Long time no… see!

Blogged on November 14, 2007 at 00:36

Well, it’s been almost a month since I posted the last time and a lot of things have happened.

The Conference

The last two weeks were hectic. I was involved in a conference with leaders from all over the world, and we had to get some materials ready for it, including a DVD set with 6 sessions that we taped earlier and had to be edited and put on a DVD for release during the conference. The last session was recorded a week prior to the conference, and all the things that needed to get done had just pile up and still had to be done in time! So, like you can imagine, lots of hours of work and… very little sleep.

OS X 10.5 Leopard

During the conference my dad was here. I decided to get him Leopard (and iWork 08, so he can dump MS Office… over the course of (some) time!). I did a “Archive Install” and all went very smooth. His Powerbook G4 1.5Ghz seems snappier than with Tiger and I taught him the goodness of Quick Look and Spaces (although he seemed to enjoy Web Clips a lot more ;)). From my quick experience with it, it felt like there are things that can either be customized or I might need to “hack” them… But I can’t wait to get it… for Quick Look!!!!!

Twitterific 3.0

Inline ads seem to be one of the few new features. And I say that because I’m not a big enthusiast of direct messages (although I find them useful) and I hate the way the way they get loaded every time I open program. But I’ve been enjoying the ads a lot… They’ve proven very useful and informative! This is the way to go with ads (kudos to the guys of The Deck for the selective approach to advertisement!), although I think they should stay inline… even after a new one comes up! (never thought I’d say this!)

Firefox 3.0b1 (RC3)

I installed Firefox 3.0b1 RC3 yesterday and I love it! I have been using Safari for most of my stuff because Firefox is just taking WAYY too much memory… But 3.0 seems lighter and feels snappier.

I sincerely hope Mozilla proves Steve Jobs wrong… (for those not aware, Jobs had a sad moment - the only one in my opinion - when he showed a graph of web browsers with market share split between IE and Firefox, 75% and 24% respectively, and he announced his desire for Safari: take over Firefox’s share… not even touching IE’s share!!! Bad move Steven!)

Work - Next weeks

I’ll developing the look & feel for a e-portfolio solution we’re developing here. It’s based on uPortal (scary if you ask me!) and I’ve never worked with it!! Apparently it’s all XML/XSLT… which will be all new to me! I’ll keep reporting on this because I bet I’ll learn stuff that can be interesting for most of you!

I’ll also be doing at least one design for a friend of mine that is getting married next year, and wants to have a “blog type” website with directions and info on where the wedding will be and stuff. Great idea, huh? I’m glad to help..

Twitter & Facebook

Not being very active here in the blog doesn’t mean I’ve been offline! NO! I’ve been pretty active on Facebook and Twitter! Interesting how I’ve been ever so active on Facebook after the huge discussion I saw around some blogs on how Facebook is backed by the CIA and is data mining for them… Is that supposed to scare me? I don’t care what the CIA knows about me!

iPhone… 1.1.2

Even though I had my 1.1.1 jailbroken with some third-party apps, I never used them all that much too justify not updating to 1.1.2! I made myself a promise that every time a new official firmware came out, I’d update to it even if it broke my third party apps. An interesting thing is that, when I upgraded my jailbroke 1.0.2 to 1.1.1 I did a “Restore” and not an upgrade (I hate OS upgrades as well!). When I jailbroke 1.1.1 and reinstalled some of the apps I had before, I had all my setting there… even the level I was on on the “Lights Off” game I had installed and the preferences and accounts on Colloquy and Apollo IM! Question: is the backup feature on the iPhone a VERY GOOD and thorough one, or are the third party apps installed somewhere where iTunes doesn’t access when “formatting” for Restore (because on Restore it clears all my songs and videos even… until it syncs again, of course!)??? Interesting huh?

I still need to figure out what REAL features this update gives me. As of now, some little glitches with MobileMail seem to be fixed and the Ringtone classification is a lot better! I hope MobileSafari is more stable………………. :rolleyes:

Funny how I keep jailbreaking my iPhone, and updating the firmware and never had any problem… Lucky me, I guess!

