WordPress for BlackBerry Beta
Go check out the details and install the beta: blackberry.wordpress.org/2009/07/07/wordpress-for-blackberry-beta
Upgraded to iPhone 3GS from 3G. Veridct: Worth it !
Read lots of coverage last week that for those with iPhone 3Gs, you may want to hold off on the 3GS upgrade. Most reviewers had two rationals — 1) the upgrade price with how at&t works wasn’t very attractive and 2) that the spec upgrade wasn’t dramatic.
So a few thoughts on the upgrade and the whole 3G vs 3Gs debate:
On the pricing, it is true that at&t handled this pretty poorly and “penalized” those who bought the 3G in that they weren’t eligible for the new 3Gs pricing. On the other hand early adopters have traditionally always paid a premium. But more importantly, even at the non-upgrade price, if you look at the annual “cost of ownership” with monthly cell bills easily in the $100+ range, adding $200 to a device price isn’t as dramatic as one would think. I have a few accounts with at&t, and was lucky that one of them was upgradeable, so I got the better price.
Re: the spec upgrade. For anyone like me who started with a TI99, moved to the Apple IIe world, and then upgraded to 286s, 386, 486DX, etc — you remember what a big deal it was when the processor got a speed bump. It made tasks that once took 10 second takes just 2 secs.
It was with that in mind that I read the excellent blog by John Gruber, Daring Fireball, and his post titled “The Next iPhone” that I knew I would upgrade:
So, that guy was the first one on the team to get a Pentium-based machine, running at, if I recall correctly, 90 MHz. (The rest of us all had 486-based machines.) A few hours after he’d started using the new machine, word started to spread about just how fast it was. “You should see him do a build.” Soon there were a dozen of us crowded into his office, marveling, maybe even slobbering, at the speed of his C compiler’s progress bar.
A new computer almost always feels faster than the one it replaces. In the old days, though, every few years you’d get a computer with not just a faster processor but a next-generation processor, and the resulting performance increase was dramatic. For the Mac, those were bumps like the first 68030s and 68040s, or the first batch of PowerPCs. For the PC, the 386, 486, and Pentium.
Based on information from informed sources, I believe the processor in the next-generation iPhone is going to be that kind of upgrade.
(emphasis mine).
So last week I ordered the new 3GS, and after going through a day where all my phones were bricked as at&t sorted out the activation ( 3 phone calls to “611″, 2 trips to the at&t store, and 4 sim cards ! ) I can now safely report that the processor upgrade makes a huge difference.
The way I use the device I’m often switching between applications, clicking on links, etc — and things now just bounce right open without delay. Search is snappy, and that annoying text entry lag that still popped up on occasion is totally gone. Browsing is faster too, and many iPhone optimized sites like Google Apps actually feel like native apps now. Add in the video feature which rivals Flip for quality (original, not Flip HD) and the 32 gigs of space, and it’s a big upgrade.
Bottom line — just the speed improvement of the processor and the underlying performance makes this a worthwhile upgrade for heavy users out there. Speed wise, everyone I’ve shown the new device to who also has the original 3G , comments that it’s hard to go back to the original 3G after using the 3GS for a few minutes.
Sync Skype Chat History on Multiple Machines With Dropbox
Skype is awesome. We use it a ton here at Automattic, and it’s my main communication service for staying in touch with friends and family who are spread out all over the world. It’s also still the best text IM client out there. And now with the iPhone app, I can make int’l calls on mobile without thinking about it.
The one issue though I’ve had lately, is that I rely on Skype so much, that when I use a second machine I find myself looking through Skype chat history for a link or reference, only to realize that it’s stored locally on another machine.
