Techie :: Techno ::: August 2008 Archives
There seem to be a lot of URL shortening services out there.
While TinyURL has been around for a long time a lot of Irish users opt for url.ie, but in recent months there seems to have been a lot more added.
While competition is generally a good thing there's only so much you can do with a URL shortening service.
Custom aliases, 301 redirects and a lot more besides have all been done. At this stage the main difference between most of the services would seem to be the actual domain they're based off.
Hover, however, is a little different.
To start with it's not 100% free, which is a pity, but it comes with some very different ideas (if someone else has done it already I haven't seen it yet - sorry!).
On signup you can choose your own subdomain, so I'm using mneylon.hover.com (I know! So original!)
So if you want to get to my hosting recommendation, for example, you can go to mneylon.hover.com/hosting, while my blog can be reached via /blog
The service gets a lot more interesting if you look at the premium service ($25 / year) which allows you to use your own domain, though as it's a Tucows service they expect you to register the domain through them.
The interface is still in need of some work, but it's an interesting new take on the entire url shortening services and I'll be interested to see if they can capture any attention with it.
While TinyURL has been around for a long time a lot of Irish users opt for url.ie, but in recent months there seems to have been a lot more added.
While competition is generally a good thing there's only so much you can do with a URL shortening service.
Custom aliases, 301 redirects and a lot more besides have all been done. At this stage the main difference between most of the services would seem to be the actual domain they're based off.
Hover, however, is a little different.
To start with it's not 100% free, which is a pity, but it comes with some very different ideas (if someone else has done it already I haven't seen it yet - sorry!).
On signup you can choose your own subdomain, so I'm using mneylon.hover.com (I know! So original!)
So if you want to get to my hosting recommendation, for example, you can go to mneylon.hover.com/hosting, while my blog can be reached via /blog
The service gets a lot more interesting if you look at the premium service ($25 / year) which allows you to use your own domain, though as it's a Tucows service they expect you to register the domain through them.
The interface is still in need of some work, but it's an interesting new take on the entire url shortening services and I'll be interested to see if they can capture any attention with it.
I'm editing a few pages on a few sites today and realised that I didn't have a proper text editor installed on my Mac desktop.
There is a text editor app, but it doesn't have syntax highlighting, nor does it do a lot of the other funkier stuff that Vim does "out of the box".
The silly thing is that a Google search for vim on osx (you can adjust the keywords to suit your taste) keeps taking me to this site, which doesn't have a very recent version of vim. I'm sure their version is fine, but the installer is sadly lacking ie. you need to decompress files and move them around the place, whereas this sourceforge project is almost "sane".
There is a text editor app, but it doesn't have syntax highlighting, nor does it do a lot of the other funkier stuff that Vim does "out of the box".
The silly thing is that a Google search for vim on osx (you can adjust the keywords to suit your taste) keeps taking me to this site, which doesn't have a very recent version of vim. I'm sure their version is fine, but the installer is sadly lacking ie. you need to decompress files and move them around the place, whereas this sourceforge project is almost "sane".
Over the past few years I've used several of the open source webmail solutions to access my mail when I've been on the move. Squirrelmail, for example, is quite functional, but the size of my personal mailbox has grown so big that it took forever for it to load.
A few months ago the Atmail team announced an open source version of their webmail solution. I was interested in trying it out, but I was expecting the install process to be awkward and complex.
It wasn't
A couple of minutes after downloading the software I had a fully functional webmail client up and running and it's able to handle my mailbox without any issues.
The open source version of Atmail is a lot faster than Squirrelmail ever was and has some pretty slick features. You can right click on a message to delete it, or mark it as read / unread. Of course if you just want to delete the mail you can do so, but dragging it into the "trash" is kind of fun too!
The only thing that it seems to be missing, based on playing with atmail for a few minutes, is a method of selecting multiple emails to delete at once.
It's the kind of software that I can see people making use of if they want a functional webmail client and are sick of some of the uglier alternatives.
What are the differences between the open source version and the commercial one?
For most people the differences probably won't make much difference, as they're more for larger organisations and businesses that want to integrate with other systems, but you can see a full comparison chart on the site.
I've always been a strong believer of using the products and services that we sell, so it's only apt that I'd start using Atmail now, as we've just rolled out the full commercial version as part of our new hosting solution. Though I think our clients are getting a lot more features than I am!
A few months ago the Atmail team announced an open source version of their webmail solution. I was interested in trying it out, but I was expecting the install process to be awkward and complex.
It wasn't
A couple of minutes after downloading the software I had a fully functional webmail client up and running and it's able to handle my mailbox without any issues.
The open source version of Atmail is a lot faster than Squirrelmail ever was and has some pretty slick features. You can right click on a message to delete it, or mark it as read / unread. Of course if you just want to delete the mail you can do so, but dragging it into the "trash" is kind of fun too!
The only thing that it seems to be missing, based on playing with atmail for a few minutes, is a method of selecting multiple emails to delete at once.
It's the kind of software that I can see people making use of if they want a functional webmail client and are sick of some of the uglier alternatives.
What are the differences between the open source version and the commercial one?
For most people the differences probably won't make much difference, as they're more for larger organisations and businesses that want to integrate with other systems, but you can see a full comparison chart on the site.
I've always been a strong believer of using the products and services that we sell, so it's only apt that I'd start using Atmail now, as we've just rolled out the full commercial version as part of our new hosting solution. Though I think our clients are getting a lot more features than I am!
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