Saturday, January 22, 2005

CD Baby rewrite in Postgres and Ruby, Baby!. CD Baby, with 90,000 lines of PHP code and a MySQL database, is being rewritten from scratch in Ruby with a PostgreSQL database. Here's why... [O'Reilly Weblogs] 8:59:37 PM    comment []

Dealing with Great Expectations. Blizzard, the company behind the popular and currently balky World of Warcraft, is learning the hard way that subscribers to online games are quite demanding. Are they getting less than customers of other 'always on' services? By Daniel Terdiman. [Wired News] 5:45:41 PM    comment []

Safe Emailing For Dummies [MacSlash] 4:27:57 PM    comment []

andy1307 writes "Nicholas Carr, best known for setting off a firestorm with his "IT Doesn't Matter" article published in the Harvard Business Review, has an op-ed in today's New York Times arguing against the use of custom-built software in favor of off-the-shelf products. He cites the example of Ford scrapping a custom built software solution for buying supplies. He says companies, frustrated by the failure of custom built software, have taken to modifying their business processes around the packaged software solution. The most unbelievable line in the op-ed: "When it comes to developing software today, innovation should be a last resort, not a first instinct.". Most of us know of failed projects using off-the-shelf products that need minor customization. Is the track record of custom built software really that bad?" [Slashdot] http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/22/1921209&from=rss 4:21:13 PM    comment []

"I've found a Linux distribution that meets my criteria for an ideal system. Ubuntu Linux is fast..." [Linux Today] http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2005-01-22-005-26-RV-DB-DT 2:45:33 PM    comment []

Microsoft today announced Office Outlook Live, a subscription offering that integrates Outlook with MSN Hotmail into an easy-to-use email management solution. This is the first Microsoft Office product to be made available as a downloadable subscription service and provides customers the ability to manage multiple e-mail accounts, calendars, address books and to-do lists in one place from virtually anywhere, even offline. Sort of like .Mac has been doing for a couple of years. With an Outlook Live subscription customers will receive the latest version of Outlook — currently Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 for Subscription Services — plus 2 GB of online storage, the ability to send 20MB attachments, and advanced spam and virus protection, all for $59.95 per year.... [Tech-Knowledge] http://mikesejournal.com/archives/003204.php 2:43:02 PM    comment []

happyslayer writes "Matthew Fordahl has written a review of Microsoft's anti-spyware tool and has declared it, in a word, 'ineffective.' Though the methodology isn't carried out completely (he uses another anti-virus program after trying MS's tool, but doesn't do the same with the anti-spyware tool), it's a fairly good anecdote on the MS product's usefulness." [Slashdot] http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/21/236239&from=rss 2:38:56 PM    comment []

I’ve been trying out David Allens GTD add-in for Outlook over the last few weeks, but I’ve been missing a few things. There are quite a few macro’s out on the net that help you get extra power to the tool. I like the ‘Guilt’ macro the most. One thing that I miss is the integration into mail views of GTD, being able to see all mails that relate to the projects would be very nice. Today I sat down and tried to figure out if it can be done and after a few clicks here and there I’ve accomplished what I want. Below you can find the steps to get this too. PS1 This will only work with Outlook 2003 PS2 I will have screenshots available after I’ve created them :-) 1. Create a new search folder called “All Mails per Project” 2. You need to create a custom search folder that targets the full mailbox 3. Now set up a search with the following custom criteria; - User-defined item: 4. Save the search folder and part 1 is done. Now you have to create a view that groups the mails per project, little flaw in Outlook is that you cannot select the user-defined item in the search folder as a display field. Of course this can be resolved… 5. Go to the Customize View dialog (,a,v,d) and select Fields to display in the following steps you will get a few error messages, but you can just ignore them 6. select user-defined and press 7. Enter the word “Project” and close this dailog 8. Now select “Group by” and at the bottom right selected the option “All Collapsed” You can now close this dialog and go back to the search folder. This now needs to be customized a bit more and then we’re done. 9. Open the “Group by Box” and drag the Projects field header to the location where “In folder” is located 10. Drag “In folder” downwards till a big X is on top of it (it will be removed) 11. Finally press the “Group by Box” once more to remove the bar and we’re done… You now have an overview of all mails per Project [Microsoft WebBlogs] http://blogs.msdn.com/mischar/archive/2005/01/22/358638.aspx 2:29:56 PM    comment []

The funny thing about using this Moleskine to take some of my notes... I've become a much better note taker in OneNote. Here's what I think is going on: I don't write a ton of stuff in the Moleskine. I usually write "To Do:" and then I add a date and a list of stuff I need to do for the day. The Moleskine usually stays at my desk and I write things in it when I feel like it. I also check off stuff that I do on my To Do list. So this little notebook is what's replacing my post-it notes and assorted other pieces of paper when I need to write something down quickly. OneNote, on the other hand, is my power application for capturing important, work-related information. This week I spent about 11 hours in meetings. I could probably fill a notebook every couple of weeks and what I would have at the end of a quarter is a beautiful stack of expensive little notebooks that I would never be able to find any information in. (And my little Moleskines deserve better than that.) So I'm finding that I'm using my OneNote for the larger meetings and I'm using my Moleskine for very small meetings where a laptop might be a bit of a distraction. If the information from the small meeting is something I need for later, or if I need to send out minutes, I type the notes into OneNote and I send them out directly from there. So here's the breakdown as I experience it: Moleskine - Small, convenient, personal, creative, beautiful, relaxing, analog, un-plugged OneNote - Powerful, effecient, organized, searchable, archivable, e-mailable, digital YMMV :) [Microsoft WebBlogs] http://blogs.msdn.com/brianjo/archive/2005/01/21/358589.aspx 2:28:52 PM    comment []

© Copyright 2005 Patrick Mikulak.