HTM Blog

I've been using FileZilla lately after FTP Voyager started to give me problems. FileZilla is okay, but it does not support WebDAV. I need WebDAV so I could access my Mac iDisk from my Windows PC but unfortunately not many FTP clients support the WebDAV protocol.

I finally found BitKinex which supports WebDAV quite nicely. It turns out they used to charge for BitKinex but now it is freeware.

Finally a client that allows me to connect to my Mac iDisk from Windows, without using Explorer. This is much faster!

I've been messing around with Tumblr tonight. I can't believe how interesting it is. It's like Twitter for Blogs. You follow other blogs in the same way you follow people on Twitter.

You can also post to your blog in a variety of ways. You can go to the Tumblr web site of course. You can also post via a Mac dashboard widget. You can email or IM a post to your blog through AIM. How about calling in and recording an audio post for our blog? You can do that too. I predict great things for Tumblr.

Moving your blog to Wordpress? Wordpress allows you to import your Blogger Blog, but not if you're hosting the blog on your own server. I searched all over the web for the answer and simply couldn't find it. I found a lot of people asking how to do this, but no definitive answer. Well, here's the answer:

Temporarily switch your Blogger Blog back to blogspot.com hosting and then import your Blog with Wordpress. It actually works.

There is one small catch that I ran into. When I switched my Blog back to SFTP hosting, it changed my legacy template just a bit. I couldn't get it back to the way it was. Blogger is apparently using a different code to get their navbar at the top of the blog, and that code messed me up a bit. I did get my Blog imported into Wordpress though.

Does Apple know there is a recession going on? Apparently they're not concerned about losing customers because according to reports, Apple is about to raise the price of premium tracks on iTunes to $1.29.

I've been using FTP Voyager for years, but recently it started to give me problems. My uploads were slow and the program kept crashing. I tried to download a new version, but uploading was disabled so I could not test it out.

After weeks of frusration I did a search online and found FileZilla. Not bad at all. I configured it to look just like FTP Voyager with the remote window on the top and local on the bottom and I'm good to go. There aren't as many features as FTP Voyager, but it's close enough. I'm sold on this free software!

I've been a frustrated fan of the Palm Treo since its inception. I've had every model of the Palm Treo at one time or another, in addition to various other Pocket PC phones, iPhone, BlackBerry, etc. I keep going back to the Treo because despite its faults, I like the power it has to do what I need to do. I also really like having a touchscreen device with a keyboard. With a little program called "PushEffect" I have push email just like a BlackBerry, but without depending on RIM's servers to stay up.

As much as I like my Treo I'm extremely frustrated by the bugs. I've heard of other people having to return their Treos because they "just died." I've never had that experience as I've always been able to bring mine back to life. With that said, I did have to hard reset mine a few times. That's why I always keep a backup of my data on my microSD card. Anyone with a Treo 800w or Treo Pro should have a microSD card with a backup of your data on it. Contacts are no problem as you can simply resync with Outlook, but all the programs that you've installed will be wiped if you have to hard reset.

Please Palm...make sure the Pre is a better device (fewer bugs) than the Treo. And for goodness sake, start making slightly larger screens. My Treo screen is soooo small. While other handset makers are doing with larger screen Palm seems to be stuck on the small screen. Get with it Palm! We want a top smartphone.

I've been having a problem with Google Docs recently. Their import engine is as strong as it could be. I've been sending a Word document back and forth with a friend; each of us making changes. When the last version arrived in my Gmail account I tried to view it as a Google document. The import engine could not decipher between the different versions of the file. Microsoft Word saves past edits so you can track changes to the document, but Google Docs got mixed up and included all the edits.

I'm sure they'll work out the kinks at Google Docs, but until then I'm sticking with Word.

Are you a Google fanatic? Do you like their products (Gmail, Picasa, Google Docs, etc.)? Google is developing new products so fast it's hard to keep up. I have one suggestion for them though. Hire some designers from Apple.

Google doesn't pay enough attention to the user experience. They seem to feel that as long as the product works, that's good enough. Take Gmail for example. Doesn't it seem dull? They don't space the messages from the headers very well. The first line is the header and then one space and you're into the message. Apple would never do it that way. You know how Apple makes it so obvious where things are. They present you with exactly what you need when you need it. That is what Google is lacking in most of their products.

I love Google, but they need to pay attention to the user experience. Hire some people from Apple and you'll be set!

The U.S. House today passed a bill that would tax AIG employees who received bonuses of over $250k. The tax rate is 90%. Are you kidding me? This is your government run-a-muck.

The US Congress should not be in the business of passing bills directed at single companies, or short-term micro issues. The bonuses at AIG aren't politically palatable, but this congress passed the bill that allowed those bonuses in the first place. To now come back and try to pass a bill taking back money they already authorized is silly, and likely unconstitutional.

This reminds me of the Terry Schiavo case where the U.S. Congress tried to pass a quick law to fix a perceived short term problem. The U.S. Congress should focus on passing laws that protect all of us. These single issue bills are nothing more than those in power trying to flex their political muscles.

I've been playing with Gmail's "YouTube previews in mail" labs feature. When someone sends me a YouTube link I can now watch the video in Gmail without having to launch a new browser window. They have similar preview features for Picasa and Flickr too.

If Gmail would only get rid of the "on behalf of" xsender header, and use a x-sender header instead, they'd really have something going.