Digital Meanderings
Meanderings of a coder

If you like reading about all things hype, but are sick of reading about the iPhone, check out Xobni. The website encourages you to “Take back your Inbox.” After using this application, I must say, I think it can help.

If you’re just looking for screen shots, scroll to the bottom of this post.

Backstory

While reading Paul Graham’s essays I first noticed a link to Xobni. The icon (which you find in the right hand column of this page) intrigued me. I’m also addicted to all things organization so “taking back my Inbox” sounded great. Although I was a little skeptical, I signed-up for the beta and even put the button on my web site.

I fought the Inbox, and I won.

On Friday I received an invitation to download Xobni and I was psyched. (Note: Xobni thank-you, thank-you, thank-you for not succumbing to invititis.) Unfortunately the application is only available for Windows users and only for Outlook and I use a Macbook at home, so I was out of luck. Yesterday, I installed it - boy was I surprised!!

The installation process is as simple as you expect - close Outlook, run the install, wait (up to 25min) for it to gather statistics about your email. The length of time it takes to install should not deter you, trust me, it’s worth it.

After Xobni is installed, a context-sensitive sidebar is added to the right hand side of the Outlook window. Simply click on an email, any email and watch the extra pane change. Simply awesome!

If you’re a stats junkie you will love Xobni! At the top of the Xobni pane it displays: how much email you receive from this person (by time of day), a rank (which is how much email you receive from this person in comparison to everyone else) and, using the menu, you have access to a plethora of other customizable reports!

It shows the current email as a thread, this is similar to how Gmail does it.

It shows all the files you’ve exchanged with the person.

It allows you to setup a time to meet. When I first noticed this button I expected it to create an Outlook meeting request, it doesn’t. This may seem wrong but what Xobni does is much better. When you click this button a new email is opened and it includes your availability over the next week. Highly useful, especially if the person isn’t a fellow employee.

It automatically updates contact information. Don’t get worried, this contact information is Xobni-only so there’s no need to worry about this application ruining your contact list. This is only feature that gave me a problem - it doesn’t accurately guess the phone number 100% of the time. This problem happened once out of hundreds of people, so I really don’t think it’s anything major.

It shows all the people that are “connected” to the person who sent the email. A connection between people seems to be made when they both are recipients of an email you send. By clicking on a connection you can see all the information about them.

Wrap-Up

Simply put - Xobni rocks! The UI is fantastic. The reports are great and the application very snappy. Be sure to download it at www.xobni.com!

By the way, if you’re looking for a job, they’re hiring. The only reason I mention this is because Xobni looks like a fantastic place to work.

Screenshots

I’ve seen many sad attempts at keeping someone on your page, but the attempt at Reunion.com wins the race. Not only did the page raise two javascript alerts but it also showed a fake chat dialog! See the screenshot below or check try the link yourself!

It has been a long ride but here we are smack dab in the middle of “iPhone Week” and I couldn’t be happier. No, I’m not happy because the iPhone will finally be available for purchase, I’m happy because it means an end to all the annoying stories.

At first I was very intrigued with the iPhone. I would eat up all of the hype and all of the rumors. After over six months of this I am ready for an end. It seems that all of the Apple related blogs I read cover the iPhone more than anything else. On the front page of Mac Rumors there are eight different iPhone stories. On Arstechnica’s Infinite Loop there are thirteen different posts. Technorati is reporting over 300k iPhone posts! Even my favorite podcasts are filled with iPhone news. The utterance of the word “iPhone” makes me want to puke blood.

Thankfully I’m not the only one who feels this way. Do a search for “Sick of the iPhone” and look at the number of results that are displayed.

There’s a great articled titled “Anyone else sick of the iPhone?” on Shallow Thoughts that discusses how Apple seems to be losing focus. Even the Fake Steve Jobs hates all of the iPhone news!

Sure, the iPhone is going to be a huge hit. Yes, it looks like a wonderful phone. Yes, I would purchase one if ATT has service in Sioux Falls. But all of the hype is getting to me.

In the end, I’d love to have an iPhone or even just drool over one for awhile. But for now, I wish every one would just shut the hell up.

I’ve just received word that Leafyhost is ceasing operations. I doubt this will come as a shock to many people considering the trouble they’ve had in the past.

Although they are offering partial refunds, I wonder how long it will take for them to arrive. This may be prove to be chapter 3 of the saga.

Below is a copy of the email sent to their subscribers.

