This is really a beautiful app. SpaceTime is a "3D" web browser, that shows search results or pages in a 3D way that's really amazing.
It's better if I simply give you the URL, thre you can find every information or screenshot, go and see... www.spacetime.com
Customizing Sharepoint 2003, the next step...
Maybe you saw this other article I posted some weeks ago... after that, my job went on, but eventually I decided - actually my customer decided for me ;-) - to try to use a new site template in order to solve the customization problem I'm facing.
What I have to manage is something I cannot solve "simply" hacking the CSS or modifying the .aspx pages... so I'll try to have a new "MPS" (the WSS Multi Page Site) template different from the original one.
Unfortunately looks like this cannot be done; I managed to "clone" the MPS structure in a new one, but when I go and use it to create a new site I get a series of errors in the WebParts stating that "This Web Part was designed for use on a Microsoft Meeting Workspace". And reading around I found that yes, you can have your site template that originates from another one, but you CANNOT use the Multipage Meeting template as the starting point.
I have to find another way.
I'll try also to share with you the steps I'm taking to do this.
First: I make a copy of the STS directory to a new STSNEW directory. All this happens under
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\60\TEMPLATE\1033\
and as I think that all the action will happen there... I won't repeat that path anymore, for reading simplicity I'll substitute it with [PATH].
So I have this STSNEW! What I do with it?
Uhm... open the [PATH]XML folder, and take a look to the two files:
WEBTEMP.XML
WEBTEMPSPS.XML
Interesting stuff!!! So there are the correspondances between folders names and sharepoint usage of the templates...
In my case the interesting one is the WEBTEMP.XML (the WSS one).
First, I make a copy of the file, and name it WEBTEMPSTSNEW.XML.
In it I leave only the "STS" node, renaming it to "STSNEW" (as the containing folder I created before); to this new node I give an ID over 10000 (Microsoft's hint...). Then I change in some way the descritpions, so that later I will be able to choose between the STS and STSNEW styles. Save. Let's see...
No, it's not going well: when I open the main page in Sharepoint I get an "Exception occurred" error, that it's not very esplicative, I'd say. But after a iisreset /restart "magically" Sharepoint is back with us. Good.
Now let's see if our STSNEW can be of any use.
First: I try to create a new WSS site based on this site template.
Everything works fine, I can find in the site structure list the new description I inserted in the XML file, and use those templates to create my site.
So this first part is ok.
Now I have to find a way to "mimic" the tabbed, multipage structure of the "Multipage Meeting Workspace" template here in this "simple" WSS site I created. I'll use the "Team Site" structure (taht in my new site template I named as "New Team Site"), so that I will be able to modify also the the home page (default.aspx).
Let's try this way: create a document library that contains a list of web part pages, so that I can have all the single pages I need. For a good explanation of this, see this blog post from Daniel McPherson.
Then I'll try to create a web part for the "tabbed" navigation.
Maybe I can find something ready on the web... First I try this one from GotDotNet.
Looks great, there is also the code. Downloaded, and installed with the command:
stsadm -o addwppack -f "C:\EasyTabPartsDeployment.CAB" -force -globalinstall
And it works!!!
From now on the path is (more or less) clear: I haev to modify the new site template layout, develop all the new webparts I need, and so on.
Bye!!!
With Windows Desktop Search (I'm running 3.01) you cannot (by default) index you email if it is not configured to run in cached mode.
Well, you can change this through a group policy modification or thru this registry mod:
Create a DWORD registry key in:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Search
called “PreventIndexingUncachedExchangeFolders” and setting it to a value of 0.
Regarding the group policy: read this document and use this .adm file (for some reasons the file is not linked in the document).
That's all. I tried both ways, and both worked.
Something interesting about spam... It's called DomainKeys, and is supported by Yahoo, Cisco, SendMail and PGP Corporation. Read more here: http://news.com.com/Promising%20antispam%20technique%20gets%20nod/2100-1029_3-6185904.html?part=rss
I downloaded and installed QTTabBar, and after some weeks I have to admint that I cannot even think to work without!!!
The reason to try it was originally to have "tabs" (like those you have on IE7 or Firefox) also in Windows Explorer, but now I think it's a must. The website doesn't give the "real feeling" of all the features the tools has, but I guarantee that you will be impressed.
Now, I will not try to explain all the things you can do wit QTTabBar, read this page for a list of features.
If you decide to try it, follow the installation steps described (also the uninstall procedure is someway tricky - but nothing impossible).
