

The more the information available, the faster and easier the process.

• Make it reliable and responsive

PeopleBrowsr often shows me a partial list of Twitter Lists and TwitDeck sometimes retries and fails to add accounts to Twitter Lists.

With Christmas and New Year around the corner, it’s a good time for wishes to come true… Meanwhile, I will update this post will any relevant information I come across, so check back.

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Twitter: You are unable to follow more people at this time. Learn more here.

Plus, I have just ran into the inexplicable “You are unable to follow more people at this time. Learn more here.” pop-up, only to discover there is a 2000  follows limit! From http://help.twitter.com/forums/10711/entries/68916:

“…

What are the limits?

We don’t limit the number of followers you can have. However, we do monitor how aggressively users follow other users. We try to make sure that none of our limits restrain reasonable usage, and will not affect most Twitter users.

We monitor all accounts for aggressive following and follow churn (repeatedly following and un-following large numbers of other users). You can read more about these below, but if you don’t follow or un-follow hundreds of users in a single day, and you aren’t using automated methods of following users, you should be fine. Please note that the only automated following behavior that Twitter allows is auto-follow-back (following a user after they have followed you). Automated un-following is also not permitted. Please review our Automation Rules & Best Practices for more information on automating your account.

…

Additional limits if you are following 2000 or more people:
The rules about aggressive following and follow churn still apply. In addition, every user can follow 2000 people total. Once you’ve followed 2000 users, there are limits to the number of additional users you can follow: this limit is different for every user and is based on your ratio of followers to following. When you hit this limit, we’ll tell you by showing an error message in your browser. You’ll need to wait until you have more followers in order to follow more users—basically, you can’t follow 10,000 people if only 100 people follow you. When you reach a daily or total limit and we show you an error message, you’ve hit a technical limit imposed to limit egregious behavior by spam accounts and to prevent strain on the site. These are just the technical limits for your account; in addition, you are prohibited from aggressive following behaviors. These behaviors may result in account suspension, regardless of your account’s technical ratio.

Limits improve site performance by ensuring that when we send a person’s message to all of their followers, the sending of that message is meaningful. Follow limits cannot be lifted by Twitter, and everyone is subject to them, including verified and developer accounts. Based on current behavior in the Twitter community, we’ve concluded that this is both fair and reasonable.

…”

For the record, my behavior has never fallen into anything described in Twitter’s Following Limits and Best Practices page, except for trying to cross the 2000 limit. It turns out that “… this limit is different for every user and is based on your ratio of followers to following …”. It seems this ratio is a big secret, although online sources like @JanSimpson and “Using Twitter” give it a value around 1.1. Limits seem to be the approach of choice for Twitter to keep their service running. They have another one: you can only have up to 20 Lists, which, of course, you discover only when you try to create the 21st!

I am not happy with adhoc limits, particularly undocumented ones. The 2000 limit is both hidden and its mechanism undocumented by Twitter. Look it up and find that “basically, you can’t follow 10,000 people if only 100 people follow you”; hardly indicative of the ~1.1 actual ratio. Why? They claim this is to prevent spam and overload! Spam, though, can be measured with any number of real (and, preferably, documented) criteria…

I say, Twitter just can’t handle the volume. Arbitrary limits may give easy short-term solutions. Then, what? In the mean time, I have to decide weather to start unfollowing good people, try to “Get More Followers Fast” (oops, this is against the rules), try to get more followers slow (wait, “Remember, Twitter isn’t a race to get the most followers”), leave it be, or quit Twitter and concentrate on FriendFeed. Or put new people in an “over 2000″ List…

Did I mention how disappointed I am and how alienated I feel?

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To cut a long story short, each time he tried to switch the keyboard to EL (Greek), it would hung with no exception. Several times it even crashed by itself while (re)starting. Repairing the .pst file did not help. After realizing it was switching the keyboard that did this, I googled the issue and found the thread “Outlook 2007 crash when I typing Thai language“. Result: No solution or workaround (yet), but Outlook Connector was to blame.

Well, not any more, it’s gone now and we all are back in business. I was very reluctant to recommend Outlook Connector to begin with, but there were no issues with it for weeks. What can I say? Can’t tie the issue to an update, either.

Sorry for not troubleshooting this further, MS, we both had real work to get done…

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The feeds were served by the standard RSS WordPress 2.7.1 widget, which is fine, except it does not support much customization. After some search, I found Advanced RSS 1.0.1 WordPress plugin and KB Advanced RSS 2.1.3 WordPress plugin. Smart RSS only works until WP 2.7.0 and I didn’t want to tweak with that. Advanced RSS only works until WP 2.6.2 and requires PHP5, DOM and XSL extensions loaded on the server and I don’t want to depend on those if I don’t need to, so the choice was easy.

Installation of KB Advanced RSS worked flawlessly right from within wp-admin. Then, on my first attempt to configure it, I came across a problem which could very well had been a show stopper: for some reason, except for the feed’s URL and Title, the widget would not commit any of the other parameters to the “Options” table of the database. Troubleshooting this issue, I ended up reading all the users’ comments on the plugin’s site. As usual, I was not alone; this is a common issue. Thankfully, Wesley of  http://www.improvingtheweb.com had already posted the solution to PHP4 not committing widget field changes in WordPress. The solution worked like a charm. And, as expected, when I later upgraded to PHP5 the problem wasn’t even there to begin with.

