Do you know that feeling of being completely absorbed by what you are doing? Being on a roll, concentrating so hard that you are no longer aware of your surroundings. Then (part of) the job is done and you kind of wake up from this trance, becoming more aware of your surroundings, realizing that 3-4 hours have passed, and suddenly feeling the pressure in your bladder. Over the years, has it become easier or more difficult for you to enter this zone? Browsers with 5 open tabs, Twitter, Facebook, e-mail, word processor, spreadsheet, Skype, Google Talk, Yahoo! or Live messenger, … When was the last time you have experienced this trance like productive state? I am experiencing it now.

Ommwriter

Ommwriter

In the words of the creators: “Ommwriter is a humble attempt to recapture what technology has snatched away from us today: our capacity to concentrate.”
Ommwriter is quite a unique text editor for Mac OS X in the way that it’s aim is at helping you to keep focused on your writing and getting things done. I would indeed file this text editor under GTD (Getting Things Done).

How does Ommwriter create this experience?

• Full-screen text editing. Once activated, Ommwriter becomes the dominant application on your Mac: full-screen, blocking all other applications from view and blocking all notifications.
• Ambient instrumental music that tends to reduce other sounds to background noise, especially with your headphones on. In the current version 7 tunes are available, some with nature sounds like birdsong, crickets and waves. The music can be turned off.
• Keyboard sounds. There are 7 different keyboard sounds: pebbles, water drops, … The keyboard sounds can also be turned off.
• Background. There are 3 different backgrounds to choose from: white, some kind of fabric pattern, and the default one a misty, snow covered field with some lonely looking trees.
• Minimalistic. When you are typing the only thing you see is your text; no buttons, no menus, no toolbars, and no other windows.
• Focus on content. The only thing you can do with Ommwriter is create content. You cannot do any layout; no changing fonts or colors, no graphics, … No messing about, the layout is for later.

Ommwriter menu

When you move the mouse a minimalistic menu appears on the upper right corner where you can:

• switch fonts between serif, sans-serif and script
• change the fontsize from default to large and larger
• change the background
• change the music
• change the keyboard sounds
• open and save files

Moving the mouse also displays the word count. You can change the width and height of the text area. And that’s it.

Drawbacks

• It is (currently) only available for Mac OS X.
• If you don’t like ambient, instrumental music this might not be your cup of tea, but you can turn the sound off.
• If you are a multitasking adrenaline junkie, switching to Ommwriter might feel like going cold turkey.
• If you are writing an article for which you still have to do research and you have a several other windows open (browser, email, PDF viewer, …) you are better of using another text editor. Ommwriter dominates your screen so you have to minimize and afterwards maximize it again every time you want to consult information in another window. A dual monitor setup provides a way around this limitation, because the program only blocks the main screen. You can scroll using the scroll-wheel in windows displayed on the second monitor, but as soon as you click Ommwriter gets minimized.

Conclusion

If you own a Mac (Mac OS X 10.5 or higher) and you write a lot, whether you are a scriptwriter, blogger, journalist, or poet, you should definitely give Ommwriter a try. It provides a unique experience and maybe it will help for you getting things done.
The difference between the common multitasking approach and using Ommwriter is that with the former you look productive and with the latter you are productive.
Did I mention that it is free. No more excuses. Download it. Now.

Resources

• Ommwriter
• YouTube video by 4nitsirk

Just as I was finishing my review of the beta version of Zend Server CE, Zend proudly announced the release of Zend Server and Zend Server Community Edition (CE). So I had to start all over again with a fresh installation of Zend Server CE 4.0.1. I was pleased to see that they fixed some of the quirks and bugs I had encountered in the beta version, but oddly enough they introduced some new ones too.

Zend has made quite a lot of noise about their latest products, namely Zend Server and Zend Server CE (Community Edition) and I felt tempted to try it out for myself.
According to Zend, the Zend Server Community Edition (CE) is a free Web Application Server that is simple to install and easy to use. Well, you are about to find out, if you continue reading. It is intended as a community-supported product via the Zend support forums, and updates will be made available periodically. Still according to Zend, the Zend Server CE should be ideal for developing and running non-critical PHP applications. Replace free with commercial, non-critical with business-critical and add some extra features in the mix and you have the Zend Server. Since I do not need a commercial webserver I decided to try out the community edition.

Ubuntu server

At home I usually tinker with virtual Ubuntu servers, so I installed a basic virtual Ubuntu server (8.04 LTS) with OpenSSH server as the only extra software package, no LAMP.  I already posted an article on how to install a virtual Ubuntu server on Mac OS X using VirtualBox, so I will not repeat it here. I christened this server zsce and assigned the static IP-address 192.168.1.83 to it. I didn’t bother installing the linux guest additions for VirtualBox.

Zend Server CE doesn’t install a DBMS and the manual doesn’t mention it either, but I thought it made sense to install MySQL before attempting to install Zend Server CE.

sudo aptitude install mysql-server mysql-client

You will be prompted to provide a root password for MySQL.

And now …

Installing Zend Server CE

I used the DEB installation method for installing Zend Server CE using aptitude. Installing on a Ubuntu server means using the command line only.

First you will have to add a repository to be able to download the Zend Server CE

sudo vi /etc/apt/sources.list

Add the following lines to the file:

# Zend Server CE
deb http://repos.zend.com/deb/ce ce non-free

Add Zend’s repository public key. If you did not use the sudo -s command earlier, like mentioned in the manual, you will get the following error:

johan@zsce:~$ sudo wget http://repos.zend.com/deb/zend.key -O- |apt-key add -
--10:31:23--  http://repos.zend.com/deb/zend.key
=> `-'
Resolving repos.zend.com... 93.188.130.102
Connecting to repos.zend.com|93.188.130.102|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 1,673 (1.6K) [text/plain]

100%[========================================================>] 1,673         --.--K/s

10:31:24 (441.22 KB/s) - `-' saved [1673/1673]

gpg: no writable keyring found: eof
gpg: error reading `-': general error
gpg: import from `-' failed: general error

Lesson learned: follow the manual to the letter or place the sudo command before the apt-key command.

johan@zsce:~$ wget http://repos.zend.com/deb/zend.key -O- | sudo apt-key add -
--10:32:41--  http://repos.zend.com/deb/zend.key
=> `-'
Resolving repos.zend.com... 93.188.130.102
Connecting to repos.zend.com|93.188.130.102|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 1,673 (1.6K) [text/plain]

100%[========================================================>] 1,673         --.--K/s

10:32:41 (104.95 KB/s) - `-' saved [1673/1673]

To follow the manual more closely I now ran the sudo -s command, which makes me root.

johan@zsce:~$ sudo -s
[sudo] password for johan:
root@zsce:~#

Update the package repository info.

aptitude update

Install Zend Server CE. I copied most of the installation messages so you can see which packages are installed with Zend Server CE.

root@zsce:~# aptitude install zend-ce
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
...
The following NEW packages will be installed:
apache2-mpm-prefork apache2-utils apache2.2-common libaio1 libapache2-mod-php5-zend-ce
libapr1 libaprutil1 libframework1-zend-ce libicu36 libmcrypt4 libmhash2 liboci-zend
libpng12-0 libpng3 libpq4 libpq5 libsqlite0 lighttpd-zend-ce openssl php-bcmath-zend-ce
php-bz2-zend-ce php-calendar-zend-ce php-ctype-zend-ce php-curl-zend-ce
php-data-cache-zend-ce php-debugger-zend-ce php-dev-zend-ce php-exif-zend-ce php-fcgi-zend-ce
php-ftp-zend-ce php-gd-zend-ce php-gettext-zend-ce php-imap-zend-ce php-intl-zend-ce
php-json-zend-ce php-ldap-zend-ce php-mcrypt-zend-ce php-mhash-zend-ce php-mime-magic-zend-ce
php-mysql-zend-ce php-mysqli-zend-ce php-oci8-zend-ce php-optimizer-plus-zend-ce
php-pdo-mysql-zend-ce php-pdo-oci-zend-ce php-pdo-pgsql-zend-ce php-pgsql-zend-ce
php-posix-zend-ce php-soap-zend-ce php-sockets-zend-ce php-sqlite-zend-ce php-tidy-zend-ce
php-tokenizer-zend-ce php-xmlreader-zend-ce php-xmlwriter-zend-ce php-xsl-zend-ce
php-zem-zend-ce php-zendutils-zend-ce php-zip-zend-ce php5-common-extensions-zend-ce sqlite
zend-base-ce zend-ce zend-ce-doc zend-extensions-ce zend-framework-ce zend-gui-ce
0 packages upgraded, 67 newly installed, 0 to remove and 10 not upgraded.
Need to get 48.5MB of archives. After unpacking 179MB will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?] Y
...

This can take a while depending on your connection.