Google Android and the Stock Market

I’ve been following the stock market in some way, mainly because… the iPhone makes it so easy to do so! :p But I had strong beliefs that the high rise of Google’s stocks was a result of the hyped gPhone, which some expected to be an iPhone competitor of sorts…

Google’s stocks rose above $740, close to over $300 in the last 6 months and it felt… “bubblish” IMHO! And when Google Android was announced and investors realized it was not a physical-iPhone-alternative, or a device that could make sense of Google’s interest on the 700Mhz frequency auction, the stocks plunged, with GOOG down by over $120, and even bringing down AAPL (Apple) along the way!! Of course that mini-crash was also influenced by the rise of the oil prices… but I think it was also a result of the bubble effect on the gPhone expectations…

The most interesting fact is that Google’s shares are on the rise again today… They closed at $660.55 (+$28.48) and the AAPL closed at $169.96 (+$16.20). I’m very confused with the market today… REALLY! I think the market is crazy and Google’s stocks are soooo volatile! I give up on thinking I should get money and start investing… although that would have given me at least $300 per share on Google and over $100 on Apple, had I money back when I thought it would have been good to buy them! </rambling>

Coming Next

I urge those who have any kind of interest on my sayings/rambling to get on Twitter and follow me! Twitter as proven to be a great social utility because it can function as both an instant message system, a broadcast and a micro-blogging platform. Long Live Twitter! Or you can get Facebook…

I had some stuff I wanted to blog on some weeks ago… but they’re old now! And since I was “out” for the last 2 weeks, I need to get back on track before I can start writing on a constant pace. Keep checking back folks!

Finally, GMail via IMAP!! Great news… and some comments!

Blogged on October 23, 2007 at 23:11

So GMail is offering IMAP… finally! It’s not out to public yet, but I’ve been one of the lucky ones to get it for testing! Here are my thoughts on my first 20m around it.

First off, IMAP is GREAT!! It’s a great way to keep all your mail and folders (inc. sent, drafts, custom folders, etc…) on the server so that all you have to do with every client you may use (be it Thunderbird, Mail.app, Evolution, KMail, etc…) is enter your account details and you have it all right there. It gives you the mobility of a webmail with the power of a desktop client.

Then GMail came out! It was the first true web-based email that could cope with the his desktop counterparts. Google didn’t even offer POP3 support until later on, focusing their efforts on their web interface (that hasn’t been change since then!). If everyone remembers when it came out, the frenzy around the invitations was the best marketing the web has seen, and since then many have copied it. It introduced the whole concept of “Beta” being something “cool” more than “buggy and not ready”!! Kudos for that.

But with the advent of mail on mobile phones, they had to find a solution past their (nice but limited) phone app. In my opinion, they knew they needed IMAP now.

And so I went to try it on my preferred desktop mail app: Mail.app. I was curious on how they would get “around” the “Labels vs Folders” issue that has been long discussed around the web. And that is what the picture on the right shows: they turn them into folders. Please note that on that picture, I have already set my Drafts, Sent, Trash and Junk to the appropriate folders, so I have them correctly set along with the same folders on my other IMAP accounts. But the Labels into Folders was horrible: Why are they placed as local folders (although they’re not) and not under my Inbox for GMail??? Why is a “[Gmail]” Smartbox created for my GMail, when it should be “under” my Inbox, like any other IMAP account, and just like it appears in the web interface??

I think IMAP is a great feature, but it messed up my Mail.app organization. I need those Lab… err… Folders to be listed inside my Inbox, just like the “All Mail” and “Starred”.

When I tried moving them, the Labels on the web interface where changed to “INBOX\Label_name” implying that it is possible to do it with the necessary arrangements on their folder structure on the servers.

And oh boy, I can’t wait for that!

PS: I know there is at least one major university considering moving to GMail for their institutional mail. If anyone is aware of how the process of moving their current mailboxes and mails goes, and it’s twists and quirks, please mail me so I can inform them on how to proceed. I’m sure IMAP will be a feature they’ll have as a pre-requisite… and now they can have it!!!

PS2: I’m having some problems with Firefox and Wordpress… The link dialog is not showing up on the editor and I don’t have time to manually enter links. I’ll put some appropriate links tomorrow!

WYSIWTF of the Day! (Google)

Blogged on August 19, 2007 at 21:09

Screenshot of Google Analytics for the domain levifig.net
(my blog analytics are on a different report)

Can someone please shed a light on how the f… in the world, did those searches directly hit my levifig.net domain??? (that has absolutely no content aside from a link to the blog!).

I believe those searches are pretty self explanatory even if you’re an english speaking visitor. I mean… I get the first few of them: “einztein” being my nickname for some years now all over forums, social networks, irc, msn, gmail, etc…; “levi figueira” being my first and last name; the “dan balan” and the “sugar tunes” being from a couple of recent posts in my blog; and “levifig” being my “more personal” nickname and username that I use, and the obvious: it’s the domain name!

But the rest of them… come on Google… how in the world…????