[Brain dump]

I have lost count of how many times in the last 12 months Costa Rica have been experiencing problems with the international links.

Today we are experiencing slowness again, which makes me think about the risks of relying too much on online services like Gmail and 37 Signals products, just to mention a couple of them.

Web applications are really useful but at least for some of us in this world, we should really think about the risks of having too much important information online and find a way of accessing the data without being connected.

Gmail provides POP access to all your email which at least gives you an alternative that you could frequently use to download your emails to your computer, Yahoo requires a payed account to make that happen. In the case of more sophisticated applications like Basecamp, it could get a little more complicated.

A couple of years ago when I began playing with the idea of coding my own future, I thought about implementing a couple of applications for the web but then I thought a little more about it: if an application can be used locally without requiring online access it should be written in that way. Why force the risks, scaling and security nightmares and many other things present in online applications, just for the sake of it?

If an application can work offline, that should be the preferred mode.

Four months since my last post, time certainly is something we should pay attention to, because it just keeps moving whether we like it or not, whether we ignore it or just pretend it doesn't affect us.

A lot of things going on right now. I am looking for a new house, a few months ago my wife and I decided to end our marriage, not an easy thing to do but the end has come.

At my day job I am in the final stage before launching a new product, a web application providing access to the mobile platform in Costa Rica, targeting a specific need for communication of small and large companies.

In the Mac application front, I am working on a freeware application and will be talking a little more about it in the coming weeks. It will help me in my day job projects and hopefully will help other developers too.

The application right now is Tiger only, but once Leopard ships, it will be available only for the new feline.

Yes, I am alive but with too much work at my day job. I am at full throttle with a new project involving SMSs and I am developing the application using Python and the Twisted framework.

In fact, I am implementing the SMPP protocol with Twisted and at the same time implementing a library with Twisted for using Amazon S3 and Amazon Queue Service. I hope to release them as open source in the future.

I will resume work for my Mac project in a month after reaching a stable base code in my day job work.

I used to think about a problem using only paper and pencil like this:

Using Tinderbox, now I have a documented, searchable, "query friendly" way:

I can search all problems, look for all the solutions, mark problems as solved or non solved, mark problems that need research, all without sacrificing my "visual needs" in the process.

VoodooPad 3 is the new release from Flying Meat, three versions this time; Lite, Standard and Pro.

The Pro version has several features: document level encryption (opposed to page level encryption on the standard version), triggers, page meta data and page sharing via an internal web server.

Other great features: Palettes, Print to VoodooPad PDF Service,Tabs, "Recently Updated" and "Recently Viewed" lists ( shown as palettes )

You can check the complete list here.

All the new features are great and moves forward the application in terms of usability and value to the user but the one that really caught my eye since the beta was the page meta data.

Each page can have a set of key/value pairs defined by the user. Right now the feature is a little basic but for the users that needed this, it is a great addition. You can access/use the page meta data in three ways:

1. The Info Palette of the page:

2. Script Plugins

3. Triggers

Yes, the VoodooPad 3 Pro version has trigger support! ( There are 13 triggers )

You can associate one or more scripts ( a page that is a script ) to each trigger.

To expand the previous book example, you can write a plugin that sets the initial two meta keys when the user closes a page and the page category is "Books". Now this could be better with a "Page added to category" trigger, although it doesn't exist at this moment having this functionality already in the application could bring more triggers in the future.

One of the interesting things with this type of applications is that its value increases with its use over time, the more information inside of it with good classification features, the more useful it is for the user.

VoodooPad is a great application with a great price if you are not using it, give it a try!.