Author Archives: Christopher Finke

Emurse, GMail, Life, Netscape, Netscape.com

Why not?

Sixteen days ago, I read a blurb about a new resume hosting site called emurse.com. Being the early adopter that I am (except when adopting a blog, apparently), I signed up to make sure that I could get my preferred username; there are a lot of C. Finkes out there vying for the obvious six-character login.

So I input my information, and promptly bookmarked the statistics page to observe my imminent rise to the top (which, thanks to a digg post, actually happened). Later that evening, I mentioned to my wife my brand-spankin-new resume website. She asked, “Why would you do that? You’re not looking for a new job.” My response was (as it often is), “Why not?”

Fast-forward 5 minutes (an unnecessary fast-forward, perhaps), and my GMail account is boasting that beautiful “(1)” in the title bar that lets me know that I’m not alone in this dark dark world. It turns out that while my wife was questioning my use of online time, Alex Rudloff (emurse.com creator and Netscape developer) had seen my resume and thought that maybe I might be interested in applying for an open software development position at Netscape. And maybe I was. I mean, I was.

So one “Why not?” and sixteen days has brought me to a new job, for which I’m very excited. I’ll be part of a team working on the new Netscape.com, and eventually, Netscape browser-related stuff. Working for and by myself was nice, but then again, human contact is nice too.

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Here's What You Should Think

It’s Just “wired magazine” Now

Effective with this sentence, I, Chris Finke, will no longer capitalize the “W” and “M” in wired magazine.

At the same time, Wired News becomes wired news.

Why? The simple answer is because there is no earthly reason to capitalize any of these words. Actually, there never was.

True believers are fond of capitalizing words, whether they be marketers or political junkies or, in this case, techies. If It’s Capitalized, It Must Be Important. In German, where all nouns are capitalized, it makes sense. It makes no sense in English. So until it becomes Die Wired Nachrichten, I’ll just follow customary English-language usage.

Still, the decision wasn’t made lightly. Style changes are rarely capricious, since change plays havoc with my sacred cow, consistency.

But in the case of wired magazine, wired, and wired news, a change in my writing style was necessary to put into perspective what wired magazine is: another medium for delivering and receiving information. That it transformed human communication is beyond dispute. But no more so than moveable type did in its day. Or the radio. Or television.

This should not be interpreted as some kind of symbolic demotion. Think of it more as a stylistic reality check.

But now, by lowercasing wired, wired magazine, and wired news, I, Chris Finke, am simply giving the medium its proper due.

Chris Finke is an Internet user, a Web surfer, and an e-mail sender.

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Here's What You Should Think, Politics

Common Sense and Logic for President in 2020

In case I forget, here’s my platform for when I run for President in 2020:

  • The metric system: we should use it. All measurements must be have metric equivalents listed by the end of my first term. The U.S. will be metric-only by the end of my second term.
  • College textbook prices: they’re ridiculous. A cap of $.10 per page will be placed on all textbooks; none of this $ 120 for a 250 page book on hamster psychology.
  • Vehicle mileage. Under my administration, it will be illegal to sell a consumer vehicle (ie. not applicable to semis, U-Hauls, etc.) that gets less than 30 mpg. Electricity is here; let’s use it.
  • Broadband Internet for everybody: all libraries and schools will have government-provided broadband Internet access and current computer hardware.
  • Television stations will be required to have their average volume set at a standard level. The volume buttons on my remote don’t work so well, and I’m tired of leaning in to hear one channel and having my eardrums blown by the next channel.
  • Bike lanes will be mandatory on all roads on public University campuses. I’m sick of almost getting mowed down on Washington Avenue just because I can’t bike on the sidewalk.
  • In order to receive welfare, government-subsidized student loans, or any other sort of federal cash, the recipient must have voted in the last federal election. If they were not old enough to vote, they must at least be currently registered.

If we can focus on and achieve these goals, the U.S. will be a better place. Admit it; you agree with me.

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anyInventory, Here's What You Should Think

Results – They Keep Going, and Going, and Going…

A couple days ago when I started keeping track of how many results Google returned for “anyinventory”, the total stood at 99. Today, 4 days later, we’re up to 420. This is mostly due to the announcement of 1.7.1 being posted to the front page of SourceForge, but there’s a couple sites linking independently. No interesting links today though, sorry.

