Web Trend Map 2007

 See this: a web trend map for 2007 - in "Tokio Metro" style!

Available in different formats, from Information Architects Japan.

How to backup a Blogger blog

If you want to have a backup of your Blogger-hosted blog, read this: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2007/02/how-to-backup-blogger-blog.html

Métro - "The ultimate public transport guide for your PDA or Smartphone"

Do you already know Métro? If not, please go to http://www.nanika.net/metro/ and see what this mobile app can do for you - for free.

It is available for Windows Mobile, Symbian, Palm OS.

Its main goal is to guide you in the public transportation system of some hundreds of cities around the world. I tried the Windows Mobile version, and I find it really useful, fast, and well designed.

I'm publishing some screenshots here, showing the first screenshot, the list of my downloaded cities, a couple of calcolated routes (one in Milan, one in Paris), and a screenshot of the route building page:

Windows Mobile 6 is coming!!!

Ehi, I was out for a few days and when I come back... breaking news - At the 3GSM show in Barcellona Microsoft will announce the official release for Windows Mobile 6...
Now you all already knew about this - but maybe you do not know this great post by Jason Langridge on the new fuctionalities of the new mobile OS!!!
Read it... really interesting!

Bye!

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:

ToDoList - a free to do list manager (windows desktop)

ToDoList, from AbstractSpoon software, is self-defined as "A simple but effective way to keep on top of your tasks".

I like this app a lot, and I'm using it (following the continuous new releases) from a year or so, and I'm happy with it.

You can read about it both on the Abstract Spoon site and on the codeproject page.

The app is free, under a creative commons license, and you can also download the source code, also hosted on codeproject.

MyLife Organized - desktop and mobile app

I found this Time Management software, and I'm interested mainly because it features both a desktop and a Pocket PC version.

For Desktop exists also offer a completely free release, but it's not "feature complete" (I think it's an older release of the product).

Here's the link: http://mylifeorganized.net/

And here are some mobile screenshots:

The feature list is impressive, and the whole thing is based on the GTD - Getting Things Done "technology" (see here on wikipedia).

The app is capable to sync with Outlook/Exchange, and the Pocket Pc can sync with the (Professional) desktop edition thru Active Sync.

But the cost of the software is high... and even if I'm interested, I know that I will not spend $77.95 fot it (in this price both versions of the program - pocket pc and desktop - are comprised).

Anyhow, if you're looking for a good time management software, give a look to MyLifeOrganized.

geoGreetings!!!

Have fun with this creative use of google maps and of letter-shaped buildings around the world... :-)

Google Notebook

I just discovered Google Notebook, and it looks promising.
To use it you need a (for IE) 170kb browser addon, and if you want to give a look to a tutorial, you can go here.
The main use of Google notebook is to collect information ("web clips") from differente sources, mainly web pages. Then you can access what you collected, and organize them as you like.
The main thing to observe here is that this useful feature is... google-based!!! I mean that every single byte you insert into your notebooks is stored on Google computers - I do not mean that it can be considered "public", but I will not send my credit card number out there... ;-)

Let me know if you decide to use it, and your opinion!

.Net vs J2EE

Interesting read from David Chappell's blog.

just a quote from this post:
"(...) His firm, like all the big software houses, is happy to build the solution using either .NET or J2EE--it's up to the customer. But if the customer chooses .NET, the price is 28% less than if the customer chooses to build the same solution on J2EE."

kdice

kdice is an online multiplayer game, similar to Risiko!

be careful, it's quite addictive...

have fun!

Free screen capture from Ilium Software

Here you can find a simple (yet useful) screen capture program, From Ilium Software.

Here's a sample of a catptured screen from my device:

 

The use of this app is really straightforward; you can choose which key will be used to take screenshot, and the number of seconds before the screenshot will be taken.

