I saw someone post this on Twitter today – and I was able to successfully recreate it.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1
I should vote for this to be fixed.
LinkedIn
Still on Evernote
A few months back, after I started at Scientific Learning, I wrote about note taking software. I tried using Evernote and am happy to say I’m still using it. I ended up upgrading to the premium plan and am still pretty happy with its functionality.
My big wish list now would be:
- Templates templates templates! I’d love to be able to build templates for things like one-on-one meeting notes, team meeting notes, daily notes, and technical research notes. It’d keep me from forgetting things for different types of note taking sessions.
- Better formatting. I noted this when I first evaluated it and it’s still true.
- Better export into the clipboard when I copy content. Right now I generally just export to PDF and then e-mail that if I want to keep my formatting in-tact. Pasting into an e-mail (on Mac) just looks bad, especially if I have lists in my document.
Note Taking Software
When I switched to my job here at Scientific Learning I knew I needed to do a better job taking notes. The big question, though, was how should I take those notes and then even more important, how do I organize them and look them up later?
So far I’ve been pretty impressed with Evernote. They have a nice Mac and iPhone client as well as a web interface that works. Your data is synchronized through their web site and supports tagging as well as basic formatting. They have other support for uploading/indexing documents such as Word and PDF documents but I haven’t found a great use for that yet. There is also image uploading with support for geo-tagging from the iPhone. They have a premium plan that I’ll probably pay for once I’ve passed my 30 day test of software. Basically, if I’m still using it after 30 days at a consistent level it’s probably something I’ll continue to use.
The only downside is I wish there was better formatting options since I’m a little bit of a stickler about that but the data is way more important than that. OneNote on the Windows Office suite was really cool about that and they’re going to get more “cloud” support in the 2010 version but the lack of Mac support there really killed it for me. I don’t want to start up a VMWare instance everytime I want to take notes. Also, not having an iPhone and web interface really limits its flexibility.
Trying Out Woopra Analytics
I tried to sign up for Woopra last night and ran into some problems related to bad code on their site (lots of Java code in their JSPs and an improperly permissioned MySQL database). It wouldn’t let me sign-in for a while and then I realized they didn’t really have a free account. Doh! But then last night I got an e-mail with an invitation code for one of the free accounts with a 250k page view limit. My site doesn’t even come close to that so I figured let’s give it a go. They said the invitation code was to make-up for the problems signing up. Pro-active customer support is the way to win my trust so I give Woopra thumbs up for that.
What does Woopra promise? Real-time analytics is their biggest draw. When I’ve used Google Analytics and CoreMetrics in the past both require you to wait until the next day for most analytics. That is really annoying when you’re trying to see how a new promotion or feature is performing after you deploy it.
The client is built in Java so it’s cross-platform and on the surface it looks pretty slick. As I started hitting my site from a few machines at home they showed up right away in the client. I didn’t even have to hit refresh anywhere. After I’ve had some time to look at traffic for a few days I’ll post some screenshots. So far they have a lot of the same analytics that other packages such as Google and CoreMetrics like browser, OS, resolution, search referrals, etc.., however it reports it real time. I have to say the real-time aspect is pretty damn cool.
I’m hoping someone posts some reports on how well it works and how useful the real time aspect is on a high traffic site.
WiFi Rail Works Great – When You Can Find a Hot Spot
Anyone that rides BART knows that getting Internet connectivity can be a pain, especially if your cell phone doesn’t support tethering (another reason AT&T is terrible). Even when I borrowed a Blackberry with tethering support enabled it wasn’t that fast.
WiFi on BART would rock if it were available. It’s now starting to be deployed due a contract BART signed with WiFi Rail recently. They’ve been testing their hotspots in the main 4 downtown stations for a while now and a few weeks ago I noticed that I could keep connectivity partially through the TransBay tube. The speed and consistency in the tube is not that great but in downtown I was able to get upwards of 400-500 KB/s (yes, bytes, not bits) from Powell to Embarcadero even while moving between stations. It was enough bandwidth to download the latest version of Sun VirtualBox. I do wonder if the speed in the tube is the issue since I don’t know how well WiFi will roll over from one hot spot to another.
