Here’s my latest LiveCode.tv presentation.

Feel free to leave any comments about the presentation. If you have questions, I’ll try to answer.

Which app or service shall we choose now that MS has taken over Skype?

Skype is the best instant messaging and video conferencing programme up to now, but I have decided I don’t want to use it anymore. The interface of the latest version is more than bloated. Sound quality is between fair and good, particularly if your microphone uses ambient sound compensation. Video quality is reasonable, but this seems to depend largely on your specific hardware configuration, while some other software is able to improve quality by post-processing (iChat, FaceTime). Skype is only compatible with itself.

Let’s have a look at a number of possible Skype alternatives. While some software may replace Skype completely, we might want to use a combination of different application to achieve the same result. Discusses are instant messaging systems, on-line voice chat video conferencing software, file transfer services, andVoIP services.

The products discussed in this article should at least:
– be available for Windows, Mac and Linux
– allow you to use the main service without any limits, at no charge, while it may charge for additional services
– do at least one of the following: instant messaging, voice chat, video chat, screensharing, file transfer, VoIP
– be a current product, not be in beta stage, and be expected to stay around a little while longer.

Of course, nothing guarantees that the latter condition is indeed satisfied and in the reviews below I won’t pay attention to this issue. There are a few products that are not available for all three operating systems, but are still discussed because they are very well-known.

Nimbuzz
http://www.nimbuzz.com

Great programme for VoIP to landlines and mobiles. Good sound quality, particularly if your microphone uses ambient sound compensation. Lacks video chat. I like the interface more than Skype’s and much more than ooVoo’s and YuuGuu’s. If Nimbuzz had P2P audio and video chat, it would be my favourite over Skype. Compatible with Yahoo, GoogleTalk, AIM, ICQ, MSN, and Facebook. Support for ICQ is incomplete, as contacts can be added but not deleted. Also, there is no way to block authorisation requests.
At the time of writing, VoIP from Nimbuzz to landlines is really cheap in most European countries while VoIP from Nimbuzz to mobile can be considered relatively inexpensive.

ooVoo
http://www.oovoo.com

Somewhat bloated interface. Not attractive to use. Seems to have all Skype features, but the free version lacks desktop sharing and allows no more than 3 participants in a video conference. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get it to work with my web cam. I wrote to support to complain about the issue but haven’t received a reply yet. File transfer seems to be limited to 5MB, which is ridiculous in this time of fast internet. This programme seems to use an intermediate server rather than real P2P for some features, which puzzles me. It seems that ooVoo is compatible with itself only, although there are options to import contacts from several other services. Importing contacts basically means that your contacts get an e-mail with a request to download and install ooVoo.
OoVoo has potential, but not without working video chat feature. The software tends to get slower and lock up over time. I also noticed that ooVoo is rather CPU intensive and it crashed when I tried to open a video chat without working camera.

iChat
http://www.apple.com/ichat

Almost perfect sound quality. Good video chat quality, but unfortunately locking up iChat once in a while. It also happens once in a while that I can’t connect to specific Macs. The reason might be a firewall or router, but Skype, Nimbuzz and ooVoo don’t seem to have this problem. Why can’t Apple solve this? File transfer is quick and easy. It still puzzles me why chat history doesn’t appear in the current chat window. Compatible with ICQ, AIM, Jabber, Facebook, GoogleTalk. Keep in mind that iChat is available for Mac only, but since it is compatible with quite a few chat services, this doesn’t need to be a problem.

FaceTime
http://www.apple.com/mac/facetime/

FaceTime uses the same technology as iChat for video conferencing is thus pretty good. It has a totally bloated interface and is complicated to use. I tried it once and have it never running. As far as I know, FaceTime is compatible with itself only. Video quality is good. I’m always pleasantly surprised by the video quality in Apple’s software. Another advantage is the relatively low CPU usage (9% on my machine, during video conference). Facetime seems to allow for some Mac-to-phone service, but this doesn’t work for me and FaceTime doesn’t tell me how to correct the problem (I would expect an error message similar to: go to www.somewebsite.bla to download and install essential software or ask your friend to follow the instructions at www.itunes.com/bla). I’m slightly disappointed that Apple doesn’t provide FaceTime for iPhone for free. FaceTime is only mentioned for the sake of completeness. It is available for Mac only and doesn’t really belong in this list.