...
Setting up sqlite (2.8.17-4build1) ...
Setting up zend-extensions-ce (4.0.0-1+b60) ...
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of zend-gui-ce:
zend-gui-ce depends on lighttpd-zend-ce; however:
Package lighttpd-zend-ce is not configured yet.
zend-gui-ce depends on php-fcgi-zend-ce; however:
Package php-fcgi-zend-ce is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing zend-gui-ce (--configure):
dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Setting up zend-framework-ce (1.7.8+b34) ...
Setting up zend-ce-doc (4.0.10+b20) ...
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of zend-ce:
zend-ce depends on zend-gui-ce; however:
Package zend-gui-ce is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing zend-ce (--configure):
dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Processing triggers for libc6 ...
ldconfig deferred processing now taking place
Errors were encountered while processing:
lighttpd-zend-ce
php-fcgi-zend-ce
zend-gui-ce
zend-ce
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
A package failed to install.  Trying to recover:
Setting up lighttpd-zend-ce (1.4.18-1+b56) ...

Setting up php-fcgi-zend-ce (5.2.9+b36) ...
Setting up zend-gui-ce (4.0.16+b150) ...
Site zendserver_gui.conf installed; run /etc/init.d/apache2 reload to enable.
* Reloading web server config apache2

Setting up zend-ce (4.0.0-1+b60) ...
* Stopping web server apache2
apache2: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using 127.0.1.1 for ServerName
httpd (no pid file) not running
...done.
Starting ZendServer 4.0.0 ..

apache2: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using 127.0.1.1 for ServerName
spawn-fcgi.c.206: child spawned successfully: PID: 7700
Starting ZendServer GUI [Lighttpd] [OK]
[08.04.2009 10:44:59 SYSTEM] watchdog for lighttpd is running.
[08.04.2009 10:44:59 SYSTEM] lighttpd is running.
ZendServer started...

This is a bug they fixed. In the beta version the installation stopped after ‘E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)’. I then had to run the installation command again to get to the message ‘ZendServer started…’.

If you want to get rid of the ‘Could not reliably determine the server’s fully qualified domain name… ‘, just add a servername to the Apache configuration file.

vi /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

ServerName zsce

Restart all Zend Server Community Edition daemons.

root@zsce:~# /usr/local/zend/bin/zendctl.sh restart
Stopping ZendServer GUI [Lighttpd] [OK]
spawn-fcgi.c.206: child spawned successfully: PID: 8359
Starting ZendServer GUI [Lighttpd] [OK]

Check the Zend Server Community Edition status

root@zsce:~# /usr/local/zend/bin/zendctl.sh status
[08.04.2009 10:04:54 SYSTEM] Apache is running.
[08.04.2009 10:48:54 SYSTEM] watchdog for lighttpd is running.
[08.04.2009 10:48:54 SYSTEM] lighttpd is running.

Hurray!

Browsing, using Firefox, to https://192.168.1.83:10082 I got ‘Secure Connection Failed’ error; ‘192.168.1.83:10082 uses an invalid security certificate …’. So confirm the exception and you will get a prompt to provide a password for Zend Server CE.

Post-installation steps

Adding the <install_path>/bin directory to the $PATH environment variable for all users.

Finding the <install_path> directory for your Zend Server (linux). I already know that the zendctl.sh script is located in that directory, so all I have to do is to find it.

root@zsce:~# updatedb
root@zsce:~# locate zendctl
/usr/local/zend/bin/zendctl.sh

By the way, the location is also mentioned in the manual. Just showing off.

root@zsce:~# vi /etc/profile

and add the following lines to the end of the file:

PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/zend/bin
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/usr/local/zend/lib

In order for the changes to take effect, run the following command:

root@zsce:~# source /etc/profile

I decided to install the extra extensions.

root@zsce:~# aptitude install php5-extra-extensions-zend-ce
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
...
The following NEW packages will be installed:
libgif4 libgmp3c2 libltdl3 libming0 libmssql-zend odbcinst1debian1 php-fileinfo-zend-ce
php-gmp-zend-ce php-imagick-zend-ce php-mbstring-zend-ce php-memcache-zend-ce
php-ming-zend-ce php-mssql-zend-ce php-odbc-zend-ce php-pcntl-zend-ce php-shmop-zend-ce
php-sysvmsg-zend-ce php-sysvsem-zend-ce php-sysvshm-zend-ce php-wddx-zend-ce
php-xmlrpc-zend-ce php5-extra-extensions-zend-ce php5-unix-extensions-zend-ce unixodbc
0 packages upgraded, 24 newly installed, 0 to remove and 10 not upgraded.
Need to get 4311kB of archives. After unpacking 10.4MB will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?] Y

and also phpMyAdmin.

root@zsce:~# aptitude install phpmyadmin-zend-ce
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
...
Setting up phpmyadmin (4:2.11.3-1ubuntu1.1) ...
Lighttpd not installed, skipping
invoke-rc.d: unknown initscript, /etc/init.d/lighttpd not found.
Setting up phpmyadmin-zend-ce (4.0.0-1+b17) ...
...

I selected lighttpd as webserver for phpMyAdmin when prompted, this isn’t mentioned in the manual, but it produced a message stating that lighttpd is not installed. I ignored it and phpMyAdmin seems to be correctly installed and working. When you have ServerSpy installed in your Firefox browser you will notice that phpMyAdmin uses lighttpd as webserver. Strange, but it works, just keep going.

When I tried to access phpMyAdmin via my browser (still using my MacBook) I got the following message:

“For security reasons, the link to the phpMyAdmin interface from Zend Server is locked for remote access and is only accessible from localhost. “

Great, I am running Zend Server CE on a command line only linux server and must access phpMyAdmin from the localhost. Zend Server CE is also supposed to be for development environments, so where’s the harm in accessing phpMyAdmin from another computer? Despite being my first encounter with lighttpd it took me only a couple of minutes to figure out how to fix this, without RTFM. I added the IP-address of my home network (192.168.1) to the lighttpd configuration file.

vi /usr/local/zend/gui/lighttpd/etc/lighttpd.conf

...
$HTTP["remoteip"] !~ "127.0.0.1" {
$HTTP["url"] =~ "^/phpmyadmin/" {
url.access-deny = ( "192.168.1" )
server.errorfile-prefix = "//usr/local/zend/gui/lighttpd/share/lighttpd-custom-errors/errorcode-"
}
}
...

Restart all Zend Server Community Edition daemons.

root@zsce:~# /usr/local/zend/bin/zendctl.sh restart
Stopping ZendServer GUI [Lighttpd] [OK]
spawn-fcgi.c.206: child spawned successfully: PID: 8359
Starting ZendServer GUI [Lighttpd] [OK]

Don’t ask me to explain the change to the lighttpd config file, my first attempt to fix it worked. Hurray!

Now we get to the point were they included some new bugs.

I wanted to install the Dojo toolkit and the Zend Framework extras. But compared to the beta version the manual now contains some typos which will prevent you from installing them.

From the manual for version 4.0.1:

aptitude install framework-zend-dojo-ce

resulted in

Couldn't find any package whose name or description matched "framework-zend-dojo-ce"

and

aptitude install framework-zend-extras-ce

resulted in

Couldn't find any package whose name or description matched "framework-zend-extras-ce"

A quick search in the manual for the beta version revealed that the correct way to install the packages is:

aptitude install zend-framework-dojo-ce

and

aptitude install zend-framework-extras-ce

This way the packages installed without errors. Since I have never used the Dojo toolkit and the Zend framework I didn’t test them.

I did not install any other packages, so I do not know if there are more typos.

Tests

This is just a review about the installation of the community edition of the Zend Server. No tests, no benchmarks, no security audit, … Well, as it was installed separately, I did test the database connection to MySQL using the following 3 database extensions: MySQL, MySQLi and PDO.

I created a database (testdb), with 1 table (names) containing 2 fields (id and name), inserted some records using phpMyAdmin and tested the connection to the database and retrieval of the data using PHP-scripts.

The first 2, MySQL and MySQLi, worked flawlessly, but this was not the case for PDO. The following error was displayed in the browser, when testing PDO on Zend Server CE:

Error: SQLSTATE[HY000] [2002] Can’t connect to local MySQL server through socket ‘/tmp/mysql.sock’ (2)

The solution for this problem (via Google) was to include socket information in the DSN (Database Source Name) as you can see in the script below. I never encountered this problem when using the default LAMP installation on Ubuntu or CentOS.

<?php
try {
    $dbc = new PDO(
          'mysql:host=localhost;dbname=testdb;unix_socket=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock',
          'testusr', 'testpwd');
    $sql = 'SELECT * FROM names';
    foreach ($dbc->query($sql) as $row) {
        echo $row['id'] . '. ' . $row['name'] . "<br />\n";
    }
} catch (PDOException $e) {
    echo "Error: " . $e->getMessage() . "<br />";
}
$dbc = null;
?>

Test PECL installation:

root@zsce:~# pecl list-all
All packages [Channel pecl.php.net]:
====================================
Package           Latest Local
pecl/APC          3.1.2        Alternative PHP Cache
pecl/memcache     2.2.5        memcached extension
pecl/hidef        0.1.1        Constants for real
pecl/memcached    0.1.5        PHP extension for interfacing with memcached via libmemcached library
pecl/spidermonkey 0.1.2        JavaScript engine for PHP
pecl/selinux      0.2.1        SELinux binding for PHP script language
pecl/bloomy       0.1.0        Extension implementing a Bloom filter

OK

Test documentation. The following chapters on the locally installed help for the Dashboard (https://192.168.1.83:10082/ZendServer/help/zend_server.htm#dashboard.htm) returned not found errors (404).

