It has been a bit of a trek, a learning experience and a lot of just grinding to get here. I know that everyone has worked extremely hard to get to this release, which OSAF is calling 'Preview'. This essentially means that we now feel comfortable with our solid beta and that you can use it for real! This release marks the new Dashboard which gives you a convenient list based view of all the events in your calendar, a fast way to manage, create and triage these tasks and events all in one contained view. And as usual a whole mass of bug fixes that have been building up over the last releases. But most importantly, we have tried to fix anything and everything that might cause any kind of data corruption. Obviously when using a calendaring solution the last thing you want it to do is lose your data, and make you less organized.

Keep in mind, OSAF's Bugzilla Instance is still filled to the brim with bugs, features and enhancements that we have staked out to compete in our next short cycle set of dot releases. One unfortunately, is "Make Cosmo work again in Safari". In our testing we found so many Safari specific bugs that it really just wasn't feasible to get them all fixed an tested for Preview, sorry Apple people (including me) but you must default to Firefox and (for some reason still my favorite; Camino). However, we have found that most of the bugs you will encounter using Safari are fixed in the Safari Public Beta 3, so you are free to test that out and log bugs if you find them. Our next series of dot releases has 0.7.1, .2, and .3 over the next 3-4 weeks. In this rapid cycle we will be picking small groups of important bugs to fix or implement, test them and get another cooked version out the door for you toying pleasure. After the last release some of us are bracing ourselves, but I feel confident that we make this happen.

The update on the Chandler Desktop Release is that they are still fighting a fluctuating bug count somewhere less than 10 each day. The word is that a few of them are pretty gnarly and continue to uncover others. This next week a handful of people will be going through ~800 case testing spec to validate that recurrence is working as it should. This feature has proven to be extremely challenging for both the desktop and web UI, if you want to help it is both welcome and encouraged. The desktop is planning on having their release around Sept 10th, completing our OSAF ecosystem for Preview.

If you have missed out on me mentioning this multiple times already, we have testing sessions regularly and are always happy to welcome a new user and answer questions on IRC at irc.freenode.net, channels #osaf, #osaf-qa, #cosmo, #chandler, and for windmill stuff naturally #windmill.

We are hosting an instance of Chandler Server (Cosmo) where you can go sign up and use it quickly and for free online at Chandler Server Hub.

If you would prefer to Download the Chandler Server Bundle and run it yourself you can do that as well, Download Chandler Server Here!

Recently I have had multiple queries from my former college peers who are now graduated and ready to embark on their techie career. Since our university is in the state of Washington there is a lot of exposure to Microsoft products, however Open Source was neither ignored nor shunned but it wasn't explicitly promoted. We learned lots of languages, and were allowed to use whatever software we wanted to accomplish the task but the default for a large portion of my peers was C# and .NET developing in the free educational download of Visual Studio .NET {Insert latest release here}. I on the other hand had a Powerbook G4 running MacOSX and really fought the idea of running Windows with .NET in a Virtual Machine... so I traveled what I thought was the road less traveled and went with Open Source alternatives, which has really panned out for me.

The first step is a bit like stepping off the ledge into a pitch black abyss. You aren't quite sure how deep the rabbit hole goes, and after you take the leap you continue to fall for a long time before you start to get hand holds and work your way back towards the top. On the other hand you start to realize that you have limitless directions you can go, and that you aren't the only guy wandering through the abyss. In fact there are more people than you can believe, and the majority of them have had the same issues that you have and are happily willing to point you in the right direction. After all, the more the merrier so come join the party!

One important piece to keep in mind here is that Open Source = Choices, Choices, Choices. You are free to try as many solutions to the same problems as you have time for, and after a short while you start to get a feeling for what you prefer. Unlike the Microsoft way you get to PICK which of the solutions (that all claim to solve the exact same problem) feel the most sensible and productive for you. Isn't that great? You may be thinking, I will NEVER find my way... but don't give up at that first error you run into that you can't understand, keep on trucking, it's worth it.

There are many ways to learn all of this new and interesting terminology. Some people like books, others like to follow tutorials that walk them through things one step at a time. I personally like to punish myself by picking a task that I think is way beyond my reach, and requires me to use countless combinations of technology I have never used before, then start banging my head against the wall. One step at a time as I struggle through baby steps and getting small pieces do what I want, it feels as though a map covered in fog is slowly being revealed one city block at a time. Eventually you find yourself with a pretty navigable map, but still in the corners and wooded areas you have small clouds giving you something new to learn and tweak anytime you have a free second.

