Web services that dont work. My #1 frustration
I can understand when things are in a public beta stage and are still going through testing, that things may not work. But, when a web application has been launched and there is no trace of ‘Beta’ or ‘testing’ anywhere on the site or service then you’d expect things to work ok and in this age of extremely competitive sites and services, it is simply unacceptable when they dont work as required.
Today, I decided that I needed some ‘Bookmark this’ buttons at the bottom of my posts as I have implemented on Skylines Australia.
So, as my blog is with Blogger, I thought there must be a widget or a pre-written piece of code out there to do it for me. I came across Sharethis and Addthis.
Sharethis
I registered at Sharethis and I filled out the form for my blogger button and I followed the prompts to put the widget on my blog and impatiently hit ‘save’, excited about this new addition, I refreshed the blog to be presented with this;
1. A new side widget with nothing in it. 
2. A link underneath my posts that does nothing (because of javascript errors) 
So, that was it for Sharethis. It had already wasted too much of my time.
Addthis
So the next thing to try was Addthis. Their site looked nice and to be honest, the button looked nicer and more functional than the Sharethis equivalent. So, I thought I would give it a go and register. 
This was what I was presented with after registering. No disabling of the form before putting your details in, or even a nice notification page (this is all that was on the page, just some centred text). My registration still went through as gmail was quick to notify me of the successful Addthis registration.
Maybe I just need to stop being lazy. Its not a hard thing to add to the posts and it’d only take me 30mins or so to whip something up. But after these two dismal attempts at attracting me as a user on their sites, I started to think of other sites that constantly irritate me.
Shelfari
This is actually a fairly good site. I do use it and I generally like it. But their search engine is attrocious. What respectful web site in the 21st century has a crap search? None. Searching and indexing has advanced so much in the past 10 years that there is simply no excuse for bad search engines. This site constantly makes me use the advanced search to put everything in to find a book. eg. Searching for ‘A year in tibet’ gives me a crap load of books, mainly about the lord of the rings. But if I go to the advanced search and put in the title and author, I get the book I was searching for which has the exact name I was searching for. Not to mention on this site how you can mark a book as ‘Plan to read’ and then next time you come back, its set to ‘Already read’ and ‘I own this book’… Not sure what happens between visits but I dont read that quickly.
Blackout Rugby
This site is a great online Rugby game. FYI, I love rugby. I bought a team-signed Waratahs jersey on Saturday night. Thats beside the point. This game is great, but lacks the finesse of something with more time under its belt. For example, up until a few months ago, the site used a flash-only navigation. This meant that if I logged in on my 64Bit Fedora machine (with no flash support), I had to try to guess the URL of the pages I wanted, which also lead me to a big fat SQL error (and likely, an injection opportunity which I promptly notified them about). They have now implemented a fall back navigation menu for no flash support. The other area this site falls over is in stability. The site has been down so much over the past month (maybe 5 days at least) due to them moving hosts twice. When you are charging money for a ‘premium’ membership, this is simply not good enough. You cannot expect to grow your user base when you take usability so lightly.
In conclusion
Web site owners and operators need to realise that if their product does not work, they will lose their users. It is that simple. If something doesn’t work, the user will go elsewhere. If something isn’t accessible, the user will go elsewhere. If something is too complicated, the user will go elsewhere. With the level of competition and new-and-improved up-and-comers in all areas of the internet, its never been more important to ensure that your service works. Even if it means removing functionality to ensure that the core of the system is as bug-free as possible. Or just stamp a ‘Beta’ on it.
Incoming call desktop notification in new PC Suite 7
I have been looking for something like this for a long time. I hate ring tones with a passion and my phone is almost always on silent. Enter my ipod and a productive morning and I miss a lot of calls. So, Nokia has built in a desktop call notification feature in their new PC Suite. “Be informed of incoming calls and new messages received on your computer!”
