| The Ultimate Business Machine Technology, business And, not least, about by: Bernard Teo
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Thu 05 Jan 2006 Another year over, a new one's just begunCategory : Commentary/YearOver.txt So this is Christmas Together with Hai Hwee, we've managed to get five pieces of software done last year - Postfix Enabler for Tiger, DNS Enabler, WebMon, MailServe and Luca Accounting. I'm trying to create a set of tools that will allow people to run a business on top of the Mac platform - tools that will allow the business to communicate with a potential customer base (through email and a web site), build a community around the use of its products, transact business on-line and in real-time, as well as account for the money flows. And I'm using this Mac@Work site to demonstrate what I mean. So what I hope to do in the coming year is to deepen the value of each of the products, cover the gaps between the products (if that is something we can do), and make the pieces easy to snap together and set up quickly - always with the objective of helping people get going using the tools to serve their businesses better. There are obvious things that can be done - if you're a user of WebMon or MailServe, you probably have a very good idea of what I should be working on to help you manage or exploit the web and mail server better. But there are other things that can be done - e.g., Luca. I believe that the most important thing about managing one's life is to get a firm grip on where all the money has gone - whether you're an individual managing your personal finance, or a small business owner, or a large corporation. I think we've got a very good double-entry engine built into Luca. And it's got a nice interface for traversing through all the figures, drilling down into the details and making cross-references, so that you'll get a good picture of where all the money has gone. But it needs a little more work to make it suitable as a personal finance tool for individuals, especially when it comes to data-entry. Do we need another accounting application for the Mac when there is Quicken and MYOB? I don't know. What I know is that they're not Mac-centric and I'd rather do my own since we can do it, and having control over it, I can tie it in with all the other stuff we're doing, building tools for Mac business users. And managing the business means managing the business's finances. There is one more thing I'd like to do. Bundle all of Hai Hwee's work interfacing with PayPal into a package people can download and set up so that they can also do business on the web the way we've done. There is quite a bit of negativity surrounding PayPal, about its susceptability to fraud and all that, and that's probably deserved. But in the realm of powerful ideas, I can put forward a case that PayPal is probably the most important test-bed we have right now for deriving A New World Currency. I think, in the scheme of things, PayPal is more important entity than eBay, its parent, and may end up being a whole lot more valuable (if eBay doesn't kill it first through mis-management). So, I'd like to do a PayPal-based, PHP-based, eCommerce solution. But PayPal has a more interesting web-services-based solution that we haven't been able to access yet because we're outside the US. I think that would make for a neater solution and so we'll wait until there's a better time to work on that. Mon 02 Jan 2006 MailServe 2.0.2Category : Technology/MailServe202.txt I kept getting problems with the mail queue. Then I realised that I couldn't count on the fields in the mail queue log to follow fixed widths on different machines. Sometimes the queue ID of the message takes 10 characters, sometimes 11, and so on. So I had to find another way to parse the fields into table columns. I think I've killed this problem once and for all. 2.0.2 is out. The Good Books GuideCategory : Commentary/GoodBooksGuide.txt
Look, you can get all these books from our Library. It's been a lazy December but I did get a lot of reading done. The great thing about using the Library is that you can try out lots of different stuff - God knows I've got tons of great-looking but utterly useless books strewn all over the house. (Guess what a second-hand book store would pay for them now? 30 cents each, I just asked). This is how I found "The Cloud Sketcher" by Richard Rayner. Architecture, jazz, New York in the early 1900s, Finland, and a skyscraper - the cloud sketcher. It looked interesting and I enjoyed it. Quite like Ayn Rand's Fountainhead. Only in Ayn Rand, the characters are concepts (like creativity, power, individualism, even love), not people. Here the people are a little more accessible. Imagine you're little Esko, disfigured by the fire that took your mother, uncomfortable in a suit, an outsider at a local dance, and somehow a pretty girl is making her way towards you, she's got a little mirror in her hand, which she uses to ward off the other boys like a gypsy, and she's asked you to dance, beautiful Esko. And you're smitten. Fate brings her back to your life when you're older and you know that there's such a thing as a soul mate. Esko grows up to be an architect and he builds his skyscraper for Katerina. Rayner's evocation of the early years of the 20th century - where cars, elevators, street