Google implemented voice chat in Google Talk and packaged that implementation in a library called Jingle, which was then transformed into a proposed Jabber standard, XEP-0166. Note that Google’s libjingle is not an exact implementation of XEP-0166, it differs slightly in the way it initiates its sessions, but that’s just a minor inconvenience.

Jingle has been introduced back in 2005, and even three years later, while most messengers tried to incorporate it, most still don’t support it. That’s why I got excited when I read Ticket #34 on Pidgin’s Trac. The ticket includes a bunch of patches that link Pidgin with Farsight which already supports Google Talk and Jingle.

Now the ticket isn’t assigned to a milestone, so we won’t be seeing voice support in the next couple of Pidgin version, especially that this code is only a month old. But the ticket’s been there for a year, and somebody has decided to dedicate some time to it, and that’s always a good sign.

I’m glad that the Pidgin team decided not to re-invent the wheel, and use Farsight. Pidgin can now, without much effort, support proprietary protocols as soon as they are implemented in Farsight. Meanwhile, I can stick to Tapioca for when I absolutely need to hear a human voice.

I needed a portable Dokuwiki that I carry around on my USB stick. Not only carry-in-key-chain portable, but also cross-platform platform portable. Mac OS and most Linuxes come with PHP installed, so I can run my pocket wiki without fiddling with configuration files. The Windows version on the other hand, needs to include PHP and some extensions, which amount to about 5MB extra.

The details are explained in the README file which you’ll find in Nanostick’s package. Nanostick by itself only weighs 250KB; adding PHP and compressing it leaves us with 2.5MB.

Version 0.0.1 includes a copy of PHP 5.2.5 for convenience only. Any subsequent version will not have PHP included.

Let me know if you face any trouble with it, or if there’s anything I can do to improve it.

Here’s the source, and recompiled version linked against libcmt.lib instead of MSVCRT, so it will run on its own. Unfortunately it doubled in size, from 20KB to almost 57KB, I hope you don’t run into storage trouble.

Here’s what I’m so excited about: Even though security companies are growing like fungi in the Gulf, there isn’t much serious focus on enterprise security. The knowhow is largely imported, most of the available solutions are developed elsewhere, and it costs ridiculous amounts of money to simply close your front doors.

We’re not going into the saturated firewall, IPS/IDS market; these products cannot protect you by themselves without understanding how they work and their pros and cons. We want to make sure that data is never compromised, no matter how aggressive an attack is.

You might have heard of steganography, which is the science behind hiding information. There are many applications that can hide documents inside other documents on the computer (Steganos comes to mind), and they do a great job at it, but they are limited to digital steganography.

Here’s a simplification of how these applications work:

• Pick a binary file.
• Pick another binary file.
• Scramble second file’s bits and store among.
• Restore hidden file with password or key.

Here’s how we’re doing it:

• Pick a media file, an image for example.
• Pick a file to hide or a message to store.
• Hide file inside image.
• Print image on a $100 printer.
• Scan the image on the other receiver’s side.
• Restore hidden file with password or key.

So instead of manipulating the the bits of the media file itself, we’re manipulating the signals it sends and making them carry data inconceivable to the human senses, and sometimes even machine’s. The very same principle can work on other media files, the bigger and noisier, the better. Now we’ll be able to hide PDF files over traditional FM radio stations, or broadcast Picture-in-Picture TV channels quite literally.

I’m going to refrain from dropping some lousy April’s fool’s joke, I’ve never been a fan of “not” jokes; and unless yours is at least as good as finding water on mars, my advice is to refrain to.

The last three months, my Q1/2008, were dedicated to founding a start up. We’ve just got this little space in Dubai Airport Free Zone, a.k.a. DAFZA, and we’re going to deal mostly with IT security. We called it “The Kernel”, wish us luck.

Speaking of Dubai and IT, I’ve recently had a chance with a bunch of geeks at DemoCamp Dubai, an informal conference where four or five presenters show off their skills and projects for 15 minutes each. I believe the only other place where you’d find such a friendly crowd is at a rehab support group.

Now, to explain why Scatterism looks so plain: I’m still running WordPress 2.1, while 2.5 has been release just a few days ago. I’ve customized the database structure a little, especially that it needed to accommodate Ultimate Tag Warrior. I’m using Jotdown, which is a combination of Markdown, GeSHi, some footnote parsing code, and a bunch of preprocessing macros, all of which need some work to make sure they don’t break WordPress 2.5. In addition to all of this, my eyes are sore from looking at my current lights off/lights on theme, so I’ll stick to Simplr (thank you Scott) for a while until I redesign.

I wish I could speed things up a little bit, but Dubai is a time-eating monster, with long roads and traffic jams, and unlike every other full-time blogger, I’m neither full-time, nor am I working from home.

Thanks Q1 for helping me out. Thanks Q2, the funniest intro award goes to you. Thank you those who still have Scatterism on their feed readers.

You’ve set two of my friends free of their Dilbert’ese jobs.

You’ve made me cut down my feeds, my reads, and my emails.

You’ve been teaching me a lesson, and showing me new visions.

Goodbye 2007.

I bumped into AideRSS, a feed reader that ranks posts and stories by the number of conversations. The idea is simple: count the number of links from Technorati, del.icio.us and the likes, and convert it to a rank relative to the rest of the posts from the same blog.

It might not sound very exciting, until you hit that spot of 100+ posts a day, then you’ll appreciate having a tiny robot filtering your news and giving you the relevant stories.