Hello,

Due to rising costs and a number of recent crises, we regret to inform you
that we have decided to cease offering web hosting and domain management
services effective June 30, 2007. We ask that all users move their data to
another location by this date, and we will be available to assist any users
in the process between now and the end of the month.

Due to recent mail issues, please use the following email address for any
and all questions or concerns from now on: leafyhostsupport@gmail.com

- Domains: Modifying DNS/Whois contact information
Email us at leafyhostsupport@gmail.com with the subject “Domain Ownership -
*your domain*” and include your username in and zip code in the email body.
Upon receiving your information, we will send you a password and details
with which you can access and modify your domain’s Whois and DNS
information.

- Domains: Transferring to a new registrar
All domains under our ownership are currently unlocked, but to transfer a
domain you will need an EPP Key. First, follow the steps listed above to
change the Whois contact email address to one that you are currently
receiving mail at. Then, email us at leafyhostsupport@gmail.com with the
subject “Domain Transfer - *your domain*” and your username and zip code in
the body. Upon receiving this information, we will have an EPP Key generated
and emailed to the Whois contact address for the domain you requested.

- Domains: Renewal
We will not be renewing any domain names, so you will need to transfer your
domain to a new owner using the instructions listed above. We suggest that
you do this as soon as possible, but you do have until your domain’s
expiration date. The expiration date can be found with your DNS and Whois
information. (See above.)

- Lifetime/Yearly accounts
Partial refunds will be offered for all Lifetime and yearly accounts. Yearly
accounts will have the remainder of their unused hosting refunded, and
Lifetime account refunds will be calculated as if the accounts were Yearly
accounts costing $150/year. To receive a refund, please email us at
leafyhostsupport@gmail.com with the subject “Account Refund - *your
username*” and include your hosting plan, the last 4 digits of the credit
card that was billed OR your PayPal email address that was billed, and a
name and address that we can send the refund check to.

Again, if you have any other questions or concerns, please contact us at
leafyhostsupport@gmail.com as soon as possible. We sincerely thank you for
your support over the past 4 years, and wish you all the best in the future.

Thank you,
Samuel Fine
Christopher Budnick
leafyhostsupport@gmail.com

In light of the recent Massacre at Virginia Tech many universities are responding with their condolences and with assurances as to the security of their campus. My college, Bloomsburg University, is no exception.

The President of the University, Jessica S. Kozloff, wrote her own letter. In this letter she expresses her condolences to those at Virginia Tech. She also goes on to answer seven questions that have been brought to her attention. Her answer to the second question worries me.

2. Do we have Instant Messaging (IM) or text messaging or a central public address system?
Our communications system is described above. We do not have instant text messaging capability at this time. This technology is very new to most university campuses, but it is certainly something that we will look at very seriously. The campus is too large for a central public address system.

Instant Messaging is a new technology? How many years must a technology be around before it considered new?

A brief Google search returns a plethora of information about IM and its history. Specifically, Wikipedia provides an excellent history.
According to that article instant messaging has been around since the 1970’s and, in its current incarnation, since 1997. So at the bare minimum IM has been around for ten years. How is it new?

I understand this is only one administrator, and this is only one example of a lack of technological understanding. But is this a sign of a bigger problem? A sign of a general lack of understanding when it comes to technology? If it is, it would be very worrisome. Although technology is not a silver bullet, it most certainly helps, especially in situations where time may be short.

In the end, I believe that we to ensure that people in power know and understand the technology that is available. They also need to be informed of its strengths and its weaknesses.

Edit 2007-04-18 - Turns out another school has the same problem understanding technology. This time it involves caller ID, a bomb threat and a case of mistaken identity.

I’m sorry to report that, according to CNN, Kurt Vonnegut has passed away. This is most certainly a sad day for American Literature.

I recently made the switch from Windows to Mac OS. I’ve really been enjoying my new Mac unfortunately it seems that companies who make financial software haven’t realized that they are missing a huge market.

Before I switched I used MS Money to manage my personal finances and Quickbooks Simple Start to manage my business finances. Unfortunately both of these arenas have poor counterparts in the Mac world. Below are some quick reviews of some of the software I’ve found and evaluated.

Business Accounting

• Connected

  This is my least favorite of all. The UI is lackluster to say the least and none of the reports can be user modified.

  The UI looks like it was designed by Software Developers or by someone with no idea about UI design. The menu is filled with acronyms and instead of drop-down menus the user must click different buttons to bring up the menus they need.

