a different post

this is "out of scope", but this video is impressive.
if there were only 100 people in the world...

http://www.miniature-earth.com/

mon.itor.us - site monitoring, also from mobile

mon.itor.us is a free uptime monitoring service for your website.

It can perform many different tests, from http to ftp and imap.

If you insert in your site a code snippet provided from mon.itor.us, you can also have a visits traffic report, but the site has a lot of services available.

When you register, you can have your alerts delivered also to your msn messenger / GTalk / ICQ account (you need only to add to your buddy list a new contact).

But the one very thing that caught my attention is the possibility to access those reports and data from Windows Mobile devices: simply reach http://mobile.mon.itor.us and read all the fundamental site stats on the go. Works!

Here's a screenshot of the mobile web page:

midomi - a music search engine

Ehi try this: on http://www.midomi.com/ you can sing or hum a melody and the site will search for it... returning the best matches and letting you hear the returned (musical) results!!!

Now, it's fun - even if the results are not always what expected!!! I tried with different melodies... but the site managed to get only "It's the end of the world as we know it" from REM - then went on maintenance.

The question: the problem is in the software or in my poor singing abilities? ;-)

VH PocketPC Capture

At this URL http://www.hmelyoff.com/index.php?section=18 you can find this freeware app that allows you to get screnshots out of your Windows Mobile device, but thru Active  Sync from your desktop pc.

Actually it will do also another couple of things for you... you will be able to "remote control" your device, or take control of the camera output...

Nice utility.

The Spamdemic Map

Interesting, and a huge work:The SpamDemic Mapp... a map of the spammers world!!!

...and what about your email address? which of those spammers know it? :-)

Getting Things Done with Remember The Milk

The first reason for this post is in its own title: I always dreamt to be able to title a post in a similar way... :-)

No, I'm joking; actually I want to drive your attention to this post on the "Republic of GeekTronica" blog (I read about this on LifeHacker).

It's about the integration of the Remember the Milk 's site functions in your "Getting Things Done" system. 

It's really interesting, I'm tempted to switch to this solution to manage my tasks.

want a preview for next Windows Mobile 6.0? in your hands?

if the answer is yes... read this, on GizModo.

as for me... I'll wait some more time :-)

WikiSeek

WikiSeek is a new Search Engine ("obviously" marked with the ubiquitous BETA word) that queries WikiPedia - and all the external links that WikiPedia references.

In this way the results it gets are better (or at least more complete) than the results you get from WikiPedia itself. And it features another web 2.0 thing: the tag cloud, in this case built with WikiPedia Categories resulting from your query. This category cloud fills up with suggested categories as you type your query - I like this feature.

Finally there is a plugin you can run in order to add WikiSeek to your search providers (in IE7 or Firefox, at least). 

Not bad at all. I'll use it a lot, I think.

ClearTemp for Windows Mobile - free utility to clean temp files

A good and really useful utility to clean up temp files, with a lot of possible customization.

Here's the link to the developer site. There you can find screenchots, install instructions, and everything you need.

I tried it and immediately appreciated some 3 Mb of freed space :-)

Vicott Wong (the author) has writtem other good utilities, here's the list.

cLaunch - a great Windows Mobile Today Screen PlugIn

cLauncher is a freeware Windows Mobile Today Screen PlugIn that allows you to have tabs containing icons you choose and configure.

A screenshot here:

It's a really great plugin, allowing you to speed up apps usage. Try it!!!

WM5, iPhone, Apple, and bloggers

Referring to the previous post, regarding the "iPhone skin" for Windows Mobile, I want to add something.

In the picture below you can see the two layout, compared... left WM5, right iPhone. Now, the look & feel is great, no? But it's only a joke... I'm sure that anybody with some Photoshop skills and Windows Mobile knowledge has already done again the "skin". And I', sure that Apple has more to it that the simple layout of the "home" screen... so why put all this money and energy in suing bloggers?

Please read this TechCrunch article for a better coverage of the whole matter.

Windows Mobile 5 can look like the iPhone ;-)

http://mobilitytoday.com/news/windows_mobile_iphone_tweak.html

yes, yes, we all know... it's not only the look, but this is cool anyway.

I'll try it on my WM5 asap!

***EDIT***
Actually it looks like Apple's lawyers are out there making sure that nobody can download anything of that kind... bah! It was (simply) fun!

**EDIT**
I found this "interesting" url - it's from an italian blog, "geekissimo blog", apparently not yet sued... ;-)
There you can find everything you need for the iPhone skin.

iPhone - a more "weighted" post from mobilecrunch...

A really interesting post on iPhone, from MobileCrunch.

amAze - free mobile GPS navigation application

On amAze's web site you can download and install a free GPS software for java-enabled mobile devices.

Now, that's really interesting... but I couldn't try the software yet, my iMate k-jam is not in the list... when I understand which version to try, I'll let you know everything!!!

*** EDIT ***
I had a feedback from amAze... their software is not compatible with Windows Mobile devices!!!

iPhone

http://www.apple.com/iphone/

video:

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/digital-cameras/video-iphone-placing-a-call-227469.php

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/portable-media/apple-iphone-interfacemusic-227463.php

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/macworld2007/multi-touch-gesture-interface-227431.php

iWantOne :-)   

 

**edited**
Here's a better video of the thing...

Windows Mobile 6.0 Video

Want to have a preview of the next mobile OS from Microsoft? Here's where!

