The Curse of the Mes
With my MobileMe email still down I can’t help but be amused by those who are comparing MobileMe to WinMe. Windows Millennium Edition was the biggest software mistake ever. Microsoft should have never released it. (Some think Vista has claimed the title but I’ve always liked Vista so I’ll have to disagree).
Now a new Me has joined The Me Club. MobileMe, the badly named, horribly performing package from Apple.
MobileMe Mail Gripes
Disclaimer: This is a pointless post. I am just ranting.
So when Apple released the new iPhone 3g they also released a new service called MobileMe. The service would take the place of their .Mac service and would essentially provide all the same features in shiny new packaging.
Reading about MobileMe I was excited. It finally gives me the holy grail: an easy way to keep mail, calendar, and contacts on my computer, my mobile device (1st gen iPhone), and access it all from the web. I already had a .Mac account so I was looking forward to the new service rolling out.
MobileMe had some pretty rough spots as it was rolled out but that’s to be expected with any new service. A few days in and it looked like they had things under control. Until around 11:00 PM CST on Thursday, July 17. At that time email ground to a halt for me and thousands of others.
Apple’s support page says 1% of users are affected (a lot of users in the discussion site think the number is probably much higher but I’ll give Apple the benefit of the doubt.). That may not sound like a lot until you consider that .Mac/MobileMe has around 2 million subscribers (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/17/technology/personaltech/17pogue.html?scp=1&sq=mobileme&st=cse) which means some 20,000 people have been without email.
For.Four.Days. Browse the discussion site and you will find a lot of upset people. Stories of people who use their .Mac mail for business contacts and have lost a lot of work as a result. One guy that was waiting for papers he was to print and fax back to sell his house. A mom waiting for important email from her daughter.
I had just switched to using the .Mac account as my primary email so I haven’t been too badly affected but I had already used the account to send some important messages and have had the joy of having to go back and re-email the people, asking them to please email me again at a reliable (gmail hosted) email.
The thing that makes all of this so aggravating is Apple has released no information. The MobileMe support page tells me what I already know – 1% of users are without email. I talked with someone on chat support and they have no info either, they just say to watch the support page. I can understand technical trouble. I cannot understand a company that will not tell 20,000 customers why they cannot access their email.
Here’s a suspicion. Probably not true, but as I say, I’m ranting. I’ll be cynical for a moment. Apple has an investor meeting planned for this afternoon. It is possible they don’t want to release information about the problem until the meeting is over rather than let investors get wind of how serious the problem might be. They had so many bumps with the MobileMe rollout more bad news would only hurt them.
On a slightly amusing note, MobileMe chat support is being overwhelmed. Apple’s response has been to temporarily disable chat support so new people cannot enter the queue. Instead of being able to chat here is what they see: “Due to the overwhelming interest in MobileMe, all chat support agents are currently busy. Please try again later.” Overwhelming interest? Talk about putting a positive spin on things. More like, due to overwhelming outrage…
Come on Apple, give us some information! I know I will forgive you guys for this huge blunder, MobileMe appeals to me too much. But I know lots of other people will not be so forgiving.
Announcing WordPress ESV Plugin 3.5.0
Posted by Chris in ESV Plugin on July 15th, 2008
A busy day for plugins! With the release of Tippy 3.0.3 I am also releasing WordPress ESV Plugin 3.5.0. The main change with this version is to take advantage of the new ability for users to interact with tooltips, allowing you to include a listen link within your tooltips:
To make use of this new feature you must also install the new Tippy.
Get the WordPress ESV Plugin from its page, Tippy from its page.
Announcing Tippy 3.0.3
Posted by Chris in Tippy Plugin on July 15th, 2008
I am releasing a major update to Tippy today. In many ways this new plugin is a downgrade but I think the changes will be good.
