Category Archives: Online Life

Mailing List Hosting

I’ve hosted email lists of one sort or another probably all the way back to 1995, when I first bought complete.org as an email-only domain fed off a UUCP connection on a long-distance dialup link.

I’ve only used two mailing list hosting programs in that whole time: Majordomo and Ecartis (used to be known as Listar). Unfortunately, Ecartis has not seen upstream work in several years, and as a result was removed from Debian in May.

That got me to thinking: what am I going to do with the mailing lists I host? I’m not pleased with my current list archives, which are very similar to what you get from Mailman: no search engine, and every thread is broken at the end of each month.

I also want to preserve my archives.

I’m presently looking at whether to continue hosting the lists myself, or turn to something like Google Groups or Nabble. Hosting it myself, the main choice is Mailman, which really has more features than I need in most areas, and fewer than I need for archiving.

For other hosts, I’ve looked at Google Groups, Yahoo Groups, and Nabble. Google Groups looks like the best option, and even has a (somewhat hidden) way to subscribe via pure email without having a Google account. They can import and export subscriber lists, though not archives.

I’m thinking I’ll also make sure all the lists have full archives at Gmane. Then, based on message IDs, I can generate a bunch of RedirectPermanent lines for Apache to links to the archives don’t get broken.

My current thought for list hosting itself is Google Groups. It would be nice to be free of the hassle of administering a mailing list host, which is nothing special these days. Another benefit of Google Groups is that those people that like web forums (who ARE those people anyway?) get a forum-like interface to the list if they so choose.

Nabble has some interesting features, and can optionally import a full history of a list, but it concentrates far more on the forum than the email aspects. It doesn’t even appear to have basic moderation settings.

Web Design Companies That Understand Technology

There are a lot of companies out there that do web design work that looks fabulous.

Unfortunately, a lot of these sites look fabulous only when viewed in IE6 build xxxx, with a 75dpi monitor, fonts set to the expected size, running on Windows XP SP2, with JavaScript enabled. Try looking at the site through Safari, Firefox, with larger-than-expected fonts, and things break down: text boxes overlap each other, buttons that should work don’t, and it becomes a mess.

So, if your employer wanted a web design company that has a good grasp of Web standards and the appropriate use of them, where would you look? A company that can write good HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and still make the site look appealing? A company that has heard of Apache and gets the appropriate nausea when someone mentions ColdFusion or Frontpage?

So far, I’ve seen these places mentioned by others:

WebDevStudios.com
Happy Cog
Crowd Favorite

Converted to WordPress

I have been using Serendipity on my blog for some time now. Overall, I’ve been pleased with it, but the conversion was a pain.

Serendipity is a simple blog engine, and has a wonderful built-in plugin system. It can detect what plugins need upgrading, and install those upgrades, all from directly within the management interface. There’s no unzipping stuff in install directories as with WordPress.
Continue reading Converted to WordPress

Twitter and Identica Dilemma

Since July, I’ve been trying out Twitter and its open-source competitor identi.ca. Both are microblogging sites, with Twitter being the largest and most well-established of them.

Both let you follow people with their 140-character updates via the web, or with alerts on your phone.

My dilemma involves how to make this work for me.

For some people, I’d like to get an alert as soon as they post an update. For others, maybe get a non-intrusive alert a couple of times a day. I want to get these notices on my computers, whichever one I’m using.

In theory, Twitter lets you follow updates on IM with Jabber. But their Jabber gateway has been down for literally a month now, and though they still have a note saying it will be back RSN, there’s little hope.

Identi.ca has a working Jabber gateway. But unlike Twitter, you can only specify if you want notices from everyone, or nobody; with Twitter, you can sign up for IM notices from just a few people. I already have a Jabber client on all my machines.

So here are my options:

First, I could just use the Twitter and Identica web interfaces only. Not really all that appealing; I don’t want to have to go load up a webpage a few times a day. Also it is annoying to have to open a web browser, pull up a web page, just to enter 60 characters of status.

Second, I could use Twitterfox and Identifox firefox plugins. They look nice, but add yet more bloat to Firefox — and that’s two more plugins per machine to set up and maintain, not to mention that one machine is not aware of what I’ve already seen elsewhere. They do make it easier to post updates.

Third, I could use RSS feeds for reading in bloglines. Not all that realtime though.

