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The magic of Lotus Notes

Lotus Notes easily has the most horrendous HTML rendering of any email client I’ve used. Not only can you not change the font size, but everything pushes to the right off into infinity so a basic newsletter is impossible to read.

The other truly bothersome trait is its ability to tell me about news messages arriving which either have yet to actually arrive, or that will never arrive. My inbox has said there is a single unread message for weeks and as I am sure I’ve mentioned or you’ve gathered I’m a tab obsessive compulsive about email. There is absolutely no message waiting to be read. It’s just my client synching with the server (one of them) which is not properly relaying the info to the other servers…

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living with my new design

One of the main advantages of my new design, is that it seems to be working across all the browsers I’ve tested. I was having bad rendering issues with Safari previously, driving my right sidebar below the content area. Now everything seems to be cool in Moz, Safari, OmniWeb, Opera and IE. The only glitch is in both IE and Opera the Radio buttons on my search box have eitheer boxes or brackets around them. That’s cool though since it is a small detail and I don’t see a very high instance of either browser from my Mac visitors.

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3 Columns in effect!

It took a crazy amount of trial and errors… I finally have it going. I found some nice template examples at blogstyles and have used that as a base to get my home page where I want it … almost. Though from here it should just be tweaks over time. whew.

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struggling a bit…

I am close, but have yet to successfully get my stylesheet and revised HTML template to work. I am trying to get a 3-column layout going. I can get the columns to render and hold their place, but I can’t get the page to continue (no scroll bars) and my center column (main content area) is drawing blank. If you see any weirdness, it’s just me trying to get it going… If you have any tips, I’d love to hear them.

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Home on your iPod

Just caught this super cool (pending) feature of Panther…

Ever thought you could carry your home in the palm of your hands or in your pocket? You can. Panther’s Home on iPod feature lets you store your home directory — files, folders, apps — on your iPod (or any FireWire hard drive) and take it with you wherever you go.

When you find yourself near a Panther-equipped Mac, just plug in the iPod, log in, and you’re “home,” no matter where you happen to be. And when you return to your home computer, you can synchronize any changes you’ve made to your files by using File Sync, which automatically updates offline changes to your home directory. [Mac Rumors]

While it seems to not be in the latest build according to the article – which was pulled indicating a likely truth – we can certainly hope for it! Having a large iPod will have some amazing advantages when you are away from your computer!

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SunnComm Does Some Thinking, Backs Off

SunnComm CEO Peter Jacobs to the Daily Princetonian: “I don’t want to be the guy that creates any kind of chilling effect on research. I just thought about it and decided it was more important not to be one of those people. The harm’s been done…if I can’t accomplish anything [with a lawsuit] I don’t want to leave a wake.

I don’t want to be the people my parents warned me to stay away from. It’s 10 million bucks, but maybe I can make it back, and maybe [Halderman] can learn a little bit more about our technology so as not to call it brain dead.”

The good Professor Felten: “SunnComm is to be commended for deciding not to interfere with Alex‘s right to speak. I hope SunnComm decides to join the debate now. If SunnComm wants to add anything, or to challenge anything that Alex said in his paper, I for one would like to hear from them.” [Copyfight: The Politics of IP]

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Student faces suit over key to CD locks

Antipiracy technology developer SunnComm says it will likely sue a Princeton student who showed how to break its CD copy protection by pushing the Shift key. [CNET News.com]

If the CD does load and installs the software, Halderman identified the driver file that can be disabled using standard Windows tools. Free-speech activists said the nature of Halderman’s instructions–which appeared in an academic paper, used only functions built into every Windows computer, and were not distributed for profit–meant they would not fall under DMCA scrutiny.

“This is completely outrageous,” said Fred von Lohmann, an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group that has previously represented computer academics concerned that copyright law would impair their ability to publish. “This is not black hat (hackers’) exploits he’s revealing. This is Windows 101…It is relatively hard to imagine any better example of how the DMCA has been misused since it was passed five years ago.”

Perhaps instead, they should have focused on creating a technique that would require some actual effort to break.

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IP Banning comment spammers

I’m a mercilessly ip banning comment spammers until I figure out a better solution. [Joi Ito’s Web]

While not quite as merciless yet, I am starting to see porn comment spam. I’ve received garbage comments in the past but now porn is starting to creep in as well. argh…

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Mac OS Upgrades

Some users complain about the high cost of a “dot release”. The moniker 10.x should really be read as Mac OS 10 version x. It isn’t a “dot release”, but a whole new version. Panther is really Mac OS X 3, akin to Photoshop 8 or Quicken 2003. [deeje.com]

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TypePad

I am in the process of setting up a TypePad blog for my wife and I to share for some personal blogging. In going through the process, I’ve begun to realize just how much thought has gone into the design of the system. Congratulations to Ben and Mena – it really is a great thing. Typepad feels more mature that MT and has many great options for users all within your reach. I love that options for photo albums and moblogging are right there!

