Various articles by CNET and bloggingstocks.com point out that the discontinuation of MS Money comes as a result of cost cutting and growing competition from Quicken, as well as Internet-based Mint.com and Wesabe.

The problem I am seeing is that Microsoft tends to get itself into a game of competing with the leaders instead of being the leader when it comes to innovation. Remember the Web browser war between Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer? The search engine race against Google? The video game console, personal music player, personal finance software, and the list goes on and on. I won’t miss MS Money, since I’ve already switched back to Quicken a while back and have used Mint.com for quite some time. Will the Microsoft Zune end up like MS Money eventually? Only time will tell.

However, Opera Unite doesn’t really make me want to switch to using Opera browser for privacy, bandwidth, and security reasons. More importantly, all the services of Opera Unite are already available in Facebook, and I am happy to use Facebook to share my notes and photos just like most of my friends do. Lastly, (a bit of bias) I really like Safari on the Mac. It is simple, yet it runs and loads Web pages really fast in comparison to Firefox, Flock, and Opera.

Here is a great article on Opera Unite for those who want to learn more about it.

One of my favorite developers on the guest speaker list is Sofa, who developed Versions (which just won the Apple Design Awards) and Checkout. The Amsterdam design firm also created gorgeous icons for companies such as Mozilla, TomTom, and Nike. Another one of my favorite developers is 280 North, who developed 280 Sildes, a sexy Web-based presentation application equivalent to Keynote on the Mac. The development team of 280 North also created an open source framework, named Cappuccino, which aims to make it easy to build desktop-like applications for Web browsers. The framework, written in Objective-J (also developed by 280 North), is largely based upon Apple’s Objective-C and Cocoa frameworks. Even Cappuccino’s IDE, named Atlas, feels and operates like Apple’s Xcode.

Almost.at, a real-time event feeds application built using Cappuccino, is another impressive product demonstrating how developers can harness the power of Objective-J to build desktop-caliber applications that run in Web browsers.

One of the CSS frameworks I’ve been using is YUI’s CSS Reset, CSS Fonts, and CSS Grids. Recently I came across Blueprint CSS, another CSS framework that tries to differ itself from the developer-oriented YUI CSS framework by putting an emphasis on the needs of typographic design.

The interesting thing is how these two frameworks are being compared to each other. In my experience as a client-side designer, I am always looking for better ways to solve the same development problems quicker and easier. And Blueprint CSS framework appears to meet my needs well.

blockquote, x:-moz-any-link { /* FireFox 2 hack */
  padding-top: 5px;
} 

blockquote, x:-moz-any-link, x:default { /* FireFox 3 hack */
  padding-top: 5px;
}

1. Download WordPress 2.7.1.
2. Back up my database via my hosting service provider’s database administration tools.
3. Back up all my existing WordPress files onto my local disk via FTP.
4. Upload and overwrite all WordPress files and sub folders with the new release, except the “wp-content” folder, which contains custom plugins and themes.
5. Go back to WordPress admin page (http://www.yourdomain.com/wordpress/wp-admin/) and upgrade the WordPress database (as simple as clicking on a link) as instructed.

That was it! Now I got a spanking shiny new WordPress interface!

dyld: Symbol not found: _apr_socket_sendfile
 Referenced from: /usr/sbin/httpd
 Expected in: /usr/lib/libapr-1.0.dylib

/usr/sbin/apachectl: line 81: 58838 Trace/BPT trap          $HTTPD -t

I did a good amount of searching on Google hoping to find related discussions on the same issue from other users, but I couldn’t find the right answers to my problem. This problem may or may not be related to my system setup, and trying to work with Apple to identify the cause can be time-consuming. I need the Apache Server to work now locally, and it becomes inevitable to re-install the default Apache Server on Leopard 10.5.6 as the quickest solution.

Thanks to the Internet and those generous code contributors, I find this very useful shell script from a CodeSnippets post that allows me to quickly re-install the latest version of Apache Server without figuring out a lot of thing on my own. Due to its usefulness, I am including it in my post just so I always have it even if it becomes unavailable on CodeSnippets in the future. The credit of this code certainly goes to its original code contributor.

