jake olsen

I went off a while ago how I’d never buy an iPhone. I then ate those words.

We created an application which is the thing I have been dreaming of since the thought of Urbanverb in 1999. Urbanverb was never built, but Platial was, and so now is Platial Nearby. It’s the version of Platial to use while you are out in the real world away from the confines of your computer.

There are still some bugs which we are madly fixing, but if you have an iPhone, try it out.

–jake

It’s been a minute.

Our beautiful daughter Quinn has been with us for 5 months now almost.

Launched this.

Doing a lot of work with Solr and EC2.

I’ll try to update more regularly.

–jake

I bought an iPhone, so I at least the words in the title of this post. Even with Apple’s closed-source approach I blasted in that post, the iPhone is pretty active in open-source development considering it’s short two month existence.

Phones are legal to unlock, as granted by the DMCA exemptions last year. Therefore, it makes complete sense that my iPhone is running on T-Mobile, rather than sketchy AT&T. Hack yours by following these instructions.

What a fun experience watching these guys go at it on IRC, a good summary is here.

–jake

In follow-up to my old post about switching to Ubuntu full-time, I did the deed last April.

Here’s how it went:

1) Switched to Vista Ultimate. Found that key software such as firewall and antivirus didn’t work.
2) Got scared about not running firewall and antivirus.
3) Went back to XP.
4) Two weeks…
5) Feisty is released April 19th, let’s give it a shot. Edgy blew.

I’ve been pretty happy with this release. Minor hiccups included getting the graphics subsystem to display properly (Envy helped). Major hiccups included a corrupt LUKS partition.

Regarding dmcrypt/LUKS encryption:

This guy went through a similar problem, but basically, there is a single point of failure in LUKS. The dreaded LUKS header. Back it up! Luckily I had a not-so-old backup of my data.

I was a little naive in my selection of software, here’s what I finally ended up using.

command line svn for Tortoise SVN
Pidgin for Trillian Pro
KeePassX for KeePass
rsync for WinSCP
Komodo for IDE

There is a place for every OS, and I use them all. But working with community maintained software has it’s own benefits and I’m enthused to see how far Linux has come.

–jake

When I’m browsing, I often double-click to select a word for a clipboard, another search, whatever.

My surprise tonight when I noticed NYT had hijacked my double clicks to open their reference search, which is powered by Answers.com, and is mostly useless and non-contextual.

Which is how I was taught that Gibson only means Mel Gibson.

Guess they need the pageviews.

UPDATE: It actually looks like they are trying to be contextual, as the double click on “Gibson” from this article passes “say, Fender and Gibson” onto Answers.

–jake

Somehow, I friended myself on Twitter.

It’s bugs like this, that I wonder:

1) How in the hell did I do that?
2) How the hell do I un-friend myself?
3) Am I an idiot?

I had Twitter updating from my now listening bot, but Huslage said that was going to cost him a fortune in SMS fees. Makes you wonder, what kind of person wants Twitter updates all day long?

–jake

With Windows Vista released, I’ve been wondering if I would upgrade.

I’m quite satisfied with my Ubuntu install on my laptop, and the idea of embracing a FOSS operating system on my dev box makes me feel good. I am running FreeBSD, Linux, and all other sorts of open source software on my servers, but am I ready to use it ALL THE TIME…. AS A USER???

There are a few apps on Windows which are very nice, which I always run, or that I’m simply familiar with:

• Tortoise SVN client rules any GUI I’ve seen for SVN on other OS’es.
• Trillian Pro is excellent for all chat + IRC.
• KeePass password safe, neat little open source app for password management.
• WinSCP, using directory sync makes development painless.
• Internet Explorer, just to see what 80% of the world is looking at.
• Windows Media Player, hahah! Not.
• Ultramon, for multi-monitor setup.
• All the Office applications I have come to rely on, though I’ve been getting by with Open Office another machine.
• Outlook, meh, yeah, I know. Been using it for 10 years, so I’m used to it.

And that’s it. The replacements I’m looking at are:

• gSVN RapidSVN for Tortoise.
• Gaim for Trillian Pro.
• Revelation for KeePass.
• rsync + rsyncd for WinSCP.
• Multiple monitors, this will be a little harder.
• Open Office for Microsoft Office.
• Thunderbird for Outlook.

I have a friend who’s made the switch from Ubuntu to Mac… he said he “just needed it to work.” I’ve heard this from many a Mac user. I don’t know what their PC experience is, but I can tell you, most of my systems have always “just worked.”

Also, there is a MacBook sitting right next to me. I only use it to test sites in Safari. You Mac folks will cry “BLASHPHEMY, THE ANSWER IS RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOUR FACE!”

But, IMHO, the Kool-Aid is way too strong.

–jake

Steve Jobs:

“You don’t want your phone to be an open platform,” said Jobs, referring to the concept of any phone owner writing applications for it. “You need it to work when you need it to work. Cingular doesn’t want to see their West Coast network go down because some application messed up.”

What is Cingular’s network built on? Duct tape and fishing line?

With open source phones starting to spring up, Apple has a big opportunity here they are going to miss. This closed source approach is why Apple stinks IMHO. DRM is another issue, but that discussion is for another day.

Anselm Hook:

to me the cellphone space still look like a witches brew of free agents competing over scraps without any real awareness of a bigger opportunity… if they could get their act together over the basic idea of making those 64 bits of information free… we’d all tra la la through flowery fields of bliss i am sure.

playing in somebody elses sandbox, with their image of prescribed activities is not fun…

For further reading, walled gardens and the iPhone are a hot topic in this months Geowankers discussion.

–jake

It’s time to hack some ubiquitous apps.

Today, MetroFi launched their 1 Mbit service in Portland. Premium non-advertising service is 2 Mbit and is $20 per month.

I logged into the network downtown from my phone. I only got to the login screen because I was driving, so I didn’t test the service yet. I could see the headline.

Free WIFI causes First Death in Portland

I didn’t know there was a local partnership with Microsoft, this should be interesting for local ads. I wonder if they’re doing WIFI router location based services?

Here’s an image of their router locations:

And these things are all over the streetlights:

Hell, even Om writes about it.

The PDC has the details on the project here.

–jake

My attempt to go consumerist crazy and buy the XBOX special on Amazon failed miserably.

Amazon went down. Yes, down. They can’t handle people wanting $100 Xboxes.

With this, and the recent Alexa problems, how does Amazon expect people to trust EC2 and S3? It seems THEY should be able to turn on extra machines when they have a special that millions of people are scrambling for.

I’m off to be thankful, my consumerism is done for the day.

Happy Thanksgiving!

–jake