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Archive for the ‘Review’ Category

THE Blog Client for Mac?

21 Sep

The past few days have been a very critical time for my blogging experience. I have been trying different blog clients for Mac, and I was slowly, albeit surely, coming to the conclusion that there is no good blogging client for Mac. On my Windows 7 PC, I used to blog with Microsoft Windows Live Writer. It actually downloaded my WordPress blog theme and let me type as if I was writing on the blog itself. It could add annotations, had plugins to provide Wikipedia quick-links, and in short, anything I would have wanted from a blog client. So, when I started my search, the standard was set pretty high.

Here is a list of all the different applications I’ve tried on my Mac:

  • Ecto: didn’t even come close to satisfying me. The WYSIWYG editor was buggy and annoying. And I really didn’t like the UI.
  • Qumana: Didn’t support online drafting, had no way of inserting multi-media content, and didn’t provide a friendly user-interface.
  • MacJournal: didn’t do me much good, as a blogging client. As a replacement for my note collector software (OneNote on Windows) it did great. But it’s lack of support for correct media uploading left me disappointed. Sure, I could configure FTP access for my website, but that would have required tweaking the user permission settings from the server side and I wasn’t going for that.
  • Blogo: it was great. Except it didn’t allow me see or edit WordPress pages. Also I had some problems uploading. The UI was awesome. I particularly loved the Fullscreen view which allowed me to write without being distracted by everything else.
  • MarsEdit: MarsEdit wasn’t that much better than Blogo; but it currently is my editor of choice. It allows me to do most of the things I used to do with Windows Live Writer and the UI isn’t bad. There are currently no uploading problems and the spellcheck works just fine. It also has a Preview option, much like Windows Live Writer.

MarsEdit Main Window

Well, that’s it for now. I hope by reading this you can save some wear and tear – and some bucks of course :-) .

 
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Posted in Review, Tips and Tricks

 

Finding My Inner Mac

18 Sep

Hello everybody out there! About two weeks ago, I bought my very first MacBook. It’s not much better than my old VAIO Z, hardware-wise. But man, can it work.
The OSX runs in about twenty seconds and the logon process takes about 5 seconds (compare it to a 95 second startup time on Windows 7).
After the initial confusion of finding my way around, everything was a piece of cake. After only three hours, I had said goodbye to my old VAIO Z. For nearly any application I had on my Windows, there is a – sometimes better – replacement for my Mac. More than that, I now have the luxury of enjoying a native Persian calendar, the lack of which I always felt on Windows

Everything looks perfect and elegant. At 2kg – about 500g heavier than Z – it’s just barely heavy enough to make me notice the weight.
What I have installed on the OS include:

  • calibre; to manage my eBooks and also to have something to work with my Nook. Also, the interface was familiar since I had used it on my Windows already. The real disappointment here, was that I couldn’t satisfactorily manage my eBooks’ collection with iTunes. I liked the interface very much, however I couldn’t get it to work with the Nook as well as I wanted to.
  • IntelliJ IDEA; currently my favorite IDE for developing anything, from C to enterprise Java applications.
  • MacJournal; the all powerful note-taking, document-organizing, blog client, etc. that I use right now. This post is written in MacJournal by the way. Up until this very moment, I think I like it.
  • Nambu; for tweeting madly day and night.
  • Firefox; my browser of choice for the moment, since I couldn’t find anything like Foxyproxy for Safari.
  • Skype; no comments here, I gather.
  • VLC; the awesome all purpose multimedia player. The only thing lacking a bit for me is the fuzziness of videos for my RMVB videos.
  • Vuze; the great, cross-platform Bittorrent client, written in Java.
  • Keka; the very cool compression utility capable of decompressing GZip, BZip, 7zip, RAR, etc., developed on top of 7zip.
  • JDiskReport; since I am a hard disk usage nerd. It provides me with excellent, detailed reports of exactly how I have used my hard disk.

Also, I have come to believe that Mac is all about integration. I am now enjoying a level of integration and cooperation of applications I never had experienced before. My iPhoto, Address Book, Mail, and Skype are inter-connected. I can sync my Nokia E52 mobile phone with my Mac as easily as I would take a look at it. And it’s just the beginning.
Well, I guess that’s all for now. Have a good time folks.

 
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Posted in My Opinions, Myself, Review

 

Apple vs. Opera: Mobile Browser War?

21 May

It’s happening again. The whole Windows+IE story is going to be repeated, and well, we all now that history tends to repeat itself.

In a shocking move, Apple has tagged Opera Mini browser’s download from the AppStore Opera Mini for iPhoneas mature, and before downloading, you need to confirm that you are over 17.

Is Apple really that concerned about anonymous browsing capabilities built-in within the Opera iPhone browser? Is the company really moving to protect our kids from porn? Why not add a similar warning to Safari’s first-run process, then?

Recent events have just take a ridiculous turn in my opinion. If you are selling a device, you are also selling the rights of ownership. You can’t be the big brother so “kindly” watching over us, keeping us from “being naughty boys.” I myself don’t believe in mobile porn business, but I certainly believe in freedom, and that, in my opinion is restricting that freedom.