• Administration Interface/Administration/Passwords
• Tasks/Working with Zend Server

Review

Bugs / quirks / annoyances / missing / typos / remarks:

• Missing: MySQL
• Missing: PHP CLI. My mistake, it is present.
• Typos (?): names of the packages Dojo and extras for Zend Framework are spelled wrong in the manual
• Documentation: when to install your DBMS, what webserver to choose when installing phpMyAdmin, how to allow access to phpMyAdmin from outside localhost, the relationship between lighttpd and Apache, …
• Bug: PDO, doesn’t work without including socket info in the DSN
• Installation takes more time and effort than a default Ubuntu or Centos LAMP installation.
• The installation of phpMyAdmin reported lighttpd not installed.
• Bug: some broken links in the locally installed help

I can understand Zend not including MySQL in the installation, because not everyone uses MySQL and if they did include it, people would start complaining why PostgreSQL isn’t included. So, it’s no big deal. It would be a good idea though to include in the installation manual when you are supposed to install your DBMS. Most likely this will be before installing Zend Server, but it wouldn’t hurt mentioning this.

It isn’t that difficult to install Zend Server CE, but it takes more time and work than a default LAMP installation on Ubuntu.

Documentation is still a bit lacking: when to install your database (before seems logical to me), installation of phpMyAdmin (which webserver to choose, how to allow access from another computer), more information on the relationship between lighttpd and Apache … I am not asking for a complete manual on lighttpd and Apache here, it’s just the first time I am confronted with lighttpd (among other stuff) … or is all that supposed to be common knowledge.

Actually, I find it impressive. It’s quite an achievement to offer a product like this and making it free for home/development/non-critical use. No less than 5 installation methods: 1 for Microsoft Windows, 1 for Mac OS X and 3 for Linux (tarball, RPM and DEB). The list of software and packages is extensive, but I might not be the right person to appreciate all of this. I’ve never used a debugger, caching, … and I don’t know why they install 2 webservers (lighttpd and Apache) instead of just one. This is why I stick to reviewing the installation procedure. Let’s be honest; the list of bugs, remarks, … will not take a long time fixing.

Why would you use Zend Server CE ?

Speaking for myself, from a professional and personal perspective, I see no use for Zend Server CE in the near future. This may sound quite harsh, but let me explain.

At work we have a mixed server environment, Windows and Linux (CentOS, Scientific Linux) servers. I do not see us replacing the current webserver setups with Zend Server (CE). Although I do see that a mixed server environment might be the ideal place to use Zend Server; resulting in identical setups for your Windows and Linux webservers, which would make it possible to move sites easily. Especially if you start from a clean slate or want to restart with a clean slate. But this will require a lot of work and I don’t see it happen any time soon. It’s also no use to develop on Zend Server CE when you do not use Zend Server in your production environment.

I am also not impressed with the argument that Zend Server uses a very recent version of PHP (5.2.9) compared to Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (5.2.4) and CentOS / RHEL / SL (5.1.6). You choose an environment and you stick with it for a while and since security updates and bug fixes are backported I do not see a problem with this approach. I do admit that RHEL’s approach feels a bit like the other extreme compared to Zend Server.

It’s very unlikely that shared hosting sites will move en masse to Zend Server in the near future. So when I develop my personal site at home on a Zend Server CE installation and then upload my site to my webhost, there is a risk that there will be errors due to different PHP versions or different installed components, modules and packages. This is asking for trouble; you should always keep your development environment identical (or as identical as possible) to your production environment. The same goes if you work as an independent contractor. Of course, if Zend Server gains a lot of momentum this situation might change in the years to come, but I feel no need to be an early adopter.

I do not feel like I have wasted my time installing Zend Server CE even as I have no intention of using it in the near future. It made me realize that there are some areas where my knowledge is lacking: debuggers, caching, Zend Framework, lighttpd, … So my list of interesting things to study just got a bit longer.

I only have an iPod Touch, but the software and features I will describe in this post are also valid for the iPhone. In the title I carefully avoided calling the iPod Touch an ebook reader. Yet, I do know the expression, ‘If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck’. Ebooks can be copied or uploaded to, stored on and read using the iPod Touch and iPhone, but I am still reluctant to call the iPod Touch an ebook reader. My definition also includes it being based on E-Ink/Vizplex technology that is less straining for the eyes than a computer screen. But that’s just me, if you want to stick with the duck test, that is fine too.

Stanza cover flow

I also have a BeBook, a 6 inch E-Ink/Vizplex ebook reader device, and this means that I can compare the iPod Touch with a real ebook reader.
I will discuss 4 ways or means of reading ebooks on your iPod Touch or iPhone. All 4 ways of reading ebooks keep track of your position in the books, like a bookmark.

Stanza

Stanza is a free application for the iPod Touch and iPhone. You use it to download from a vast selection of over 100,000 books and periodicals, and read them on your iThingy. You can also use it to buy ebooks and to upload your own ebooks (courses, syllabus, reference material, …) from your computer using the Stanza Desktop application. In my opnion, your iPod Touch isn’t complete without it. I am not going to describe all the features of Stanza, because you can read them on their website.

Stanza ebook

How does Stanza compare to the BeBook ? The freely available ebooks for Stanza are also available for E-Ink devices like the BeBook, Hanlin v3, CyBook, Sony PRS, iLiad, … and for reading on your computer. When you consider the reading experience the BeBook is the absolute winner. What do I mean with reading experience: easy on the eyes (less straining), font size, readability, manipulation, turning pages, reading in bed, comfy chair or outdoors …
It is only when you take portability into account that the iPod Touch scores; using the BeBook you will need a handbag or small backpack to take it with you and the iPod Touch fits in a pocket of your coat or trousers (the kind with sidepockets) or you can clip it to your belt.
Those are the differences that matter to me, although I must add that for uploading new books to my BeBook I need an USB connection to a computer. For the iPod Touch the vicinity of a wireless network is enough and as for the iPhone there are no such limitations.
Stanza also offers custom bookmarks and a search function.

PDF

There is no built in way to store PDF’s on your iPod Touch or iPhone, but it does include a PDF reader. When you download a PDF document using the Safari browser the PDF reader will open and you can read the document, but when you close it and are offline it is no longer available. There are several applications available in the iTunes store that allow you to upload to and store PDF’s on your device, but there is a free workaround available. Add an email address to Mail with a provider that allows huge attachments, I use a GMail account, and send the PDF ebook that you want to read to that address and then download it on your iPod Touch. Even when you are offline the ebook will remain available in your inbox. This only works for recent emails, because after a while they are no longer in your cache. In the Productivity App Store you can find some free file managers like Discover that wiil allow you to upload and store some files.

PDF emagazine

I must admit that when it comes to reading emagazines, the digital version of magazines, the iPod Touch outperforms my BeBook. Emagazines like php|architect and Linux Magazine are unreadable on my BeBook, but not on my iPod Touch. I read these emagazines in landscape mode and use maximum zoom. The texts in those magazines are displayed in 2 columns and using maximum zoom the iPod Touch screen will display 1 column of text in a readable print. You will have to scroll up and down but that doesn’t hamper the reading experience that much. Reading a technical ebook is a different story (programming, server management, …); here you will not only have to scroll up an down to read the text, but also left and right to read 1 line. It will look like you need a finger to read and the only thing missing to make you look like a moron is to start mumbling.
Apparently there is more than 1 PDF reader available. For example, when you open a PDF document from Mail, you can only scroll and zoom, but when you open a PDF document stored via Discover you can also add custom bookmarks. You might want to give some other solutions (storage and PDF readers) available in the iTunes store a try if you want more features.

CHM

CHM PHP manual

There is no native CHM reader on your iPod Touch or iPhone, but there is iCHM. There is a paid and free version available in the iTunes store, but it is worth the money if you regularly use CHM files. Using this app the iPod Touch offers a better reading experience than my BeBook for CHM documents. Meaning better navigation and a better display of the contents (colors, quotes, code samples, graphics). Very useful for looking things up, reading a chapter, studying the specifics of a PHP-function, … There is no search function, but the table of contents and index are available.

Apps

App comic

There are also a lot of ebooks available in the Apps Store. Some are completely free, like Shakespeare, others are just a teaser to wet your appetite for buying the full version and for the rest you have to pay. The ebooks in the Apps Store cover a wide variety of topics: historic, action, comics, collected works of, health, religious, fiction, politics, …
It is good enough for short reads, but not for reading a whole book in 1 go or for reading hours on end for reasons I’ve already mentioned before.
Some of these ebooks have a search function, a usable table of contents and custom bookmarks, but the user interface can vary a lot from ebook to ebook or more precise, from app to app.

iPod Touch and iPhone versus BeBook

App Shakespeare

Why have both devices ? Well I bought my BeBook for reading ebooks and my iPod Touch as a toy.
Doesn’t the iPod Touch offer more value for money than a BeBook ? The BeBook is a bit more expensive than a 16 GB iPod Touch (Belgium, 2008) and the iPod Touch offers a lot more features: wifi, internet, email, games, calendar, weather, ebook reader reading ebooks, RSS, calculator, music, video, photos, productivity tools, taking notes, … With the BeBook you can read ebooks (and listen to music too if you really want to). So which device offers more value for money ? That depends on your needs. If you want to read ebooks: novels, courses, manuals, technical books, … that are in a suitable format (file format and page size) for an 6 inch E-Ink device, than the BeBook offers more value for money.
Reading experience. For reading an article in an emagazine (PDF), looking something up in a manual (CHM)  or reading a chapter in a book (Stanza) the iPod Touch and iPhone are a good enough choice, especially if you want to combine it with the other features those devices have. For reading books, reading hours on end and reading outdoors buy a real ebook reader device.