lamps, electricity, ocean liners and airplanes are novelties, as well as the invention of the steel that allowed skyscrapers to be built - reminds me how much of human technological progress had been compressd within the last hundred years. And it made me pick up another book - about oil. Oil was what made all these things possible. In many ways, world history in the last 150 years was the history of oil. Daniel Yergin's "The Prize" is how history should be written - clever, entertaining and illuminating. Exxon, BP, Shell/Royal Dutch, Rockefeller, the Shah of Persia, Iraq and Kuwait, Tony Blair and the George Bushes. You can see how the actions of today are made inevitable by decisions in the past. And just as the basis for our digital technology could be traced to the exigencies of World War 2, automobiles and mechanised transport could be traced to the necessities of World War 1. ("The British Expeditionary Force that went to France in August 1914 had just 827 motor cars and a mere 15 motorcycles. By the last months of the war, British Army vehicles included 56,000 trucks, 23,000 motorcars, and 34,000 motorcycles.") I understand things a lot better now. Sun 01 Jan 2006 MailServe 2.0.1Category : Technology/MailServe201.txt I've updated MailServe to 2.0.1. This is from the Release Notes : The Fetchmail launch daemon was re-spawning itself when launched on the faster machines due to some timing issues. This has been fixed in this release. (Thanks, Klaus Nielsen, for helping out and pointing the way to the solution. Really appreciate it). Also, Fetchmail could not deliver mail to machines that have been set up to receive mail for more than one domain. This has also been fixed. It's been a busy day. By the way, Happy New Year, everyone. Thu 29 Dec 2005 MailServe ReleasedCategory : Technology/MailServe2Released.txt I've released MailServe 2.0. It costs $19.99 but Postfix Enabler users will be able to upgrade for $9.99. I've been feeling rather unwell since coming back from Bangkok, so it was all I could do to get the final testing done and the documentation updated. But I'm glad that's all done. It's something about Christmas. I've been sick I think eight out of the last ten Christmases. But November, December and January are, for me, the best months for living in Singapore. I start to feel the cool breeze in November, and the light on the leaves sparkles when we're not wet with rain. I don't think anyone else that I've talked to feels quite the same way but I look forward to December. I relax, savour the days, and get knocked down by flu. Maybe that's my body's way of keeping score - making sure I'll catch up on all the rest that I need. Lazy days and December. But it doesn't last. The heat, humidity, and awful glare of the equatorial sun will all come back once Chinese New Year is over. Tue 13 Dec 2005 To Bangkok, ThailandCategory : Commentary/toBangkok.txt I'm going to join my family for three days in Bangkok. There should be a wireless Internet connection at the hotel that we're staying in. Hope I can keep in touch with those that need to reach me, then. It was so quiet at home the last few days that I managed to finish the MailServe documentation, at last. It still needs more polish. But it'll do for now. Tue 06 Dec 2005 This is usCategory : Commentary/us.txt This is a picture of all of us here - from left, my long-time collaborator and friend Hai Hwee, my kid Brendan, and my wife, Bee Khim. We were going to sneak over to Johor, at the southern end of our neighbour Malaysia, for the day. That's always going to be fun and don't we look like it?
Next week, Brendan and Bee Khim are going to spend a week in Thailand but I'm only going to join them for the last three days, in Bangkok - in case I can't find a good Internet connection and the support for Postfix Enabler, WebMon, DNS Enabler and all, starts to languish. So, I'm a long way from having this business run like a well-oiled machine, able to run for much of the time on its own without me. One day, I hope to get this figured out. Actually, Cutedge was the name we used when Bee Khim, Hai Hwee, and I were writing software for insurance companies for most of the last twelve years, together with a couple of other people. We've spent the last two years "recuperating" (I've almost managed to never touch a PC or cross an IT manager's path in two years and I think it shows - I feel fresher and happier). But business seems to be re-awakening in the region. Who knows where the journey will lead? The Journey is the Reward, remember? Wed 30 Nov 2005 MySQL 5.0Category : Commentary/mysql5.txt MySQL 5.0 is here. Stored procedures, triggers, views, etc. Support for views - that was the last thing we were waiting for to replace Oracle entirely in our applications. Oracle should be afraid - very afraid. Tue 29 Nov 2005 SoftpediaCategory : Commentary/softpedia.txt Softpedia is featuring all of my products in its collection. How did we get in there? We've been awarded its "100% Clean - No Spyware, No Adware, No Viruses" badge. Don't want to look too unappreciative. Hey, thanks guys. The MailServe PageCategory : Technology/MailServePage.txt I've created a more permanent place to house the MailServe project. MailServe is the successor to Postfix Enabler. I thought it needs a name change because it's doing a lot more than just enabling Postfix.