Safari Browser on iPhone Steve Jobs might have started a revolution in mobile trend, but he is really showing that he just can’t bear the idea of other people sharing the ground with him. You can easily see that, when Opera has not only to compete with a browser already installed into the device, but only get through alarming warnings. Also, bear in mind that as the built-in browser, it has now been a long time since anybody used anything but Apple Safari on iPhone, so familiarity of application is another factor acting in favor of Apple.

But seriously, we all know that competition only makes competitors work harder. So, Apple, is this an indication that you don’t want to work harder and provide us with a better solution? Because it just seems damned so.

Also, read this entry from the Next Web on the same subject.

 
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Posted in My Opinions, Review

 

CLRS 3rd Edition

20 May

  CLRS 3rd Edition, CoverAbout two weeks ago, I finally got my hands on an original version of the latest edition of the CLRS book. Most significantly, the pseudo-code convention has changed to be a little more like modern, object-oriented languages (e.g. Java, C#, etc.).

For example, to access a property of an object, instead of property[object] (which was the notation used by the 2nd edition) we will write object.property.

Also, there are many places that the whole text has been rewritten. All in all, it was a very good buy. My only regret is that from now on my “CLRS at a glance” articles won’t be compatible with my earlier notes.

(Cover picture courtesy of Amazon)

 
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Posted in Review

 

Small Idea, Great Potential

14 Feb

Well, actually it might already have become a great business rather than a potential. But as I don’t know how it might exactly be, I’ll stick to my title.

What I’m going to talk about is the WikiReader.

What is WikiReader

WikiReader is a small BSD-based (?) handheld device that let’s your search in a previously downloaded version of Wikipedia articles. Or as the website says

WikiReader is an electronic encyclopedia giving physical form to Wikipedia. Now you can take it with you wherever you go.

It has a nice look, with only three buttons and a touch screen for easy navigation. With two standard AAA batteries it’s said that it’ll function for up to 12 months of normal usage.

It has an apparent monthly schedule for providing update files (which as of now measure to 4.7 GB).

No knowledge of how a wiki operates is required to use this device, which has an intended audience of school children and the like.

Read the rest of this entry »

 
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Posted in My Opinions, Review

 

Going Mobile

19 Jan

WordPress Mobile Edition is cool tiny utility that allows you to redirect your mobile visitors to a shiny, new interface which incorporates easy navigation and good looks in a simple UI.

As I’m personally using this plugin, I won’t hesitate to recommend it to anybody who wants their blogs to be compatible with mobile browsers. And remember, the issue here is not merely compatibility, but rather the ease-of-use.

Good luck to you all!

 
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Posted in Review

 

eyeOS 2.0: A First Look

03 Jan

Well, it’s not here yet, but what I’ve seen is pretty smooth. I think the eyeOS GUI designers are well into their business. What I’ve seen so far from the mock-ups and videos and images suggests a big facelift in the upcoming eyeOS major release.

I think you will agree with me when you see the video.

Read the rest of this entry »

 
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Posted in My Opinions, Review

 

eyeOS: eyeMail

03 Jan

Okay, it seems like I’m not gonna be able to run eyeMail on my server. After a couple of Google searches, I found out that there could be two things preventing eyeMail from functioning correctly.

One was the MBString PHP module, which as I’ve previously mentioned, I’ve gone through pains to install. The other was the SQLite extension. Well, I tried everything and it seemed to be doing well. But as I searched some more, I realized that my PHP was compiled with PDO-SQLite. But, eyeMail requires the SQLite extention, not the PDO-SQLite.

So, I’ll only be able to run eyeMail on my server if I recompile PHP without the “—without-sqlite” option. Right now, it’s not that important to me, so I’m gonna let it pass.

 
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Posted in My Opinions, Review

 

eyeOS 1.9

01 Jan

Today, I installed eyeOS 1.9 on my virtual host. It was more than good, in my opinion. However, the installation didn’t go as smoothly as I thought it would. I mean, the 1.8 worked better for me.

First, I had to uninstall and reinstall Kloxo, PHP, MySQL, Apache, and PEAR several times before getting them to work properly together. I know this wasn’t directly related to the eyeOS installation, but I had to do this because eyeOS (or rather, PHP) didn’t recognize the SQLite and MBString modules I had installed.

Then I had to surf the web for about one hour to find out that I couldn’t see any applications in the package manager, because the default repository address wasn’t working. So, I had to switch the repository to 1.7.

And besides everything, I still haven’t got the IMAP mail client to function properly.

I’ll post as soon as I get that problem solved.

 
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Posted in Myself, Projects, Review

 

A Dream Come True

27 Dec

We all have many dreams, most of which we deem unreachable. But many of those “unreachable” dreams are just a little further down the way, waiting for us to put some effort in it. I’ve found an excellent video depicting just such a thing.

Read the rest of this entry »

 
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Posted in Review

 
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