October | 2007 | Status-Q

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MacPorts tips

If you do development on Macs and you don’t use MacPorts, you should seriously consider it, especially if you come from a Unix background. Formerly known as DarwinPorts, it’s the equivalent of the Debian package-management system for Macs, and exceedingly useful when you find you just need to grab a copy of libpng, or try something with PHP 5, or some such.

The documentation will help you get started, but it’s very handy when someone like Garrett Albright writes a helpful tutorial to explain some of the more obscure features. Thanks, Garrett!

qsf

12 Oct 2007

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LucidTouch

A nice demo of a new interaction mode. I can’t quite decide how useful it is yet, but they get points for innovation! (And for a good video)

Thanks to Claes-Fredrik for the link.

qsf

9 Oct 2007

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General

Fon home

Now there’s a surprise. BT has joined forces with FON. I first heard about FON and met the founder at the e-Tel conference couple of years ago. Basically, it’s a system to allow people to share some of their wifi bandwidth with passers-by who also subscribe to the FON system. I liked the idea – I’d written a proposal for something very similar when I was at AT&T – but I didn’t think FON’s model would work because it would violate the usage contracts of most ISPs, who don’t like you sharing your broadband with others.

Of course, if the ISP is in on the action, then that’s a different story! Congrats to Martin Varsavsky for this, and to BT for not behaving like an old-fashioned telco. It will be very interesting to see how popular this proves to be…

More info at BTFON.com…

qsf

9 Oct 2007

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Sunshine after rain

One of the many joys of working in the Ndiyo/Camvine shed is the view from the window, looking westward towards Grantchester. It rained for much of today, but the sun came out in the evening.