In my quest to find an ideal backup solution, I’ve been testing Dropbox which allows you to sync files between multiple machines. So I took a crack at trying to get my Skype chat history to sync. A quick google search brought up this post which I followed:
Step 1) Quit the Skype application on all machines
Step 2) Move the "main" Skype chat history files to the Dropbox directory:
"mv ~/Library/Application\ Support/Skype ~/Dropbox/"
Step 3) Create a symlink from the original folder to the Dropbox folder:
"ln -s ~/Dropbox/Skype/ ~/Library/Application\ Support/Skype"
Step 4) On your secondary machines, remove the /Library/Application\ Support/Skype folder, and just insert the symlink:
"ln -s ~/Dropbox/Skype/ ~/Library/Application\ Support/Skype"
And it works ! One issue to be aware of: If you are logged-in and running Skype on multiple machines at once, you can get file conflicts and Dropbox will create secondary files – which kills the whole sync idea. So for this to work, you need to quit Skype before you plan on using it on another machine — which isn’t a bad idea anyway since leaving it open just means missed messages.
And lastly, I posted some of this to the Dropbox forum and one member there recommended a slightly different method where: “The original stays where it is. Without moving it, one creates a symlink. Its symlink goes into the Drobox folder.” I tried that method early on, and at least with Skype, the chat history kept getting written locally and never updating the Dropbox folder.
So for now this is working nicely for me. I do wonder if in the future Skype would ever offer up a secure way to store chat history with them. I also did see mention of a new service that tackles this issue for IM history in general called im-hisotry.com — looks interesting but haven’t tested so far as it’s Windows and Linux only.
For anyone thinking of trying the symlink method, as with anything like this, please backup your files before attempting this, as YMMV.
Working Automattic Style
Great piece in this month’s Inc. magazine by Matt: “The Way I Work: Matt Mullenweg”:
I travel a lot, but when I’m in San Francisco, I usually work from home. Everyone else works from home, too. We’re a virtual company. We recently got an office on Pier 38, a five-minute walk from my apartment. I’ll go to there once a week, usually Thursdays, and for board meetings, which happen about once every two months. We leased it so we wouldn’t have to keep borrowing conference rooms from our VC partners. It’s kind of sad; we have this great space right on the water — and six days a week, it’s empty. Of the 40 people working for the company, eight are in the Bay Area, but that’s just a coincidence. They could be anywhere in the world.
We all communicate using P2, something we launched that allows users to publish group blogs in WordPress. It’s a bit like Twitter, but the updates come in real time. With P2, we can share code and ideas instantly. There is a dedicated channel for each part of the company, and when there’s a new message, it shows up in red. It may be someone talking about development or what he or she had for breakfast. I also use Skype for one-on-one and mini group chats.
In my home office, I have two large, 30-inch computer monitors — a Mac and a PC. They share the same mouse and keyboard, so I can type or copy and paste between them. I’ll typically do Web stuff on the Mac and e-mail and chat stuff on the PC. I also have a laptop, which I have with me all the time, whether I’m going overseas or to the doctor’s office. I’m pretty rough on my laptops. I go through about two a year. I keep a server for my home network in the closet. I really enjoy computer networking. I sometimes do tech support for our employees who live in the Bay Area.
I know people I talk to are always fascinated by our organization and how we are setup and completely virtual. This piece provides a few more good insights as to how it all works.
Running Windows 7 On OS X Using VirtualBox
I installed the GPL Open Source virtualization app VirtualBox tonight with Windows 7 so I could run the BlackBerry simulator on my Mac. It runs basically everything you would need:
Presently, VirtualBox runs on Windows, Linux, Macintosh and OpenSolaris hosts and supports a large number of guest operating systems including but not limited to Windows (NT 4.0, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista, Windows 7), DOS/Windows 3.x, Linux (2.4 and 2.6), Solaris and OpenSolaris, and OpenBSD
Been running it for a bit, and so far so good, and really impressed by how easy it was to setup. Score one more for Open Source 
VirtualBox even has some well made screencasts to get you started. I’ve included one below:
Good stuff.
Tesla Roadster on Golden Gate Bridge
I’m not a really a car person per se, but seeing the all electric Tesla Roadster the other day was a thrill.