The current job market has lots of directions you can go, while staying on the Open Source path. I personally found my fire in the "Web Developer" technologies. But you have your pick from any focus from low level Operating System/ Kernel stuff, Database technologies, Apache Web Server/ Web Services, Java or wxPython/ wxWidget development in its many strongholds, Python or Ruby development as Web Application logic, Javascript, DHTML, UI creation world and the list goes on. You take your pick, and it may be a combination of many of these different spaces. To go from zero to creating a working usable production level application built on Open Source you can be sure that you will be exposed to lots of these different areas probably making it really clear to you where your passion lies.

I am going to describe my path, some of the challenges I have run into over the last year since I jumped head first into a career in the Open Source world. My first recommendation is dive right in, and just write code. It will probably be inefficient, ugly, slow, etc. but the point is that you engaged your brain and set some ground work. From here on you will be iteratively improving your code and the technology you're using. Ask anyone who has been writing Open Source software for any period of time, and they will tell you that looking at their own code from the past makes them wonder, What the heck was I doing? And that's what you are supposed to think, because if you think "I did that perfectly" you are either a super genius, or you have stopped improving.

My first goal when I decided that my interest was "The Web" was to learn this (what I thought was brand spanking new) thing called AJAX. I downloaded a lots of docs... that I never read, looked at a bunch of examples that I didn't really understand and then realized that it was time to simply try to build it. As it turns out AJAX is simply a means to get content on to a web site without reloading the whole page, and DHTML allows you to manipulate the page without a reload, to reflect these changes. I had used PHP in my past and used that as a starting place. As I built this "App" which is still online for your toying pleasure at Sticky Notes, my first AJAX App. I happened upon lots of problems that had been solved for ages, I just didn't know it.

Fortunately or unfortunately I got an opportunity to engineer solutions to these problems on my own, so when I finally saw what the world had decided was the best solution I could appreciate how amazingly useful it actually was. In this case I was moving data from my web site in Javascript using the xmlHttpRequest object. You are free to go view the source HERE and you will see that I wasn't using any fancy libraries or built-ins of any kind for doing the AJAX calls. I simply used the raw object and had to do each operation the long way. I also had to figure out how I was going to sort data that I was sending back and forth across the wire, and this really did become a pain. I finally decided to just delimit things using commas then URI encode it, but it's obvious to see that this is cumbersome and easy to bust. Now almost a year later I know of many libraries to abstract and simplify Javascript when making these AJAX calls (Fleegix, DOJO, Prototype, MochiKit, etc), I also know that encoding your data with common character delimiters has gone the way of the dodo. The answer to that problem is XML (Extensible Markup Language) or (my current preference when using Javascript) JSON (Javascript Object Notation). Instead of splitting your data fields up with commas, you can build a real Javascript object containing all the data you want in an organized way, send it across the wire, then receive a response in a format that you can evaluate directly into a Javascript and continue on with life. These are just a couple examples of the way the Open Source community is a problem solving force that you can benefit from in many ways making life easier.

In the mean time I have toyed with many solutions to my straight PHP on the server end including Django, Pylons, PHP Cake, Ruby on Rails, Java and the list goes on. The point is that the world is continually evolving and improving and to really be hip to the current jive you need to continually stay involved in the community and maintain an active interest. This world is not just a job, it becomes a way of life, a hobby, a profession and a piece of your social life. The people you meet, the challenges you are faced with, and the satisfaction you get by contributing to the world can't be described appropriately by me except for that it keeps you wanting more.

