Comments for The Hardware is Not Enough

Comment on "Stay away from “StoresOnline International”" by

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 22:23:46 +0000

If you have real experience with StoresOnline software or Customer Service, please leave a response. http://storesonlinesuccess.wordpress.com/ Thank you.

Comment on "Virgin Mobile GPRS access from a Palm OS device" by Rob

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 13:50:48 +0000

Might be the driver that's a problem. Try experimenting with the phone driver you've picked. But often you need the exact one for your phone, or else it doesn't work.

Comment on "Virgin Mobile GPRS access from a Palm OS device" by Ian Franklin

Sat, 29 Mar 2008 11:51:03 +0000

I've tried above but can't get it to work. Do I need a script. I'm using a Nokia 6300 with a Palm TX. The Nokia connects to the net and sends/rec email OK. I had been getting messages on the Palm saying I needed to subscribe to a packet data service which I couldn't understand as GPRS was already working. Any help appreciated.

Comment on "MT-MyBlogLog" by Rob

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 17:33:26 +0000

Well, it does and it doesn't. The old method seems to be either deprecated or just being badly tended, so that some Avatars work and some don't (so mine, for instance, works fine on this comment), and it doesn't seem to matter whether the user signed up for MyBlogLog recently, a long time ago, or not at all. Indeed, MyBlogLog is still suggesting the WordPress MyAvatars plug-in as a good alternative for putting avatars by comments in WordPress blogs, even though it uses the same method as this plug-in The 'hash' in the new widget is technically the MyBlogLog user's user id, but there's no way as far as I can tell – and I've been looking through the new MyBlogLog API closely – to work out what someone's ID is from their URL. However, it might be possible to extract the avatar or ID from the MyBlogLog widget's 'latest visitor' item.

Comment on "MT-MyBlogLog" by Tom Keating

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 17:13:30 +0000

Rob, Just thought you should now that MyBlogLog no longer supports URL encoding of avatars. Looks like it is now some sort of "hash" instead. i.e. something like this: I believe the Yahoo acquisition is what caused the change. Ah well.

Comment on "Virgin Mobile GPRS access from a Palm OS device" by

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 18:10:05 +0000

Excellent help and much appreciated

Comment on "Skype WiFi phone" by Johny3172

Fri, 25 Jan 2008 20:01:08 +0000

I want to connect a regular phoneset to a skype wifi phone. My goal is to use an old style phone I have on a regular phone hook-up with Skype service without a lot of cables. If a Wi-Fi skype phone had a phone hook-up on it... I thought to have a Wireless Bridge to get the internet signal from Wi-Fi and connect to a Skype router and my old phone to that. It still have a lot of wires around. Can you help or know anyone who have idea to do it with less cords?

Comment on "MT4: Finally made it" by

Fri, 21 Dec 2007 01:06:15 +0000

Yes, couldnt agree with you more. MT 4 is very falky. Checkout out technosailors review. He brings up some good points.

Comment on "Movable Type 4 beta" by towersys

Thu, 20 Dec 2007 23:58:49 +0000

Hey Rob, came across your blog whilst googling for a media player plugin for entries. Good read. Version 4 was long overdue and I was really expecting more from Six Apart. At the very least they should have had made sure that most of the popular plugins were MT 4 ready. Not to mention some nice command line importing/exporting and rebuild scripts just to make upgrading that little bit easier. There's this huge reliance on the community for these sorts of things and i think its kinda cheeky considering MT is pretty much commercial software, despite this step toward free additions and an Open Source version...

Comment on "The future of HTML" by Rob Buckley

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 13:43:30 +0000

It's at editor's draft status, so it's a while off from the public draft and being incorporated into any browsers. So at least a year to two years away, I reckon.

Comment on "The future of HTML" by Norton

Wed, 21 Nov 2007 10:47:47 +0000

Any news when the new HTML version is about to come out? I'm wondering how quick, if ever, this will become a new standard for web site development. Can you post some more information about what W3 plans are in this matter? Cheers,Norton

Comment on "MT4: not yet" by Rob Buckley

Tue, 04 Sep 2007 22:51:23 +0000

Thanks. I had seen that Simply Threaded had been released and I almost upgraded my blogs on the strength of that. But your own Media Manager's still at beta stage (it was only at alpha when I last had the time to contemplate the upgrade), the version of MT it needs to work (MT 4.01) is only in beta as well and has performance issues according to the known issues and various ProNet mutterings, MT-Blogroll's still not there yet, and MT-Notifier will be coming at some point just not yet. So I'm still not quite ready - and neither's MT! – for me to make the jump! But I'm hoping we both will be at some point - I rather liked the look of Mintifier.

