Sunday, January 12, 2003

iCommune is a very neat idea, taking advantage of OS X's built-in Apache WebDAV server, WebDAV filesystem and iTunes' device plugins to provide simple peer-to-peer music sharing between computers. The iCommune "server" produces an index of the ID3 tags, which the client reads via HTTP—that way the client doesn't have to scan the entire hierarchy manually, yet has all the metadata needed to fill out the iTunes listing. You don't even need the WebDAV server to be a Mac—included is a Python tag indexer which works virtually anywhere. I've already got it set up between my PowerBook and desktop G4—so far, so good. (I also meant to go home an hour and a half ago!) 11:32:03 PM | reply [] This post being empty was causing Apple's XML-RPC implementation, used in NetNewsWire, some consternation, so I may as well fill it. It originally complained about FaxSTF X preventing my PowerBook from going to sleep in a timely fashion, and asked if anyone else had the same problem. I should have done a Google search first, as I just did and found other people complaining and a workaround for the misbehavior of the FaxJobMgr daemon. After implementing power awareness in Pester, I know exactly what Smith Micro needs to do to fix this, and it isn't exactly complicated. That they've know about it since last September and haven't fixed it, nor has Apple done anything about it considering they bundle FaxSTF with their portable computers...can't someone else please make some decent OS X fax software? FaxSTF has been around for ages, and has always been abysmal, even back to the 2.x version I remember I got bundled with my copy of MicroPhone II back in 1992 or so. GlobalFax rocked, but was unfortunately left to die. There was a third major Mac fax program I can't think of at the moment, which was also good; I believe Symantec bought it at some point, but left it to die or only preserved the Windows version? It appears paragraph breaks correctly appear in my RSS feed when I use explicit <P> tags rather than relying on Radio to do it automatically, so I'll start doing exactly that, as ugly as it is. 10:19:03 PM | reply [] I made a couple minor bug fixes and enhancements to DSBRTuner today, bringing the version to 1.0.1+njr3. I broke saving of the playthrough setting in the last version; it's now fixed. The space bar works as a keyboard equivalent for the power button, and the power setting is saved so the radio doesn't automatically come on if you have it added to Login Items as I do. 9:23:41 PM | reply []