23
Feb 10

Gnotero

Last week, I talked about Zotero, a bibliographic reference management Firefox extension. I forgot to mention that, for those using Linux, there is a quite handy companion to Zotero: Gnotero.

Gnotero screeenshot

Gnotero screeenshot (from the official website)

Gnotero is a simple application which will lie on your taskbar's notification area and allow you to easily perform simple searches on your bibliographical database and open the respective associated fulltext PDF files. Very useful when, for some reason (such as productivity) you don't want to open your Firefox web browser.


18
Feb 10

Zotero 2.0 is out

After a beta phase and some release candidates, the final release of Zotero 2.0 is out. Zotero is a free bibliographic reference manager software, fully integrated as a Firefox extension. Now that bibliographic research is not about spending days in libraries skimming through journals and conference proceedings, it makes perfect search to have reference management capabilities hand-in-hand with the web browsing experience through which we find papers.

Zotero makes it easy to keep and organize references as you go, by having several so-called translators — which, simply put, enable one-click saving of a paper's metadata from several online sources. Sadly, due to a very recent upgrade, the translator for my main source (IEEE Xplore) is currently broken, but the Zotero developers are aware of this and should correct the translator soon. If you have immediate access to the fulltext PDF of the paper and you configure Zotero appropriately, the PDF can be automatically downloaded and associated with the bibliographic entry in your Zotero library.

Another interesting feature of Zotero, which is new to 2.0 (not so new for those who have been using the 2.0 beta/release candidate versions) is library synchronization — including any PDF files you may have associated with your entries. For this purpose, Zotero offers a storage space of 100MB, for free; paid options start at US$20/year for 1GB. Thanks to that storage space, you can keep the whole of your library updated in your multiple working computers (like for instance, your lab/office computer and your laptop). The full power becomes obvious when it is the case you resort to an online source (IEEE Xplore, Springer, etc.) for which your institution has a subscription or other kind of arrangement which allows you free access to their libraries from your institution's network (but not at your home Internet connection); you save the item (fulltext included) while at your institution, synchronize, and then you can access that document in whichever computer you have synchronizing with your Zotero library.

Zotero also has a very complete capability of exporting items to the citation format of your preference or particular need. Personally, I don't use this to its full extent, I prefer exporting references to BibTeX and let the journal/conference LaTeX template take care of the citation format.

To conclude, it is also worth noting that Zotero has some social networking functionality, such as creating a profile associated with your library, making your library public, and following/being followed by other Zotero users. At a first sight, I would say that this is not as strong a feature as in another similar solution, Mendeley — which works as a standalone application and didn't quite get my fancy.

On a side note, the new IEEE Xplore is very pleasing to the eye and whatnot, but it still does not get BibTeX right. Humpf.


10
Feb 10

How I got sick of Buzz in less than 1 hour

So, this is my sub-1-hour experience with Google Buzz.

Take the blue pill

I access Gmail, and get notified that I was endowed with the privilege of using Google Buzz. This endowment came in the form of a huge blue button (sort of pill-shaped) saying something like "Yes mommy, I want Buzz", with a little link on the side which said (and now I quote) "Nah, just take me to my inbox". So far so good, I'm a geek and I don't like not trying stuff — unlike the horde of pundits who enjoy bashing what they never used. The result is immediately becoming a follower of a gazillion people who live in my Contacts simply because at some time Gmail would add there anyone with whom I happened to exchange more than one e-mail.

E-mail-like pressure

The next present is having a new Inbox. A new "bold-with-a-number-between-brackets" monster nagging me, but with unimportant stuff — some of which, by the way, I already get on Google Reader. Talk about evolution: Gmail gives me the cutting edge technology to send Bacn (social network notifications, newsletters, mailing list digests and reminders) out of my sight, and yet I now have a new top-billed pain in the ass telling me (with near-e-mail urgency) that someone thought it would be nice to share the latest fail or lolcat with the rest of the world, regardless of whether they subscribe to that specific contents. Well, if/when I want to submit myself to that kind of content overflow, I'll go check my items on Google Reader, thank you, I don't need an inbox sidekick.

But, lo and behold, Gmail also gives me the (not obvious) ability to get that "Buzz (2)" thing out of my way: just drag it to below the labels.

