| The Ultimate Business Machine Technology, business And, not least, about Weblog • Archive • Cutedge by: Bernard Teo
|
Wed 05 May 2004 SerendipityCategory : Commentary/secondhandbookstore.txt I was searching Google for second hand bookstores near my office. I have more books than I know what to do with, and we may be moving office. I was hoping to sell some of the less memorable ones to a second hand bookstore nearby so I don't have to cart them around. Look what I found. First, a suggestion that perhaps some of the more notable figures among our political opposition would be better off going into business themselves, like running a second hand bookshop. Got to give credit to the contributor. It's hard to fault his or her logic. I even believe it may work. But it'll probably not be taken up. Next, a case study of a second hand book store in Ireland - "KennyÕs Second Hand Bookstore opened its doors on Friday 19th November 1940 selling a selection of second hand schoolbooks donated to Des and Maureen Kenny by their friends. Since then, KennyÕs has come to be regarded as the worldwide specialists in both published Irish Literature and antiquarian books in a range of subjects." - it's a very interesting read, and soon I was forgetting what I was supposed to be doing and following the links on this site. Which leads me to Enterprise-Ireland.com - "Helping Irish companies grow in world markets". If you've ever spent any part of your waking life worrying about how to make your company grow, you will find something interesting here. There've compiled a very wide range of case studies and they're very well-organised and easy to navigate. These people are definitely not going through the motions here. Tue 04 May 2004 Building Better MousetrapsCategory : Technology/betterMouseTraps.txt "Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door." Ralph Waldo Emerson. Postfix and Sendmail Enablers are not, most definitely, commercial successes. Not by a long way. But I'm happy that they've been useful. It would have been nice to see more PayPal notifications. But it's nice enough, for the moment, to see the variety of places where they've been used. For example, these are some of the places they've been referred to : Moodle - http://moodle.org/doc/ Sol4.Net - Sending Email from Perl - http://sol4.net/projects/project1.shtml The Postfix Site : http://www.postfix.org/addon.html We're learning something everyday from doing this. I'm learning how to handle the tech support requests better. And we're learning, as we experiment, about building things that people would want to use. People whom we've never met before, and who don't know us from Adam. But will they still use the stuff if they have to pay for it? For ten years, we had gotten by well enough building custom software and providing custom site support. And getting paid by PC users while hanging on to our Macs was a trick that worked for us. But I don't how the other guys in the business could keep on doing this because the energy, the intensity of focus you have to supply to keep the business going, is simply not sustainable. I think Michael Gerber described it best in "The E-Myth Revisited". Part of the reasons for all this rambling is that I'm far from clear how to find the way out. And this weblog is my way of letting out the noise when the thinking gets too loud. For example, I was writing the documentation for Luca, an accounting system that we built, and I was saying something like how Luca allows a company to manage a really sizeable business with, at most, one accounts manager and maybe just one clerk. Like how a company using Luca could handle the same amount of transactions, both in terms of dollar volume and the number of vouchers processed, as another company which had almost five times the amount of staff. And this actually did happen. But imagine the accounts manager (whose company is using Luca) attending a (wedding) dinner, say, where she happens to find her friend who is the financial controller for that other larger company (at least in terms of staff strength but, remember, the two companies do almost the same amount of business, but who at the dinner table would know that?). Imagine how she feels when she says she has just one person reporting to her and the other could mention five or six. That's why her friend has a better title - she has more people reporting to her. So the idealism that went into the design (to get the work done in the most efficient way possible) gets undermined in social situations like these. This is similar to the challenges Apple faces with the IT departments. (In passing, read Rob Enderle's latest column and you can see why Apple may never be able to get past the biases and entrenched interests - "... the market likes standards and Apple isn't one"). If you're starting a company, it pays to watch Apple and learn from its trials and tribulations. You're never going to be able to take a Microsoft-like posture because it's going to be pain, contempt, despair, and yet more pain. Watch Apple and see if there's method in its madness and whether some of it could work for you. Mon 03 May 2004 Apple is to Computers as BMW is to Cars? WrongCategory : Technology/appleBMWcomparison.txt Got this from the Mac OS rumors site, and the more people who read this the better : "Steve Jobs loves to throw out the handy little statistic that Apple has more marketshare than BMW in an effort to justify the Mac's 3% of the US computer market. "There is one fundamental flaw in his thinking, however. "Whether one drives a BMW or a Chevy, one uses the same fuel. However, if you use a Mac, you need software that is incompatible with 97% of the computer market. "Imagine if BMWs required special fuel. How many people would buy them?" And, having worked in corporations and watched Macs being "cleansed" out from them, I can contribute a few more examples why that analogy fails. So Steve Jobs ought to think different, himself. For example, you may laugh at the PCs being Yugos but the IT department could build the equivalent of roads with widths that only the Yuogos can run on. And they will do it