Fourth, I could set up two Identica accounts, one which sends all notices to my IM and one which doesn’t. It’d be annoying, and still doesn’t solve my problem with Twitter at all.

Fifth, I could install some Twitter-watching app on all my machines. That’s annoying as it’s yet another piece of software to maintain everywhere, and yet another one to keep updated, AND if that wasn’t annoying enough, they still don’t know what I’ve seen everywhere.

How are all of you using Twitter or Identica?

Also, I’m curious how all these companies that use Twitter and instantly find out when anyone mentions Dell or JetBlue are able to do that. I don’t see a “search everyone’s tweets” feature anywhere.

Video uploading sites?

I’m working on switching from using a Mac to using Linux for editing video. I have a mini-DV camcorder that a bought a few years back, and I’ve been looking at capture and editing software for Linux.

Along with that, I want to post some videos online for family to be able to see I want to preserve the original quality as much as possible, offer the option to download the video, and be able to share some videos with family only (not the entire Internet).

I’ve been looking at various reviews of video sites (such as this PCWorld one) and decided to look at blip.tv and Vimeo in more detail.

Blip seems to have lots of controls, options, etc. And, they seem to really care about end users, respond fast, and care about freedom. There’s an impressive response from their support team concerning Ogg Theora out there. They offer FTP uploads (which are a huge improvement over HTTP POST uploading, in my opinion, and easily scriptable). They can also automatically post your video to archive.org or about a dozen other video or blogging sites.

But what I want to do is not really what they are aiming at. They are set up for “channels” (you can apparently only have one channel per user), and for more professional users. Most notably, you can’t make videos private or restricted without paying for their $100/year or so “pro” account.

Vimeo looks very much like the Flickr of video. They do offer various options for restricting who can see a video. When they transcode video to Flash, they have the option of preserving it in HD, which blip.tv doesn’t (both go 640×480 or so by default, and blip maximizes out that that). Though both offer the option to download the full, unmodified original. Vimeo has only one option for uploading, and it doesn’t seem to work well with Firefox. They have little detail about anything in their docs. Maybe it’s more the Photobucket of video than the Flickr of video. (Oh, who am I kidding — that’s Youtube).

Of course, there is Youtube. Maxes out at 320×240, doesn’t offer the original for downloading. Doesn’t make me think all that positively about them.

I could also use Flickr. I’m not sure if they offer the original, but there’s a 90-second limit on uploads there.

Any other thoughts?

Towards Better Bookmark Syncing: del.icio.us and diigo

I use Firefox (well, Iceweasel) from several machines. On a daily basis, at least three: my workstation at home, my workstation at work, and my laptop. I have wanted to have my bookmarks synced between all three of them for some time. I’ve been using unison to sync them, which mostly works. But firefox likes to store a last-visited timestamp in bookmarks.html, so if I have a browser open at more than one place, I get frequent unison conflicts.

I started searching for better alternatives again, and noticed that the new alternative del.icio.us plugin for Firefox supports a del.icio.us version of the traditional Firefox Bookmarks Toolbar. I use that toolbar a lot, and anything I use in place of standard Firefox bookmarks absolutely must support something like it.

I imported my Firefox bookmarks (about 900 or so) into del.icio.us. They arrived OK, but flattened, as del.icio.us doesn’t have a hierarchical structure like Firefox does. After a good deal of experimentation, I have mostly gotten it working how I want. I’m using the bundles mode of the extension toolbar in Firefox, and simulating subfolders by using certain tags. It works fine; not quite what I’d want out of it ideally, but everything else is so much better that I’m happy with it.

The social bookmarking aspects of del.icio.us sound interesting, too, but I haven’t started trying to look at that stuff very much yet. Delicious also has a new “Firefox 3” extension that also is documented to work fine in Firefox 2. It has a few new features but nothing I care all that much about.

My main gripe at this point is that the Firefox extension doesn’t allow me to set things as private by default. It also doesn’t propogate my changes to the site immediately, which led to a considerable amount of confusion initially. On the plus side, it does do a synchronization and store a local cache, so I can still use it offline to load up file:/// links.