Comment on "MT4: not yet" by Byrne Reese

Tue, 04 Sep 2007 04:00:44 +0000

Just a quick FYI - Arvind has released Simply Threaded for Movable Type 4.0 and I just released Media Manager for 4.0 as well. Take a look also at Clean Sweep for MT4 and many more amazing plugins in the plugin directory!

Comment on "Movable Type 4 beta" by Rob Buckley

Sun, 29 Jul 2007 22:27:05 +0000

Thanks for letting me know. Fast Search is a really invaluable plug-in, particularly for reducing server load, so I definitely won't be going to MT4 until it's been updated. Fortunately, one of the latest betas fixed the problems that were causing most plug-ins to work, but I'm still waiting for documentation and MT Media Manager and MT Blogroll as well before I make the leap.

Comment on "Movable Type 4 beta" by Mark Carey

Tue, 10 Jul 2007 21:02:33 +0000

Hi Rob, Fast Search will be updated for MT4. Early indications are that it will require quite a bit of work under the hood. As soon as Six Apart releases some developer docs in this area, I will be doing an MT4 version of Fast Search -- hopefully it will be ready for the MT4 launch, if not before. SmartRebuild should become unnecessary in MT, but I have not yet checked the MT4 code in this area. But not long after I released SmartRebuild, 6A checked in a very similar fix into a development branch of the MT code. I assume that made into MT4, but I am not sure.

Comment on "Death of Mac Windows Media Player nothing but bad news" by Rob Buckley

Wed, 08 Feb 2006 17:50:22 +0000

"The statement, "F4m isn't very good", I have problems with. I don't see it that way." No offence, mate, but isn't that because you work for the company that develops Flip4Mac, Telestream?

Comment on "Death of Mac Windows Media Player nothing but bad news" by Antonio

Wed, 08 Feb 2006 17:44:51 +0000

The statement, "F4m isn't very good", I have problems with. I don't see it that way. Sure, there are some sites that won't stream, but that's because of all the many different protocols, formats, codecs and network variables. The F4M people are working to make any, that are presented to them, compatible. If you have a site in quiestion, send the link to support@flip4mac.com. Use that email to report any other anomalies as well. This is NOT a Microsoft company and they aren't run by them, so they really want to be successful and are responding to the requests of the users. DRM is still up in the air, but negotiations are under way to possibly add compatibility.

Comment on "Google Pack builds on Google trust" by Michael Zarb

Fri, 03 Feb 2006 03:00:54 +0000

How hard would it be for Google to lose their reputation for being trusted ? I think Google has put is trustability at risk by not taking appropriate measures to monitor the reliability of sites that use its AdWords service. I say this because sponsored links where riding on Google's Trust reputation, but as the popularity of Google AdWords grew, less reliable "entrepreneurs" took advantage of the service and I believe this may eventually have an impact on the click rate as more searchers are directed to spammers and phishers or other generally insecure and dubious sites through Google's Sponsored links. I think recent news that hackers scan through Google reinforce such risks. What I am uncertain about is whether Google's Marketing machine will ever find it remotely challenging to deal with recovering trust. None the less it begs me to question notions that trust is easier lost then gained. Michael Zarb (Student MSc ADMIS LSE)

Comment on "Nokia 6630 continues to annoy" by Hubert

Tue, 24 Jan 2006 23:59:38 +0000

Simcard not registered, disconnecting and bluetooth problems is solved with firmware upgrade - I upgraded mine (at the customer service) and the mentioned problems are gone. The size of the phone, however, remains the same after upgrade :-)

Comment on "ZFS goes open source" by Jesse

Fri, 20 Jan 2006 00:11:58 +0000

Agreed, I think Apple should consider using ZFS.