KB Advanced RSS is well thought-out, very straight forward with good documentation and examples. It supports all the features of the standard widget (including multiple instances) plus formatting and full support of all the feed’s fields to display or not (including the debugging tool to show which these fields are)! It further supports two modifiers to optionally manipulate the string before display, by taking out a number of characters from the start (ltrim) and/or trimming it to a specific length (trim).

Alas, what I actually needed was to take out a number of characters from the end of the string. Fortunately, as it turned out, KB Advanced RSS’s code is pretty straight-forward and extending it with my own modifier (rtrim) to do just that was only a matter of 3 lines of PHP code added to the version of the plugin that runs by my version of Wordpress; there’s one for versions up to 2.7 (pre-wp-2-7.php) and one for versions after that (post-wp-2-7.php). Here is the PHP code from the modified post-wp-2-7.php (my rtrim extension is in blue):

///////////////////////////////// CUSTOMIZATIONS /////////////////////////////////////////
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// If you want to write customizations, put them here. The variable to modify is $text. See the FAQ.
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

// right trimming
// cuts $rtrim characters from the right
// by ageor, April 9, 2009
$rtrim = (is_numeric($rtrim) && 0<$rtrim) ? (int) $rtrim : null;
if (is_int($rtrim))
$text = substr( $text, 0, strlen($string)-$rtrim );

// left trimming:
$ltrim = (is_numeric($ltrim) && 0<$ltrim) ? (int) $ltrim : null;
if (is_int($ltrim))
$text = substr( $text, $ltrim );

// length trimming (do after left trimming)
$trim = (is_numeric($trim) && 0<$trim) ? (int) $trim : null;
if (is_int($trim))
$text = substr( $text, 0, $trim );

return $text;

The way this is written, the string in question can undergo any mix of all three trimming types necessary.

All setting up and troubleshooting took place by adding one instance of the widget and configuring it, then a second instance. When all was done and I had what I wanted, I removed the original two instances of the original RSS widget, positioned the new ones on top and saved, certain I was done. However, as the resulting “Widgets” Wordpress admin page suggested after saving, something was very wrorg. It displayed the message ‘You are using 3 widgets in the “Left Sidebar” sidebar’ but not the widgets themselves, nor the “Save Changes” button. Sure enough, I ended up with an unworkable site, as these where the first 2 widgets on the left column of Ice Tea tech and the page that appeared ended with the title banner. Disaster!

To cut a long story short, plenty of “trial and error”s later and with the help of Vicki of neTWire, here is my conclusion: For KB Advanced RSS widget to work with WP 2.7.1 and the Atahualpa WordPress theme, the WordPress RSS widget needs to be activated and positioned above it. That’s how I temporarily solved my problem, until (if ever) I have the time to look deeper into the code involved or newer versions of  the theme and/or the plugin solve it for good.

Just to be clear, none of the problems and troubleshooting it took to solve them can be traced back ato KB Advanced RSS alone. Atahualpa is a great but complex theme and it is their combination that turned out to be problematic. It’s not the first example of a bad mix and it won’t be the last. On the flip side, with each such incident we get to learn something new that will potentially save others and ourselves some frusrtation and time in the future.

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According to WikiPedia’s “Addiction” article: “… The term addiction is also sometimes applied to compulsions that are not substance-related, such as problem gambling and computer addiction. In these kinds of common usages, the term addiction is used to describe a recurring compulsion by an individual to engage in some specific activity, despite harmful consequences, as deemed by the user him self to his or hers individual’s health, mental state or social life. …”.

I’ve had various discussions with intelligent people who are not well acquainted to computers nor the Internet and they express concerns about its use and hidden dangers in it, especially if they are parents. The concern that “kids, teenagers or people who use their, usually networked, PC for long hours are addicted” is overrated and exaggerated.

From Wikipedia’s “Internet addiction disorder” article: “… To the extent that the Internet is a social medium instead of an object, people cannot be addicted to it. The analogy is made to an environment: a person can not be truly addicted to living in a favorite town (no matter how distressing a change of home might be), and a goldfish can not be addicted to living in a pond.
Secondly, it is widely recognized, even by its supporters, that most if not all “Internet addicts” already fall under existing, legitimate diagnostic labels. For many patients, overuse or inappropriate use of the Internet is merely a manifestation of their depression, anxiety, impulse control disorders, or pathological gambling. In this criticism, IAD is compared to food addiction, in which patients overeat as a form of self-medication for depression, anxiety, etc., without actually being truly addicted to eating.
It is possible that a person could have a pathological relationship with a specific aspects of the Internet, such as bidding on online auctions, viewing pornography, online gaming, or online gambling (which is included under the existing Pathological Gambling), but that does not make the Internet medium itself be addictive. …”.

People spending way too much time “in” the Internet is a misconception dated back to the time we needed to dial-in to the Internet. While connected to the Net over telephone lines the meter was running, hence the need to make the most out of it. Broadband has changed this. We are now “online” all the time for a flat rate, or, at worst, for a pay-as-you-go rate (especially true in cellular telephony). In these early days, we got online specifically to use the Internet, mainly use email, surf the Web and, if advanced enough, to do some instant messaging and e-shopping.

