On APIs

The web, in it's so-called 2.0 age, has spawned a movement that prescribes the philosophy of freedom of information. In so doing, new web-based applications (digg, twitter, anything from 37signals) have created "API"s, a fairly accurately name. However, in thinking back to the desktop application market and the operating systems that they run upon, we see the use of the term API. The programatic functionality provided by these APIs is wholly different from those on the web. The desktop APIs provide access to actions to be taken on behalf of the application or some other form of functionality. Information is undoubtedly an aspect but, it is not the focus. On the other hand, we see the APIs of the web. These APIs offer, primarily, the methods enabling some external party access to information and the capability to submit/insert/update information within the originating application. With the differences that exist between the two forms of API, why do they share this nomenclature?

I suggest something like "AIT", or Application Information Transport, be used to describe this new form of API.

The Original Wikipedia

For anyone who has ever read the exceptional series, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, this website will be more familiar to you than anyone else. The concept behind the guide of which the stories surround is a comprehensive collection of all information available in the universe. In the story, one of the primary characters is, unbeknownst to his friend Arthur Dent, an alien writer for the guide.

Here is the online version of the guide, a website initiated by Douglas Adams. http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/

Now, for anyone familiar with the goals of Wikipedia the story of the guide does not appear to be the same concept, aside from being a massive collection of knowledge. It is in the realization of the H2G2 website that the community effort takes center stage. So, we can see, the core concepts of the Wiki movement may have been started in the 90's by an ingenious author.

A Concise Response to an Inaccurate ZDNet Article

The article I will be responding to can be found here: Leopard looks like...Vista

I will simply respond to the ten point list the author published, so if you need to see what the article said, please check it.

In response:

1. No, the Vista Sidebar was in response to Apple's Dashboard, introduced in Tiger. As far as aero is concerned I cannot find any real parallel. Also, the real improvements to the desktop were in the dock with the introduction of Stacks, something Windows lacks entirely. However, the author skipped over that part.

2. Instant Search is, again, a response to Apple's Spotlight, introduced in Tiger. Notice the lack of gaudy transparency around the border of every window, which is one of the prime "features" of aero. Furthermore, Cover Flow in Finder is a method for browsing files whereas Flip 3D is a method for switching between application windows. Obviously, the two share nothing aside from being three-dimensional effects.

3. QuickLook is NOT a thumbnail. Thumbnail previews of certain documents do not allow you to scroll through the pages of the document, the slides of a keynote, or watch a video.

4. Actually Leopard is the first to be 64-bit from "top to bottom". There are quite a few problems with Vista's 64-bit "support", not the least of which is driver and application support. In addition, 32-bit applications still run on Leopard without any difficulty and the argument that 32-bit still matters doesn't apply. The author seems to have forgotten that, as Jobs mentioned, almost every Mac computer is running a 64-bit processor. In fact all but the Mac Mini and the low-end iMac have Core 2 Duo processors, which offer the wondrous 64-bit technology.

5. Core Animation, not important. Somehow I don't believe the author was at WWDC because if you watch the keynote, the crowd applauds profusely and, if you read any articles by Mac developers in the past 2 months you'll hear plenty of excitement about Core Animation. As a matter of fact, quite a few major developers are bringing their next applications out as Leopard-only, mostly due to Core Animation.

6. Boot Camp has nothing to do with Leopard looking like Vista. In fact, it means the users aren't only running Tiger, they're running windows too. An entirely different argument.

7. You're right, Vista doesn't have this. As far as being excited about it, it isn't a developer accessible technology so I am not surprised the 5000+ developers did not get very excited. It is an end-user feature and the argument is again, entirely unrelated.

8. Dashboard, as I mentioned earlier, is a feature of Tiger, released well before Vista.
9. For starters, the technology that you mention, Meeting Space, is not actually a video- or audio-conferencing tool. Second, it is not a presentation tool, it is a collaboration suite. Lastly, the application you may be looking for is Windows Live Messenger, which does not offer any of the presentation or extended video-chatting capabilities. Messenger cannot do audio- or video-chatting and does not even work on a local network, it requires an internet connection. All of these applications have a variety of features that the others do not, my point is merely that this is another inaccurate comparison by the author.

Wikipedia - Meeting Space

10. Time Machine. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of non-Mac users. It is not always about the features. It more often about the intelligence, ease-of-use, and logical patterns found in the application, while still maintaining the customization that power-users require. That quality is what Time Machine brings to the table. It makes it a no-brainer to configure and makes it even easier to retrieve a file. If you know where the file was, you just go back "in time" through that folder. If you don't know where a file was, use a spotlight search and search back through that method. I'd like anyone to volunteer if they use Volume Shadow Copy on a regular or automatic basis, please reply in the comments, with usage examples.

WIkipedia - VSC

Safari 3 Beta

For Mac OS X and...WINDOWS?!

Yes folks, that is the case. It would seem the success of iTunes on Windows has lead Steve to think that Safari is the best browser and will take Windows by storm. I can't really form an opinion on that at this time but, I have found a few new little features in the Safari 3 Beta.

First, we finally get live searching!




The same searching is available while viewing source.