just because they can. The Internet has, sort of, saved the Mac. Back in the days when corporations were evaluating mail systems with names like Da Vinci and Network Courier (names you may not have heard of today because they probably all died with the advent of the Internet), it was very easy for IT departments to kill the Macs by choosing just one out of the many that would not support the Mac. Java has also saved the Mac. It was possible, before we had the abundance of JDBC drivers that came with Java, to say that none of the standard database systems will work with the Mac. So, off with it. But today - Oracle, MySQL, PostgresSQL, Sybase - all these will work on the Mac. So, if we seem to have escaped from irrelevance, it may probably be due more to accident than by design. Or didn't Guy Kawasaki say that the continued existence of the Mac is proof enough that God exists? Sun 02 May 2004 Cocoa BindingsCategory : Technology/cocoabindings.txt I believe Steve Jobs said, while morphing NeXTStep into Cocoa, that the best code is the code you don't have to write. I've just read, for the first time, about Cocoa Bindings, and it looks like we could find a lot of use for it in Luca. The less code you have to write, the less you have to debug. So the more of these the better. The example given is in Objective-C. But what about Java? There's so much to know in so little time. Sat 01 May 2004 Weblog.hqxCategory : Technology/weblogHQX.txt There had been quite a few downloads recently of the PHP-based weblog system that is used to drive this site. Unfortunately, I hadn't been updating it much. For example, initially the Search Weblog and Send-A-Mail feature didn't quite work. But I had solved it a long time ago but hadn't updated the download package with the latest version. But I've just done that. Sorry about that. If you download it now and enable PHP on your built-in Apache web server, you can set up your own weblog by dragging the expanded folder anywhere inside /Library/WebServer/Documents. If you do that, clicking on this link will show you what you should see when you do a http://localhost/weblog The documentation is still outdated because it's already taken longer than I have the time to spare to update the download package. But most of the documentation is still valid. If you need to update the weblog remotely, after you've saved the day's blog item into the docs folder, execute the following Unix shell script from the terminal (with your own modifications), and that should do the trick : #!/bin/sh If you're using BBEdit, you can create a file to store that script and stuff that file into BBEdit's Unix Support/Unix Scripts folder, in which case it will appear on BBedit's Unix Scripts menu, which will then allow you to update your weblog from within BBedit. Not quite totally the Mac Way. But close enough for now. Thu 29 Apr 2004 iTunesCategory : Commentary/iTunes.txt Is it only me? But I believe the music sounds better on my iBook since I did the latest iTunes update. There's so much to admire about Apple's interface design. You read about Party Shuffle and you sort of understand why it'll be cool to have such a feature. But then, when you finally get to trying it, it all makes sense, and you go "but, of course!". Want to do really good user interface design? Use a Mac. Every day. (And I thought I had gotten being a Mac evangelist out of my system). In all the notes about Steve Jobs' iTunes Music Store anniversary interviews, I think one item stands out - about the two thirds of the music that is not in print anymore. "A somewhat intriguing glimpse of the future was offered when Steve Jobs said that one of the biggest challenges in working with the labels was getting their out of print archives online. Mr. Jobs said that most of the labels had less than 1/3 of their entire catalog in print, largely because of the physical and financial limits the real world imposes on physical inventory. He added that "it's getting even worse with the demise of small record stores." "According to Mr. Jobs, Apple would like to get that back catalog on the iTMS. That would offer untold options for music lovers of all varieties to get what we currently consider to be "hard to find" songs." (MacObserver) It makes perfect business sense. These pieces of music are not in print because of the old economics prevailing. You may have a certain number of people who have a very deep yearning to buy, collect and listen to these old pieces again. But there wouldn't be enough of them to make it worth the distribution overheads. But the beauty of being digital is that you're shipping bits directly to desktops and then to ipods. You've nuked the overheads and changed the rules of the game. Zooming out from talking about iTunes for a while, I've spent a lot of my time looking for a business we can run ourselves that uses our own technology, and where I don't have to argue with an IT department about using a Mac, or doing things the Mac way, etc, because I know it all works and that there are so many ways to kill your competition using it. It seems like Apple has found it. They've found a way whereby their iTunes, iPods, Music Store, Apple Store, experience streaming huge amounts of content out their Movie Trailer servers, and the whole Apple design gestalt come together in a business enterprise which just works and which cannot be easily duplicated because the magic is in the whole gestalt rather than in any individual piece. This is what I'm envious of. That's the way to do it. Use your own technology, stop trying to persuade people, and kill the competition. It's the best revenge. Man, you've got to love all this music. iTunes takes you out of this world and into the world of memories. Java-on-Mac MeetupCategory : Commentary/JavaMeetup.txt These are some of the pictures Timmy Yeo took a couple of nights ago at Burger King (at Novena Square, where there's glorious free wireless surfing and we should use it while it lasts!) when a few of us met up to take a look at Java on OS X. I think I was trying to explain Model-View-Controller, using the iBook, handphone, and what-else as props.
James Gallagher is doing a blog editor tool in Java and Cocoa, using XML-RPC to talk to a MoveableType server. I persuaded Hai Hwee to come along because, being the Java-Cocoa guru (and I'm just the "suit"), she would be of better help. There's Siva (bottom, left), self-confessed "MacAddict", who's using the version of PHPosxom that I mangled (basically I made changes to it to make it easier to design the look of the web page without tripping over the PHP code), and who has since helped a few other people set up blogs.
Then there's also Hanx (top, left), a long time Mac user and "evangelist", and Seng Aik (top, right), who had set up MacRebels ("Rebel Against Stupidity"). Also, I just remember - we're going to have the usual monthly Mac meet-up next week, Tuesday. So, the Mac scene is alive and well in Singapore. I was reading this article about the design of the Apple Store, yesterday, and about how Apple feel the stores may have contributed to Mac sales, ever since they were started. But, the question is : just how many people were pre-sold about the benefits of the Mac in sessions like these, all over the world, before they even walk into an Apple store or an AppleCentre. If the entity in Apple that oversees the sales figures of our local office is happy with its performance, then the impact of all these non-paid Mac "evangelists" must have been significant. Because, for years, watching Apple perform in Singapore was like watching a team in smart cool jerseys get walloped 10-nil every time they take the field. And they could still give themselves high-fives when they leave the field. And there's nothing you can do about it, if you can't bring yourself to work on Windows. Love me, love my dog. So, if you can't help sharing your enthusiasm for the platform, you're probably going to help sell a few Macs, which makes Apple salespeople think they're so smart, since they can sell so much without doing a thing themselves. Which could be the reason why they seem so smug. And the cycle goes on and on. But it struck me clearly, last week at Sun Tech Day, that Java has given me a way to dis-engage. No more throwing a body in the line of a rabid Windows or Linux user. Be my guest, take a swipe. You can continue using what is probably the best hardware/software combination. Yet, you don't marginalise yourself out in the fringes. I would love it if Apple Singapore perform better and get their act together because it would be no more than the long-suffering Mac users deserve. But we should leave this worrying of the (small) size of the Mac market to the guys who're paid to do it (even if they always seem so determined to run the company to the ground, and then return to the safety of their IBMs and HPs). I don't believe we will see any improvement until Apple hires people who really love the platform for their Singapore office. I was actually astounded to read the last paragraph in the Apple Store article: "But I think the one thing that sets apart our stores and Apple, is fundamentally two types of people in the world, in my view. There are believers and there are skeptics," Johnson said. "Apple is filled with believers. And believers tend to think of what can be, and they just go do it, and they don't spend time asking why not. They go and make it happen." "Apple is filled with believers." If this were true, I don't see it in our neighbourhood. Finally, Apple's success with OS X shows that, some day, some Taiwanese or Chinese company will wake up to the same conclusion - that they can take their skills building computer hardware, and marry that with an ability to integrate all these free, Open Source stuff, the way Apple has done. The Microsoft business model may not be the only model that could succeed and Apple has shown a viable alternative. So, it may be all geek-talk. But geeks can feel the ground shift before others can. It'll be interesting to see how this works out. AutopMacCategory : Commentary/autopmac.txt Found this page to linked to the Postfix Enabler page : AutopMac pour Mac OS X Jaguar et Panther (http://autopmac.chez.tiscali.fr/). It looked interesting. And here is the English translation. Looking for FeedbackCategory : Commentary/PFE1_1feedback.txt There were some (twenty?) downloads of Postfix Enabler 1.1 Beta that I can count from looking at the web server log. It would be great to get some feedback. If it had messed up a system, I would have heard by now. So, maybe, no news is good news. But it's still good to know if it has worked for you, all those who've downloaded it. Tue 27 Apr 2004 Postfix Enabler 1.1 Beta ready for downloadCategory : Technology/PFE1dot1BetaRelease.txt I've created a web page for Postfix Enabler 1.1 Beta. You can find it here : http://www.cutedgesystems.com/weblog/Tutorials/PostfixEnablerBeta.html You can download the latest beta release and let me know how it goes. I know only enough Unix and AppleScript Studio, and Postfix and SpamAssassin, to get all these done. I still don't know anything about Perl. But I want to get all these done and move back to doing