Actually the video is not so good, as the man "behind the stylus" doesn't do nearly anything but browsing ALL the Ringtones and Sounds... Yes, they're not bad, but maybe... :-)

the Tiny Icon Factory

wow - from MIT's PLW, The Tiny Icon Factory!!! so maaaany tiny and cute little icons, and you can create your own!

A Google Home personalized homepage clone - in .Net

At this link (dropthings.com) you can find a clone of the Google personalized Homepage, built using ASP.Net Ajax, .NET 3.0 and the .NET Linq extensions. And here at codeproject you can download sourcecode and read a tutorial.

Impressive!

Survival: Sql Server, grant on all stored procedure and shrink db and logs

1) Stored Procedures: to grant execute permission on all the stored procedures in a database, use this (quick and dirty) solution:

use DATABASE_NAME

select 'grant execute on ' + specific_name + ' to [LOGIN_NAME] '
from  information_schema.routines
where routine_type = 'PROCEDURE'

executing this after the obvious substitutions of LOGIN_NAME and DATABASE_NAME will return a bunch of lines like

grant execute on stored_procedure_name to [LOGIN_NAME]

if you copy and execute those lines, you're done.

2) Stored Procedures: another (less dirty) way to obtain the same result:

DECLARE @proc_name  SYSNAME
DECLARE @sql   VARCHAR(4000)
DECLARE @username  VARCHAR(255)

SET @username = 'LOGIN_NAME_HERE'
SET @proc_name = ''

WHILE 1=1
 BEGIN
  SET @proc_name = (SELECT TOP 1 ROUTINE_NAME
     FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.ROUTINES
     WHERE OBJECTPROPERTY(OBJECT_ID(ROUTINE_NAME), 'IsMSShipped') = 0
   -- Only user stored procedures here!
    AND ROUTINE_TYPE = 'PROCEDURE'
    AND ROUTINE_NAME > @proc_name
    ORDER BY ROUTINE_NAME
  )
  IF @proc_name IS NULL BREAK
  SET @sql = 'GRANT EXECUTE ON ' + QUOTENAME(@proc_name) + ' TO ' + @username
 EXEC (@sql)
 --Print (@sql)
 END

3)  Shrink database and transaction log: Just a couple of instructions that sometimes are useful to shrink databases log files:

BACKUP LOG  databasename  WITH TRUNCATE_ONLY
 
DBCC SHRINKFILE (  databasename_Log  , 1)

DBCC SHRINKDATABASE (databasename, 10)

mdog.com

Ehi, mobile user :-) , do you already know about mdog.com?
It's a new service, completely web-based (no installation of anything on your device) that acts as a gateway between you and the web resources, rendering them in a "mobile-compliant" way.
After a brief setup phase (I did this part on a desktop pc) you can point your mobile browser to your "mdog home" (in my case it is http://www.mdog.com/oipaz) and start browsing.
You can choose from a variety of information sources, that will be presented in a "My Web" tab; a few screenshot will make this more clear.





The really interesting feature, though, is the ability to read and post to blogs; here is this blog opened thru mdog:



So I think this is an interesting web tool. Try it!

...and there is also YubNub.org

Just a moment after having published the previous post, I found another command line interface tothe various web searches around.

It's youbnub.org, and it's really similar to sugarcodes, probably older.

The two samples of the previous post in youbnub would be:

wp moleskine

and

wls moleskine

Well... I personally prefer the layout of sugarcodes, and really appreciate the auto-completion feature. But the main difference between youbnub and sugarcodes is that on youbnub you have the chance to integrate in your browser the funcionality of the site, and you can choose from a wide array of browser plug-ins, for IW, Firefox, Safari, Camino, Maxthon... there is even the chance to integrate youbnub with Emacs!!! Actually the "Installing youbnub" page is really interesting.

Sugarcodes.com

Sugarcodes is a web gateway to all the search engine of the web, thru the use of a command line interface.

You can for example write on the sugarcodes command line:

wiki moleskine

and obtain that sugarcodes brings you to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moleskine

but you could also try

m moleskine

and be teleported to the Live Search result page for moleskine, http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=moleskine

The commands available are really a lot, and you can add yours; and you do not need to remember all the commands you need... while you write there is an auto complete feature that will "bring you there" :-)

Virtual Earth Mobile 1.69

Jason Fuller has published a new release, 1.69, for his Virtual Earth Mobile app. You can download it here, from the Windows Mobile Team Blog.

The main feature Jason added is the ability to drag maps using the stylus, but there are others things added.

Obviously you can also download the "official" Windows Live Search for mobile beta, described here and downloadable from your mobile here (there are both a Windows Mobile and a J2ME editions).

Your choice!!!
Bye

from Google: 2006 Zeitgeist

interesting read: The 2006 Year-End Google Zeitgeist, and the related post on the official Google blog.

AdbWeather - Free Win Mobile Today Screen Plugin

How could I live without this? :-)

Seriously, I really like this great (and free) today screen plugin, that shows weather condition and forecasts on your pocket pc screen; it has a lot of features, like downloading and showing of weather radar images, or scheduled refresh of weather data, and more.

It can be configured to retrieve wether info both for US and International cities.

Here's the URL for this great app: happyjackroad.net

And here are a few screenshots from my mobile:

The same screen, but with a white background on the plugin:

The plugin responds to user clicks, opening this menu:

The app has lots of features... just an image: