| The Ultimate Business Machine Technology, business And, not least, about by: Bernard Teo
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Mon 03 Nov 2003 WebserveMonitorCategory : Technology/WebServeMonitor.txt I wrote something that will pull my web server log into a Cocoa front-end, that I call WebServeMonitor. I can see that I'm still getting the usual hits on the Sendmail Enabler page but it's already outnumbered by those hitting Postfix Enabler. Besides letting those who paid for Sendmail Enabler know they can now download Postfix Enabler for free, I've only sent it out to the people who've been asking for it the last couple of months - a case of squeaky wheels getting the grease. I wasn't sure there was even a need for Postfix Enabler, in the first place. It's interesting to study how information diffuses over the web. I like looking through the web server log to see where and in which context our stuff's been mentioned. It's been strange to see something I wrote here coming back at me in the midst of all that look to be Spanish. Anyway, I've put in something that may allow Postfix Enabler to work also on Macs that had been simply upgraded from Jaguar, rather than having been clean installed, or archived and installed. My friend Yezdi is aupposed to try this out but he's still incommunicado, and it's time to turn in. I've put this version on the web page because it should do no harm. If it works, it will be great. Sun 02 Nov 2003 Postfix Enabler 1.0.1Category : Technology/postfixenabler101.txt Updated Postfix Enabler to include the POP server. It's now equivalent in features to Sendmail Enabler 1.1.3. I think it's now justifiable to price it back at $9.95. I've added the ability to turn on and off the SMTP and POP server separately, and giving the application enough intelligence to indicate to the user whether either or both are active A couple more things to work on - to see how I can patch things so that it will work on upgraded Panther machines, rather than just those that had been archived and installed, or clean installed. And to see if I can make SMTP-AUTH work by making the least amount of changes to the Apple-installed binaries. Thu 30 Oct 2003 POP3 on Panther works againCategory : Technology/qpopperPanther.txt I've got the POP server working again on Panther, using qpopper, thanks to this link - http://www.kung-foo.tv/blog/archives/000654.php - at "kung-foo.tv - chaotic intransient prose bursts". Thanks, man. I'll work on including this in Postfix Enabler. I'd like to get UW-IMAP working again on Panther and I may now understand enough to give this another shot. Mon 27 Oct 2003 Postfix Enabler - Soft LaunchCategory : Commentary/postfixenablerannounce.txt I've got the Postfix Enabler download page up. If you've been looking for it to be released, you can download it now. This version 1.0 release does not include the pop server. It will only enable the smtp capability that is provided by Postfix on Panther. But enough people have said that they only need that, so here goes. Enjoy! as they used to say. I'm just doing a soft launch in case there are any bugs. No announcements on versiontracker until I'm sure it does even the little that it's doing now very well. I didn't feel that we could charge US$9.95 for it because it's not that difficult to turn on Postfix manually, using the command line. but it's still hard work and there's the inevitable deluge of support calls that is going to come. So it's going to be $5.95. Come on. Pay the shareware fee, guys. (But Postfix Enabler is free for those who paid for Sendmail Enabler. You know who you are! Thanks.) Sendmail Enabler UpdateCategory : Commentary/smupdateannounce.txt I updated Sendmail Enabler to prevent it from running on Panther. I should have done this earlier but I really couldn't find the time. I didn't change the version number because there weren't any new features. Sorry, if you've run Sendmail Enabler on Panther. But it shouldn't cause any harm. Wed 22 Oct 2003 TrainingCategory : Technology/trainingsystem.txt I'm starting to get more people interested in doing the training than I have students. But, as in everything, you've always got to start with having a great product, and the guys I've talked to have the potential to do good stuff. About the system I'm using to manage the course administration. Almost all of the companies we've built systems for have been PC-based companies. I've always looked for a business we can run which uses our own system and which could show-case the amazing stuff we know we could do only on a Mac. And I think this is it. For a start, imagine the iCal integration. We're setting things up so that once we get agreement on the general outline of a course, how much it would cost, and when it would be done, we want to enter it just once into the database and have the system generate the course synopsis page, update the iCal-based training calendar, generate the course registration page, collect the registration, and send out e-mail updates to the trainer and attendees, all at one go and on the fly. We're getting there with the system. But the point is, if you do IT this way, you start out with imagining how the information will be used (before you even talk about specific technologies). For example, we think it would be great if people subscribe to our iCal calendar, so they can overlay it with their's and the Singapore public holidays calendar, decide if it's a convenient date to attend a course, and book it with just one click. I think a part of the reason why some IT managers hate the Mac is that they have an inkling (though they may not consciously understand it) that the dialogue is going to change concerning their work (with an increased emphasis on the business of helping people understand information), and it's a dialogue they're not comfortable with (coming from a training that focused on cables and connectors and bits and bytes). I've been an arts-inclined student who studied engineering-based subjects all my life. Just how many of my engineering classmates married arts graduates and have a happy life? It's difficult to imagine how they could have a dialogue in the first place. (It's easy to get nostalgic when iTunes is playing music from that era.) iTunes WindowsCategory : Commentary/iTunesWindows.txt Found a use for my Dell laptop playing my iTunes collection, streaming off my iBook. Since we're now doing all the Java and database development stuff on our PowerBooks, we've hardly ever used our PCs, reserving them for our courses to show Mac-PC connectivity. Maybe I don't really need it to play iTunes but it was just sitting there. If that's the best thing I could do with a PC besides being a paperweight... Mon 