CoffeeBreak

RapidShare. Completely unusable?

2009-12-25T23:59:27Z

RapidShare is changing it’s free download limits (as in speed, time and size) like others are changing their underwear. Their current setup however, is the worst I’ve experienced so far and makes RapidShare almost completely unusable without a client software.
I had to reload about 20 times and wait around 15 minutes, before I even got a download ticket. I had to wait 90 seconds after I got the ticket for the download to finally start. For each reload I had to click twice, after I got the ticket it took another click to start the download. In total, that sums up to 20 * 2 + 1 = 41 clicks on a website that advertises itself as “1-CLICK Web hosting - Easy Filehosting”.
The download itself took 43 minutes 25 seconds for a total of 114.83 MiB, that’s about 45.14 KiB per second. Compare that to a test download I did from a full-speed server that delivered 657.37 KiB/s for a 30.6 MiB file in 48 seconds. That’s more than 1400% as fast as a download from RapidShare, not counting the waiting time.

The numbers speak for themselves – in my opinion RapidShare is completely unusable at the moment (and even more for less tech-savvy people than for me).

Bon Appetit at the Erlangen canteen

2009-09-29T17:31:53Z

It’s no secret the canteen on the Erlangen university’s southern campus is not the best – but I haven’t seen something like that before.

A little bit disgusting if you ask me – I was lucky, it wasn’t my meal, though…

on work atmosphere

2008-08-26T20:49:00Z

Whether I feel comfortable in office depends on a lot of criteria, some subtle, less important, some of uttermost importance. I'll try to list some factors here, but this list doesn't claim to be anywhere close to complete. Note that this list is compiled from my experience; your mileage might vary. You're welcome to share your opinion using the comment form.

Co-Workers

Colleagues probably have the largest impact on the atmosphere at work (at least when working in an office with a couple of other people around). Whether they are friendly, open and humorous (jokes make work a lot more fun) is one of the two key factors deciding whether I feel comfortable working at that place.
Unfortunately you hardly talk to your co-workers before picking up work, but that's probably why there's a probationary period…
Your Boss

They guy in charge at your company can make your work life a misery. If he doesn't like you (or he's a complete id**t) and you don't have backup from your colleagues work can be a pain.
Hey bosses, if you're reading this, here's to you: how to be a good boss (PDF document, 98KB) at number17.com
Your Client(s)

If you're working in the services sector you're working for someone. That's fine, however there usually is a simple problem with this person (or these persons, depending on whom you're working for this might be a large user base): they've got the money. And as we all know having the money makes you the king.
We all know the saying customer is king, but sometimes you should (at least try to) parent your customers to be less exhaustive towards you.
Oh, hey clients, read this: how to be a good client (PDF document, 66KB) at number17.com
Equipment

This one's not a very big part, but it helps if you can work with a somewhat current system. Oh, and two screens are luxury, too.

Inspired by Lektion in Unusability und “Placebo forte!” on Keep Smoking
number17 comics via pixelgraphix.de

I took it! And so should you

2008-07-29T15:14:57Z

A List Apart has published the 2008 survey for people who make websites. If you work in the web business, you should go ahead and take the survey as well.

Thunderbird IMAP push email

2008-07-12T10:18:49Z

RFC 2177 defines IDLE, an extension to the IMAP protocol allowing mail clients to change into an idle mode while keeping the TCP-connection open. This allows the servers to notify the clients of new mails on arrival (the so-called push e-mail).

Not all e-mail providers support IMAP IDLE, though – you should check whether your mail provider supports it by opening a telnet connection to the IMAP server (standard port for IMAP is 143) and sending 001 capability. If the answer contains „IDLE” your server supports IMAP IDLE.
GMail for example answers
* CAPABILITY IMAP4rev1 UNSELECT IDLE NAMESPACE QUOTA XLIST CHILDREN XYZZY 001 OK Thats all she wrote!

There's one thing to look out for, though – Thunderbird only sends the IDLE command (effectively enabling push e-mail) if you disable the „check for new mail every n^th minute”-option. I could not find any documentation on that feature – however using Help » Mozilla Thunderbird Help causes a 404 File Not Found error for me anyway (using the German version of Thunderbird).

Steve Jobs would say: „Exchange for the rest of us” – using GMail, IMAP and Thunderbird.

