| The Ultimate Business Machine Technology, business And, not least, about by: Bernard Teo
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Fri 29 Jan 2010 MailServe Snow 4.1.3 ReleasedCategory : Technology I've released MailServe Snow 4.1.3.
It includes a few new features. I've added the ability to create and delete mail users from within MailServe, and decide if the user should be hidden from the Login Window and whether he has the full complement of the standard OS X home folder or a minimal home folder to store only the IMAP folders. The administrator can also decide for this user if his spam mail will be deleted right away or continue to collected in the spam folder. Dovecot has been updated to the latest version 1.2.10. Fetchmail was updated by Apple to 6.3.11 via the latest software updates, and this version has a much less chatty log and so the Fetchmail log has been merged with the Postfix and Dovecot log in the MailServe Log Panel. Finally, there used to be a 16K limit to the size of the Aliases field (and all other similar fields). This limit has been removed and they can now contain as much information as the mail admin wants. This is a release that includes a substantial amount of code changes, plus a lot of tweaks that the user don't see underneath - unless I left some bugs and, of course, hell may then break loose. But I've tested as much as I can and I've been using it on my live server for a week now. Hope that I've done enough. This is really the time to put in the new features - when Snow Leopard has already settled in for a while. It would have been unwise to attempt all these when Snow Leopard just came out. So it's a bit of an inversion (in terms of business practice) from what the users would have expected. But this is dictated by the realities of living at the cutting edge of technology. I think this works. (And I'm now going to work on a major new feature addition to DNS Enabler Snow, though there's a new toy - the iPad simulator - that's calling out its siren song.) Wed 27 Jan 2010 Dovecot 1.2.10Category : Technology Dovecot 1.2.10 is out, so I've updated the latest test version of MailServe Snow 4.1.3 to include it. I might also be able to include a feature that'll allow the user to set up his own custom procmail recipes, in addition to the one that's set up for the SpamBayes junk-mail filtering to work. This is going to be a pretty significant update. Mon 25 Jan 2010 Dovecot 1.2.9Category : Technology I forgot to mention that the latest (testing-stage) MailServe Snow 4.1.3 also includes the latest Dovecot 1.2.9 release. But you'll need to save your MailServe config and then do a de-install of MailServe so that MailServe can then replace it with the new version of Dovecot when you start up all the services again. I'm starting on a new version of DNS Enabler for Snow Leopard that will hopefully make it able to support dynamic DNS updates from client machines that are on dynamic IP addresses. Sat 23 Jan 2010 MailServe Snow 4.1.3Category : Technology There is now a new 4.1.3 version of MailServe Snow (as yet unreleased). I've added the ability to create new OS X users from within MailServe. The administrator has the option to create standard OS X users (with the full complement of folders inside their home folder) or ones with only a minimal home folder (to contain only the IMAP folders) and these latter type of users are hidden in the OS X login window.
It needs more testing before I'll release it. I'm using it now on my live server. There's one more new feature - the ability to indicate that spam for a specific user should be sent straight to the black hole, via /dev/null, with just one click. I've used this to make sure that my son Brendan never ever gets to see the spam/junk/filth that was heading his way (or at least the ones that were filtered off by SpamBayes - a few still get through unfortunately). Because the users thus created who have a minimal home folder do not appear in the login users list, they will also not show up in Systems Preferences' Accounts pane. So, how do we delete them when necessary? I've given the mail administrator the ability to delete users but, to be safe, MailServe will not delete admin-level users. Current MailServe Snow users who would like to try it can just contact me and I'll send the copy over. Mon 18 Jan 2010 Designing Software CinematicallyCategory : Commentary Actually there's one book I'd like to recommend that software developers read (okay, only if you also love movies) and that's Robert McKee's "Story: Substance, Structure, Style and The Principles of Screenwriting".
