m.theWeekThatWas – the mobile edition

Posted on Monday, 11 February, 2008 by Shane Perris

The Commentariat can’t decide if Google’s Android mobile phone operating system is gathering steam or lagging behind.

Warfare is declared between a mobile browser that doesn’t even have an alpha and a much loved but cut down version of a market leader (and the video of the latest version of Opera Mobile makes it look even better)

Geeks speculate and drool about how a 3G iPhone will make their dreams come true, despite the fact that it’s a smart phone that can’t cut and paste yet.  Oh, and US network providers?  We’ve all had widespread 3G coverage for years now.  Isn’t it time you caught up and joined the rest of the world?

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Local Development: Installing XAMPP

Posted on Friday, 8 February, 2008 by Shane Perris

image There will come a time when the beginner blogger wants to take more control and choose to host their own blog. When it comes to development, testing design tweaks, different templates, plug-in compatibility and overall usability, nothing beats having a version of your blog sitting on your very own desktop (or laptop) computer. The easiest way to host a local version of your blog on Windows is to use the popular local server package XAMPP. This post will explain what XAMPP is and does and will give the reader a step by step tutorial on installing XAMPP on Windows.

What is XAMPP?

XAMPP is a variation of the commonly used acronym LAMP which stands for Linux, the Apache web server, the MySQL database and the languages PHP and Perl. Many websites run on a variation of LAMP (or the not quite as popular WAMP for Windows etc.). XAMPP runs on multiple platforms (hence the ‘X’) and installs versions of Apache, MySQL, PHP and Perl specifically tailored to run on your local machine rather than on a server openly available on the internet. The emphasis on local installation also means that XAMPP is inherently insecure and should not be deployed on systems accessible from outside your own network.

Some of you reading this may have tried to install all of these components separately and came to the same conclusion I did: it’s hard and generally not worth the time and effort invested. XAMPP makes all of this extraordinarily easy and the rest of this post will show you just how easy it really is.

Installing XAMPP

Although XAMPP is available for Windows, Mac OSX, Linux and Solaris, this tutorial will be for Windows only. I don’t have a Mac (I’m saving for one) and my Linux install is a work in progress (I’m still not confident using it but I’m working on it). As for Solaris….well, I choose to work on the theory that if you’re running Solaris at home, chances are you’re already way beyond my area of expertise and I have no idea why you’re reading this post, or indeed this blog. In fact, if you are reading this and you want to write something seriously techy hard core for the Solaris crowd, we should talk.

Step 1 – Downloading XAMPP

The latest version of XAMPP can always be downloaded from the Apache Friends XAMPP site. The most recent version is v1.65 (although this tutorial uses version 1.63a). (Please note that v1.65 has some compatibility problems with Perl, which could be an issue further down the track. Previous versions of XAMPP can be downloaded from Sourceforge) On this page you will find the version for your platform. The Windows version has three downloads – an installer file version, a zipped package version “for the purists” and a self-extracting zipped archive. The simplest option is the Windows installer. Go ahead and download the installer version. I don’t mind waiting.

Step 2 – Installation

Installation really is easy. Double click on the exe file you downloaded. If you’re running Vista, the following warning message may pop up:

xampp_vista_warning

Just follow the advice and you will be fine. Click “OK” to continue.

The usual installer welcome screen is next. Click “Next” to continue.

xampp_setup_wizard_1

XAMPP will ask you to choose a destination. Vista users should keep in mind the earlier warning message and make sure that XAMPP installs in to your main system folder. I have chosen to install XAMPP directly into my C:\ drive at c:\xampp. Once you have selected a location, click “Next” to continue.

xampp_setup_wizard_2_install_loc

You need to install the web server and database services for XAMPP to be useful for local blog development. At the next screen of the installation, ensure that the boxes are checked for Apache service (the web server) and MySQL service (the database).

xampp_setup_wizard_3_services

The Filezilla option is for the installation of an FTP service. You are probably already familiar with FTP (File Transfer Protocol) but it is not required for our purposes here. I have left that option unchecked.

The shortcuts are also useful but not necessary. I have chosen to let XAMPP install the shortcuts.

Click “Install” to let the XAMPP installer do its thing, which will look something like this:

xampp_setup_wizard_4_install_progress

You might get an error message like the following once the installation is finished:

xampp_setup_wizard_ports_ERROR

I am going to admit that I have no idea why this error message appeared. I waved the rubber chicken and clicked “OK”. Since then, everything seems to have worked just fine. My advice: go with the flow on this one.

