software

I've been using Pukka—a Mac client for Delicious—for a bit, and it's pretty great. (More on that later, it's already the subject of a half-finished Technophobe review). I like it enough that I recommended it to a friend today:

bobthecow: @storiesofmac Pukka is pretty okay (Delicious + Mac)

about 2 hours ago

Sun Jul 19 02:05:23 +0000 2009

And what do you know, Justin Miller (the creator of Pukka) noticed:

incanus77: @bobthecow Any way I can make Pukka 'really ok'? :-)

about an hour ago

Sun Jul 19 02:52:12 +0000 2009

So here, other Justin, are a couple of ways to make Pukka great:

• Pre-populate the page title when dragging a URL into Pukka for bookmarking: I was actually surprised that it didn’t already work like this.

• Popular tags support: I still use the official Yahoo plugin in Firefox to do the majority of my bookmarking because of this one feature. I will drag a page from Safari to Firefox and bookmark it there just so I don’t have to think up all the tags to use.

• Global keyboard shortcuts for bookmarking: I'm not sure how this one would work, but I’d like to be able to bookmark via hotkey in any browser. It might need to be an input manager or a set of browser plugins. Think 1Password for bookmarks.

• Bonus: if you can work it into the plugin/input manager goodness, I love being able to select a paragraph from the site to use for my Delicious description text.

• Real Spotlight integration: For this it might make sense to stash the local bookmark cache as a folder full of webclips, and make sure they’re named, tagged, and commented in a Spotlight friendly way.

You're well on your way, and I'd love to see Pukka get even better.

If someone makes a digital version of your popular board game, don't sue them. If someone ports your software to a new platform, or creates a wildly popular knockoff, don't sue them. Don't instinctively reach for a DMCA notice or a lawsuit. These developers aren't your competition, they're your fans.

Once you shut them down, you'll prob'ly write your own version for that platform. After all, you now see that there's a market. But if their knockoff already has an enormous fanbase, you won't win them over by shutting down the software.

Scrabulous, a Scrabble knockoff by two Indian students, became the most popular game on Facebook. 500,000 people played it per day, until it was removed from the platform. It was replaced by an inferior, and far less popular, licensed version by Hasbro and EA. Hasbro lost, even though they won.

Copyright holders: If the software works, buy it. Not only do you save the development time for the officially licensed version, but you inherit the fanbase.

Tris was one of the original jailbreak apps for the iPhone. It was a free Tetris clone, written by student Noah Witherspoon before legitimate third-party applications were possible. Once Apple opened the App Store, Tris joined Tap Tap Revolution in going legit. It was a popular app, but not long-lived. Unfortunately, EA had a much more awkward version of Tetris slated for the iPhone. So Tris was shut down.

Copyright holders: If the developer shows promise, hire them. Who better to have working for you than your biggest fans?

Most geeks are enthralled by Swiss Army knives. "Look at all these features!" they say, "It even has a spoon!" … But the Swiss Army knife is, by definition, a compromise. When compared to actual silverware, a Swiss Army spoon falls far short of the mark. Fanboys and apologists accept this "Swiss Army" compromise because of the convenience offered. They no longer have to carry the right tool for every job, because they have one tool that's good enough for most jobs. In the limited capacity of pants pockets, convenience wins over suitability almost every time.

Application developers, being geeks, often fall into the same trap. They develop a "Swiss Army" application that does a lot of things poorly, but does nothing nearly as well as a single well-targeted app would. But a modern computer isn't limited like my pockets. I can comfortably fit as many tools as I want or need. My favorite apps to use are almost always the little ones that do one thing exactly right.

