another real reason why we need WriteFree and related inky components Create and Use Forms in Journal . Form filling in Journal is very exciting especially for commonly filled out forms - tax forms come to mind for folks that don't use turbo tax, quicken and other software. Being able to get at this functionality programmatically is neccesary for a lot of developers, maybe thats what we might go for , a simple component that enables form filling. Will look at this later, post ideas to the message board

At least its not only me ranting about the lack of ubiquitous broadband jrjBlog...This is a big fucking , fuckin, fruckin deal....lemme explain. --its a long story though
Somewhere around 80 centuries ago- lots of previously "primitive folks" converged on strategically advantageous locations and started living close together probably due to the efficiencies that it provided (efficiencies= easier defenses and sharing and whatever else)....
--this growth in communities and the "efficiencies" that it brought made it possible for this folks to have a bit more time on their hands....And back then time on their hands was really literally "time on their hands"....Since that's what the human brain is supposed to have evolved for , hand coordination...
for some reason and it could have gone another way, some person in this "primitivia" decided to use a surface to communicate an abstraction....pure magic...this "abstracting on surfaces" over the 80 centuries past (some say 100 centuries others 200- I don't care), developed into elaborate multi faceted human activity that sadly went mainstream only about 4 centuries ago...track the dominant civilizations over human history and you can see how this "abstracting on a surface" is related to dominance.
The harder thing after abstracting was sharing ... sharing this stuff made all the difference, abstracting alone is a bit weird.....as usual this long story will suddenly be cut short by this claim.... "groups of people with widespread, ubiquitous networks access- broadband will kick some serious butt" now does someone think that its disturbing that S Korea has more internet connections per person than the US. My life is impossible without network access, and am sure everyone is in pretty much the same situation....am in new york city this month and apart from a few often inconveniently located community hotspots there is really no ubiquitous broadband ...in New York (the big apple, the greatest city in the ...), the internet for most is still an oracle you go to every so often, go through a ritual to use and so on, someone tell me am stupid or I have no clue....but something is really wrong...this is the biggest issue today...the fact that components access points selling for barely a hundred bucks and so on, you can almost never find an access location in NYC.....anyway I promised not to whine about that here any more.....but I think that there is a serious problem that our society hasn't figured out ubiquitous network access ...maybe my biggest fear "capitalism regressing" is making people refuse to do the right thing and share network access that they are not using....end of the rant , but there is another frustrated person...yes why can't hotels offer internet...don't they get it, maybe IT industry is so full of crooked people that hotel management can't figure out how easy it is to share the same fuckin internet service that they are paying for anyway with their guests

writefree

writefree

ok, my hotspot ranting will be done elsewhere, i seem to spend quite a bit of time looking for hotspots, but its the only way i can get unfettered internet access - proxy servers, content blockers and all that so read here if you care about wifi and the lack of

because guess what, its 7.50pm now and starbucks at 35 st and 8th ave will close at 10.00, actually they kick us out earlier, though i found a bar that is in my hotel that faces a starbucks and i can get a moderately good signal if i sit at the right place.
Thats the state of ubiquitous internet today, of course if you don't care you can get on those cullular networks for about 300 bucks for the card and some more for the service, and thats always under 100kbps....something is very wrong with that picture, remember the internet is over a decade old

and on the hotspot thing in nyc, there are a bunch on nycwireless.net's nodedb, you just have to find them, and there are might not be any conviniently located that open late.
The optimal place would be like paris on the platte in downtown denver, opens very late, totally free, lots of folks pecking away and dirt cheap coffee and food. I am so sorry for any time that i didn't appreciate paris. So a bit more hunting and i should find some interesting location that is not bryant park

ok, some more ranting and little coding, i managed to convince my boss to let me do a particular solution using C#, actually i doubt he cares whether its C#, VB.Net or Swing, He just needs a good app. The entire backend is a mishmash of java, lots of scripting and a bevy of legacy shit with lots of soap calls. The direction of the organization is a java based integration framework, so it should have been a java client app, but luckily with the fairly small user base behind the firewall a web app made no sense. Thus i sold him on a windows stuff client instead of the earlier envisioned JSP's. The purpose of this rant is that i will now be able to run VS.Net on my developer workstation, that means i can do all sorts of WinForms shit whenever i can, and i plan on selling them more WinForms stuff since they are already a Windows shop, the inhouse backend is all windows. Thus i should be able to sneak in some Write Free coding in the meantime. No promises but i will get to finish the Toolbars and maybe work on some more components, I read somewhere that someone had inky components, i went to their website and wasn't able to find any of those components. And like i keep on saying i need inky components, actually i don't but the tablet really needs inky compoenents, Windows has to get very inky fast.....and yes Dell is still wrong about the direction that the Tablet will take....so we are back is the point

the cool thing is that with the delay and disruption that write free has had there might be industry developments that may change the direction and structure of the project, so ever the optimist , i figure there is something good about the slowing pace of development. Its just one of those things, we are always moving in a particular direction and though we might never get there , we still took the road less travelled .....