Conclusion

If you want more features for the same price or less than an E-Ink ebook reader buy an iPod Touch. It is good enough for short reads like an article or a chapter. I use my iPod Touch as an ebook reader to read ebooks when I am sitting on a train or in a waiting room, for those odd moments that might otherwise seem a waste of time.

Want to buy a BeBook ?

Then I have some very good news for you: by using the following email address as a coupon you will get a 25 EURO reduction when buying at BeBook:

bebook4johan@gmail.com

I am not employed by BeBook or Endless Ideas BV in anyway, but I admit there is something in it for me as well.

Virtualization is a hot topic in ICT. How can you put this to use at home and more specifically on your Mac ? You can use it to run Windows on your Mac, but also to try out different flavors of Linux or to run a LAMP (Linux Apache MySQL PHP) development server. If you have a spare recent pc you can install a baremetal hypervisor like XenServer5, but that’s a different story. If you want to install a hypervisor or virtual machine monitor on your MacBook, Mac mini or iMac, there are a number of solutions available. To name a few: VMWare, Parallels, Q and VirtualBox.
First requirement: it has to be free, free as in made freely available by the software vendor, not as in a pirated or illegal copy. So skip VMWare (unless you stick with the VMWare Player) and Parallels.
Second requirement: it must be a hypervisor project, preferably open source, with active development, user groups, forums and good documentation.
So I chose VirtualBox. For the cross-platformers among you, like myself, VirtualBox also runs on Windows, Linux and OpenSolaris and supports a large number of guest operating systems including Windows (NT 4.0, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista), DOS/Windows 3.x, Linux (2.4 and 2.6), Solaris, OpenSolaris, and OpenBSD.
But this post will be about installing a virtual Ubuntu LAMP or web server on Mac OS X using VirtualBox.

Sharing

Getting started

For starters, you will need a Mac. I have a MacBook 2.16 GHz Intel Core Duo, with 2 GB RAM and 120 GB hard disk and Mac OS X Leopard (10.5.6) installed. My Mac is connected to a wireless router.
Next, you will need to download VirtualBox for Intel Macs (mine is version 2.1.0) and Ubuntu server (I chose for the 8.04 LTS 32 bit version).
You will also need enough diskspace to install one or more virtual machines, but that goes without saying … right ? 8 GB and up is recommended for a virtual machine, but since we will be using the server edition, CLI only (no GNOME, no KDE, no Office suite, no games, …) 4-5 GB should be more than enough for a development webserver.

IPv6

The installation of VirtualBox is pretty straightforward, so I’ll skip this.
However, you must change some settings of Mac OS X. First you must enable internet sharing. To do this, open ‘System Preferences’ and in ‘Internet & Network’ click ‘Sharing’. Now you get the window you see in the picture ‘Sharing’, select ‘Internet Sharing’, for ‘Share your connection from:’ select ‘Airport’ (when you use wireless) and select in ‘To computers using’ the ‘Ethernet’ option.
Secondly, some sites mention that you should disable IPv6. I didn’t notice any difference between IPv6 status ‘Off’ or ‘Automatically’. The information on those sites wasn’t very recent  and, if I recall correctly, referred to VirtualBox version 1.x. My IPv6 is configured to ‘Automatically’, but if you want to turn it off, here’s how to do it. Again open ‘System Preferences’ and in ‘Internet & Network’ click ‘Network, next click the ‘Advanced…’ button and the ‘TCP/IP’ tab. Where it mentions ‘Configure IPv6′ select ‘Off’.
That should take care of the preparations. Let’s get down to business and install a virtual webserver.

Create a virtual machine

VirtualBox

Start VirtualBox. Before we go into the step by step creation process, I will explain some of the choices I made. For RAM I chose 256 MB, this is the minimum for an Ubuntu server, but as it is just for a virtual development or test server on my MacBook, this should be enough. Keep in mind that the memory you allocate to your virtual machine is no longer available for your real machine; 2 GB RAM minus 256 MB still leaves plenty of RAM available for my Mac, enough to run a second and even a third virtual machine if I want to, but if you only have 1 GB of RAM to start with, you will probably notice that everything slows down if you allocate 512 MB to your virtual machine. According to VirtualBox the recommended disk space for Ubuntu is 8 GB, but that is for the desktop version with Gnome and all the bells and whistles you don’t need in a server. I chose 5 GB to be on the safe side, but after installation I noticed that Ubuntu server needs less than 1 GB of disk space, so I guess 2 or 3 GB should be more than adequate. It depends of course on what kind of sites you’ll be developing. I chose for ‘Fixed-size storage’ instead of ‘Dynamically expanding storage’, but both options work, so no worries here. In the case of ‘Dynamically expanding storage’ you select the maximum disk space and that space will only be addressed when needed, so you save some space on your hard drive … at least for a while.

Create your virtual server:

• click on the ‘New’ icon
• click ‘Next’ to go to ‘VM Name and OS Type’
• choose a meaningful name
• as ‘Operating System’ select ‘Linux’
• as ‘Version’ select ‘Ubuntu’ or ‘Linux 2.6′, both options work
• click ‘Next’ to go to ‘Memory’
• select amount of RAM, I chose 256 MB
• click ‘Next’ to go to ‘Virtual Hard Disk’
• leave ‘Boot Hard Disk’ checked
• click ‘New…’
• click ‘Next’ to go to ‘Hard Disk Storage Type’
• I chose for ‘Fixed-size storage’
• click ‘Next’ to go to ‘Virtual Disk Location and Size’
• I kept the default name and location
• select amount of disk space, I chose 5 GB
• click ‘Next’ and ‘Finish’
• for ‘Fixed-size storage’ this can take a couple of minutes
• click ‘Next’ and ‘Finish’ (again)

Virtual machine settings

General tab

Before actually installing your virtual Ubuntu server, you must change some settings.

In the main VirtualBox window, select the virtual machine you’ve just created and go to ‘Settings’ either by a right mouse click on the virtual machine or by clicking on the ‘General’ link (in blue). Now click on the ‘Advanced’ tab and check ‘Enable PAE/NX’, this is required to install an Ubuntu server, it is however not needed for an Ubuntu desktop or so I’ve read.

On top of this window you see a list of icons: ‘General’, ‘Storage’, ‘Audio’, ‘Network’, ‘Ports’, … Click on ‘Network’. Here several settings need to be changed.
Change the ‘Adapter Type’ to ‘Intel PRO/1000 T Server (…)’. This adapter is less demanding on your CPU.
Change ‘Attached to’ to ‘Host Interface’, ‘NAT’ is fine when you only want an outgoing connection like for Ubuntu Desktop, but you want your Ubuntu Server to accept incoming connections (HTTP, FTP, SSH) too, otherwise your server is useless, so change it to ‘Host Interface’.

Network

Which host interface to select in ‘Host Interfaces’ ? I read another blog that mentions that you must select ‘en0: Ethernet’ even if you only have a wireless connection. I believe this caused all the problems I encountered installing this virtual machine. At first it was a success, the installation went fine, the server got assigned an IP address in the 192.168.2.0 network although I have no idea where this network comes from (Mac or VirtualBox). The updating, upgrading, configuring, … everything went smooth. I could connect from my MacBook to the virtual machine via HTTP and SSH. Next day, no more connections from the virtual server to the internet or from my MacBook to the server (cannot allocate memory errors, see troubleshooting chapter at the bottom). I lost count on how many attempts I made to get it to work. I was convinced that the problem was either caused by the IPv6 setting or because I didn’t install the linux-virtual kernel and the ‘Guest Additions’ right away. Google searches indicated these to be the most likely culprits. Once the problem occurred, the only solution was to delete the virtual machine and start all over again. It was only after I selected ‘en1: Airport’ as ‘Host interfaces’ that it kept working. I could see a lot benefits by using the rogue/alien/virtual/… 192.168.2.0 network: I would be able to connect to my webserver even when my Mac was offline or on a different wireless network, so I didn’t want to give it up so easily. By selecting ‘en1: Airport’ my virtual machines now connect to my wireless router, which has a 192.168.1.0 network. And there are benefits for this solution too: your virtual machines can connect to other machines on your home network (you can use this to make backups) or let those other machines connect to the virtual servers on your Mac (e.g. a Windows pc to test a website with IE). Maybe I did something wrong, maybe the information on the other site was wrong, but 4 times in a row I installed servers with ‘en1: Airport’ as host interface and they keep on working.

