There's no excuse for violence against MacBooks, but the SmackBook virtual desktop changer sure made it tempting.

Now you can get all the benefits and incur none of the bad karma. With a wave of your hand, you can get precisely the same effect one achieves with SmackBook.

The new implementation appears to rely on the ambient light sensor located under the left speaker grille. No software releases have been announced, though it looks like the user in the video runs a command from the Terminal prior to the demonstration. The author's page indicates a software release is imminent.

I'd rather smack than wave, but some people aren't as violent?

The Cult of Mac Blog

“VirtueDesktops” is a virtual desktop manager for Mac OS. It offers features, eye candy and configurable options that no other desktop manager on the mac has added yet, and is under active development. It is based upon DesktopManager, which is a lighter, less feature-packed virtual desktop application.

This is the best desktop manager for OS X. Superior to Desktop Manager. Nicest feature: Command-Tab will switch desktops if you select an application that is not on the current desktop. Ver' nice.

VirtueDesktops

--post-data=string
--post-file=file
Use POST as the method for all HTTP requests and send the specified data in the request body. --post-data sends string as data, whereas --post-file sends the contents of file. Other than that, they work in exactly the same way.

Please be aware that Wget needs to know the size of the POST data in advance. Therefore the argument to --post-file must be a regular file; specifying a FIFO or something like /dev/stdin won't work. It's not quite clear how to work around this limitation inherent in HTTP/1.0. Although HTTP/1.1 introduces chunked transfer that doesn't require knowing the request length in advance, a client can't use chunked unless it knows it's talking to an HTTP/1.1 server. And it can't know that until it receives a response, which in turn requires the request to have been completed – a chicken-and-egg problem.

Note: if Wget is redirected after the POST request is completed, it will not send the POST data to the redirected URL. This is because URLs that process POST often respond with a redirection to a regular page, which does not desire or accept POST. It is not completely clear that this behavior is optimal; if it doesn't work out, it might be changed in the future.

This example shows how to log to a server using POST and then proceed to download the desired pages, presumably only accessible to authorized users:

# Log in to the server. This can be done only once.
wget --save-cookies cookies.txt \
--post-data 'user=foo&password=bar' \
http://server.com/auth.php

# Now grab the page or pages we care about.
wget --load-cookies cookies.txt \
-p http://server.com/interesting/article.php

If the server is using session cookies to track user authentication, the above will not work because --save-cookies will not save them (and neither will browsers) and the cookies.txt file will be empty. In that case use --keep-session-cookies along with --save-cookies to force saving of session cookies.

GNU Wget 1.10 Manual - HTTP POST Options

The Open-Xchange™ Collaboration and Integration Server Environment allows you to create, store and link appointments, contacts, tasks, email, bookmarks, documents, forums and many more elements and share them with other users. This environment can be accessed via any modern web browser and multiple fat clients like KDE Kontact, Apples iCAL, Konqueror, Mozilla Calendar, and many more, based on open standards and interfaces.

If you download the Outlook OXtender, then the Open-Xchange™ Server can also be accessed via MS Outlook and Palm devices. Browse the Wiki and the download section for further information.

OPEN-XCHANGE : The Collaboration and Integration Server Environment

Platypus is a powerful developer tool for creating application wrappers around scripts, i.e. for creating MacOS X applications that execute a bundled script. Scripts can thus be run seamlessly from the graphical window environment, making elegant Mac OS X-native applications from scripts.

Here are some of the features Platypus has to offer:

* Supports shell scripts, Perl, Python, PHP, Ruby, Expect, Tcl, AppleScript
* Supports arbitrary interpreter -- thus support for any script type
* Executing scripts with root privileges via Apple's Security Framework
* Drag and drop files, which are passed to the script as arguments
* Graphical feedback of script execution: progress more...

Platypus 3.3 - MacUpdate : Wrap Perl Scripts as OS X .app Bundles

"This can be used as a standard PC on standard power," MacLellan told ZDNet UK, "or it can be used with power-over-Ethernet, and that really makes it efficient."