I had to completely rebuild my Windows XP machine, and after a lot of setup and reboot, and setup, and reboot (imagine Office, Visual Studio 2003, its SP, then Visual Studio 2005, its SP, then a lot of other packages, and then... a nigthmare!!!) I found that Windows Update was not responding anymore.
After some research I found this post, and given that it solved my problem I'm sharing it with you: problem connecting windows update - CPU 100% svchost.exe in Windows Update.
The symptoms I had wew exactly those described in the post title: a svchost.exe process using continuously near 100% of CPU, and nothing more for long time.
Now I can update my pc without problems...
Sometimes I need to remove duplicates from a table, given a particular column to be checked.
This few lines of transact-sql code will help, I hope:
CREATE TABLE #tmp_tableCleanDup (id int, email varchar(200))
CREATE UNIQUE CLUSTERED INDEX pk ON #tmp_tableCleanDup(ID)
CREATE UNIQUE INDEX removeduplicates on #tmp_tableCleanDup (email) WITH IGNORE_DUP_KEY
BEGIN TRANSACTION
INSERT #tmp_tableCleanDup
SELECT e.ID, e.email
FROM OriginalTable e
DELETE OriginalTable
WHERE 1=1
AND id NOT IN (SELECT id FROM #tmp_tableCleanDup)
COMMIT TRANSACTION
DROP TABLE #tmp_tableCleanDup
ok, you're reading. well, I expected this... but please, DO NOT click on this link...
the game you'll reach is reaaaallly addictive... so if you're working now don't click.
the name of the game is Desktop Tower Defense. simple, easy at the beginning, hard to leave when you start.
bye! ;-)
Still in a closed beta stage, DeepFish is a mobile browser that mixes a server-side elaboration of the web pages in order to render web pages on the mobile screen just as they would be seen on a standard "non mobile" browser.
When you navigate to a page, DeepFish first of all generates (server-side) a sort of screenshot of the needed page, and sends this image to the mobile client; there with some client functionalities like panning and zooming the user will read the page... obviously things like form submission and client caching are present. Take a look at this presentation to understand better.
I know, today we can use the new Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server (MOSS), but there are a lot of Sharepoint 2003 installation around, and recently I had to face some request from a (french, Paris-based) customer that asked me to make some "deep" customizations for their intranet, both in terms of look&feel and of webparts disposition on the page.
This request was both for the Sharepoint Portal pages and for the Windows Sharepoint Services sites and pages.
I'm not discussing here the "layout" modification, maybe I'll collect some good links that explain this task, let's say here that this was in my case solved mainly with some (not so easy) CSS modifications.
Let's focus on the webpart zones disposition, and how it can be changed.
First of all: I assume in all the samples below that your Sharepoint is installed in the default folder on drive C:\, and that you have the english setup (so in the paths you'll see the \1033\ folder, if you have other language packs you will have to deal with other paths).
The standard, "out-of-the-box" placement of the webparts in the page is ok for a lot of us; but sometimes you want to have some particular disposition of the webparts, in order to make a better use of the page space for your particular needs.
To reach this goal you will have to make some HTML coding in some .aspx pages, located in different paths. These paths correspond to the various "kind" of pages that Sharepoint 2003 offers to us: The Sharepoint main pages, the pages for the various Areas, the News pages, the Topics pages... and on and on down to the Windows Sharepoint Sites pages, both the simple and the Multi Page one.
All the .aspx pages you'll want to modify reside under this path:
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web server extensions\60\Template\1033\
Down that folder you'll find 13 subfolders. Each folder corresponds to a particular "kind" of page template on the Sharepoint portal or in the WSS sites. Below I'll give you a pair of lists that shows this correspondance.
The main file you'll find under the folder (let's say the first, the \SPS folder) is default.aspx.
This file, at run time, is used by Sharepoint as a template that is "filled" with the webparts you'll have decided to place in the various web part "zones". These zones are explicitly defined in the html of the default.aspx page, and have this look:
<WebPartPages:WebPartZone runat="server" Title="loc:Left" ID="Left" FrameType="TitleBarOnly" AllowPersonalization="false"/>
I will not enter in the details of the various tags; here we'll on ly note that the "ID" tag is the one that gives the name you will see in the sharepoint page, when in design mode.
There are many of these WebPartZone already in place in your default.aspx, go and look for them; you'll see that they are inside an html structure that you can easily hack for your needs; you can alse define more WebPartZones around the page, only be careful to give them unique IDs.