So you would love to do this right, but you don't have time because you have to make money? The technology industry especially in the Bay Area is exploding into Open Source more and more every day. I have seen more job openings for people who are fluent in the ways of Open Source than I can count. One main piece of information you should know is that, 100 lines of code you wrote in your free time speaks 1000 sentences of explanation in any job interview. Don't be intimidated because you aren't a famous Open Source guru, or that you don't have years of writing Python code on your resume. Pick something you think is interesting, build it, and when they say "Do you have experience doing Open Source software development?" Pull up your source, prepended it with your comment block including its Open Source license and say of course I do! Show them how cool your Application is, what problems you had to solve getting there, and what you learned. You will find that you learned more than you ever thought you would in the process, and most of this learning can be directly used in your long winded answers to stock Interview questions. If you really like the stuff you are doing it will come through, people will feel your excitement, and employers will overlook shortcomings in your knowledge base for this excitement, interest and obvious work ethic you have demonstrated by building cool Applications in your free time. Finding a job especially in the San Francisco/Bay Area job market that will let you learn Open Source tools as you work comes down to statistics. If you follow my recommendations, continue building your knowledge, and learn/tune yourself after each of your interviews it's only a matter of time before you find a place interested in bringing you on board.

One last preconception I have to note before I let you start your new geek life, is that Open Source is about writing code and producing usable Applications but it is equally about people and community. There are more social gatherings around Open Source than there are about any other topic I can think of. A great example of this is the Bay Piggies meetings or the San Francisco Linux Users Group, each week you can go view a free presentation about something being done with their favorite Open Source tool. These are great venues to learn things, meeting interesting and talented people, and possibly make some connections that might lead you to that Open Source dream job. Speaking of Open Source dream jobs, I have to get back to my task queue to get Chandler Server 0.7 out the door next week. Cheers!

PS. This is just a small taste, I easily could have turned this blog entry into a 30 pager so please comment, ask questions, or email me so I know what to include in my follow up.

I will be the first to admit my inability to keep my hands off new devices, but with this one I really tried. In fact I was trying so hard, that I convinced other people to stay away from the iPhone as well. My list of personal requirements for a phone device were met by my HTC 8525, and I did everything in my power to keep from succumbing to the temptation. In one way though, that is what will make this revisited review actually valuable. I haven't forgotten all of the reasons that my initial reactions to the iPhone kept me away from it, and I am prepared to address them all.

First off as an initial justification, my family and friends expect me to buy, try and give real feedback on all the new technology that comes out. I have been an early adopter for as long as I could find a way to afford it, and that will probably continue until I can no longer afford it! Secondly, in the two weeks previous to my purchase of the iPhone I had been having problems with my HTC 8525. The most irritating of these problems was a glitch in the Windows Mobile phone application that would notify me that a call was coming in, and when I hit the answer button -- the phone would promptly decline the call and turn the screen off. It could be that I had tweaked the phone one too many times, but reinstalling Windows Mobile for the 4th time just really wasn't something I could bring myself to stomach, so I just "lived" with the excruciating unresponsiveness of the UI. The other thing was that anytime I had a long day, I found myself with a phone with a dead battery or very nearly dead battery. This becomes a problem when you are in Portland for a conference, it's 10:00PM at night and you can't find any of the people you are supposed to be with. One cannot always be running back to the hotel room after 7 hours away from a charger.

I came to the conclusion that since it is so important for a phone to be reliably usable, I had a decision to make. Do I downgrade to standard cell phone, no bells or whistles, remove my data plan and stick with something that I know will stay charged and allow me to call people when I need to, or get the iPhone and live with the fact that some of the fringe techie features I personally want as a geek just aren't there yet. Of course with my early adopter geek inclination I went and started reading. I know the waves of the geeks out there, and it had been long enough since the launch that I was able to find scripts to hack the iPhone allowing the installation of native shell programs, customization of the interface, and laptop tethering (I'll get to that later). Of course you can guess what I did, and surprisingly my monthly bill is actually cheaper now that Apple forced AT&T to make it sort of reasonable for the average consumer.

I bought the phone on a Thursday, and to demonstrate my self control and ability step back from my Apple Fan Boyism I didn't even take the plastic off the box until Sunday, and didn't actually active or use the phone until Monday morning. Now for me, this was extremely hard. The hardest part is letting yourself go into the store and purchase the thing, but holding out on actually using it is pretty much unheard of (A good example of this is my last blog entry on the Nintendo Wii). But the point is that starting Wednesday night I knew that I was probably going to falter and get the iPhone so I started a tally of how many times I found myself extremely irritated by a problem with my current phone situation. The best comparison I can come up with here is that before I bought my Powerbook G4 I was using an IBM Thinkpad running Windows and I started a reboot tally that grew over a few months into the 100's. I currently use a Mac Book Pro as my primary machine, and will not switch back to the Windows environment, ever. Here are my results for 6 days of Windows Mobile: 11 Reboots (6 freezes), 8 calls it declined when I hit answer, ran out of battery before I got home 4 days. I haven't ran out of battery once with the iPhone and it has been REALLY nice. In-fact i've gone two days without even plugging it in, how about them Apples (pun?).

