IMified: on the vanguard of human-computer interaction!

A colleague sent me a message titled “IM as the new command line”. It was a link to IMified, an single instant-messaging gateway to things like to-dos, reminders, stock quotes and, through an API for creating other gateways, numerous third-party sites like Google Calendar, Basecamp, Twitter and stuff.

The UI has some web aspects, as for the directory of available widgets, creation of custom shortcuts and so on. But the main interface, the one in IM?

Numbered menus.

With “B” to go “back” to the previous menu and “M” to go back to the main menu.

That’s right:

It’s Compuserve, circa 1981, down to typing “M” to go to the main menu!

No Sam Goody online store offering vinyl and cassettes yet, and they do have lowercase support, which is very fancy.

I do think it’s a coincidence, though. If they really were ripping off Compuserve, each service would have a predefined keyword you could use to access it directly, like “GO REMINDERS” to jump straight to the reminder service, “GO QUOTES” to get stock quotes, etc. No such staggering feats of productivity-enhancement here yet. Give them time, though. They’ll stumble on the idea sooner or later.

Apache on Vista

No doubt this will get fixed in the next few months. Probably. But at the time of this writing in early June of ‘07, the official Apache 2.2 installer fails to install the Apache service and the Apache Monitor applet won’t run at all. But you can get it to work if you do the following (h/t some person on some forum I found via Google):

1. Disable User Access Control, the Vista feature that protects you from malware by dimming the display and asking you if you’re SURE you want to do anything to your system, every five minutes or so. You can do this vai a link in the Users and Groups control panel.
2. Reboot so the above takes effect.
3. Install Apache
4. Re-enable UAC if you want. Reboot.
5. Use Apache.