Code Sorcery Workshop

Once again I'm very much looking forward to attending SXSW Interactive this year in Austin. Last year was an absolute blast (the Bonjour functionality in Pukka debuted there) and this year, since I've gone solo, I'm attending as 100% Code Sorcery Workshop. I'll be arriving this Friday and staying in Austin until Tuesday evening. If you're going, be sure to drop me a comment here or look me up in the online registry! And when running Pukka, be sure to turn on Bonjour (it's on by default, use Command-B to see the drawer) so that we can all watch each others' bookmarks while the conference is happening.

I don't even know what I'm looking forward to most yet. SXSW is just such a full-on sensory overload that I'm confident I'll have a great time just taking it as it comes. Last year's panels ranged from business to blogging to design to creativity and the nightlife was just as, ahem, educational. That's the one thing about SXSW that differentiates if from other conferences -- start with awesome nightlife in Austin, add thousands of geeks plus a bit of spirits, and lots of fun is guaranteed to result.

In other news, looks like Austin's getting an Apple Store this weekend and I'm also geared up about the food.

Man, I'm tired already!

It took me a while to notice, but Vienna 2.1.1.2109, which was released a month ago today, added support for Pukka as a posting client. Vienna is an open source RSS reader with many great features such as:

• a built-in tabbed browser
• full AppleScript support
• feed display styles
• smart folders

Vienna will automatically detect if Pukka is installed and provide it as an option under Article -> Blog With....

I come from a UNIX and open source background, so I've always liked the model of small tools fitting together to create useful workflows. I've modeled Pukka in this way and the addition of support to Vienna (alongside existing support for NewsFire and NetNewsWire) continues this tradition.

Thanks, Vienna team!

I recently added a section to the site to list some of the blog posts and other reviews that have been written about Pukka. I've also for a long time had a couple banners available that you can put on your site. The HTML code is included, so feel free to add one (or both!) to your blog or website to share the love.

Also, if you like Pukka, I would greatly appreciate a review or rating at either MacUpdate or VersionTracker. It only takes a few minutes and some of you have done it already.

More users of Pukka means more ideas for great new features to add. I get email nearly everyday with some sort of suggestion and many of these make it to the finished product. For a tool like Pukka that works with del.icio.us, I find that a large percentage of the users are bloggers who can help spread the word better.

Thanks and share the love!

Get it while it's hot: Pukka 1.4.3 fixes a couple bugs related to background bookmark caching and gracefully handling issues with the del.icio.us interface when it's down, overloaded, or when you are offline.

Remember, you can always get the latest updates by going to Pukka -> Check For Updates... right in the application.

Happy bookmarking!

Big congratulations to Daniel Jalkut of Red Sweater Software! Looks like Red Sweater has acquired the development rights to MarsEdit, which is what I'm typing this blog post in right now. MarsEdit was originally a spinoff of NetNewsWire -- I remember when they got split up into separate apps (and my license for NNW turned into a license for each). Then Gus Mueller of Flying Meat worked on it a while. Now it looks to be picking up again, which is good news for Mac bloggers. Brent Simmons, the author of NNW and MarsEdit, also gave me a big shot in the arm when he added support for Pukka to work alongside MarsEdit for blog posting in NNW early last year.

I met Daniel (and Brent and Gus, for that matter) at C4 last fall and I know that he's been probing around for potential apps to take over. And I saw Paul Kafasis of Rogue Amoeba's post alluding to this news, but I couldn't quite put the pieces together last night.

This is truly cool. Great job, guys!

I've just made another small update to Pukka, version 1.4.2, which addresses a couple more bugs. The only one that has been seen in the wild (to my knowledge) would happen when a password was entered incorrectly. There was a chance that Pukka would keep trying the del.icio.us site repeatedly and possibly get blocked by the del.icio.us staff. I've corrected this and now alert the user immediately upon a password failure so that it can be corrected. Pukka will not hit del.icio.us again after that until the user has had a chance to adjust things and has been made aware of the problem.

Grab the latest version here or use the update right within Pukka.

I always strive for high performance applications, but as with any major feature upgrade, the occasional bug does creep in. The addition of duplicate notification and dock menu bookmarks required some rather large work under the hood. Know that I am committed to a stable, reliable Pukka and will address issues like these as soon as possible.

Thanks and enjoy!