Some things about del.icio.us bug me. There are very limited features for editing things in bulk (though Greasemonkey scripts help here). It has a published API, but seems quite limited (I couldn’t find out how, in their documentation, to add a tag to an existing bookmark, for instance.)

del.icio.us lets you export all your bookmarks, so you have freedom to leave. Also, if you poke around on freshmeat.net, you can find Free Software alternatives that actually emulate del.icio.us APIs and sites.

I also looked at alternatives, and it seems that the most plausible one is Diigo. But I’m going to refuse to use it right now for two reasons: 1) its Firefox plugin has nothing like the Firefox bookmarks toolbar, and 2) its hideous Terms of Service. If you go to their ToS and scroll down to “Content/Activity Prohibited”, you’ll see these gems:

6. provides any telephone numbers, street addresses, last names, URLs or email addresses;

7. promotes information that you know is false or misleading or promotes illegal activities or conduct that is abusive, threatening, obscene, defamatory or libelous;

11. furthers or promotes any criminal activity or enterprise or provides instructional information about illegal activities including, but not limited to making or buying illegal weapons, violating someone’s privacy, or providing or creating computer viruses;

So, in other words, they can delete me account if I bookmark the Amazon.com contact page, or if I bookmark the opinions of someone I disagree with. Good thing the Vietnam War protesters in the 70s didn’t use Diigo, because they’d be kicked off if they wrote about their sit-ins at Berkeley. Also, I didn’t even quote the other section that says they get to remove anything you post that they think is offensive, in their sole judgment. Goodbye, links to EFF’s articles about RIAA.

Since we can’t use last names, I guess it’s just “Hillary” and “John” instead of “Clinton” and “McCain”. Oh, and don’t get me started about the folly of operating a social bookmarking site where you aren’t allowed to post URLs. That’s right up there with Apple releasing a Windows version of Safari that you aren’t allowed to install on PCs.

Compare that to the del.icio.us terms and privacy policy and the contrast is stark indeed.

Oklahoma Man asks The Register to turn off the Internet

A couple of days ago, I mentioned the Register article about the Tuttle, OK city manager that threatened to call the FBI on a Linux developer because his webhost misconfigured their server.

Now The Register has a great followup. Apprently people all over are justifiably upset at the city manager.

There are also some great reader comments over at The Register.

Also, that city manager has removed his e-mail address from tuttle-ok.gov. But fortunately, we all remember that it’s citymgr@cityoftuttle.org.

Tuttle, OK city manager offered choice about being an idiot

I just read a story on The Register entitled Oklahoma city threatens to call FBI over “renegade” Linux maker. Quite hilarious.

Apparently Jerry Taylor, city manager for Tuttle, Oklahoma, noticed that the city’s webpage wasn’t working right. He got the default “test page” for the Apache webserver on CentOS.

Instead of calling the hosting company, he sent a series of vicious emails to CentOS, even threatening to call the FBI. The CentOS folks really went out of their way to help this guy — he was not even their customer. And he repaid them by saying they should have helped him sooner.

Of course, there was the obligatory comment about being computer literate: “I am computer literate! I have 22 years in computer systems engineering and operation. Now, can you tell me how to remove ‘your software’ that you acknowledge you provided free of charge? I consider this ‘hacking.'”

The Register story is hilarious, and the original discussion even more so because it includes a full transcript of the event. Favorite quote (to the city manager):

If you will not let me help you, or at least talk to someone who knows what Linux is, then you will look like an idiot.

Your choice.

Should anyone wish to write to the city manager of Tuttle, OK, to complain about his outrageous behavior, his e-mail address is citymgr@cityoftuttle.org. Assuming they have figured out how to properly configure e-mail.

He’s probably not worth his $63k salary and with a personality like this almost certainly isn’t giving his employees the “feeling that we’re ‘working together'” (see that link).

Sigh. Why do people hire a guy like this in the first place?

Some Airport Statistics

Airport Number of Gates Annual Passengers (2000) Wireless Internet Options Plainly Visible to Travelers
Charlotte, NC 79 10,377,837 None (checked all of Concourse A plus the atrium)
Atlanta, GA (Hartsfield) 176 38,255,778 None (and I walked almost the entire length of Concourse C to check)
Wichita, KS 12 535,715 Four free work centers throughout the airport, clearly marked, each offering four work areas complete with desk, chair, AC power, Ethernet connection, and wireless Internet access. Wireless connectivity extends into most gate areas as well. ESSID: “FREE”.