Yes, this is an ode to a great piece of software. MozBackup, It allows you to easily move and backup your Firefox and Thunderbird extensions, emails, account settings and bookmarks. All the stuff that takes a ton of time to do. And it is free. And it works really well. In short. I *heart* MozBackup!
What do you expect from a site that attempts to sell you something? To make your life easier, right?
In 2008, there is so much usability research out there, so much technology out there – all to make users’ lives a little bit easier, simpler, faster. That is, until you enter the way-back machine, web edition and go to Expedia.com.
Yes, they are a web site. That newfangled ‘channel’. They are going to kick travel agents’ asses. Yup. Until you try to actually buy the travel service. Case in point: had to reserve 3 hotel rooms in NYC for a business trip. You go to Expedia, and instead of doing something challenging like, asking you to put the names of the 3 travelers, you have to go through the following ordeal:
1. Screen one: we need the names of your travelers.
2. Screen two: Enter the name of the first traveler.
3. Screen one: we need the names of your travelers (first traveler reflected).
4. Screen two: Enter the name of the second traveler.
5. Screen one: we need the names of your travelers (first, second travelers reflected).
6. Screen two: Enter the name of the third traveler.
7. Screen one: These are the names of your travelers.
Ajax anyone? Flash? just putting three boxes asking for the names of the travelers *on one page*? too difficult if you are Expedia.
Second case: BestBuy. The site is the online version of the evil malicious moron who tries to upsell you on electronics you have not researched about and do not need. Just that they do not upsell, that clicking the back button pops up the “you just submitted a form by POST method” when all you did is clicked on a link. 2008? Apparently not at the HQ of the #1 electronics retailer in the USA. They have great HR policies, but a crap website. I DO love the Circuit City website because it IS trying to do interesting things, and works much faster, clearer, better, you name it.
So yeah – boo too you Expedia, Best Buy. Your websites just suck.
I use Hostgator as my hosting company. I love them – great service, tons of space and no long term obligations. And the servers are fast. Now, another reason to love them – running Subversion repositories on your server with the caveat – you can only have one account to account to access that repository. If you develop by yourself, and I do for now, it’s not a problem. So how do you do it – assuming you are a Java coder using Eclipse on Windows?
SVN_SSH and for its value enter c:\\Program Files\\TortoiseSVN\\bin\\TortoisePlink.exe (assuming you installed Tortoise SVN in the default location)./myrepo. Now, create an Subversion repository inside that directory: svnadmin create myrepo. svn+ssh://<your hostgator admin user name>@<your domain name>:2222/home/<your hostgator admin user name>/<Repository directory path>. In other words, if your domain is example.com, your admin user name is joey and the path to your repository is /myrepo, then your URL will be svn+ssh://joey@example.com:2222/home/joey/myrepoYou should be good to go at that point as the rest of the process is the normal project checkout scheme used by Subclipse.
Two resources were helpful: The support message board post on the subject and this blog entry.
Hope this helps!
