Dock and Finder frozen on MAC with fully updated SnowLeopard
From time to time I encounter some really nasty and irritating problems… most often they are illogical and typically related to conditions over which I have no control…
One such problem occurred to me today after the workshop I had together with Piotr Walczyszyn.
Triggered by something completely unapparent to me and in a way unlike something I had seen before, the Finder App and the entire Dock on my 4 days old MacBook Pro froze… but ONLY when I tried to start the build-in Mail App.
No matter how many KillAll I exposed the poor Dock to in the Terminal and no matter how many Relaunches of the Finder app, just as little did it help… there were no other solution every time I wanted to check email, but to restart… however, this didn’t solve the problem satisfactorily because every time Mail tried to spawn a Window as a response to me trying to Reply or Forward an email… nothing happened !!
After some messing around I found the “com.apple.dock.plist” system file which I tried to remove followed by what I had decided would become the very last KillAll Dock this afternoon.
Immediately following a completed KillAll (and intrinsic Relaunch of the Dock) everything just worked perfectly. I had lost my preferences for the Dock, but since it was a meager 4 days since I had bought the damn thing, not much was lost and all my Dock preferences could be recreated in less than a minute.
My next solution would have been to reinstall / repair the Operating System from System Disk, so naturally I was happy to find this solution which is why I decided to share it…
The file to delete can be found here: “[User]/Library/Preferences/” (where User should be replaced by your User’s ID).
Good luck taming your SnowLeopard !
My Schedule for Oredev 2009
Upon having completed my preps for the AIR Bootcamp tomorrow, I decided to use the scheduler app for Oredev to compile my own personal schedule for the conference, and it turned out to look as follows.
Quite a number of slots were difficult to decide because so many sessions this year sound so interesting and the lineup of speakers is totally impressive…
Have you not yet checked out Oredev, I recommend you do it… its right here…
http://www.oredev.org/
Going to the amount of conferences I have been so fortunate to do the recent times… I always find that the scheduler apps always leave something to be wished. Some of them are really bad (Microsoft TechEd 2008+2009) and some of them are really good (Flash On the Beach 2009). The latter mainly because it was an iPhone App, to have a complement mobile app should be the standard from now on.
Anyways, the one for Oredev is really simple and easy to use, so what it lacks in wow’ness, it makes up for in simplicity… and it persists the personal schedule locally on the client… check it out…
http://www.oredev.org/scheduler
Introducing AVIT… another Aral Balkan production
Avit is one of the latest really cool iPhone apps which in the purest simplicity provides the user with instant gratification and value…
Avit allows you to scan the barcode on a book from your iPhone camera, submit it to the Avit webservice and immediately be given the options of reading it instantly or bookmarking it for later purchase on Safari books… pretty neat !
Check it out…
http://avitapp.com/
Book a Reclining chair in Zurich Airport
In the near future I will be flying through Zurich where I have been so unfortunate that my itinerary includes what most be considered an overnight stay in Zurich. Instead of heading with the AirTrain into Zurich Downtown and acquiring some humble lodging in the area around the Train station, I have this time decided to stay in the airport.
However, the Star Alliance Business Lounge closes at 23:00 and its the lounge with latest closing time (The Senator lounge already closes at 22:30), so I wanted to ensure that my stay in the airport would be as nice as possible.
Browsing the Zurich Airport website, I found the page offering Dayrooms and Reclining Chairs (reclining chairs that you can even book for an overnight stay), today I then received the booking confirmation… how cool is that !?
Check it out…
http://www.zurich-airport.com/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-154
Introducing Adobe WorkflowLab
Having returned from this year’s monstrous MAX in Los Angeles (monstrous due to the vast amount of sessions and networking).
One of the major impressions is the focus all of Adobe seem to have had throughout the past year on working smarter – not harder. This has reflected itself into every product and every aspect of the “Adobe Lifestyle” effectively offering opportunities and challenges to all of us making a living and life off the Adobe ecosystem.
One very obvious results of this thinking and focus at Adobe is the ALPHA release of the Adobe WorkflowLab, created by Mr. Doug Winnie and his team of skilled designers and developers.
The Workflow below is the workflow actually used to create WorkflowLab, its one of the many templates installed with the application itself… in all modesty a cool way of sharing this information with the community as well as a way of illustrating the willingness and ability to drink ones own cool-aid.
The screen below is the startup screen meeting the user after starting WorkflowLab, as you can see on the right side, it comes with a number of ready-made workflows which will allow people to get off on the right foot when starting a project type that they have not done before.
Adobe WorkflowLab is already available in a very early ALPHA release on Adobe Labs… Check it out…
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/workflowlab/
TheFunTheory/RolighetsTeorin… The PianoStairs Experiment
Sometimes its important to think out of the box, and I believe that’s what I believe these guys and girls did when they came up with the idea about the pianostairs…
The solution of making pianostairs as an alternative to escalator and normal “boring” stairs is based on the funtheory (that making things fun will make the critical difference).
Check out the video at youtube…
However, don’t be mistaken… the experiment is sponsored by Volkswagen, so it’s not for your blue eyes only they did it… nevertheless, it doesn’t change the fact that we can change user behavior by making the action itself fun to do…
You can check out the video above and the other funtheory videos at the funtheory website…
http://www.thefuntheory.com/
(re)Introducing Oredev 2009
Now, as we are getting closer to the closing date for the Early Bird discount its time to go to your boss and convince him/her to send you to the premier Developer Conference in the Baltic region: Oredev 2009.
The conference features no less than 170 sessions and workshops featuring an impressive gallery of both international and regional speakers.
Check out the schedule yourself with the easy-to-use scheduler web-app…
http://www.oredev.org/scheduler
If you need arguments to convince your boss, you can read some advice on how to do that here…
http://www.oredev.org/prod/oredev/site.nsf/AllDocuments/45739BB1F8000ECAC12575C3004EE0AC
Anyways… check out the conference…
http://www.oredev.org/
CS4 Live Tour… another “free lunch”
Now, in these days of financial tough times its worth noting all the “free lunches” available out there… One such “free lunch” is to be had on the 22nd of October in CinemaxX when the Adobe Evangelist team visits Copenhagen to talk about Creative Suite 4.
Check it out….
http://events.adobe.co.uk/cgi-bin/event.cgi?country=dk&eventid=8747
Cynergy Showcase Site… State of the Art – State Art – Art States
Cynergy has recently released their most recent initiative for displaying their many impressive showcases… CynergyTV !
If you don’t know what or who Cynergy are, then you should definitely check out their normal website, its a great source of inspiration of how to instrument an organization to continuously and consistently be able to deliver great user experiences…
http://www.cynergysystems.com/
Check it out…
http://cynergytv.com/
Great achievement for the UX team at Hello
A couple of weeks ago, the IA department at Hello won the esteemed IA-Jam at the EUROIA conference that took place in Copenhagen.
The decisive reason for the team winning was the recent work they had done leading to the release of UX-BASIS on which I have been blogging before.
Check it out…
http://www.euroia.org/