Today, thanks, in part, to digital convergence and the computer becoming a consumer item, we have one PC each instead of one per office or home and we do online pretty much anything we did before the Internet existed at all. Thanks to broadband, the phrase “I am connected” doesn’t mean much any more, because we are online whether we actually make use of the Net or not. Sometimes we are practically online and we don’t even realize it (most high end cellular phones are a click away from the Internet)! We have blended it in our everyday life like the telephone, the radio, the TV, the newspaper, the typewriter, the tape recorder etc. before it.

Except for physical activities (debatable; have you tried Nintendo Wii Fit?), computers, possibly connected to the Internet, are used today for prety much everything else. Today, even more than in the earlier days, neither computing nor using the Internet are activities by themselves. They are just enablers for countless individual activities (the following is by no means a complete list, or in any particular order):

• Reading, Watching, Listening to Multimedia Documents
  Reading, Watching and Listening to our own or others’ material includes art, essays, news, books (electronic and audio), presentations, schematics, photos, music, videos, radio & TV broadcasts, podcasts, etc. or any combination of those and more.
• Research
  Whether it is scientific or market research, online computers are the tools behind it that collect, store, index, process, search, retrieve, distribute and present all the information and data in ways limited only by imagination.
• Multimedia Documents Creation
  Most (or all?) of this so-called “content” we can view, we can also create ourselves for us and others to view or use.
• Communication & Social Networking
  Email, Instant Messaging (IM), VoIP telephony, Video calls, Audio & Video Conferencing are just some types of online communication. Social Networking helps keep in touch with lots of people. Additionally, (micro)Blogging and RSS feeds help us get input from and address potentially unlimited content creators and audience, respectively.
• Recreation & Games
  Physical activity aside, electronic editions of traditional board games represent only a small fraction of the games we can play with practically unlimited human or computer opponents from around the globe.

It’s not my intention to prove how good technology is; there may be issues in all applications that leave room for discussion. I am trying to raise awareness to the fact that computer and Internet usage cannot be measured as an activity on their own, as they are not. They represent the sum of all their individual uses. Of course (networked) computing (possibly as life itself) is a platform where addictions can occur. Like all drugs are not inherently addictive, nor is technology, computing or the Internet. Still, ‘… With the widespread use of computers in the 21st century, it may be difficult to distinguish users who are “highly engaged” in their computer use from those who might be considered “addicted”. …’ (from Wikipedia’s “Computer addiction” article).

Diversity and multiple activities & interests have always been factors against addictions. Having a tools combination like a computer networked to the all-inclusive Internet actually promotes diversity. Let’s do so, too.

PS. There are studies indicating computer and internet “addiction” or “overuse”. At this point (and I am no expert), I believe many people use or overuse them like they do with any new, shiny toy. Once they both become commonplace, like the telephone and television did, any “related” addiction will be easily traced to the pre-technology causes.

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YAAB has an unusual but effective interface that allows adding content to any category of a WordPress blog from any number of feeds, even offering its own scheduler, if needed. It sure works as advertized.

Ever since then, I meant to further optimize the blog by separating the bookmarks from my other posts. This is just what I did, with the help of the “ACE” (short for Advanced Category Excluder) WordPress plugin. From now on, bookmark posts won’t appear in the main feed, like they don’t appear in the home page. For those interested, the Bookmarks feed is at http://dipot.com/category/bookmarks/feed (or find everything I post in my FriendFeed stream).

ACE gives a WordPress blogger full control over which Categories are hidden in any of 6 sections of their blog: Archive page, Home page, RSS feed for Posts, RSS feed for Comments, Search results & robots’ crawls. It is very straight forward, has a clean interface and works as advertized.

I consider both plugins to be great assets to WordPress blogs. Which are your favorite plugins? What functionality do you put/expect in a blog?

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After extensive search I found Bytes for All’s Atahualpa, a WordPress theme that is customizable enough so I wouldn’t need to dive deep into CSS just yet. It supports a dynamically resizing main column plus 2 sidebars and lots of user definable parameters. Being a novice, I also installed, among others, the qTranslate plugin to support multiple languages in Ice Tea tech, in case I need it in the future.

To my surprise, as I’m afraid some of you noticed, post dates did not appear correctly. The date format was correct, but the date itself was wrong. To cut a long story short, in theory, WordPress supports any PHP function for date formatting, qTranslate supports the PHP “date” and “strftime” functions and Atahualpa, due to its highly configurable setting, seems to have the PHP “date” function hardwired in some places.

After some trial and error and with the valuable help of neTWire’s Vicki Kolovou it turns out that, actually, qTranslate only works correctly with the “strftime” type of date formatting. So, there is no way it can coexist with Atahualpa or Ikarus, another highly customizable theme I  tried.