I don’t think there’s a better time to learn, or relearn, Rails. It’s a 2.0 release, which should give you some peace of mind. It’s overhauled, so it feels less “hacky”. And it’s not as hyped anymore, so you can see it for what it is, a tool not a myth.

Take a look at David’s notes on the new release. Tell me if it’s too quite for a 2.0.

Early ’90s, I put my hands on a Macintosh Classic II. It was a striking departure from the bulky interface of Windows 3.0, the difficulty of command-line MS-DOS, and the funny-looking collection of hardware we called a PC.

But my Classic II never became a production computer. With its tiny screen, and its meagre memory, it remained a toy for me to play with every once in a while. I loved it, but it was useless.

Skipping the Color Classic, the PowerBook and the Quadra, my next Apple computer was a full-tower PowerMac, though I can’t quite remember the exact model number. It ran a familiar operating system, something very similar to my Classic II, only it ran much faster.

I believe I was lucky that the first Apple OS I tried was System 7, a polished, intuitive environment where I didn’t have to worry much about what’s going on underneath. Apple went out of their way to make sure System 7 hooked in new-comers, while still satisfied the loyal customers.

However, Intel introduced the Pentium, and a couple of years later, Microsoft introduced Windows 95¹. Apple’s System 7 suddenly felt out-dated. “It can’t multi-task”, my anti-Apple friends cried out, “It doesn’t run Office”, “It’s made by a fruit!”. But System 7 was still a more polished, more intuitive, and a better-performing system.

1994-1999 witnessed the decline of Apple’s market share. The PC was hungrily biting chunks of Apple’s market, manufacturers were growing like fungi, and Intel wasn’t standing behind Apple like it is today.

Yet Apple had a certain significance, especially for those of us who came to love the two smiling faces, and especially in the Middle East. You had “designer cred” if you owned a Mac. You were someone who knows what he’s doing.

That’s what Apple signified in the Middle East: Designers. The only reason anyone would buy a Mac was to run Photoshop. Not only because Photoshop ran faster, but also because it never crashed. Windows 95 couldn’t hold a candle to the stability of MacOS. But then again, we all know how it didn’t matter.

The next upgrade was a PowerMac G3. It was almost identical to its older sibling. The only difference aside from performance, was the new and colorful MacOS 8. OS 8 wasn’t as stable as its predecessor, not until several months after its release. But it did its job, and only hang when our Media100 did something complicated.

Quickly after that, we brought in a B&W G3, followed by a similar-looking G4, both of which ran MacOS 9. The last “modern” operating system². That G4 was the last Apple computer that I used on a daily basis. It is also the last PowerPC-only Apple computer.

It might be because Apple was too expensive in the Middle East, or because Apple’s support in the region was a cruel joke against loyal customers, or maybe because Apple’s later computers were just sloppy releases (Cube, Flower Power anyone?). Upgrading a G4 didn’t seem viable, when for only half the price, I could get the same performance. Windows 2000 was a surprisingly stable OS, while OS X was still an infant.

For as long as I can remember, Apple’s products always arrived late in our region. I could never get my hands on the latest an greatest releases. It was a blessing in disguise, I realized, but it still ticked me off that I couldn’t write a review, praise or criticize, or at the very least, form an opnion about Apple’s latest and greatest.

Now allow me to make a bold statement: If history is an indicator, then I suggest you never buy a first-generation Apple product. Never. Ever.

Apple has a history of perfecting³ products as they go. It’s a smart strategy for a company that means business, but early adopters always suffer undesirable consequences. Apple’s first iMacs were cheap Lego-like toys. Early iPods had battery problems. Intel MacBook Pros over-heated. First generation iPhones have personality issues.

This isn’t to say that Apples products are bad. On the contrary, I currently own a 5G iPod, and I wouldn’t replace it for any other music player. My next two computers are going to be a MacBook and a 24″ iMac. And even though I’m installing Linux on the latter, I can’t help but want Apple’s hardware.

But this particular “i” trend is starting to get on my nerves. Apple has always been the symbol of defiance. The company that revolutionized computing. “The computer for the rest of us.” they said, only that goal was set aside by soaring shares.

My experience with Apple, and my support for Free software, taught me to doubt Apple, to question their tactics every now and then, to look for better alternatives, even if along the way, I end up enraging some people. Brand loyalty is worthless, if the brand I’m supporting isn’t supporting me.

1. Yes, I have my dates straight. PowerMac was introduced in 1994, while Windows 95 had no weight until late ‘95, early ‘96. ↑

2. Mac OS X is based on BSD, and uses a hybrid kernel. Whereas MacOS 9 and older systems use a nanokernel, which is considered to be a more modern approach to kernel design. ↑

3. Perfecting that is, not enhancing. ↑

I can’t believe that this guy had the nerve to call this hair-brained conspiracy theory a valid counter weight to Daring Fireball’s rational analysis.

— Dan Hamilton, iPhone Bashing for Fun and Profit

I feel terrible about having to post a response on my blog, when it should be a comment on iGadget Blog.

I can’t say I’m completely surprised by the responses to my previous little post which links to a Mobile-review.com article. Nobody gets away with bashing Apple. Not even the middle man.

However, the reason I linked to such “drivel” is so I can read more responses like Dan’s. I’ll leave my share of experience with Apple to another post, but I’m not an Apple expert, and I would much rather read proper, not just emotional or sarcastic, responses to a conspiracy article.

I know for a fact that my readers are smart people, and they need no one to take them by the hand and show them the true path. They need no one to clarify that Mobile-review’s article, regardless of its validity, isn’t a response to a Daring Fireball article. I’m sure you all know where Daring Fireball ranks on my list.