“You can run, but you cannot hide”

So this was how it went: Buzz would stay put, people would share things, but I wouldn't mind it unless I really were in the mood of explicitly and deliberately go and check what shook. And then something landed on my inbox, and my world crumbled.

I had posted a buzz to test the service, and now someone had commented it. And so, to let me know, my own buzz takes a quantum leap and lands in my Inbox. Not on the Inbox-like Buzz icon: my friggin' email Inbox! So there goes the "Buzz will be here quiet and still, and I'll just check out now and then to see if this is worth it" experience. Once again: monkey evolved to man, man evolved to mindless e-mail consumer, mindless e-mail consumer evolved to e-mail consumer who makes Bacn skip the Inbox, and then Buzz came along and zarked it all up. What's best? The only option Buzz gives you is to "mute" a buzz — mute one buzz, not the "I don't want comments to any of my buzzes to end up in my Inbox" kind of mute — and the filter rules can't be fit to filter this, Bacn style turns out you can use the non-obvious fact that Buzz thingies are automatically assigned the hidden, reserved label "buzz" (so you can filter by criterion label:bacn).

Turns out, I didn't even have the time to think if this was a showstopper….

“You know, even the mob doesn't go after your family.”
Bill Maher

…because suddenly my girlfriend asks me on the Gmail chat: "Who is [let's say] John Doe?"

Not just any John Doe, but the John Doe that commented on my buzz, who she does not, by any chance, know (let alone follow). Kind of guessing what was happened, I asked why she was asking who that specific person is, and voilà: the kind Buzz icon notified her that someone she doesn't know nor care about commented on a buzz from someone she follows. This is neat (not!), since it means that, when you follow someone, it means you are also implictly following the opinion of whoever reads what they share. In other words, at the extreme, without a single flick of the wrist, you are potentially following the whole world — and this is a hell of a heaven's gate for spammers.

So this had it for me.

Gag'em and bag'em (or Thanks, but no thanks)

Since there is no huge blue (or, for that case, any kind of) button to simply turn Buzz off, I instantly (wait for it) unfollowed the 30-ish people I was following (without even the faintest action from my side, if you remember well), and disabled the connection between Google Reader and Buzz (so that, when I share something on Google Reader, it isn't shared on Buzz) — let's hope that is enough to not have random comments show up in my Inbox. No more Google Buzz for me, then, i would say that I'll leave it at least until I hear that it has massively changed, but I don't find that likely. I think I'll stick to Twitter and a pre-Buzz Google Reader. And good old Gmail, which never let me down, and is now at risk of having its user experience significantly ruined by this half-assed attempt at a social-thingy-something by Google.

EDIT: Just when I think this over, I head to Google Reader and find out that unfollowing people from Buzz means also unfollowing them from Google Reader…

EDIT 2: There is a "Turn off Buzz" link in the Gmail footer. Thanks Pedro Santos.


18
Jan 10

BlackBerry gripes

I have recently become a BlackBerry user (more specifically, a Curve 8520). I got easily accustomed to the interface and the whole concept (I was previously a Nokia S60 user) and, in no time, was fully taking advantage of the capabilities of both the platform and the associated service: e-mail synchronization, BlackBerry Messenger, integration with social networks (keyword here: integration; of course I could use Twitter on a Nokia S60 phone, but it was never an integrated experience).

Right now, there are only two minor gripes I have towards what I think is mostly the software's fault — and since my model currently sports only the 4.6 version of the BlackBerry OS, it is possible that some of this has been solved for 5.0 (if anyone knows, please say so in the comments).

  1. SMS timestamp: If I receive a message while my phone is off, let's say during the night, it gets delivered in the morning a while after I turn it back on. Thing is: the timestamp is that of when the message is delivered (nothing new here, I've seen phones do this), and there is no way of knowing at what time the message was sent. Perfect implementation for this would be allowing to choose which time is displayed on the message list, and allowing to see both times in some sort of "Message properties/details" screen.
  2. Replying from a different address: Let's say I have 2 e-mail addresses (mailboxes) configured on my BlackBerry: bob@someisp.com (Personal) and bob@examplecompany.com (Work). For whatever reason, a work e-mail ends up on the personal mailbox (bad judgement from sender, tricky mail forwarding strategy from myself, whatever), and I want to reply to it using my work address. I can't. I can either create a new message (having to copy and paste (1) the subject and (2) the sender-now-recipient address) or, as I read in some fora, forward it (having to (1) edit the subject to remove the "Fwd:" prefix or replace it with "Re:" and (2) copy and paste the sender-now-recipient address), in which cases I can select the mailbox I want to send the e-mail from.