I don’t have that much troubleshooting time for myself and Ice Tea tech’s environment is currently only in English. So, I’m sorry to report qTranslate had to go, at least for now. I hear it causes other issues, too. It’s a pity, as it otherwise really is a very well thought-out plugin…

It seems such issues are still commonplace. After this experience, my new definition for blog optimization is “the most functionality that actually works as it is supposed to”…

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As I mention from time to time, I never have enough of a good thing. FriendFeed is more than good, it’s great. Greatness has a tencency to increase expectations. These are a few optimization suggestions to raise the experience from “great” to “near perfect” (as new requests will probably always exist):

1. Discussions is a great strength of FriendFeed. Threading keeps all comments together. However, when following an interesting discussion, one needs to scroll all the way up to comment. Please also give us a “Comment” option after the last comment.
2. Lots of people, including myself, have asked for a Twitter-like direct message (the only thing it does FriendFeed does not). An opt-in email-based scheme has been suggested as well. The only reason against direct messaging I can think of is desire to keep all conversations public. If this is the reason, please, go ahead and say so.
3. RealTime is great. However, it does lack some options otherwise available, like “hide”. Please unify the experience across all views. This would include a Realtime option for every view as well.
4. A person’s badge available everywhere is indeed very handy. It would be nice to also appear on mouse over the person’s picture and name in the title of a thread and on top of his/her feed. Even more important, subscribing to the author of a comment from his badge in the middle of the thread should not return us to the top of the page, especially with <number of> comments appearing collapsed, driving productivity way down, not to mention frustration.
5. Rooms are indispensable. However, when posting, we are asked to choose our feed or one single room. This results in the posts not reaching all their potential audience, unless effort is duplicated. Please support multiple destinations for posts.
6. Many posts are actually links. The same links are often posted from different people at different times. They also result in interesting and informative conversations which end up being held in different parts of FriendFeed. Please merge all posts referring to the same link to the same thread. More posts of the same link can become “like”s and comments can all contribute to the same conversation.
7. FriendFeed Feedback serves, among other things, for feature requests. Chaotic as it is, it is impossible to marshal all these ideas. Please officially use a rating system for feature requests, so people can vote the most important ones in an orderly manner and FriendFeed can respond onte time for each of them.
8. When I read posts I often catch myself subconsciously filtering by author, instead of by content.Please give us an option for a view that hides or moves the author at the end of posts (maybe in small print).

Finally, on a personal issue: I tried for a while to rely on RSS to read my FriendFeed feeds. To my surprise, Google Reader does a very poor job on catching these feeds. Consequently, I end up with 40 entries every 3 hours, instead of what should be around that many per minute during peak hours! Is this a Google Reader flaw, a FriendFeed flaw, or a matter of communication between the two systems? Can something be done about it?

My only real complaint with FriendFeed is in requests feedback. And I’m hopeful they will respond and optimize it and their response. They constantly improve things, so it’s only a matter of time.

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During my early days as an IT support person (well before USB flash drives, external hard disks and recordable CDs), I picked up the habit to not be dependent on anything not included in Windows (v. 3.0, at the time) if I could help it. So I got used to working on the setups my clients did.

I rarely support people this way any more. Although old habits die hard, I increasingly get used to my own, optimized setup. I am a Windows person wishing for a Linux future, so, I keep trying to use software also available for it in an effort to prepare for the switch at some point. I also prefer portable applications, ones that can run fully configured from a flash disk. Firefox is my browserfits these specs plus there is a plethora of great, value-adding add-ons to optimize it.

This is the list of the Add-ons I can’t live without (in alphabetical order):

1. Better GReader

As the name implies, Better GReader is a collection of scripts (also available for GreaseMonkey) that improve the Google Reader experience. I use the ones that bypass the GReader-iGoogle choice, color-code the list items, massively mark the items above the current one as read, show the feeds’ favicons and make better use of the window real estate to fit more items in each page. Among other choices, there’s also the preview item within GReader choice I know people like, but I don’t use it. Better GReader does not require GreaseMonkey to work.

2. DownThemAll!

“The mass downloader for Fireox”. GetRight is better, but it’s not free. The only item in my wishlish for DownThemAll is ability to change the saved name of the document.

3. FireFTP

Not everyone uses FTP any more. If you do, FireFTP covers all the bascis: local and remote “explorer” windows, permissions change, synchronization, initial folders after logon etc.

4. Google Toolbar for Firefox

Firefox does support several search engines out of the box and a lot more by customization. The Google Toolbar is very versatile and Google is my search engine of choice. I don’t use all of its features but those I do use save me a lot of clicks and data entry.

5. IE Tab

IE Tab is still one of the first add-ons I install, as it allows use of Internet Explorer’s rendering engine within a Firefox Tab. Furthermore it can remember IE-specific sites and kick-in automatically. I would prefer such sites did not exist (and they do tend to become extinct) but if you are a web developer, you need it anyway.

6. PDF Download

Earlier versions of Firefox did not work very well with acrobat documents. I think both Firefox and the acrobat plug-in have now improved but I’m still used to choosing whether to save or to just view a .pdf up front.

7. PlainOldFavorites

Windows and IE Favorites are not as compact as Firefox Bookmarks. I don’t like importing them, though; I prefer using PlainOldFavorites that adds a “Favorites” menu entry that works almost exactly like (Internet) Explorer’s. If only Shift Organize worked the same, it would be perfect! This is a must-have for people whose primary browser is IE.

8. Shareaholic

If you like to post sites you visit on an extensive list of supported services (including my favorites Delicious, Facebook, FriendFeed, Google Reader, Twitter and many more), this is the tool of choice. Many sites use widgets for that but why not be prepared?