But, after a lot of searching (And I mean a LOT, there is no documentation for this feature anywhere. Not even in the PC Suite User Guide) it appears that not all phones are supported and the ones that are need to be connected via cable, not Bluetooth.
What an absolute bugger. I dont want to have to plug my phone in all the time. Whats the point of having a phone with Bluetooth if all the features of PC Suite cant be utilised with it?
Further Reading;
No incoming call notification - PC and Mac Software - Nokia Support Discussions
Re: Incoming SMS and Call notification - PC and Mac Software - Nokia Support Discussions
Re: No New Call Notification with the New 7.0 PC Suit - PC and Mac Software - Nokia Support Discussions
Web applications that I could not live without
I thought it was time I post about the web services that I could not live without. Basically, last week I bought a new Nokia E71 so that I could do as much work / organisation from my phone as possible. So, my ongoing drive is to have as much of my web accessible data available on my phone. This list is almost as much for me as it is for you, so I don’t forget things.
I seriously could not live without gmail. I have gmail check all my email accounts so that my mail is accessible from everywhere. It took a while to pry Outlook from my hands, but once I had done it, I never looked back. I am also able to check gmail from my phone with ease.
iGoogle, or google.com/ig is my start page. I have everything on it from all my news from Google News, all my latest RSS updates from Google Reader, all my latest statistics from Google Analytics, plus other things like the weather, a Remember The Milk widget and even a ‘This Day In History’ widget (I love my history). This is the absolute centre of my internet.
Remember the milk is an online task manager which can be as simple or as complex as you like. I am terrible at remembering ideas and todo’s. I originally tried todoist which was good, but I much preferred RTM. I have based my RTM lists on this awesome post on the RTM blog. I can share tasks or even entire lists with anybody else on RTM which makes working with the task manager so much easier as others can update my tasks for me. Also, RTM have a widget for iGoogle and a plugin for gmail (providing you use firefox, which you should) and can add tasks to your Google Calendar. I have definitely become more productive since using this and I continue to try and hone my RTM skills to get more from it. I am also trying to get RTM to sync with google via the iCalendar service and the Remote Calendars plugin for Outlook 2003 but have so far been unsuccessful. Doing this would allow me to put my tasks on my phone.
Google Calendar is a very good online calendar but because I use Outlook via an exchange server at work and we have Outlook on the home machines, I dont get much opportunity to use it for a primary calendar. But, what I do use it for is synchronising my home Outlook with my work Outlook using Google Calendar Sync which runs on my machines and updates my Google calendar with my Outlook appointments (which then gets sync’d to my other machines!).
Twitter is an odd one. People love it, hate it or just don’t get it. There are many sites offering ‘how to use twitter’ advice but its up to you. Basically, it is known as microblogging and you get 140 characters to update your audience with. I use it to post about new blog posts or news and I follow a few web developers, designers and other influential people to see when they have updated their blogs and sites. I use it with TweetDeck which is a desktop client for Twitter and makes Twittering much easier. Me on Twitter.
Flickr is an image hosting service. I started using the service this year as an alternative to Picasa web albums. As I have started dabbling in photography, being able to view images on Flickr based on the camera used is a big bonus for me. I can also upload directly from my mobile using the mobile tools. Me on flickr.
Delicious (formally del.icio.us) is an online bookmark manager. It seamlessly integrates with firefox using the available add-on. As I have crazy amounts of bookmarks with lots of design sites, code references, inspirational sites or even just sites I like, I can tag them and find them easily. Also, as its web based, it doesnt matter where I am, I can always get the link I need. I previously used Google Bookmarks but found Delicious to be better, easier and more intuitive. I can also share bookmarks among my friends (I have 2!). Me on Delicious.
Honourable Mentions
- Zyb – For backing up and managing contacts from many different sources. Great when you go through phones as often as I do. Me on Zyb.