#!/bin/sh
# this re-installs the default apache server on leopard
# save code as filename.sh and give it permissions to run (see in code)
# run with ./apache_refresh.sh
# If permissions error do: chmod u+x filename.sh
# WARNING THIS MAY DELETE OR CHANGE YOUR APACHE SETTING SO BACKUP IF YOU HAVE ANYTHING YOU WANT TO SAVE

echo "*******************************   Starting Apache Server Refresh - Leopard"

#make a temp directory to work with, you can change this if you choose
echo "*******************************   Creating the source folder"
mkdir ~/Desktop/apache-temp
cd ~/Desktop/apache-temp

#get current apache version, update or change if necessary
echo "*******************************   Downloading Apache Server"
curl -O http://www.gtlib.gatech.edu/pub/apache/httpd/httpd-2.2.11.tar.gz

#if you change the apache version above be sure to change it here as well
echo "*******************************   Extracting Apache Server"
tar xzvf httpd-2.2.11.tar.gz
cd httpd-2.2.11

#you can change the default install paths, "Darwin" is the default leopard install, if you don't know what this means then don't change this!
echo "*******************************   Configuring Darwin Layout"
./configure --enable-layout=Darwin \
--enable-mods-shared=all \
--with-ssl=/usr \
--with-mpm=prefork \
--disable-unique-id \
--enable-ssl \
--enable-dav \
--enable-cache \
--enable-proxy \
--enable-logio \
--enable-deflate \
--with-included-apr \
--enable-cgi \
--enable-cgid \
--enable-suexec

#make the files
echo "*******************************   Compiling Apache Server"
make

#install the files
echo "*******************************   Installing Apache Server"
sudo make install

#backup hosts file
echo "*******************************   Backing up hosts file"
cd /private/etc
sudo cp hosts hosts.backup

#delete hosts file
echo "*******************************   Deleting Hosts File"
sudo rm hosts

echo "*******************************   Creating New Hosts File"
cd ~/Desktop/apache-temp
cat > hosts << EOF
##
# Host Database
#
# localhost is used to configure the loopback interface
# when the system is booting.  Do not change this entry.
##
127.0.0.1	localhost
255.255.255.255	broadcasthost
::1             localhost
fe80::1%lo0	localhost
EOF

#move new hosts file to /etc dir
echo "*******************************   Moving Hosts Filer"
sudo mv ~/Desktop/apache-temp/hosts /etc

#set hosts file permissions
echo "*******************************   Setting Hosts File Permissions"
cd /private/etc
sudo chown root hosts

#backup httpd.conf file
echo "*******************************   Backing up httpd.conf File"
cd /private/etc/apache2
sudo cp httpd.conf httpd.conf.backup

#delete to httpd.conf file
echo "*******************************   Deleting httpd.conf File"
sudo rm httpd.conf

#copy httpd.conf file from originals folder
echo "*******************************   Copying New httpd.conf File"
cd original
sudo cp httpd.conf /private/etc/apache2/httpd.conf

#backup httpd-vhosts.conf file
echo "*******************************   Backing up httpd-vhosts.conf File"
cd /private/etc/apache2/extra
sudo cp httpd-vhosts.conf httpd-vhosts.conf.backup

#copy httpd-vhosts.conf file from originals extra folder
echo "*******************************   Copying New httpd-vhosts.conf File"
cd /private/etc/apache2/original/extra
sudo cp httpd-vhosts.conf /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf

#remove the temp folder
echo "*******************************   Remove the temp folder"
rm -R ~/Desktop/apache-temp

echo "*******************************   Starting Apache Server"
sudo apachectl start

echo "*******************************   Done"

Notice the line “curl -O http://www.gtlib.gatech.edu/pub/apache/httpd/httpd-2.2.11.tar.gz” that specifies the download source. Change that to the most current version if necessary.