I work for an advertising agency where we regularly transfer files up to 2 gigs in size. Our problem was that people wanted something faster than Fedex'ing CDs and we had too many people getting mad when our mail servers crashed because some one emailed a 2 gig file.
Our solution was to create a web based file sharing system that supplements your existing email service. This system is available for internal employees as well as external employees. Its simple. If you need to send a file, you login in to the service (LDAP enabled so one password for all systems) and fill out a form with the recipients email address and then attach the file(s) you want to send. The recipient receives an email from the user and the location to pickup the file. This is all done via HTTP but we recently added support for a client side java application that will download the file via FTP transparently. Its all *extremely* user friendly.
An interesting aside is that to correctly implement 'view attachment' in a browser window and 'download attachment' to your harddrive functionality, we have to send a bogus MIME Type for the file so that IE will actually download the attachment instead of opening it in the window. (Word doc, PDF, etc.)
Another option that we explored was to use WebDAV. The issue we ran into there was that WebDAV is not supported natively under Mac OS 9 or Win 9x.
Also, was this written with.NET? Hell, no. J2EE all the way.
And its cheaper than buying a tablet PC to lug around to meetings. Its especially when most people already have atleast one pc at their desk. This method doesn't require another device besides the pen.
I don't like palm pilots for their limited input functionality and tablets are too big and bulky. This by passes those problems.
I think this takes digitizing your notes in a different direction. Before, you are always writing to the screen of your device. That's not very convenient since what you write disappears after you pause.
With this, you are writing on what everyone in the (literate) world is familiar with: paper. It doesn't take you out of your element, its not a strange surface to write on, it can be a very large surface thats relatively cheap compared to a tablet pc, and its unobtrusive.
Dude, I'm still pissed off that Playstation 2 destroyed my copy of Tekken Tag Team. You see I was too excited to burn a copy before I started to play it.
Next thing you know, the playstation falls over and scratches the hell out of the disk. On top of that, lying flat it will even scratch a disk anyway.
Either software makers/distributors/etc need to provide me with a new copy when my purchased cds are toast, or they need to shut the hell up about copy protection.
Now, I never make backups. I make copies of the original, and only use the copies. The only time the original ever sees the inside of a cd player is when I make the first copy. After that, it goes on the shelf and gathers dust.
That sounds like fair use to me.
When they (management) asked me what tool I used
on
What's in Your Toolbox?
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· Score: 0, Offtopic
Thanks for the info, I tried to setup an example, however, was unable to get the accessKey attribute to work. The browser (Mozilla and IE) keeps intercepting the Alt and Ctrl key.
I never thought about the JavaScript event method. Good idea! This is good if the developer wishes to provide a default shortcut system. But it loses its power if a user wants to customize the shortcuts.
I was thinking more along the lines of a feature built into Mozilla. Say for instance, you right click on a link or form element and from the context menu select, Keyboard Shortcut'. However, this way lacks the ability to have a default configuration for a particular site. (Unless, of course, you have access to Novell's ZENWorks and just blow down a new configuration image.)
This may be a bit off topic mod me down if you wish, but I am just talking about another alternative input method.
What if we had the ability to assign keyboard shortcuts to links on a web page?
Let me explain my reasoning and then what I am talking about. Our company is in the process of converting its HP3000 database to Oracle and its terminal applications to web applications. One of the drawbacks to switching from a terminal application such as Reflections is we lose all of the custom shortcuts that people use to navigate through the system.
As an example, a web application has a row of navigation across the top that stays the same throughout. We could say that any link that matches this description from this URI: domain.com/ or domain.com/app/module maps to Ctrl-F3 or Ctrl-Alt-F.
Let's take it a step further and say that we can add shortcuts to not just links, but form elements as well. We can already tab to form elements, but this would make the process that much faster.
Not only would this be an absolute hit with people that hate taking they hands off the keyboard, but I believe that whatever browser would implement this would make great inroads into corporations that are converting their terminal applications to web based applications.
The desktop isn't important in a server enviroment. Or at least as important as you make it out to be. Saying the fate of unix lies in desktop doesn't make sense when unix has never been geared for mainstream desktop use.