Long ago in the '80s, Brenda Laurel made the analogy that designing computer systems is a lot like figuring out the manifold activities that go towards putting together a play. That was in her book, "Computers as Theatre" which, though rather dated by now, is still a classic. And one can argue that with the Internet, YouTube and all, its time has come. So, if you're of such a persuasion, you can find much of relevance in Robert McKee's exhortation to tell good stories always. For in telling good stories, you pare away at the details, so that what you have left is all that you need to keep the viewer on the message. Where computer-systems design and story-telling diverges is when after you've set up a sense of expectation (via the layout of the "scene"), in computer-systems you must go on to fulfill the expectations, but in a play, the playwright often does just the opposite, building suspense and creating the drama that keeps the audience transfixed. But the point is, the principal creative activity in both endeavours is the setting up of the scene (because in computer-systems, if you create in the user the right expectations, he will already know what to do, and you save yourself the bother of having to write a thick user guide). And the principles are quite similar in both cases, which shouldn't be surprising if you're a software designer who also loves watching movies. Just one more thing. Reading the book, you'll enjoy movies a lot more because Robert McKee deconstructs famous scenes from e.g., Casablanca and also one from Chinatown, which struck me because, watch this. In the scene the detective slaps the woman, saying, "You're lying. Tell me who she is!". "She's my daughter." Slap. "She's my sister." Slap. "She's my daughter." Slap. "She's my daughter. And my sister!" Slaps. Then the horror, as the truth dawns on the detective (and also on us, the audience). Now watch how Steve Jobs uses this technique, in the launch of the iPhone. "We're launching three products today. An iPod. A phone. And an Internet communicator. An iPod, a phone. Are you getting it?" And the crowd goes wild. The Apple Licensing MythCategory : Technology Glad to see that Jean-Louis is still a fan. What's with the Apple Licensing Myth? Let's hear it from one who should know. P.S.: Jean-Louis Gassée lost out to Steve Jobs when Apple chose NeXT instead of his Be to build what became Mac OS X. Yet he's generous in his assessment of what Steve Jobs had done to turn around Apple. Unlike most business failures, Apple's problems in the John Sculley / Mike Spindler eras weren't in the strategy. The "build the whole widget" idea really does work. The problem was in the execution and also, in some small part, due to the fact that Apple was way ahead of its time. Sun 17 Jan 2010 WebMon Snow 4.0.4Category : Technology I've just released WebMon for Snow Leopard 4.0.4 with two new features. WebMon now allows Server Aliases to be changed, rather than be set to the default *.domain, so that server admins can easily set up sites with sub-domains.
Also WebMon now allows Custom Apache Directives to be set for each hosted domain (called Domain-Specific Directives), on top of the ones that are set for the server as a whole (called the Server-Specific Directives). And I've re-arranged the GUI so that, as the user's eye moves down the window, his mind concentrates first on the domain-specific settings before moving on to the increasingly server-specific. (Or at least that's what I hope will happen.) P.S.: I'm now working on some enhancements to MailServe Snow. I hope to be able to release them by next weekend or the one after. Then I'll work on one new feature for DNS Enabler Snow. PostgreSQL InstallerCategory : Technology This is Hai Hwee's PostgreSQL installer. It's almost done and will include a Preference Pane.
There's a Postgres installer for OS X at the Postgres site but it doesn't work very well. It changes some memory settings on the Mac, requires a reboot (always a sign that things are not quite right), and the Mac will refuse to go to sleep on its own after that. So we need our own installer. So now, knowing how the OS X installer and preference pane work, we can easily make installers for custom builds of MySQL and PostgreSQL. Between Maven and these installers, there's just one missing piece - something in Maven that will allow us to create database users and their access rights quickly and in a consistent way across the two databases. Once we have that done, it will be very easy to set up new database-driven web sites with just a few quick clicks. We should be able to get there soon. Read more ... |
Mac@Work
Services running on this server (an iMac 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 GB RAM, 320 GB hard disk, Ethernet, Airport Extreme, Mac OS X 10.6.2 Snow Leopard 10B504) :
(mostly) set up with the help of MailServe, WebMon, and DNS Enabler, all for Snow Leopard. |
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