Then the program remains in the background. When you're done, you can find your the screenshots in the device's file system root, in .bmp format.

blogger - no more in beta!

well, maybe you already know this - but blogger.com has completed the switch to the new release, after some months of beta testing.

so... this blog is no more in beta! :-)

Zoho.com

I found only today zoho.com, and it's a pity.

I used docs.google.com for a while for sharing some ideas (written in a document) with some friends of mine, and it looked cool - but now that I discovered zoho I really think that all my sharing will happen there!

Zoho has a unique (as far as I know) range of (free!!!) services: a word processing (capable to publish on main blogging system, like blogger), a wonderful wiki, a spreadsheet, planner, a chat, a presentation tool... probably I miss something.

I think that quality of all this is far superior to google's - but how many of you did hear anything on zoho in the past months? Ehehe, it's a strange world...

I like zoho - you will too! Try it!!!

gamejump.com

On http://www.gamejump.com you can have access to tons of free ad-supported games for your mobile platform.
They have games ported to hundreds (I read somewhere 8 hundreds) of different phones.

happy (free) playing!

smaato - windows mobile apps

On http://www.smaato.com/ you can find a couple of really good - and free - Windows Mobile apps.

Smaato Cost is a mobile cost tracking software, with tons of features, fully configurable, even with csv export of traffic data... really well done, please go and test it, you won't be disappointed.

Smaato News is a mobile RSS reader, and it works; it has a good and well designed user interface, I like it.

Microsoft releases ASP.NET Ajax 1.0 RC

Microsoft released a few days ago the RC for ASP.NET Ajax 1.0.

Here's the link: http://ajax.asp.net/default.aspx?tabid=47

And if you do not know this, this is the link to a very interesting ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit sample website: http://ajax.asp.net/ajaxtoolkit/

Apollo (from Adobe Labs)

Hey, I didn't know about this (I admit)

But this Apollo thing... I don't understand yet if it will be a hit or not.

Read the Apollo FAQ - the main description tells us that:
"Apollo is the code name for a cross-operating system runtime being developed by Adobe that allows developers to leverage their existing web development skills (Flash, Flex, HTML, JavaScript, Ajax) to build and deploy Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) to the desktop"

So what? Give to web client developers the chance to develop for the pc - even if they don't know anything of windows applications, c#, .net, or c++ ?

Let's see what comes out. I suspend my judgement ;-) 

Pitagora Suicchi (Pitagora's Switch)

Have some fun looking at these video - some Rube Goldberg's Contraptions, but from Japan!!!

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=pitagora+suicchi&search=Search

For an explanation... see Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PythagoraSwitch

The Anti-Google FAQ

This is funny. Answers to questions like "I have a hard time spending all my AdSense income... what to do?"

Link: http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2006-12-11-n75.html

Windows Live Writer - a desktop app for your blog

Recently I started using Windows Live Writer (Beta) to create the post you're reading.

It's a desktop application for Windows, and the main characteristics are:

- works with windows live spaces, but also with Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, WordPress, and others

- wysiwyg editor

- you can post images and "live local" maps

It works, I have all my blogs fed with this app, and i'm happy with it. You can have a "web preview", or modify html directly.

Yesterday I switched my blogs to beta.blogger.com, and Live Witer didn't manage to write anything on them... so I checked  http://windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com/ and actually they posted a new release that works with the new api spec from beta.blogger.com.

Thanks... :-)

bluedot.us

Another interesting site (thanks kfra for inviting); the idea is to have a single web links repository, searchable (every link is taggable). And you can share your links (or parts of them) with other users of the site.

You can also have a button on IE toolbar to "Dot This" - in other words you can post any link to bluedot as you visit a site.

I'm going to use it for a while, and I'll invite other friends... At present it looks useful and interesting, let's see...

on BlueDot I'm here: http://bluedot.us/users/oipaz  

Swivel, another graph

Here we go again...

My first Swivel graph!!!

Here it is...

But I'll make others!!! It's really fun !!!

