Last month I had a [post][mypost] about [MacZOT](http://maczot.com) and their BlogZot offer to [AppZapper](http://appzapper.com/). Today they are doing it again with [BlogZot 2.0][bz], and this time it’s the collaborative text editor [SubEthaEdit from CodingMonkeys][sub] which is in the cheap stakes.
[mypost]: http://www.lindsve.net/2006/04/03/appzapper-offer-at-maczotcom/
[bz]: http://maczot.com/
[sub]: http://www.codingmonkeys.de/subethaedit/
Together MacZot and CodingMonkeys will award a total of $105,000 (!) in software licenses. That is huge, and I would recommend all of you Mac users to go to their sites and check out this great offer.
I have occasionally used this editor, and although I find it to be a good text editor it is the collaborative features which I find most appealing when it comes to this peace of software. To be able to do live collaborative editing together with your friends/colleagues is a definitely winner!
So what’s the catch? Nothing basically, all it takes is that enough bloggers out there blogs about this great promotion. So if you’re a blogger, I advise you to immediately check it out at and participate!
Update: I did get a free license for SubEthaEdit for this post. Whohoo! 
[tags]maczot, blogzot, subethaedit, codingmonkeys[/tags]
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Tagged Web
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Today I have updated my site to the newest release of [WordPress](http://www.wordpress.org). While I was at it I also did a reformat of the pages on this site, utilizing the [PHP Markdown](http://www.michelf.com/projects/php-markdown/) format. This makes it a lot easier to edit text since it provides a much more human readable text than pure html does.
I’ve also dropped using a dedicated blog editor after I installed the markdown plugin, since it is a lot easier to use [TextMate](http://www.macromates.com) in this process.
Yet another thing which I’ve added is the use of [Technorati](http://www.technorati.com) tags, which you can see below my posts. This publishes my posts to the technorati blog directory.
[tags]wordpress, markdown, textmate[/tags]
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Tagged Web
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There are currently numerous different solutions available for providing computer users with enhanced computer security. There is a problem with most of them though; They seem to only target the automated threats like computer viruses, spam, phishing, etc. Now enters a new player in town, called [CID Security](http://www.cidsecurity.com), which aims to be a major provider of:
1. Increased privacy, confidentiality and integrity
2. Increased computer stability and performance
3. Knowledge about computer security issues
The final point should be a big winner. Most computer users aren’t geeks. Period. How can they then know what to do regarding their own computer and information security? So far, the main provider of such information is the neighboorhood/family geek which delivers a set solution – “When dialog X appears, push button Y”. This solution won’t last, and that is why the ordinary computer user needs a way to easy learn about the different issues involved in computer and information security.
The first product to be released is called Basic Security, which aims to be a Computer Security 101 for ordinary people. There isn’t a lot of product related information on the web site yet, but that will be available in good time before the release.
[tags]Computer security, privacy, confidentiality, shredding, cryptology, backup[/tags]
The permission system in Mac OS X can at times be truly weird. Today, when I was going to update iScrobbler, I tried to do a plain replace of the application in the /Applications folder. My daily user is currently set as an administrator account, so that should be quite easy. When I dragged the application to the folder, Finder asked me if I wanted to replace the existing application and I confirmed this. Then I was told that I didn’t have sufficient permissions to complete this task. Since the previous version was installed with my ordinary admin account, I didn’t think that much of it.
The weird issue here is that I was allowed to delete the existing app by dragging it to the Trash, and then copy the new one to the application folder. Since my current account was not allowed to replace it, why was I allowed to delete it?
[tags]macosx, permissions[/tags]
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Tagged Apple
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I’ve been using TextMate as my text editor of choice for quite a while now, but I haven’t quite been able to go in detail why. Today I came across this review though, and it states the excellence of this text editor quite well. The thing that really made me go over to it though was the screencasts on the TextMate website.
TextMate’s rise to fame has been swift. It’s been hailed as the best text editor for Mac OS X by developers the world over. We’ll be contemplating why people love it and more importantly if it really deserves the praise.