The following list shows each SharePoint Portal Server 2003 area or subarea and the corrisponding folder:
- Root site: \SPS folder
- My Site: \SPSMSITE folder
- News: \SPSNHOME folder
- Company News, External News and Press Announcements, and all areas that are under the News area: \SPSNEWS folder
- Site Directory: \SPSSITES folder
- Topics: \SPSTOC folder
- Divisions, Human Resources, Locations, Marketing, Operations, Projects, Resources, Sales, Strategy and Support, and all areas under the Topics area: \SPSTOPIC folder
- Community Template: \SPSCOMMU folder
Then there are some other folders that are relating to the Windows Sharepoint Services side of the coin; the two main folders are:
- \STS: all the pages for the WSS sites
- \MPS: for the Multi Page Template pages under WSS sites
This last one is a little more tricky, because when you modify the default.aspx page... this modifications will show up only in the main page, and not in the various subpages. To have also these pages modified you'll have to edit another page, in the folder:
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\60\TEMPLATE\1033\MPS\DOCTEMP\SMARTPGS
The file is named spstd1.aspx. modify and save it... and you're done.
Now: I'm not saying that all this process is easy and safe; you'll want to have backup copies of all the files you modify, and you'll want to make a lot of experiments before deploying all this in production... but as soon as you make the first test you'll find comfortable with the other.
Hope this helps...
Andrea
uhm... I didn't try Windows PowerShell until yesterday, but now I'm becoming addicted!!!
Some links...
Windows PowerShell on Wikipedia - a general intro, and some "fundamental" links.
On Microsoft's site, the main page for PowerShell (from here the link to the download pages - if you use XP sp2, here's the direct download link).
some Sample Windows PowerShell Scripts on Microsoft's site
and the CodePlex repository for Windows PowerShell scripts
Then a little article (on ThinkersRoom.com) on PowerShell customization, that introduces some interesting arguments through maybe "basic" yet well written. Read it.
ZenZui is a brand new entry in the "mobile widget browser" ecosystem, in which you can also find other players like BluePulse and Widset (from Nokia), and some others.
ZenZui was intially developed from Microsoft, now is an independent spin-off.
Actually ZenZui is not yet a real downloadable solution, but I think it will soon. Reading here and there I find interesting the business model they are going to implement - nothing so revolutionary, but it can work. Quoting from the site: " using well-established advertising principles like CPA and CPM (we call it CPZ – Cost Per Zoom)".
I will not try to explain how the interface will be, I prefer to redirect you this YouTube Video showing the ZenZui app working.
I found today this new blog entry in the Roberdan's blog (read more from here if you are interested in microsoft technologies and in communities): it's a collection of links on Sharepoint technologies, on Web Content Management in particular.
Actually in Roberdan's blog you can find much more than this, but in this precise moment this post is really useful to me... :-)
Thanks Roberto!!!
These are the very first lines of a thing I wrote some times ago...
Many system administrators would agree that, had it not been for write-ahead logging, the understanding of model checking might never have occurred. In fact, few mathematicians would disagree with the study of robots [13]. In this position paper we disconfirm that the acclaimed constant-time algorithm for the theoretical unification of the memory bus and redundancy by Suzuki is in Co-NP.
[...]
Ok, ok... it's a fake!!! It was produced from this site: SCIgen - An Automatic CS Paper Generator
Go and try it... it's incredible!!!
from the Windows Live Messenger's "i'm" initiative":
i’m is a new initiative from Windows Live™ Messenger. Every time you start a conversation using i’m, Microsoft shares a portion of the program's advertising revenue with some of the world's most effective organizations dedicated to social causes. We've set no cap on the amount we'll donate to each organization. The sky's the limit.
I knew about this from kfra, who pointed me at this blog entry
The Gorb presents as an "online community of professionals where real life reputations are earned and viewed by others".
The idea is to "rate" and comment on other people, but anonimously. In other network of this kind (say in LinkedIn for example) the comments and ratings are public and "signed"; so maybe they are not fair, in the sense that tend to be "too good".
Thru anonimity GORB wants to produce a more objective judgment on people.
I'll try to "rate" someone here around :-) let's see what happens...
In my long and exhausting ;-) journey towards the best RSS reader for Windows Mobile (Pocket PC) I found this great app, pRSSReader (a question for me: why did I find it only now???).
SImple to use, at the same time it offers a lot of functionalities; I uninstalled all the similar tools I tried in the past, now I use only this.
Some screenshot follow; there is only a single thing missing, in my opinion, a thing that I found really useful in other similar apps: the ability to send the content of a particular post thru email, without having to go all the way long thru copy&switch-to-email-app&paste&send&back.
