Category Archives: Software

Why I Joined Habari, and What It’s All About

Posted on by Mahmoud Al-Qudsi
6

People have been bombarding my email asking me questions about Habari, and most importantly, why I joined it. I wasn’t planning on blogging about any of this until I officially became a committer in the Habari project, but after reading this post, I feel the need to share my reasons.

I’ve been a loyal contributor the WordPress project and a ardent (for lack of a more aggressive word) WP-Hacker for what seems like forever – even though it isn’t. WordPress is my first-love when it comes to blogging, you may have noticed. But yeah, I working on Habari too.

I didn’t leave WordPress. Not because Matt is the devil-incarnate nor because I’m put off that he wouldn’t hire me (not even interested), but because Habari is a challenge. It’s something I’ve always wanted to work on.

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A Country without Internet for a Week or So…

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
1

Imagine having no internet for a day. It can’t be that difficult, can it? You can find things to do, offline work to get finished, people to talk to, books to read, TV shows to watch, etc. Now try to imagine a business without internet – obviously one that makes of the internet normally. Again, they might be behind on the day’s news, miss out on a couple of stock changes, and lose touch with some contacts and/or offices – but they’ll live through it. But what if it wasn’t just one person or business, and not even two, but an entire country without internet for a week! What would happen!?

Today, we were unlucky enough to find out. Actually, it turns out we were the “lucky” ones, at least according to the Jordan Telecom customer service manager we spoke to. In a nutshell, we’ve been having internet problems for the last week or so, and we didn’t have internet at all for most of today. The conversation went something along these lines:

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WordPress 2.0.7 Fixes the FeedBurner Bug

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
2

For the first (and hopefully last) time ever, we’re glad to hear that WordPress has a major security vulnerability. Why? As a result of a security vulnerability that affects WordPress 2.0.6 and below on certain server configurations, the WordPress Developers Team has released a new version of WordPress that incorporates both a security patch for the detailed vulnerability, and a fix for the FeedBurner Bug that we reported for 2.0.6. You can download WordPress 2.0.7 or see the list of affected/changed files here on the WP Development Blog.

Originally, the WordPress team had refused to patch the WordPress 2.0.6 FeedBurner Bug on the premise that it was too soon to release another version of WordPress for a “minor” bug – which we disagreed with. However, you can now download WordPress 2.0.7 and hopefully this time there aren’t any surprise bugs that need immediate patching. We highly recommend everyone goes and downloads WordPress 2.0.7 immediately in order to avoid anyone compromising their blog/site via the security hole in WordPress 2.0.6.

Correction: WordPress is released and maintained independant from Automattic

Windows Forces you to use UAC to Add a Printer

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
16

If you want to use Windows Vista and you want to be able to print to a network printer, you’re going to have to use UAC. You turned it off? Turn it back on. You’re using the in-built “Administrator” account? Log-out and log-in as a normal admin. Microsoft says you have to use UAC to get a printer installed. If you don’t, you get this ugly message:

“Windows cannot connect to the printer. The specified print monitor is unknown.”

Exactly why this message shows up isn’t clear, it has nothing to do with the printer you choose to use or the process you take. This particular message is displayed when trying to add a printer via the wizard:

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Ultimate Tag Warrior and WordPress 2.1

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
8

For anyone trying out WordPress and interested in keeping their tags alive: don’t. Ultimate Tag Warrior is completely broken with WordPress 2.1 and you can lose all your tags by upgrading to WordPress 2.1. In the more recent SVN revisions of WordPress 2.1, any time a comment is added, deleted, or unapproved, you lose all the tags for that particular post. It’s a damn shame, because UTW is an excellent plugin, and WordPress 2.1 is a big improvement over 2.0.

Bunny’s Technorati Tags is a more basic tagging solution, but it’s verified working on WordPress 2.1. If you can figure out how to switch from UTW to Bunny’s TT you can easily switch back when Christine releases a new version of UTW that’s compatible with WP 2.1 via her import from custom-field feature. Just be very careful, make database backups, and use Google when you get stuck.

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The Need for Creating Tag Standards

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
45

Web 2.0, blogging, and tags all go together, hand-in-hand. However, while RPC standards exist for blogs and the pinheads boggle over the true definition of a “blog,” no one has a cast-in-iron standard for tags. Depending on where you go and who you ask, tags are implemented differently, and even defined in their own unique way. Even more importantly, tags were meant to be universal and compatible: a medium of sharing and conveying info across the internet — the very embodiment of a semantic web. Unfortunately, they’re not. Far from it, tags create more discord and confusion than they do minimize it.