Installing Ubuntu server

Don’t close the ‘Settings’ window yet. Click on ‘Storage’ and select the tab ‘CD/DVD-ROM’. If you already closed the window you can click on the link ‘CD/DVD-ROM’. Here you can either mount your Ubuntu CD-ROM in your ‘Host CD/DVD Drive’ or select the ‘ISO Image File’ you downloaded on your computer. When you choose the ‘ISO Image File’ option, click on the folder button on the right and in the new window ‘Virtual Media Manager’, click on the ‘Add’ button and browse to the location of the ISO file. Don’t forget to unmount the CD- or DVD-ROM the first time you shut down after installing.
From an economical and tree hugger point of view it is better to install from an ISO image .
Now you may hit the ‘Start’ button after you’ve selected the virtual machine.

Ubuntu

I am going to walk you through the installation process, but very briefly.

• select language
• select ‘Install Ubuntu server’ or ‘Check CD for defects’ first
• select language, country and keyboard
• let it configure your network with DHCP, you can change it later
• choose a name for your webserver
• as partitioning method I chose ‘Guided – use entire disk’
• for the next step there was only 1 disk to select
• agree to write the changes to disks
• you can take a break now
• set up a user and password
• ‘HTTP proxy information’: leave it blank
• you can take another short break now
• select at least the following software to install: ‘LAMP server’ and ‘OpenSSH server’
• you will be asked to provide a password for the MySQL root user
• after installation, let your virtual machine reboot and don’t worry about the CD-ROM or ISO image, it will be ignored, but unmount it when you shut your new server down

Select software

There are several advantages for using ssh from a Mac OS X Terminal instead of the terminal or user interface provided by VirtualBox:

• more control over the layout: font, size, colors, background
• better keyboard support (e.g. @ # ^ | `)
• faster, more responsive … at least that is my impression

Now you have installed a virtual Ubuntu LAMP or web server. It just needs some polishing and then you are ready to go. I believe it is best to continue and especially optimize your kernel for a VM environment before calling it a day.

Finishing off

You do not have to do all of the following steps, for example the steps on how to configure the Apache webserver and vsftpd FTP-server, you can skip these or alter them to your liking, but I just want to leave you with a working webserver. Since it is supposed to be a virtual development server on your notebook or desktop I haven’t really bothered with security, creating virtual host, optimizations, …
I recommend you do not skip the network configuration, the update and upgrade and the installation of the virtual kernel and guest additions.

Network configuration: Currently your network configuration is based on DHCP. This is not very useful for a server, you need a static IP address. In the user interface provided by VirtualBox, log in to your server. First check your current network configuration:

johan@lamp:~$ ifconfig
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 08:00:27:d4:b0:68
          inet addr:192.168.1.4  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::a00:27ff:fed4:b068/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:1167 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:829 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:523485 (511.2 KB)  TX bytes:103126 (100.7 KB)
          Base address:0xc010 Memory:f0000000-f0020000

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:12 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:12 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:600 (600.0 B)  TX bytes:600 (600.0 B)

Obviously I am connected to the network provided by my wireless router, now edit your network configuration using the command:

sudo vi /etc/network/interfaces

For safety reasons it is best to make a copy of this file before editing. I will demonstrate the settings for my home network, they might be different for yours, but this example should help you to figure it out:

# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.1.80
gateway 192.168.1.1
netmask 255.255.255.0

Notice that I don’t need to specify a wireless-essid, wireless-key or wireless-channel, even though it is, indirectly, using a wireless connection, the settings are for a wired connection.
Next restart the network using the command:

sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

You can check the new configuration with the command ifconfig.

Update/Upgrade: After an installation it is recommended to update and upgrade the installed software. On an Ubuntu server you do this via the following two commands, the second one can take a while:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get upgrade

Virtual kernel: You have to customize or optimize the kernel for a VM environment:

sudo apt-get install linux-virtual

Installing Guest Additions: To install the Guest Additions, click, with your virtual server running and in the active window, in the ‘Menu Bar’ on ‘Devices’ and ‘Installing Guest Additions…’. The ISO image containing those additions is now mounted to your virtual machine. By default a CD-ROM is not automatically mounted in Ubuntu server, so use the following commands to gain access to the additions:

johan@lamp:/$ sudo mount /media/cdrom
mount: block device /dev/scd0 is write-protected, mounting read-only
johan@lamp:/$ cd /media/cdrom
johan@lamp:/media/cdrom$ ls
32Bit        VBoxLinuxAdditions-amd64.run  VBoxWindowsAdditions-amd64.exe
64Bit        VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run    VBoxWindowsAdditions.exe
AUTORUN.INF  VBoxSolarisAdditions.pkg      VBoxWindowsAdditions-x86.exe

According to the VirtualBox manual, you must install DKMS to be able to compile the kernel using the command (don’t do it, continue to read):

sudo apt-get install dkms

If you do that, and you execute ‘VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run’ you will get the following output:

johan@lamp:/media/cdrom$ sudo sh ./VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run
[sudo] password for johan:
Verifying archive integrity... All good.
Uncompressing VirtualBox 2.1.0 Guest Additions for Linux installation............
VirtualBox 2.1.0 Guest Additions installation
Please install GNU make.
Please install the build and header files for your current Linux kernel.
The current kernel version is 2.6.24-23-virtual
Please install the GNU compiler.
Problems were found which would prevent the Guest Additions from installing.
Please correct these problems and try again.

As far as I can figure this out, installing DKMS doesn’t take into account that you have installed the linux kernel for virtualised hardware (linux-virtual). So instead install the headers for the right kernel and the necessary tools to be able to build.

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r` build-essential

After that you can install the additions (make sure that you are in the CD-ROM directory):

sudo sh ./VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run

The VirtualBox manual recommends installing them, but I haven’t used them yet. This post is all about installing a virtual Ubuntu server on Mac OS X. It’s not an in-depth look at or the nuts and bolds of VirtualBox.

Changing the configuration of the webserver to enable the per-user web directories. This means that every user can have his/her own website by creating a special directory in his/her home directory. First create a ‘public_html’ directory in your home and change the group to ‘www-data’ to give the Apache webserver the necessary permissions to process your webpages.

cd $HOME

mkdir public_html

sudo chgrp www-data public_html/

Enable the userdir module and restart or reload the Apache webserver.

sudo a2enmod userdir

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 force-reload

Create a PHP test page info.php in your public_home directory with the following contents

<?php phpinfo(); ?>

and on your client computer enter the following URL in your browser (change the IP address and username)

http://192.168.1.80/~johan/info.php

and you should get the version information for your PHP installation.

Installing an FTP-server to upload your websites. I am used to the ‘Very Secure FTPD’ server, vsftpd, although I believe this is not the default one for Ubuntu. Anyway it is easy to install if you use the following commands to install and stop vsftpd and edit the config file.

sudo apt-get install vsftpd

sudo /etc/init.d/vsftpd stop

sudo vi /etc/vsftpd.conf

In the configuration file uncomment the following settings

local_enable=YES

write_enable=YES

local_umask=022

and change the ‘YES’ to ‘NO’ in

anonymous_enable=NO

and save. Restart.

sudo /etc/init.d/vsftpd start

Now you should be able to upload files to your virtual webserver using an FTP-client like FileZilla. Enter the IP-address, your username and password, click ‘connect’. If all goes well, you will see the contents of your home directory on the webserver, including the public_html directory. Any files you upload to the public_html directory will become visible or at least accessible when you enter the following URL in your browser (change IP and username to match your settings):

http://192.168.1.80/~johan/

Some extras: On a webserver I like to have phpMyAdmin and PHP CLI available (when installing phpMyAdmin, select ‘apache2′ when prompted):

sudo apt-get install php5-cli

sudo apt-get install phpmyadmin

The further configuration of your webserver, samba, … is beyond the scope of this post. Good luck.

Troubleshooting

I experienced a lot of problems at first. The installation went fine, the updating, upgrading and configuring too. Next day, the server could no longer connect to the internet and I could no longer access the server via HTTP, SSH or even ping to it. This happened enough times to exclude an accidental configuration error or a corrupt ISO image. The error messages I got were:

ping: sendto: Cannot allocate memory

ssh: connect to host 192.168.2.22 port 22: Cannot allocate memory

Once these occur just delete your virtual server and start all over again. They are either caused by IPv6 being turned on, not installing the for VM’s optimized kernel or using the fictitious, virtual or whatever it is called 192.168.2.0 network. I have narrowed it down to the use of the 192.168.2.0 network. I do not know enough of virtualization to explain this, I only want a virtual webserver, in fact more than 1 server, running on my MacBook.

You can connect to your virtual server from other machines in your home. This works without hassle for Macs and Linux boxes, but for Windows XP you have to ping or connect via ssh to your virtual server first before you can browse to it (WTF).

PS

I have no idea if this post is also useful for installing a virtual Ubuntu server on a Windows or Linux host.

I have been using my BeBook ebook reader for one month now, so I thought it was time for a first review. In this post I will write about the BeBook, what you can use it for, its features, possibilities, limitations and quirks and give you some advice before you buy an ebook reader. I have used a lot of its features, but not all of them and I also encountered some of the limitations and quirks. I will probably post an extra review in a couple of months when I had the time, the need or felt the desire to explore the rest of the features and possibilities. By the way, I love my BeBook.