  The reports included in the application are sufficient but they can not be customized. They seem to be designed for people that sell actual items, and not services. In itself this is fine, but the other programs I used allowed me to modify the reports to fit my needs and the needs of my customers.

• MYOB FirstEdge

  This has been my favorite application to play with. The UI is superb, the application is extremely easy to figure out and the reports are customizable.

  MYOB definitely spent some time designing the UI. The application is easy to navigate which makes it easy to learn even for us non-accountants.

  Although the reports are customizable the tool for modifying the reports could use some work. Resizing boxes and fields is difficult because you must click in exactly the right spot inside the “resize” icon or else you’ll move the whole box or field.

  It also seems that snap-to-grid is always on when using the arrow keys and I couldn’t find a way to disable it. Snap-to-Grid is a great feature for lining things up, but in some instances I needed greater flexibility and the mouse (the only way to move an object without Snap-to-grid) wasn’t accurate enough.

  There are two features I wish this had. One of them is the ability to group transactions with the same account number. I do consulting work and, as per the clients wishes, I charge to certain account numbers depending on the work I perform. It would be nice to see these transactions grouped together so both of us can see how much is being charged to each account number.

  The other feature is one that would allow me to track Sales Tax without charging it to the customer. The hourly rate I charge includes all taxes so I can’t charge it to the customer, but I would to print a report at tax time that shows me what I owe to each agency.

Personal Accounting

• Liquid Ledger

  Another great piece of software I just didn’t find it worth the price considering I already own Money and Parallels.

  Unfortunately the application is missing two things that are important to me - a Palm application and the ability to automatically sync with my bank account.

• iBank

  This is my favorite out of the personal finance software I tested. The UI is slick, and importing from MS Money was a breeze once I formatted the date correctly.

  Just like Liquid Ledger, it is missing a Palm application and the ability to automatically sync with my bank.

• Money Dance

  Another great personal finance application. It has a slick UI and is pretty easy to use. Unfortunately it has the same flaw as the other two - lack of Palm support and limited ability to sync with my Palm PDA.

For now it looks like I’ll be sticking with doing every financial using Windows running on Parallels. I was really hoping to switch everything to Mac OS unfortunately that seems impossible given my requirements. If anyone has a suggestion, please email me or post a comment!

When PayPerPost first started the blogosphere was abuzz with how wrong it is. People getting paid to write for-pay blog posts and not being allowed to disclose the fact that the post was really an advertisement. Personally, I’ve written a few for-pay posts and I really don’t feel like I was misleading any of my readers.

My rationale for being ok without full disclosure is I wrote my posts about the product. I didn’t really endorse the product itself but I endorsed the idea behind the product. If I thought the idea was good, then I would write the post and accept their money. If I felt the product was bad then I didn’t write anything and didn’t get paid. This may be seen as an ethically gray area, but I think I kept myself pretty clean.

Thankfully PayPerPost has announced on their blog that they are now allowing bloggers to disclose the fact the post is an advertisement. Good news for all the ethicists and PayPerPost-weary bloggers out there!

By the way, this post has been brought to you by PayPerPost.

I’ve been a member of the Ars Technica community for a long time. It is a very close and helpful community. It is filled with intelligent and caring people. There are quite a few members with the entrepreneurial spirit and often times other members are happy to throw some business to these people. Often times this works out very well for everyone involved but every once and a while a business comes along that is run by people with really no experience. Such is the case of Aetheri now Leafy Host, a web hosting company started by two members of Ars.

Here a link to the original thread if you care to look. In this post I plan on dissecting it.

In the beginning it seemed like a great service. It was run well and the services were provided at a great price. But two months everything changed. Two months ago they encountered a complete hard drive failure and they lost a lot of data. Not too bad though, every hosting company has backups right?

Although they advertised multiple backups it become very obvious that they were a false promise. There were no backups. The drive needed to be professionally recovered. Instead of sending it out immediately this company decided to try to fix it themselves. They made an image of the drive, or so their customers hope, and began to use the FSCK tool. Apparently this has helped a little but not all the data has been recovered.

The worst part of this fiasco is all of the un-kept and vague promises that were made by the people at Leafy Host. They continuously would say that the drive would be sent “soon.” They promised again and again to send the drive “tomorrow.” As of 12/5 they promised that they would send the drive out on 12/6.