yes , am really sorry but i have had to spend the past couple of weeks in nyc and in between trying to find suitable internet connectivity and lugging a laptop and a tablet, i haven't done too much on write free. I am hoping to get more organized soon and then i can put some time into the project. my weekends are horrible -since i spend almost 20 hours commuting, i try to do some work in transit but the real work in a software project (design, strategy and planning) never seems to be possible in a transient environ since the nature of software development requires being able to sketch, doodle, prototype, communicate and the very neccesary "zone time" ...oh well i hope to be home without the commute in a couple of weeks and that should be good for the project.
Anyone that knows 24hour open hotspots in nyc , please email me, there is nothing worse than not being able to get online at night (this week am in a room facing 8th Ave and there are 2 miserable wifi networks that i can get but none of them are accesible, so i haven't had last weeks luck, though even last week the intermittency was quite a try, oh well, and yes unlike the bookstores in denver which were always empty, the bookstores in nyc are always full of sometimes disruptive juveniles- i have also drank enough tall mochas to last me the rest of my life

still swamped, bad time management or both, but i guess this gives us time to evolve the design according to changing market conditions, no message board comments so i figure everyone is busy :)

yes, yes, am sorry there has been little progress but i have been busy at work, uploaded buggy standard toolbar, will fix it when i get the time,otherwise knock yourself out folks

ok Denver sucked since there wasn't ample wifi networks and there is the other factors, but the Borders were literally empty and that made it an optimal place to code- think all the books you need and an 11 mbps network, New York, the bookstores are always crowded and though there are many networks , in the fall its not too cool cause you can't sit outside, so you literally have to move from location to location, I plan on just saying shucks after room service has been to my room and doing the rest of work in my 10 by 10 room after moving the furniture around to be able to use the desk so that i can still get a signal and sit at a desk. And the week after next , am coming up with a zaurus, and the pocket pc's for sniffing wifi networks. You should always carry a smaller device that can pick up 2.4 and 5 GHz radio bands signals, you can find your own or you can just get a pocket pc and netstumber or similar software. That enables you to discover networks that you can use

bit more ranting about wifi, am still intermittently coding, talk about context switching and related, unless you have to i would recommend hunkering down in one location and doing all your coding at that location though on the move tends to i guess encourage the whole concept of prioritisation and improvisation in software development .... oh t-mobile keeps dropping me and customer service sucks. Nevertheless i will still put in my 5 hours today for WriteFree and if you remember i still have access to one of the 5 wifi networks that i can pick up on the 25th floor and so on

ok , now am 25 floors above seventh avenue and for some reason am picking up 5 AP's , and yes some are accesible, so i have 6 mbps connectivity via an unknown insecure entwork, i am not complaining but i will try to find the owner of the ip so that i can inform them that their network is open to whoever, if its internal , too bad. So i have net access, now i can work in my room

ok this blog is about Write Free, the open source note taking framework, so its probably not a good idea to rant about hostpots here , but the fact this project is not being done in one location and like every one i also have to have a real job at some point in the year so i have to travel, i really expect that i might miss my books and other artifacts that i may have at my desk, but i expect to be able to connect to resources and stuff like that ...oh well may be i am clueless

someone tell me am clueless about the broadband and hotspot thing since if am right then we have a big big problem, doesn't those two items determine the economic direction of the human race, i mean doesn't it seem like a critical aspect of what we will ultimately become, a species that communicates in real time and with unlimited bandwidth. Thats what i think, but then why are so few public places not going out of the way to set up few hotspots, i would figure any public place would find it an obvious smart move to set up a free hotspot. Not only do you attract a more aware if only afluent clientele with that capability and am sure it costs less for the average business to set up a hotspot than it takes to set up the music system that blasts hip hop into the unfortunate cistomers ears.
ummm now am sitting at the corner of 35th street and seventh avenue - at the starbucks which opens later than the one block up, i still haven't found a place in manahattan like paris on the platte in denver, and even paris closes at 2:00 am, something is very wrong with this lack of "internet in the air " picture. I am sure its related to the whole messed up telecoms industry situation. i feel like am part of an untapped , misunderstood opportunity. I miss houston and Barrett Canon who i personally think is a revolutionary on the scale of Ben Franklin. Based on my few experiences i think houston wireless is undoubtedly the most progressive and effective community wifi network promoters ever. They have focus and for that reason , most of houston is fairly covered with over 100 free nodes.
I am still trying to explore/assess NYC wireless and their famed 587 Locations, and 8990 Total Nodes. currently i have not found any one of those nodes and am in the middle of manhattan so am wondering whether nodedb is not the best way to make folks aware of hotspot locations or whether the specific communities should come up with a more get folks to use the AP's strategy. I guess most folks have understood Metcalfe but haven't yet figured out Reed's Law. The story now is not about doing networks, that's a given and thats really a lower level communal function. The tricks is building a more value based thing and communities do that. Its easy to link folks together, in fact me and all the folks having this 3 dollar mochas are a kind of network, but am not sure you can call us a community, there is little group forming here, though i confess i am sometimes by nature anti social , but i really would rather do digital communities than real life communities

