empty of what

Image by jblyberg via Flickr

Recently I had the need to send alerts to my iPhone from my FileMaker system.  I started using Twitter, and while that works ok, the alerts would get lost in my twitter stream. I needed something that would make different sounds based on what kind of alert was coming in. 

I found a super simple solution. And it was almost free!

I have been wanting to get Aegir up and running

on the latest ubuntu server. I finally got a chance to do it this weekend. Aegir is hosting platform for drupal. and ubuntu is my favorite linux distro. 

recently I was asked by another FileMaker Developer how to set up a Script Trigger to run when the Enter Key is pressed.  Here is screencast and a sample file showing how it is done.  You can download the file at the bottom of the post.

So I finally got Google Wave. ( Sorry all my invites are accounted for ). I was very excited. I couldn't wait to try it out.

I opened it up and... well... er... nothing! It is like a huge beautiful meeting room full of cool tools to help you interact with other people. The only problem is there is nobody else there to interact with. Or at least nobody I can find. It's like a massive echo chamber, except quieter. Hopefully this will improve as my invitees join up.

It is a nice blending of email, chat and docs functionality. And I am sure that it will grow in usefulness as more extensions are made available. But honestly, and as much as I hate email, I doubt google wave will kill it off anytime soon.

I am trying to remember that google wave is a platform, or a service, not a product per se. And I shouldn't expect to much from the first attempts to build useful stuff on it, but if I am being honest, I have to say that my first experience has been underwhelming. Perhaps I lack the vision.

sad panda!

I haven't written much about FileMaker lately, and I should, since it is still the most useful tool I have in my arsenal. I live in it almost every day. Together with a host of other technologies FileMaker is proving itself to be an extremely awesome platform to build a startup on. 

At DevCons past, Rich Columbre used to give a talk called something like "FileMaker at the Center". This is my version of that talk and I call it "FileMaker et al". Let me start with a little background information.