Colin Charles Agenda

Today I read that co.mments bit the dust. Another web service (who remembers the I Want Sandy discussion a while back), ceasing to exist (though from what I see, a lot of folk are using Disqus more).

It got me a little worried. I rely quite a bit on online services.

• Bookmarking, once previously living in my bookmark.htm file, now is shared on delicious. It has proven to be invaluable, storing 3,108 bookmarks. They are a Yahoo! run company.
• Photo storage and sharing, once previously sitting in directories on my web server, are now kept on my Flickr account. Flickr is great, because I can share photos with just friends, family, or participate in a vibrant community of photo enthusiasts. I currently have 16,813 items stored there, with backups on various media sitting in my various homes. They are a Yahoo! run company, and I happily pay them for a Pro account.
• I depend on Google Reader (read my shared items) to read RSS feeds. In fact, I have been sharing items as a form of bookmarking them. Ditto with adding stars to items. Don’t say Google doesn’t close services – they have.
• I use Google Calendar, because it simply rocks. I also use Google Docs, and I also use GMail (hosted, and regular).
• I use Twitter, who has no business model, as of yet. I like it over FriendFeed for one minor detail – I can update via SMS.

Most of these services have ways for you to get your data out of them, assuming they don’t exist in due time. But what will replace them?

Sure there are desktop applications. But with the variety of devices I utilise, I’m trying to cut down from using desktop applications and just focus on working online. In fact, all that is open now is Firefox, Adium, iTunes, TextMate (where I carve this text out), Terminal, Skype and twhirl. On my work laptop, its just Thunderbird, Firefox, Terminal, and Skype that’s open.

So maybe I need less desktop applications. It’s good, because that’s the hope of online services – live right in your browser.

But in tough(er) times, what do you do if the online service you use, disappears? Where’s the continuity (i.e. will my grandkids be able to browse my Flickr photo albums?)

I do wonder, if this will lead to more open source, peer-to-peer/federated run, online services. Like if Twitter folds up, who’s to say its excellent community won’t move to identi.ca ? (till then though, the latter probably doesn’t stand a chance, besides the very geeky top-of-the-trend open source folk…)

For work, the good days of using Tunnelblick are over, and I’m now using the Cisco VPNClient.

Today it greeted me with a message:

Error 51: Unable to communicate with the VPN subsystem.
Please make sure that you have at least one network interface that is currently active and has an IP address and start this application again.

The thing is, I already had the wireless going, and it had an IP. Macworld tells me to do:

sudo SystemStarter restart CiscoVPN

You can also do:

sudo /System/Library/StartupItems/CiscoVPN/CiscoVPN restart

They both work. Let’s hope this is not a regular recurrenceannoyance.

Raj Kissu is in the papers today. He completed a Google Summer of Code 2008 project with MySQL, hacking on blob streaming for phpMyAdmin. In fact, his project was so good, he has commit access to the phpMyAdmin tree :-)

Today, The Star had an article about him (and two other students), titled For the love of code. He said:

But Raj has already heard ­inquiries for his project. “A ­company that has developed a transactional engine using MySQL server have clients who want to test BlobStreaming,” he said.

Kudos Raj. I think we’ll see more great work from Paul McCullagh and Barry Leslie, as more happens with Scalable BLOB Streaming for MySQL happens.

In fact, Barry Leslie from PrimeBase will be speaking about blob streaming in his talk titled BLOB Streaming: Efficient reliable BLOB handling for all storage engines, at the MySQL Conference & Expo 2009. What are you waiting for – register now and save! See you at CE2009!

So, its a few hours before MacWorld 2009, and I’m contemplating getting an iPhone 3G. December 2008 has come and gone, and there is no sign of Apple partnering with any telco, or deciding to sell unlocked units in Malaysia, much to my annoyance. No, no, I love my Nokia E71, I’m just researching the iPhone 3G.