What is important is interoperability with desktops, and more importantly desktop applications.
Companies that have a large user base of Mac OS
You have training, technical support issues, software compatibility issues, loss of productivity and upgrade costs just to name a few.
News flash: I never said it was true for everyone. What I did comment on was the eas of administration and the fact that more windows users are switching to OS X then mac users.
What is different in one companies' HR deparment from another's? Our HR department is completely run off Macs.
Our Account Services teams run 60/40 on Macs/Windows. These people are constantly dealing with computers outside of our network.
Account Services is not prepress only. They are more of a management group. Human Resources is also not exclusive to Advertising.
I work for an advertising agency, one of the largest privately owned in the industry I might add.
Fully 1/3rd of our workstations are Macs. At our location here in Detroit (Southfield) we have around 400 G3s and above.
I'd say our IT department has taken Apple seriously. Its also interesting to note that there are only two members of our IT staff are devoted to servicing the aforementioned Mac userbase.
On a side note, only around 20 users that have used Mac OS earlier then OS X have made the 'switch' to OS X. Any new users dove right in and requested it.
The other way we differ is that we didn't set out to make an Outlook clone, as a matter of fact the UI designer has never even seen Outlook.
That's great and all. But how can you be a decent UI designer if you have never seen some of the best examples of User Interfaces. Despite not wanting to make a clone of Outlook, there are wonderful UI elements MS created for Outlook and MS Office in general.
You can't just read a book to develop excellent User Interfaces. You have to experience what is out there and build on that with your own and other's insight.
My company has started using Tomcat for production applications over the past 4 months. Overall we have been very pleased with its performance. The two most important reasons we went with Tomcat are speed, its 'reference implementation' backing, and development team. Price was not a problem for us in this case. We reviewed: JBoss, Resin, Oracle's app server (apache with tomcat 3.x), and even Orion.
Oracle's offering wasn't up to the current level everyone else was at (its Tomcat 3.x for crying out loud) and who really want's to install 20 pacthes every month to keep it up to date.
The only problems in my eyes with Tomcat, are its handling of updates to any war files. It seems to just miss new changes 75% of the time.
The other problem is its lack of JDBC Pooling for DBs such as MySQL or Postgres. Let's just say, there is no connection pooling. We ended up with using only one connection until we had time to roll our own.
In this case, it comes down to more than just copyright. Copyright law does nothing to protect the author's liability when his software crashes and costs the user untold amounts of money.
I believe part of the idea behind this click-through is to make sure that the authors can be protected in a court of law. Not to restrict the end user.
If its a shell script, you could easily bypass or edit the agreement then. I wonder if it would hold up in court that, in the agreement I signed, sun had to pay for my lunch every day for the rest of the time I use their technology?
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Our solution was to create a web based file sharing system that supplements your existing email service. This system is available for internal employees as well as external employees. Its simple. If you need to send a file, you login in to the service (LDAP enabled so one password for all systems) and fill out a form with the recipients email address and then attach the file(s) you want to send. The recipient receives an email from the user and the location to pickup the file. This is all done via HTTP but we recently added support for a client side java application that will download the file via FTP transparently. Its all *extremely* user friendly.
An interesting aside is that to correctly implement 'view attachment' in a browser window and 'download attachment' to your harddrive functionality, we have to send a bogus MIME Type for the file so that IE will actually download the attachment instead of opening it in the window. (Word doc, PDF, etc.)
Another option that we explored was to use WebDAV. The issue we ran into there was that WebDAV is not supported natively under Mac OS 9 or Win 9x.
Also, was this written with .NET? Hell, no. J2EE all the way.
Aren't these a suped up version of the chips that will be going in the playstation 3?
I don't like palm pilots for their limited input functionality and tablets are too big and bulky. This by passes those problems.
With this, you are writing on what everyone in the (literate) world is familiar with: paper. It doesn't take you out of your element, its not a strange surface to write on, it can be a very large surface thats relatively cheap compared to a tablet pc, and its unobtrusive.
I think they really hit upon something here.
Not granting them visas is an easy way to push confrontation off for awhile.
Thanks for you enlightened point of view. Maybe you could enlighten us with your evidence and examples.