Adobe Flash Lite 2.1.1 for Mobile Devices

On this page: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/devices/ you can find the latest releases of the Flash Lite 2.1 player for various mobile platforms, including Windows Mobile 5.0 (bot smartphone and PocketPc) and Symbian.

Swivel - it's online!

Yes, I really like this site.

Go to http://www.swivel.com and see how some temperature data in Fresno correlate to profits in electric utilities!!!

In these first days it looks like the server's site have some problems... and I hope that there will be some way to select useful data from useless uploads - but the idea is really good!!!

This is quite difficult... but!!!

The title is "How Google Finds Your Needle in the Web's Haystack" - and it's about the Google Pagerank algorithm. hard to understand for me, but it's interesting.

Here is it: http://www.ams.org/featurecolumn/archive/pagerank.html

from Francesco Balena's blog

A wonderful regular expression tester!!!

http://www.dotnet2themax.com/blogs/fbalena/PermaLi...

Windows Live Search Beta for Mobile

This is cool. I installed it and it work perfectly; it's a pity that traffic coverage is not present on the area I live in... that's Milan, Italy.

But if you have a Windows Mobile phone or a Java J2ME enabled one, go and get it!!!

Let me know... :)

Snap.com - mouseover href preview

You'll have noticed that if you pass your mouse over the links in this page, a little site preview shows up; it's a (free) functionality offered by http://www.snap.com/.

I think it's really nice. Don't you?

The service is described here.

Swivel.com - keep an eye on this, look promising and interesting :-)

http://www.swivel.com/ is going to have an important place in my links collection.
The "YouTube for Data" is a good claim, but read here - TechCrunch says it all.

Survival: sql, update a table with values from another table

Often I have to update a table column with values taken from another table.

Since everytime I write this from scratch, and I'm lazy, I write it down here!

UPDATE table_one
SET column_one = ( SELECT table_two.column_two
 FROM table_two
 WHERE table_one.id = table_two.id)
WHERE EXISTS
  ( SELECT table_two.id
    FROM table_two
    WHERE table_two.id = table_one.id);

Survival: c#, calculate Age given a Birthdate

Need a c# function to calculate an "age" (number of full years) given a Birthdate?
Since I find it really useful... here it is:

public static int GetAge(DateTime BirthDate)
{
    // get the difference in years
    int years = DateTime.Now.Year - BirthDate.Year;
    // subtract another year if we're before the birth day in the current year
    if (DateTime.Now.Month < BirthDate.Month || (DateTime.Now.Month == BirthDate.Month && DateTime.Now.Day < BirthDate.Day))
        years--;

    return years;
}


Survival: sending mail using telnet

This is useful, and I'm not able to learn the command sequence correctly... so I'm writing this post for the next time I'll need this!!!

1. Open a telnet connection to a mail server:
telnet mail.domain.ext 25
If the server is reachable and ready, it should reply something like:

Trying ???.???.???.???...
Connected to mail.domain.ext.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 mail.domain.ext ESMTP Sendmail ?version-number?; ?date+time+gmtoffset?

2. Now let's define the domain from which you'll send this email:
HELO local.domain.name
It's better if you use you exactly qualifid domain name. The answer should be:
250 mail.domain.ext Hello local.domain.name [loc.al.i.p], pleased to meet you

3. Now your email address:
MAIL FROM: mail@domain.ext
Should yield:
250 2.1.0 mail@domain.ext... Sender ok
If not, there could be possible problems.

4. Now let's give the recipients address:
RCPT TO: mail@otherdomain.ext
This Should yield:
250 2.1.0 mail@otherdomain.ext... Recipient ok
If not, there could be possible problems.

5. To start composing the message issue the command DATA:
DATA

6. If you want a subject for your email type
Subject:-type subject here-
then press enter twice.

7. You may now proceed to type the body of your message

8. To tell the mail server that you have completed the message enter a single "." on a line on it's own.
The mail server should reply with:
250 2.0.0 ???????? Message accepted for delivery

9. You can close the connection by issuing the QUIT command.
The mailserver should reply with something like:
221 2.0.0 mail.domain.ext closing connection
Connection closed by foreign host.

