Category Software

Hey, where's the GPS support, Google?

Google EarthIt was just brought to my attention that Google Earth Plus for Linux does not have any support for GPS devices whatsoever, despite this being one of its main selling points over the free version. Google advertises the four variants of its Google Earth product range (Free, Plus, Pro and EC) without making any differentiating remarks for the Linux, Mac OS X or Windows ports. There is no mention of this either on the GE product page or its help centre. A potential customer would almost certainly expect this feature to be present in all three versions of the software and as such misled by the product presentation by Google.

Hellenic Reverse Directory Lookup Widget

Επειδή τυχαίνει κατα καιρούς να δέχομαι κλήσεις από αγνώστους και καθώς ο δικτυακός τόπος του τηλεφωνικού καταλόγου του ΟΤΕ δεν είναι ό,τι καλύτερο, έφτιαξα ενα Dashboard Widget ώστε να μην χρειάζεται να κάνω βόλτες στο www.whitepages.gr. Καθώς το χρησιμοποιώ αρκετά είπα να το βγάλω προς τα έξω μήπως φανεί χρήσιμο και σε άλλους έλληνες macheads. […]

How to disable the WP Dashboard blog posts.

Ever since WordPress started including blog entries from WP-people in the Dashboard (first page of the administration panels) it annoyed me. Not only because I don’t care or wouldn’t like to read their blogs (I don’t in principle, but don’t mind them), but also because it did so without asking me and without explicitly giving […]

The Xcode Bugs

For reasons unbeknownst to me, Xcode has been seriously misbehaving lately. In most cases the problems had to do with its buggy parser/writer and required me to open the .xcodeproj files with TextMate and fix them. One example, that tortured me the other day, had to do with spurious compiler flags added there for no […]

Web 2.0? Try Web 1.01.

If it’s about the users, then it’s about independence, stupid. Name the four or five online services/web sites you use daily. I bet among others you’ll find Flickr, Yahoo!, Google, blogspot and wordpress.com (for those blogging/publishing online) in most peoples’ lists and in some, the most ridiculous of them all, Twitter. What’s wrong with all […]

Although JavaFX has a lot of potential, the technology also has a lot of weaknesses.

Can JavaFX become relevant? Ars provides a short summary of what's good and what's not so good about Sun's latest RI/desktop app platform. As this is probably the only Open Source effort tackling this increasingly important market segment, I'm very much wishing to see it succeed. Sadly, Sun's record with Swing is disappointing and JavaFX seems to be suffering from some of the same mistakes.

Why I don't like Silverlight.

The short answer: because it comes from Microsoft and reeks of its aspirations of total domination monopoly. Because it excludes Linux even before it’s out. Because it doesn’t conform to Open Standards. The long answer: I recall only too well the web-hell of yesteryear when sites required Internet Explorer, when proprietary, temperamental Microsoft DHTML was […]

Coda

First of all let me state here that I'm a huge fan of Panic. Their software is typically well-designed and extremely functional. Transmit 2.0 was the first shareware application I ever bought for OS X and I've kept an eye on them ever since. Yesterday Panic released Coda, an application that unites Web Development under one window. While I'd have a hard time abandoning TextMate --- it must be my UNIX roots :) --- I cannot but praise their work. John Gruber has a pretty good review of the app at Daring Fireball.

It's out.

It’s that time of year again. The latest version of Ubuntu, the most popular linux distribution of the past few years, version 7.04 codenamed “Feisty Fawn” just came out. But what does it bring to the average user? Before I start my brief review, let me preface this by stating that Feisty is definitely an […]