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Like all good things, IM has it’s dark side. Unlike phone and email which can be easily ignored, if you get an IM it generally pops up right in front of whatever you are doing on the computer. It’s the electronic version of tapping someone on the shoulder while they’re working. In the words of Uncle Ben Parker, “With great power comes great responsibility.” In other words, IM gives you the great power to annoy the hell out of someone!
That being said, I decided to summarize the 5 most annoying things that IM buddy’s do:
1. “Hit & Run” IM
The “Hit & Run” is when a buddy logs onto IM only when they want to contact you. They come online, hit you with an IM then flee the scene once their question has been answered! They go right back off-line and you can never IM them when you need their help. This could happen if you’re dealing with someone who has a modem connection. But usually the case is , ironically, they themselves don’t want to be interrupted by IM messages.
Solution: Block until they learn to play nice.
2. “Cliff Hanger” IM
The “Cliff Hanger” IM is when a buddy sends you a message (usually interrupting some important thought) with a message like “hey chump, you there?” To which you reply “yep, what’s crackin?” Then your buddy never sends back a reply. They just leave you hanging after they interrupted you! You sit there staring at your IM client waiting for a few minutes until you finally give up and try to remember that awesome thought you had.
Solution: When they get back to you 1 hour later, don’t reply.
3. “Time Delay” IM
The “Time Delay” IM is when a buddy is IM’ing you and, most likely, doing five other things at the same time. They take just long enough between each reply to keep stringing you along, but not enough to let you get back to work. This conveys about the same level of respect for your buddy as, say, talking to them on the phone while watching TV.
Solution: Tell them to use Email next time.
4. “Diarrhea of the IM” IM
The “Diarrhea of the IM” IM is a buddy who seemingly has nothing to do – ever. They want to chat endlessly and will IM you all the time for no reason. Their IM chats usually begin with something like “Hey whatcha doing?” This is a common symptom of the buddy who is new to IM and is excited about the ability to reach out and touch someone whenever they want.
Solution: Give them some time to get used to the thrill of IM.
5. “I Don’t Use IM” IM
Ok, so this isn’t an IM user, but a non-IM user. Let’s face it, once you use IM you want everyone you know to use it so you can reach them. Not using IM is even more annoying than all the other problems!
Solution: Send daily email bugging them to use IM.
Are you one of these people? Do you have your own IM pet peeves? Leave some feedback and let me know…
Update: The proof of concept that I did here was actually implemented as a feature into Parallels version 2.5. Did my idea inspire them or where they already working on it…? The world may never know! My humble idea had it’s 15 minutes of fame on the social network sites. Alas, this hack is no longer necesary for launching Windows applications. However, it still may be interesting and useful as a crude messaging system between the host and guest OS. With that I present the original article:
With the latest version of Parallels coherence mode you can run Windows apps yet have the Windows OS itself transparent. This creates the visual effect that you are running Windows apps within OSX. The coherence feature is still a little rough but it got my gears spinning and I saw some amazing possibilities. The illusion doesn’t seem quite complete to me without being able to launch Windows apps from the Dock. I created this simple app as a proof of concept that it could be easily done. It’s simple but it works!
You can try it out for yourself: Download docksync_v01.zip
The app requires .NET Framework 2.0 which you can install from Windows Update
Update: Grab Matt’s add-on DockSyncOSX and you can drag/drop Windows Shortcuts!
Demo Video
How does it work?
Obviously there is some communication between OSX and Windows already through parallels. But, not having access to that API, I decided to create a simple app on the Windows side that basically monitors a shared directory. On the OSX side, you simply create a specially crafted text file in that directory to send a command over to Windows. Any OSX method to generate a text file can be used. Just to keep things simple, I used a shell script that can be executed by double-clicking an icon. The result is crude but it works and hopefully might inspire someone to take it a little further.
Here’s a screenshot of the Windows app that’s monitoring for commands:
This is being released with no license so use the code at your own risk. If you have any suggestions or updates, please post them here. In particular if you know of an cleaner way to trigger the creation of the task file on the OSX side, that would be cool. Preferably something that people can create and edit without having to compile.
All of us who are into the Windows on OSX thing via bootcamp, parallels, VMWare, etc have been hearing of a mysterious ability to actually run windows applications right there on the OSX desktop. How would this be done – will Apple write some sort of API wrapper to run Windows Applications? Will bootcamp mysteriously merge with OSX? What does this all mean?
Well I have seen the future. And it is not quite what I was expecting.
I’ve been playing around with the latest beta version of Parallels, which is now available for download from the parallels forums. There’s a surprising amount of new feature for a minor version update, but one that I found strange and interesting is a feature called “Coherence Mode.” Coherence mode is supposed to allow you to run windows applications right on the OSX desktop.
As you can see from the screenshot, it really does visually look like you are running a windows application right there on the desktop. Since you can drag your mouse around and grab various windows in either Windows or OSX, it really does somewhat feel like the apps are running in OSX too… kinda! What Parallels seems to have done is basically to have windows running over the top of OSX, but visually hide the actual desktop. So, it is more or less just a visual trick. One wierd thing that you’ll notice from the screenshot is that the windows taskbar is floating just above the OSX dock. I’m sure Apple fanboys will struggle to keep their lunch down at the sight of it! Even I find it a ugly.
In addition to the Coherence Mode feature, Parallels now supports drag-n-drop between the two operating systems. This feature works really great. Though it is again some amount of visual trickery again, since files could be easily copied through the virtual shared directories. You can’t drag a file from a windows app to a mac app – now that would be cool! But, it’s seamless and this is a really nice feature.
All in all, I think they are on the right track. If they can get the drag-n-drop working a little better when in coherence mode, perhaps even dragging and dropping between applications, that would really make it feel like the windows app is truly running in OSX.