the finger-keyboard synapse - September 2004 Archives

September 2004

Anniversaries, Favorites and Releases (14:43) - The turn of the month from September to October is beginning to carry a lot of historical significance for BitWise. Today marks the release of BitWise 1.0.3, making BitWise the first and only cross-platform direct-to-IP encrypted voice chat. Don't worry, there are still many new trails to blaze, and we'll keep the "firsts" coming. I think September 30th, however, will be one of those special BitWise dates that I'll always remember. The days either side of September 30th also carry...

Routing Server quiet release, surprise new documentation (10:26) - Sometimes the best things go unheralded. Yesterday the BitWise Routing Server 1.0.3 was quietly released, preceding the release of the 1.0.3 client by a few days. Staggering the releases makes things easier here, letting us focus now on only the client release. The only major addition to the Routing Server since 1.0.2 is the ability to direct the UDP traffic for voice chats. Continuing with the additional documentation, various events spurred the creation of two unplanned new pages, one detailing...

Client calm, but a document and duty deluge (20:44) - I realized that there hasn't been much BitWise news either here or elsewhere since the last Beta release almost two weeks ago. This certainly doesn't mean that nothing is being worked on! The end of last week were spent working on some new documention, a total of four new documents. The new documents cover Voice chat (soon to be part of an official 1.0.3 release), Grouped Conversation View, Logging and Contact List Options. Hopefully at least someone will look at...

What's all this OxONet jazz anyway?--and some OxONet news (15:56) - As mentioned in my sidebar, one of my businesses is OxONet, a web hosting and design company now in its sixth year. I have been asked why I don't post much about it, and it's mostly because it's a pretty routine business by now; I doubt anyone wants to hear "I sent out OxONet invoices today" or "Some people from North Dakota opened an account today." Every once in a while, though, something exciting does happen, like today. A few...

Wardriving driving across the line? (22:59) - Wireless technology is hot these days, with more and more wireless devices appearing all the time. There's no denying that wireless is here to stay. My brother works from home two days per week, and I recently helped him set up a wireless router at his house. His company has a wireless usage policy even though they do not condone using wireless technology for work; because they recognize that they can't control or monitor wireless use in home offices they... | 7 Comments

What time does the 7 o'clock ferry leave? (22:47) - Need a good laugh? This site never gets old: Things People Said Other [relevant] news soon!... | 1 Comments

Longest running bug? (16:05) - "Have you really been typing for the past 10 minutes?" my friend Nick BWed me the other day. I am known for sending some lengthy messages from time to time, but I definitely had not been typing for 10 minutes straight. I had received isolated reports about people "stuck" in typing status according to BitWise, but this time I actually had a pretty good idea of what caused it. This bug has been around since grouped conversation view was introduced... | 3 Comments

Ridiculous magazine publishing cycles (13:33) - I'd just like to note how ridiculous it is that the November issue of PC Gamer arrived in my mailbox today. I don't have the time for games anymore, but I still like to read about them, that's close enough for me. :)...

I've been wxPromoted! (23:05) - Some of you know that BitWise uses the wxWidgets library to work some its cross-platform magic on Windows, Linux and OS X. We first started using wxWidgets for BitWise when BitWise was rewritten (that major effort began May 2003 and ended March 2004). One of the advantages of using an open-source collaborative library like wxWidgets is that when you find a small bug that affects you, you can take the initiative to fix it yourself, and then submit a patch... | 1 Comments

Humanity through a 17" rectangle (23:36) - It is undeniable that the Internet has opened avenues of communication that did not exist just 10 years ago. We now have the ability to "reach out and touch someone" half the world away with the touch of a few keys. Cameras and microphones allow us to see and hear people instantly. Or, for the true multitasker, text-based IM lets you communicate with multiple people all at the same time, none of them knowing that they don't have your full... | 8 Comments

BitWise in your language, every step of the way (17:27) - After some gentle prodding, I revisited the whole Internationalization issue with BitWise. For some time now, we have offered translations of the BitWise client in Spanish, French, German and Dutch (we'd love to have more!), but obtaining these translation files required navigating our English-only website. After some looking around, I found that I could not only present the entire setup program in other languages, but could even have the setup download your translation file automatically (if one exists for your... | 1 Comments

Nature Boy (22:21) - As many of you probably know, this weekend was Labor Day here in the US. For the first time in a many years, I actually participated in Labor Day this year by taking time off, which isn't always easy for the "self-employed" entrepreneur (or as a student not too many years ago). As much as I like my work, being away from it does wonders sometimes, especially when the time off takes you somewhere far outside of your normal environment....

Positive vibes at the end of the week (21:36) - One of the best parts of producing software is receiving feedback, especially the positive kind. What's sometimes even more interesting is where you find comments made about your software, and what features people find noteworthy. Even as the hits continue to increase, I still like to glance through the referrer logs and see what sites are sending us the most traffic. Today, there were several hits from a forum, and while references from forums are quite common, what made this...