I’m at the office, coding away. I thought I would take a Bump update break.

The answer to the previously mentioned Palm V alarm issue seems to be soft reseting the device through the reset button on the back. Two of us have tried this with great success. Just make sure you don’t erase your data.

I’ll be attending the Web Design ’99 Conference. If you are too and want to meet up, please shoot me an email.

Wired News has a story about a contest that Kipling , the maker of the excellent line of Hacker bags, is running. It seems that no one has been able to break their code yet despite a mention on Slashdot . I have one of their computer bags and I love it. 

I’m waiting now for Netscape to confirm my entry into their channel system .

My first piece of writing to be published in several months marks the start of a monthly Web Authoring/Web Business column in MacNow Magazine . The name of the column is Leveraging the Web . While the magazine has more of a Macintosh focus, I’m far less interested in platform specific computing these days.

Palm Underground readers get $1 off any title they buy from Peanut Press , a company that digitizes books in a Palm compatible format. I downloaded their reader application and purchased two titles last night. My first instinct would be that reading books on a Palm device would be difficult on the eyes, but I read through about half of one title last night. I actually liked it. The Palm’s backlighting made reading in bed better, and it is convenient to be able to carry a couple of titles around for my spare moments. They don’t have a really wide variety of titles yet, but they do have Monica Lewinsky’s book(which I would never buy).

The Netcraft Web server survey documents Apache’s continued growth as the number one Web server. Despite a distant third place ranking, Netscape’s servers saw the most growth over the last month.

So, I love the New Beetle . It’s a really well designed vehicle, and is really visually pleasing to me too. I think the funniest thing is other people’s reaction to it. In the three days I’ve had it, I’ve had several people approach me in parking lots to tell me how much they like it, and asking me if they could get a look at the inside.

It looks as if Byte Magazine’s revival as an online only entity is progressing well. I always loved the print version of the publication. According to the San Jose Mercury News , the site was getting 600,000 page views a month without any new content at all before they relaunched it. When the magazine disappeared, I took it as a sign of things to come in the technology publishing field. While I doubt that magazines will disappear at any point in the near future, the Web has made it easier to keep yourself up to date on things in a daily manner rather than a once a month print thing. 

The feast and famine updating motif continues. I’ve been doing a lot of reading and working some substantial hours during the week. Not an excuse though.

I love my new Palm V

It doesn’t have a lot more memory than the Palm Professional I had before, but it is faster. The screen is also quite a bit better, and the feel of the buttons is much improved. The biggest difference is the size of the device. Where it was once too large to slip into my pocket, it now is almost unnoticeable. I picked up the aluminum case for it, and it reminds my of a cigarette case. I’m still waiting on the modem so I will write more once that has arrived. It also worth mentioning that it is much better looking too.

The new MacPac connectivity software is solid.(I’ve been using the beta version for a couple of months so it wasn’t a surprise. The new software that sync’s with Outlook 98 on my Gateway works really well. All in all, it seems like my impulse decision was a decent one. Two things are nagging at me though: 1)It’s not expandable 2)The integrated battery make sme nervous that I will find myself without power or a place to charge up. In honor of this new purchase, I have added a Palm Resources section to the links page.

Most of my focus over the last two weeks has been down three paths. Broadband Internet access and the changes we can expect from it. Network appliances and the dissapearance of the general purpose computer in non-technical homes. Security and privacy.

Feed Magazine has a story name Getting What You Pay For that talks about the Free PC movement in detail. I guess I understand the underlying economics, but I don’t understand why anyone would build a whole business model around this concept. As an ancillary information gathering arm of a larger company, it might make sense.

CNN has a story on How to make your fortune on the Web Interesting statistic in the last paragraph. There must be a ton of bad business ideas proposed to venture capitalists.

The next issue of Wired magazine came today. My personal opinion is that this magazine has declined greatly over the last two years.

Web Review’s current feature is Running Open Source Software They cover GIMP, Apache and Zope. Free is definitely a good way to go with software these days.

In the non-Free software department, I have picked up a copy of Headline Studio from Metacreations. A really comprehensive solution for all of your banner creation needs. I expect to be writing a review of it for MacNow magazine .

