Archive

Archive for the ‘InterWebNet’ Category

Syncing Gmail Contacts Birthdays and Events with Google Calendar

May 10th, 2011 No comments

I am horrible with other people’s important dates, e.g., birthdays, anniversaries, date you got your appendix removed, etc.

I just realized I should put all that info into my Gmail Contacts, and then it will appear on my Google Calendar automatically. Oh wait… It doesn’t show up. Damn. Why doesn’t it work?

Turns out, this obviously valued feature is not turned on by default, but it is available.  To get your contacts’ birthdays and other events to show up, simply perform the following in Google Calendar:

Click Settings (the little gear icon in the upper right corner of the screen), then Calendars (link just under the "Calendar Settings" tab), then the Browse Interesting Calendars (lower right) link, then More (under the heading), and finally Subscribe next to the Contacts’ birthdays and events.

Fantastic!  Now you, and more importantly, I should have no reason to forget to remind our friends and family a Happy Birthday.

ReadSync Facebook App for Kindle Users

February 6th, 2011 No comments

Ever since I got my Kindle at Christmastime, I was thinking that there should be an application that lets you view your Kindle bookshelf, and share books with friends, share what you are reading, have read, and may recommend.  I have been using the weRead on Facebook for quite awhile, but you have to manage the bookshelf manually. This is not a complaint as I have many physical books that would not work with a Kindle-only application, but the majority of books a Kindle owner has will be the electronic formats of the books.

I did a little research this morning and came across the ReadSync Facebook application which syncs with your Amazon Kindle bookshelf. The application lets you view all the books you have sync’d to your Kindle. It lets you share a book on your wall with friends, and even see your friend’s bookshelf (if they are also using the application.) This looks to be exactly what I wanted.  The only drawback is those hardcover and paperback books I still happen to pick up from time to time (mostly technical books which I want to quickly be able to thumb through.) For these I will still rely on weRead, unless ReadSync makes an update to allow a reader to manually add books to their bookshelf.  I think a hybrid application containing both eBooks and tangible books would satisfy all readers.  Maybe I will contact the developer and try to get that ball rolling.

Happy Reading!

iTunes Ping

September 16th, 2010 No comments

I just recently started using iTunes Ping, and my first impression was ‘Facebook/Twitter for Music’; pretty neat.  If you have friends on Ping, then you can follow them, and see what they are listening to and/or interested in.  Finding your ‘actual’ friends is pretty easy, since you know there name and often times e-mail, but finding the ‘real’ artists is another matter.  Apple apparently didn’t learn or pay attention to the problem Twitter had a few years ago when it started: fake accounts.  Another neat feature of Ping, is for actual artists to promote other artists.  If you like Trent Reznor or Paul van Dyk, you might want to follow them and see what they are listening to.  But in the event you pick the wrong account, or perhaps the artist doesn’t even have an ‘official’ Ping account, then all you end up doing is following some asshat douchebag who thought he would create an account using the name of an actual artist.

I think the ‘verified’ or ‘official’ account identifier that Twitter put in place should be Enhancement #1 on the Ping backlog.  I’m still liking the service, and will continue to use it, but I’ll stay away from following artists until this gets resolved.

Greenshot – free screenshot tool

July 13th, 2010 No comments

After using SnagIt for several years with my old company, I was in need of an open source replacement.  After using everyone’s favorite research assistant, I found Greenshot.  It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles that SnagIt has, but it has the basics which is what you use 80% of the time anyway.

So far, so good.  If you are need of a good screenshot/capture tool, and don’t feel like forking over $50 for a SnagIt license, check out Greenshot.

Simple Calendar Control for Web Application

March 19th, 2010 No comments

I originally did this back in 2007, but did not want to lose the content, so I decided to put it up here.

I found a robust and relatively simple calendar control to use for web UIs. It can use a pop-up window or a floating <div> tag. I prefer the latter as it makes the page look good and avoids a pop-up.

To use the control simply put the CalendarPopup.js file in your application’s “scripts” directory and be sure to include it in your JSP. (I used this in a Java app, but you can apply it to any language.)

Download the and put it in your images directory.