If you’re on Mac OS X and do a lot of text editing (html, css, javascript, php, latex, plain tex, etc), I’ll recommend you to check out this editor.
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Tagged Apple
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Interesting papers related to my thesis work (This is mostly for my own reference):
Christian Schulte: «[Programming Constraint Services](http://web.it.kth.se/~schulte/paper.html?id=Schulte:PhD:2000)»:
This thesis presents design, application, implementation, and evaluation of computation spaces as abstractions for programming constraint services at a high level. Spaces are seamlessly integrated into a concurrent programming language and make constraint-based computations compatible with concurrency through encapsulation.
Spaces are applied to search and combinators as essential constraint services. State-of-the-art and new search engines such as visual interactive search and parallel search are covered. Search is expressive and concurrency-compatible by using copying rather than trailing. Search is space and time efficient by using recomputation. Composable combinators, also known as deep-guard combinators, stress the control facilities and concurrency integration of spaces.
The implementation of spaces comes as an orthogonal extension to the implementation of the underlying programming language. The resulting implementation is shown to be competitive with existing constraint programming systems.
Christian Schulte: «[Views and Iterators for Generic Constraint Implementations](http://web.it.kth.se/~schulte/paper.html?id=SchulteTack:CICLOPS:2005)»:
This paper introduces an architecture for generic constraint implementations based on variable views and range iterators. Views allow, for example, to scale, translate, and negate variables. The paper shows how to make constraint implementations generic and how to reuse a single generic implementation with different views for different constraints. Applications of views exemplify their usefulness and their potential for simplifying constraint implementations. We introduce domain operations compatible with views based on range iterators. The paper evaluates different implementation techniques for the presented architecture.
Christian Schulte: «[Speeding Up Constraint Propagation](http://web.it.kth.se/~schulte/paper.html?id=SchulteStuckey:CP:2004)»:
This paper presents a model and implementation techniques for speeding up constraint propagation. Two fundamental approaches to improving constraint propagation are explored: keeping track of which propagators are at fixpoint, and choosing which propagator to apply next. We show how idempotence reasoning and events help track fixpoints more accurately. We improve these methods by using them dynamically (taking into account current domains to improve accuracy). We define priority-based approaches to choosing a next propagator and show that dynamic priorities can improve propagation. We illustrate that the use of multiple propagators for the same constraint can be advantageous with priorities, and introduce staged propagators which combine the effects of multiple propagators with priorities for greater efficiency.
Jean-Xavier Rampon, et.al: «[Global Constraint Catalog](ftp://ftp.sics.se/pub/SICS-reports/Reports/SICS-T–2005-08–SE.pdf)» _(direct link to pdf)_
This report presents a catalog of global constraints where each constraint is explicitly described in terms of graph properties and/or automata. When available, it also presents some typical usage as well as some pointers to existing filtering algorithms.
AppZapper is a great little app to use for deleting applications from your mac, which I purchased a license for a couple of months ago.
From their website:
AppZapper is for people who want to confidently try new apps while knowing they can uninstall them easily. Drag one or more unwanted apps onto AppZapper and watch as it finds all the extra files and lets you delete them with a single click. A slick safety system remembers which apps you want to keep safe, and the log tracks all the files you’ve zapped. In one Zap you’ll understand it. In two you’ll fall in love. Within the five free Zaps, you’ll know you need to add AppZapper to your arsenal. Go ahead — try five free zaps and see AppZapper in action now.
I highly recommend this useful goodie, and macZOT.com is currently running an offer for this utility. The price will go down $0.05 for each blog entry about it, so if you blog – read this!
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Tagged Apple
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Kent Sutherland has released a new beta of Chax today, which provides a couple of great new features. I have now updated the Norwegian localization for this release and it can be downloaded here.
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Tagged Apple
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I have now released the final 1.7 version of my Norwegian weather widget: Værmelding.
Full changelog listed in the complete post
Update: Oops, the 1.7 release was uploaded with my internal debug mode on. This is fixed in 1.7.1, which is uploaded now.
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