lames have recently been thrown due to confessions about bad experiences with New Yanoff. New Yanoff is the successor of Yanoff, which is the well-known newsgroups reader for the Palm platform.

Let us begin with compatibility issues. New Yanoff is not compatible with some recent models of the Palm such as the LifeDrive.

Secondly, the user interface of the trial version ($24 for the registered version) is filled with many nags. It is understandable given the purpose of this trial package. Nevertheless, nags were claimed to be excessive.

On to more major flaws, the user interface is relatively unprofessional, as indicated in a Yanoff 3.0 review. Below is one screenshot that has been borrowed from this review.

Example of bad UI design

Finally, the default signature for sent messages bears citations from the bible. It works this way by default and gives no warning and indication that this is happening. To some this will be no cause for concern, but religion, much like politics, is a sensitive issue to many. This is in fact the point which initiated the flames in nntp://comp.sys.palmtops. The developer strongly defended his choice to “spread the gospel” (exact quote), which is a very controversial step among most developers (imposition of the developer’s views).

As the discussion developed, New Yanoff turned out to be a relatively disappointing piece of software that is not sufficiently reliable. GPL Yanoff, which is of course free, can still be downloaded from its Sourceforge Web site.

Cited by: PalmAddict

Slashdot on my home computer

ood old Slashdot is one of the heaviest hubs on the Web. What distinguishes Slashdot from most ‘Internet Authorities’ is that new items get added in a linear form (reverse-chronological, much like a blog) and contain links to external sites.

It is common knowledge that once an external link appears in the front page of Slashdot, it can ‘kill’ that external site within seconds. This is known as the notorious ‘Slashdot Effect’. This deadly side-effect can have an impact on many sites if they are hosted on a shared server. Slashdot will cripple such a server, if not bring it to the brink of total collapse. That is the expected outcome when a surge of (tens of) thousands of surfers hits the same server simultaneously. Large sites with multiple servers can endure the load, but otherwise, nobody benefits — neither the sites and hosts which are linked to, nor the ‘Slashdotters’.

As time went on and Slashdot grew, the need for mirrors was realised. If local (temporary) copies of the destination sites can be retained quickly enough, the bandwidth barrier is somehow circumvented. Certain site mirrors (The Network Mirror is one such Slashdot-bound/ripoff site) can gain PageRank as high as 6 without any original content, but only the reflection of Slashdot content with a crawling depth of 1 (i.e. front pages and all pages linked from the front page).

Earlier today, yet another site bit the dust. As soon as small and modest sites appear in Slashdot, they vanish from the face of this Earth. Even the mirrors to do not appear to work unless they cycle for updates frequently enough (before the servers collapse). I sometimes wonder: “News that matter, but where’s the news?”

By the way, schestowitz.com was once cited by Slashdot and endured the load thanks to its excellent Web host, Catalyst2.

here is a well-known issue with the Palm Tungsten E, which appears to have been resolved with the release of the Tungsten E2. A large number of users are have reported a continuous buzz, which makes the use of the handheld quite unpleasant, especially in low-noise environments. An on-going discussion in UseNet reveals more details.

Only yesterday, a group member stated:

The E2 doesn’t have a screen buzz, at least the two I’ve tried in different stores didn’t!

On the contrary, Colleen confessed that she was a victim of this fault:

My E2 has the buzzing noise, but only when I have my headphones in. I must admit, if I could hear it all the time, I would rip out my hair…

Yet another reader adds an opinion:

There have been a number of reports of the TE2 having screen noise also. Like with the TE, it is a rare occurrence. But when millions of units are sold ‘rare’ occurrence can mean a substantial number of units…

Lastly, let us add possible solutions to the mix:

I remember reading the buzzing sound had something to do with the processor speed so I tried out LightSpeed but it wasn’t stable enough to use on my TE. When I tried the two E2 units at two different stores I just figured that the increase in processor speed corrected the problem.

…when I changed the clock speed of the processor the buzzing went really low, almost to the point of being undetectable but the software I was using wasn’t stable…

There were more messages involved in this large on-going thread, which keeps developing at this very moment. The bottom line is that this buzz is endemic in the Tungsten E, but may affect the Tungsten E2 as well.

Cited by: PalmAddict

Yahoo have recently introduced nice features such as news delivery as RSS feeds. They now offer an extensive audio search which encompasses on-line music stores as well as smaller sites and self-promoting bands. It appears to work well because it managed to pick up some long-forgotten files — the stuff I recorded in 2002 or thereabouts. It’s all quite embarrassing, but I am flattered to find my name among the results pages. Raves and insults in the box below….

or quite some time I have been wanting to create a CSS Zen Garden style. This morning I spent about 2 hours designing a dark layout as I could no longer resist my desires. Shown above is a screenshot (Firefox 1.0.4 under Linux) which you can click to enter the actual page. As for the translucent PNG element at the top, I suspect that Internet Explorer would not render it properly. Support for transparency with a decent colour depth has always been poor in Internet Explorer (see related item).

I named the style Palm Bliss, which like any other hastily-chosen title, is a stupid name. All graphics were worked on under The GIMP version 1.2.3. The style is still considered “work in progress”, but I could not help exposing it already (despite its premature state). Knowing my past experiences, it will remain in its current form forever, never to be worked on again or even submitted. Nevertheless, I truly feel as if it was something that I had to do in order to challenge myself.

You may also wish to see an older item about Zen Garden galleries.

ollowing a recent item on imitation at Microsoft and in relation to what has become a trend, surfers spotted a stunning resemblance between an MSN search test-bed (start.com) and Google’s popular personalised pages. The test-bed is supposedly maintained by interns, but it projects badly on claims for innovative thinking over in Washington. To persuade yourself that the pages are inseparable, have a look at the screenshots below and click to enlarge.

Google’s personalised portal on the left and Microsoft’s clone on the right; click images to view them in full size

The pile of dusty Dells in my office, taken from my daily photolog

Below is a story which I discovered on Dvorak Uncensored. He pointed to an item from Thomas Hawk who talks about being denied to right to photograph streets:

Yesterday I was shooting some photos of One Bush St. (the building where Bush and Market Streets intersect) when their security guard came out of his little glass jewelbox lobby hut to ask me to stop taking photos of the building. He said it was illegal. I moved to the sidewalk and continued taking photos and he again asked me to stop. When I told him I was on a public street sidewalk he said that actually they owned the sidewalk and that I was going to have to stop taking photographs.

Even after shooting approximately 2000 photos in the streets of Manchester, never did anyone address me with a complaint. “Only in America”, some would say…