Step 3 – Check your installation

XAMPP sets up a local web server on your computer that is accessed by typing http://localhost/ into your web browser. Do this now to see if XAMPP installed correctly with the required services running. If you’re lucky, your browser looks like this:

xampp_install_success

For some reason, one or more of the required services might not be running (for example, the Apache service might not be running because the ports were already in use). You can see which services are running in the XAMPP Control Panel. If you chose to have shortcuts installed, you will find a shortcut to the Control Panel conveniently placed on your desktop. If not, you will also find the program sitting in the main XAMPP folder (the file is called xampp_control.exe).

The control panel looks like this:

xampp_control_panel

The most important services are Apache and MySQL. If they’re not running, you can start them in the Control Panel. Once your control panel looks like the one above, try localhost again.

Hooray!

XAMPP is now installed and ready for business. In the coming weeks I will show you how to install a number of blogging engines on your local machine such as WordPress and Movable Type.

If you are still having problems getting XAMPP up and running, drop me a line in the comments and I will try and help you get it working.

Posted in how-to, tutorials | Tagged | 63 Comments

Microsoft and Yahoo: did anyone actually see it coming?

Posted on Wednesday, 6 February, 2008 by Shane Perris

It’s interesting that for years there have been rumours that Microsoft and Yahoo were destined for some sort of arrangement, whether it be a formal partnership, merger or good ol’ fashioned buy out.  The first link goes back to 2006 and I vaguely recall rumours in 2005, but my Google-fu is letting me down at the moment and I can’t find evidence of this.  My point remains – this idea has been around a long time.

This time of year is flush with predictions for the 12 months ahead.

The Read/Write Web predictions included the rise of semantic apps, the acquisition of Digg, Twitter and Tumblr, the Facebook juggernaut rolling on and the first chinks in the Google armour. 

Mashable! predictions included increased acceptance of the mobile social, Facebook going mainstream (if my 60-something coworker asks me about Facebook because her sister-in-law sent her an invite, it’s already mainstream people) and blogs to become acquisition targets.

Update: as Adam Ostrow of Mashable kindly pointed out in the comments, the one important prediction I missed in his 2008 predictions was indeed Microsoft buying Yahoo. I’m an idiot (Adam kindly didn’t point out that fact, so in the interests of full disclosure I’m doing that for him).

There were predictions of Windows XP living on and increases in state-sponsored cyber warfare, “personality matters“, the year of “micro” (blogging, groups, online video)  and enterprise adoption of web 2.0 (I’d link to the original Forrester report but I don’t have that kind of cash just lying around – especially not for an 8 page publication!).  In amongst all these minds that are far more perceptive than mine, I don’t recall once seeing mention of the Microsoft-Yahoo even being a possibility.

It is amazing that despite all the past rumours (or perhaps because of them), it is as if everyone thought the idea would never actually go ahead.  After so many false starts, each rumour would be treated as the merger and acquisition world equivalent of an Apple Tablet.

If anyone can point me towards someone who did predict that this year, Microsoft would try to buy out Yahoo, please let me know.  I would dearly love to subscribe to that person’s feed.

 

Graphic credit: “Microhoo” by Joe Manna.  Used under a Creative Commons licence.

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The month that was: let’s go shopping!

Posted on Monday, 4 February, 2008 by Shane Perris

The post-Christmas sales are always an excellent place to pick up a bargain to two.  A sneak peak into the Backpack pages of some of tech’s leading lights yielded some surprising results…

 

ballmer's shopping list

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/02/01/wow-microsoft-offers-446-billion-to-acquire-yahoo/

 

bezos shopping list

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1102509

 

mcneely's shopping list

http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2008/01/sun_acquires_mysql.html

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Local Development

Posted on Friday, 1 February, 2008 by Shane Perris

“Local development” – the practice of hosting a copy of your blog on your local machine (desktop or laptop) for the purposes of testing changes to your blog.

Having a blog can be an exciting experience. Blogging virgins often choose to have their blog hosted by someone else (eg Blogger, WordPress.com, Livejournal, Typepad to name a few). This is usually a good thing as the hosting service takes care of all the trickier aspects of blog hosting like free (or nearly free) hosting, bandwidth issues, image hosting, bug fixing, and general trouble shooting. This enables the beginner blogger to focus on the important things like content and trying to maintain the rage after the three month honeymoon period is over.