A basic Jack PC costs �209 without monitor or keyboard. At a low price and using low power, MacLellan believes the device is "one of the biggest developments in PCs that we have seen" and is one of the "ever-growing range of thin clients, which are rapidly replacing PCs as a more effective desktop computing solution for modern businesses".

The Jack PC runs Windows CE, is designed to connect to "any terminal server-based environment" and has Citrix ICA and Microsoft RDP clients built in.

Kinda neat. For simple home installation using existing jacks, I'd like to see one with power jack(s) as well, but I realize that packaging that would be difficult. These would be nice to put in a new house, in the kitchen, bathroom, by the couch, in the bedrooms, on a covered patio. I spent several months building a house last year, and I wish we'd put this in it. Very nice. With a single PC acting as a server, you could do an awful lot with this, some LCDs and wireless keyboards. You could route the monitor/usb out the back and embed a touchscreen in a wall for alarm and audio control. Lots of applications for a convenient package.

Wall-Socket PC - ZDNet UK News

Finally the killer question.

"I don't know, you guys," Bill said, "Is anyone really looking into all the details of how to do this? Like, all those date and time functions. Excel has so many date and time functions. Is Basic going to have the same functions? Will they all work the same way?"

"Yes," I said, "except for January and February, 1900."

Silence.

The f*** counter and my boss exchanged astonished glances. How did I know that? January and February WHAT?

"OK. Well, good work," said Bill. He took his marked up copy of the spec

...wait! I wanted that...

and left.

"Four," announced the f*** counter, and everyone said, "wow, that's the lowest I can remember. Bill is getting mellow in his old age." He was, you know, 36.

Later I had it explained to me. "Bill doesn't really want to review your spec, he just wants to make sure you've got it under control. His standard M.O. is to ask harder and harder questions until you admit that you don't know, and then he can yell at you for being unprepared. Nobody was really sure what happens if you answer the hardest question he can come up with because it's never happened before."

Joel, as ever, is great.

My First BillG Review : Joel on Software

I usually keep two 20" screens side by side on my desk, so I can code on one and test on the other. I find I can work much faster if I can just make a change in Eclipse, and by the time I turn my head to the other screen, the tests have already run. My new laptop, however, has a 15" screen, which feels a bit cramped when I'm working away from the office. I've been using the fancy Desktop Manager by Richard Wareham, which is a very nice utility to let you keep several virtual desktops, and change between them easily.

Of course, if you're using something like Emacs or Butler, all your keys will be taken already, so you'll need to use some sort of Command-Ctrl-Shift-4 keystroke for the actual desktop switching.

Turns out, the laptop has a built-in motion sensor. Nominally, it's there to protect the internal hard drive. The basic idea is this: If the accelerometer suddenly notices that the gravitational pull of earth is no longer present, the most likely explanation is that the laptop, sensor and all, is currently accelerating at 9.81 m/s� towards said earth. In that case, it will (wisely) try to turn the hard drive off in preparation for impact.

It can, however, also be used in situations not involving lobbing the laptop across the room, fun though that may be.

Medallia Blog: SmackBook Pro Archives

Whereabouts

Whereabouts helps you share address cards on the Internet. Friends and colleagues can automatically keep up-to-date with changes to each other's address, email, and phone numbers.

I finally started using Address Book on my new Macbook Pro. This is great. Along with Plaxo, I am now more efficient because of this tool.

Recurring Dream: Whereabouts | Sharing Mac Address Cards over the Internet

The day has finally come. After spending many long hours, the features are implemented, the code is optimized, the testing is complete: The application is ready to leave your protective care and head out into the real world. This article is the first in a series of three covering deployment of Qt applications on various platforms. This one focuses on Mac OS X.

* Static Linking
* Shared Libraries
* Plugins
* Deploying on Panther and Jaguar
* Conclusion

Mac OS X handles most applications as "bundles". A bundle is a directory structure that groups related files together. Bundles are used for GUI applications, frameworks, and installer packages. These are presented to the user as one file in the Finder. When set up correctly, bundles make for easy deployment. All one needs to do is to archive the application using some preferred method. Users then open the archive and drag the application to wherever they please and are ready to go.

The diagram below shows the directory structure of a bundle. Files are shown in italics; directories are shown in roman.

Deploying Applications on Mac OS X