Webmail done right

2008-02-22T17:25:39Z

I recently bought a (gs) shared hosting package at mediatemple.net. I’m not going to talk about their system now, but about their webmail client, which is provided by @Mail, their mail server. The @Mail web interface comes in 4 variations: Simple (which is plain HTML), Simple with AJAX (which is how most other webmail interfaces work today), Advanced for IE6+ (please, don’t ask me to comment on this one) and Advanced for Mozilla.
When I logged in using the Advanced for Mozilla interface I noticed something in the address bar: .webmail/parse.php?file=html/english/xul/xullogin.html&XUL=1. XUL? Wait… I’ve heard this before… A quick lookup at Wikipedia confirmed my thoughts: XUL is the XML User Interface Language, the Language the Firefox layout (i.e. XUL defines where the Home button is) is written in. But what does that mean for a webmail client? The answer is easy: It’s a hell lot faster than HTML + JavaScript, actually it’s running at the native speed of your browser, which is pretty amazing. The XUL interface also takes advantages of features your OS can do for you: The menus and lists are rendered by your OS and even sorting is done at native speed - awesome.
However, it’s still getting better: PGP built-in right into your webmail client! Unfortunately it seems you can’t upload your own key or download your private key after you generated a key using the webmail interface, but I’m sure we’ll see some improvements in the next version(s) of this software.

If you have a Firefox Browser at your hands, make sure to try the @Mail-Demo at http://demo.atmail.com/index.php

Jing

2008-02-03T15:36:00Z

Jing is a small application allowing you to create screenshots and screencasts up to 5 minutes - nothing revolutionary here. The new thing is, that Jing is capable of storing these files at either screencast.com, Flickr, a custom FTP server or your local hard drive (or network drive) and inserting a link to the file into your clipboard. This way you can share screenshots with your mates over IM or Email almost instantly.

After installation Jing docks to your screen edges and reveals it’s features on mouseover. Jing makes it super-easy to take screenshots and share them, once you’ve tried it, you’ll like it. Jing also comes with a screenshot/-cast history that allows you to delete old files to save some space. However, there are two downsides:

You’ll need to register with screencast.com on first startup even if you don’t intend to use it
You can’t create multiple FTP accounts (e.g. one for temporary files and another one for files you’d like to post in your blog and store permanently)

Jing is available for Mac and PC at http://www.jingproject.com/

Cool gadgets on my desktop

2007-11-07T15:58:00Z

I often use my computer in the late evening and even when I turn my screen brightness down my eyes hurt after some hours. However, I don’t like to keep the whole room lighted, so I got myself some gadgets: Magic Eggs, a ripoff of the well-known Oggz. Magic Eggs are 9,5cm tall eggs glowing in slowly changing colors. Using LED technology and an integrated rechargeable battery they provide up to 8 hours of colored light. I’m just charging them first time, so I can’t test whether their batteries really last eight hours, but I will test this…
Update: The eggs last even longer than eight hours - I had them running throughout the evening and the night for a couple of times now and they were still not empty more than 10h later when I woke up. Awsome!

Because they are battery-powered, they are portable - I love positioning them across my desk.

I ordered my Eggs from leds.de and it took them quite a while to ship them - seems they ran out of stock.

Oh, and here’s what you’re all waiting for: Images. More to come soon.

Oggz by amitp, released under cc-by-nc.
Update: More images in the full view of this post.

Postponing mails

2007-11-01T19:16:00Z

I often get that kind of emails saying “Hey, can you quickly do this and that for me?”. Usually, I can - but I don’t want to - at least not immediately. So what I do is, I postpone it and happen to forget it once it’s out of the first page of my GMail inbox. But there’s quite an easy way to prevent this from happening using a neat feature of the GMail web interface called labels. Labels are best described as virtual folders, or if you know iTunes (smart) playlists. The mails are not being moved from the inbox, but you can tag them with something.
I created myself two labels, one called ‘finished’ and one called ‘postponed’. Whenever I read a mail and consider the work attached to it to be finished I apply the label ‘finished’ to it, whenever I postpone some work I apply the label ‘postponed’. That way, I know at a glance in my virtual ‘postponed’ folder that there’s work left.
How do you manage your mail? Any suggestions on mail management? Tell me using the comment function.

Why I’m blogging in English

2007-10-14T18:28:00Z

Since my early days in web development, which happened to start at HostingPosts, a free hosting provider, I’ve always been using English when talking about web development related topics. I quickly advanced to a moderator and later an administrator at HostingPosts, for I was trying to give something back to the community by helping other members out, when they had web development-related problems. I practically never talked to my German friends about web development, probably since they were just not interested in that kind of stuff anyway.
When I got my two VPSes at HostEurope I first joined a German discussion board about web topics - HostEurope’s customer board is a great place if you need help, if you have access to it (obviously only if you’re a HostEurope customer) make sure you check it out.

The decision whether to blog in English or German was a tough one, though. It took me almost two months to make the final decision, but I went with English for two main reasons:

I have some English friends, who would probably enjoy reading my blog and they obviously don’t speak German
A lot of people in Germany speak English anyway

Oh, and there’s another reason, too: I’m blogging in English, because I can I know my English is not perfect, so you’re welcome to correct spelling mistakes (shame on me for not paying attention to Firefox’ spell check plug-in!) or weird grammar.