[this is aaronland] Monday, March 26 2001

If this thing can do file-locking, it would be a pretty cool example of the street finding it's own use for things. Every day I do a certain amount of sysadmin-ish type work and there is a real need to document who did what and when. I keep notes locally, but that really doesn't work for people in another office or another city. Similarly, having to scp a bunch of files to a remote server or write 15 lines of DocBook everytime I add a symlink, just won't happen. On the other hand, there's a lot of overlap between keeping log file, writing a journal, maintaining a bookmarks list and updating a weblog so the tools for one aren't very different for another. Digressing for just a moment, journals and logs could benefit by having aliases and bookmarks could stand to use, well, hyperlinks. But I digress. If this thing does file locking then I could use it for most of what I'm currently using the RadioUserland outliner for (why can't the Gimp capture individual windows in RU?) I would rather use RU because it speaks XML, maps the outliner to the weblog nicely and has a built in search engine. But it runs on NT and, more importantly, it can't talk to the network over a secure connection. That shouldn't be interpreted as being quite as pissy as it may sound. There's a lot to be said for knowing who your customers are and acting accordingly. Plain old FTP and Windows are probably smart business decisions from Userland's point of view. What I find sad is that by deciding to not include one of the core widgets (SSL) for any Internet app they effectively limit the different uses that the street may find for their thing. Call it boot-strapping, call it capturing eyeballs, call it whatever you want; it's almost always good for business. And if you think I'm just being flaky and idealistic I would point out that the web itself is a as good an example of the adage as you're going to get these days.