9. Split Browser

I can live without Split Browser, except when I can’t. Like on US election day and Obama’s inauguration, when I had a tab split into 3 or 4 panes to follow several video etc. streams at once. If you need it, you need it.

• Adblock Plus

Due to the debate whether blocking ads is hurting the Internet, I scruple about such add-0ns. Having said that, I asked about the most valuable Firefox add-on in Twitter and FriendFeed and the answer I got was Adblock. I am presenting Adblock Plus, which knows how to block many ads and is easily further configurable. Additionaly, four expansions, Adblock Plus Filter Uploader, Adblock Filterset.G Updater, Adblock Plus: Element Hiding Helper and Adblock Plus Watcher help share our filters, update them automatically, hide text ads and debug Adblock Plus for even better results.

There go my most valuable of around 35 Firefox add-ons I use. Which browser do you use and how do you optimize it? Please do share!

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I like FriendFeed much better than Twitter; that’s no secret. In a conversation with @Trianta earlier today, it seems the only FriendFeed desktop clients out there are the Adobe Air-based Twhirl and feedalizr. They both leave a lot to be desired. There is also the announcement of  .NET-based FriendFeed Client. Web-based FriendFeed applications are also scarce, compared to Twitter’s.

This isn’t a wish list. It’s a wish come true list, including existing applications that accomplish specific tasks and add great value to FriendFeed. True, there are many more than the following but those are my favorites (in no particular order):

1. Friendfeed Like Compatibility Calculator

FriendFeed stats only show 10 people who like me and another 10 that I like most. It’s not enough. Friendfeed Like Compatibility Calculator lists who gave a user the last 300 likes. Utilizing the 3 included modifiers, the list can show people with similar interests. It also shows the subscription status with a small “sub” next to each user. No password or passkey is required.


2. FriendZone?

Find out the top 100 subscribed to people among the people you subscribe to. This defines your friendfeed neighborhood, or FriendZone and results to contacts you may want to subscribe to, if not already. No password or passkey is required.

3. FriendVenn

This is one function FriendFeed should perform itself. FriendVenn answers who subscribes to you that you don’t subscribe to. Only for oneself, as it requires both username and password (not passkey). It returns 3 columns: “people you are subscribed to”, “people who both sub to you and you sub to” & “people who only subscribe to you” with totals for each.

4. Twitter2FF

Twitter2FF helps sync Twitter follows and FriendFeed subscriptions both ways. It requires usename/password for Twitter and username/passkey for FriendFeed. It then provides a one-page, one-click per user interface to invite or subscribe to Twitter friends in FriendFeed and follow FFd Friends in Twitter. It uses its own expanding database of Twitter-FriendFeed account pairs, as well as the Twitter feeds of people you subscribe to in FFd. Friendfeed recently added its own support to massively Find (and subscribe to) your Twitter friends on FriendFeed but Twitter2FF is still useful for the other half of the job.

5. FriendDeck

FriendDeck runs different concurrent FriendFeed searches live. Each result includes all poster’s details, the originating service and Like, Re-Share & Link ability.

6. FriendFeedLinks

“FriendFeedLinks is a memetracker that tracks links shared on FriendFeed”. It also makes them available via RSS.

7. ffholic

ffholic reports (collectively or per user) on the most Discussed, Liked, Commented, Popular or Active Entries, Users, Rooms, Photos, Music or Videos (not all combinations exist) for the last 1, 7 or 30 days. The good thing is Entries, Photos, Music & Videos reports are available in RSS feeds and include a language filter, powered by Google. Last but not necessarily least, ffholic also presents user metrics and calculates “activity points”.

Find more in FriendFeed Apps and, please, let me know of other FriendFeed apps, clients etc. that you find useful. There is also Robert Scoble’s discussion “To new friendfeeders (there are thousands due to Twitter invites and follows), here’s what you need to know:” on Friendfeed, with plenty of tips and links.

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I never have enough of a good thing. The first time I read the online edition of a magazine I immediately wished for a filtered edition which would only contain the articles of my choice. When Greek Naftemporiki newspaper’s online-edition provided filtered, personalized content, I immediately wished for a method to push the content to me, instead of going around the sites and soon after that RSS appeared (what I like about technology; it always catches up).

Now RSS is commonplace. Filters increase, but the implementations are still early and immature. For example, except for Google and similar sites, filters usually apply to a single site; that of the content source (like http://naftemporiki.gr -only in greek). RSS makes it easy to gather information from multiple sources to the feed reader of choice, but by itself provides no filtering in the source, except in the form of multiple feeds. So, where should filtering apply?

The tools have been expanding and improving. From the days of raw content we now have search, filtering, RSS and a multitude of clients to put them to good use. I tried the very good BlogBridge for a while for its keyword-based virtual feeds (thanks, karagos, for suggesting it). It being offline and other problems I had (bad greek support and hitting the 600 feeds limit of the free edition while not convinced to buy yet) made me return to Google Reader. Regardless of reader, my everyday struggle to get and keep informed about the news and my interests has been getting very time-consuming, mainly due to increasing volume (never have enough of a good thing, remember?).