All I want to know is when are they going to put the WiFi on the rest of the Pittsburg Bay Point line? That’s the busiest line in the system (hint hint WiFi Rail). My advice, fix the TransBay tube and extend through Oakland next. The longer it’s available continuously the more use it will be to people and the more willing they will be to pay for it.
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Yes, I’m still alive!
I realized it’s been a while since I posted so for those that check in on me every now and then here, yes, I am still alive. 
Myleene and I recently welcomed our twin boys, Evan and Carter, into the world. They were born early at 33 weeks, 6 days so they spent 3 weeks and 4 weeks in the NICU, respectively. They are both home now and doing well. They’re gaining weight and Carter is already over 7lbs and Evan is right there behind him.
I’ll post links to photos soon but I’m exhausted (as expected) and need to get some sleep before the next feeding.
One day I’ll finish my technical posts that are all still in draft mode.
I Suppose The Firebug Developers Should Be Flattered…
I was looking for some IE developer tools (because they generally suck) and came across this at the Microsoft site:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc848894(VS.85).aspx
Wow, that doesn’t look like Firebug or anything does it?? And it won’t even work on IE7. Sigh. Trying to troubleshoot css/javascript issues on IE makes me hate web development so hopefully this will make ie8 at least somewhat bearable but that doesnt’ help trying to fix things on IE6 and IE7 which are still a majority of the traffic I server (luckily this ratio is dropping steadily however).
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Annoying Java.Blogs Bug
Hopefully some of you are coming to this page from the daily Java.Blogs update e-mail that shows up in your inbox every night. And maybe someone that maintains the site will see this and figure out why this bug happens.
On entries where the name of the blog is a domain name (i.e. dzone.com) the anchor tag terminator for the link to the blog entry does not terminate at the end of the link but rather it continues to consume the domain name of the blog as well which means the only way to get to the link is to copy paste it into my browser window. Annoying!
Basically you get something like this:
<a href=”http://www.javablogs.com/Jump.action?id=123456″>http://www.javablogs.com/Jump.<wbr>action?id=123456<br>dzone.com</a>
when you really should get the </a> tag after the ID number and not the domain name. Like I said, though, it’s fine if the blog’s name is not a domain name. Can one of you guys fix this??
Also, when looking at the source for this problem I came across the <wbr> tag. I spend a lot of time on the front end these days I can honestly say I’ve never seen that tag before but lo and behold it is real: http://www.quirksmode.org/oddsandends/wbr.html. I guess I learned something new today.
Sending obscure HTML in an e-mail is probably not the best idea anyways.
Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite
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This Is The Biggest Load Of Crap
Read this article at the Wall Street Journal. This has got to be one of the biggest loads of crap. I might as well have gone and bought a huge house I couldn’t afford, transfer all my assets to someone in my family, then declare bankruptcy and ask the judge to lower the principal on the house to something I can afford.
I will admit I don’t know the details and the limits of the bill but this is just ludicrous. My wife and I bought a house that was within our means in 2001. We could have gone and upgraded a few years back to a bigger house or one that was more expensive but we decided to stay put, do a little work on it and keep paying it off…like responsible people. We didn’t go out and speculate and buy multiple houses or a bigger house than we needed or could truthfully afford. And now, people that did the irresponsible will get a break while people like me will have to pay more taxes in the long run to subsidsize this travesty.
Why should someone that was dumb enough to buy a house that has lost 45% of its value from its peak get a bailout (I know people in this situation)? Seriously, how can you even try to justify this any longer.
The America I grew up reading about doesn’t exist anymore. Just call us the handout country now.
When Voice Recognition Goes Bad — Horribly Bad
I was grocery shopping the other day and wanted to find out what a hothouse tomato is so I spoke the words “hothouse tomatoes” into the Google Mobile App for the iPhone and it returned “penthouse letters”. Not exactly what I was expecting.
Normally this app is amazing in how well it figures out what I said but I can’t figure out how it got this one so wrong. Strange indeed.
