Robert Accettura's
Fun With Wordage

AVG really needs to fix their “LinkScanner” product. It essentially scans pages for links and pre-downloads them to check for malware. If that doesn’t sound so bad, then your obviously not paying for bandwidth or trying to keep your server load manageable. Essentially it means more traffic pegging servers and downloading pages, but most of it being a total waste.

This isn’t just bad for webmasters. This excess traffic hogs ISP’s (who now plan to charge by-the-byte) and WiFi. In a country where we are tight on bandwidth, this is really a pretty lousy implementation.

AVG even went so far as to use multiple user agents, all of which seem to spoof IE, making it more difficult to block.

The best way to block the bogus AVG traffic seem to be by looking for the Accept-Encoding HTTP header, which could be done using an Apache rewrite rule if you can’t do so on the firewall or load balancer level.

AVG really needs to reaccess this poorly designed product. It’s unnecessarily taxing the web.

By default when connecting over SSH to my Mac OS X 10.4 box (using bash shell), there’s no ANSI color. Sometimes it’s pretty handy to have. I keep forgetting how to turn it on.

To add, put the following in the .profile file in your home directory:

TERM=xterm-color; export TERM

Now when I SSH in, I get ANSI color goodness.

Hopefully next time I’ll just look for this post.

Seems everyone who tries Windows Vista comes to at least one of two conclusions (if not both):

1. Please don’t let Windows XP Expire - There’s even a petition for those in this camp. And it’s getting press.
2. Mac Time - Enough said. Mac OS X 10.5 isn’t perfect, but is anything? It’s about as close as anyone has gotten.

It will be interesting to see the fate of XP.

Back in March I mentioned that Microsoft is trying to standardize it’s HD Photo format as the official successor to the ever so popular JPEG format. Well it’s now looking to become JPEG XR.

Suprisingly it’s still not listed on Microsoft’s Open Specification Promise where Microsoft lists things it won’t sue over. Hopefully they will update that soon. My understanding from what I’ve read is that’s the intent.

It’s a pretty interesting thing going on. Video on the web has improved by leaps and bounds over the years from a tiny grainy video object that took a decade to load, to instantly loading and still improving quality Flash / Windows Media / QuickTime. Photos on the other hand have been using JPEG for pretty much a decade. Most photography buffs don’t seem to fond of JPEG because it can degrade picture quality, but still love services like Flickr.

Will JPEG XR spark a photo revolution by allowing better quality?

CNet has a slide show with it’s top Windows programs. It’s a pretty good list. I’d agree with it for pretty much everything. What I found really interesting is that of the 9 listed, 7 are open source. Here’s the rundown with the license for the source of each:

• Audacity - GPL
• Paint.NET - MIT License
• OpenOffice - LGPL
• Pidgin - GPL
• VLC Media Player - GPL
• FileZilla - GPL
• WinPatrol - Proprietary
• Mozilla Firefox - MPL/LGPL/GPL
• Process Explorer - Proprietary

Interesting to see the penetration of open source here.

I got my copy of Mac OS X 10.5 earlier this week. Bought it from J&R (via Amazon) since it was $99 + shipping, less than Amazon itself was selling it for. For some reason both of them are able to undercut Apple (even with a corporate discount) which seemed odd. Here’s my rundown of the new OS during the first 24 hours.

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ComputerWorld has a rather good showdown of email clients on Mac OS X. The best breakdown of features I’ve seen on the Mac side in some time.

That said, I think they were slightly unfair to Thunderbird. For example, Thunderbird does have calendar support via Lightning which wasn’t mentioned (though it does indicate webmail support via extension). I’ve been using it with Google Calendar and it’s been working very well for me. It also says that Thunderbird can’t read from the Mac OS X Address book, though it should be noted that’s now fixed for the next release. It does however in another part of the breakdown briefly discuss Apple’s upcoming Mail release.

Another interesting note is that there doesn’t seem to be any mention of Entourage still not being available as a Universal Binary, meaning it’s very slow on Intel based Mac’s as I’ve mentioned before. We won’t see it as a Universal Binary until 2008. As someone who uses it daily at work, I’m counting down the days. IMHO this problem alone makes Thunderbird a much better mail client (minus the lack of Exchange support).