How many sources and how many pieces of news and info am I talking about? A quick count showed around 2800 items from my (ever expanding collection of) ~750 subscriptions in Google Reader in the last 12 hours. This includes my ~450 FriendFeed subcriptions feed, but not my ~900 people Twitter feed (strangely, only a small count of the tweets I follow make it to the RSS feed). Thankfully, a good portion of the tweets make it to FFd as well (although I fear not all FFd posts make it to the RSS feed, either). At this rate of incomings, it takes me 10-20′/h to browse everything, read and microblog about whatever catches my eye.

This is way too much time. In practice, I browse some of the titles when there’s time and only read the interesting items among them. I do use the Google Reader Filter GreaseMonkey script to highlight items containing an increasing number (~100, so far) of keywords and it is helpfull. But the real problem is with the multiple sharing of the same (great) URLs in FriendFeed, which in turn produce multiple different (as they come from different users) items in Google Reader. Those are not caught by the script’s “hide duplicates” option.

So, for the time being, I consider avoiding duplication my #1 goal for increasing my news-reading productivity. I hope Friendfeed will listen and convert duplicate link posts to likes or comments of the first such post. This would also result in a major added benefit: aggregating all the relevant discussions in one thread, as discussed here. I find it so important, I even requested Robert Scoble to lobby for this here (I guess it’s impossible to read everything, even for him)!

#2 goal is to reduce sources that produce similar content, like press releases etc. Google News does well about it but doesn’t track all the sites I do. Mechanisms of bookmarking sites like Delicious might also help, as they keep URL scoring. While I work on a plan, I’ll stick to goal #1. Please join!

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I have been trying to organize/visualize the way I post, be it blogging, a comment on FriendFeed, an interesting link a came across etc. During the time it took me to complete the flowchart, more services were added as sources or carriers of my posts. As a result, the chart got more complex than originally anticipated. Interestingly enough, there is a pattern and the flowchart works for me most of the time.

Also get the Posting Flowchart as built in Dia (hence the crudeness), for your own use. So, there it is:

Posting Flowchart

Please do comment. Is posting a one-way street for you? Are there any general rules or do you post on a case by case basis?

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First things first. I told them all in person and I’m saying it here as well. Special thanks go to Andrew Hyde, the mind behind Startup Weekends, Alexandros Pagidas, the person who brought it in Athens, Patrick Malone, our host in Microsoft Innovation Center venue (Patrick and Lydia, you definitely improved Microsoft’s image for all of us), the sponsors of the event (Domino’s, Loumidis, Coca Cola-3E, Wind; hopefully I am not forgetting anyone) and all the professionals who dropped in to give us a hand. I won’t go into the event itself. Others have already done that; follow the event’s site and the links all over this post for that.

In danger of giving the feeling of repetition to readers of other relevant posts, I’ll say it: Athens Startup Weekend was a successful event and proved several points (Greeks can actually work together without shouting or arguing all the time, previous acquaintance is not important, teams can form without guidance or many introductions etc.). Plus, it produced and set off a number of ideas that can eventually work.

Andrew mentioned that Startup Weekends are not meant to create viable startups over the weekend but, rather, form a community among the participants. In a private conversation he said only 4 such startups were created in Startup Weekend history so far (unfortunately I didn’t get the names). The event is meant to prove that people who didn’t know each other before can sit around the same table, share and expand on an idea and make the most out of it in a very short time-frame. The important thing is not the idea, but that these people can work together, add their talents to a cause and produce a combined result that’s greater than the sum of their individual strengths. At the end of the day, these people become potential partners/collaborators in these very same or other promising projects.

The event put the best out of us all. We expressed our opinions and discussed difficult matters (we sometimes knew nothing about) in a civil, productive manner. We all got out of there with some fresh ideas, some new potential friends and partners, the knowledge that talented, cooperative people are there waiting to be found and great accomplishments are so much closer than expected. Indeed, 10 great projects were born.

I consider myself privileged to have been a part of it and hope the event does go annual so we can experience it again.

Here are a few additional relative links (no particular order; I’ll be happy to add links I’ve missed):

• Athens Startup Weekend: brief recap
• Εντυπώσεις από το Athens Startup Weekend
• Athens Startup Weekend I
• Athens Startup Weekend
• Επιτυχημένη η συμμετοχή μας στο Athens Startup Weekend 2008 #ASW
• Introducing HowSocial.ru, a project of Startup Weekend Athens

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• Sometimes it seems Google’s Android is the second touch screen platform after Apple’s iPhone

I can’t understand why Android-based HTC G1 and other touch devices are automatically compared to the iPhone. Yes, it is a great looking device. It has a great touch screen. And that’s where innovation ends and limitations begin.

Great as the iPhone may (or not) be, it’s not clearly and objectively superior to Microsoft’s Windows Mobile devices hardware-, software- nor appearance-wise. Plus, Windows (Mobile and its previous incarnations) has been, so far, dominant in the touch arena. So, how come the iPhone (a new comer with plenty of flaws of its own) is the ad hoc point of reference? And how come all Windows Mobile’s long-standing features (touch screen, great sofware library, multitasking) are rarely mentioned?

• Android, anyone? Sure, on what hardware?

