OS X

Conflict of the ants

March 11, 2006

Earlier today I worked on setting up an Open Source Portfolio (OSP) on Mac OS X. It seemed pretty simple and the instructions said it would be. But each time it kept saying there was an improper flag "-cp". The problem turns out to be a conflict in configuration between the installation of Ant that comes with Mac OS X developer tools and the Ant included with OSP.

Confession

March 1, 2006

First off a bit of a confession. When I wrote that I'd given up on SOHO Organizer I didn't entirely mean it. I continued (and continue for that matter) to hold on to the sliver of hope that some day the company that produces it would see the error in their ways and would come out of the funk. However today, just before making a purchase of a different calendar product to replace Group Organizer I thought I'd check once more. And sure enough, the message that says they really care about getting a converter for old data is still there. Amazingly I still believe it just as much three months later as I did the first time I read it - which is to say not at all.

Maybe Google will soon be releasing a calendar or somebody will point out a great AJAX calendar that also syncs with the Treo650. maybe....

Contact management software for OS X

January 30, 2006

I wrote sometime back about the really sad situation that has become of SOHO Organizer. The message that a converter for previous data will be available "some time soon" is still on the website. Apparently instead of doing anything about really getting the hundreds of bugs fixed they're "focused" on universal binary. There also seems to be time available to delete posts if people raise too many concerns.

Bottom line is the end user gets buggy software that will not run properly on either architecture.

Can Yojimbo do what I'm trying to do?

January 24, 2006

I wrote yesterday about my overall favorable first impressions of Yojimbo. Tonight a project came up that seemed the perfect test. The project included tracking down property records from the Clark County website. These records all come from a website where the display are all pages created by submitting web-forms.

Unfortunately I can't find a way to get Yojombo to capture these pages. Even with a copy and paste from the results page it seems to be "smart" enough to go back and reload the original page - now a blank form - instead of the results I'm trying to paste. It can be done by taking a screen picture and putting that in, but it lacks the ability to select the text and copy-paste later on.

Yojimbo - a 30 second review

January 23, 2006

Bare Bones software released Yojimbo today. As I'm in the market for some better ways of keeping track of information I thought I'd jump in for a test drive.

Upon opening the disk image containing the application the elegance of Bare Bones simple design jumps out at the user. Instead of just having text telling the user to drag the application to the Applications folder the disk image contains an alias pointing to the main Applications folder.

From there it's time to test out the product's web page claim "It's so simple, there is no learning curve." It seems to be true. A quick gander at the preferences let's one know that F8 will bring up a quick add window and F7 shows the tab that can be positioned around the screen to allow quick access to add information to different folders. All and all quite slick.

The ability to color-code and label things will be quite handy. It would be nice to have an additional field on each item so any item can be marked "completed". This is possible to handle with the labels, but requires one to setup an archive label for filing completed items. Also the choice of using .Mac sync services unfortunately leaves those of use dependent upon DirecWAY for internet connections out in the cold. However it must be judged to be a small portion of the potential audience.

Immediately out of the box Yojimbo feels much snappier and more intuitive than SOHO Notes or Sticky Brain that generally fit into the same niche. Yojimbo is a great program and has lots of potential looking ahead.

Giving up on SOHO Organizer

January 18, 2006

So what is to be done when you get around to releasing an incredibly buggy piece of software much later than promised just to get it out the door? Evidently if you're Chronos you close up shop and head out to the industry trade show. As if that weren't insulting enough when people post about it in the discussion area evidently there is time request people take posts down but not to address the concerns.

Chronos produced a great set of tools Group Organizer and Personal Organizer for several years. As all around personal information managers they ruled the Mac platform with little competition. Personal Organizer suffered some competition from Apple's iCal and Address Book but had enough features to make it valuable. The interfaces of both programs suffered from never making the jump to the new Aqua design of OS X.

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