Does anyone know if Mail supports exchange? The review seems to think so (see the chart), though I thought that was only over IMAP. Apple seems to agree with me (emphasis mine):

Mail works with the following account types: POP, IMAP, .Mac, and Exchange (only if configured as an IMAP server). You can’t log in directly to Hotmail, AOL, or any service that does not support POP or IMAP access, and retrieve email using Mail.

I wouldn’t really call that support.

Other than those things which I believe aren’t quite accurate, I actually liked the review. I though it was a decent breakdown on a level I haven’t seen before. It exposes features that few really look at (search for example), but really matter in terms of user experience.

According to Ars Technica, Microsoft may have removed the WGA requirement to install IE7 in hopes of gaining more market share by allowing users of pirated Windows XP systems to upgrade.

I doubt this will really do much. My guess is that those who are avoiding WGA are more technically advanced users. They either:

• Use Firefox, since that’s what real cool kids do. Besides, they like the extensions.
• Use Opera
• Using a workaround to install without WGA.

I think the bigger reason IE6 is still so prominent is that corporations spent the better part of the decade bringing their applications on the web. Upgrading to IE7 means testing and upgrading them. Nobody wants to rush into that. Corporate users who will continue to use IE will mostly stick with IE6 until they move to Vista.

Apple iMac

So todays announcement was the new iMac. Wasn’t much of a surprise as it was due, and the rumor sites were pretty consistent. The new design wasn’t much of a surprise either. I love the metal, and think it’s great on the G5/Mac Pro. I never really cared for the glossy display, but I don’t think that’s a deal breaker. Lenovo did a poll on screen preference and found the overwhelming majority (86%) preferred anti-glare. It’s definitely my preference. I do however think it matters more on laptops than on desktops since laptops will on occasion be subject to lighting that produces glare, while a desktop is typically setup in a position that wouldn’t facilitate the problem.

Apple Keyboard

Also new is the revised Apple Keyboard. This was leaked a little early. Gizmodo did a good breakdown on the changes to the key layout. I think the most surprising move was eliminating the Apple logo in favor of the word “command”. My guess would be the feel of the new keyboard is very similar to modern Apple laptops (Gizmodo says it does), but not as cramped. If that’s really the case, given the construction of this keyboard it could be a very comfortable keyboard.

Surprisingly Apple lists the keyboard’s requirements as:

• Mac OS X v10.4.10 or later
• Keyboard software update

For a keyboard? This sounds a little strange. I’m virtually positive if you plugged it into any computer it would work fine, but some of the special keys may not be mapped correctly. I’m almost positive it will work fine in Windows XP/Vista as well, since Apple has Boot Camp. I suspect Apple will at some point ship Windows software for the keyboard for users who want to use Windows in Boot Camp, as well as those who just want the Apple Keyboard. My guess is that it’s either just not ready yet, or they want to gauge interest.

iLife ‘08

iLife ‘08 looked pretty good, but I’m not a heavy user, so it didn’t impress me as much as I guess it should have. Organizing photos by events is extremely handy and seems very well done. iMovie also has quite a few enhancements that should make movie editing much easier.

iWork ‘08

iWork ‘08 impressed me a little more. So much like Office, yet so much more polished and eloquent. What’s impressive is that the final results look so good, and the process to get those results seems intuitive. Numbers in particular looks really great. Will this eat into Microsoft Office’s market share? No. Will it make life easier for many Mac professionals who want to make some nice looking documents? Absolutely.

Overall

One thing I thought was noteworthy is Steve apparently mentioned that the keyboard photos were leaked online. Considering Apple’s tight lipped history, that was somewhat interesting. Still no sign of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. He didn’t spend any real time on it, barely a mention. Considering it’s August, and the last big event before October, this was a little surprising. I’m wondering if this could mean a further delay.

My predictions from yesterday weren’t to bad, though they were mostly obvious. The only thing I was a little surprised about was the missing update on Leopard. I still think the Mac Mini will see a speed bump by the end of the year.

Mac Rumors notes that according to the Apple press release for the iMac, Airport Extreme now has Gigabit Ethernet (something that was sadly missing). No mention elsewhere on the site. I wonder if this is official, or just something that slipped out. It’s looking better and better.

Edit: According to CNet, the Mac Mini did get an speed bump! That means another prediction was right.

Product images courtesy of Apple.

Someone created Mobile Terminal for the iPhone. That means one could in theory run SSH. Awesome.

[Hat Tip: Gizmodo]