There is also a new element inspector available to provide information on the style, metrics, and element properties.










I presume this new Safari will be released in-full and with a new unified look in October with Leopard.

Anything else I find that is new I will report here.

A Brief Ruby On Rails Install

On a debian system, that is properly configured, ruby on rails can be installed in six command-line steps.

1. sudo apt-get install ruby1.8 ruby1.8-dev rdoc libruby1.8 libzlib-ruby ri1.8
2. wget rubygems (currently available here. I'm sure this will change in the future)
3. tar -zxvf rubygems
4. cd rubygems
5. ruby setup.rb
6. sudo gem install rails mongrel postgres-rb --include-dependencies

Aaaannnnd, we're done!

On Mac, for testing purposes, just use locomotive. Despite mysql, migrations make it easy to ignore which database you use in production.

Coda, someone got it right! Where to go from here.

Thank you, Panic Software, for making such a wonderful application. I have been using Coda for a good bit of time now and I love it. There were two things missing from my old method of development and testing using textmate, safari and terminal.

First, I spent far too much time in terminal and textmate without a well managed set of sites, ssh/scp, subversion, and other related info as well as lacking any sort of information on the project. I have tried to manage my site info with Serverskine but, I just couldn't get it where I wanted it. Serverskine had information I didn't need and was lacking fields that I did need. It also lacked sufficient ties to other applications.

Second, good tabbed terminal. I know there are other terminal applications out there but, nothing is as good as terminal in my opinion, even without tabs. It is pretty darn quick and the simplicity is worth it. All I really wanted was tabbed windows and perhaps some ties to the aforementioned information.

Oh and it is drop-dead gorgeous, too!

Now, what would be even better is the intertwining of information that Apple has in OS X. iTunes, iPhoto, and iMovie all create a pile of media that is accessible to many other applications or, any application that wishes to take advantage of the little media browser.

What I would like to see is Serverskine become a truly useful app with ties to a terminal that is fast, simple, lightweight and tabbed. In addition, ties should be made to textmate which, face it, is still the longstanding king of text. I still use TM for so much. Top it all of with great control of subversion or cvs in a freestanding application that, again, allows simple tie-ins from other applications. Specifically simple access to commit, update, add and delete from an existing subversion repository.

What I'm Looking Forward to in OS X 10.5 Leopard

Of all the things Apple has posted on their Leopard "Sneak Preview" page, I believe that the next iteration of iChat is the thing I look forward to, the most. Yes, I know, TimeMachine is beautiful and functional and I would really love to have it but, it doesn't hold a candle to the functionality of iChat. Being able to videochat and show a slideshow, keynote, or, with an invite, control another user's mac with remote desktop, without any setup, through iChat; it all makes my mouth water.

Some of iChat's features I could care less about, such as: video with backgrounds or tabbed chats (I already have it quite nicely with chax.) Just the remote desktop over iChat alone would make my life of habitually repairing any and every problem with the computers of my family, friends and their pets, infinitely easier. Just imagine, if you will, the utility (not to mention awe) of fixing a family member's computer, while they watch you work your 'voodoo computer-magic.' I look forward to it and I am willing to wait until October.

Frustration; Data Stuctures

I'm so close to graduation. The second project of the semester in my CS course, Data Structures, is aggravating. Maybe it's the teacher, maybe it's senioritis but, either way, I just can't get past the intricate requirements that C++ has in place for reasons, it seems, simply to frustrate me.

For example, I have a templated PRQuadTree (which is only good for one thing) and yet it must be templated. While implementing the delete method I realize that we find the item to be deleted using the coordinates, but we only really want to delete one element from the vector stored by the element in the tree. In a normal data structure I would just delete the node but now I have to do a song and dance to make sure the offset is in the vector and delete it, if it is empty then delete the node. This violates the templating quite a bit. The only way I can get away with it is by implementing some backwards-ass method in the comparator that every element to be inserted would then have to implement as well in order to use this PRQuadTree.

Grrr...

How-to: Reorganize "Rolls" in iPhoto 6

If you are anything like me, you will eventually find yourself importing pictures from a source other than directly from a digital camera. This may not seem like much of a problem until you understand that the "rolls" that iPhoto defines its file structure from the process of importing pictures. If you import files from somewhere other than a camera it is named with an arbitrary roll number. The roll name is then used to define the file structure. This will eventually grow out-of-hand. Here's what you do to avoid this messy situation.

1. Open iPhoto

2. Select View->Film Rolls (shift-apple-F)



3. Drag individual or groups of photos (including the header for a roll, which will take all of the pictures within) and drag it to another roll's header



4. If you wish to rename a roll, as is often the case, click a roll's header and extend the information (little 'i') from the bottom left corner. You can see that the title of the roll is shown in this information, from which you may edit it at your leisure

That should be all you need. When you reopen iPhoto it may ask you to re-index or re-organize your thumbnails.

The resulting file structure should look like this:

VMWare Fusion Beta 2

I think I'll give Fusion another shot now that beta 2 has been released.

The beta is available for free with registration.

You can all read their website and the abundant news on various Apple blogs to find out what has changed. I'll post back here with any improvements I experience.