Comment on "Curious new Safari bug" by Rob Buckley

Tue, 17 Jan 2006 08:23:07 +0000

Thanks. It turns out to be a known issue in 10.4.4 if you have .Mac syncing enabled. One of the improvements to Safari in 10.4.4 is the syncing of read articles in RSS feeds via .Mac, but it has a nasty side-effect...

Comment on "Curious new Safari bug" by Ian

Tue, 17 Jan 2006 00:14:15 +0000

Also on 10.4.4 but not seeing this behaviour on either of my machines.

Comment on "Google Maps revisited" by Rob Buckley

Mon, 16 Jan 2006 13:29:49 +0000

First thing I did. But I'll try it again, just to see if I imagined that. Thanks.

Comment on "Google Maps revisited" by Ian

Mon, 16 Jan 2006 13:28:08 +0000

UPDATE: found a solution: (http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Maps-API/ browse_frm/thread/795fe988c29b2986/aeb9d002dcd94251) Basically put the Javascript for the map in the head section and call it using 'body onload'

Comment on "Google Maps revisited" by Ian

Mon, 16 Jan 2006 13:02:47 +0000

I've got the same problem - I've integrated a google map into a web page. It works in everything except IE on PC! IE displays the map but then complains about a dnserror.

Comment on "Microsoft's Mac Business Unit is undergoing cutbacks" by Andy Ruff

Sun, 15 Jan 2006 15:42:50 +0000

Nadyne's got it right... March is not UB. What I said is, for Entourage, we have two things going on: -March release: Spotlight, Sync Services, and Smart Cards -Next release: development on universal binaries (only a minority of devs are working on the March release) and new features, quality improvements, etc. Basically the Entourage team is split in two: with a majority of our development focused on the next major version. Apologies if my overloading use of commas appeared confusing :).

Comment on "Microsoft's Mac Business Unit is undergoing cutbacks" by Nadyne Mielke

Sun, 15 Jan 2006 06:12:57 +0000

Universal binaries are coming in the next full version of Office:Mac. The March update is an updating to the existing Office:Mac 2004, and is not delivering universal binaries.

Comment on "Microsoft's Mac Business Unit is undergoing cutbacks" by Rob Buckley

Sat, 14 Jan 2006 23:36:27 +0000

Others think otherwise, however: The company also said that the Universal Binary transition may affect the timing of the next release of Mac Office and Mac Messenger. Although it plans to deliver Entourage and Messenger updates in March, these will not be native Intel applications Quoting Roz Ho, they go on: "We typically deliver new versions every two to three years, as this timeframe is when the majority of customers are ready for new productivity software. Moving to universal binaries will naturally impact our schedule, but we��re dedicated to bringing Office for Mac and Messenger for Mac to customers and making sure we deliver the highest quality products. We��ll know just how much the schedule will need to shift as soon as we��re able to fully test our current and forthcoming solutions on Intel-based Macs." It's all a bit confusing. Anyone want to clarify?

Comment on "Microsoft's Mac Business Unit is undergoing cutbacks" by Rob Buckley

Sat, 14 Jan 2006 23:19:21 +0000

But when Roz Ho was speaking, I got those two things as separate (ie March update for Sync Services and Spotlight, universal binaries for Messenger and Office "on track")

Comment on "Microsoft's Mac Business Unit is undergoing cutbacks" by Rob Buckley

Sat, 14 Jan 2006 23:17:01 +0000

However, looking back through the above comments, we find the following written by the program manager for Entourage himself, Andy Ruff (my blog seems to have acquired at least one very illustrious reader): As a Program Manager on Entourage, I'll speak merely to what my team's been up to. Since 2004, we've released the PST Import Tool, SP1, SP2 (the Exchange release), the upcoming March release with Sync Services, Spotlight, and Smart card support, and concurrently becoming universal binary. That to me says Universal Binary in March.