and also according to Paul Thurrott

Tablet PCs Set to Soar
"Tablet PC sales only account for about 1 percent of the overall market for notebook computers, making them a niche market at best, but various trends and changes to the underlying platform will see sales surge, analysts say. The original generation of Tablet PC devices was hobbled by two huge problems: Poor performance and poor battery life, the latter of which is obviously a deadly sin for machines that are meant to be used untethered. Both of these problems will be solved by the Centrino platform, which combines Intel's Pentium-M processor with dedicated chipsets and wireless functionality, leading to excellent performance and stellar battery life. Another change involves the common-sense move away from slate designs--which target certain niche markets, but aren't viable for normal office use--toward the so-called convertible laptop, which can work like a normal notebook when needed, or be switched into slate mode for handwriting-based work. Market research firm IDC predicts that Tablet PCs will thus account for 20 percent of the notebook market by 2007"

am not sure whether the centrino will be the savior of this mode of computing, but i agree that battery times are ridiculous and though there are a bunch of promising ideas and trends in computing power management that are coming of age, i still think for some time the demands of the average mobile computa (computa is my term for a human using a computer) will exceed the ability to provide the kind of power experience that hand watches provide (when was the last time that you thought about you watch battery). The one single factor that will make all the difference will probably be the proliferation of "internet in the air", another of my terms that means hotspots. The fact that a place like New York has a minimal number of hotspots available the entire day, actually am not even sure that you can find a 24 hour hotspot location at all , i haven't found one. I continoulsy bashed Denver,saying how the telecoms infrastructure there was horrible, and now in New York city i see the same thinking....that might be the real reason untehered computing is failing and that might be the reason that the Tablet is languishing

nevertheless we exepect to write lots of this stuff since:
1. I hate the tethering that is part of desktop computing( am willing to forego the big display and the mess that is my desk for an ad hoc computing location- and while for some tasks my desk is the more optimized location, often i need to redce the baggage that comes with that location)
2. This is not just about location, its also about a new way of working and though i am typing this words i believe being able to use the almighty pen anywhere and got a bunch of things creates a bunch of opportunities for me that i would otherwise not have had
3 i vowed not to get keyboard related health problems
4. the smallest keyboards are at least 2 inches by 4 inches or something like that , you can write in the air and have that sent back to your virtual built into your glasses display or whatever
5. and its gores on and on

another rainy day in New York - means little development done since i mostly do hotspots and other off base development locations, its really very hard to do any development without some type of internet access. As a result, most of the development will be done tonight, i guess , without internet access

well i found Cosi locations in NY. I wonder if anyone has had any experience with them that they would like to talk about, If so, please post your comments at the WriteFree Site since am sure many folks who might want to contribute to the project may find that information handy. I am planning on checking one of them out tonight since borders wil close at 11:00 and am not planning on using expensive hotel ethernet.

weekend time for WriteFree is almost 50% of my time, there's going to be some work to do , but at least i can say for sure that some stuff will be done this weekend.
The sad thing is that there is little participation in the community. I admit that i feel responsible for the lack of participation since we haven't really come up with a broad enough spec or schedule for the same. As we really get to releases and other value items , there should be more activity, oh well i need the software. The only concern i have is that maybe a better investment in my time is towrite proprietary stuff. guess we wil see how that goes.

ok and it does not help that am doing this on the road most of the time. At least i can report to the folks that the tablet is a viable development platform. The only realistic configuration for development is the Motion M1300 or the Toshiba Portege 3500 Convertible Tablet PC which are both fairly expandable. Using any thing else is painful. I will do the specs for my on the road dev system later, right now they need to close the Borders on 32nd St and 2nd Ave in Manhattan and that was the dev location this evening....yes on the road you need some kind of broadband access...am doing t-mobile

ok and it does not help that am doing this on the road most of the time. At least i can report to the folks that the tablet is a viable development platform. The only realistic configuration for development is the Motion M1300 or the Toshiba Portégé 3500 Convertible Tablet PC which are both fairly expandable. Using any thing else is painful. I will do the specs for my on the road dev system later, right now they need to close the Borders on 32nd St and 2nd Ave in Manhattan and that was the dev location this evening....yes on ther road you need some kind of broadband access...am doing t-mobile

small change of plans, I expected to get about 10 hours per day for WriteFree work this coming week, Unfortunately another trip came up and thats only going to leave me with about 5 hours a day or less. I get some time during the weekend, and thats better than nothing. I guess thats not too good for WriteFree. However i will do my best to do good quality work that others can build on. Might be slower but will be done eventually... now let me put some work in the project so that i can have project relevant stuff to post on this blog