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Slightly Improved Installer Application

I still need to get around to writing the Xcode tutorial for building really cool webkit applications. (i.e. like the Hab.la Adium/iChat installer), but I have made a few minor improvements that might be useful for our institutional users who pass our installer around.

The new installer has better error handling, and includes a readme file.

You can download it here:
http://static.hab.la/downloads/HablaInstaller.dmg

Also we had an outage this morning when we ran out of space on /var due to logging. I could have sworn we already fixed the log rotation problem, this is ridiculous, of course at least it was sunday morning. (Our most off peak time on our more off peak day).

Filed under  //   adium   install   outage   webkit  

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Easier integration with Adium and iChat with new helpers (installers)

And you thought we couldn’t make Hab.la any easier to install… Once again Ben spent another day and a half hulled up in front of his computer performing his coding sorcery (even learning objective c in a day!) to bring you the next generation in Hab.la helpers (what say ye? helpers or installers?).

The result is the hottest thing I’ve seen since that coffee spill last week.

The Hab.la helpers for Adium and iChat (Both for Mac OS X) have evolved past their former Applescript selves to let you quickly and easily configure your IM client.

Here’s a basic run-through of how it all works:

  1. Download the installer application
  2. Run the installer
  3. Verify your username is correct and click either “Add Account to iChat” or Add Account to Adium”
  4. Now Hab.la is fully integrated with your chat client!
  5. All you need to do now is add the Hab.la code to your webpage and you’re all set.

Stay tuned for details on how Ben actually built this installer— pretty cool stuff…

Filed under  //   adium   helper   ichat   installer  

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Exciting Progress -- Hab.la Building Relationships

So I spent way to much time trying to figure out exactly how Adium and Meebo handle updating nicknames in a buddy list (roster). The answer is, while they are both based on libpurple/gaim they both pretty much ignore setting the nickname in presence updates and messages. Let’s just say I spent a lot of time figuring out exactly how adium deals with this: i.e. doing traces through libpurple’s source code: http://www.google.com/codesearch?hl=en&q=+libpurple..,

I tried to find a socks proxy where I could rewrite packets and watch jabber messages, but I couldn’t find anything that quite fit my needs, so I ended up modifying something called PySocks (which hasn’t been updated in a few years, and required a bit of hacking to evne run, but works quite well as a socks proxy for rewriting packets and monitoring jabber to figure out what’s going on. [sourceforge.net/projects/pysocks/]

So google codesearch, grep, and pysocks was the method, but what was the result? And why does this matter to you?

Good questions self!

The idea is to have your hab.la buddy list become more personal, so instead of having visitors appear as “webuser1” and “webuser2”, they’ll appear as “John the Spammer”, and “Fred the friendly reader”. I.e. your buddy list will not only tell you you have 2 people browsing your site, but also who those people are [if they’ve chatted with you using hab.la in the past]

Hab.la building relationships – sounds like a good motto to me :-)

Filed under  //   adium   backend   jabber   meebo   python   xmpp  

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There's an awful lot of code in this thing

OK, so the whole thing about recompiling Adium for debugging? Yeah, turns out to be not quite as quick and simple as it sounds.

It's all good now though.

Filed under  //   adium   debugging  

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Buddy lists and whatnot

OK, I guess I'll break the cherry on this blog. I spent some time last week reading up on the XMPP spec for presence notification and buddy list (sorry, "roster") management. It's not really that complicated, but it's written in that typical RFC style that is really hard to understand.

As of yesterday I had basically everything working nicely in iChat, which seemed great. But then today I tried Adium, and of course the buddy lists don't show up at all there; same for gaim.

The nice thing about working with open source stuff, however, is that I can look at the code and see where it's going awry. Or, recompile the whole thing as a development build and step through it with a debugger. Which I am doing now.

Filed under  //   adium   buddy   debugging   gaim   ichat   lists   oss   xmpp  

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