Category Archives: Uncategorized

How to advertise your software

I’m always very much against “how to make money”-ads. I never click on them and I strongly advice you not to click on them, too. Nonetheless, I made a “how-to-make-money”-presentation for shareware developers. It is a lenghty treatise of almost 2 hours –sorry about that.

The first hour of this movie is a long and boring discussion of basic stuff that you really need to have heard at least once before you start advertising your software. The second hour shows a few things about the Facebook advertising network and gives a demo of the Project Wonderful system.



Streaming live video by Ustream

Yes, I know that not everything is clear and maybe there are a few flaws. I know this and there is no need to contact me about it. Yet I do believe this presentation contains lots of useful stuff for those who are about to start marketing activities for their own small companies. Enjoy.

LiveCode.tv Event #31 Wrap-Up

Last Saturday, 9 July, we had another nice on-line gathering of LiveCode fans. This time we had 2 great presentations by Claudi and Jim.

Claudi Cornaz showed his “stackAlly”, which analyses your code and stacks, manages stack versions and archives code. One amazing feature is a tree view of events, showing all messages triggered by a single event in your code.

Screen_shot_2011-07-09_at_20

You can watch Claudi’s video here:
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/15893197

Jim Ault showed a simple UDP messaging example. He introduced us to the UDP protocol and gave a demonstration using a modified version of a stack by Alex Tweedly.

You can find Jim’s presentation at
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/15894157

The European HyperCard User Group (eHUG, http://www.ehug.info) raffled off an e-book courtesy of TidBITS. The e-book was won by Matthias. You can find more info on the TC series at http://www.takecontrolbooks.com.

We are still looking for more people to prepare presentations. If you would like to participate in the event, now or later, please head over to http://qery.us/u0 for ideas and contact Mark or Björnke. At http://qery.us/du you can find a web form that makes it really easy to contact us.
I hope to see you all at the event next time. We will be making announcements on this mailing list and at http://livecode.tv where you can (soon) find a copy of this text.

Who owns the copyright of Monkey’s self-portrait?

If an unlimited number of monkeys use an unlimited number of typewriters for an unlimited long time, then at some point they must produce the complete works of Shakespeare. Another version of this note may be that if you wait long enough, a group of monkeys will appear to be the copyright holder of some photos. Or will they?

Pastedgraphic-1

That’s what’s happened according to this article on SlashDot. After the Daily Mail published the pictures, TechDirt started a discussion about the copyright of the pictures, using the pictures on their own website —all of them, apparently in original size, thereby probably exceeding the fair use limit. Since the monkeys are said to be the copyright holders, I assume I can safely post this picture here, but to be sure, I’ll post just one small picture and stay within the limits of fair use.

On the other hand, monkeys are not supposed to have legal capacity and can’t own anything. Then again, if you make a product during time paid by your boss and if you don’t have a contract explicitly stating that you own your own work, chances are that your boss is the copyright holder. These monkeys have no contract, but they certainly have a boss. Moreover, the owner of a dog or horse usually takes full responsibility for all deeds of that animal, be it biting a hare to death or winning prizes. Taking this in consideration, one has to conclude that the owner of the monkey, the Indonesian government, is the copyright holder.

Whoever may be the copyright holder, the Indonesian government or the monkey, it is certainly not Caters News Agency LTD, which in this case has nothing to do with the photographs, except that their name is on one of the pictures. They issued a take-down notice to TechDirt, who started a discussion about this copyright subject, but they should only have asked for their name to be removed!

The Indonesian government probably doesn’t care about copyright in this particular case. The Anglo-Saxon judges will probably make a decision, which defies all logic in the eyes of continental Europeans. My guess is that TechDirt will lose a case in court for the wrong reasons.

LiveCode.tv Event #30 Wrap-Up

Last Saturday, 2 July, we had another nice on-line gathering of LiveCode fans. This time we had 2 cool presentations by Judy and Chipp. Additionally, we set a record as the event was attended by over 30 people! Yay!

Judy started the event with a beginners session. She discussed the creation and use of tab buttons and menu buttons. If you have just started using LiveCode, then this video is a must-see. (Unfortunately, I don’t have the download links for Judy’s stacks yet; I might add them to the blog later).

You can watch Judy’s video here:
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/15757319

Screen_shot_2011-07-02_at_22

Chipp showed his new altButton droptool and InterfaceDesigner and talked about the MagicCarpet AutoUpdate Architecture. All attendants were allowed to download a complimentary copy of InterfaceDesigner. At http://qery.us/uh is also a free download of altButton available. Thanks Chipp!

You can find Chipp’s presentation at
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/15758078

The European HyperCard User Group (eHUG, http://www.ehug.info) raffled off an e-book courtesy of TidBITS. The e-book was won by Steve. You can find more info on the TC series at http://www.takecontrolbooks.com.

We are still looking for someone to present this Saturday (9 July)!!! If you would like to participate in the event, now or later, please head over to http://qery.us/u0 for ideas and contact Mark or Björnke. At http://qery.us/du you can find a web form that makes it really easy to contact us.
I hope to see you all at the event next time. We will be making announcements on this mailing list and at http://livecode.tv where you can also find a copy of this text.

