A mechanical cow, that lets out a blast of steam in a strictly defined time, became the new point of interest of Scotland’s capital.

The cow’s backside, that is attached to the wall of Rowan Tree pub in the historic neighborhood of Edinburgh, called the Old Town, raises its tail three times a day and shoots out the blast of steam.

The mechanism works by hours, and thus allows people to synchronize their watches, as well as the another Edinburgh’s sight – One O’clock Gun, a canon, which fires every day at 13.00.

The cow itself was set up more than a year ago, though the mechanism that allows her to let off the steam was installed quite recently.

In spite of it, the cow already acquired popularity not only among the local citizens, but also among the tourists.

The owner of the pub, Norrie Rowan said: “The cow already became popular all over the Edinburgh, that is why hundreds of tourist pass by my pub every day and take the pictures of it.”

Many countries have already realized the importance of the development of the touristic branch, especially in city travel and are already spending huge budgets to install interesting objects and places of interest in the cities.

A good example of this are the Baltic countries that have recently entered the Schengen Zone. This means a possible increase in the tourist flow and surely great income, because an average city travel tourist spends more than $500 during his stay in the city.

Therefore such new members of the Schengen Agreement as Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania are refurbishing their cities, resorts and points of interest and performing huge advertising campaigns to attract as many tourists as possible.

A mechanical cow, that lets out a blast of steam in a strictly defined time, became the new point of interest of Scotland’s capital.

The cow’s backside, that is attached to the wall of Rowan Tree pub in the historic neighborhood of Edinburgh, called the Old Town, raises its tail three times a day and shoots out the blast of steam.

The mechanism works by hours, and thus allows people to synchronize their watches, as well as the another Edinburgh’s sight – One O’clock Gun, a canon, which fires every day at 13.00.

The cow itself was set up more than a year ago, though the mechanism that allows her to let off the steam was installed quite recently.

In spite of it, the cow already acquired popularity not only among the local citizens, but also among the tourists.

The owner of the pub, Norrie Rowan said: “The cow already became popular all over the Edinburgh, that is why hundreds of tourist pass by my pub every day and take the pictures of it.”

Many countries have already realized the importance of the development of the touristic branch, especially in city travel and are already spending huge budgets to install interesting objects and places of interest in the cities.

A good example of this are the Baltic countries that have recently entered the Schengen Zone. This means a possible increase in the tourist flow and surely great income, because an average city travel tourist spends more than $500 during his stay in the city.

Therefore such new members of the Schengen Agreement as Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania are refurbishing their cities, resorts and points of interest and performing huge advertising campaigns to attract as many tourists as possible.

As a coworker of mine put it, I recently “stepped into the 21st century” by splurging on the Droid the day after its launch. I’ve been intrigued by the smart phone for some time and would have jumped all over the iPhone but the coverage from AT&T really sucks in my neck of the woods. When they started talking about the Droid on Verizon’s network, I got all giddy and couldn’t wait to get one. Not to mention how much fun it could be writing my own mobile apps. I guess it’s time to dust off my Java books and lube up my copy of Eclipse.

This post, however, is less about technical stuff and more about getting what you want where you want it, and that is calendar and contact synchronization. I’m not saying that this is the only way, or the best way, but I dug around for several hours and tried all sorts of free and demo software and this is what ended up working for me with the least amount of pain.

First, some back story on my situation. I’m an avid Yahoo Mail user and have been for about 10 years. I like Yahoo mail with all it’s Ajax goodness and sleek interface. GMail on the other hand, seems clunky. As a coworker of mine put it, “it looks like something that was designed by programmers”. I have a GMail account to use for all the wonders that Google offers, like analytics and other services. Being that the Droid is heavily integrated with Google, the calendar and contacts functionality on the phone depends on the Google Calendar and GMail Contacts. So now I was faced with the problem – how do I get my events, appointments, reminders and contacts from Yahoo to my phone?

NOTE: I’m running Office 2007 on Windows 7 64bit

How I am Synchronizing Yahoo! Contacts and Calendar with Outlook and GMail

1. First I am doing 2 way synchronization between Yahoo and Outlook for contacts and calendar.  This is very simple using Yahoo’s AutoSync addon for Outlook/Outlook Express.  You can install the bits for this program by first going to Calendar and then clicking the “Sync” link in the top right.  You can also get more info from VersionTracker.  This addon isn’t 100% rock solid and sometimes won’t fire up, but not sure what the circumstances are.  I don’t think it’s officially supported in Windows 7, but it’s been working good enough for now.
2. Now that I have all my Yahoo contacts and calendar entries in Outlook, it’s time to find something to synchronize Outlook to Gmail.  I went into this thinking this would be a simple task, but let’s just say there’s a lot of crap software out there both for free and for pay.  What I ended up using was the addon from Soocial.com, which a contact management service that helps keep your contacts organized.  They offer tools to sync several providers, but the Yahoo sync is only one-way, which is why I am using AutoSync to handle that.  Their GMail sync tool only works for contacts, which leads me to item 3.
3. To keep my outlook calendar synchronized with the GMail calendar, I am using Google’s Calendar Sync Tool.  You may be as surprised as I was to find that Google offers a tool to sync the calendar but not contacts.  I think it has something to do with the Apps Synch product that requires an Enterprise license.
   Note: Google does offer a way to sync iTunes contacts with GMail, but that seemed like a whole other can of worms.

At first I had reservations about putting all my contacts on Soocial.com, but I couldn’t find anything sketchy about them in the public domain.  If you have any knowledge about this service, please share.