Adium
http://adium.im/

Very nice and widely used open-source programme for instant messaging. Like iChat, Adium runs on Mac OS X only. No video chat and no VoIP. Adium crashes once in a while. Compatible with all major instant messaging services and Gadu-Gadu, ICQ and Twitter. Generally stable, but once in a while an Adium release appears to be unlucky. Frankly, I believe that Adium has too many options to be considered an easy-to-use chat app.

ICQ

Instant messaging only. Very insecure network. Remnant of the 20th century. Compatible with AIM.

MSN

Just mentioning it because it is widely used. MSN is included on Windows PC’s by default, which automatically makes it the most widely distributed software compared to all alternatives. I have never used it and can’t comment on it. Feel free to write a comment below.

YuuGuu

It is really difficult to figure out what YuuGuu’s free features are. It seems that free features are rather limited. Screensharing is free if both sides of YuuGuu installed. YuuGuu-to-web screensharing is available as part of a paid subscription. Voice chat is available as phone conferencing, for which you need to buy a special number. In my country, the Netherlands, this happens to be an extremely expensive number. Organising a phone conference yourself, using your own phone carrier, is likely to be cheaper.
Interface is modest but behaves a bit unusual. Example: click on the arrow next to the start button to open a menu. Clicking the arrow again should close the menu but it doesn’t. Just as with iChat, I did have some connection problems, which seem specific to someone’s hardware configuration. I think that YuuGuu was created with Java, which doesn’t necessarily make it more attractive for many people. Compatible with Yahoo, GoogleTalk, AIM, ICQ and MSN.

DropBox
http://www.dropbox.com

Why mention Dropbox? This isn’t a chat app nor video conferencing software! True, but it replaces one important feature of Skype with great perfection: file transfers. Put a file into your public folder to share with everyone or put it into a specific shared folder to share the file with an individual or group. Your partner in conversation can change the file and put it back into the same shared folder to show you the changes. Be careful though: if you remove the file from the folder, your friends will lose it if they didn’t make a copy in a different location on their hard disk.

VNC
use your favourite search engine

There are many VNC programmes, which could offer an alternative to Skype’s screen sharing feature. The main problem with this is that you often need to open a port in your router to allow for a direct P2P connection. Mac OS X has a screen sharing server built in, Microsoft has a Remote Desktop Connection programme and for Linux many different VNC versions are available.

JaJah
http://www.jajah.com

I saw JaJah listed on other blogs and decided to have a look. JaJah is a system that connects people through the phone line. It doesn’t do anything Skype does, except that it lets you talk with someone else; no VoIP, no video conference, no file transfers. Also, it is horribly expensive. It is cheaper to call abroad from my own mobile phone (currently, I pay approximately 25 cents per minute to call to Germany from mobile to mobile, while JaJah costs more than 30 cents).

GoogleTalk/GoogleVoice
http://www.google.com/voice/

“Google Voice is not available in your country”. US only, apparently. Cool. That saves me the time writing about it.

QuteCom
http://trac.qutecom.org

Theoretically, this project provides voice and video chat. Unfortunately, to install this programme on a Linux or Mac machine takes a lot of time and some technical skills. This isn’t the right app that you might want to ask your friends and business partners to install quickly right before an important on-line conference.

SightSpeed
http://www.sightspeed.com/

Logitech’s SightSpeed is not free. LogiTech offers a free alternative, called Logitech Vid.

Logitech Vid
http://www.logitech.com/vid

From experience, I have to say that Logitech isn’t the most reliable partner. When I bought a new computer quite some time ago, this rendered my Logitech scanner useless and all Logitech said was “sorry”. Logitech Vid doesn’t work with my web cam (MacAlly). Contacts are to be added by e-mail, who would then receive a request to install the software. Although it might work for some, it is useless to me. When I did a test call, nothing indicated whether the call was successful or unsuccessful. After some time, an advertisement tried to persuade me to buy Logitech webcams —and failed.

IMO.im
https://imo.im/

IMO is a web based service that connects a large number of different chat services (MSN, AIM, ICQ, MySpace, Facebook, Yahoo, Google Talk, Skype, Jabber). This service doesn’t seem to have a voice or video chat platform of its own. I haven’t tried this myself yet but a friend who uses it daily told me that video chat doesn’t work and the iPad version crashes a lot. Still, I think it is an interesting service and the availability of the video chat might depend on the types of services that are connected as well as your hardware configuration. Further testing definitely recommended.
I tried the iPhone version, which works nicely. I was able to log in on MSN. Unfortunately, the first time when I logged in on Skype, hundreds of otherwise blocked spammers appeared in my contact list.
The IMO.im interface isn’t the most intuitive and the iPhone/iPad app is buggy (often need to tap twice where you’d expect one tap to be sufficient) and crashes a lot. Still, this is the only app I keep trying and which I haven’t uninstalled yet.