With version 2.0.0 of Tippy I introduced several new features, including the ability to have multiple tooltips, movable tooltips, and resizable tooltips. As far as I know no one ever used those features and it only complicated the code, causing me to pay attention to things that I wasn’t even using.
With version 3.0.0 I have removed the extra features and am keeping the tooltip pretty basic but very usable.
The biggest new feature is that the tooltip now will fade in and out rather than disappearing immediately. This adds a bit of flexibility to what you can do since users are now able to interact with the tooltip contents without you having to make the tooltips static: See this extra data
You also now have the ability to specify whether or not to display the header with the tooltip: header on header off
If anyone wanted the features available in the 2.x series I can send you the source.
Feel free to contact me with any questions, columcille@gmail.com
Download the changes from the Tippy page.
Announcing WordPress ESV Plugin 3.4.1
Posted by Chris in ESV Plugin on July 15th, 2008
Be sure and grab the just-released WordPress ESV Plugin 3.4.1. This release sees a couple of bug fixes and a little more cleaned up code. Also I can confirm the plugin works with the new WordPress 2.6.
Grab the plugin from the WordPress ESV page or if you were already running 3.3.0 you should be able to upgrade directly from your WordPress plugin page.
Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where using the plugin in Static mode would cause a problem on lines that contained both a Scripture reference and some other link.
- With version 3.3.0 the plugin name and directory changed slightly but I neglected to update the link to the Scripture CSS file. Somehow I never noticed the passages were not being formatted properly. CSS file is now properly linked.
WordPress ESV Plugin 3.3.0
Posted by Chris in ESV Plugin on July 5th, 2008
Announcing WordPress ESV Plugin version 3.3.0. This is my first update in a while and not much has changed. A few tweaks were made to the options page and a minor tweak for XHTML validation.
One word about installing this release. Keep reading after the instructions for more details about this release.
Instructions
All of the files for this plugin are now contained within the wp-content/plugins/esv/ directory. If you upgrade to 3.3.0 from a previous version you will need to remove wp-content/plugins/esv.php.
Changes
One big change is the downloads will now be hosted using the WordPress Plugin Database. The ESV Plugin now has its own page there: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/esv-plugin/. The main advantage this offers is automatic updates if you are using WordPress 2.5 (I think it also works with 2.3). Just visit the Plugins section of your dashboard and it will notify you if any of your plugins can be upgraded.
(Tippy users: I have also put Tippy on the WordPress database: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tippy/)
For the options, the biggest change is the addition of the Flash and MP3 types for the Audio format. If you ever use this plugin to include Block or Inline text and you have it display a Listen link, I highly recommend you try out the Flash format. It is quite nifty! For a demo, click the Listen link below.
12 Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. 13 But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. 14 If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. 15 But let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or an evildoer or as a meddler. 16 Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name. 17 For it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God? 18 And
“If the righteous is scarcely saved,
what will become of the ungodly and the sinner?”
19 Therefore let those who suffer according to God’s will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good. (ESV)
Logos Reftagger and Blogger
Blogger users, the Logos folks have posted instructions on how to use their Reftagger Scripture popup with Blogger sites.
WordPress ESV Plugin, Tippy Plugin and WordPress 2.5
Posted by Chris in ESV Plugin, Tippy Plugin on May 19th, 2008
I had previously mentioned on the ESV Plugin page that the plugins only partly worked with WordPress 2.5. Since then I have tried it out some more and have not had any trouble with the plugin itself.
There is the possibility of quirky behavior if you use the visual editor, the esvbible tag, and you have the esv plugin process your posts when you save them. Even then the problem only shows up when you edit posts you had previously saved. The visual editor likes to reformat links so it might interfere with links generated for inline or block passages. This problem is not new with 2.5, it has always been present.
History on the Web
As I was closing my DreamHost account I noticed that I had been with DreamHost for almost exactly three years. I signed up with them on May 31, 2005. This led me on a nostalgic road of my history on the web. Here it is in reverse order. I’ve left off the dates because I’m a little fuzzy on them.
