The uber geeks

Tag Cloud Issue with Delicious Update

By Sameer Barkawi with no reader comments

I’ve been using Delicious.com for about 2 months now. It was my first social bookmarking experience, and I’ve enjoyed using the site. It does what it’s supposed to do for me, and I’ve even found it useful in keeping an online location for all my links, as well as a way to share what I’m surfing.

The new design was just released a few days ago, and I think it was a good update. Most of the major changes aren’t visible, which is good, because I think the layout of del.icio.us was fine the way it was. Everythin. Even the name change is welcome. I personally found the separation of the word “delicious” with periods to be annoying, even if it was a clever domain name.

delicious

image taken with Skitch by plasq

There was a little problem that I ran into while bookmarking some pages today. When I used the old bookmarking shortcut I had on Safari, it would leave out the recommended tags or popular tags that I’d enjoyed from before the update. Not only were there no recommended tags, but even my own tag cloud was missing. The only thing that would come up was an autofill feature for tags that I’ve used previously. Handy, but not enough when I can’t remember exactly what tags I’ve used before.

I had thought that they might have left it out in the update, but when I used the “Create New Bookmark” feature, it revealed the old glorious cloud of tags to choose from. It was a small scare, but a scare nonetheless. I don’t know what causes everything else to work fine except that, but I was able to fix the issue simply by using the new supplied posting shortcut. So be sure you update your “post to Delicious” button so you don’t lose the features.

Tips for upgrading MAMP

By Colin Devroe with 2 reader comments

A few days ago I needed to upgrade my local install of MAMP, the application that installs Apache, MySQL, and PHP locally on your Macintosh for testing purposes, and I hit a bit of a snag. I accidentally deleted all of my databases!

Being on Leopard, and having setup Time Machine the moment I upgraded to the new Mac OS, meant that I didn’t have much to worry about. I clicked on Time Machine, and restored the version of MAMP I had installed less than an hour before upgrading. Quick, simple, and a heckuva time saver.

So I had to figure out how to upgrade MAMP without losing any of my testing databases, their structure, or the data therein. So here is a quick and dirty list of tips for upgrading MAMP that you might find useful.

  1. Stop the Apache and MySQL services via MAMP.
  2. Quit the application.
  3. Copy the /Applications/MAMP/db/mysql/ directory to your desktop*.
  4. Upgrade MAMP per the included instructions.
  5. Drop the copied MySQL directory back into /Applications/MAMP/db/mysql/.
  6. Restart MAMP and the Apache and MySQL services.

This worked for me, your mileage may vary. I also tried to export all of the data via PHPMyAdmin though I wouldn’t recommend that method since this seems so much easier. Anyone have any tips to add?

* If you are using SQLLite you will want to copy that directory as well.

Porting Mac applications to Windows - An interview with Cris Pearson of plasq

By Colin Devroe with 1 reader comment

As a small software development company, spread out over several different countries, plasq has always tried to make the right decisions as to where to put their development resources. Comic Life, one of plasq’s most successful applications on the Macintosh, was recently released for the Windows platform.

This intrigued me because there are a lot of Macintosh applications, really useful ones, that never make it into the Windows market for a variety of reasons. Sometimes the company just can’t pull enough resources together to pull off such a daunting task. Other times, it would seem, that companies like to remain loyal to the platform of their choice. Obviously the Windows market is much larger than the Macintosh one, but that doesn’t make plasq’s decision any easier. To port an application from one platform to another is a lot of work.

I’ve been privileged enough to know Cris Pearson, CEO of plasq, for a little while now and he graciously answered a few questions regarding the porting of Comic Life to Windows. The interview continues below.

Cris Pearson wearing a Simplebits Tshirt

Cris Pearson; wearing a Simplebits Tshirt

Colin: Comic Life has been a huge hit on the Macintosh platform. Was there a large public outcry for Comic Life to be ported to Windows, or was this simply a decision based on market share?

Cris: Since the first day, we have had people beg for a Windows version. Some even switched or bought a Mac just to get Comic Life.

We focus on Mac development internally as that is where our main love and skills are. When we noticed the many schools who wanted Comic Life however, with the help of Freeverse and i5Works, we took the plunge and did the Windows version.

Colin: I see that Comic Life, for Windows, has been in beta since May 2007. Was the porting of this application a huge struggle? Can you tell us whether this process was easier or harder than plasq anticipated?