- Plaxo – Another contact manager. This used to be my primary manager but I found that lately it has started adding so many new features that doing simple contact management is getting to be a bit tricky. Keep it simple, Plaxo! It is also great for updating your contacts with any activity on your social networking services. Me on Plaxo.
- Last.fm – The greatest music site ever. Listen to music via the site or the client based on bands that you like. Over time as you listen to more music, your own personal station becomes more tailored to your tastes. This is almost a ‘could not live without’ but I already had too many in that list. Me on Last.fm.
- Shelfari – This site is for book management. I read a lot of books, but I also find that a lot of the time I see or think of a book that I’d like to read at some stage but then I forget it. Not anymore, I just add it to my ‘like to read’ list on Shelfari. I can also add books and reviews. Me on Shelfari.
- LinkedIn – Linked in is more of a social networking site for professionals. You create connections between friends, associates and business partners. Its like a big online resume where you can give feedback about people you have worked with or look for jobs. It is a good way of keeping in touch with other professionals and see whats happening in your industry. Me on LinkedIn.
- Skylines Australia – Shameful plug for my own site. The greatest automotive site in the history of the internet.
Thats my list. I’ll create a new list soon of web sites that I cant live without (as opposed to web services or applications).
What can you not live without online? Do you use any of these services? Got any alternatives?
isearch, the people finder
Lifehacker today posted about a site called iSearch which allows its users to search for people online.
I read the post and I thought “great, there are a bunch of people i’d love to contact”. I went to the site and was a bit bummed that it thought that ‘Sydney’ meant ‘Sydney, FL’ and not ‘Sydney, NSW’ but anyway… The site kinda freaked me out a little bit.
Not only did I find myself on there with incorrect details (I was never the treasurer of Skylines Australia, I was president of the club and owner of the site) but when I noticed that it had a list of ‘Associates of Christian Biggins’ and they were people I knew, I felt a little strange. Sure, it called ‘SAU Cotm’ (Skylines Australia Car of the month) an associate of mine, it still listed real people there. This site knew my friends.
If that wasn’t enough, it offered an email address for me.
When you clicked on the link, it tried to sell you an email address for $1.69. Looking at the address and the strategically placed underscores, it does actually look like one of my addresses. Of course, anybody who actually knows me, knows that a simple google search of my name will bring up a helluva lot more info on me that this site.
But, it got me thinking. Where is this leading? What information of mine will be available to complete strangers (for a price?) in the future. I have always been a bit laid back about my online privacy as I am not an overly private guy to start with, but this has definitely got me thinking. Especially when you have contributed to as much of the internet as I have (and most of the time not using an alias).
Anyway. If you want to know anything about me. Just ask. 
In the meantime, I am going to decide whether I respect iSearch or despise it.
Looks like Picasa face recogniser needs some help.
Picasa was updated recently to include a new face recognition feature to allow you to group your photos by person once you had updated a few with their names (Like facebooks ‘tag’ feature).
This is a screen shot of Picasa on my sisters computer asking her for the name of her button.
Code merging. Its awful without good tools.
No developer likes to merge their code in with other code after finishing a big project. Its a royal pain in the ass. I find myself having to do it at work a lot (we have a largish team) and at home because at home, I somehow find that I have 84 copies of the same thing. So, I need to merge them together occasionally to keep things maintainable.
Merging is by far 10 times easier on Linux than windows. Linux is such a good development environment (apart for .net – but then, who uses .net anyway?). I would recommend getting VirtualBox, Fedora (or Ubuntu) and installing them on a windows machine. Even if you only use it for coding, profiling and merging / deploying. Its worth it and takes bugger all time to set up.
I am using Ubuntu on my VirtualBox. I prefer Fedora, but I found it hard to get higher resolutions with it. Anyway, I’m off topic.
Once you create your two directories or files that you need to merge or create a diff for. You can open one of the three programs;
My personal favourite is Meld. There are others out there. If you use something else, let me know about it.