Survival series - Sql Server, Stored Procedures with non mandatory parameters

With this post I begin the "Survival Series", i.e. some post with answers to little recurring problems that recurringly make many people waste a lot of times "reinventing the wheel".
Really little things, but useful, that I encounter in my programming life :-).

Let's start with this: How can I have a stored procedure with sime parameters that are actually "non-mandatory" ?
Well, this is really easy... but often I see people crash their heads on this "easy" subjects.
Let's see an example: I have the need to call a "search" stored procedure, that accepts 3 parameters (2 varchars and 1 integer) and based on these 3 values must query some tables and return the corresponding resultset; but from the calling app I can have only one, or two, or three values on these parameters.
What I write is (say we have a "Pubs" table):

CREATE PROCEDURE dbo.SearchPub
(
@txtCriteria VARCHAR(30),
@txtYear VARCHAR(4),
@idArgument INT
)
AS

SELECT *
FROM Pubs
where 1=1
AND (@txtCriteria IS NULL OR Content like '%' + @txtCriteria + '%')
AND (@txtYear IS NULL OR PubYear = @txtYear)
AND (@idArgument IS NULL OR Argument = @idArgument)
ORDER BY PubYear desc

GO


As you can see in the Where part, with the three "OR" I can easily manage calls like:

EXEC dbo.SearchPub NULL, NULL, NULL
EXEC dbo.SearchPub NULL, '2006', NULL
EXEC dbo.SearchPub "searching for this", NULL, 3


Hope this can be useful... Bye

Search engines with graphic snapshots: PageBull and Snap

Recently I read about this snap.com and pagebull.com.
Both this two search engines show a preview of the page returned by the search, a graphinc one. A sort of snapshot.

This is interesting; sure they will not become my main search engine, but I'm sure that I'll use them quite often. I work in the web development field, and having a fast way to compare different sites, or to have a fast look at competitive sites could be a quite good resource.

pagebull has less "textual" information and fills the entire browser window with snapshots; snap is more "traditional" and shows a links list (with textual info) on the left, and a single graphical preview (related to the focused result) on the right.

http://www.snap.com
http://www.pagebull.com

Google Master Plan

This is really fun: the zoomable Google Master Plan

Also have a look at this list of "ideas" read out of the Plan: http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2006-11-27-n21.html

Doppler: podcast (rss) aggregator for Mobile

Doppler is another rss aggregator for Windows, both Desktop and Mobile. Actually the Mobile version is in Beta right now, but since it looks promising, I'll keep an eye on it.
Today I installed the Beta 3 reease and it works, but it has some problems: it goes nuts with posts containing images - it starts rendering, then after a wile it goes random refreshing over and over the screen.
Anyway, here's the link to the download page: http://www.dopplerradio.net/dopplermobile-beta.

I'll post again any news on this software.

.Net Framework 3 released

.Net Framework 3 has been released,
read here.

need free software?

http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/

every day a commercial licensed software package - only for 24 hours...
uhm... I like presents, I think I'll give a look :-)

mozilla minimo, browser for windows mobile

From http://www.mozilla.org/projects/minimo/ you can download Minimo, a Mozilla porting for Windows Mobile devices.
I have it, and actually I use it a lot (even if I still have IE as the default browser).
What I like about it:
- tabbed browsing
- some sites are rendered in a better way than IE (for example the google adsense site, on IE I cannot login...)
- a better use of the display space.

Looks a bit slow on the first startup... but it's a good app.

HubDog

I'm using HubDog from some time, and I'm quite happy with it.
It delivers a sort of RSS feed reader, with a good user interface, it's stable, and it can consume also audio/video *casts.