Now I know the ability to idle seems really important to all you geeks out there, but I bring up a more important question. Should we really be idling ALL DAY LONG? I'm the first to admit that I like the idea of being connected to IRC and AIM 24 hours a day no matter where I am and what I'm doing, but I don't think for my mental health that I should be doing that. Honestly at this point, and instant message can wait till I get home, and I really don't need that temptation of trying to IRC while I drive. On the iPhone, anyone can email you at any time, and your iPhone will tell you and you can pull it out and look at it -- isn't that dangerous enough? I get facebook messages, txts and email's all day long everywhere I go.. and it has been working out pretty well. I don't even miss getting PM'ed on IRC while I'm at whole foods getting groceries.

Tethering, tethering, tethering. Okay yes, it would be REALLY nice if this was a supported and built in feature. But when it really comes down to it my beef here is that if I am not anywhere near an Internet connection, and I need to get my laptop online to take care of something urgent for work.. well that won't stop me from doing it: http://www.hackszine.com/blog/archive/2 ... _wire.html It's doable with an iPhone, this solution is not elegant, nice or even easy to setup.. but it does work and that's enough for me.

My other huge complaint - 3G. Edge is slow, not too slow to look at a couple web pages on the BART, or pull down email, but yes it is slow. This actually did become MORE of an issue after I bought this phone, one speculation is that the first people to buy the iPhone were geeks.. and were so focused on the Internet Communicator functionality that they forgot to heavily test the phone functionality to discover this issue. According to AT&T http://blogs.zdnet.com/Apple/?p=740 there are two edge networks NOM1 and NOM2, on NOM2 you cannot receive phone calls while you use edge data (I check regularly following the directions in that link and have never found myself on a NOM1 network). I know that this isn't a problem with 3G because I regularly talked to people on the phone (speaker or headphones) while using Google Maps, or using the awkward mail interface to download and read email. This does still annoy me a bit, because I do use a lot of the data functionality and don't like the idea that I won't even KNOW I missed a call if they didn't leave a message, but I guess at this point I'm saying -- If it's real important, they will leave a message.. and if I was on Windows Mobile I wouldn't have been able to answer the call anyways! However, this doesn't completely cripple the phone, because the WIFI functionality is really well done on the iPhone and I travel from home, to work, to friends regularly and as I have gone to each and joined those wireless networks the iPhone will now automatically do that when it sees the network available. The order of operations for receiving data on the iPhone tries to use a wireless network before it will use edge keeping your phone available for incoming calls. Just remember that if you are traveling away from WIFI that while your pages and email are downloading, that call won't come through. But after some extensive testing I have discovered that if that browser bar is blue and loading the call goes the voicemail, but the second it's done loading then calls are again free to come through.

The recent iPhone update made some serious fixes that I really appreciate. Including the mail applications ability to pull down all my IMAP folders and show them correctly, including all their subsequent folders and messages. One other big comparison/complaint I had with the WIndows Mobile mail application was that I never actually got it to send emails. I spent hours over the time I had the phone and could never get it to send an email, and I think the easy entrance to using this device at least for a mac user has been seriously overlooked in the reviews. I activated the iPhone on a Monday morning around 8:30AM, and within 10 minutes all of the things I care about had been synced from my Mac Book onto the phone. I left for work at 9:00AM and for the rest of the day didn't find myself lacking one piece of data that I wished I had from my old phone. After the hours and hours I spent with Microsoft Active Sync crashing and strangely disconnecting for no reason half way through my contact sync, this was absolutely mind blowing.

I own an iPod with 50 gigs of music on it, and I usually leave it in my car glove box connected to the stereo and pretty regularly find myself on a plane, or on the bart, or waiting at the dentists office wishing I had remembered to bring it with me. But really, I don't need 60 gigs of music, I go on binges where I listen to a few of the same CD's over and over again, and always want a few playlist of my all time favorites. No matter where I go I never forget my phone because its an integral piece of my life, and now I never leave home without my iPod either.