To Space or Not to Space, that is the Question

This one is probably the most obvious obstacle and the most destructive when it comes to tallying tag popularity or making those pretty tag clouds: Can tags have spaces in them or not?! If tags don’t/shouldn’t have spaces, then what do you do with multi-word tags that you just can’t shorten? Do you replace the spaces with underscores, dashes, or just take ’em out? Does it matter?

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Windows Vista Forgets its Name – Again

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
1

The worst bugs are those that you can’t fix without formatting. Most people – before they knew any better – used to recommend formatting as the “tool” of choice for fixing any bug or issue with the operating system or even a piece of software. But as people learn and experience new things, they find alternative (read: less painful) ways of dealing with these issues and making them go away. But what about the bugs that can’t be dealt with otherwise? Like this one: You install Windows Vista, you give it a computer name, you join a domain and change it. Two weeks later, Vista forgets its name, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

It’s a bit complicated when taken out of context, but just look at the image below (click it for a hi-res screen capture), it might make things more clear.

Basically, Windows Vista reverts to the “automatically determined” computer name internally, while all settings point to the name you gave it. The name it uses is the default name provided during setup, whether or not you accepted it at the time. This was a reported bug during the beta, and it’s still driving us crazy now.

A Clarification on WordPress

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
9

Day before yesterday, we posted an article about how WordPress was king of the blogging world, and how close to impossible it would be for it to lose its position. Amongst the comments, trackbacks, emails, and pingbacks directed our way, we find it necessary to clear up some points. For sake of communication and clarity, we’re using bullets to explain:

Most importantly: that wasn’t a review of WordPress. Just a discussion about how WordPress amongst others “spoils” developers!

  • WordPress isn’t necessarily the best engine, just the best platform. The difference is, it might not have the best code and features out there, but as a product together with its community, resources, and developers, it’s the platform for you to use.
  • The reason why WordPress will find it much easier to remain at the top compared to others that have taken the fall is that it’s open source, friendly, and free. That means people are more willing to help it out. Business 101: “open & flexbile” companies take much more and much longer to fail than “closed & rigid” companies do.
  • We’re not saying WordPress will remain the best product, but that even if a far better product came out (like the promising new-comer: Habari), WordPress will remain the tool of choice simply because of how widespread and prevalent it has become.
  • WordPress is not a company, it’s an open-source project. Automattic is the company. They come together, but WordPress is a separate entity, that continue developing and improving with or without Automattic. Don’t confuse the two.

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Atom isn’t RSS!!

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
6

For the last time: Atom isn’t some new version of RSS! It’s not a different kind of RSS and it’s not some alternative-form of RSS either! Atom is one RDF-compliant standard, RSS is another. They have absoloutely nothing to do with one another, and they’re not compatible! You can’t mix and match the two, and pretending they’re one and the same only makes things worse for you and your readers. Nor is it a “sub-format” of RSS. Just because the both serve the same basic purpose at-heart, it doesn’t mean you can say they’re one and the same – that’s like saying OS X is another format of Windows!

What makes it extra-embarassing is when a blogging engine, attempting to sell itself to the more “technically advanced” bloggers out there, has this as a “selling point:”

RSS Syndication

With RSS, your content can be made available for syndication.  ExpressionEngine supports all major RSS formats, including the new Atom format.

Umm.. Hello? So much for “redefining the standard for publishing systems.” Somehow we don’t think that’s what pMachine had in mind when they made that tagline up for ExpressionEngine, their new up-and-coming blogging platform.

“Car 2.0?”

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
7

It looks like Bloggers and tech start-ups aren’t alone in going for smooth curves, design refreshes, and a new, prioritized take on how things look to the audience just as much as how they feel and what they do: automobile manufacturers have just joined the game! Case-in-point: the new Ford Interceptor. Talk about different!

It’s still a Ford, though it looks more like a cross-breed between a Mustang (the top of the car), a Cadillac (the overly deep body), and a BMW (the wheels and the rear – from what we can see of it). It looks rather eerie, and only too fragile.

According to MSNBC, this is part of a new plan by Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors to attempt to regain market share lost to Japanese automakers. It seems they don’t understand it’s not just about the way things look, it’s also about how reliable they are and how good of a name they have to back them. Give the average American a choice between equally priced BMWs and Cadillacs, you shouldn’t be surprised by the result.