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A Chip Off The Old Block

July 25th, 2008 by Tom Sepper

tag Category : Family & Friends, Katie Lynn, Technology
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iPhone OS 2.0 Evaluation

July 11th, 2008 by Tom Sepper

Now that the iPhone OS 2.0 is out, time for me to write my evaluation.

I’ve previously listed (here and here) my wishlists, and it looks like some of them have actually been resolved:

  • BCC ability — fixed by Apple!
  • Distribution List ability — still MIA.
  • Mulit-client chat (YIM, AIM, Jabber) — still MIA as one client.
  • Contacts having own home screen icon — fixed by Apple!
  • SSH terminal with bookmark support — MIA and likely will remain that way.

Two out of five isn’t bad!

The AppStore is awesome though. Apple Remote is flawless, and the Facebook and MySpace applications work as expected. WeatherBug is a nice addition as well.

Of all the improvements Apple made, there are two that stick out (in addition to the above two already listed):

  • Ability to delete/move multiple emails at a time
  • Multiple calendar support

All in all, OS 2.0 is a great step forward. I can’t wait to see what 3.0 brings!

tag Category : Apple, Technology
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Safari, Firefox, Camino.. Oh My!

April 6th, 2008 by Tom Sepper

From an earlier blog entry, I’ve already explained my personal browser war. I have finally made a choice after a few software updates as well as finding some very helpful plugins.

My browser of choice is now Safari 3.1. 

First off, to address Safari’s inadequacies I outlined in my previous post:

  • WordPress released version 2.5 which fixes the TinyMCE issue.
  • I realized that I didn’t have that many Firefox extensions installed; and those that I did I found suitable Safari replacements.
  • Having to export and import my bookmarks when they change in order to keep my iPhone up-to-date was a major pain. Using Safari obviously fixes that natively.
  • I no longer use Outlook Web Access, so this is a moot point.
As for the plugins I found to replicate Firefox extensions:

The two plugins require the SIMBL application to be installed.

I have two Greasemonkey scripts installed: Show Password onMouseOver and Spelling Cow all text fields.

My question to those reading this — which Greasemonkey scripts do you find indispensable?

tag Category : Apple, Technology
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My iPhone Software Wishlist (SDK)

March 6th, 2008 by Tom Sepper

Everyone has their list; here’s mine:

  • Multi-protocol Chat Client. Hell, if I had my way, Adium would be ported ASAP!
  • SSH terminal with bookmark support.
  • Real Address Book - not a section of the phone.

I guess my earlier suggestions and wish list still apply as well, but those need to come from Apple.

tag Category : Apple, Technology
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Anatomy of a Twitter Replacement

November 29th, 2007 by Tom Sepper

Twitter seems to be all-the-rage in the tech circles these days. When I was trying to find an easy way for Monica and me to update Katie Lynn’s website, I decided to give Twitter a try. It worked well usually, but I noticed the external javascript calls slowed down page load time dramatically. Additionally, customization ability is lacking. I loved being able to send a text message to update the site, but I wanted the ability to email updates as well.

So I set out to find a replacement. I thought that would be simple.

Boy was I wrong.

I searched for a long time and finally found some very basic framework. Luckily, I’m not too shabby with PHP and was able to write everything I wanted:

  • Accept text messages, emails, and web submissions.
  • Parse the text message/email into variables.
  • Insert the variables into a MySQL database.
  • Display records any way I want.
  • Allow people to subscribe to receive an email upon a new update.
  • Load fast!

I then wrote an extremely easy admin interface to be able to edit the entries.

There are five main files to the application:

  • Parser - as the name indicates, it parses the text and email submissions.
  • Admin - all admin functions including posting via web.
  • Notifier - emails subscribers upon all new updates.
  • Subscribe - as indicated, performs the subscription action as requested by the visitor.
  • Unsubscribe - as indicated, unsubscribes a subscriber upon their request.

The beauty of my system is that it does not need a cronjob. Instead, I simply piped an email address to the parser script’s full path.

And voilà!

I have a nice, simple Twitter replacement.

tag Category : Technology, Twitter Killer, Web Development
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