Month: August 2006

Using screen for remote interaction

Linux.com has an interesting article about Using screen for remote interaction. Since I do a lot of screen advocacy, and these particular features too, I thought I’d share the link to the article. Just in case, you know…

Screen is one of those tools that is hard to explain but pure genius once you see it in operation. The description from its official Web site doesn’t help much:

Screen is a full-screen window manager that multiplexes a physical terminal between several processes, typically interactive shells.

Basically, screen allows you to create virtual terminals which are not connected to your actual xterms or console screens. You can then disconnect from a screen session and reconnect from somewhere else while preserving your shell or other running processes.

Via Linux Weekly News.

17 Pithy Insights For Startup Founders

Here is another list of 17 Pithy Insights For Startup Founders. The ones I liked the most are

6. Eventually, your product will need to work and do something useful. No amount of marketing or strategy will get you around this.

and

11. Force yourself to write, as it will force you to think.

(blogging, wiki, email, IM, anything). And, of course,

13. The problem you solve should be ugly. The solution you build should be beautiful.

And this one

14. Even the most successful startup ideas had 100 reasons not to pursue them. There is no perfect idea.

which goes really well with that thing I just posted.

GMail – changing attitudes towards HTML email

So far I’ve read that one of GMail‘s goals is changing people’s attitude towards their email storage. With huge, and evergrowing, inbox sizes people don’t have to delete any messages anymore. They still can, if they wish so, but they don’t have to.

After using GMail for some time, I noticed that one of my other attitudes is changing. I’ve always been on the opposite side of HTML email lovers. And I still believe that HTML email is evil. But there is a but.

With GMail, all email is HTML. I mean you’re already in the browser, aren’t you? So, how does this affect things?

GMail rich content

GMail can be used to email yourself some pretty looking HTML emails. Things like lists, highlighted text (think: yellow marker), and links with descriptive captions instead of Really Long URLs ™ can really enrich your email experience. Notes, outlines, and shopping lists are among some really frequent content.

And the beauty of it is that with GMail you are always sure that it will display exactly as you wanted it, and that you won’t get complains like “Send me the text version of that”, granted that you only email yourself and other people who use GMail (except those psycho geeks who use GMail via POP access only, with a text-only mail client).

If used appropriately, this can make world a tiny bit better. And you know, I’m all for that.