Maybe I understand a new platform like Android needs to come with new hardware for psychological (marketing) reasons. Now that’s over and done with, why not introduce Android for old and new hardware? Wasn’t one of Linux’s advantages better performance on old PCs? I’m sure I would love to run Android on my current Windows Mobile Phone but I fear this won’t happen any day soon, if at all. How about selling the HTC Touch HD (my favorite, in the absence of an Android phone with no hardware keyboard. With a camera flash, please) with a choice between Android and Windows Mobile? Better yet, sell it able to dual-boot both platforms? I would buy it right now. Now this is not so, I just have to wait and I am not happy about it at all.

Consider how nice it would be to compare different platforms’ sales and performance on the same hardware (isn’t that what Apple avoids at all cost on the PC market?)! How different the HTC G1 is from the Touch HD or any other current model?

It is my prediction that we will see Android and Windows Mobile running on the same hardware not later than 2009. And this will be the start of a new era on the “choice” and “objective comparison” fronts.

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My personal favorites (therefore wishlist) that are not working yet (in alphabetical order): Firebug, FireFTP, Google Browser Sync, Google Toolbar for Firefox, PlainOldFavorites, SEOpen, AddThis.

In all fairness, I am also thankfully mentioning the ones that are already working: BlockSite, DownThemAll, Facebook Toolbar, Forecastfox, IE Tab, IE View, iMacros for Firefox, MySocial 24×7 Bar, PDF Download, Shareholic, Web Developer.

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I have already tried a CD player and WinAmp on a PC. The CD is short in duration and eventually wears out. WinAmp is better, but it requires a PC with a dedicated sound card (or every other sound source disabled), it doesn’t run as a service out of the box and it does occasionally stop playing for no apparent reason.

All these were happening before the portable MP3 players days. So, the obvious today’s choice would be an MP3 player with enough memory, set to shuffle and repeat. Using an AC to USB adapter should solve the power problem, as batteries don’t last for ever, right? Unfortunately, most USB-powered MP3 players switch to data mode when connected, even if connected to power-only USB. And when in data mode, they just won’t play songs! Experiments with several players and asking various salespersons confirmed that fact.

So, how can it be done? I got a suggestion to find a player powered from a non-USB source. Not an easy task, these days. The last such device I remember was an MPIO MP3 player (yes, it still works, but it’s not mine). Although this was before USB totally dominated the peripherals market, I always held using a non-USB power adapter against it. Little did I know…

Then I accidentally came across the Creative MuVo V100. Its design is exactly such that it distinguishes connection to data USB vs power only USB and acts accordingly, that is play MP3s even when powered! Perfect, at least in theory. Preliminary tests show that, while it works as advertised, it, too (like WinAmp), occasionally stops playback for no apparent reason.

While tests continue, it seems I am still searching…

Update: Creative is in the clear. Apparently, MuVo works fine. When I tried another USB power supply all problems disappeared. It turns out even a simple device like that can be faulty enough to work at random! I am finally happy with my music on hold.

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“… IE8 now renders the “Acid2 Face” correctly in IE8 standards mode. …”

“… With respect to standards and interoperability, our goal in developing Internet Explorer 8 is to support the right set of standards with excellent implementations and do so without breaking the existing web. This second goal refers to the lessons we learned during IE 7. IE7’s CSS improvements made IE more compliant with some standards and less compatible with some sites on the web as they were coded. Many sites and developers have done special work to work well with IE6, mostly as a result of the evolution of the web and standards since 2001 and the level of support in the various versions of IE that pre-date many standards. We have a responsibility to respect the work that sites have already done to work with IE. We must deliver improved standards support and backwards compatibility so that IE8 (1) continues to work with the billions of pages on the web today that already work in IE6 and IE7 and (2) makes the development of the next billion pages, in an interoperable way, much easier. …”

If you wonder who made the “existing web” prone to “breaking”, I don’t. In my mind, it was Microsoft. When IE was dominant, it never completely adhered to standards, while extending HTML in all sorts of ways. When standards emerged or caught up, was IE updated accordingly? No.

Is Microsoft finally entering a standards compliance era? How, by adding a “Standards mode” in IE8? I still have my doubts and for good reason. You see, past experience says otherwise.

Web developers, Microsoft hasn’t and won’t ever do it for you. If you are interested in every computer owner being able to fully utilize your sites, please do us all a favor and comply to universal, not Microsoft standards. Windows percentage in the PC market is still very large but dropping. Make them build a decent browser; or not, who cares? Firefox, Opera etc. are excellent, compliant and multiplatform browsers. Don’t build the Internet depended on ActiveX and anything else non-standard enough so only IE (therefore only Windows) users can view.

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• Your home on camera, live (0)

Provided there is an ADSL in the premises, the task is trivial, tech-wise. In this case, the heart of the system is an AVM Fritz ADSL modem, 4 port switch, wireless Access Point with SIP, complemented by 2 VIVOTEK PT7137 wifi IP pan-tilt (but not zoom) VGA cameras.

The first problem in serving content from a non-static (dynamic) IP address is how to hit the correct IP, which is a moving target (I recently came across the fact that, in Greece, ISP OTEnet actually disconnects dynamic ADSL connections every 54 hours, just to change IP address!). The solution to this is dynamic DNS, in this case in the form of the free service DynDNS (other such services also exist). What dynamic DNS does is have a client program automatically update the current IP address of an ADSL connection to a host of the form <myhost>.dyndns.org. In this case (lucky me), both the router and the cameras have dyndns.org support built-in. If this wasn’t the case, I could set up a dyndns.org client in a windows or linux pc to do the job. I could, alternatively, buy a static IP address, which I do not prefer for security and cost reasons. More than one dynamic DNS client can be set up for redundancy, if needed.