- MediaLayer So far they are doing great!
- DreamHost I had a pretty good experience with them. Support was good, services ran fine. But over the last year or so they have made a number of sloppy mistakes with a varying level of severity. They have also oversold themselves quite a bit so web response times have been somewhat sluggish.
- Believer’s Networks (they later changed their name to Eversible) I used them for web and shell hosting, but at that time web hosting was a little more limited than I wanted.
- Cedant A terrible experience throughout. Seeing as how that was 4 or 5 years ago they may well have improved since then.
- Yerot.com. Torey (yerot is his name backwards) was a friend at MSU who had a hosted Linux box. He gave accounts to various people so I put my website on there.
- Cyberearth. Cyberearth was a machine in my dad’s office at MSU. It was used for work but he let me put a personal website on there as well.
- Ra. Ra is (was? Looks lightly used these days) the primary unix machine at MSU. It was the hub for student web pages and for student email. Everyone had an account and it was actively used by many students. I ran my personal page from here for a little while. I got my first Ra account while still in High School and I think Ra was the first place for me to set up a website.
- SHS server. Starkville High School had a unix machine donated to them by MSU. A small handful of students ran websites on there. I don’t remember if I did much with this web space, I just remember having it. Around this time Ra would have been my main web home.
I have been on the internet since my freshman year of High School in 1992. I remember using gopher to look up information. At Starkville High the internet connection was through several dumb terminals hooked up to a machine hosted at MSU, later moved to the high school. My first computer job was with the ERC at MSU my junior year of HS. Prior to that I got my first Ra account and around then would have set up my first website. I remember discovering the World Wide Web while working at the ERC. The browser of the day was the snazzy Mosaic. From then I switched to Netscape and pretty much stuck with it during the infamous Netscape/Internet Explorer browser war. I switched to Firefox while it was still pre-1.0 and remained a faithful Firefox user until recently when I bought my first Mac. I now use Safari.
My websites were always silly things that served as blogs in the days before blogs. There was no blogging software back then, but I would post articles on my website in a way similar to blogging. The designs were usually horrid things. I only remember a few of them but I can feel my eyes start to melt as I remember the website with six frames, lots of colors, animated flames, etc. Hopefully I have improved some over the years.
I started officially blogging around five years ago. My first ever blog was one I wrote myself, piecing it together using PHP. It came along nicely but when I learned about WordPress I decided to abandon my blog software and use something already developed. I think WordPress was pre-1.0 at that point, but I am not sure. I have been using WordPress ever since.
With the release of WordPress 2.5 my loyalty has been challenged. Since I host some WordPress plugins I get frustrated every time the WordPress developers make changes to the database or the APIs within WordPress. And they do that a lot. 2.5 hasn’t affected the plugin too badly, however. Some things don’t work and I still need to fix them, but I was surprised that it still worked at all. The problem with 2.5 is the developers let a color blind rat design the look and layout of the admin tools. Some things have improved – the overall arrangement of what menu is where is better with 2.5 but once you get within various menus things go downhill. The main problem is with the tools to write new posts and pages. A lot of users are thoroughly baffled by the changes. Developers have yet to explain themselves and about all I’ve heard is that the developers don’t care that the users are unhappy.
So I decided to try something new. Since resurrecting Seek the Holy I have been using Movable Type. Exploring the Mystery is still WordPress and will continue to be WordPress but for now at least my new blog site is Movable Type. There is a lot to love about MT, but it is not perfect. The main thing I miss is the way WordPress does design templates. It is much easier to design a site for WordPress than it is for Movable Type. I also miss my plugins, of course, though I may see about writing versions of them for Movable Type. But I might not, particularly if I switch back to WordPress.
I am currently wrestling with the decision of staying with Movable Type or switching back to WordPress. Only time will tell.
Move complete
It looks like we are in place on MediaLayer without any problems present… I hope… (cue ominous thunder)