One more mentionable is that I have owned 3 pairs of Apple head phones, and all of them were crap. All three started buzzing in my ear and had to be thrown away after a period of a few weeks. The headphones that come with the iPhone are MUCH higher quality, and much more durable and I am now using them to listen to music via my laptop during the day while I work. I went with the 4GB iPhone model, because I have a 60 gig iPod that I can bring with me if I really need to listen to more music than that, but at this point I have all my favorite music on there and still have 2 gigs left for pictures, email and whatever else I can stuff on the little device.

At this point I am still stunned by the super high resolution screen, and the ability to really browse the web almost as useably as you can on a full size screen, without crippled pages, special mobile pages or reliably crashing the browsers such as MiniMo or Opera Mobile. Ideas and comments are continually flowing through my head during the day as one feature after another responds the way I expect making the iPhone that much easier to use with a UI built for heuristic perfection.

A few weeks ago my friend and OSAF summer intern Jacob Robinson discovered a Nintendo Wii in a hot tub display at Costco in Concord CA. I have been mentioning my interest in acquiring one over the past months, so he quickly called me to inform me of the situation and I instructed him to buy it and bring it over ASAP. I have been watching the progress of the Wii, and listened to coworkers express how innovative and purely fun it is to play - so I couldn't pass up the opportunity. Somehow the Wii has managed to maintain it's "Sold Out" status at almost every establishment I'm aware of that sells gizmo's of this sort, to this day.

The Wii (and Jacob) arrived at my house around 11:30pm, and of course I had to instantly rip the thing out of the box and start playing with it. It appears that Nintendo took a page out of the Apple book of packaging and had nicely formatted, wrapped and scented the inside of the box. One of my favorite things has always been the opening of a new Apple product for exactly this reason, and now Nintendo has made it's way onto my list. The console was essentially plug and play minus a minute or two of plugging in information via the on screen keyboard that you control with the WiiMote. However you are satisfied because you instantly get to play around with the technology that makes this new console revolutionary. For those of you who aren't familiar, the Wii uses wireless remotes that you hold in your hand like a flashlight with buttons on top. As you swing them around in the air a sensor you mount on your TV picks up the motion and reflects the location on the TV. It feels as if the remote is a laser pointer that you are moving around on the TV, and the accuracy is astounding.. the QA process for this piece of the product must have been excruciating.

Now that the console has been named, the date and time have been selected and your wireless connection is all setup you are given a menu that allows you to Play the game currently sitting in the drive slot, read the news, look at the weather, look at photos, setup your Wii identity (Mii) or do more configuration. I couldn't wait to play the game that comes with the console called Wii Sports. At this point it's about 1:00am, and we are still going strong. Wii Sports satisfies the same need that Mario has satisfied for all of Nintendo's consoles up to this point, if you bought the console and didn't buy any games that day (because the thought of all the money you spent made you cringe) you can still crack the box open and start playing right now. You also get some practice, and overview of what the console can do, and it keeps you from getting frustrated and taking the sucker right back to the store!

Wii Sports gives you Tennis, Bowling, Baseball, Golf and Boxing... and this is what sold me on this new technology. The graphics are mediocre, and in comparison to the new Sony products and XBox would be an absolute embarrassment if it weren't for this new wireless remote technology that completely changes the aspects of gaming that you used to think made it fun. The mediocre graphics of the Wii fade out of sight as you realize how unbelievably fun it is to be able to swing at your competitions pitch in real time, in the air as if you were really swinging a baseball bat.

Obviously with any piece of technology you can trick it and tweak it to figure out ways to cheat. The censor looks for various motions, distances, and speeds of those motions in relation to the TV, so if you don't want to stand and swing the baseball bat like a real batter you can sit back on the couch, be lazy and swing it 5 inches with one hand and it will still work. However eventually you get frustrated with that and want to stand up and give it your full swing. The motion detection is very accurate, with golf and bowling my drive still slices to the right and my bowl still inconveniently curves left towards the end giving me too many 7/9 splits.