Hundog is "hubdog - centric", in the sense that you must have an HubDog account to have it working, and the list of your feeds is (actually it "can be") shared with others. And this is both a bad and a good thing.
A bad thing because maybe you're not happy to have HubDog know about your chisen feeds - a good one because you can search between other HubDog users feeds, thus discovering new interesting feeds you didn't know about.

Any way, HubDog is now at the 2.0 release. Link: http://www.hubdog.com/

vxUtil: this is a great utility

If you need to run some network utilities, like ping, ping sweep, DNS lookup, port scanning, and others, give a look at vxUtil, free for personal use: http://www.cam.com/vxutil_pers.html.

Really good!

WM5 Network Analyzer Power Toy

Useful: a network analyzer tool, from Microsoft. It runs some basic network test and produces a log file. Here's the link:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=081c6401-49d4-4506-a03b-c41bc76c2f51&displaylang=en

game - syberia for windows mobile

I know that this is an "old" game - but I didn't play it on pc. Instead, I bought it for my i-mate k-jam, end I have to say that this game is really amazing.
Hours and hours of well planned and wonderfully designed gaming. Worth the $24.95.

Go have a look at the game site: http://www.tetraedge.com/syberia/

is there anybody who still doesn't know?

http://www.microsoft.com/games/flightsimulatorx/downloads.html

at this url you can find a playable demo for FSX... try it!!!

bye.

Fs Earth

Another Google Earth --> Fs2004 utility:
http://fsearth.fsutil.com/

Looks really good!

LIMC 2005, from ISDProject !

A great freeware scenery for Milan Malpensa, LIMC: http://library.avsim.net/download.php?DLID=79750.

It's from ISDProject (www.isdproject.com), and it's the second release of this airport.

Great work, give it a look...

Flight Simulator X announced !!!

I'm sure you all already know, but yesterday Microsoft announced the official release of FSX in the 4th quarter of 2006, in time for the holyday season.

Please read about all this on AvSim and FlightSim:
AvSim Q&A on FSX: http://www.avsim.com/pages/0106/FSX/qanda.html
AvSim, FSX screenshots: http://www.avsim.com/pages/0106/FSX/fsx_thumbs.html

FlightSim: http://www.flightsim.com/cgi/kds?$=main/notams06/fsx0104.htm

Flight Keeper

Lately I downloaded and tried the trial version of Flight Keeper.

And I was amazed from the really huge variety of functions of that app; actually after some setup and understandings, and after three or four "test flights" I decided to buy it; it's really a great add-on, and my personal suggestion is to give it at least a try.

The web site: http://www.flightkeeper.org/

FSUIPC Version 3.53 Released

From Peter Dowson's web site you can download the latest release (3.53) of the FSUIPC dll.

VistaOz.org

Please find some time to give a look to this site: http://www.vistaoz.org
These guys just released the 0.99 release of thei freeware scenery replacement for... Australia!!!

It's impressive. And they made some videos that are simply amazing, start from there to get an overview of their great work.

Get it Get it Get it... :-)

Navdata AIRAC cycle 0513 available

NAVData has released the AIRAC Cycle 0513 today. Go get it !!!
Bye

Navdata AIRAC cycle 0512 available

NavData published the new AIRAC cycle, 0512.
If you use PMSG products, or other add-on like Flight1's ATR, or FSNavigator... download and install it!!!

Milano Flight Simulator Show 2005

For all the Italian readers ;-) on November 27/28 2005, in Novegro (near Milan Linate airport, LIML) will be held the third edition of the Flight Simulator Show.

For all the details, go to www.mifss.it (site in italian only).

Navdata: AIRAC cycle 0511 available

Maybe you already know, but http://www.navdata.at/ published the new AIRAC cycle, 0511.
If you use PMSG products, or other add-on like Flight1's ATR, or FSNavigator... download and install it!!!

fsstation - "the best approaches in the world" guide

This is interesting:
http://www.fsstation.com/content/view/135/36/

It's a 5 pages guide to some really good approaches in FS2004. Worth reading.