Next thing you know, the playstation falls over and scratches the hell out of the disk. On top of that, lying flat it will even scratch a disk anyway.
Either software makers/distributors/etc need to provide me with a new copy when my purchased cds are toast, or they need to shut the hell up about copy protection.
Now, I never make backups. I make copies of the original, and only use the copies. The only time the original ever sees the inside of a cd player is when I make the first copy. After that, it goes on the shelf and gathers dust.
That sounds like fair use to me.
As in, 'Pure Fscking Voodoo'
Thanks for the info, I tried to setup an example, however, was unable to get the accessKey attribute to work. The browser (Mozilla and IE) keeps intercepting the Alt and Ctrl key.
I was thinking more along the lines of a feature built into Mozilla. Say for instance, you right click on a link or form element and from the context menu select, Keyboard Shortcut'. However, this way lacks the ability to have a default configuration for a particular site. (Unless, of course, you have access to Novell's ZENWorks and just blow down a new configuration image.)
What if we had the ability to assign keyboard shortcuts to links on a web page?
Let me explain my reasoning and then what I am talking about. Our company is in the process of converting its HP3000 database to Oracle and its terminal applications to web applications. One of the drawbacks to switching from a terminal application such as Reflections is we lose all of the custom shortcuts that people use to navigate through the system.
As an example, a web application has a row of navigation across the top that stays the same throughout. We could say that any link that matches this description from this URI: domain.com/ or domain.com/app/module maps to Ctrl-F3 or Ctrl-Alt-F.
Let's take it a step further and say that we can add shortcuts to not just links, but form elements as well. We can already tab to form elements, but this would make the process that much faster.
Not only would this be an absolute hit with people that hate taking they hands off the keyboard, but I believe that whatever browser would implement this would make great inroads into corporations that are converting their terminal applications to web based applications.
Excuse me? How exactly did GNU fail? Look at what they have created.
I believe he was referring to the fact that GNU failed to produce a widely used Kernel.
They obviously expect this to be a hit.
What is important is interoperability with desktops, and more importantly desktop applications.
Companies that have a large user base of Mac OS You have training, technical support issues, software compatibility issues, loss of productivity and upgrade costs just to name a few.
What is different in one companies' HR deparment from another's? Our HR department is completely run off Macs.
Our Account Services teams run 60/40 on Macs/Windows. These people are constantly dealing with computers outside of our network.
Account Services is not prepress only. They are more of a management group. Human Resources is also not exclusive to Advertising.
You worked for a newspaper? Good job.
Fully 1/3rd of our workstations are Macs. At our location here in Detroit (Southfield) we have around 400 G3s and above.
I'd say our IT department has taken Apple seriously. Its also interesting to note that there are only two members of our IT staff are devoted to servicing the aforementioned Mac userbase.
On a side note, only around 20 users that have used Mac OS earlier then OS X have made the 'switch' to OS X. Any new users dove right in and requested it.
The other way we differ is that we didn't set out to make an Outlook clone, as a matter of fact the UI designer has never even seen Outlook.
That's great and all. But how can you be a decent UI designer if you have never seen some of the best examples of User Interfaces. Despite not wanting to make a clone of Outlook, there are wonderful UI elements MS created for Outlook and MS Office in general.
You can't just read a book to develop excellent User Interfaces. You have to experience what is out there and build on that with your own and other's insight.
No kidding. Compared to their internet access bill, mine is nothing. I am now happy to pay my 40 dollars a month. Thank you BBC!
The only problems in my eyes with Tomcat, are its handling of updates to any war files. It seems to just miss new changes 75% of the time.
The other problem is its lack of JDBC Pooling for DBs such as MySQL or Postgres. Let's just say, there is no connection pooling. We ended up with using only one connection until we had time to roll our own.
I believe part of the idea behind this click-through is to make sure that the authors can be protected in a court of law. Not to restrict the end user.
If its a shell script, you could easily bypass or edit the agreement then. I wonder if it would hold up in court that, in the agreement I signed, sun had to pay for my lunch every day for the rest of the time I use their technology?
But yes, its freaking rediculous.
I could now DoS them straight to hell.