I was driving back home and approaching Golden Gate Bridge when this silent car passed me on the left. The car looked awesome, and the mere fact that there was no tailpipe made an impression. There was something very “Need For Speed” -’ish about the way the car moved, like it was in a video game, very effortless. I had seen coverage of this car before, but never seen it on the road.
The license plate read “Tesla 84″ – so assuming this is the 84th one made ? Here are some spy shots I was able to take from my iPhone:
Mozy Online Backup Service Review
Mozy to the rescue ! After the loss of my laptop and external HD, I was able to use the Mozy backup service to restore most of what I needed. I’ve been using Mozy for nearly 3 years, and this was really the first time I had to “use it” — so a few thoughts:
The good::
- Hey it worked They are now owned by EMC so that gives you a bit more confidence too.
- I paid for the “DVD restore” option after the web option didn’t quite work for me ( more on that below ) and I was pleasantly surprised to see a fedex package appear a few days later. But instead of a few dozen DVDs, they sent a 160 gig Iomega external HD. Very cool ! Not sure if I got some extra nice service or if that’s standard for them now with HDs being so cheap — but I was glad to not have to manually copy over all those DVDs.
- I used the live chat support option a few times and they were pretty helpful and always followed up via email later to make sure I was all set.
- For $5/month per machine this seems like a really great option.
The bad:
- The web restore option, which is an instant way to retrieve your backup, has a somewhat clumsy interface. There is a web interface for data under 20 gigs, and then you can use the Mozy client (OS X and Windows ) to restore files as well.
For me I was restoring from another machine, so I wanted to use the web restore version and not sync up another machine into Mozy.
For some reason, which may have a sound technical explanation, the web restore is available only in 1.8 gig DMG files. So downloading and then stitching it back together is a manual process.
- The other issue is on how to actually pick the restore. When I selected the entire backup, the web restore was actually twice the size of my backup HD. The external HD backup they sent me was smaller than their 2X web restore. Maybe it was a bug, or maybe I did something wrong, but that seemed very odd.
- Related to the above, when I got the backup there was lots of duplicated files which i had moved to different directories on the original machine. Looks like Mozy always keeps a backup of what you had and then keeps adding to it. There is an option to restore a “backup set” by date, but when I looked at it I saw lots of missing files.
The “not Mozy’s fault” but an issue with our lousy internet access
- I mentioned at the top that I was able to “restore most of what I needed”. The reason I couldn’t restore everything was because some of the files I was working with were huge and Mozy had not had a chance yet to back them up. For me, and I suspect many of you, Mozy was often a few days behind on uploading all the new stuff. Om Malik talked about this issue last month, The Ugly Truth About Broadband: Upload Speeds.
Conclusion:
I’m thankful that I had some kind of online backup in place for when the unthinkable happens and happy that Mozy worked.
When I asked the question of what kind of backup strategy people use, I was surprised by how few use an online service:
I’ve also rethought what I’m actually backing up and if I can streamline it a bit. I use a bunch of cloud services already, so lots of what I had backed up was available from other services.
I’m also looking at using DropBox and Syncplicity to handle the task of light backup, but really for syncing across multiple machines.
And since it’s been 3 years since I looked at this space, I’m going to test out Jungle Disk and a few others just to see if they are a bit more elegant on the restore side of things. Jungle Disk in particular seems attractive since they don’t charge you for each extra machine you link up.
New Hampshire Public Radio Interview on Iraq Trip
I had a great conversation with Virginia Prescott of NHPR’s Word of Mouth on the topic of “Rebuilding Iraq, Blog By Blog“:
In an effort to encourage Iraq to use social media to rebuild itself, the State Department sent representatives from Twitter, Google, YouTube and WordPress to Baghdad in late April. For five days, they visited universities, met with technology companies, and sat down with Iraqi president Jalal Talabani.
Raanan Bar-Cohen was there. He’s vice president of Automattic, which leads the WordPress open-source project, a blog-publishing tool. Raanan spoke with Word of Mouth about how he observed Iraqis using social networks during his visit.
You can listen to the interview (MP3) here.