Why local development is a good thing

New bloggers become veteran bloggers (if they survive aforementioned honeymoon period). With experience comes a desire to have greater control over the type of experience provided to the blog’s readers. The common remedy is to organise your own hosting with a web host provider and make your own designs on design, templates, plug-ins and so on.

One problem with hosting is that it can be difficult to spend time tweaking your blog, testing for changes. Every change you make to your blog on your host’s servers is published and goes “live” straight away. There is little room for trial and error. It is in this situation that local development excels.

Hosting a copy of your blog on your local machine gives you the luxury of making as many changes as you like without worrying about whether those changes will break your blog and cast it into cyber purgatory. You also don’t need to worry that everyone will see that change you made to the colour scheme at 3am that seemed like such a good idea at the time but in the cold light of day resembles far too closely the colour of the tabouli that was on your kebab while you sat at the keyboard tapping in the RGB colours when you should have been sleeping (or at the very least still at the club and not changing your template colours at 3am, even if The KLF proclaims it as eternal)

Don’t sweat it – it’s easy

Although it may sound like a complicated idea, hosting your own blog is easy to do. All you need is some server software (such as Apache), an SQL compatible database (such as MySQL or PostgreSQL) and an installation of one/all of PHP, Perl and Python. Luckily for you dear reader, it is a doddle to get all of this in one simple, easy to install package for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux – XAMPP.

What can be installed locally?

Many blogging engines can be installed locally. The most popular of these include WordPress, Movable Type (which is the core of Six Apart‘s Typepad service), Drupal, Joomla! and Mambo. You can also install technologies like MediaWiki that serve an allied service and ideal.

Coming up

In the coming weeks, TechWhimsy will provide tutorials on how to install XAMPP as well as some of the more popular blogging engines like WordPress and Movable Type.

Stay tuned!

Photo credit: Downtown Champaign: Taking Out of Storage by grifay.

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4 Reasons why Windows Vista is better than XP

Posted on Wednesday, 30 January, 2008 by Shane Perris

Windows Vista has attracted a lot of heat since its launch in January 2007. It’s been called out for nagging users with the User Account Control (UAC), being a resource hog, being slow, having an unfamiliar interface, incompatible with legacy hardware, incompatible with legacy software – you name it, Vista has been bagged for it.

However, in my experience it really has not been that bad. There have been high profile cases of people declaring that they were going to downgrade back to XP (Chris Pirillo is one popular example) but is it really the case that people have been this much of a hard time?

Google Trends reveals that, for many people, Vista works.

vista_trends

(Blue is “vista sucks”, red is “vista works”)

vista_xp_trends

(Blue is “vista works”, orange is “vista sucks” and red is “downgrade to xp”).

What is interesting to me is that downgrading to XP appears to have got the most attention online. Personally, I think downgrading to XP is a definite backward step and here’s why I think Vista is better than XP:

1. Great collection of bundled software: Vista (especially the Home Premium version that the majority of people will come in to contact with) comes with a wide range of applications that are designed specifically to play nice with the operating system and are handy for the general consumer. Windows Media Centre. Windows Movie Maker 6. Windows DVD Maker. Photo Gallery. Instant search. Windows Sidebar.

I know that a lot of these are also available in XP or have 3rd party equivalents but don’t underestimate the power of bundled apps. After all, isn’t one of the key selling points of Apple’s OSX the powerful consumer-level apps that come standard with the computer?

2. It makes better use of hardware resources: I accept that Vista has a heftier hardware requirement than XP. However, XP needed more resources than Windows 2000, which in turn needed more than Windows ME and Windows 98. A decent level of graphics grunt is required and 2 gigabytes of RAM is something of a sweet spot. The extra hardware resources are worth it as Vista puts them to good use. The shiny Aero interface of Vista utilises the Graphics Processing Unit of the computer that would otherwise sit there doing not much of anything outside of gaming. Aero makes looking at the computer screen just that little bit easier on the eyes. Vista also makes good use of spare RAM capacity. It might look like it has a big memory footprint but what it is doing is storing more things in the quick access memory that it thinks might be needed, giving the user faster response times and jumping back to the hard drive less (it’s quicker to fetch from RAM than from disk).