Comment on "Microsoft's Mac Business Unit is undergoing cutbacks" by Michael W. Wellman

Sat, 14 Jan 2006 23:11:49 +0000

Mr. Buckley said:implied that the March update would optimise Office for use in Rosetta; maybe I misunderstood that, though Roz Ho said (at least the quotes I've seen said she did):We've worked together to make sure current versions of office run well in Rosetta. I thought "current versions" meant currently shipping versions; however, I'd be the first to admit that parsing sentences at this level of inferred meaning is a nearly pointless exercise. ;-) A fuller quote from Roz Ho:I'm happy to say that Microsoft's MBU is on track to deliver universal binaries of office and messenger. We've worked together to make sure current versions of office run well in Rosetta. We'll be adding sync services, finishing touches on smartcard and spotlight support. All of these updates will be available in March. Looking back in a more nitpicky fashion, I can't really argue whether "all of these updates" meant Spotlight, Sync, et al, or whether it included the previous sentence talking about Intel native. Where one puts the
certainly affects the apparent meaning. ;-)

Comment on "Microsoft's Mac Business Unit is undergoing cutbacks" by Rob Buckley

Sat, 14 Jan 2006 15:56:54 +0000

In my mind, using the headline "Microsoft's Mac Business Unit is undergoing cutbacks" and then linking to an article that says sources say "Key developers in the Macintosh Business Unit at Microsoft have been reassigned elsewhere, such as the MSN unit, and the company has plans to slowly exit the consumer side of the business" was sufficient for people to assume that I was writing about possible cutbacks at the MacBU. I admit, in retrospect, that since most people aren't aware of my mental processes, linking to the Betanews piece may have suggested I was endorsing the whole article; perhaps, I should just have linked and quoted the bits in which I was interested. In hindsight, that would probably have made things clearer, so my apologies to you for my lack of clarity. But I do think it was still reasonably clear. A basic summary of the entry would be: "if the MacBU is scaling back, that would explain why these things I've noticed are happening." Of course, the corollary of this is that if the MacBU isn't being scaled back, then it wouldn't explain those things I noticed and there's probably another explanation. Certainly, I wouldn't have written the entry at all and I wouldn't have given any credence to Betanews' sources' claims at all if I'd known that the Universal Binary version of Office was due in March, which I think is a new piece of information: during the keynote, Roz Ho only said that Universal Binary work was "on track" and implied that the March update would optimise Office for use in Rosetta; maybe I misunderstood that, though. As an earlier comment pointed out, getting a Universal Binary together in half a year is a colossal achievement for a development shop producing a product as large as Office, particularly one that doesn't/didn't use XCode as far as I know. It would certainly require a significant number of developers and I could understand why other things may have been put on the back-burner as a result, particularly with SyncServices and Spotlight work happening simultaneously right after the Exchange work. Still, you write it as you see it at the time. You get more information, you refine or even change your opinion. That's life.

Comment on "Microsoft's Mac Business Unit is undergoing cutbacks" by John Welch

Sat, 14 Jan 2006 15:08:24 +0000

As far as the rest of the article, it's moronic. I agree. That's why I didn't use anything other than the "scaling back" suggestion. Funny, your article would suggest that you have a rather different opinion of just how silly the betanews article is. Indeed, the tone suggests that you were almost taking it seriously in the whole.

Comment on "Microsoft's Mac Business Unit is undergoing cutbacks" by Andy Ruff

Sat, 14 Jan 2006 02:22:04 +0000

John nails it... the MacBU has been doing precisely what we've been doing for over 20 years of Mac productivity app development. While you correctly point out that the severity and number of changes in the apps doesn't balance across service packs, it's no different than what we've done in the past. For example, go back and look at 10.1.4, an update that primarily delivered Exchange support to Entourage for the first time while the other apps had much smaller changes. When 2004 rolled around, all apps sill included a fair amount of work. Perhaps thinking of it this way makes more sense: progress in Entourage is often incremental, broken up across a release's lifecycle. Other apps, while fixing issues, tend to be focused on more major version release cycles. The teams have a bit different development methodologies and road maps driven primarily by the demands of each app's customers. All of it aimed to deliver the best value for our customers.

