Even if the Playbook hasn’t captured the hearts of reviewers, its future holds an element of techy curiosity: RIM says Android apps will run better on the Playbook than they will on Android devices. The Android App Player will act as a virtualization layer, allowing the Playbook to run Android apps; however, Android developers will first have to submit the apps to the Blackberry App World (as they say, he who controls the distribution channel…). The claimed increase in performance seems to be due to handwavium so far, but the App Player has been in testing mode for months, so I guess we’ll just have to trust them.

I’ve dipped my toes into the waters of the App World myself: my brand-new release, Living Fridge, is a simple app to prevent your fridge from being taken over by monstrous moldy creatures. Or it will help you stop wasting food… whichever is more important to you. There’s a bit more about it, as well as screenshots, on the Living Fridge app page.

I don’t know whether half of the settings flags are necessary or even correct, but what follows Worked for Me™, YMMV, etc, etc.

In the commands below, I’ll use 192.168.0.1 as the server housing the SQL Server instance, with a SQL Server user name of devuser, password devpass. I’m assuming SQL Server is set up to listen on its default port, 1433. Keep an eye out, because you’ll need to change these things to your own settings.

First, install unixODBC:
sudo apt-get install unixodbc unixodbc-dev
I also installed the following (perhaps necessary) packages:
sudo apt-get install tdsodbc php5-odbc
Then download, untar, compile, and install FreeTDS (warning, the URL may change):
cd /usr/local
wget http://ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/ALPHA/freetds/stable/freetds-stable.tgz
tar xvfz freetds-stable.tgz
cd freetds-0.82
./configure --enable-msdblib --with-tdsver=8.0 --with-unixodbc=/usr
make
make install
make clean

Attempt a connection over Telnet to your SQL Server instance:
telnet 192.168.0.1 1433

Use the tsql tool to test out the connection:
tsql -S 192.168.0.1 -U devuser

This should prompt you for the password, after which you can hope against hope to see this beautiful sign:
1>

If that worked, I recommend throwing a (coding) party. Next up is some configging. Open the FreeTDS config file.
/usr/local/etc/freetds.conf

Add the following entry to the bottom of the file. We’re setting up a datasource name (DSN) called ‘MSSQL’.
[MSSQL]
host = 192.168.0.1
port = 1433
tds version = 8.0

Now open the ODBC configuration file:
/usr/local/etc/odbcinst.ini

And add the following MSSQL driver entry (FreeTDS) at the end:
[FreeTDS]
Description = FreeTDS driver
Driver = /usr/local/lib/libtdsodbc.so
Setup=/usr/lib/odbc/libtdsS.so
FileUsage = 1
UsageCount = 1

Then, finally, set up the DSN within ODBC in the odbc.ini file here
/usr/local/etc/odbc.ini
By adding this bit to the file:
[MSSQL]
Description = MS SQL Server
Driver = /usr/local/lib/libtdsodbc.so
Server = 192.168.2.3
UID = devuser
PWD = devpass
ReadOnly = No
Port = 1433

Test out the connection using the isql tool:
isql -v MSSQL devuser 'devpass'
If you see “Connected!” you’re golden, congratulations! If not, I’m truly sorry; see below where there are some resources that might help.

Now restart Apache and test it from PHP using ‘MSSQL’ as the DSN. If something doesn’t work, you might try installing any or all of these packages:
mdbtools libmdbodbc libmdbtools mdbtools-gmdb

Here are some other resources that were helpful to me through this disastrous journey.

• Nice step-by-step at LinuxJournal
• Sample installation (in a bug report!)
• Accessing Microsoft SQL Server from PHP (I found this after I was done, I wish I had earlier! He has luck getting it running simply by installing packages, which wouldn’t ever work for me.)

We could say that Google+ and email are merely different interfaces to the same core features. Email is an efficient way to get an overview of all of your active or recent conversations, since it hides most of the content. Google+, on the other hand, splays it all out in front of you, which makes access to threads from further in the past more difficult, but makes interacting with recent content much easier.

Flattened-email products, which seem to be on the rise, tend to focus on the now, and less so on the ease of finding a conversation from the past, or storing it for reference. These problems will need to be dealt with quickly, or flattened-email will end up having usability problems that are different than, but equally maddening as, those that email has today.

These affordances not only enable or discourage communication in each area of the site, they also help shape the more “fluffy bits” of writing, from the length of content to its mood – how playfully, introspectively, or authoritatively one speaks.

And these subtle affordances are what takes longer to grok. This explains why it takes a mere five minutes to use every feature of Google Plus, while the great technologists of our day have spent days “playing around” within the network – and we must use a kiddish phrase, because we don’t have the words to describe the type of familiarity we gain from sustained usage of a website, rather than quick perusal.

And so, welcome to the world of interaction design. One wonders why those roles are so hard to describe comprehensively – it’s because their raw materials are, instead of concrete and steel, hints and hooks into the subconscious.

Sure, to many, the only apparent business of the UX professional is in building bridges out of pixels. But their real challenge is building those bridges in such a way that the people driving can’t help but to buckle their seatbelt, or tune in to FM 90.1, or start craving ice cream.

• LinkedIn: Arial 13px
• Flickr: Arial 13px
• PayPal: Arial 12px
• Microsoft: Tahoma, Verdana 11px
• IMDb: Verdana, Arial 13px
• BBC: Arial 12px
• WordPress: Arial 14px
• Facebook: Lucida Grande, Tahoma, Verdana, Arial 11px

The Problem

Even though the laptop could see the wireless hotspot, when you entered the security code on the back of the Fivespot, it gave a ‘security code mismatch’ every time — even though other devices could connect to the Fivespot network just fine, and this laptop could connect to other wireless networks just fine. Adding to the peculiarity, if connected via USB to the laptop using the WWAN connection, it worked just fine.

The Workaround

(The tech professional version: Connect to the WiFi hotspot on another computer. Visit 192.168.0.1 with ‘admin’ as the password and change the encryption mode to WEP. Enter a passcode, then apply. Restart the Fivespot. Connect from your device using the passcode.)

You’ll need a different computer that can successfully connect to the WiFi hotspot. I used another laptop for this, but it could be anything with a full browser — iPad, Blackberry, just whatever will connect. Go ahead and connect to the Verizon AC30 network on that device.

Type 192.168.0.1 into your browser. When it asks you for a password, type ‘admin’, just like the username. Click Basic Setup at the top. On the drop-down for Encryption Mode, change it to WEP, then make up a password to fill in to Network Key 1. Click Next, then Apply. You can then close that page. Note that while using WEP mode means your network will not be open, it is not really that secure.

Next, to get the hotspot to show up correctly, I had to restart the Fivespot. Once the Verizon AC30 network shows up on your (formerly nonworking) laptop, connect and use your chosen Network Key as the password when it prompts you.

According to a very helpful Verizon employee who knew the workaround, they know about the issue, and they’re collecting details to be able to issue a firmware update to the Fivespot. Hopefully this will come soon.

From your 65 subscriptions, over the last 30 days you read 1,255 items, clicked 166 items, starred 3 items, shared 1 items, and emailed 0 items. Since November 22, 2006 you have read a total of 16,742 items.

The ’2006′ part of it makes the numbers seem off… since at the stated rate of consumption, I should have read more like 85,000 items. I didn’t pick up serious Google Reader usage until a couple years ago. I’m clearly not much of a share-er, but that’s mostly because it feels awkward sharing with all of my followers things that me and probably two other people would find interesting.