I am not going to explain the technology of the ebook reader and I already explained why I chose the BeBook; see my ‘The quest for an ebook reader‘. I am also not going to explain on how to use the BeBook or upgrade the firmware, because this is explained in the user manual and on the BeBook site.

Use

customized PDF 1

I probably differ from the average ebook reader (person, not the device this time) because I want to use the BeBook to read technical ebooks, documents, manuals, courses, howto’s, … and not just novels.  This means that I am confronted with other formats like CHM and pagesizes in PDF books not optimized for ebook readers. In one review they used the term ‘power user’ and I must admit I like the sound of that . Some examples of what I read on my BeBook during the first month:

• ‘The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes’ by Arthur Conan Doyle, ‘The Art of War’ by Sun Tzu, … and other freely available ebooks optimized for reading on an ebook reader.
• converted some texts found on websites into customized PDF to study the differences in various translations and interpretations of the ‘Tao Te Ching’ by Lao Tzu
• Virtual Box manual
• started reading in the ‘Guide to programming with Zend Framework’
• browsed in the XenServer5 Reference Manual

The BeBook

Bookshelf

The BeBook comes with a leather case, battery, screw driver (for replacing battery if necessary), headphones, USB cable, user manual and wristband (doesn’t look very comfortable).

The experience of reading on an ebook reader is much closer to reading a book than reading on a computer screen.  Sometimes reading on the BeBook is even more convenient than reading a paper book like a small paperback. You can hold the BeBook in one hand and turn to the next or previous page using only one hand. An ebook reader is not backlit like a computer screen or cellphone, so you need an external lightsource like the sun or a lamp to read. With the leather case the BeBook is slightly larger than a single DVD-box, without it slightly smaller; just hold a DVD-box to get an idea of the size. On the picture you can see that the BeBook will easily fit on your bookshelf.

The leather case that comes with your BeBook is very useful; if it wasn’t included you would probably have to buy one. There are two ways to fit the device in the case depending on whether you are right or left handed.

BeBook

The website of BeBook claims that you can do 7000 pageturns without recharging the battery. Reading customized PDF (9 x 12 cm, 3.54 x 4.72 inches) ebooks I made it to 3000 pageturns and I have the impression that using a mix of non-customized PDF (had to use zoom level 3) and CHM ebooks I would be lucky to reach little over 2000 pageturns. I can imagine that displaying PDF or CHM ebooks is more demanding than TXT or RTF ebooks, so maybe it is possible to reach 7000 pageturns with other formats. Listening to music on your BeBook will decrease the number of available pageturns. It is said that the BeBook only needs energy for a pageturn, once a page is displayed it no longer needs power, so you can leave it turned on. I haven’t tested this.

There are several features that I haven’t tried yet: reading offline RSS feeds and webpages, changing default language, listening to audiobooks, adding bookmarks, …

On a more or less monthly basis a new firmware upgrade is released, so it might be nice to know that your BeBook will improve each month, although the December upgrade had a few bugs. The upgrade routine is one of the annoyances: you have to keep a 1 GB SD-card around for this. I use a 2 GB SD-card for storing the ebooks and use the 1 GB SD-card from my digital camera to upgrade when necessary.

Types of ebooks

This list of types is made up by me.

DRM: I have no experience with DRM’ed ebooks. See the BeBook forum for more information.

Free ebooks: There are lots and lots of freely available ebooks out there, enough to see you through several incarnations. Most of them are optimized for reading on an ebook reader. Here lies the true strength and worth of ebook readers. Some sites:

• My BeBook
  
• Food for the Mind
  
• Baen Free Library
  
• Project Gutenberg
• …

Technical ebooks: This covers ebooks about software, programming, operating systems, system administration, … in a wide variety of formats and pagesizes. I guess a majority (60-70%) is readable, varying from just readable to good readable, but it doesn’t come close to reading an ebook in the MOBI or customized PDF format. The other 30-40% won’t display, crash, freeze or are unreadable due to small print, colored text on a colored background or encoding. I will go into more detail when discussing the formats (see PDF and CHM). The digital version of magazines, lets just call them emagazines, are unreadable due to small print and colored text on a colored background.

Other: Saved webpages, texts, rich text format, Word-docs, customized PDFs … just create your own ebooks.

Operatings systems

Microsoft – Windows XP: I haven’t experienced any problems connecting and disconnecting or copying, removing and renaming ebooks via a desktop pc with MS Windows XP.

Linux – Ubuntu 8.04: I haven’t experienced any problems connecting and disconnecting or copying, removing and renaming ebooks via a desktop pc with Ubuntu 8.04 (linux).

Disk Utility

Mac OS X – Leopard: Unfortunately I have experienced some problems with Mac OS X. I have a MacBook with Max OS X Leopard and some of the problems I encountered were: problems connecting and disconnecting, copying files to the BeBook, creating and renaming folders. The last couple of days however, I had no more problems. I am a bit hesitant to claim that I found the solution, because all I did was renaming the internal and external (SD-card) memory, which were both labeled ‘NO NAME’, to ‘INTERNAL’ and ‘EXTERNAL’. I keep my fingers crossed though.
There are still some quirks left: you have to use the Hidden Cleaner application to remove hidden Mac OS X files that do not remain hidden once on the BeBook (annoying) and you need to use the Disk Utility application to unmount your BeBook instead of just using eject to disconnect.

Formats

I haven’t tried or encountered the following formats on my BeBook so far: PPT, WOLF, DOC, FB2, PRC, DJVU, TIFF, JPG, GIF, BMP, PNG, RAR, ZIP, … Maybe I will mention them in my 3 or 4 month review.

PDF tech 1

PDF: Most of the ebooks I have read so far are PDF. The customized freely available ebooks and the ebooks that I made myself were the most enjoyable reads.
To make your own ebooks import the document (Word, text, RTF) or copy the text (from a website) into OpenOffice Writer, adjust the pagesize to 3.54 x 4.72 inches (9 x 12 cm), decrease the margins to 0.1 or 0.05 inches, choose a font and fontsize, do some formatting, export as PDF and copy it to your BeBook. For reading on the BeBook I definitely prefer sans serif fonts (Arial, Verdana, Comic Sans MS) over serif fonts (Times New Roman, Georgia). Mostly I use Verdana or Comic Sans MS size 8 or 9 points. Comic Sans MS might seem an odd choice, but I kinda like it for fiction books.
The digital magazines to which I am subscribed, php|architect and Linux Magazine, are not readable on the BeBook due to small print and colored text on a colored background.

PDF tech 2

Next, one of the reasons I bought the BeBook for in the first place, namely reading technical ebooks. With technical ebooks I mean books, manuals, howtos, courses, … concerning software, programming, operating systems, system administration, … None of those ebooks that I tried are made to be read on an ebook reader, but are meant to be read on a computer screen. Yes, most of them are readable on zoom level 3, varying fom barely to good, but not for hours on end. On the other hand I have never gotten my hands on a technical book that would qualify as a pageturner. The problems that occur with this type of ebooks are: too small font size, refusing to display (seems to be a problem of encoding), closing after reading a few pages (WTF ?) and variable margins. The latter might need some explaining. It happened with an ebook with alternating margin widths: on even pages the left margin was wider than the right margin and on uneven pages it was vice verse. When you use zoom level 3, the BeBook zooms in on the text and removes all margins, but this is fixed for the rest of the ebook. So when you zoom in on a even page and then go to the next, uneven page, there will be some text missing on the left and some whitespace on the right. In order to read this ebook, you would have to zoom out and then zoom in again after each page turn.
When you have (to read) lots of technical ebooks the BeBook can be quite useful, because statistically the majority will be readable. If you only have a couple of technical ebooks or when all the technical ebooks are from the same publisher, it would be a good idea to ask someone if he or she can try them out for you on their BeBook.

CHM

CHM: Most of the CHM files I’ve tested were usable and readable. There are 3 zoom levels available, but the first level works fine for me. You can change the font by changing the system font. Reading is less enjoyable than reading MOBI, EPUB and good PDF ebooks.
There is this quirk or bug that makes that a table of contents of a CHM ebook only becomes usable after the compleet CHM file is loaded or re-indexed. When you open a CHM ebook and you press the ‘next page’ button you will notice that the total number of pages increases by dozens or hundreds for each pageturn. When this number doesn’t change anymore, then the table of contents becomes usable.
My BeBook did choke on the PHP Manual, but that was before I updated the firmware and I haven’t tried it again yet. I hope they improve the CHM reader in the near future, because there are some bugs and quirks left.

LIT: I have only tested 2 Microsoft LIT ebooks, one crashed and the other needed a lot of time for each pageturn. I haven’t bothered to continue testing, because there are no LIT ebooks on my reading list. For all I know the files might have been corrupt.

RTF

RTF: Is used for text files with some formatting. I haven’t really used it yet to read ebooks, I just tested it to see if it is usable. It is very readable, but I converted most of the ebooks I have in this format to customized PDF for better control over the layout.
As you can see on the photo, not all formatting is visible on the BeBook. Indentation, lists, bold and italic are, but outlined, shadowed, underlined and strikethrough are not. You have more control over the font and font size using this format, you can load your own fonts, but for example when you use Arial or Times New Roman bold and italic are usable, however this is not the case when using Verdana.
For this format there are 5 zoom levels available, but in a different way than for the rest of the formats. However, for me the smallest font size is large enough to read it comfortably. Via the menu you can also change the page orientation, the interline space, turn on or off footnotes, set the system time, inverse the display, whether to show or hide status bar with or without system time, … This is a very mature reader (referring to the software this time).