3. Vista is more secure: it’s very hard to argue with this one. Vista is not perfect but UAC makes it a lot harder for the general user’s system to be compromised. The regular pop ups can get annoying at times and Vista runs the risk of inducing “pop up fatigue” where users just click “OK” automatically. However, once you have the system configured just the way you like it, the pop ups happen much less than you think. Other operating systems employ similar security measures, for example OSX and Linux. While I don’t have experience with OSX I do know that in Linux I’ve had to use the command “sudo” to temporarily elevate user privileges many times, almost to the stage where it becomes habit to add sudo to the start of every command line action.

4. Vista has an improved user interface and other system tweaks: There are lots of little tweaks and improvements that make life easier in Vista. For example, when renaming files, Vista automatically highlights only the filename and not the file extension. Hit the TAB key when you’re finished and it jumps to the next file in the list and highlights the name, ready for renaming. Little touches like this go a long way. There are many more little Vista tips (for a great selection, visit The Supersite For Windows Vista page).

Caveats

I accept that Vista isn’t perfect. Despite being more secure than XP out of the box, it still does have security problems. Some of the user interface changes can be confusing if you’re used to doing things in a certain way. Old hardware may never have Vista-ready drivers (especially if the hardware is obsolete or the manufacturer has gone out of business). There are some lingering concerns about the impact of the inbuilt Digital Rights Management, but that’s not a wall I’ve bumped up against yet.

Conclusion

I enjoy using Vista. I hate having to use XP on my work computer. Although I’m a fan of Vista, I don’t recommend it unconditionally. If you have XP installed on your current computer and it works just fine, I wouldn’t suggest upgrading. However, if you’re buying a new computer, I see no reason to stick with XP. Vista will work just fine.

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The Week that Was – DRM (in verse!)

Posted on Monday, 28 January, 2008 by Shane Perris

Yahoo! is rumoured to soon set the DRM shackles free.
last.fm successfully did, but you can only hear tracks by three.
The media was so pumped up it ignored imeem
who a month ago convinced the Big 4 to stream.

Amazon shows downloads have already been done
Unless you’re outside the US where iTunes is the one
And that’s only if you like the roster of EMI.
Anything else is just pie in the sky.

Qtrax is trialling legal P2P and
Peter Gabriel’s support keeps We7 tracks free.
Saul Williams gave it away for a while, as did Radiohead
While David Byrne offered up other models for artists to try instead.

Yet Universal doesn’t know how to find a geek.
Warner wants to sue because Seeqpod can seek.
SonyBMG clings to old business plans.
It’s no wonder music sales are going down the can.

 

Photo credit: Eliminate DRM! by baughj

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Fixing Hibernate Problems in Windows Vista

Posted on Friday, 25 January, 2008 by Shane Perris

One of the most regularly reported problems with Windows Vista is that the hibernate function – one of the power-saving modes – does not work. I have been using Vista daily since February 2007 and although the experience has been generally positive, hibernation has failed to work a number of times. Through trial and error (and a lot of time spent trawling through blogs of both users and Windows developers) I have come across some solutions that seem to work for most people.

Hibernation problems on Vista fall roughly in to three categories:

  1. the computer fails to wake up from hibernation
  2. the computer fails to hibernate
  3. the computer keeps waking up from hibernation when it is supposed to be sleeping

Waking Vista from hibernation

Right from when I bought my laptop (a Dell Inspiron 1501, a mere matter of weeks before they sexed up the Inspiron range with colours, new gadgets and upgraded specs that make my laptop blush with shame at being so weak and puny and unworthy of calling itself a “computer”), my computer would not so much hibernate as enter into a terminal coma from which there was no waking.

The number one reason that Vista fails to wake from hibernation is a problem with video drivers. In my case, the answer was simple. All I needed to do was to update the drivers for my Radeon Xpress 1150 onboard video chipset. A quick visit to the ATI drivers page to download the latest drivers and I was back in business. As easy as that.

Making Vista hibernate

Sometimes the hibernation option is not available, or your hardware key combination (on my Dell it is Fn -> F1) simply does not work. The first thing you need to check if your computer supports one of the hibernation options. To do this, go to the start menu and type Command in the search box. In the results, right click and select “Run as Administrator”. When the command prompt opens up, type powercfg -a which shows you all of the available types of hibernation that your hardware supports. In the video below you will notice that my laptop supports s(3) which is the “deep hibernation” that saves the state of the system to disk before shutting the hardware down.

