So, wordpress now has an iPhone app. I’m not sure how I feel about typing out a blog entry on my phone but it might be useful in some circumstances.

By the way as you can tell from the brievity of this post. Yes it was from my iPhone. So you too go out there and start blogging from your phone.

Hey I finally got in.  No matter how many times I reset my password, it was saying that it I had the wrong username / password.  But magically not today.  So I’m only a week late to the fun, but I have to say since I dont have an exchange server (though I might set one up)  that Mobile is a decent replacement.  Now how often does your computer update to the service?  It seems slow.  Once Mobile Me get a hold of the data though the push to the iphone is quite fast. (Yep.  I do have iphone 2.0 software now, thanks iphone dev team)  

On a side note:  Like a stupid person I forgot to backup my iphone before updating to 2.0…lost everything since last sync, a week or 2 ago, Lame.

Well over the last 2 weeks this site has run on 2.5 different servers.  The original, the temp, and the rebuilt original. But everything looks good now.  

 OPML, the feed of feeds.  Really.  I recently got a chance to work with opml, and I was bored on a sunday night, so I thought I would share with you a couple of thing I observed. 

First off the link:

opml and asp.net - That helped with parsing the opml file and getting a dataset from it. 

OPML files for the most part have a simple layout.  <outline> tags that hold attributes for the feeds type, xml link, site link, and title.  You can add a couple more things, but really that is basically what you will see in every opml file.  

According to opml.org the goal of opml is:

 The purpose of this format is to provide a way to exchange information between outliners and Internet services that can be browsed or controlled through an outliner.

OPML is also the file format for an outliner application, which is why OPML files may contain information about the size, position and expansion state of the window the outline is displayed in. 

I’m not really sure what they mean by that, but I do know that opml is the way to import / export / transfer subscription lists.  And since the web is crazy with subscriptions these days, opml is found in most feed readers.  So if you are writing a feed reader, you should have it on your feature list.

Well opml is really no more complex then that.  So I’m going to get back to coding…

Ok, so this is my first day with evernote, but I like it a lot so far.  The idea of Evernote is to store all your notes online and to be your remote brain.  To that end you can store text and images (including uploads from camera phones, and your builtin web cam)  it will then store that data, and run a OCR against it to make the images searchable.  Another part where evernote excels is the ability to access your notes from a web browser, mac and pc clients, pocket pc client, and a soon promised iphone client.  Never be without your data, access and search it from anywhere.  

So moving beyond Evernote to the rest of my setup.  I have the HP Officejet 6310 All-in-One.  I have had trouble with the included windows software.  You should be able to press scan to on the HP and have the image that you are scanning sent straight to a computer.  Well, the windows software never did work, it just always crashed as I tried to configure it.  But that is not the case with the Mac version, which is awesome.  So I installed that, and set it up to be able to send the image directly to Evernote.  Now from my scanner I can press “Scan To” and select “Evernote”  which will transfer the image to my laptop, which will send it to evernote all without pressing any more buttons. Then I can search and access that scanned document with Evernote at anytime from anyplace on just about any device.  Awesome. 

The largest security convention and expo that I have ever seen.  It was also the first that I have seen, but at 26000 people in attendance I think it has to be close to the biggest.  So why was I there?  Aquila Command.  We were at the expo in booth 39030 along with Eagle-i.  Eagle-i as I have talk about before is a realtime video analysis platform that we (Aquila Command) work with to provided the “complete solution.”  They do the analysis of the images, we make sure that user (guards, managers, etc.) are notified to the event.  We do that by means of a window client, and window mobile client, email, and sms.  There were a lot of impressive technologies and companies there at the expo.  And I was thoroughly humbled.  But there are still important selling points to our product.  I think we can build on those strengths.  Focus on that part, and build an application might be useful in other markets as well. 

I’ll try to update this post by the end of the week with pictures of vegas/the expo.  I’m just too lazy to sync my camera.  Has anyone ever used the eye-fi card? Because I was thinking about getting one.  

Recently I have found myself watching more and more of the yahoo developer theater.  Now at times it is slow, and not very direct, or to the point.  But that is what fast forward was developed for.  Otherwise it is filled with great content including discussions with and interviews of some the developers behind new/advanced technology at yahoo and others, including wordpress, facebook, google,  etc.  They have some good discussions about Openid and the fact that Yahoo is now a open-id provider, hadoop and yahoo’s increasing use of hadoop, and even facebooks take on collect and organizing the large amount of data that they collect about user interaction

So I recommend that if you are interested in web development and the technology that goes on behind it, YDN theater is a great resource.    

I thought I would run down some of the software that I have been using lately.  Some that I just started using, some that I have been using for quite some time.  My main computer is  a macbook pro, so all of this software is going to be for OS X Leopard, though some of it is available on other platforms.

Gizmo Project - This is available for many platforms linux, windows, and some mobile phones.  It is a great VOIP option, however maybe not the best under low bandwidth conditions.

Grand Central- Not software, but a service recently bought by Google.  If you can an invite, which I did within a couple of days,  then it is awesome with your gizmo project phone.  Grand Central rings multiple phones when some calls your number, with many different options and settings.  But the really awesome thing is that it will ring your gizmo project phone.  thus  give your voip phone a free number for incoming calls.  what about outbound?  well  just add the person to your contact list at Grand Central then from the website, click call.   Grand Central will ring your gizmo project phone and once you pick up connect you with the other party.  as simple as that, free calls. yes indeedy free.

Last.fm - Service and software, use the last.fm client to track your music plays and use the last.fm website to recommend music and let you keep in touch with your friends music tastes.

Of course there are the standard Mac apps that are a must:  Vmware, Adium, Transmit (though right now I’m using a trail of Forklift, and I’m a bit torn on which is better.), and VLC for those videos that quicktime just won’t play.

I added support for delicious for my bookmarks.  I signed up for delicious many moons ago, and I havent used it as much as I should.  From now on though that is going to change.  I want to keep better track of the helpful webpages that I come across, and I thought that I would share those bookmarks here on this blog.

Well, I guess I will help add to the spike. So here is my input. First off, awesome, looks like a long of awesome functionality is included. and lot of freedom. Then if you also add the announcements of the improvements to the iphone software, then no wonder that RIM stock was down 3 dollars by the end of the event.On a side note, there were a few people that wanted to get the SDK. as you can tell by the site going down….i’m still refreshing.
Update: I finally got some love from developer.apple.com I’m downloading now…all 2.1GB of it, and also the development videos from itunes. Hooray!!