20 Oct 2003 Mac Training, for Mac People, the Mac WayCategory : Commentary/MacTrainingAnnounce.txt I've wanted to organise Mac training for the longest time - so that Mac users can learn about getting the most out of their Macs, from other dedicated Mac users who could teach the Mac way of doing things. It's only lately that I've got the resources to make this happen. I've got a large enough space, complete with AppleStore look-a-like beech wood flooring. It's in Shenton Way, within walking distance of the MRT, as well as all the design, media and advertising companies around Tanjong Pagar. I've got the systems set up for course adminstration, making materials, paying the trainers, and for publishing course calendars. If you've got the latest iCal, you can see what I mean - subscribe to webcal://www.roadstead.com/dav/ical/RoadsteadTraining.ics, and you can reach the registration page for a course with just one click. And I'm starting to find the right people who've got the passion to help other Mac users - both switchers and veteran Mac users - discover things they don't know they could do with their Macs. I'm working with Yezdi (who's the President of the local Mac Users' Group MUGS) right now to organise a half-day "Panther/Mac Productivity WorkOut" course that can help people switch to Panther, as safely as possible. The idea is, you bring your own Mac, say your PowerBook, and you bring along your copy of Panther, and we'll help you choose a strategy for upgrading (believe me, there are a few), showing you how to take advantage of all the new features, as well as all the old stuff that you always wanted to know but didn't know who to ask. (We've arranged it so that you can also buy Panther here when you turn up for the course.) We've got PCs, servers and laptops, on tap, so that you can really see how well the Mac fits into a PC environment, instead of just taking somebody's word for it. Because I own the place (really) we can work towards keeping the costs down, say $80 for a course. And we'll keep things focused so people won't waste time. (If you just want to learn and don't have a Mac to bring, we'll provide you with one to use for just $19 more). We've put up more details on http://roadstead.com/training/workout There are currently two planned dates - 28th Oct (Tuesday) & 8th Nov (Saturday), 9.00 to 1.00 pm (just to see which timing is more popular) - which people can register for, if they're interested in joining other Mac users upgrade to Panther together. I'd love to host courses for FileMakerPro, Final Cut Pro, movie making on the Mac, sound editing, business systems, setting up Internet servers, courses for kids, etc... I'm contributing the space, the systems, the infrastructure, and doing the publicising, so that people who need the knowledge can get connected with the people who can best provide the training. I don't know how far we can take this (though I've been dreaming about doing this for a long time). But I've always preferred the grass-roots movement rather than the top-down, hey-we're-with-Apple way. So I'm going to stick my neck out and do this. I've just sent out a message to Mean, a local Mac users group. Maybe later to MUGS. And I would have learnt enough from doing real estate adverts to advertise on the local papers. I believe this idea could work. Even if we only get one interested attendee, we'll still do it. Sat 18 Oct 2003 Random Musings on a Lazy Saturday AfternoonCategory : Commentary/musings.txt I'm told I'm the ONLY Mac source on the subject of enabling Postfix on Panther. I've also just read James Duncan Davidson's thoughts about how people breaking Panther NDA is irking him. While I have another take on this, I think it's better to keep quiet from now on. After all, it's only another seven days. Not that I have anything more to add. I've got a lot of things back to what I used to get with sendmail, but I still can't get the POP server part to work. I'd love to find out how to solve this. Maybe I can find it in his forthcoming Panther book when it comes out. I'm reading Jim Carlton's book on the death of Apple. You could apply the same deprecating tone he used on Apple to the case of Microsoft. With all their dominance (you're absolutely required to use Windows in most corporations), one would have thought they could have used the opportunity to really improve their users' computing experience, in a way that gives Apple no room to find their way back. But no. You still don't get the same devotion to Microsoft among the average PC user that Apple routinely enjoys among the Mac faithful. In most business books, this is customer loyalty to die for. It should be the envy of any industry, no? So who roots for Microsoft? Not mentioned in Jim Carlton's account is the role of corporate IT managers and CIOs, who saw Windows as something that could give the end-users what they think they're getting (the Mac computing experience), while holding on to the true reins of power because the PC was still, in reality, as technically-challenging as it had ever been - thus requiring continued (and massive) IT support. And they knew it. Part of Microsoft's genius is knowing how to sell to this audience. I remember how the argument for Windows (in the 3.0 incarnation) against the Mac was that you can run Windows without replacing the current hardware platform. Who could argue against this? It's like motherhood and apple pie. But it was a lot more subtle than this. Six months after Windows was declared the winner (and the movement to base everything else on it - database software, applications, peripherals, the whole ecosystem - had gained irreversible momentum), the same guys would go to management and say how the users could be more productive if they had faster hardware to run all these stuff. They had known this all along. The thing is, this is the way the game was played. Have you ever seen truck-loads, piled high with PCs, coming to your work place? Mathematically, it was like how A(B+C) = AB + AC. You get the same result, but one thing looked huger than the other. I was recounting this to someone the other day and he was, coming from the corporate world, maybe not surprisingly, admiring of this approach. He felt that it was a masterstroke in strategy. Putting aside the possible waste of money, what about the deceit? It left the incumbents in power. You've got to understand this angle about technology. It's loaded with political ramifications. Perhaps Apple don't and never will. Microsoft understands the power of momentum. You only have to read Jim Carlton's book to see it. Now, when Panther launches, how many third-party systems and software will launch with it? Do you see a connection?