UStream/LiveStream
http://www.ustream.com
http://www.livestream.com

There are several on-line services that let you stream your webcam, voice and screen to one or multiple recipients. Some of them allow for private conversations. This might be a good alternative for Skype, but won’t let you transfer files. A cool side-effect is that you’ll be able to record the entire conversation.

Conclusion

No service or software is currently able to replace Skype completely. OoVoo would be a good attempt, if it worked as advertised. For Mac users, iChat is probably a nice alternative, as long as your partner in conversation has a Mac, too. Nimbuzz seems to be a great VoIP alternative, but only for calls from computer to phone. It is possible to chat, but I don’t know anyone with a Nimbuzz account to chat with. IMO.im would probably be the best instant message client if it weren’t that buggy.

To replace Skype with a cross-platform solution, you’d probably want to make a combination of several applications and services. A good combination would be Nimbuzz, VNC, DropBox. Imo.im would be very useful if it weren’t that buggy. Some might want to choose a different path and choose to use on-line streaming services.

If you know of a really good software product or on-line service to replace Skype, please let me know. Until thats day, I’ll keep Skype installed, just in case everything else fails. You can find Skype at http://www.skype.com .

While the RunRevLive conference is on it’s second day, we are organising the Live LiveCode Code Event for this Saturday already. Unfortunately, we don’t have any presenters yet! It just so happens that all geeks are currently in San José! The good news is that this is an excellent opportunity to do an all-beginners session at the LLCCE.

Have you just started using LiveCode or would you call yourself an intermediate LiveCode programmer? Then we invite you to do a short presentation. Tell us what you (plan to) use LiveCode for, let us know which problems you are struggling with or share your newly found solutions with us.

We are planing to do multiple short sessions this Saturday, each 15 to 20 minutes long. If you have been too shy or if you have always been thinking that you’re not advanced enough, then this is your chance!

More info about the LLCCE is available at http://livecode.tv. Contact me by e-mail or use the web form at http://qery.us/du to get in touch with me.

Here is a collection of useful links for starting and intermediary advanced LiveCode programmers.

http://h.webring.com/hub?ring=runtimerevoluti1
http://revolution.byu.edu/indexgeneric.php
http://www.runrev.info
http://www.altuit.com/webs/altuit2/RunRev/Tutorials.htm
http://www.revjournal.com/tutorials/
http://www.sosmartsoftware.com/?r=revolution_didacticiels&l=en
http://support.runrev.com/scriptingconferences/
http://derbrill.de/developers.php?lang=en
http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
http://tactilemedia.com/site_files/software/tutorial_thumbs.html
http://www.hyperactivesw.com/Resources.html
http://www.sonsothunder.com/devres/revolution/revolution.htm
http://www.sanke.org/MetaMedia/
http://revclever.com/

Please, let me know if you know about any links that belong in this collection.

Here’s a quick screenshot of the latest additions to Economy-x-Talk’s Compression Tool:

This new version of this cool compression utility, giving access to 7 different compression formats, will be available soon. You can still download the old free version from the software section of our website at http://economy-x-talk.com.

Happy Easter!

Time Machine only works with external hard disks and specific network disks. It won’t work with the internal hard disk of another (spare) Mac, which is a shame. Why not literally use your old PowerMac as a backup machine?

That’s what I did, using this and this hint on Mac OS X Hints. I got Time Machine to work. It backs up my MacBook on my PowerMac. Unfortunately, I’m not entirely sure that it works correctly, since it didn’t create a complete backup of my MacBook and it doesn’t show past dates in the sidesbar for whatever reason.

Still, I think I should write down what I did. Try it yourself and let me know if it works (or not).

Connect another Mac (the host) to yours, preferably over a wired network. Make sure that the hard disk or partition that you want to use for backing up is mounted on the Mac (the client) that you want to back up.

Open Disk Utility and click on the New Image icon to Create a sparse bundle image on your client Mac. It doesn’t need to be big, as Time Machine will expand it as necessary.

Make sure that the name of the disk image file is equal to the name of your client Mac. You need to enter this name in the field labelled Save As. The name of the disk volume is Time Machine Backups. You enter this into the field labelled Name. Just choose any reasonable size for your new disk image. The format has to be Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Don’t use encryption and set the partition to Single Partition – Apple Partition Map. The image format must be Sparse bundle disk image.