Comment on "Microsoft's Mac Business Unit is undergoing cutbacks" by Michael W. Wellman

Sat, 14 Jan 2006 02:09:02 +0000

the apparent slowness of Microsoft to address bugs, add new features and develop apps in its Mac apps is probably due to the scaling back of the MacBU. In order to imply that some change had occurred (the scaling back), it would help if the precursor (the apparent slowness) itself constituted a change. People, especially those whose pet bug/feature wasn't fixed/implemented, have complained about the "apparent slowness" almost as long as there has been a Macintosh Business Unit. Office 98 was released in the summer of 1998. Office vX in November, 2001. Office 2004 in May, 2004. Given that schedule, the next major release wouldn't normally take place until 2007. That Microsoft has said that they'll ship Universal Binaries in March, 2006, is astonishing to me. If you're a developer, it's immediately obvious that their code is a long, long way away from "just click the Intel checkbox". That Microsoft was able to go Universal *and* add major functionality is beyond astonishing. So, if anything, I'd say that their current apparent speed is surprisingly fast. ##### Oh yeah, one more thing. 200 people working on something doesn't equal 200 developers! Add in graphics artists and sales and marketing people and management and HR and IT and you've probably taken well more than half of the slots just for these people. And it's likely that you've got as many testers as developers and often you'd like more testers. And then you've got Program Managers who are entirely different from Manager managers. ;-) Which means that you've got on the order of 40 to 50 developers. Spread across Excel, PowerPoint, Word, Messenger, and Entourage. Or, on average, 10 developers each per program. So, considering all that they've done, I'd be hard-pressed to call them "apparently slow". mikel

Comment on "Microsoft's Mac Business Unit is undergoing cutbacks" by Rob Buckley

Sat, 14 Jan 2006 01:23:17 +0000

If you are seriously taking that report at face value, i recommend having someone else analyze it for you. It's almost nonsensical. Ah, John. Always nice to see a familiar name coming out all guns blazing. Calm down now. The only thing I took from the article was Betanews' sources' suggestion that MacBU might be scaling back, not the Betanews analysis of the situation and certainly not the Jupiter analyst's report. Even then, I thought I included their reporting of this claim with a certain degree of scepticism and didn't use any of the Betanews 'evidence' to support my arguments. I only suggested that it chimed with certain impressions I'd been getting. Feel free to point out areas where I did otherwise, where I suggested their report was definitely true, or where I said my argument was based on the discontinuation of WMP for Mac. As far as the rest of the article, it's moronic. I agree. That's why I didn't use anything other than the "scaling back" suggestion. That's not a pullback, and you'd have to be thick to think it was. I do hope you mean that in the sense of "one would have to be thick to think it was", otherwise that would be quite rude. ;-)

Comment on "Microsoft's Mac Business Unit is undergoing cutbacks" by Rob Buckley

Sat, 14 Jan 2006 01:09:54 +0000

If you've got feedback around the Palm conduit and our AppleScript support, providing us with more details of your complaints is a good first step in helping me insure you're thoughts are considered in our development priorities. Already done, many, many times, for the last three years. ;-) Many others have made similar requests. My blog entry, however, wasn't to complain about Entourage as a user. If you examine my entry, it was merely a statement of the facts as I saw them. BTW, I said 200 people working on Mac Office... not 200 people working on Exchange functionality Indeed. But have a glance at the improvements made to Word since the release of Office 2004: SP1: AutoRecover functions correctly when FileVault is enabled; security is improved when you open a document that has macros; Text changes to the font selected on the Font menu; German proofing tools are correctly detected; Text selection is improved SP2: increased stability In Excel: SP1: Security is improved when you open a document that has macros SP2: increased stability In PowerPoint: SP1: Performance is improved when you play movies in a slide show; Compatibility with fonts is improved; Dragging objects on a slide works as expected when the ruler is turned on; Security is improved when you open a document that has macros SP2: increased stability Compared to the output of the Entourage group, the Excel, PowerPoint and Word group haven't really done much at all, which suggests that the Entourage group are either much more of a can-do team than the others or that they're much bigger. Which is it? What proportion of that 200 work on Entourage and what proportion works on Word, Excel and PowerPoint? And of those, how many are programmers?