TXT

TXT: Is used for plain text files. See the photo for a sample of a text file at zoom level 1. There are 3 zoom levels available. I haven’t really used it yet, I just tested it to see if it is usable. It is very readable. You can change the font by changing the system font. I have come across some ebooks in this format, but I converted them to customized PDFs. But you can read ebooks in this format.
I think this format might be useful for reading howtos (will sound familiar for the linux users among you), RFC and configuration files (with lots of documentation) … or when I am to lazy to do some formatting and converting. I would like to be able to display a text file in a monospace font like Courier (New) with 80 columns per line, perhaps in landscape orientation without zooming like mentioned for RTF, this would be useful for code reviews for example.

MOBI

MOBI: I have only tested some freely available non-DRM’ed MobiPocket ebooks. They are among the best readable ebooks and there are tens of thousands of freely available ebooks in this format. There are three zoom levels available and even the third zoom level is displayed in portrait orientation. The table of contents is only for show; you cannot use it for jumping to a chapter. You can change the font, choosing between the system font IBOOKN and 2 user fonts, namely Times and Arial. I recommend using IBOOKN or Arial.

EPUB: I tested only one EPUB ebook, but the format has a good reputation as far as I know. There are 3 zoom levels available and I would recommend using zoom level 2 to read this type of ebook. The table of contents works and you can change the font through the system font. There are tens of thousands of freely available ebooks in this format.

EPUB (zoom 2)

Other: I have saved one of the posts on this blog for offline browsing and copied it to my BeBook. The text was good readable, but the pictures and backgrounds were missing. I remember reading somewhere that there is an easy trick to show the graphics, but I forgot how. Keep in mind that you will be able to read the text as on a static webpage, but forget the interaction and Flash animations from the real website. I also haven’t tested whether you can influence the layout via CSS (font, size, color, margins, …). Maybe for my next review.
FB2 seems to be a very popular format among the BeBook owners, but I haven’t come across an ebook in this format yet.
As for the viewers for PPT (MS Powerpoint) and DOC (MS Word) formats, I haven’t needed them so far.

Some advice before you buy

There are some things you should consider before you buy the BeBook or any other ebook reader for that matter. On occasion you’ll find some post on the forums of some (very) disappointed, angry or frustrated people. Mostly because of unrealistic expectations, which could have been avoided by doing some research.

• Availability: Are the books that you want to read available as ebooks ?
• Price: Some ebooks cost more than the paper version of the book. It is stupid economics (no paper, no printing, no shipping, no storing, no middleman and still more expensive), but it’s a reality. When you pay good money for an ebook reader and have to pay extra for reading ebooks this might be a turnoff. Most of my ebooks are from php|architect and the digital version of their books and magazine cost less than the paper version.
• DRM: If you want to read only or a lot of recent books, you will probably have to buy them. Most of those will have some form of Digital Rights Management (DRM). It’s a stupid idea that seriously hampers your users’ rights and it’s stupidly implemented. Most ebook readers can display only one DRM’ed format, because when the manufacturer gets a license for that DRM’ed format, they are not allowed to add support for another DRM’ed format; it’s an exclusive deal. You cannot blame BeBook for this, blame the publishers. Basically it comes down to this: if you want to read DRM’ed MobiPockets buy a BeBook, if you want to read DRM’ed Adobe Digital Editions buy a Sony PRS-505 or PRS-700 for example. For more information: Ebook Reader Matrix. I wonder if that is even legal: suppose that I buy a music CD produced by Sony Music and that I cannot play it on my Pioneer CD -player, but I will have to buy an Sony CD-player. I know for sure that this practice is hampering the adoption of ebooks and ebook readers. Apparently some online bookshops don’t even mention the DRM’ed format they use when you buy an ebook, so you might end up with a legally bought ebook and be unable to read it on your ebook reader. php|architect has a more creative approach to protecting their economic interests, their ebooks are not crippled by DRM, but my name, email address and client number are displayed on every page (PDF). Actually I find this very neat, ‘Look this is my book. See, I can prove it, my name is on every page’ .
• Ask. When in doubt whether the ebooks or documents that you have, want to read or want to buy will be displayed properly on the ebook reader of your choice … ask. There are plenty of friendly and helpful people out there on the forums of BeBook and MobileRead. I did this too; asked a lot of questions, uploaded some different types and formats of ebooks, asked for someone who was willing to try them out and send me some photos as proof.

The BeBook doesn’t have a touchscreen or WiFi and you cannot use it to scribble notes, take pictures, watch movies or phone home. If you want a bigger screen, touchscreen, scribble notes and WiFi an iRex might be what you need, but you will pay (at least) twice as much. The BeBook ebook reader is very good at what it is supposed to do, namely to display ebooks and that is good enough for me … and you can listen to music too.

Conclusion

The BeBook will never completely replace reading paper books for me and I will still (have to) read ebooks on a computer screen. But the amount of freely available ebooks out there is intoxicating, it really opens your mind for other genres and the ability to do some necessary reading of ebooks away from a computerscreen is a treat for sour eyes. I thought I would be using my BeBook mainly for reading technical ebooks and while I do use it for that purpose, I find myself irresistibly drawn to the abundance of free non-technical ebooks. I have included some links to websites that offer tens of thousands of free ebooks, browse through their catalog and say that you are not tempted to buy an ebook reader. For the IT’ers among you, even if the BeBook reduces eye strain, the display of the IT books (PDF and CHM mostly) pales in comparison to customized PDF, MOBI and even EPUB ebooks, but it is usable. Is the BeBook worth the 300 something EURO ? For myself, the answer is ‘YES’.

Reasons for buying a BeBook:

• you are a bibliophile
• you are running out of shelf space
• you have to read lots of ebooks or other digital documents
• you want to carry a lot of books with you (for a vacation) without the bulk or weight
• you want to reduce eye strain
• you want to read ebooks in more comfortable positions (bed, comfy chair, beach, park, …)
• you want an ebook reader and good value for your money

Want to buy a BeBook ?

Then I have some very good news for you: by using the following email address as a coupon you will get a 25 EURO reduction when buying at BeBook:

bebook4johan@gmail.com

I am not employed by BeBook or Endless Ideas BV in anyway, but I admit there is something in it for me as well. As it is a win-win situation for all parties I am okay with it and I also believe that my review is fair and balanced.

I already knew how to run PHP scripts from the command line (CLI), although I never really used it. What was new to me was that there are 2 ways of doing this. The first one is by using the php command and the second, and new for me, is by adding a shebang on the first line of your script.

Why would you want to use PHP CLI ? Well you don’t have to learn another programming language like perl or bash to make shell scripts, you can run cron jobs in PHP and you can reuse code from a website for example in your shell script.

Before you read any further, the examples below will work for linux and Mac OS X, but not for Windows. I used Ubuntu 8.04 server and Mac OS X 10.5.6.

First you’ll have to make sure that PHP CLI is installed.

johan@ubusrv:~$ php -v
PHP 5.2.4-2ubuntu5.3 with Suhosin-Patch 0.9.6.2 (cli) (built: Jul 23 2008 06:44:49)
Copyright (c) 1997-2007 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.2.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2007 Zend Technologies

If you see ‘cli’ somewhere on the first line, you are ready to go, otherwise you will have to install it first. For example on Ubuntu:

johan@ubusrv:~$ sudo apt-get install php5-cli

It it also useful to know the full path to the PHP binary on your computer. There are several ways of finding out. For Ubuntu and Mac OS X the path is ‘/usr/bin/php’.

johan@ubusrv:~$ which php
/usr/bin/php
johan@ubusrv:~/cli$ whereis php
php: /usr/bin/php /usr/share/php /usr/share/man/man1/php.1.gz
johan@ubusrv:~/cli$ type -a php
php is /usr/bin/php

For the first method we’ll use the following script:

<?php
        echo "First PHP CLI script\n";
        echo exec('ls -l\n') . "\n";
?>

You can either execute it by using the php command or by using the full path of the php binary. In this case it is not necessary to make the file exectuable.

johan@ubusrv:~/cli$ php firstcli.php
First PHP CLI script
-rw-r--r-- 1 1000 1000 71 2009-01-01 19:39 firstcli.php
johan@ubusrv:~/cli$ /usr/bin/php firstcli.php
First PHP CLI script
-rw-r--r-- 1 1000 1000 71 2009-01-01 19:39 firstcli.php

For the second method we’ll add a shebang to the first line of the script:

#!/usr/bin/php -q
<?php
        echo "First PHP CLI script\n";
        echo exec('ls -l\n') . "\n";
?>

I have added the ‘-q’ in the shebang, because you will find a lot of examples like this, but you don’t need it. According to the PHP Manual CLI is started up in quiet mode by default, though the -q and –no-header switches are kept for compatibility so that you can use older CGI scripts.
After you’ve made the file executable, you can now run it like any other shell script.

johan@ubusrv:~/cli$ chmod +x firstcli.php
johan@ubusrv:~/cli$ ./firstcli.php
First PHP CLI script
-rwxr-xr-x 1 1000 1000 89 2009-01-01 19:56 firstcli.php
johan@ubusrv:~/cli$ /home/johan/cli/firstcli.php
First PHP CLI script
-rwxr-xr-x 1 1000 1000 89 2009-01-01 19:56 firstcli.php

php|architect

At the end of September php|architect had some great news to announce concerning their magazine: a new logo, full colour printing and a new subscription price.