Create a new text file with your favourite text editor. Paste the following code into your text file

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC “-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN” “http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd”>
<plist version=”1.0″>
<dict>
<key>com.apple.backupd.HostUUID</key>
<string>YOURUUIDHERE</string>
</dict>
</plist>

You need to replace YOURUUIDHERE with the UUID of your client computer. To find your UUID, choose About this Mac from the Apple menu (in the top-left of your screen). A small window titled About this Mac appears. Click on the button labelled More Info… to open System Profiler. On the left of the window, you will see a main category Hardware, which need to be selected. In the text area on the right, you will see a line labelled “Hardware UUID”. You need to replace YOURUUIDHERE with the number (including the dashes) that appears on this line.

When saving the text file, call it “com.apple.TimeMachine.MachineID.plist” (without the quotes). You can save it on the desktop temporarily. We’ll refer to this file as the plist file.

Now we need to copy the plist file into the sparse bundle. To make this possible, right-click (or control-click) in the sparse bundle and choose Show Package Contents from the pop-up menu. A new window with the name of your sparse bundle appears. Move the plist file from your desktop into the sparse bundle. If the plist file doesn’t disappear from your desktop now, you can safely delete it.

Copy the sparse bundle to the hard disk on your host Mac and delete the original.

Now you need to tell Time Machine to allow for using shared network volumes. These network volumes on other Macs (using the AFP or SMB protocol) are unsupported by default. To enable access to shared network volumes, you need to enter the following line in the terminal:

defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1

and press return. Now you can turn on Time Machine in the Time Machine preferences panel. Open System Preferences and go to the Time Machine preferences panel. Click on the Off-On button to turn on Time Machine.

On the right side of the prefeences panel, you will see two buttons appear: Select Disk and Options. Make sure that the shared volume of your host Mac is still mounted on your client Mac. Click on theh Select Disk button and select the shared volume. If you are asked to enter your password, enter the user name and password for the host Mac, not the client Mac. Make sure to store the password in your Keychain. If your host Mac has a small hard disk, you can use the Options button to exclude your system folder and applications folder.

Time Machine should start backing up your client Mac any moment now.

On my own machines, Time Machine seems to work, but I still don’t have a complete back-up of my client Mac. Any recommendations are welcome and I’ll post any additional information that reaches me here on this blog.

If you don’t like bragging, just ignore this post and move on 🙂

I believe many are waiting for LiveCode features that just work out of the box. An important example of this is unicode, which is still a big problem in many respects. For example, while unicode is pretty much the standard for exchange of data among programmes and between programmes and the operating system nowadays, LiveCode still doesn’t let you retrieve unicode text directly from the command line, external plugins and database drivers. Fortunately, LiveCode’s TCP sockets allow for exchange of binary data, thereby creating an opportunity to retrieve unicode data.

The past few days, I created a simple command line interface to send commands to a php script on a server. Together with PHP, this interface makes MySQL just work –something I can’t resist showing off.

The last 5 lines show how I can save Japanese characters to the database and get them back as Japanese characters. Nothing special you might say, as a C++ programmer, but for LiveCode it is quite something, made possible by using PHP as a layer between LiveCode and MySQL.

Enige tijd geleden werd ik min of meer gedwongen om Skype naar Skype 5 te updaten, omdat de oude Skype steeds slechter ging werken. Of dat nu wel verstandig was…?

Skype neemt nu een derde van mijn beeldscherm in beslag. Dat is ronduit belachelijk. Ik gebruik Skype ook om mee te bellen, maar helaas gaat dat met Skype 5 in de helft van de gevallen mis. Bijv. als een nummer in gesprek is, dan krijg ik geen in-gesprektoon, maar een “internal error”, zodat ik geen idee heb van wat er aan de hand is tot ik het met een gewone telefoon probeer.

De gebruikersnaam van een gebruiker is alleen te zien in de groene bel-button in het profiel. Dat vind ik wel een hele rare plek om zulke essentiële informatie te tonen. Dan zien de meeste buttons er ook nog eens heel anders uit dan de standaard Mac OS X-buttons, wat nogal onwennig aanvoelt.

De enige manier om een chat te sluiten schijnt command-W te zijn (ofwel appeltje-W) of Close Conversation uit het File-menu, terwijl het in de vorige Skype mogelijk was om gewoon een button aan te klikken om een chat te sluiten. Het duurde me weken om hier achter te komen.