Comment on "Microsoft's Mac Business Unit is undergoing cutbacks" by John Welch

Sat, 14 Jan 2006 01:05:15 +0000

If this report is true, the apparent slowness of Microsoft to address bugs, add new features and develop apps in its Mac apps is probably due to the scaling back of the MacBU. Certainly, the vibes I've been getting of late are that only a few significant developers are working on things such as SyncServices support in Entourage and so on. If you are seriously taking that report at face value, i recommend having someone else analyze it for you. It's almost nonsensical. First, the Mac BU never developed Windows Media Player. That was, oddly enough the Windows Media group, and it was, to put it kindly, a debacle. Using Flip4Mac is the best thing MS could have done for its mac users, since you get the same feature set in an application that doesn't utterly and absolutely blow. As far as the rest of the article, it's moronic. Let's see, by focusing on the products they currently develop, the Mac BU is only focusing on the products they currently develop, yet that's a pullback. Um... Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot? Office and Messenger have been the only products from the Mac BU for quite some time now. (No, IE didn't count, it hadn't been updated in a dogs age, and was starving in the corner). So how is that a pullback? The Mac BU is doing PRECISELY what it's been doing for quite some time now. That's not a pullback, and you'd have to be thick to think it was. This comment: consumer exit could mean the end of the low-cost Student & Teacher Edition, too, particularly with Apple offering iWork. is inane. Those are SKUs not products. At least ATTEMPT to research before blindly quoting ANYONE, regardless of title. The article on betanews is idiocy.

Comment on "Microsoft's Mac Business Unit is undergoing cutbacks" by Andy Ruff

Sat, 14 Jan 2006 00:46:04 +0000

Ultimately, I walk the MacBU halls each day and see more and more people working hard on Mac Office. You see issues in our software that you'd like to address that we haven't. While you've certainly got a valid reason to complain, there's no way that such evidence can be correctly tied to cutbacks within a product's development. Just because a car company doesn't fix an oversteering problem on a 2005 model, doesn't mean they cutback design and development efforts on the 2006 model. As a Program Manager on Entourage, I'll speak merely to what my team's been up to. Since 2004, we've released the PST Import Tool, SP1, SP2 (the Exchange release), the upcoming March release with Sync Services, Spotlight, and Smart card support, and concurrently becoming universal binary. That along with all the work towards the next major version of Entourage. We've got a lot of customers who want a lot of different things. As in any company, we've got to evaluate where we want to allocate our time and energy in such a way that we believe is best for our customers and our business. You cannot use your disappointment of two features to progress as much as you'd like to assume that the entire application isn't progressing. While AppleScript and Palm support are important, we must prioritize our efforts as every software project faces. I can assure you that the efforts to build the Palm conduit and our AppleScript dictionary came at the cost of other features that other users wanted to see progress. You can ask anyone who used Exchange in 2004 before SP2 and after SP2 for an understanding of how much work we've done to improve the experience. We made the decision to address the concerns of our Exchange users because of the tremendous amount of pain we heard from them when 2004 was released. If you've got feedback around the Palm conduit and our AppleScript support, providing us with more details of your complaints is a good first step in helping me insure you're thoughts are considered in our development priorities. -Andy BTW, I said 200 people working on Mac Office... not 200 people working on Exchange functionality. Just take a quick perusal of the various MacBU bloggers to see that we've got a variety of people working on a variety of things.

Comment on "Microsoft's Mac Business Unit is undergoing cutbacks" by Rob Buckley

Fri, 13 Jan 2006 23:53:58 +0000

All 200 of you working on improved Exchange compatibility? Hmm. Okay... The Palm conduit has been poor for a very long time now whereas the Exchange work was the main project of the main part of last year. Smaller companies than the MacBU can put together entire conduits in that time (Cf Mark/Space, which put together five last year). Are there really not enough people to fix bugs in a single existing conduit as well as develop new features? If there aren't, it kind of substantiates the original entry. The Sync Services mechanism will remove a syncing mechanism, not add one, since the Palm conduit will effectively be discontinued. To sync with Palm devices will then require the completely hopeless Apple iSync conduit, which doesn't even try to preserve calendars or contact categories, or an investment in Missing Sync for Palm OS. And word from the MacWorld floor has it that rather than syncing Entourage category to iCal calendar, the Sync Services implementation MacBU has planned will sync all Entourage calendars with a single iCal "Entourage" calendar. Sorry to say it, but this is hopeless for most people: my wife stopped using Entourage as a PIM because she couldn't preserve calendar categories when syncing with her Palm T3 using the Entourage conduit; certainly, I would rather keep using Paul Berkowitz's Sync Entourage-iCal AppleScript and preserve my calendar categories than switch to Sync Services if indeed that is how Entourage's implementation will be handled. Thanks for clearing up Omar's input: it shows you that a manager really can make a difference.