Apart from this pRSSReader is really worth a try; it's freeware but you'll find that a PayPal "donation" to the author, David Andrš, could be a good idea.
..so, I'm a "Low Ranking Nerd. Definitely a nerd but low on the totem pole of nerds."
don't know if this a good or bad news :-)
In a recent comment in this blog I was "pointed" to Qode's web site.
Qode is similar to ShotCode, but both work in a different way than MoBeam (I talked about MoBeam here some days ago).
What I mean is that with Qode (as with ShotCode) you use the mobile device's camera to grab the barcode (or similar object) in order to be transferred to a web site. With MoBeam - as far as I have understood - the mobile device is used to show the barcode to the "real" world; for example to the laser scanner at the discount cashier...
Anyway Qode is interesting, like Shotcode is.
Texter is a text substitution application; it stays resident in memory and "hears" what you're typing. When a certain key combination is hit, it performs the related action.
For example you can have Texter substitute the string "ema" with you email address, or you can type "hre" and have a complete href tag written, with the URL you copied in the clipboard at the right place, and the cursor ready just before the </a> closing tag...
MoBeam is a technology that can be used to have your phone's screen laser-scanned in order to show (for example) a discount coupon.
I'm in the Joost.com beta. Really amazing, I have to say...
Joost is the new name of the "Venice Project", and it's a web-based interactive TV project. Even if in beta, and with a (well, not so) limited choice of channels to watch, it works very well.
two great ideas:
http://www.word.sc/ - "the social dictionary" combines new web 2.0 concepts to the good old dictionary.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/ - a "slang dictionary", edited by the site's visitors
use them, you'll be surprised!
www.quintura.com is an interesting search engine.
when you input your query and start the search, quintura returns results both in a traditional (list-syle) way and in a new "cloud" way; it filters the main terms in the search results and shows them in a cloud, thus showing also the "proxymity" of a particular term relating to your query terms (centerd in the interface).
Then, when you click a term in the cloud, quintura concatenates it to your original query terms, and searches again...
Try it: when you are searching around to gather new info, and not to find a specific web site, it can be useful.
Check this post, contains some interesting links to windows mobile developers resources.
http://www.apple.com/iphone/hello/
The brand new Apple iPhone spot has been presented during the last Academy Awards ceremony (the "Oscar" prize).
This weekend I had a problem: my 7-years old daughter was going to participate in a swimming contest, and I had no stopwatch :-)
Luckily on PocketPc Freeware I could find this simple yet almost perfect Stopwatch app, that fit my needs completely.
What you get with StopWatch 1.2 quoting from author's website:
- Up & Down counting
- Preset time values
- 7 segment display
- Accuracy: milliseconds
- Portrait & Landscape mode
- Context Menu
- Lap times
- Styling
Here are a couple of screenshots:
Useful links:
the first is a "Complete FAQ for sending email in ASP.NET", covers framework 1.x, while the second is a "Complete FAQ for the System.Net.Mail namespace found in .NET 2.0"
At this url you can download the latest sync software release for Windows Mobile-powered devices.
Microsoft says that this release performs better in terms of data transfer, that tey removed (for security reasons) remote pc sync functionality through WiFi or Lan, and that Exchange 2000 is not supported anymore.
See this: a web trend map for 2007 - in "Tokio Metro" style!
Available in different formats, from Information Architects Japan.
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
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:
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!
this is "out of scope", but this video is impressive.
if there were only 100 people in the world...
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:
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? ;-)
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.
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? :-)
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.
if the answer is yes... read this, on GizModo.
as for me... I'll wait some more time :-)
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.
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.
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!!!
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.
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!
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!!!
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... :-)
wow - from MIT's PLW, The Tiny Icon Factory!!! so maaaany tiny and cute little icons, and you can create your own!
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!
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)
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!
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 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" :-)
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
interesting read: The 2006 Year-End Google Zeitgeist, and the related post on the official Google blog.
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:
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.
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.
Have fun with this creative use of google maps and of letter-shaped buildings around the world... :-)
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!
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."
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.
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! :-)
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!!!
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!
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 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/
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 ;-)
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
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
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... :-)
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
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.
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!!!
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
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... :)
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.
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.
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);
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;
}
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.
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
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
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 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.
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 :-)
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.
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/
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!
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
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/
http://www.microsoft.com/games/flightsimulatorx/downloads.html
at this url you can find a playable demo for FSX... try it!!!
bye.