Thu 16 Oct 2003 Mac Meetup in Singapore, 14th October 2003Category : Commentary/macmeetup14Oct03.txt Thought I'd place a link to some photos Siva compiled of the recently concluded Mac meetup (14th October 2003, at Burger King at the Millenia Walk). The Singapore Mac Meetups could be one of the best-attended Mac meetups anywhere in the world. I've enjoyed the last two that I've attended immensely because you can learn a lot in two hours. Man, look at all these Mac users... Note : This is where you can sign up (if you're in Singapore). They meet every second Tuesday of the month. A week before the meetup, you'll be asked to vote for a place to meet up. Then you get the result of the vote and you just turn up, easy as that. Tue 14 Oct 2003 Apple Panther Tech TalkCategory : Technology/pathertechtalk.txt Attended the a Panther Tech Talk by Apple at Raffles City yesterday. The topics covered were : Panther, the G5, porting Unix apps to OS X, Rendezvous, optimizing C/C++ code, developing drivers, multi-lingual capabilties and a securities technologies overview. I keep thinking, during the talks, about how business writers often miss the point about Apple. They make comparisons with Microsoft, as if the war has been won, and there's nothing else to talk about any more. Actually, I think Apple represents an alternative way of doing technology that is equally valid. Far from being dead, I believe that it is an emerging model that is going to get even more relevant as we move along. A lot of what goes into Panther is available in the public domain as Open Source projects - Samba, Free BSD, DNS and BIND, Apache, everything that constitutues the Internet. Apple's genius is in packaging these technologies into a whole that is easy-to-use by an end-user, creating technologies where they don't already exist to glue everything together. The resulting product is open where it makes sense, and yet proprietary, again where it makes sense. It has been said that a measure of intelligence is the ability to hold two (apparently) contradictory thoughts in your mind at the same time, and reconcile them. Perhaps, Apple's market share is a reflection of the number of people who can actually do that. One day, countries like China, who're starting to learn how to build and put together the hardware pieces, are going to realise they can take Linux and follow Apple's lead to put together something that is much greater than the sum of its parts. So long as it follows Internet standards and consists of Open Source pieces like Apache and MySQL in the main, it would have a built-in ability to interoperate with the rest of the systems out there. That is, instead of participating in only one layer, take responsibility for the vertical integration and build the whole product. It's like, we can all communicate with each other because, whether we're Chinese or Malay or Indian, we all agreed to use English as the common language. The current Windows model is like saying we all have to be cast from the same mould before we can talk to each other. Obviously, God had other ideas. People who argue that products eventually become commoditised forget that we're talking about technologies that are designed to augment human communications. Far from becoming more standardised, we're going to see a demand for these services to grow in complexity to match the variety and richness of human communication. If you take a perspective where you agree that that is the end you are working towards, that the technologies have to be melded so that it will simultaneously give us better and more powerful ways of communicating while becoming even easier to use, then you may become more sympathetic towards Apple's cause. If you take that perspective where you're focused on the complexity of creating the software, then it is no idle thing to want to have a tighter control over the hardware, just so you can make the whole damn thing work in the first place. It is no accident that Apple's stuff is so elegant and the PC stuff is so clunky. You reap what you sow. Postfix on Panther. Yet another follow-upCategory : Technology/followupPostfix.txt Okay, just one more thing about Postfix on Panther (from 7B74 onwards). I've noticed that I lose the ability to send mail out after the system wakes up from sleep. So I made this change to /etc/hostconfig - I set MAILSERVER=-YES- (from MAILSERVER=-AUTOMATIC-) and the problem goes away. It's been working great since. Actually, I'm trying to find the least amount of things I have to change to make Postfix work from a stock Panther installation. I think I'll still do a Postfix Enabler - for what it's worth. Maybe a set of things that go from Basic to Advanced (with SMTP-AUTH) to Pro (with POP and IMAP). 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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