DssW

DssW / Personal — Comments Off
25
Apr 10

Celebratory muffins for AppleScript

Last week, DssW launched a new preview of Power Manager 4. This preview introduced AppleScript support. To celebrate we made chocolate and walnut muffins.

Homemade chocolate muffins

Homemade chocolate muffins

AppleScript is never easy to implement. I have been planning our AppleScript implementation for more than a year. That planning paid off and the work involved was pleasantly stress free. As ever, a few esoteric aspects of AppleScript’s requirements caused moments of wonder but nothing requiring a change of course.

The muffins were a delicious well-deserved treat.

DssW — Comments Off
19
Feb 10

A better source of SSL certificates

I am no fan of Certificate Authorities (CA) but they seem necessary to work with in order to offer secure services. Certificate Authorities are the organisations that deal with certificates needed for Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) connections – the connections in your browser that show a padlock.

Early morning view from Queen Victoria Market, Melbourne

Early morning view from Queen Victoria Market, Melbourne

Thus, I was delighted to find StartSSL‘s offerings. The prices are good and the service has been great.

I had trouble getting the sign up process working with Safari 4 on Mac OS X, and needed help to rectify the resulting problems. Within an hour or two all was put right and DssW’s Reseller site now has a new SSL certificate.

I experienced problems when setting up the site’s authentication certificate and keys. Keychain appeared to get confused at some stage and I was left locked out of my original account.

If you decide to try StartSSL from Mac OS X, I recommend using FireFox. I found Safari’s tight integration with Keychain to be counter productive. FireFox avoided Keychain’s problems and gave me control over where the keys and certificates ended up.

Ultimately, I want DssW’s keys and certificates stored in separate keychains or files, and not lumped into my personal login keychain.

Try following Glenn Fleishman’s article “How to obtain and install an SSL/TLS certificate, for free” from ars technica for the smoothest experience.

DssW — Comments Off
3
Sep 09

Now available in a bookstore near you

You know your efforts are making an impression when they appear in print.

All three of DssW’s Mac energy saving products appear in Joe Hutsko’s latest book: Green Gadgets for Dummies. This is the first time I have known my work to appear on a bookshop’s shelves, and it feels good.

Green Gadgets for Dummies recommends DssW

Green Gadgets for Dummies recommends DssW

DssW — Comments Off
27
Aug 09

Hello Snow Leopard, Good Bye Panther

DssW launched an update to Power Manager today. This update improves a couple of bits and pieces, but nothing too significant has changed.

DssW Power Manager 3 for Mac OS X

DssW Power Manager 3 for Mac OS X

The biggest change is our dropping of Mac OS X 10.3.9 support. With the introduction of Mac OS X 10.6, the time is right. We have supported Mac OS X 10.3, aka Panther, for four years.

Panther was the first generation of Mac OS X that could support Power Manager. Earlier generations of Mac OS X did not include the underlying functionality we needed.

It feels sad to say good bye to Panther. Going forward the decision makes sense; our efforts can be better directed, and new critical path technologies are calling that Panther can not emulate.

Supporting multiple generations of Mac OS X is not always easy. Each generation of Mac OS X introduces new technologies, methodologies, and quirks that demand a deep understanding of Mac OS X’s implementation.

That effort to support multiple generations of Mac OS X with one binary often results in a much more stable product.

I was pleased to note that Snow Leopard required no specific changes to Power Manager. Instead, we used the allocated time to improve the Login Window notification mechanism and port our process management to launchd.

DssW / The English Space — Comments Off
21
Jul 09

Now selling digital content

Today Megan released her first book. The book is called Wordsearch 1 for Beginners, and is available immediately from The English Space.

Megan’s book is being published by DssW; my company is handling the business side of the venture, while Megan focuses on the producing useful content for her readers.

Megan’s book was the cause of our recent Reseller upgrade at DssW. Our reseller software needed to be extended to handle the sale of digital content.

Selling digital content is new for DssW. For this post, I consider digital content to be any content that is not available until a payment has been made. That means allowing only paying customers to download or view the content.

I have extended DssW’s tried and true reseller software to handle the sale of digital content, in addition to software licences. Thankfully the improvements touched surprisingly little existing code.

When you buy your copy of the book, you receive an e-mail from DssW containing a unique download link. That link is unique to you and lets you download the book as many times as you need.

As with nearly all sales through DssW, the download e-mail is sent automatically and immediately after your payment has cleared. If you are buying with a debit or credit card, the book will be yours within minutes regardless of the time of day, or day of the year.

Today marks the beginning of a new adventure. Exciting times are ahead.

DssW — Comments Off
14
Jul 09

Upgrading Reseller to Catalyst 5.8 from 5.7

The last few days have been spent preparing the way for DssW‘s next big thing. That meant getting my hands dirty and updating our sales and reseller software: Reseller.

Reseller is written in perl using the Catalyst framework. Thankfully Reseller is not too complex, but different enough from my day-to-day UNIX development work to take me a while to orientate myself.

Catalyst has continued to improve since I last updated Reseller. In that time, Catalyst’s minor version number ticked up from 7 to 8 and with it came a handful of significant changes. Catalyst now uses Moose and has generally matured. The update meant I needed to tweak a few bits and pieces but nothing too painful.

Catalyst’s documentation continues to be outstanding; the documentation is main reason I picked the framework over Ruby-on-Rails or Java. Fad and functionality mean little without guidance. Those seeking to compete with the likes of Catalyst need to rival their clear, centralised, documentation and tutorials.

The upgraded Reseller is now live and ticking along nicely. If you notice any problems, please let support@dssw.co.uk know.