Finally, my Erricson cellular phone passed away this week after a year of loyal service, abuse, and being dropped about a hundred times.

Here’s a site with Sim City Icons for Atlanta. Now you can enjoy building(and destroying) the city I live in with the game.

I’ve been listening to the Pixies a lot this week. It reminds me of home. 

Howdy. How ya been?

In the process of questioning whether or not my work process is proper and efficent, I have been spending all of my time this week using my FireAnt. It makes me realize that I still wish things worked together better than they do, despite the layer of compatibility that the Internet provides.

One thing that kills me is email. I have office email, Internet email, and I access both at home and at the office. In each place, I have both a PC and a Macintosh(Each running more than one operating system.), as well as a Pilot that I read mail from. I have to turn cartwheels to make sure I don’t delete mail I need. Inevitably, its 10 pm, and I need something that is a 20 minute drive away. So I’m looking for a solution that doesn’t involve my carrying equipment around with me everywhere I go. Web based email would be the answer, I guess, but I think that there has to be a more elegant way. Also, I prefer to be able to read and compose email offline. I also like to read my sent mail and refer to it. This has become an issue for me, and I haven’t found an acceptable answer yet.

I did, however, find some useful things on my quest for an answer. The first is Magical Desk Interesting place to keep your documents so that you, or others, can access them. I am using it now to transfer documents from the office to my home. I wouldn’t use the free email, if I wanted that there are a million other places, but I like the idea and interface. Since it’s free, it makes good sense. It also would be great for traveling types.

HotOffice takes this idea one step further.(You also have to pay for it.) For a small business with high speed Internet access, this is a quick and inexpensive Intranet with all the expected features and a much lower cost. I wonder how many users you have to have before you hit the cost barrier of doing the Intranet in house? Great solution for a small company with a distributed workforce. Unfortunately, they seem to only support some WIN32 browsers, no Macintosh browsers. Doesn’t that sort of defeat the purpose? Still, the idea is a good business model with the commerce they are building into it.

Scripting News is tracking the disappearance of the IE 5.0 beta from Microsoft’s servers. I was waiting until I would have time to do testing to download it. I guess that makes me one of the developers that got screwed in this deal. Now I have to wait for three weeks to get it.

I’m doing the preliminary sketches for the new Bump, expect the development cycle to go beta within two weeks. I plan on adding a bunch of features, better content, and some interesting ideas.(I think)

I’m trying out Enfish Tracker Pro . It indexes and tracks information that you specify on your hard drives and on the Web and then links the information based on relevancy. Over time, I think it could be a really usefull tool in tracking writing and ideas.

Finally, there is a new Pilot in the family. Since I can’t use it yet, I don’t have any comments. I couldn’t resist once I saw it. 

I changed the font tags on the journal text. I think it is still easy to read, but allows more text without scrolling. Let me know if you don’t like the change.

I’ve had a 3Com Palm Pilot for a few months, but because of synching issues with my G3 tower at work(where my contact and schedule data resides), I have not really started using it until today. I installed the software on my machine at home, and hooked the Hot Sync cable up to it. I soon discovered that the Macintosh software isn’t compatible with Mac OS 8.5. Right now I am trying to get some third party software to work, but I am getting very frustrated by these complications. I use Chronos Software’s Consultant now for my contact management and scheduling needs. Previously, I used Now Contact and Now Up to Date, which I liked a lot more, but Now Software was bought by Qualcomm and, while they are releasing a follow package named Eudora Planner, I don’t have time to wait for it.

The new version of Consultant comes with the ability to synch with the Palm devices, but it means I have to upgrade to a developmental version of the Conduit software. I’m downloading it now. There are a ton of Pilot sites on the Web, and I will add a new section of them on the links page after the dust settles from these projects.

I have to launch a new site at work tommorrow morning. I’m frustrated with the amount of time I have to spend on this task. I want to create high quality work, but don’t have enough time to be painstaking about it. I’m hammering away on it now though.

Jakob Neilson has an insightful article on Personalization in alertbox.

Well I have to get back to the site for work. I have more on my software experiences of the last 24 hours, but it can wait.