...more recent posts
In Microsoft Word (from Office 2004 Mac edition, at least) if you try to sum a column of numbers with either =SUM(above) or =SUM(below) it will just stop counting at 85 rows no matter how many rows you have! And it gives no error! Holy shit. What a pile of crap. Why can't they be sued for something like this? I wonder how many people have billed incorrectly because of this bug?
Very clever javascript date library: datejs.
Full Apache, PHP, and MySQL stack coming to the S60 mobile environment (Nokia is calling it PAMP.)
In addition, there will be PHP extension modules that provide access to the core functionality of the phone. And on top of PAMP you can basically install any LAMP based content management system. For instance, Drupal can be installed off the shelf.This is exactly what I thought the iPhone was going to allow, and the reason for my initial jaw droppery over that device. Now if only the N95 wasn't like $1000!
Crap. Spent all morning trying to (re) install MySQL server on my somewhat new OS X 10.5 system (the 10.4 mysql package does work.) What a pain. Still not sure what the issue was, but it kept ending on startup. The useful clue I found was to look in the file ending with .err in the mysql data directory. This is where error messages get written, and indeed it informed me that I already had something (another instance of mysqld) running on port 3306. So I just killed that and then restarted the new server. Would have been more helpful if that error was directed to stdout as well as the file but I guess you can't have everything.
Been buried since early morning, so didn't get a chance to even look at my RSS until now. Amazon released Kindle, an eBook reader. It's really strange. Described as "the iPod of reading." Has an EVDO cellular modem in it to connect with Amazon. It costs $399, but has no monthly charge. $9.99 to download a book. All first chapters free.
And it will surf the web ("basic" web surfing, so might not that great yet) and do email. And $.99/ month for blog subscriptions (RSS?)
This is not going to work, but really interesting / strange / frightening business model to give away the computer and the wireless connection, but then sit as gatekeeper and charge for everything.
Drag and drop sortable lists with javascript and CSS. Been possible for a while, but this is a nice resource. And this is probably the last major piece I still need to integrate in Geneva.
CBS to blanket a big chunk of midtown with free (ad supported) WiFi:
CBS Corporation has announced today that it will "light up" midtown Manhattan with the creation of the "CBS Mobile Zone," a wireless high-speed network enabling New Yorkers with Wi-Fi-enabled cell phones, laptops or other devices to access the Internet for free, and make voice over internet (VOI) calls.
The zone will be from Times Square to Central Park South and from 6th Avenue to 8th Avenue and is a test in partnership with the MTA.
You might be asking what CBS gets out of the deal - ad impressions! New Yorkers who access the "CBS Mobile Zone," will be greeted by an ad-supported homepage that includes hyperlocal content such as breaking local and national news, sports highlights, weather reports, music discovery, wallpapers, ringtones, maps, a social network and the ability to search for nearby restaurants, shops and entertainment complete with geographically- targeted community reviews. Citi and Salesgenie.com(TM) have signed on to be early sponsors of the Wi-Fi HotZone.
In a complete shock that doesn't actually make much difference in my life, Bruce Chizen has stepped down as CEO of Adobe. Wow. A few years ago I was pretty sure Adobe was on a road to no where. And they still might be, but they've made a lot of what seem like good moves to me since then. And now they are poised to really duke it out and be a big force in the future direction of not just the web, but computing itself. Why would anyone step down at this point?
I guess there could be a ton of personal reasons, but it's hard to figure there is a better or more interesting job out there.
htmlSQL : "a PHP class to query the web by an SQL-like language." That is just so wrong. Yet it's perfect. As they say, if you have a hammer every problem looks like a nail. So since I'm comfortable in SQL this seems very useful. Still I know it's just so wrong.
I thought I had blogged about Opera adding support for HTML 5 <audio> and <video> tags which replace the very messy <embed> situation we have now (which is one of the big reasons that embedding video in a web page is mostly done with Flash at the moment.) But I can't find it, so I guess it was one of those many things I almost blogged about but never actually got around to posting. Anyway, yesterday WebKit annouced support as well (WebKit is the rendering engine at the heart of Apple's Safari browser, as well as the open source KHTML - from which Safari was born - plus Nokia's mobile browser and now Google's mobile browser in their new Android mobile OS platform.) And there is some really straightforward javascriptable capabilities:
<script>
function playPause() {
var myVideo = document.getElementsByTagName('video')[0];
if (myVideo.paused)
myVideo.play();
else
myVideo.pause();
}
</script>
<input type=button onclick="playPause()" value="Play/Pause"/>
Nice. I've tried playing around with scripting the embedded quicktime player, and it's a real pain. This seems much better. I've been wondering for a while why Apple has let Flash get such a lead here. I think a lot of developers would rather an HTML / javascript solution, but you basically are forced to use Flash now because it just works.