"Triple 7 closes on Beta", PSS says

Phoenix Simulation Software (http://www.phoenix-simulation.co.uk/ is going to publish a brand new 777 - it's in beta now.

Take a tour in the coming soon section of the PSS site for a bunch of screenshots.

conversion web service

my fs2004 -> google earth conversion now can be called thru a web service.

the url to be called is

http://codexweb.atomictag.com/fpconvert.asmx

if you want to try it, you have to upload a byte array (byte[] in c#). if you want a snippet of code written as a .Net web page (code behind in c#) drop me a line and I'll send it to you.

please tell me if you decide to use it!

have a good flight

news on fplans conversion

I'm developing a web service that will enable any app to call my conversion tool from outside.

If this is of any interest for you please let me know, drop me an email at indialimaalpha -at- gmail.com

well, thanks a lot

I received a lot of compliments on my "FS2004 to Google Earth" page, and the page itself is visited by about 70/80 people a day, till now.

So I want to thank you all... And this (little" success is giving strength to a coupoe of ideas I had this days:
- make a .exe windows app that does the same, like flips, but written on .Net framework
- make a web service, that anybody can call from his app, giving the same result

And what I have to do immediately is modify the "Uploaded Plan List" page, it's too slow...

So if you are interested stay tuned for news!

FS2004 plans and Google Earth

a user of my "conversion page" (http://codexweb.atomictag.com/fplan.aspx) told me that this kind of conversion is fun also because links Microsoft AND Google... and they are not exactly friends, in this moment.

any way: I added some enhancements to the "List page", now shows also the plan generale description, and the departure and arrival description for all the (137 until now) uploaded flight plans. Moreover you can download the original Flight Plan.

bye!

flight plans on Google Earth

my page (http://codexweb.atomictag.com/FPlan.aspx) is having a good success.

many people use it to convert their plans, and then they follow it with myFSGoogleEarth (http://www.elbiah.de/flusi/)... a good idea, I'll say!

and then there is also this:
http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/download.php?Number=64566, which provides an index in the US of aero sectionals that can be used as
overlay on Google Earth...

there's a world of things to do !!! :-)

fsinsider.com

Do you know http://fsinsider.com/ ?

It's a Microsoft "official" FS site. They also look for new employee... take a look at the job descriptions !!!

it's my turn to be cool... ;-)

Go to this link: http://codexweb.atomictag.com/FPlan.aspx

It's a (very simple) page I wrote, that shows a standard FS2004 flight plan (.pln format) in Google Earth!!!

Try it... and tell me if it works for you, and if you like it !

Have a good (GEarth) flight !!!

(virtually speaking) I touched Japan !

yes, I just ended a very calm and long flight from LSZH (Zurich) to RJAA (Tokio), with my JAL-branded 747-400...

my career in FTG (see previous posts) is going well!!! ;-)

p.s.: I'm developing a completely useless, but "really cool" utility for FS9... stay tuned, in a few days it should be finished.

now that's cool - number two

go here: http://www.elbiah.de/flusi/.

you'll find some "Flight Simulator Tools", not bad.

but when I saw "MyFsGoogleEarth: Link Google Earth with Flight Simulator (FS 2004, FS9)" I made a jump.

just take a look at this image (I took it from the site)



And I said: why I did not think of this before?

bah...

FSAutostart

Do you know FSAutostart?
It's a really useful windows app, freeware, that shuts down all the non-necessary apps before launching FS2004 (or any other program, you decide).
It can also restart the apps shut before, it defragment memory, and knows about windows services.

Try it, you will not uninstall it.

url: http://www.kensalter.com/fsautostart/

Alaska Fjords

Sometime ago, clicking around on AvSim, I found the Michael Vone site.
Michael in these years created some "adventures" for FS9, really weel done and challenging.

In particular I liked really a lot the "Alaska Fjords 2" adventure. Actually I liked it so much that I decided (after being authorized by Michael) to translate it in italian (I live in Milan, Italy).