I've just released Pukka 1.4.1 to fix a couple bugs that users might have been seeing with this week's 1.4. Essentially, Pukka should run a tad faster, be more impervious to crashing, and not make any sound effects if you don't want it to ;-)

As always, get Pukka here or through auto-updating right in the application (Pukka->Check For Updates...).

I hope you enjoy these enhancements!

I'm pleased to announce the immediate availability of Pukka 1.4 featuring duplicate post notification, bookmarks in the dock, and much more! Grab the latest version here or read on for more info.

I've put a lot of work into this version and it features some popularly-requested features as well as some brand new ideas. First and foremost, Pukka knows every link you've posted, across every account, and will notify you when you start to edit a post for a page you've already bookmarked.

You're now given the original post date along with the option to cancel, continue editing as new and overwriting the old post, or populating Pukka's editing form with the old post for review or refinement. Trust me, this is a huge improvement to the posting workflow!

Hand in hand with knowing about past posts, it of course follows that Pukka is now aware of your bookmark collections and can let you access them. That's right, Pukka now lets you browse all of your tags, organized by account, from the dock menu! This is a much-requested feature that I'm happy to finally implement. A lot of groundwork has been laid for future functionality in this area, but I wanted to start things off right and provide a simple, fast, and direct way to make immediate use of this information. Check out a screenshot for the full scoop.

There are several more minor features that I think you'll like as well. Among these are:

• remember main window placement between launches (Window->Save Current Position)
• Bonjour drawer open/closed state is saved between launches automatically
• easier keystroke shortcut for changing accounts: Command [ and ]
• automatically trimming of edge and internal whitespace in pasted URL and title

Not necessarily a feature, but worth mentioning, is the fact that Pukka is now a timed but unrestricted demo. You've now got a fourteen day period in which to use Pukka in all its glory, regardless of how long you've been using it unlicensed so far, before it will stop working. Please consider registering Pukka if you find it useful -- it's only $5 US and since I'm now working full-time for the Workshop, your registration goes directly towards more great Mac software. And to previous customers, your registration will continue to work as always -- thanks for supporting the Workshop!

The last feature is of a more technical nature, but may be of use to some of you. If you've ever found Pukka's tag autocompletion to be too fast (or too slow!), you can now have complete control over this. The default delay is 0.2 seconds but it can be adjusted with a simple Terminal command:

defaults write net.codesorcery.Pukka "Tag Completion Delay" 0.5

Replace 0.5 with whatever amount of time (in seconds) that you'd like to have Pukka wait before suggesting a tag. If you'd ever like to revert to the default, just use:

defaults delete net.codesorcery.Pukka "Tag Completion Delay"

In a future version, I'll make this more accessible, along with a more robust set of preferences in general.

And lastly, speaking of future versions, stay tuned soon for the next version of Pukka. I've got a lot more in store and I am, as always, open to feedback from you to make things as good as possible. The next version of Pukka will likely warrant a price increase, so if you're interested, be sure to register now and save a few bucks. All licensees of Pukka 1.4 and all previous versions will continue to have full registration status for life.

Keep your RSS reader parked right here for the latest news and updates! I've been working on Pukka for just over a year now and I'm having the time of my life, so I hope that you enjoy the fruits of my labor.

One of my current laments is that I don't seem to have time to blog, at moderate length, as I would like to do from time to time. My favorite post here continues to be an early one, So really, what's the deal?, where I talk about starting out, why I did so, and a bit about my general philosophy on what I'm doing. I enjoyed talking with Blake about this during my CocoaRadio interview. Basically, I need more of this kind of post.

A seemingly great idea that occurred to me yesterday while reading Eric Sink's On The Business Of Software is an annual blog post called The State of the Workshop. This being the inaugural post, I hope to tell you what the heck the Workshop is, where I hope to take it, and why you might want to care. If you are still reading even now, I thank you for that and promise to try to keep it interesting at a general level. And I hope to be writing here again next year at about this time.

Look who's talking

First, and hopefully blessedly briefly, a bit about me. My name is Justin Miller and I'm a nearly thirty-year-old geek from the web hosting, web development, and political internet consulting spheres. I am the lone voice here, which I will also talk a bit about momentarily. I'm the CEO, owner, president, Chief Gnome Wrangler, and trash taker-outer.

Code Sorcery Workshop started about eight months ago when I began charging for my nascent del.icio.us posting program, Pukka. Then, it was a place to centralize my attempt at Mac shareware. Today, the Workshop is my full-time job. That's right -- as of about two months ago, I've gone indie and am attempting to live The Life. Again, it's an attempt, and I'd like to lay out for you my motivations, my reasoning, my commitment, and the current state of things.