Add the following lines to your application’s JavaScript file (or include on the same page if you don’t have an external JS file):

// Set up Calendar control
var calObj = new CalendarPopup("calDiv");
calObj.showNavigationDropdowns();
calObj.setMonthNames('JAN','FEB','MAR','APR','MAY','JUN','JUL','AUG','SEP','OCT','NOV','DEC');

// Handle the Calendar control
function doCalendar(destObjId, srcObj) {
    calObj.select(document.getElementById(destObjId),srcObj.id,'dd-MMM-yyyy');
}

Then add the following lines to your JSP:

<script>document.write(getCalendarStyles());</script>

In your JSP, add the following HTML code where you want your date field and calendar control:

<input id="dateField" style="width: auto;" maxlength="11" name="actualDate" size="25" type="text" />
<img id="imgCal" onclick="doCalendar('dateField',this);return false;" src="cal.gif" border="0" alt="" />

That’s it!

In order to workaround IE 6′s inability to recognize the z-index attribute on the tag, I made some modifications to the original JavaScript code. You will need to pass the an ID value to be used for the hidden that will overlay the box.

var calObj = new CalendarPopup("calDiv", "calFrame");

You will also need to specify the following styles in a stylesheet. The ID values in the stylesheet must match the names of your DIV and IFRAME IDs on your page.

div#calDiv {
    position:absolute; visibility:hidden;
    background-color:white;
    layer-background-color:white;
}
.select-free {
    position:absolute; z-index:10;/*any value*/
    overflow:hidden;/*must have*/
    width:152px;/*do not change value for calendar control */;
}
.select-free iframe#calFrame {
    display:none;/*sorry for IE5*/
    display:block;/*sorry for IE5*/
    position:absolute;/*must have*/
    top:0;/*must have*/
    left:0;/*must have*/
    z-index:-1;/*must have*/
    filter:mask();/*must have*/
    width:3000px;/*must have for any big value*/
    height:3000px/*must have for any big value*/;
}

Your JSP now needs the following line:

<div id="calDiv" class="select-free"></div>

Funniest Thing on the Twitter All Day

January 13th, 2010 3 comments

A conversation between @cwgabriel from Penny Arcade and @pvponline from PVP.

Brought a tear to my eye after @wilw got involved.

gabriel_pvp_tweets

Categories: Humor, InterWebNet Tags: , ,

Google Chrome Frame

November 25th, 2009 No comments

I installed Google Chrome Frame about a month ago, and I am very impressed with how responsive and quick Internet Explorer is with JavaScript intensive web pages now.  If you use a lot of JavaScript intensive websites, e.g., Facebook, Gmail, Google Maps, Google Calendar, etc., you will notice a significant improvement in performance when using IE with the Chome plug-in.

I was also interested to find out that the new Google Wave application only works with IE if you have the plug-in installed.

The plug-in works in Internet Explorer 6, 7, and 8, and requires you to have Windows XP, Vista, or Windows 7.

PyXML for Python 2.5

October 30th, 2009 No comments

I was looking for a version of PyXML for Python 2.5 and had some difficulty due to the project being unmaintained.  I was able to find someone that compiled PyXML 0.8.4 for Python 2.5.  You can find it here.

Categories: InterWebNet, Programming Tags: ,

Can’t Find Shit on Oracle’s Website

October 21st, 2009 1 comment

When Oracle first announced that they were acquiring BEA, the first thought that went through my head wasn’t “I wonder if Oracle AS will be dropped in favor of WebLogic.”; it was “Oh great! Now I won’t be able to find shit on the WebLogic forums too.”

It’s been several months since the acquisition, but today I got fed up.  BEA used to have a website, dev2dev.bea.com, where they would post clever tips, tricks, etc. about the WebLogic platform.  I would have thought that Oracle would have kept all of this “useful” content alive after the website consolidation, but I was wrong.  It wasn’t bad enough they killed the forums at BEA, which has since caused all Google searches to come up with a plethora of dead links since the BEA URLs no longer exist.  Links from other forums to BEA listings are now worthless as well.

But hey, I can always go over to the forums at Oracle’s website and search there right?  One would think that was a logical solution, that is until they found out the honest truth:  Oracle’s search engine is powered by the Total Perspective Vortex.  At least that is what it feel’s like each time I attempt to find any God-damned thing on their site.

All I wanted was the article about the Thread Dump Analyser (TDan) tool that was written a while back.  It’s the best tool out there IMHO for performing thread dump analysis and being able to represent the output in a visual way.  It’s a good thing I keep a backup copy of the tool available.

Good Night.

Google Calendar now has Sports Schedules

September 3rd, 2009 No comments

Just noticed today that Google Calendar now has built in sports schedules so that you can be sure you never miss out on a game.  Pretty sweet feature for the sports fanatics out there.

image

Categories: InterWebNet, Sports Tags: , ,