LiveCode.tv Event #29 Wrap-Up

Last Saturday, 25 June, we had another nice on-line gathering of LiveCode fans. This time we had 2 interesting presentations by Ken Ray.
Ken’s first presentation dealt with the new DropTools Palette, how it works, what it does, and how you can develop your own DropTool stacks.

The second presentation walked us through setting up and using the MetaCard IDE, which is a spartan and less intrusive alternative to the LiveCode IDE.

Due to a technical hiccup, Ken’s presentations were cut into pieces. You can watch all pieces here http://qery.us/tz . We are looking into the possibility of hosting a concatenated version of the presentation elsewhere.

eHUG was allowed to raffle of a license of Disk Drill, courtesy of CleverFiles. The Raffle was won by Robert.

For those who did’t win, you can still get a 20% discount by using the coupon code MUGDXDD-CF on the CleverFiles website http://www.cleverfiles.com .

We still need new presenters! If you would like to participate in the event, please head over to http://qery.us/u0 for ideas and leave a comment and/or contact Mark or Björnke. An easy way to contact us is through this web form http://qery.us/du

I hope to see you all at the event next time. We will be making announcements on this mailing list and at http://livecode.tv where you can also find a copy of this text.

LiveCode.tv Event #29

While celebrating the release of LiveCode 4.6.2, we invite you for another edition of the LiveCode.tv event. This weekend’s event is scheduled for 25th June 2011 at 19:00h GMT (Sat. 22:00 in Moscow, Sat. 20:00 in Paris, Sat. 14:00 in New York, Sat. 11:00 in Los Angeles, Sun. 04:00 in Sydney, Sun. 03:00 in Tokyo, Sun. 2:00 in Beijing; check the correct time in your own time zone).

This time we will have two presentations by one person: Ken Ray. His first presentation will take a look at the new DropTools Palette, how it works, what it does, and how you can develop your own DropTool stacks.

The second presentation will walk through setting up and using the MetaCard IDE, which is a spartan and less intrusive alternative to the LiveCode IDE.

For the second and last time, the European HyperCard User Group (eHUG) is allowed to raffle off a license of DiskDrill, courtesy of Cleverfiles. Disk Drill is data recovery software, a must-have for every Mac user. Find the eHUG website at http://www.ehug.info and visit http://www.cleverfiles.com to learn more about DiskDrill. A DiskDrill license is worth US$ 89. For those who don’t win the license, you can still get a 20% discount by using the coupon code MUGDXDD-CF on the CleverFiles website.

During the event, you will also be able to get a 25% discount on a license for Installer Maker Plugin for LiveCode. You can find more info about the Installer Maker Plugin at http://qery.us/ce and go to http://livetalk.us/im for the discounted license.

Make sure to use ChatRev during the happening, otherwise you won’t know where to watch the streams, which will be announced in ChatRev. Download ChatRev here: http://bjoernke.com?target=chatrev or enter in the message box:
<pre>go stack URL “http://bjoernke.com/chatrev/chatrev1.3b3.rev” </pre>

We are looking for new presenters! If you would like to participate in the event, please head over to http://blog.livecode.tv/participate/ for ideas and leave a comment and/or contact Mark or Björnke. An easy way to contact us is through this web form http://qery.us/du

See also the following page for the same information:
http://livecode.tv

Removing the Akamai Client Plist Errors from Console Window

The Problem

Adobe seems to have managed to seriously mess up my Apple computer (MacBook running Mac OS X Snow Leopard). Last month, I installed a trial version of InDesign, because I had to do a quick test to see if software developed by my company is compatible with InDesign. It turned out to be perfectly compatible, after which I uninstalled InDesign. Since that time, my MacBook slowed down terribly. Everything related to network activity, the use of sockets and even Airport slowed down to an unacceptable low “speed”.

At first I couldn’t find any cause for the problems, but when I looked in the console, I quickly found the culprit:

Screen_shot_2011-06-20_at_23

Wrong Solution

Every 10 seconds, a plist file caused OSX to attempt to launch a deamon, which didn’t exist. Searching for the source of this problem, I found this site, which suggests that Adobe is the source of all problems. I followed the instructions on that site (including wasting 3 hours with a faulty downloader application from Adobe and three times obligatorily updating Adobe Air while I had the latest version already) to no avail.

Right Solution

So, I decided to search for the files related to the problem and typed

$locate akamai

in the terminal. The locate command found two files:

com.akamai.mac.plist
com.akamai.client.plist

One of them was in a deamons folder, the other in a preferences folder. I simply moved both files to the trash and restarted my Mac. This removed the recurring error message from the console window and improved my Mac’s network performance. Hurray!

How to burn an OSX Lion install disk

It looks like eggfreckles was the first to note how to create an OSX Lion installer disk:

• Purchase and download Lion from the Mac App Store on any Lion compatible Mac running Snow Leopard.
• Right click on “Mac OS X Lion” installer and choose the option to “Show Package Contents.”
• Inside the Contents folder that appears you will find a SharedSupport folder and inside the SharedSupport folder you will find the “InstallESD.dmg.” This is the Lion boot disc image we have all been waiting for.
• Copy “InstallESD.dmg” to another folder like the Desktop.
• Launch Disk Utility and click the burn button.
• Select the copied “InstallESD.dmg” as the image to burn, insert a standard sized 4.7 GB DVD, and wait for your new Lion Boot Disc to come out toasty hot.

This appears to be inspired by blogchampion.