If your hardware does support hibernation but it still stubbornly refuses to bunker down for the winter, either the hibernation option has been disabled or the Hibernation File Cleaner has been deleted by the Disk Cleanup Utility. Both these options are easily fixed using the powercfg utility again. To turn hibernation back on, type powercfg -h on. The short video below shows you how easy this really is (toggle full screen mode on the flash player for best results).

I can personally vouch for this method as well. Like many people, when I first ran the Disk Cleanup Utility, I saw the the Hibernation File Cleaner took up around 1GB of disk space and I thought “Surely it wouldn’t be an option if it wasn’t safe to delete it? Surely?” Like many people I learned the answer was “Hmm. Not so much” which isn’t exactly grammatically correct but does get its meaning across while inspiring a healthy dose of Friends nostalgia and yearning for Courtney Cox that I thought had long since worn off. Not so much, obviously. But I digress. In my case, the option to hibernate had disappeared from my shut down options and Fn -> F1 didn’t work either. powercfg -h on worked immediately.

Vista Keeps Waking Up From Hibernation

This one is a tricky one. In theory, hibernation physically shuts down your machine so issues such as scheduled tasks (eg system updates, virus scans and so on) shouldn’t be able to wake the machine back up. However, I have seen reports all over the internet of Vista machines waking up and doing strange things. I have never experienced this problem myself but the following suggestions have worked for various people at various times:

  1. if your computer wakes up at a consistent time, make sure there are no scheduled tasks (Start menu -> search for “task scheduler”)
  2. check your BIOS settings to make sure that “Wake on LAN” (also sometimes known as “Wake on Ring”) is disabled. Check your bootup screens to see what key combination you need to hit to access your BIOS
  3. check in Device Manager (Start menu -> search for “device manager” – your life will be much easier if you run this program as Administrator) and see if any of your devices have an option that allows it to wake the computer. I’ve seen reports that blame everything from a wireless mouse to an ethernet device that isn’t plugged in to the network for waking a computer from hibernation.

If any of the above suggestions help, or you have an even better suggestion to make about Vista hibernation modes, why not drop me a line in the comments?

Posted in how-to, tutorials | Tagged , | 171 Comments

Where to find Facebook Etiquette Tips

Posted on Wednesday, 23 January, 2008 by Shane Perris

etiquetteI am happy to concede that I was slow to jump on the Facebook bandwagon. After all, there is only so much adopting that one can do in a fast paced, 2.0 "must be the first, oh please, I just have to be the first" fashion and Facebook was over that threshold. However, once I signed up, I found myself bewildered as I had no context for the rules of engagement. I needed an etiquette guide and I maintain that social networks like Facebook are failing their new users when they don’t at least point to a user-generated guide.

The first attempt was Save Face on Facebook on Wired’s How To Wiki. I was relieved that t he community had filled the gaping void and provided meaning to the bewildering array of behaviours I was witnessing.  It had a common sense list of actions (well, all except the one about not writing on your own wall, that is. Why is that? The whole Wall-to-Wall thing seems counter-intuitive to me and I think that’s one for the Facebook usability gurus to work on). Yet, the guide has let me down. The more astute will notice that this How To entry hasn’t been updated since October 2007.

And then I discovered Practising a Proper Social Demeanour: A Guide To Facebook Etiquette , a creation of research student Maz Hardy.  Proper Facebook Etiquette deals with the big questions such as:

If you’re looking for sensible guidance in the Brave New (2.0) World, you could do worse than stopping by Proper Facebook Etiquette.  It might save your precious reputation one day.

Photo credit: numberstumper

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Steve Jobs causes global market panic

Posted on Monday, 21 January, 2008 by Shane Perris

No 3G iPhone.

No sub-notebook/tablet/12" Powerbook.

No Blu-Ray drives.

Randy Newman.

Markets plummet in US, Europe and Asia/Pacific (red lines denote approximate local time when Steve Jobs delivered the Macworld 08 Keynote).

Coincidence?  You decide.

dowjones_edited-2

 

nasdaq_edited-1

 

ftsee_edited-1

 

nikkei_edited-1

 

allord_edited-1

 

 

 

 

Stock charts courtesy of Yahoo! Finance.

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