Cris: It was a big task, yes. Considerable parts that we got for free or were simple on Mac required a lot of code from scratch. Then we had to do a lot of testing to get it up to plasq standards :)

It certainly took longer than we expected. The final results are great and very close to that of the Mac version. It’s one of the best Windows applications I’ve seen :)

Colin: Are there any differences between the Mac and Windows versions of Comic Life? Any goodies for either group?

Cris: We have kept it as close as possible except OS specific things, like .mac uploading and iPhoto integration. We use the Pictures folder in a manner similar to iPhoto integration though.

Even files are transferable across platforms.

Colin: Does plasq plan to release all of its products cross-platform?

Cris: No :) When it makes sense from a market perspective or type of app, then we will think about it. It will also depend on complexity. Apple are making creating advanced graphical heavy apps quite easily compared Windows.

In the case of Skitch, communication is one of it’s strong points, so having a communication application limited to Mac isn’t a good idea, so we are porting that.

Colin: plasq is one of my favorite software development companies, and I’m sure I’m not alone, any plans for some new products in the near future?

Thank you saying that! :)

We are working on a Drawing program for the 0-7 age group. There aren’t many programs around in this space… and the ones that are, their Interface leave a lot to be desired.

— End Interview —

Thanks to Cris for doing the interview and to his entire team at plasq for making great software that is useful, easy, and above all fun to use. Be sure to check out all of plasq’s products.

Twitter: What are you doing?

By Colin Devroe with 4 reader comments

On the list of “Yet another social web site” comes Twitter. A site that asks “What are you doing?”.

Essentially Twitter is a place that you can jot down what you are doing at anytime during the day. You have a friends list that will keep you up-to-date as to what your friends are currently doing, and these “statuses” can be sent to you via IM (Jabber only), your phone, or you can just visit your Twitter page now and then.

Though Twitter was created to see what everyone is up to it often becomes a place where conversations occur, often all written in the third-person. Which definitely gets interesting sometimes but when two of your friends are talking to two of their friends and you don’t have those people as friends - it can be annoying. My suggestion? Make as many people you want to be as your friend, but only “follow” those you really want to know what they are up to. Otherwise, Twitter becomes quite the distraction. For information on how to do this, sign up and you should be able to figure that out - Twitter is so easy a caveman could use it (crap now I am making that caveman dude sad).

I’d say my favorite feature of Twitter would be the IM notifications. It makes it possible for me to nearly never visit the site. The enhancements that I’d make to this feature would be to have the usernames of people link to their Twitter page, and to have Direct Messages show up via IM as well (as far as I know this does not currently happen). You can completely interact with Twitter via IM by using the Twitter Lingo.

Other Twitter stuff

Twitter has an API that allows you to take your data and use it. Some interesting things have popped up as a result. Jeremy Keith has created a lifestream that combines Twitter with a whole slew of other bits of data and combines them into one stream. Chris J. Davis has followed suit with his own lifestream, and I’m sure others will follow.

If you are into widgets, Twitter already has two of those! If you want a widget that just allows you to update your status Twidget by Frank Manno is for you. It definitely cuts down on distractions. If you want to update your own status and view the status of those you are following then Twitgit is the widget you want, crafted by Ben Ward.

Conclusion

All in all Twitter is pretty fun to use - and some may find some real value in it. Some of the conversations that have occurred there would probably have never occurred otherwise, so I am sure there is value in that.

If you want to make me a friend on Twitter, I am cdevroe on Twitter.

No matter how you use - all it asks is “What are you doing?”.

Flickr hits 300,000,000 photos

By Colin Devroe with 1 reader comment

Photo-sharing site has recently passed the 300,000,000th photo on their service. This photo is number 300,000,000.

Also of note is that over 10,000,000 of those have been geo-tagged. You can view these through Flick’s World Map which you can look through all 10,000,000 there if you have the time.

Do you have a Flickr account? We ubergeeks do. You can see my photos, Chris’ photos, Mike’s photos, and Josue’s photos. I’ve geo-tagged a few photos, so has Mike, and Josue has too. Chris? No geo-tags? For shame!

Congrats to Flickr (and ) for reaching this milestone. Hopefully in the near future I’ll be able to use in conjunction with either or in order to geo-tag my photos locally rather than only on Flickr. One can only hope.

TUG feed update

By Colin Devroe with no reader comments

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