Mac@Work : The Ultimate Business Machine

The
Ultimate
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Technology, business
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And, not least, about
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Weblog • Archive • Cutedge

by: Bernard Teo

Sat 14 Feb 2004

Low Power, High Performance, 64-Bit, 32-Bit Backwards-Compatibility, Symmetric Multi-Processing

Category : Technology/970FX.txt

Just announced. The IBM PowerPC 970FX. All good things in one unified package. And potentially much cheaper, too. It's going into volume production just in time to go into the new Xserve G5's. It's the one number we need to remember. Looks like we're going to see the whole Mac line coalesce around this chip in the years to come.

Posted at 4:27AM UTC | permalink

Thu 12 Feb 2004

Projectory - An open-source web-based Project Management System

Category : Technology/Projectory.txt

Just got this e-mail from Corey Ehmke. He has just released Projectory, an open-source web-based Project Management System that runs on any platform with Apache, Perl, and MySQL installed, but was created completely on the Mac.

Projectory is free and is released under the GPL. Full information is at http://projectory.sourceforge.net.

I haven't had the time yet to look further into this but I think it's a great thing for developers on the Mac platform to have, as an alternative to the Windows-only project management systems. I hope to have checked it out in time for the Java on OS X course because it may be just what these people are looking for.

In the mean time, this is Corey's short description of Projectory :

"Projectory is a platform-independent, web-enabled project management tool designed to track software projects through all phases of development. Where traditional project management software is primarily useful only for planning and reporting purposes, Projectory lets you track actual development effort expended by teams or individuals across multiple projects and activities. It's easy to configure for small or large software development groups, and its streamlined user interface makes it easy for individuals to enter and manage their work entries. Its comprehensive reporting capabilities serve the needs of team leads and managers alike. You can get an accurate snapshot of current development activity, track effort on planned vs. unplanned work, and compare actual effort expended to the estimates in your project plans. Its project-agnostic activity tracking functionality makes it a great tool for improving estimation on new projects, as you can mine historical data to determine real-world development metrics."

And I reproduce below the Projectory team's full press release :

"The Projectory development team is proud to announce that after two years of development and extensive beta usage in a rapid software development environment, Projectory 1.0 has been released under the GPL.

"Projectory is a platform-independent, web-enabled project management tool designed to track software projects through all phases of development.

"Where traditional project management software is primarily useful only for planning and reporting purposes, Projectory lets you track actual development effort expended by teams or individuals across multiple projects and activities. It's easy to configure for small or large software development groups, and its streamlined user interface makes it easy for individuals to enter and manage their work entries.

"Its comprehensive reporting capabilities serve the needs of team leads and managers alike. You can get an accurate snapshot of current development activity, track effort on planned vs. unplanned work, and compare actual effort expended to the estimates in your project plans. Its project-agnostic activity tracking functionality makes it a great tool for improving estimation on new projects, as you can mine historical data to determine real-world development metrics.

"Projectory is platform-independent and can be installed on any web server that supports Perl CGI applications and MySQL databases. Installation and configuration instructions are provided for *nix (including Mac OS X) and Windows 2000.

"Full details, including a feature overview and screenshots of the application in action, are available at http://projectory.sourceforge.net

"You can support future development of Projectory by making a donation to the project. 10% of all donations will go to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). For details please see http://sourceforge.net/project/project_donations.php?group_id=57546"

Posted at 2:50AM UTC | permalink

Tue 10 Feb 2004

If we build it, people will come

Category : Commentary/JavaOSXCourseUpdate.txt

We've got four people, and maybe three more, on board for our Java on Mac OS X course. So it's panic time, as Ian Beattie, the Final Cut Pro guy, would say. Three weeks more to make sure these guys will get their money's worth.

Posted at 9:46AM UTC | permalink

Mon 09 Feb 2004

Build Your Own Browser

Category : Technology/buildownbrowser.txt

Try this exercise at MacDevCenter, if you have the OS X Developer Tools installed (and have upgraded to OS X 10.3.2 and Java 1.4.2).