Ohoh, a new subscription price is usually bad news.
What was the old situation: they offered 3 different types of subscription to their PHP magazine ‘php|architect’, namely paper only, pdf only and both.
I had a subscription to the pdf only, this was also the cheapest subscription.
In the new situation they will offer the paper and pdf together for less than the pdf version in the old situation. So the subscribers will receive more value for less money and that in these times.

So where is the catch ?

The new offer started in October and given the difference between the old subscription price and the new, they have decided to provide all their current subscribers with an extension to their subscription equal to the old cost of the remaining issues in their account divided by the new price. In my case I got 2 months extra for free.

Come on, where is the catch.

They also moved their printing facilities to be closer to their distribution center and introduced a lighter, environmentally-conscious paper to reduce their environmental impact. So their move to an all-print subscription should be largely carbon-neutral.
You’ll find more on this on Marco Tabinis blog.

There is no catch. It is all good news.

Thanks Marco Tabini.

I honestly thought that the namespace separator for PHP was a done deal, namely ‘::’.  It was originally planned to introduce namespaces in PHP6, but they moved it to the upcoming PHP 5.3 and due to problems implementing that they made a last minute change to ‘\’.

A lot of people are happy that PHP will finally have support for namespaces, but a lot of people also think they made a really bad choice for the separator.
One of the best comments I found was on slashdot and it gives an overview of the separators for different programming languages:

Java:
Attribute/Method access: foo.bar
Static method access:    Foo.bar
Package access:          foo.bar.baz

C#:
Attribute/Method access: foo.bar
Static method access:    Foo.bar
Namespace access:        foo.bar.baz

Python:
Attribute/Method access: foo.bar
Static method access:    Foo.bar
Module access:           foo.bar.baz

PHP:
Attribute/Method access: $foo->bar
Static method access:    Foo::bar
Namespace access:        foo\bar\baz

My thoughts about this:

• it makes PHP look inconsistent
• it makes the introduction of namespaces in PHP look like a rush job, improvisation, some quick and dirty programming
• if they encountered serious problems introducing namespaces in PHP 5.3, they should have postponed it to PHP6, like originally planned
• it feels weird using a backslash on the left side of an assignment operator
• it looks ugly

I don’t think I will be using namespaces anytime soon, because I will be using PHP 5.1.6 at work and PHP 5.2.5 on this shared hosting for a while longer, but when I have to I will just go with the flow like everybody else. Unless you choose for poor man’s namespacing (and be using very long classnames).

Just my 0.02 €

During a conversation about SF & Fantasy books with a librarian he mentioned that he uses an ebook reader, because, like me, at home he hasn’t got enough shelf-space for all the books he owns, let alone for all the books he would like to buy. He also demonstrated his iLiad ebook reader and I immediately loved it.

What is an ebook reader ?

An e-book  reader is a device used to display ebooks (in a wide variety of formats: pdf, txt, doc, rtf, mobi, chm, html, …). It may be a device specifically designed for that purpose, or one intended for other purposes as well. The term is restricted to hardware devices, not software programs. The main advantages of these devices are: comfortable reading, perfect under sunlight, weeks of battery life and lightness.

What do you need an ebook reader for ?

• Shelf-space. I have over 300 books and this means that a lot of them are stored in boxes in the attic. Whenever I want to buy a book, I not only have to consider if it’s worth the money, but also if it’s worth the shelf-space, because another book will have to move to a box in the attic. Regardless of whether I buy an ebook reader or not, I will still buy the paper version of the books by my favorite authors like Terry Pratchett and Raymond Feist, on some things you do not compromise.
• Save your eyes. As a webdeveloper I spend a lot of time in front of a computer screen. Also in my spare time I spend some of it in front of a computer. I already own several ebooks and am subscribed to 2 emagazines, but I find myself struggling to keep up, because there is only so much time that I can and am willing to spend in front of a computer screen. The main reason for this is eye strain and ebook readers have the reputation that it’s like reading a paper book.
• Save money. Ebooks tend to be cheaper than paper books. An ebook reader on the other hand costs a lot of money, so you have to buy a lot of books to break even. On the bright side however there are tens of thousands of ebooks available for free (legally) on the internet. No to mention the manuals, texts on websites that can be converted into an ebook, …
• Save the trees.

What would I use an ebook reader for ?

I would use it mainly to read technical ebooks (programming, web, linux), manuals (dito), RSS feeds (offline) and emagazines (computer stuff again) as a better alternative to reading them on a computer screen. Reducing eye strain is worth some money to me. Shelf-space is another good reason. The availability of tens of thousands of free ebooks from authors like Darwin, Doyle,  Kafka, Nietsche, Shakespeare, Verne, Twain, Austen, Poe, Lovecraft, … is a very nice bonus.

The search for an ebook reader

Deciding I am interested in buying an ebook reader and the actual act of buying are two different things. First I had to double my initial budget of 150€ to 300€. Even this increase limits my choice severely, but I decided that I do not want an ebook reader the size of A4 or letter, that I do not need wireless, touch screen or the ability to take notes … just a reader.
So no iLiad, Plastic Logic (available spring 2009) or CyBook and living in Europe also means no Sony or Kindle ebook readers.

But I wanted to see some more ebook readers before making a decision. This proved to be a lot easier said than done.

• FNAC (Bruges, 17/11/2008): the hardware guy send me to the book department and they referred me back to the hardware department. The guy admitted he didn’t had a clue what I was talking about and had done a quick search on Google after he’d send me to the book department. They do not sell ebook readers, not now and not in the near future. When I mentioned that I’ve found several online shops in the Netherlands, he said that Belgium is always a couple of years behind the times compared to the Netherlands. Great. Not that I am patriotic and it isn’t for the first time that I hear this, but it does sting a bit.
• Media Markt, the largest European chain specialized in electro, cd and dvd, … or so they claim (Ostend, 17/11/2008): I asked the persons responsible for mp3-players & portable dvd-players and pc & laptop. Their reaction can be summarized as follows: ‘E-book readers … yeah’, an uneasy silence, ‘What is an e-book reader and what do you use it for ?’ , sigh. After I explained it, they made a phone call to their supervisor and got back to me saying that they do not sell ebook readers, not now and not in the near future.

So I would have to buy a device that I’ve never seen or touched before! Luckily there are a lot of very active forums and blogs about ebook readers, even with photos and homemade movies (see links below). I uploaded a couple of ebooks and emagazines and found some people who were willing to try them out on their ebook reader and send me some pictures. It quickly became clear that the emagazines would probably be unreadable on a small ebook reader, but the ebooks were readable. I decided to continue my search.

The ebook readers

Living in Europe and the budget limits my choice for an ebook reader. In fact there is only one real ebook reader that qualifies, but I included devices that can be used as an ebook reader in the list. They all cost 300€ more or less.

• iPod Touch. Small, light, very nice, lots of features, very tempting, but while you can use it to read ebooks, it is not an ebook reader: it doesn’t use an eInk technology, it isn’t less straining for the eyes than a computerscreen, the screen is very small for long time reading …
• Asus eee pc. Small notebook, but to heavy to use as an ebook reader and it is not really an ebook reader: see remarks for the iPod Touch. I already own a MacBook, so I don’t need another notebook.
• BeBook v3 (or Hanlin v3). Small, light, long battery life, probably the ebook reader with the most supported formats (very important), active development (new firmware on a regularly basis), active community, very good reviews.
• CyBook Gen3 (update, already ordered my BeBook, but due to a price drop I also have to mention it here). Similar to BeBook: same screen resolution, but less supported formats and currently not available.

Decision

Even with a bigger budget the BeBook would probably be the best buy, the most value for money. So I ordered my ebook reader at  BeBook (http://mybebook.com) from Endless Ideas BV. Why did I buy my ebook reader there  ?

• good price
• very active and helpful user community
• they are actively participating in the firmware upgrades
• when you bring on a number of new clients, you can get an BeBook for free

I already have my BeBook and it is indeed very useful and addictive. I will try to post an extensive review with photos before the end of the year.

Some links:

• http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/E-book_Reader_Matrix
• http://pookey.co.uk/blog/archives/61-BeBook-review.html
• http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=30913
• http://mybebook.com/
• http://www.jinke.com.cn/Compagesql/English/index.asp

Want to buy a BeBook ?

Then I have some very good news for you: by using the following email address as a coupon you will get a 25 EURO reduction when buying at BeBook:

bebook4johan@gmail.com

I am not employed by BeBook or Endless Ideas BV in anyway, but I admit there is something in it for me as well. As it is a win-win situation for all parties I am ok with it and I believe that my review is fair and balanced.