The WordPress 3.0 Beta is available. This update is very significant because it merges Wordpres MU the regular branch of WordPress. For people who manage multiple WordPress sites, but were unable to use WordPress MU, this change could be a significant timesaver. It is also particularly useful for people who work at organizations where each department wants their own separate blog or website and they don’t want to have to deal with the administrative overhead of a bunch of separate installs.
You Broke the Cloud!
I host a number of websites on a “cloud” service where they automatically bring webservers up and down to adjust to the need. I was running into an error message the other day so I opened a chat with tech support:
Me: I’m trying to create a mysql stored procedure, but I’m getting error X.
Tech: Oh no!
Me: Did I break the cloud?
Tech: You made it rain ;(
I think the world would be a much more interesting place if every tech support person was trained to say “Oh no!” to whatever problem you present.
Notice that emoticon. Frowning and winking at the same time is a bit hard to do.
Open Source Apps for Education
Blind People Mad at Kindle
I would think that the National Federation of the Blind and the American Council of the Blind would be thrilled with the idea of colleges using Kindles for textbooks. After all, Kindle’s can read the text to you which would be a great advantage for people who can’t see. This seems like a big step up from a regular book that may or may not have a braille or audio edition and if such editions exist are going to be hard to find and probably much more expensive.
It turns out those two organizations see things a bit differently. Instead of being happy about the advantages such a device would give blind people, they decided to complain to the DOJ about several pilot programs to use Kindle’s in several universities. Their logic is that the devices are difficult to navigate if you can’t see. While I see their point, surely the devices aren’t any more difficult than letting a blind person find and read a book in a large library on their own. They also complain that blind students wouldn’t be able to use the web browser capabilities of the device (which presumably doesn’t offer text to speech capabilities).
I think it is idiotic that they are preventing programs that would make things better for the people they represent. Technology progresses incrementally and trying to hold up new projects that are beneficial just because you want them to be beneficial in other ways is a sure fire way to reduce progress for people with disabilities.
Frustrated with Intuit
Intuit makes Quicken and Quickbooks. I stopped using Quicken for Mac because it can’t import OFX files. Most banks have a way for you to download your transactions in the OFX format. Pretty much every piece of financial software in the world can handle OFX files, but not Quicken. I noticed that there is a new version of Quickbooks out that works on OS X and thought that surely it wouldn’t be crippled in this way. Shows how optimistic I am. It turns out it can’t handle OFX files either.
Here is what Intuit is doing. Rather than letting people import the files themselves, Quicken has found they can charge banks extra money to be Quicken/Quickbooks compatible. They take the OFX file from the institution, turn it into their own format. If someone buys their product and finds it can’t import transactions from their bank, Intuit can blame the bank and say that the bank doesn’t support the right format. Worse still, the charge the bank one fee to support the format their PC software uses, and another fee to support the software that their Mac software uses.
In reality, these formats are the same. Quickbooks and Quicken look at the file and see who it comes from. If it comes from a bank that hasn’t paid Intuit money, they return an error saying that the financial institution doesn’t support the right format or the platform (PC or Mac).
It is so frustrating to work with Intuit because they are taking something that should be an open standard and exploiting the banks by using their customers as leverage. If enough customers start complaining that the bank doesn’t support something, the bank will probably have to go ahead and pay Intuit. The customer on the other hand, buys a product that may or may not work with their bank. They can’t rely on open standards to give them compatibility.