As I said, if you use a model with Blackberry OS 5.0 (or happen to be test driving the leaked OS 5.0 for Curve 8520 ;) ), please have your say on how these issues are dealt with now.

P.S.: Yes, this blog's in English now.


21
Oct 09

Apple and the Fail Whale

Segundo a Isa, “A Apple dá um peido, os Fanboys vêm-se!”. Mas não só. A julgar pelo curto invervalo de tempo decorrido entre os primeiros tweets de pessoal de queixo caído por causa do Magic Mouse e uma frequência marcadamente maior de 'fail whales', diria que lançar produtos Apple novos é um dos DDoS mais eficazes contra o Twitter.


27
Mar 09

Adobe AIR em Fedora 10 x86_64

Para referência própria e alheia, eis uma receita simples e condensada de como instalar, com sucesso, o ambiente de execução Adobe AIR na versão 64-bits do Fedora 10:

  1. Descarregar o instalador no site oficial do Adobe AIR (AdobeAIRInstaller.bin).
  2. Num terminal, digitar o seguinte comando (como root) para instalar as bibliotecas de 32-bits das quais o AIR depende:
    yum install gtk2-devel.i386 nss.i386 libxml2-devel.i386 \
    libxslt.i386 gnome-keyring.i386 rpm-devel.i386
  3. Ainda no terminal, e também como root, na directoria para onde foi descarregado o instalador, digitar os seguintes dois comandos:
    chmod +x ./AdobeAIRInstaller.bin
    ./AdobeAIRInstaller.bin

E está feito!


11
Mar 09

AFP e a Internet sem downloads

A tirada mais risível que me lembro, sobre a questão da pirataria de música:

(…)

A proposta de vedar o acesso à Internet a quem pratique pirataria consiste numa “solução faseada” que passa “não pelo corte total de Internet mas sim pela proibição de fazer ‘downloads’”, segundo Vera Castanheira, directora executiva da AGECOP, associação para gestão de Cópia Privada, uma das associações de direitos de autor representada no MAPiNET. A iniciativa, tornada pública a semana passada, encontra-se de momento numa "fase muito embrionária", reconhece a responsável. Entre os restantes membros do MAPiNET encontram-se a Associação do Comércio Audiovisual de Portugal, a SPA – Sociedade Portuguesa de Autores e a Associação Portuguesa de Imprensa, entre outros.

(…)

— Público, Presidente da Associação Fonográfica Portuguesa apoia proposta de corte de Internet a quem pratique pirataria

Isto só pode ser mesmo uma tentativa de assustar o Zé-Ninguém, que saca umas músicas e não percebe nada de computadores. Senão, expliquem-me lá como é que se continua a ter acesso à Internet, mas não se podem fazer downloads? Tanto quanto sei, ver uma qualquer página é, tecnicamente, uma sucessão de pequenos uploads e (possivelmente maiores) downloads


08
Jan 09

Figuras em PDF

Mais como nota para mim próprio, eis a maneira certeira de cortar figuras em PDF (para ficarem em PDF na mesma, mas só com o desenho, e não uma página A4 com o desenho lá no meio) em Linux, via mailing list TeX on Mac OS X:

(…) (i) convert the PDF to EPS by applying pdf2ps, (ii) sanitize
the EPS by applying eps2eps, (iii) convert the sanitized EPS to PDF by
applying epstopdf.


12
Nov 08

Practical attacks against WEP and WPA

Practical attacks against WEP and WPA

Este documento descreve em pormenor a forma de quebrar os protocolos WPA (uma norma outrora considerada segura) e TKIP.


03
Nov 08

OS Fanaticism

Talk to me about your creations, not the floor you were standing on when you made them.

Travors