In five minutes, without writing a single line of code, you would have built your very own web browser. Wait, that's not all. Log on to the bank where you do your Internet banking. In my case it's at the Development Bank of Singapore (DBS). Be prepared to be amazed as your very own web browser does Internet banking. It's jaw-dropping, eye-popping time. For good measure, I transferred some money from one account to another. It all worked, flawlessly. And fast, too. And all without having written a single line of code.

This is going to enable a totally new class of web applications. I'm not sure how it is all going to work out, but there's going to be a hybrid between client/server and webserver/browser -based applications.

If you've ever used 4th-Dimension before, you may be aware that its client-server architecture was, for some time, quite ahead of its time. But it wouldn't scale across the web. Web-server-based applications will, of course, work across the web, but the browser cannot come close to matching to the kind of end-user interactivity we used to be able to build into client-server applications.

I've often wished I could get the best of both these worlds (e.g., get the web-based application to do some pretty complicated computation as I tab along from one field to another, without having to do a POST everytime). Now, I think there may be a way to do it. But how? Not sure, but I believe it'll work in combination with the technology called Web Services. And I believe also that the breakthrough will appear first on a Mac, if only because Mac developers can now cut the crap and start experimenting.

Posted at 12:59PM UTC | permalink

Wed 04 Feb 2004

Courses at Apple : Java on OS X and AppleScript Studio

Category : Commentary/Applecourses.txt

It's been announced. I'll be conducting these two courses at Apple Singapore - Java on Mac OS X on the 2nd and 3rd of March, and the AppleScript Studio Course on the 4th and 5th of March.

We've completed development on Luca, an accounting application on OS X that was written using Java. So the Java on OS X course will use this as a case study to show how a Java application could be constructed on OS X. And we'll also cover areas like code re-usability, showing how most of the Java code can be re-used to build a web-services-aware accounting application that will work over the web - great for consolidating information from several physical locations.

Postfix Enabler will be used as the case study for the AppleScript Studio course. I hope to get more people building such applications on OS X after the course. But will they come? We'll soon find out.

Posted at 9:32AM UTC | permalink

Tue 03 Feb 2004

Java 1.4.2, Safari 1.2 and LiveConnect

Category : Technology/liveconnectishere.txt

Downloaded these two updates and I'm now able to do Internet banking using Safari. The key improvement is the existence of LiveConnect support - at long last. Now I can connect to DBS Bank and I've heard others say they've got good results with UOB and Citibank, among others.

So Netscape Navigator is out of my dock, now, and I won't ever miss it.

Posted at 6:13AM UTC | permalink

Mon 02 Feb 2004

Polyglot AppleGlot

Category : Technology/polyglot.txt

We now have two (contributed) localisations for Postfix Enabler, one in Traditional Chinese and one in French.

In case you're wondering how people could contribute a localisation, this is the way it's done in OS X. If you click on Postfix Enabler in the Finder, and simultaneously hold down the Control (Ctrl) key, you will see a pull-down menu appear, so you can do a Show Package Contents, which will open up Postfix Enabler as though it's a folder.

Navigate down the folder until you find the Interface Builder file (in Contents/Resources/English.lproj/MainMenu.nib). If you've installed the OS X Developer Tools, you will have Interface Builder installed, which will allow you to make a copy of MainMenu.nib, open it, and also edit it.

If you take care not to disturb the structure of the interface, e.g., the size of the windows and other parameters, and restrict yourself to working on the textual elements in the interface, it's quite easy to change the words on the interface into any language you want, if the you have the text input method installed on your Mac. You can open the International panel under System Preferences and switch the Mac to use any of a dozen other languages, and then it's a simple matter of highlighting a text field anywhere on the interface and overwriting it with an equivalent text string in the language that you want to translate the application into.

Then you send the "localised" MainMenu.nib file back to the author of the application, and, in less than a minute, he has a French or Chinese localisation bundled in and ready to be used. It's really that simple.

