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Update on: Just found a bug in OS X Lion and there is nearly no way to tell Apple!

admin — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 09:47:41 +0000

I described a problem related to Samba shared drives on Windows and connecting them with Mac OS X Lion here.

After three months and two more versions of Lion there is still no solution. The guy from Apple never called back and never replied to my email.

I see this problem on all Macs running Lion in my company. So this is not my machine.

Apple support was one of the best in the industry for many years. Today it is just like the rest of the support hotlines. It takes hours to explain and it gets never solved.

Thanks! I liked Snow Leopard better because it actually worked!
Do I have to move back to a PC? After all these years?

Why Android phones suck and why the iPhone wins the game

admin — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 15:32:39 +0000

Honestly, since the beginning of the iPhone vs. Android war, there has been not a single Android phone I am interested in. Starting with the Android G1, which looked for me like a Fisherprice toy to the current, Samsung Nexus S – not a single one that really nailed it for me. It is no secret I like Apple stuff, but just comparing the two different ideologies behind the phone, shows you simply why Google is not going the right way with its mobile OS.

Android Version 1.0 was bound to a Gmail account. Means you had to have a Gmail account to get your contacts and mails. There was no POP3 or IMAP client pre-installed and I would doubt there was one on day one. You had to save everything in the cloud. Not optional, you had to!

People are often say that the platform that Apple provides is under total control of Apple. That is true and it is not always good, but on the other side, it gives you the safety that an app is not doing anything dodgy with your contacts, SMS application or anything else. This has been seen within the Android eco system quite a lot within the last months.

Here are a few examples:

Nasty Android Virus Fails To Inform You Your Calls May Be Recorded

Android hit by rogue app malware

Google removes 21 apps infected with malware from its Android Market, report says

And to bring it down to the point – if you want to run stuff that is not in the iTunes store on your iPhone just UNLOCK the damn thing!

Back to the release cycle

To be honest they pretty fast release new versions, which is from one view very impressive, but if you read this really good article at “the understatement” you will pretty soon realize that this is Androids biggest problem!
Apple always at least supported their hardware from the OS perspective at least for 3 years. Means a phone that is 3 years old (iPhone 3GS) is able to run iOS 5, which is while I am writing this, the current OS version of Apple.

If you look at the graph you will see that basically every Android phone sold is already out dated the moment you buy it.

I think this pretty much nails it down!

Buying a phone that is already out dated and rebuying a new one, just because the OS is not providing the latest features or having support for at least 3 years!

Happy birthday Linux

admin — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 12:34:24 +0000

Today, exactly 20 years ago, Linus Torvald released the first version of his kernel which is today known as Linux.

You can read his initial message to a minix newsgroup by following the link.

His release not for 0.2 can he found here.

Thank you Linus for starting with Linux and thank you to everyone who participated in creating a free and super stable operating system within the last 20 years. Awesome job and keep doing what you are doing!

Happy birthday Linux!

New design on spamcollect.com

admin — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 15:51:21 +0000

I just updated the design of spamcollect.com. I hope you like the new colors. I am playing around with Google Adsense, so please don’t be angry, this is just a test.

RTB finally gets an open standard called Open RTB

admin — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 14:59:44 +0000

If you are working in the online advertising industry, you might already have heard the letter RTB. It is like a buzzword floating around in all agencies currently. Most people don’t know what it is.

It is basically buying display inventory based on algorithms and target user thru that. All is happening in real time and every agency has to send a bid.

There is now an open standard for this called Open RTB.

Create PowerPoint like presentations with HTML5 and JS – deck.js helps

admin — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 07:15:08 +0000

Just found deck.js a JavaScript framework that lets you create Power Point like presentations within the browser using new web technologies like Ajax, HTML5 and CSS3.

Just found a bug in OS X Lion and there is nearly no way to tell Apple!

admin — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 09:29:36 +0000

What an interesting experience!
I found a bug in OS X Lion related to Finder and connecting to SMB / windows shared drives. Basically whenever I try to access a company wide shared drive on a Windows 2008 R2 Enterprise 64bit via SMB thru the Finder, I get a message saying like “You don’t have permission to access this object”. Interesting thing, trying to mount the drive via Terminal on the Unix Shell and accessing the drive, opening files, saving files etc. work just fine. So it is related to the Finder.

I wanted to submit my bug to Apple, but didn’t find anything on the webpage. So I called the hotline.
The guy in the first level support told me that words like “Terminal”, “mount” and “smb” don’t mean anything to him, but I could not compare mounting a drive on a unix shell with the Finder. He said this is something completely else and I have to talk to my local windows administrator. THIS GUY HAD NO IDEA! He first refused to forward me to someone from second level support first and tried to solve it by himself. Good idea, but he absolutely had no idea about OS X and shell commands.

After a while I got forwarded to the second level support. I am waiting for feedback now, but it looks like Apple is only opening bugs thru the hotline.

For everyone who has the same issue, you could open a Terminal and access your drive by going to /Volumes/NAMEOFSHARED .

Solved! Delivery engine next run with Newsletter Plugin for wordpress

admin — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 14:17:01 +0000

After moving a website of a friend from one server to another, his newsletter plugin didn’t work anymore. It sent out the test mails, but it was refusing to send out the mails to the subscribers.
He is using a quite good free (if you don’t need the PRO functionality) newsletter plugin for wordpress.
After a little bit of searching we found out that on the email section within the plugin there is a message saying: “Delivery engine next run” and a negative count.

This is due to wp-cron.php and just deactivating and activating the plugin solves the issue. After that Deliver engine next run had a positive value.

Adobe launches Adobe Edge a HTML5 CSS3 Animation tool

admin — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 08:28:32 +0000

Adobe Labs just launched Adobe Edge, a tool that lets you create animations in a UI and export them as HTML5, CSS3 and javascript. Basically it reminds me to the last version of the flash creation tools I saw.

Currently Adobe Edge is free as it is still in the Labs. You can download it from the product page.

Phonegap 1.0 released

admin — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 19:01:17 +0000

Nitobi just released version 1.0 of the mobile app framework Phonegap.
Phonegap enables you to write HTML5 and javascript pages and compile them into a mobile phone application (app). Phonegap currently supports iOS, Android, Blackberry, webOS, Bada and Symbian.

Phonegap also gives you some java script functionality that lets you use the GPS or accelerator in the phones.

Some big companies are taking part in the development like Adobe, IBM, Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Logitech or Time Warner.