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anyInventory, Here's What You Should Think

anyInventory 1.7.1 – Better than Ever

I released version 1.7.1 of anyInventory, a Web-based inventory system, today. To date, this is the release with the largest percentage of user-requested features added, so it should definitely be more usable than when I came up with my own features and stuck them in (although built-in password protection certainly is useful’)

Also, as a side note, as of today, Google returns 99 results when you search for anyInventory. I plan on tracking these results as the weeks go by and posting any interesting links I find. Here’s one to get us going:

anyInventory is linked under Software > Office > Warehouse at BlibbleBobble.co.uk, the site of one Oliver White. Thanks Oliver!

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anyInventory, Here's What You Should Think

anyInventory – It Just Keeps Getting Better

anyInventory 1.7 was released today; this release is by far the best one yet. It has a brand new layout, built-in password protection of the administration directory, thumbnailing of remote images, and multiple-category alerts. I’m finally satisfied with how it looks and how stable it is; now the focus will be on digging out those last few bugs and adding some new features.

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anyInventory, Here's What You Should Think

anyInventory News

Some various news about anyInventory, an open source inventory application I’ve been working on:

Version 1.5 was released today, with the addition of some of the label features promised in the documentation. Bug fixes are in there too, as always.

A new developer has joined anyInventory: Drew Hearle. Drew’s post on Slashdot was the inspiration for anyInventory, and now he’ll be contributing to it as well. Funny how life works, isn’t it?

Features planned for 1.6 include an improved search page, better remote file support, and timed alerts. So don’t touch that dial!

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anyInventory, Here's What You Should Think

anyInventory – Rising through the ranks

anyInventory, an open source inventory system that I’m working on is progressing nicely. It was ranked in the 99.21 percentile for activity in SourceForge the other day, and version 1.4 was released to rave reviews (well, my own rave reviews, but that still counts). Some issues with invalid zip files were resolved by offering a tar of the source files as well.

It is now the third result when you search SourceForge for ‘inventory,’ right behind ‘Inventory’ and ‘inventory’, which is up from being on the third page of results just a week ago. If you’d like to help develop or test anyinventory, or you are having problems installing, contact chris@efinke.com.

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anyInventory, Here's What You Should Think

anyInventory: Clever Tagline Here

I’ve been working on a Web-based inventory application called anyInventory for the last week or so that was inspired by this Slashdot thread. It has gotten to the point where I could release version 0.1 (or whatever). If you’d like to help test it out or would be willing to read through the help and documentation files and comment on them, e-mail me at chris@efinke.com. I’ll be releasing it officially in a few days.

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Here's What You Should Think

Toby 0.5: Halfway to 1.0!

This release features one major improvement and one major featurea addition: the improvement is that support has been added for multipart messages that contain multipart sections within a section (commonly generated by Outlook for forwarded messages); the feature is the addition of thread arcs and thread navigation for e-mail conversations. You can read more about thread arcs at http://www.research.ibm.com/remail/threadarcs.html

Additionally, the WYSIWYG editor htmlArea that is used for composing HTML messages has been upgraded and included with this version of Toby.

Watch the homepage for more announcements: http://toby.sourceforge.net/

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Here's What You Should Think, Toby

You’re Free, You’re Free!

Toby is no longer supported. I recommend using RoundCube Webmail instead.

I’ve released another Toby version, 0.4.1 this time. What changes have I made? Well, I’ll tell you what changes I’ve made: improved HTML message support, improved multipart message support, interface improvements (including section headers and collapsable sections) and a whole lotta extra love. Doesn’t that make you just want to download it?

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Here's What You Should Think, Toby

Toby 0.4 in the Works

Toby is no longer supported. I recommend using RoundCube Webmail instead.

Toby Web Mail 0.4 is in the works. Changes include language customization (currently only available for English and Spanish — if you want to help out by translating a language file, e-mail chris@efinke.com), better install and upgrade scripts, and a completely re-written message handling class. Attachment handling success is nearing 100%, and messages are now parsed into a standards-compliant format before they are written to the database, rather than every time they are displayed. Yay for optimization!

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