The trial version now expires on 30th December 2005. I think this will give me enough time to add a couple more things and test it more thoroughly (as well as to bulk up its documentation). To try out MailServe, just use your current Postfix Enabler serial number. Mon 28 Nov 2005 Requiem for Georgie BestCategory : Commentary/requiem.txt Dig the grave and let me lie Remembering George Best. It was 1968, I think, or early 1969. I watched, on the black and white TV, Manchester United vs Benfica, and what looked like one of the Beatles, beating two defenders, rounding the 'keeper, and side-footing the ball into the empty net. Amazing. The crowd went wild. My father said, "that's Georgie Best". I was hooked. That famous picture, of Best in the number 7 shirt, wheeling away, right arm raised to salute the crowd, was ingrained in my memory. Football became my favourite sport, and United my favourite team. I shared the same birthday as George Best, May 22nd. I remember writing, as a kid, to a UK football magazine about that, and about my love for Man U - and got one pound £ in the mail as prize. (Could that have seeded a lifelong interest in making money from ideas?) Whatever, it's true - I love Man United as much as I love my Mac. My wife often says, she thinks she comes third, or even fourth, after that, behind the kid - especially on Saturday evenings when I go missing when United are playing. So, goodbye, Georgie. Thanks for the memories. You are the Best. "You can keep your Chopin, Sistene Chapel and Da Vinci sketches. If I want to see a real artist at work, I'll put on a video and watch George Best drop a shoulder as he rounds the Benfica goalkeeper in 1968." Mon 14 Nov 2005 Comics & The Art of User Interface DesignCategory : Commentary/comics.txt You can find inspiration in the unlikeliest places. I discovered "Understanding Comics - The Invisible Art" by Scott McCloud, while reading Daniel ("Free Agent Nation") Pink's book "A Whole New Mind". Scott McCloud shows how comics work by deconstructing the medium into its constituent parts, most of which work invisibly in telling a story. For example, there's this concept called "closure", whereby the reader is able to predict what is going to happen, or realised what had happened, simply because we all have a shared understanding of how things work in life. ... like that shower scene in Psycho ... do look up Computers as Theatre. The artist exploits closure to eliminate things that need not be said, to control the pace of the story, which in turn, controls tension or heightens the drama of the story telling. The story, in fact, happens between the panels of the comic strip, and the reader becomes the co-author of the story by exercising his imagination. Look at how this works in the Mac's Finder interface. The icons for files, folders and the trash can are metaphors for how things work on a physical desktop. Rolling that thing we call a mouse, our imagination allows us to slip into the metaphor and explore that environment. Closure allows us to predict what will happen when we pick up a file and place it in the trash. Scott McCloud shows how the pace of a story quickens when the drawings are made less representational and more iconic (i.e., more cartoonish"). He uses the following framework to describe how our mind moves from what is perceived by the eye to its representation as meaning and ideas inside our brains :
Comics work their magic in that area across The Language Border along The Representational Edge, where words and iconic pictures combine to tell a story in the quickest and most economical way. If you think about it, there's where user interface design occurs, too. We, as information systems designers and consultants, need to understand how to use metaphors and words and icons in combination to shortcut the trip from representation to ideas so that a user can learn to use a system in the shortest possible time and with the least amount of user-interface clutter. We have a lot we can learn from comics. First, like comic book artists, we need to start with a purpose. We need to decide what the big idea is, i.e., what we want to convey. These form the contents and we need to decide, next, how we want to present that. That's form. That's the interface design. Third, we need to understand the idiom, the vocabulary of styles, gestures and other constructs that, for a Cocoa programmer, say, would include things like switches, panels, pop-up menus and radio buttons. Fourth is structure. We we need to put it all together, deciding "what to include, what to leave out, how to arrange, how to compose the work". That's what we do when we work in Interface Builder. Fifth is craft - "constructing the work, applying skills, practical knowledge, invention, problem solving, getting the job done" - e.g., what we do in Xcode. Finally, the surface. Production values, finishing what the user sees. All art - painting, writing, theatre, film, sculpture or any other art form including user interface design - follow this path, from idea and form to craft and surface. But everything starts from having a clear purpose. I've always felt that, one day, my interest in art, in the lives and works of the painters - Paul Klee, Moholy-Nagy, Monet, Van Gogh - and the film makers - Fassbinder, Ingmar Bergman, Alfred Hitchcock - will find a link with the work I'm doing in information technology. With McCloud's Picture Plane - "the entire history of the visual arts belongs in this space" - I think I've found the key. Read more ... |
Mac@Work
Services running on this server, a Mac Mini running Mac OS X 10.9.2 Mavericks:
all set up using MailServe, WebMon, DNS Enabler, DNS Agent, VPN Enabler, Liya and our SQL installers, all on Mavericks. |
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