I'm introducing a new category on Technophobe for all the apps that are exactly the Right Tool for the job. It will soon be full of these amazing single-serving apps and widgets that do one thing and do it well. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

iTunes' iPhone backup is absolutely horrid. i've just about decided to completely replace it with rsync, so i figured i'd give it one last go. it's been 2 hours since i plugged my phone in and iTunes auto-synced. it's been over a week since my last rsync backup. how do they compare?

time

iTunes backup—crashed after 1.5 hours. resulted in corrupted backup, will not be able to restore from it.

rsync—5 minutes, 32 seconds.

connection

iTunes backup—plug in via dock connector/usb.

rsync—wi-fi.

speed

iTunes backup—USB 2.0 theoretical maximum: 480 Mbits/second. actual speed: approx 2.3 Mbits/sec.

rsync—actual transfer speed: 440 Mbits/sec.

data transferred

iTunes backup— ~16 Gb

rsync— ~155 Mb

data availability

iTunes backup—stored in a single compressed image. not available.

rsync—stored in a standard folder on my data drive. very available.

revision availability

iTunes backup—last backup. available only as a complete reimage, assuming the last backup didn't crash. if last backup crashed (about 66% probability, in my experience), not available at all. ever.

rsync—thanks to the magic of Time Machine, every single sync is backed up. every change. every revision. these backups can be restored piecemeal, as needed.

ease of restoration

iTunes backup—plug in phone. hope iTunes has a valid backup image. curse.

rsync—run the reverse rsync command, go about your merry way. can restore a single app or folder, or the entire iPhone.

triggers

iTunes backup—plug phone into computer, manual sync.

rsync—cron jobs, folder actions, bluetooth proximity, IP address availability, manual sync.

approx wait after plugging phone into computer before i can do anything with my phone other than looking a pretty "syncing" screen

iTunes backup—1.5 hours

rsync—0 seconds

final score

verdict?

wow.

i was chatting with my boss at Portero, and he found it amusing that the iPod app has such a prominent place on my iPhone. he said he'd rather have easy access to his calendar than his music. it's interesting to see how everyone arranges their apps to suit their own preferences. after playing with my phone a while, these are the apps that have made the cut and the ordering that works for me. i plan to write more on the apps later, so check back!

what does your phone look like?

the home screen

these are my go-to apps. they're generally grouped by row. notable players include transportation and task management apps.

more iPhone screenshots after the jump.

Every once in a while someone asks me what cool software they should install on their computer. Invariably, I say something like "check out the OS X tag on my blog."

Apparently I've been lying to everyone, because I looked at the software categories on my blog the other day and realized that I haven't been posting much there at all. So I decided to do something about it:

Introducing Technophobe, the future home of my tech rants and recommendations. I've started out with a really sweet Mac menu extra called Jumpcut.

More features, more reviews, more hotness coming soon. Check back for a regular dose of nifty applications. Subscribe to the site feeds. Enjoy :)

A few weeks ago I purchased the MacHeist II bundle, a program that hooks up Mac users with great deals on software and earns money for charity in the process... This year they donated almost half a million dollars. I've got no beef with MacHeist. I do, however, have a problem with Yazsoft, the vendors of Speed Download, which was included in the MacHeist bundle.

You see, Speed Download, like most applications, automatically checks for updates. In fact, Speed Download installs them automatically as well. This worked out just fine until version 5.0 was released. Right on cue, Speed Download installed the update and popped up a notification that I should relaunch the application.

The difference between this and previous updates is that version 5.0 was not included in the license I purchased. Without warning, without confirmation, Speed Download "updated" itself to a 21 day trial version. I entered the registration information, which I purchased less than three weeks ago as part of MacHeist. But since this update was from version 4 to 5.0, my old license was no good.

i love firefox. really, i do. it can be speedy. it can be extensible. but apparently it can't be both at the same time... all my development plugins make it slow, and all my browsing plugins make it even slower.

how i fixed my my super slow firefox after the jump.

conversation snippet of the day:

some dude: "I hear you can get microsoft here for $70."

employee: "yes, we have student pricing on microsoft products. were you looking for microsoft office, or microsoft windows?"

dude: "i don't know... which one is better?"