What's happening?

There are two primary things that I am busying myself with currently -- consulting on systems administration and web development, and developing commercial Mac software. I hope to grow both areas of my business. My ideal scenario right now is developing several Mac products and consulting with a couple clients who I find absolutely compelling, motivating, and just all-around awesome. I'm currently doing a bit more of the latter than the former.

If you're here, then you've probably at least heard of Pukka, if you're not already using it. I won't say much more than that there are good things in store just around the corner, and that I wish to lay out my vision for what Pukka is and where it is headed. Simply put, Pukka is the fastest way to work with del.icio.us bookmarks available for the Mac, and probably anyplace else. You'll be hearing more from me about it another time, but I wanted to mention that for now.

On the topic of consulting, please stay tuned for a website redesign where I will provide more info about my work. I am currently working with a number of awesome clients. If you are looking for some advice, particularly in the hosting, systems design, and systems administration fields, please do not hesitate to get in touch with me.

Motivations

Why do what I do? In short, more fun and less hassle. I work with open source technologies and the Mac platform because I want to focus on great products and services that piggyback on awesome design and reliability, having more fun while working, and not being hassled (or having my customers hassled) by building on a foundation of sand that shifts beneath them. Good building blocks make for good solutions on top, so I'll always go where the innovative, reliable technologies are at.

I plan on staying small -- for the foreseeable future, it will be me and the gnomes. On that front, I'd like to apologize a bit and hopefully self-correct. I've always been wary of trying to "fake the plural" (as Eric Sink puts it). I come from a blogging-as-credo background and know the perils therein. In the past I've tried to diffuse this in a tongue-in-cheek manner by referring to "we" as myself and "the gnomes". While I'd like to keep things lighthearted and fun, I'd like to reaffirm my commitment to not faking the plural and to putting myself out there in this venture. I will try to avoid some awkward positioning that's required to refer to "we" at all and will try to keep it authentic as I move forward.

Back to the topic of motivations, I'm here because I want a few key freedoms:

• freedom to balance my life
• freedom to relocate physically
• freedom to remain continuously creative
• freedom to experience my customers and colleagues as real people

I hope these freedoms speak for themselves and that I can continually strive towards them in my work.

Trust

Lastly, but perhaps most importantly, I'd like to reaffirm in which ways I and the Workshop ask for your trust and how we -- um, I -- intend to keep it.

Firstly, I have a strong commitment to not sharing customer data in any form. I am strongly hesitant to even email my own customers without their consent, so look for a future refinement of this commitment if and when I think this might be necessary. And you can definitely expect a generous "default to opt out" policy -- again, I'm just hesitant to tick anyone off and I want to be treated how I expect to be treated myself.

Secondly, I have a strong commitment to fair and balanced (now there's a loaded term...) licensing policies. In short, if you have a concern, feel free to contact me, but basically, one purchase of one license equals one person using the software. If you have multiple computers, great. But if you have multiple people, please buy a license for each. I think that's fair, don't you? I will formalize this in more detailed writing soon as well.

Thirdly, I have a strong commitment to being here for you. This ranges from courteous and prompt support to continuing to innovate to listening to existing customers to being around for the foreseeable future. In short, I don't have any plans to go out of business and I don't particularly relish that happening unexpectedly, either.

Thank you and good night

If you've made it this far, I thank you again (very, very much) for reading to this point. Feel free to leave a comment just to say hi if you like. I look forward to growing my business in the year to come and above all, I would love to be here again next year in another State of the Workshop.

I just got an email from a Pukka user who was wondering if private posting could be enabled by default. While this is not currently available natively, it can still be accomplished now using AppleScript. Based off of an earlier post about using AppleScript to duplicate the bookmarklet's functionality, I modified the script slightly to add these lines at the end:

tell application "Pukka"
    set private posting to true
end tell

Then, when the AppleScript is run to perform the bookmarklet's JavaScript, it also sets private posting to on, but lets you still pull the trigger to submit the link. This way, you can still turn private posting off if you like.

While you can easily run AppleScripts from the AppleScript menu (enabled in Applications -> AppleScript -> AppleScript Utility), I recommend a faster solution such as Quicksilver or FastScripts which can link an AppleScript to a single keystroke. That way, you could have one keystroke to ready a Pukka post as public and another to ready it as private.

Grab the new script here. Thanks to Joseph for the inspiration!