Een andere volstrekt belachelijke verandering van Skype is de weergave van on-line contacten in een apart venster, de “Contact Monitor”, terwijl het onmogelijk is diezelfde lijst op te nemen in de contact-lijst aan de linker kant van het venster. Het is werkelijk van de gekke dat Skype het meest essentiële onderdeel van het programma, de on-line contactlijst, niet in het hoofdvenster van het programma laat zien.

Nog een probleem is het ontbreken van een knop om de contactlijst aan de linker kant van het venster te doen verdwijnen. Op dit moment kun je alleen maar op zoek naar een onzichtbare scheidslijn aan de rechter kan van de linker schuifbalk en als je die gevonden hebt kun je de breedte van de contactlijst aanpassen en eventueel verbergen. Heel onhandig, omdat veel mensen die scheidslijn nooit vinden.

Een nieuwe bug is er de oorzaak van dat de instelling “Identify SMS messages by…” verkeerd wordt weergegeven. Volgens mijn Skype-account op de website worden mijn SMS-jes, die ik via Skype verstuur, met mijn eigen telefoonnummer als afzender op de mobieltjes van de ontvanger getoond, maar in de Skype preferences staat dat mijn Skype naam wordt weergegeven. Deze instelling wordt dus fout weergegeven. (Ik heb dit gecontroleerd en de ontvanger ziet wel degelijk mijn nummer, omdat ik dit op de website zo heb ingesteld).

Omdat zoeken naar mensen in Skype-me modus de laatste tijd niet goed meer werkte heeft Skype er maar voor gekozen deze feature helemaal weg te laten. Ooit, lang geleden, was het juist deze feature die mij over de streep trok om Skype als alternatief voor ICQ te gaan gebruiken. Voor zover ik weet, bestaat er nu geen enkel programma meer met een dergelijke feature (misschien nog het Poolse Gadu-gadu; hoe zit dat eigenlijk met MSN, dat ik niet gebruik?).

Voordelen zijn er bijna niet, wel enkele verbeteringen in de “lekker belangrijk”-categorie. De foto’s worden op de Mac-versie nu net als op de Windows-versie groot weergegeven, indien mogelijk. Een bug die het volgen van de mood messages steeds weer uitschakelde is nu gerepareerd.

Leuk is voor sommigen ook dat Growl-notifcations nu beter zijn in te stellen en aan je eigen voorkeuren aan te passen. Bovendien kun je nu alle geluidseffecten in één keer uitschakelen. Je kunt er ook voor kiezen Skype op alle speakers en koptelefoons etc. te laten horen als de “telefoon” overgaat. Dat laatste is wel handig.

Een ander nieuwigheidje is de mogelijkheid om door je contacten te bladeren in een soort cover-flow-modus. Helaas is dit in een professionele werkomgeving een volstrekt nutteloze functie, omdat deze manier van zoeken veel te langzaam is.

Je kunt nu al je contacten in het rechter gedeelte van het Skype venster bekijken door op Skype in de Contacts-sectie in de contactlijst (links) te klikken. Helaas neemt deze lijst (rechts) zoveel ruimte in beslag, dat het onmogelijk is om in één oogopslag, of eventueel twee oogopslagen, een goed overzicht van al je contacten te krijgen. Het is onmogelijk om een compactere weergave van deze lijst te verkrijgen.

Misschien had ik de kleine probleempjes uit Skype 2.8 maar voor lief moeten nemen. Wat mij betreft is Skype er echt op achteruit gegaan en als je geen directe noodzaak ziet om te updaten, dan raad ik het je ten zeerste af. Heb je al geupdate en mocht je willen downgraden, dan kun je hier de versie van jouw keuze vinden.

I found this on the MacNN website and it still works (Mac OS X 10.4.11):

1) Create a text file with TextEdit on your dekstop and call this file “ftpchroot” (without the quotes)
2) Put the names of the accounts you want to be restricted into the file, 1 per line
3) Press Shift-Command-K and type “/etc” to go to the “/etc” directory
4) Copy the file “ftpchroot” to the “/etc” directory (you may need to enter your password)
5) Turn off FTP sharing in the Sharing control panel of the System Preferences window and turn it back on

Any user whose account is listed in this file will be limited to his/her dirrectory when they log on. They can only move “down” in sub-directories (if they exist), but they can’t move “up” any higher than their root dir. This works on OS X client versions only, NOT on OS X Server.