I am now even wondering if I shouldn’t move my existing MT blog to TypePad. Just to make myself crazy I guess… though I can’t wait to see what happens with the MT Pro plans.

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my email situation

I was having some issues with my personal email the past few days, but did not have a chance to really figure out what was going on due to the holiday, Jury Duty and work until today.

I forgot I had enabled Spam Interceptor, which had begun checking my email account every 15 minutes…I was finding that messages in my IMAP inbox were gone – literally gone. Some would arrive, but while I watched they would vaporize! What was happening was that my account was being popped into by Spam Interceptor and then my inbox would get synched by a new check for messages…

Problem solved and now I am thoroughly enjoying the filtering service. While I am still operating at the free level, I can speak very highly about the accuracy. As I mentioned previously, Spam Interceptor is based on Spam Assassin, but includes additional filtering through both white and black lists as well as some authentication if you choose. The accuracy for the few hundred messages it has checked so far is extremely high, with only a single false positive and no official false negatives, though a few were put into my cache folder for review.

One serious advantage to a server based system like this is that I can easily have messages checked before reading email on my Palm or phone. I have not been able to set anything like this up on my account as I don’t have that kind of access (damn), but I actually like the idea of someone else dealing for me. The main negative at the moment is the lack of support for IMAP, which won’t be an issue if I can stop myself from checking mail through so many damn email interfaces. I dabble in Mozilla, Thunderbird and Webmail (SquirrelMail), but mainly use Mail.app. For now I am just leaving messages on the server, which is actually the Spam Interceptor server.

Setup is a snap.. you just modify your pop settings and Spam Interceptor serves as a mail proxy. From there it is business as usual with the occasional check on the site to confirm that things are working as you expect. If you decide to pay ($10/yr) youu get to tweak all the settings and add additional accounts. The free account only gives you access to a single email account. Even though I love Spam Sieve, server side filtering seems too attractive to pass up for now.

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Lotus Notes is bringing me down…

Today has been a serious challenge for me to deal with work email. Lotus Notes has been acting up in an out of control fashion using upwards of 80% of my CPU at times. Average lag between click and action is about 45 seconds lasting upwards of a few minutes. Basically I can’t do jack at my computer if Notes is on. Webmail via any Mac browser is a minimal experience and actually fairly difficult to use. I’ve moved myself into a conference room so at least I get get mail via the PC webmail/iNotes client which is a bit richer, but still not the same as the actual software. No idea what the deal is… It is apparently something pretty major on either the network or the Notes server itself.

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BlogPlanet

With BlogPlanet, updating your blog while you’re on the go is as easy as writing an SMS. It runs on your mobile and lets you write new blog entries, send them to your blog, edit them afterwards and delete them. On top of that, you can take pictures with the mobile’s built-in camera and include them in your posts. [BlogPlanet]

Now I just to get the Treo 600 and I’ll be all set to MoBlog – especially now that Palm released the official Java Runtime.

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My Dock

So the latest mac blog rave is to post your doc thanks to an O’Reilly article featuring some prominent mac users and their docks…

Here’s mine:

I am currently keeping the following in case you don’t recognize some icons:
iChatAV, Status Symbol, AIM, Lotus Notes, Mail, iCal, Address Book, Safari, Mozilla, Thunderbird,, Mozilla Firebird, Hydra, HyperEdit, VoodooPad, StickyBrain, Remote Desktop Connection, Acrobat Reader, NoteTaker, OmniDictionary, OmniGraffle Professional, OmniOutliner, Preview, Palm Desktop, iSync, HotSync Manager, Documents To Go, PGP, iView Media Pro, iTunes, Kung Tunes, NetNewsWire, , iBlog, Dreamweaver, X-Chat Aqua, Central, Kung Log, Transmit, SpamSieve, CPU Monitor, Terminal, LaunchBar, System Preferences, Tri-Backup, Copy Paste, APOD Grabber (gets the Nasa photo of the day), Speed Download, Word and a Folder Shortcut to my Reading folder

Damn that’s a lot of stuff… guess that’s why I keep it nice a small at the bottom. I’ve tried the sides and it just doesn’t feel right to me.

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Amazon Canada??

I just got an email for the first time from Amazon.ca. I’ve never purchased anything from them but they had my email address and even noted it was part of my account as they usually do in the messages from the US Store. Interestingly my login info worked even though I have no purchase history. Seems like Amazon is sharing the platform with the canadian store completely. I can see my one-click info and addresses I’ve used to ship as well. Hopefully this is just a silly error on their part and not some data mix-up of a greater degree.