They also would lose contact. In one instance they were out of contact with their customers for a week. Strangely, after an anonymous post was made to one of their girlfriend’s blogs and after a ban was threatened, they made contact again. Before that people called cell phones and left voice mails, sent e-mails and create trouble ticket. Their lack was contact was blamed on a dead cell phone battery, an expired help desk license and a broken email server.

Anyone else think that the operators of Leafy Host have been spewing bull?

Remember folks the kindness of community, and your customers, only goes so far. If you run a business keep the following in mind:

• Communication is extremely important. If a customer sends you an email or leaves you a voice mail - get back to them immediately even it is just to let them know that you received their message.
• Set the expectation. If your customer asks when something is going to be fixed give them an honest answer. If you don’t know or aren’t sure tell the customer so. But do let them know that you will provide them with a better estimate. If you missed the expectation help your customer understand why it happened and how you plan to rectify the matter.
• If you are going to be unreachable, or you are unreachable because server/application issues find a way to get the word out to your customers. I realize this belongs with communication, but I feel this point is very important.
• Do not lie to your customers. When a customer is paying money for a service there is a certain amount of trust implicitly placed on both parties. The customer trusts that the business will care for the their needs and will work hard to fix any problems that arise. The business trusts that the customer will pay them.
• Save your money. Although I could be wrong, I feel the reason why Leafy Host waited so long to send the drive for recovery was because they didn’t have the money to pay for the service. Running a business takes capital and the owners need to eat. This is why a business needs a war chest or a rainy day fund. Businesses need money to help them through the lean times and when the unexpected arises.

I do hope Leafy Host survives and that the operators have learned their lesson. Too bad a teacher from the School of Hard Knocks had to do it but if they learned their lesson then not all is lost.

If you have any comments, suggestions for other business owners or something to add feel free to leave a comment.

2006-12-17 - Editor’s Note: It has come to my attention that I should probably include the aliases that are used by the company in this article. Here they are: Leafy Host, LeafyHost, and Aetheri. If you have anymore, please feel free to post them as a comment.

Well my Gmail account is finally back up. Actually, it was back up as of yesterday morning around 4:30am Eastern. In this post I’m going to write up my experience in hopes of convincing you that Google is not infallible and that it is important to have backups and other means of communication.

Tuesday 11/07/2006 : Gmail First Goes Down.

I woke to find that I no longer had access to my Gmail account. I wasn’t too worried as servers always have issues and it usually doesn’t take long to fix. I was also reassured that it was a server problem when I found out that other people I know who have Gmail were also experiencing issues. I emailed the Google Team just in case.

Later on in the day my friends’ Gmail account came back online while mine was still down. What was really confusing is the fact that all my other Google services were working fine.

Wednesday 11/08/2006 : Gmail Still Down

I spent another full day without access to my Gmail account. After exchanging a few emails with Google Support I still didn’t have any resolution although they did tell me that their engineers were working hard on the problem.

Thursday 11/09/2006 : Gmail Comes Back Up

I woke up at 6:30am Eastern to find that my account access had been restored. Unfortunately I’ll never know if I lost any email.

I emailed the support team to find out what the issue was. The only answer I received was that it wasn’t caused by anything I had done. I was hoping for a little bit more than that simple brush off. Maybe they will email me back about it.

The Important Realization

After this whole debacle I came to an important realization - I have been relying on Google way too much. All of my email, over 1GB worth, was in their hands. Only in their hands. If something major happened all of that email would be lost. All the personal messages from my girlfriend and my ex-girlfriends. All the emails from my friends and family. Bill confirmations, software registrations. Everything would be gone, two years of my digital history lost.

This is a problem and not just for me. It is a problem for almost everyone on the Internet. How many people create backups of the data that they leave in the safe keeping of these corporations? We use services for our email, our bookmarks, our spreadsheets, our documents, our financial statements. How much important data do you let someone else keep safe? How would you feel if it all suddenly disappeared?

As our lives turn more digitized this issue is going to keep arising and we need to find a way to protect ourselves. In the end I think it comes down to making backups. Unfortunately this too has problems. On site or off site? CD/DVD media or tape? What format should I store the data in? A proprietary MS format or something open source? Think of how many 8-track players you’ve seen in your lifetime and you’ll realize how important format can be.

Right now I don’t have the answers, I just have unanswered questions. The only thing I know for sure is that I will be making backups and I want my paper statements.