Using one of these apps takes the hard work out of merging. In meld, you can match custom rules (for example, you can match all files in the ‘cache’ directory) and then ignore them.
Then, once your files / directories are merged, you can use something like KDESvn to commit them (if you are not savvy enough with the command line SVN client).
All done. Merged, Committed and time for a beer.
If you are unlucky to be on a Windows machine. No real biggy, but your choice of free clients becomes slim.
TortoiseSVN is the app of choice for interacting with an SVN repo.
Once you have the directories, you can merge them with WinMerge. I do find this app a little lacking. It doesn’t display the files in a heirarchical view, so diffing 10,000 files (which I did yesterday) just lists them all one by one and not within their directories.
I have heard a lot of good things about Beyond Compare but it is not free.
Let me know what you use for comparing, diffing and merging files.
Google Chrome released
After an impatient wait of ohh, say, 24 hrs (that’s when I initially found out about Chrome), Google has released Chrome as a public beta.
My first impressions are; wow!
In the ten minutes I have used this so far, I am already very impressed. You can see the feature list for chrome here. Or, you can view Lifehackers screenshot tour.
I loaded up my site Skylines Australia in Chrome and it loaded like it was a text document. It was so fast. I also especially like the source viewer and the DOM element inspector. Also, its minimal interface and the start page are also huge bonus’. Hell I could keep going, but all the features that I love are on the sites linked above. I’m looking forward to the first stable release.
Thanks Google (even if it is just another way to collect data about me).
Using lftp to transfer a large site
I own and run a fairly large site (www.skylinesaustralia.com) and have recently decided to give up the dedicated server it has been running on and move to a managed solution with mosso.
The problem for me was that mosso do not yet have ssh access due to their network config and this meant that I would need to transfer SAU over FTP from my server. (6.5GB uncompressed database and 60GB file structure meant that this wasn’t going to be pretty).
For anybody that has dabbled in Command Line FTP transfers, its not very pleasant. FTP doesnt natively support recursive transfers (this is performed at the client level) so transferring my site non recursively would have been painful for even the most boring-job lovers. This coupled with the fact that it does not offer any form of synchronising incase the connection drops (which occurs a lot in ftp) or if we needed to transfer over several sessions. Enter lftp. This extremely cool little ssh based app is like an ftp client on steroids.
Now, these instructions are for a rhel based OS (I am on CentOS 4.5) but wouldn’t be hard to make them work on other OS’s.
So, to start, we will need lftp installed;
$ yum -y install lftp
Now, lftp has an awesome ‘mirror’ feature which does just that, mirrors one directory to another. We can also specify to only transfer newer files so we can launch the transfer as many times as we want and it will only transfer changed / new files (like rsync).
So, we launch lftp like so;
$ lftp -u username,password –e “set net:timeout 0” –e “mirror --reverse –verbose -n /local/directory remote/dir” ftp.yourftpserver.com
This does the following;
- -u specifies the username and password for the server you are connecting to
- -e allows you to ‘queue’ commands. So, instead of waiting for lftp to be ready for the next command, we can write it all in one statement and it will just run them in order.
- The first command is “set net:timeout 0” – this is just to disable the timeouts with lftp. Some of my directories contained hundreds and hundreds of subdirectories and it would timeout when reading them.
- The second command is the good one, its for mirroring two directories and its commands are;
- -revserse just switches the order of the directories (ie local remote, not remote local)
- -verbose just displays what lftp is doing
- -n copies only new files
- The final argument is the remote ftp server.
This has worked flawlessly for me several times now and it is the only command line ftp method I use. The standard ftp client on *nix boxes is ridiculous.
Let me know how you go with running this.
What does google know about you?
Odds are, everything!
In a recent post about Googles data storage on SeoMoz.org it is revealed just how much data is stored about you by the Internet Behemoth.
Firefox 3 gets a release date.
That's right and we don't have long to wait either. 17th of June. 5 Days away.