From the original description: "Pilot a spectacular B737 trip through wintry Alaska fjords from Seattle to Anchorage with 4 scheduled stops, a diversion and a variety of approaches. Face variable weather, low visibility, narrow fjords, limited navaids, and night flying."

Really good, well done, a real fun to fly. You will be amazed by the level of detail of this work.

So here are a couple of links:
Michael Vone pages, on AvSim Hangar

If you are italian, and you want to download the italian translation, please drop me a line (indialimaalpha (at) gmail.com) or go to AvSim library and look for "Michael Vone Alaska" - you'll find easily the italian translation among the results.

the new 787 cockpit

http://newairplane.com/

There is an interesting virtual tour of the new 787 cockpit.

navdata and AIRACs download... bad news!!!

Take a look to this:
http://forum.navdata.at/viewtopic.php?t=56


http://www.navdata.at/ is the primary source for a lot of great add-on (both planes and other tools, like FSNavigator) to get the most updated worldwide aeronatical navigation data used by pilots.

Now that's not a good news.

PMDG 747 video

Take a look to the videos in this page:

http://www.geocities.jp/sky_b747_400/index.html

They are from a pmdg forum (http://pmdg.forumsplace.com/index.html) member, great people there!

now that's cool

Are you a Google Earth addicted, like me? and a FS one too? read the following !

Reading a forum (I think it was PMDG's) I saw a mention of an Approach Plates Tutorial. So I went for it on AvSim, and downloaded it.

If you want you can find it searching AvSim (http://www.avsim.com) for "approach plates tutorial".

In this very good document, I found this:

http://www.fsstation.com/customimages/app/sfooverlay.kmz

And that's also easy to do for other airport... you need to produce a png image, semi-transparent, north-south oriented, from an app plate ofyour choice (you can find a lot of them free on the web). Then you need exact lat long for the airport, and you have to scale the image... and make a lot of test.

The kml format is well-documented on many sites, but that's really the easy part: if you open with a text editor the sample I cited before you understand everything in a moment.

Cool!

Flying Tigers Group

Yes, I joined the Flying Tigers Group (http://www.cpavirtual.org/VirtualATP.asp).
I always wanted join a Virtual Airline, but I decided only now.

For those who don't know, FTG is a sort of mega-VA, that comprises VA like Lufthansa, Qantas, Air France, Swiss, Emirathes... etc etc.

I joined then through Lufthansa Virtual (http://www.cpavirtual.org/Lufthansa/), but the great thing is that with a single login you can fly any of the VA in the FTG.

Really fun!!! I plan to make a complete world tour, using many of the VA in FTG...

p.s.: almost forgetting, my FTG id is LH442, if you find me online somewhere... drop me a line !

jpegs...

A couple of jpegs.

Best payware aircraft? My opinion...

In these years I had the chance to fly a good number of planes, both freeware and payware.
I personally like to fly on medium and long routes, and IMHO the best products available today are:
- PMDG 747 "Queen of the sky" (http://www.precisionmanuals.com)
- Flight1 ATR-72 (http://atr.flight1.net/)
- PSS Airbus series (http://www.phoenix-simulation.co.uk/)

I know that there are come other planes comparable to the ones I listed (Level-d 767, for example, and some other "Airbuses"), but I feel at home with these, and actually I'm using only these.

The last plane I bought is the PMDG 747; I'm following the support forum on a daily basis, and I see that some users report problems and bugs; there is a service pack coming out in a short time, and I'm sure that those bugs will be solved.

My experience with this 747 is really good. I also found some bugs on some flights (LNAV missing its route, with the plane going from left to right in a really funny way - maybe not so fun for the passenger's stomaches), but in general hte plane is astounding. Perfectly flyable, excellent flying dynamics, good support and a "precision" ;-) manual. Great realism.

Conclusion: go buy it, you won't regret.

Bye