The problem comes when the author makes a new version of the software. If you're the translator, you can take the new version, make a new copy of the Interface Builder file, and do the translation all over again. Without automated tools, all you can do is to look into the older version that you did the translation on (if you did remember to keep a copy), and do a lot of copy and paste to get the new version up to where you were last on, and then work on translating whatever is new on the new version. After doing this a few times, it all starts to be tedious, and you wished you never volunteered to do the trsnslation in the first place.

Now what we need are automated tools that will magically compare the new version with an older localised version, somehow bring all the translations that were done before over to the new version, and then let the translator concentrate only on the new things that have appeared on the interface. Mistakes can crop up if the translator works on the Interface Builder files, so it'll be better if the translator does the translations on a text file which, again magically, can be used by the system to create the new version of the localised application, automatically.

I say "magical" but such a tool indeed exists. It can be found, if you are a subscriber to the Apple Developer Connection, in the monthly CD/DVD mailer. The tool is called AppleGlot, and I've just discovered, it is also available for download on-line.

It's a wonderful tool. I've got my friend, Hai Hwee, to try it out updating Kuo Yuan-Fen's Traditional Chinese localisation of Postfix Enabler from 1.0.7 to 1.0.9 and it works. We've just bumped our productivity up several notches. Now, when I update Postfix Enabler to version 1.1 from 1.0.9, I just have to work on the English version, send the new version to the translators so that they have a context to work on, but they will work on a text file (called the Glossary file), and send that back to me, which I will use to create new localised versions of the application automatically. Today, Singapore; tomorrow, the world. Did I ever mention why I call the Mac the Ultimate Business Machine?

Posted at 1:34PM UTC | permalink

The Postfix Enabler Logo

Category : Commentary/PFEIcon.txt

I wrote to Wietse Venema, the creator of Postfix, and asked for permission to incorporate the Postfix logo as a background in our Postfix Enabler icon, as it was designed by Michel Poulain.

The idea of the icon is that Postfix Enabler helps you to fix up the Postfix that is built into every Panther-equipped Macintosh and put it to work.

To my surprise, he actually replied and said yes. So we're now spotting a spanking new icon. Thanks, Wietse, and also to Mike Poulain.

Posted at 8:48AM UTC | permalink

Sat 31 Jan 2004

Spam Block

Category : Technology/SpamBlock.txt

Lots of junk mail coming in, no doubt due to the MyDoom virus, and variants. I don't have time to add these to Postfix Enabler yet, but you can add these lines (combining contributions by Terry Allen and Michel Poulain) to the Custom Postfix Settings field in the second panel :

maps_rbl_domains = sbl.spamhaus.org, relays.ordb.org, cbl.abuseat.org, bl.spamcop.net

smtpd_client_restrictions = hash:/etc/postfix/access, reject_rbl_client sbl.spamhaus.org, reject_rbl_client relays.ordb.org, reject_rbl_client cbl.abuseat.org, reject_rbl_client bl.spamcop.net

default_rbl_reply = $rbl_code Service unavailable; $rbl_class [$rbl_what] blocked using $rbl_domain${rbl_reason?; $rbl_reason} - see http://$rbl_domain.

smtpd_helo_required = yes

smtpd_helo_restrictions = permit_mynetworks, reject_unknown_hostname

Another thing to do is to un-set the LUSER_RELAY parameter, i.e., do not nominate a user who will receive all the mail addressed to unknown users in your domain. These mail will be bounced back to the sender.

I think it works because the mail server has quietened down quite a bit.

Posted at 5:15AM UTC | permalink

Thu 29 Jan 2004

Friends

Category : Commentary/friends.txt

Mike (Michel Poulain) sent me a bunch of stuff - a nice little script to attach to a mail server to stop viruses coming in (it works with Virex which comes with a .Mac account), a collection of PC viruses to test on, and, best of all, a nice icon for Postfix Enabler. All these, plus the French localisation that I've already released on the Postfix Enabler page.

He says, "It was just to complete your book on the human nature. You get support AND thanks AND money from people too. ;-)".

He's right. I told him I was just going to write about this. About how doing shareware is a lot like being a street musician, with people throwing pennies into the open guitar case (and that's when people are at least being appreciative), but there are also times when you've got to put up with a bit of ridicule, and there are, of course, the people who sponge up on your music but wouldn't pay.

But, if we don't go out into the street, we wouldn't meet the other wonderful people who're also out there, getting as much out of life as they put into it. So, it's been a wonderful experience about sharing, and that is something that has to be written about.

And, just like being a street musician (the last chapter of a pretty fun book that I just read, "Floating Off the Page", ends on that note), you've got to have a higher purpose. I'm curious where this will lead. And when you get people like Mike and also Terry Allen plying you with stuff to add to Postfix Enabler, it's a bit hard to stop, at this point, though I had meant to.

So there'll be a next release with RBL (Real-Time Blocking) and anti-virus support. It'll be great to have SpamAssassin but I'm not sure how I would be able to bundle in a binary, and whether I'm allowed to in the first place. But I've got SpamAssassin working on a test server and it works great. The thing is to figure out how you can plug in Mike's solution or Anome, with or without SpamAssassin, depending on what a user wants. Easy to dream about, hard to do.

Posted at 8:54AM UTC | permalink

Sun 25 Jan 2004

Postfix Enabler 1.0.9 in French

Category : Commentary/pfeInFrench.txt

Michel Poulain sent me a version of the Postfix Enabler 1.0.9 interface in French. I'll take a day or two to incorporate this into a working version.

Apple has a very nice way of doing the language customisation but, so far, I hadn't had time to learn enough to exploit it. I've done it the brute-force way with the Chinese translation. But the problem comes when you make changes to the system. You have to merge in the different language versions all over again. Apple's engineers appear to have put a lot of thought into this, and I think their way is designed to take a lot of the pain out of doing this.

It's during a time like this that you can sometimes see how far down the line Apple, as a company, had carried the DNA of their founders. I remember reading about Steve Wozniak talking about his design for a circuit board, how he worked hard to eliminate the cross-over wiring, how even if nobody else sees it, he would still do it because (and I'm probably paraphrasing him here), it's the aesthetically right thing to do. (I hope to find a web page that contains this but I believe I read it in a book a long time ago; but you get the drift).

Some of these things that Apple did, like language customisation done the Mac Way, are not things that are immediately apparent to business users. But these are things that are of very real benefit to the business world, especially now that we're wanting to do business all over the world. Yet again, it never fails to amaze me how the best all-time machine for running a business on has never, ever, been considered a serious business machine. What have all these IT guys been smoking?

But back again to Postfix Enabler. I'll get the French version out in a few days. Thanks again to Michel Poulain (Mike), and all the French-speaking people who had supported Postfix and Sendmail Enablers, right from the start.

Posted at 3:23AM UTC | permalink

Fri 23 Jan 2004

The Disappearing Masks

Category : Commentary/operamasks.txt

It's Chinese New Year (恭喜發財) and I'm watching this performance on the TV where the dancers, who were wearing Chinese Opera masks, were changing them so quickly, on stage. I've seen Kabuki (or was it, Noh) performances where they changed costumes in one breath-taking moment, but the speed with which that was done could be said to be stately, when compared to this. One moment it was blue and then it was red, and then it was some other colour, and then it was no more. Quite magical and quite difficult to see how it could have been done.

I was told that the technique was some sort of a state secret in China and even Andy Lau, the Hong Kong artiste, was rebuffed when he tried to learn how it's done so that he could use it in his shows.

So, I wanted to learn more. Just a couple of tries with Google and I got the information I was looking for. Here is the story about Andy Lau and the Sichuan Opera Mask. Shows that, maybe, the most important skill in our age is to learn how to frame a question, or how to ask the right questions, because there are so many answers that you can pull in from the web, without leaving your couch.

Posted at 2:47PM UTC | permalink