marc paradise

A while back I launched bbssh.org for the BBSSH project. That also included a dedicated blog — but the blogging software I chose had a lot of issues. (Particularly around not displaying or notifying of comments).

While I wasn’t able to get the posts transferred over, bbssh.org has been updated to start using the tried and true WordPress blog.

You can find it here – look for some exciting (to me) new updates about BBSSH this weekend:

http://bbssh.org/blog/

And of course if you’re a twitter fan, new blog posts and other info are posted to the project’s twitter feed:
http://twitter.com/bbssh

As you may have heard, RIM released a podcast app yesterday.   RIM has now released several apps that have already had commercial equivalents released into App World:

• Google talk/live chat/et al — IM+ and one or two others.
• Twitter -> UberTwitter and others.
• Podcast app -> Podcatcher

This is a worrisome trend as individuals and companies have devoted considerable time and resources to creating apps for sale in the RIM app store — only to be undercut with free apps released by RIM itself.  What’s to say that tomorrow, they’re not going to release an SSH client?  Or any of the other apps that make this platform great?

Competition is a good thing (frankly – the commercial offerings in all cases are better than what RIM has developed) but this is kind of like they’re saying, “Hey, thanks for contributing to our available Blackberry apps and helping to build a customer base.  We also really appreciate the great app ideas. Now f!@# you.”

It really has to give any new (or existing) BB app developer pause when considering whether this is a platform worth building on.

Windows and KDE (at least last I checked) both offer a “frequently used” menu in the Start menu (or whatever it’s called these days).   This menu shows you the items you launch most frequently, and is pretty convenient.

The only problem is that they both get it backwards.  As you use something more often, it migrates higher up the list — that is, further away from where your mouse starts out.  The newest items (least frequently used) on the list are the ones that are closest to your mouse from the start.

Wouldn’t it make sense to move the items you’re more likely to want to use closer to your mouse instead of further away?

Just a thought…

For those of you still following at this location, a couple of new blog posts have gone up at bbssh.org.  For one of them, I’d really appreciate your feedback:

http://bbssh.org/roller/bbssh/entry/information_gathering

Here’s the other, a preview of upcoming features in 1.1.9:

http://bbssh.org/roller/bbssh/entry/big_changes_in_next_release

Just a reminder to update your bookmarks to point to the new blog at http://bbssh.org/roller/bbssh; and to grab the new feed from the same place if you’re interested.

Of course you’re welcome to continue to monitor this site too – I expect to start discussing more general development topics that may not directly relate to BBSSH.

Many major enhancements and bug fixes in this release.  See our new blog home for details:

http://bbssh.org/roller/bbssh/entry/bbssh_1_1_8_alpha

For those who just want to get to the good stuff, you can snag the OTA download here:

http://bbssh.org/ota/