Using Wave we would post a requirements document. Then, since it is possible to start a conversation on any snippet of text each and every requirement could become a discussion. When a consensus is reached with the stakeholders the document owner could make the changes. No more random emails or marked up Word documents floating around. The whole document history and discussion are in one place. Nice.

Now, if only I could get a Google Wave invitation...

Essentially:

1. Go to System->Preferences->Preferred Applications
2. For "Mail Reader" choose "Custom" and enter this (we'll create the script later):

   /home/username/bin/open_mailto.sh "%s"

3. The above script will be triggered anytime you click on an email link.  Now, let's create the actual script.  Note: This is a modified script from the above web site.  It is based on some of the comments posted about the artice and then refined a little.  This script will properly handle subject, cc, to, body, and most any proper email tag that you can throw at it.  One other difference is that it can handle parenthesis.

   #!/bin/sh
   uri=`echo "$1"| sed -e 's/subject=/su=/' \
        -e 's/^mailto:\([^&?]\+\)[?&]\?\(.*\)$/\1\&\2/' \
        -e 's/(/%28/g' -e 's/)/%29/g'`
   firefox -remote "openurl(https://mail.google.com/mail?\
   view=cm&tf=0&to=$uri,new-tab)"

4. Finally, change the mode of the script so that it can execute:

   chmod 755 /home/username/bin/open_mailto.sh

Hopefully that will work for you without problems.  In my tests so far it has worked great.

Of course with an introduction like that I do have my personal favorite.  My middleware of choice is ZeroC's Ice.  What I like about Ice is that it was not created by a large committee like CORBA was.  It was a small group and was designed for simplicity and efficiency, which it accomplishes.  If you are thinking of doing a project with a distributed architecture then seriously look at Ice. Once you shed the chains of SOAP and embrace Ice you will wonder why you put yourself through such misery for so long.  Now, if I could just get Amazon to switch from SOAP to Ice for their remote API....  Oh, and before anyone asks, yes, I have done my fair share of SOAP programming and I dread it each time.

I've also used CORBA and it is OK.  I prefer it to SOAP, but find it too clunky.  Programming for CORBA in C++ is a nightmare and is best avoided by sane people.  CORBA in Python is much better and actually tolerable.  I can't speak for other languages.  Ice is just much easier to use and Ice in C++ is not a masochistic exercise.

What I would love to see for Ice is something similar to XMethods.  XMethods is a large directory of publicly accessible web services.  Some of these require payment and some are free.  The large service offering of various data feeds is great and I'd love to see more software take advantage of it.  One could envision a future where there are so many distributed public services that software could be assembled to do anything you want by just picking and choosing different services.

I lack the dedicated server to start this project, but I would accept a donation if someone wants to start me off.   What I would love to see is a XMethods type of site for Ice services.  Of course for a directory to work there needs to be content to list, so please get started.  Go create some Ice service and then put it publicly in the internet.  Please leave a comment here with the endpoint and the .ice definitions of the service and I'll give it a try and maybe even a writeup about it.

Here are just some random ideas for Ice services that I'd like to see:

• Stock information
• Phone book (white and yellow pages)
• Zip code information
• Ham radio callsign database
• Remote interface to CoolText
• POV renderer (submit a pov file and get back a rendered image)
• Text to Morse service -- send a text string and get back a wav or MP3 (I've actually written this in Python. I just need someone to donate a server and I'll put it online)
• FCC database
• US Census data
• Directory of radio stations
• Ice API for Google
• Real estate listings
• Weather forecasts
• Lat/Lon calculations
• Ice to text message gateway
• etc....

Traditional password "syncing" means having an easy to remember password that is used on multiple sites. This is not ideal, but memorizing hard passwords for each site is really not practical for most humans.

A few days ago I found the answer: A piece of software called PasswordMaker. What is really cool is that there is a Firefox plugin, a Windows binary, and a web-based version. What's more, is that your data is not saved anywhere. The passwords are generated based on the host name, your user name, a master password, and several other criteria.

Because passwords are not saved anywhere this makes the online version of PasswordMaker very handy. You just enter the information you want your password generated from and then copy and paste your generated password into the login form for your site.

The Firefox plugin will save portions of this data for you, if you so choose. So, at a minimum you will just need to enter your master password and PasswordMaker will take care of the rest. As long as you remember your master password and the settings you used to generate the specific site password then you can have strong passwords on every site you visit, while only needing to remember one password. By using the online version of PasswordMaker you can still log in to your web sites from any computer, including internet cafes.

• Adblock Plus -- One of the greatest plugins ever invented. This will stop most of the ads on the internet from even being displayed. It also stops a lot of stat harvesting sites and scripts.
• Download Statusbar -- Shows the current status of downloads in the status bar, instead of a separate window.
• FireFTP -- Very nice FTP client that integrates well into Firefox.
• Forecast fox enhanced -- It's nice to always have the latest weather conditions and forecast sitting in the status bar.
• FoxClocks -- Displays the time from anywhere around the world in your status bar. The company I work for has international offices, so I have mine configured to show the local time and the time at the international offices.
• Session Manager -- Many options to save and restore browsing sessions. You can save a session with all your open tabs and then later come back and reopen everything just as it was saved.
• Tab Counter -- Simple plugin to show how many open tabs you have.
• Tab URL Copier -- Copies the URL of all open tabs onto the clipboard. Very useful for saving or sending multiple links.
• Verisign OpenID SeatBelt -- OpenID is an awesome concept. See my previous post about OpenID. This plugin helps you to sign into OpenID enabled sites.
• Wizz RSS News Reader -- Fairly powerful RSS news reader.

Fortunately, SSH has many settings, including some to keep connections open. One of these settings, which is not recommended, is TCP Keep Alive. I am not a network hacker, so all I know is that this is bad. This method can be spoofed.

The preferred method to keep a SSH connection open is to use the ServerAliveInterval option. To use this you would do:

ssh -o TCPKeepAlive=no -o ServerAliveInterval=15
 

This would disable the TCPKeepAlive setting and send an encrypted packet once every 15 seconds. By sending this packet every 15 seconds it will (hopefully) stop the computer from timing out and closing the connection. Of course 15 seconds is probably a bit too often, but that depends on the specifics of your connection. You want this often enough to keep the connection open, but too often and you generate unnecessary traffic.

References

SSH connection stability

Needless to say, I started thinking about online photo storage and backing up all my photos to some online service. I would feel safer to have an off site backup, especially since it's pictures of my kids we're talking about here. The problem is choosing which provider to go with. Online photos seem to be the latest rage and there are new sites popping up all the time. It's crazy!

With all the choices out there I figured I could be picky, so my criteria for choosing an online photo storage service were:

• Free
• Unlimited storage
• Unlimited bandwidth
• Can order prints online
• Able to share photos with friends/relatives
• Able to download full-resolution photos (no photo resizing going on behind my back)
• No account deletion for not buying stuff

A couple months ago I read this horror story about a women who lost all her online photos because she didn't continue to order prints. So, that last point was something very important to me.

Today, I found this blog post comparing several online photo galleries. It is very good and I suggest reading it. In the end I made a choice for which service I will use and my choice is not on the list. I chose Winkflash to store all my photos. They offer all the features on my wish list, plus more.

According to the Winkflash web site:

At winkflash you can store as many photos as you want for an unlimited time, and they will never be deleted, ever. All this for free.

That alone is awesome, but then they throw in unlimited storage, albums, photo sharing, etc.

Hopefully this will work out well and my photos will be safer. Of course I also need to work on a good backup strategy, but that is another topic.