Java. Hope all these have been useful. I hope I've got all the license notices correct. Don't want to get into trouble over these. "License breached!" Not again. Sometimes it seems like so much trouble. But let's see what we can learn. Mon 26 Apr 2004 Postfix Enabler 1.1 BetaCategory : Technology/PFE1.1Beta.txt I've got a version of Postfix Enabler (1.1) that I can release for beta testing. In addition to a new field that will make it more convenient for a user to enter RBL (Real-Time Black Lists) sites that the mail server will check against, the real value that this new version brings is that it will install all the stuff needed to use a basic SpamAssassin configuration, as well as the ability to generate detailed mail statistics, with just a couple of clicks. I'm tending towards the decision to GPL Postfix Enabler, too. I feel it's a waste of time to do a pflogsumm replacement, when it's already doing a good enough job. And, at this point, I'm using the SpamAssassin/Anomy combination, where Anomy does the anti-virus filtering, and the latter is also GPL. I'm using this exercise to try and understand the intellectual property issues better. So if I want to be precise, I think the key issue lies with the use of pflogsumm rather than with Anomy. With Anomy (and SpamAssassin), Postfix Enabler acts like an installer application. Its job is only to bundle and install all the stuff needed by a non-technical user to make use of these two pieces of software with their mail server quickly. That's the value contributed by Postfix Enabler and I think everybody will agree that it's a good thing. But Postfix Enabler itself doesn't use Anomy or SpamAssassin as a library. So it can be argued that Postfix Enabler, then, doesn't need to be infected by the viral nature of the GPL. But, in the case of pflogsumm, Postfix Enabler does use it like a library - to generate the mail traffic statistics and then show its results in a Postfix Enabler window. So that aspect of its use could constitute a requirement for Postfix Enabler to be released as GPL'ed software, too. So you can see the viral mechanism of the GPL at work. In the main, the decision to treat this as a non-issue (i.e., make the Postfix Enabler source code available for download) is because it's already quite easy to see what Postfix Enabler does by going to the Finder, looking for the application, and do a "Show Package Contents". You will see all the scripts (both AppleScript scripts and Unix shell scripts), plus all the Unix binaries installed by Postfix Enabler. At various stages during the year, I've put up the link to the source code, only to bring it down, when I got tired of having to give support for that, too. But, now, I may have to put that back. Postfix Enabler loads stuff into people's systems. It may be better to make the process transparent, to test the validity of Eric Raymond's argument (actually attributed to Linus Torvalds) for Open Source - "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow". (Actually, I don't necessarily agree with that, at least not totally, and here's a guy who thinks along the same line.) But Postfix Enabler is a vehicle to learn about a lot more things than turning on a mail server. I only wish I don't have to do, or turn away, so much tech support. The real issue with the GPL is that, in its zeal to make source code free, it undercuts the rights of the author to control how the software is distributed. For example, theoretically, it is permissible then to make very minor changes to the source, including re-directing the PayPal link, and then re-distribute the modified version from another server, so long as the person making the changes makes available the source, too. With GPL, you've given away the rights to be the only one who can distribute the software. If it does turn out to be true that I've made a big mistake, I think the way to recover is to rewrite the whole thing in another language, learn from what went wrong, add a lot more features, and release it under another name and licensing mechanism. My wife reads these pages and thinks that I can't quite decide between being cynical or idealistic. That's probably understating it. Panther ServerCategory : Technology/pantherserverreviewAFP548.txt I was about to think that there's no point looking at the Panther (OS X 10.3) Server when even something that is so simple to do on a normal OS X machine, like sharing an Internet connection, seems so much harder to get right on a Panther Server machine. But I found this article by Joel Rennich at afp548.com and it's a very good review of the Panther Server. It's easy to miss a lot of the good stuff Apple had built into the Server version of OS X. There are a lot of things I didn't know OS Server could do, including the ability to extend the administrative capabilties of the system by writing plug-ins, if I hadn't read the article. So I'm making a link to it, in case I forget where to find it later. 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. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