David runs MyMacBuzz, and has a useful resource available: Where to get legally unlocked iPhone 3G (updated). Many folk on Twitter also helped, and pointed me to iWorld (horrible Flash based website).

iWorld sells the 16GB edition for RM3,099, and the 8GB one for RM2,899. Its all unlocked, and nice. I couldn’t help but mosey over and compare it though, with other countries (I’m told unlocked versions are sold in Singapore too, I just couldn’t find the price online, easily).

• 8GB: iWorld (RM2,899), NZ Vodafone (NZD$979 = RM2,005), HK Apple Store (HKD$5,400 = RM2,437)
• 16GB: iWorld (RM3,099), NZ Vodafone (NSD$1,129 = RM2,308), HK Apple Store (HKD$6,200 = RM2,806)

This is what I like to see – seen at the Apple Store Hong Kong

Apparently, Optus is selling the iPhone 3G 8GB for AUD$729 (which is only RM1,820), but to unlock it you’ve got to be on a contract (I wonder if my AUD$5 contract applies? Probably not).

iWorld apparently provides a warranty for seven days, but beyond that, you’re on your own – they’ll help you out if need be, but I guess if something goes wrong, you’re on your own.

I know there have been lots of MacWorld predictions and wishes, but my hope is that we’ll see iPhones available in more regions, unlocked, even.

On the 24th of December 2008, I came back from my little hiatus in Georgetown, Penang (in where I discovered the heritage and history of the city), and immediately started ringing up Apple Authorised Resellers to find out where in the blue hell, the new MacBook Air was. (Emphasis on the new, because all the resellers try to push the old one, to clear out their stock – in fact, they actively discourage you from getting the new one, saying the only modifications are the bigger hard disk, and better video card. They don’t mention the new Trackpad option in System Preferences, that leads you to four finger scrolling which allows you to bring up Expose or switch between applications – Mac+Tab).

Its constant delays, the fact that it was supposed to be out after Thanskgiving weekend, and so on, started really getting on my nerves. I had been waiting for this feather-weight laptop for a while, since the announcement.

Machines had none, and didn’t know when it was coming. EpiCentre had none, and didn’t know when it was coming. So I thought I’d take a chance at calling up the Apple Store Malaysia at 1800-80-6419. They even advertise saying things like “Kami juga berinteraksi dalam Bahasa Malaysia!”, which I loosely translate as “We can interact in Bahasa Malaysia too!”.

I get someone who barely speaks any English. But she has an accent. I ask her why they don’t sell any Air’s, and the fact that Christmas is tomorrow, how am I supposed to make my loved ones happy? She tells me she has no idea why and EpiCentre is the best place to ask. If they don’t have it, no one else will.

I say I will come into their office to pick a unit up. They tell me that that is not possible, they’re not Apple Retail. I say I know where such an office exists (I’ve vaguely remembered it from eons ago), and then she tells me she’s in *drumroll* Singapore.

So there, Apple’s support line for Malaysia routes to Singapore, and they’re generally not very helpful. And apparently, their QA on language skills is just not there. In fact, had I started off a conversation with her in Bahasa Malaysia, I have a feeling she wouldn’t have survived – Mandarin, maybe.

As an aside, EpiCentre in Pavillion had a couple of units available on 30/12/2008. I think as of today, they have one unit available… Go, go, rush to get ’em :-)

I just never have the luck with network printers. My purchase last year (yes, hello 2009) was a HP LaserJet M1522nf MFP – its a network printer with fax/copying/printing/scanning capabilities.

What annoys me about it is that in Fedora 8, I could only print via the network – there was no way I could scan via the network. The story unfortunately, is similar on Mac OS X – the HP Scan application only works when the USB dongle is connected, which kind of defeats the purpose of a networked multi-function device. In Microsoft Windows land however, one can scan via the network!

Is there a multi-function device, that is a laser printer, and is affordable, that allows one to print and scan via the network on Linux and Mac OS X? I just want to de-clutter in 2009.