The other problem in serving content this way is that the Internet IP one’s router uses is different from the local IP address of this same router and each of his local network devices (yes, it’s too technical). The router takes care of back-and-forth IP translation for the outgoing connections (browsing, email reception & transmission, Instant Messaging etc.) automatically (using NAPT, Network Address Port Translation). However, when a local server needs to listen to Internet incoming traffic, this must be routed to it in a way that cannot be automated (not until UPnP, anyway, which is another story), so port translation must be manually programmed to the router and the method is called “port forwarding”. What this does is tell the router what to do with any incoming traffic, depending on the Port it uses: drop it or forward it to a different internal IP and Port, where a server is standing by.

When similar content is served by more than one servers (in this case all the IP cameras transmit audio & video using the http protocol which by default “listens” and “transmits” on port 80), we have the third problem: We need to reference two (or more) different servers serving the same service (http) using the same single external IP address.

The solution here is in the way protocol calls are made: when our browser shows it connects to http://blog.dipot.com, it is actually connecting to http://blog.dipot.com:80, where 80 represents the connection’s port number (which has possible values from 1 to 65535). The port value of 80 is implied, because it is the standard port number for the http protocol (other protocols by default, but not necessarily, connect to other ports). This essentially means that we can reference ~65000 different services (protocols) on the same IP address. So, what we do is agree between ourselves and the router to use these two (or more) addresses to call our two (or more) IP cameras (the “http://” prefix is important, because the specified ports are not usually intended for this protocol):
Camera 1: http://<myhost>.dyndns.org:12001
Camera 2: http://<myhost>.dyndns.org:12002
Camera n: http://<myhost>.dyndns.org:1200n

So, assuming the cameras addresses are 192.168.1.21, 192.168.1.22 (& 192.168.1.2n) and all transmit to port 80 (the default) we program the router to forward calls to ports 12001, 12002 (& 1200n) to 192.168.1.21:80, 192.168.1.22:80 (& 192.168.1.2n:80). It is important for the cameras IP addresses to be static, so we don’t have another moving target to cope with.

In case the router didn’t support forwarding to a different port than the incoming, we should then program the cameras to listen and transmit to ports 12001, 12002, … 1200n, which is perfectly possible, if not simpler.

This came out larger and more technical than intended. All these, however, can be implemented in about 30′ and are applicable to other services as well.

For router-specific instructions to program port forwarding, refer to the excellent guide “Free Help Setting up Your Router or Firewall“.

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I have always wondered why any web developer would block all Linux & Mac OS users out of their sites and frustrate a good portion of Windows users, those who prefer Firefox. On top of that, some sites don’t even look the same in IE6 & IE7 due to incompatibilities of their own, which recently forced Microsoft to decide to make IE7 available to illegal Windows owners as well!

Over time, it is a well-known fact that Microsoft won’t respect standards very much. Java has been a good example and HTML compliance is no different. So, what’s new about any of that? This extract from the Friday, December 14, 2007 8:00 AM PST Paul Meller and James Niccolai’s PC World article “Opera Seeks Tougher Remedy in Microsoft Case“, describing the “… antitrust suit filed with the Commission this week …” by browser maker Opera Software, which I find especially interesting and long overdue:

“… In addition to the bundling charge, Opera also complains that Microsoft does not follow Web standards, putting rival browsers at a disadvantage. The issue is significant because if all Web browsers do not use the same standards, Web site developers are likely to design their Web sites to work with the most widely used browser, which is Internet Explorer. That gives people a disincentive to use other browsers.

Microsoft often takes part in debates over Web standards, and says it will implement them, but ultimately does not, Opera’s Lie said. He pointed to CSS, XHTML and DOM as areas where Microsoft does not comply with or is inconsistent. …”

I will follow up on this with great interest. I would prefer users and the industry to force Microsoft (and web developers) to comply by (prefferably open) standards (the cornerstone of the Internet), but a court might as well do it…

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Today I installed an Infrant Technologies ReadyNAS NV+ with 4 Seagate ST3500630AS Barracuda 500GB SATA2 hot-swappable hard disks and 1 gigabit ethernet port. For a total cost around 1.400€, I got a 3-disk RAID5 configuration with 875 usable GB and a hot-spare disk. In plain english, 2 disks have to fail before any data is lost.

I preferred the Infrant (now owned by Netgear) solution to the much cheaper (~900€) 2 gigabit Ethernet Intel Entry Storage System SS4000-E, (also with 4 500GB SATA2 disks) for its Active Directory support. However, apart from increased peace of mind (thanks to the hot-spare) the NV+ offers some nice built-in backup and media streaming features, in addition to the 3 USB ports with support for a UPS, printers, flash and USB disks.

I am fairly sure that NAS is the way to go for shared storage. With LAN speeds, disk capacities, users and uses increasing at a hectic pace NAS is cheap (starting at <200€), scalable and very easy to setup. Please note I am not referring to server applications storage; that’s a different, much more expensive, story.

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