I spent a little time playing Mario Party which came with the Costco package, which took me a while to figure out but I have now realized that it can be pretty fun. With this game it is the more the merrier, and the fun comes from the mini games you find your self competing in as you move one space at a time around the board game seeking various objectives. I can see some very serious potential for this product, and can understand why people are so excited about it. The stripped down package gives you a console, one controller and Wii Sports for $250 dollars. This is very affordable compared to the competition who's focus seems to be on creating a computer that also plays super high definition games, the Wii is simply a game console that tries to be a game console, with a twist. If you want the two controllers and a numchuck (which you need for boxing -- two hands per person) and Mario Party, you may get lucky if you search hard enough at your local Costco. This package goes for around $350 and in my opinion is well worth it.

I remember reading that the HDMI adapter for the Wii brings the graphics quality up significantly, so those of you interested in maxing out your high definition Plasma or LCD TV should give that a look. Nintendo continues to release updates you can install over the WIFI, and with a SD slot on the front of the console you can use it for viewing photos on your TV, or install many of the available applications for the Wii such as the Opera Web Browser (For your sitting on the couch and browsing the web pleasure.)

Remember to keep the wrist band fastened tight as you swing away, and be careful -- I know this sounds pathetic but I was actually pretty sore after playing that thing till 3:00AM. Did somebody say Wii thai-bo? I'm sort of wishing I hadn't sold my Nintendo stock.. happy gaming!

OSCON was a huge success, we had a full room for the presentation followed by lots of very positive feedback. It appears that one person was taking notes during our presentation and does a pretty good rough overview which can be read here. Another place to read some interesting reactions of this years OSCON is here at Michael Kimsals Blog. He also interviewed Mikeal and I at the conference for Web Dev Radio at some point in the future. I will let you know when that is available for your listening pleasure. I felt that the conference was very well done, with lots of interesting content. The OSAF presence there was important and in some ways expected. I didn't get to as many talks as I would have liked but the ones I went to were for the most part informative and interesting. A common sentiment that I heard from people was that nothing blew them away, but each talk did have a piece of new information you could take away with you. The 'Open Design, Not by Committee' talk given by Ted Leung and Mimi Yin did a good job at giving people a sense of what OSAF has done well, struggled with and solutions and decisions that have brought Chandler to it's current state. There are a lot of things that OSAF has dealt with that the rest of the Open Source community hasn't run into yet, and it's important that everyone learns from one another. Hopefully some of this information made it into ears that can save other projects some time and heartache. I wanted to hear Katie but unfortunately the Windmill talk was at exactly the same time. As a first timer to OSCON I really enjoyed all the industry people I had a chance to talk to, as well as the ability to get first hand looks at where some of our favorite Open Source projects are headed.

When I returned home after my day of camping and R&R up at the Russian River, I happily found that people had already descended upon #windmill on freenode and had written some of the docs I had planned on writing Monday. What a treat! I love Open Source. Currently we are gearing up on our 0.2 release release, which has some bug fixes and new features that people will be excited about and can be viewed in the Windmill Roadmap. I hope people continue to show up and help find bugs and other issues to get Windmill ready to be a competitive solution in the AJAX Web UI Automation world.

On another note, Cosmo (Now called Chandler Server) is turning into a very impressive web based PIM, that everyone should check out. We have a testing server online that I keep updated to the latest build, so please come use it and log lots of bugs! With preview right around the corner we are working like mad to get as many bugs fixed as we can so that the release really shows off the product, and gets people excited about what it will be able to do in the future.

There was an interesting Mozilla Zine Post by Mitchell Baker of Mozilla about their current situation with Thunderbird and the development of Open Source email software. What made this even more interesting was the response post by our General Manager and VP of Engineering, Katie Capps Parlante about the possibilities of OSAF collaborating or working with Mozilla on an open source mail solution. It would make a lot of logical sense because Mozilla doesn't really want to start another company just to work on T-Bird, but the world knows that there is a need for something there. OSAF has spent 5 years working on Chandler and with a little more in the way of resources and public attention could get the email functionality up to snuff and become a serious competitor. Mitch Kapor is on the board of both organizations (maybe he could consolidate his board meetings) and gain more momentum for both projects. I see a lot of parallels in the feature needs and projects between the organizations, so this could turn into a very interesting situation after preview is released.

My next post was going to be a detailed review of all the talks I attended, but I think Matt is already working on doing that himself, so I may just add my two cents and then link to it.. considering he went to more talks that I did and all the ones I went to he was at as well.


Cheers!