So what I’ve ended up with is this:

Yahoo -><- AutoSync –><- Outlook –><- Soocial.com -><- Gmail Contacts
GMail Calendar -><- GMail Calendar Synch –><- Outlook

Now when I add a contact or calendar entry in Outlook or Yahoo, I will see it on my Droid.  Conversely, if I’m on the road and add something in my Droid (Gmail), I’ll see it in Yahoo and Outlook within 90 minutes (configurable).  It not as seamless and I’d like, but it works pretty good for now.  I’ll update the post if things start to get dicey or ifwhen something better comes along.  Based on the number posts and questions on the web regarding this topic, I’m sure this will help at least a couple people trying to mesh into this new fangled era of being constantly connected to the world from your powerful little handset.

Did you know that it is possible to have Twitter automatically update your Facebook page? It’s actually very simple. In fact, I haven’t manually updated my Facebook status in months.

To get this process working, follow these six simple steps. It shouldn’t take you more than five minutes, max. These instructions assume that you already have both a Facebook account and a Twitter account.

1. Make sure you are logged into Facebook. Now go to the Facebook’s Twitter application page. Now click on the Go to Application button. It looks like this:
   
2. The application will now ask you to confirm that Twitter can access your Facebook information. Click on the Allow button.
   
3. Now log into your Twitter account by entering your Twitter username and password. The screen looks similar to this:
   
   Click on the Login button.
4. You can now actually use Twitter from within Facebook. The screen looks like this:
   
   Personally, I never use this. I want the reverse of this. I want to update my Facebook status from Twitter. Therefore, click on the Allow Twitter to Update Your Facebook Status button in the upper-right of the screen.
5. You should get a confirmation screen that looks similar to this:
   
   Now confirm that you are willing to let Twitter update your Facebook status by clicking the Allow Status Updates button.
6. After you click this button, you will go to the Twitter application. Don’t Twitter anything from here. Instead, go to your Facebook Home page, by clicking the Home link on the Facebook menu.Now you can test the connection by going to your favorite Twitter application or the Twitter web page and entering a tweet. Wait a minute or two and go back to your Facebook home page and refreshing it. Your most recent tweet should be displayed as your Facebook status. This is how my status looked:

That’s all there is to it. Now every time you Twitter something, your Facebook status will be automatically updated.

Update: If you don’t want to send every one of your tweets to Facebook, then check out Selective Twitter Status. It allows you to designate the tweets you want to appear on Facebook by end a tweet with the #fb “hashtag” in your post. Only those tweets with the hash tag at the end will be posted on Facebook.

Find me on Twitter

If you are looking to save time as you work a shoot, before you start developing it think ahead about which images are shot under similar conditions and therefore need similar adjustments, or which images you  you want similar treatments for (e.g. black and white), and apply your changes to these groups of images all at once.

Lightroom is a relatively new program, but there are already multiple ways of accomplishing this,  each with a different twist.   You have three main choices:

1.  Make changes to your first image and then synchronize the settings:

• After making the changes to the first image, in the filmstrip select all of the images you want to apply the setting to, including the one you already did.
• Make sure the one you already did is “active”.  Do this by clicking inside the thumbnail for that image, so that the border is brighter than the other selected images.  (Clicking outside the thumbnail will break apart the selection!)
• Click on the Sync… button at the bottom of the right-hand panel strip. (If you don’t have multiple images selected, you won’t see it.)
• Choose which settings from the active image you want to apply to the rest of the images, and hit Synchronize.

2.  Make changes to all of the images at once:

• In the filmstrip, select all of the images you want to affect.   Decide which of these images you want to see as you work, and click inside its thumbnail to make it active.
• Hold down the Ctl/Cmd key, and click on the Sync… button to change it to Auto Sync.
• With Auto Sync on, make changes to the active image.  Notice how the same changes are applied to all of the selected images automatically.
• Remember to turn Auto Sync off, or you may end up making unintended changes to groups of images.  Hold down the Ctl/Cmd key and click on Auto Sync to change it back to Sync…

3.  Copy and Paste your settings:

This method works for applying settings to one additional image, not groups of images.  I find it completely unnecessary given the Sync functionality, but since the buttons are there (at the bottom of the left hand panel strip), I will mention it.

• Make changes to your first image.
• Hit Copy, and select which settings you want to copy to another image.
• Select another image you want to apply the settings to.
• Hit Paste.

Figure out which method(s) you prefer, get in the habit of using them, and really start to leverage the power of Lightroom to get you away from the computer in much less time.

This is the first real post that isnt about Google. Of course, this is not a Google blog, even though it has so far kind of been one.

One great tool that Ive used for a while now is the Dropbox.

This is also a free service consisting of a client that is used for automatic uploading of stuff to the internet, enabling not only automatic backup but also synchronization.

What it does is it installs a folder on your computer called the Dropbox. Everything that is put inside this folder is automatically uploaded to your online Dropbox. It keeps everything synchronized: everytime you change or save a file located in the Dropbox it is automatically synchronized to the online space.

If you, like me, use multiple computers (maybe a home computer, a notebook and a work computer), you already know how annoying it is not to have the correct file available just because youre not sitting at the correct computer. This has probably led to you mailing yourself important files in order to be able to reach them from anywhere, or worse, carrying a usb stick around. Unfortunetely for you, these mails and files soon become too numerous and unsynchronized for these solutions to work in the long run.

By installing Dropbox on multiple computers, and specifying the same user account, all the computers will keep synchronized automatically. When you change a file on one computer, all the others will automatically get the new version. It works the same way if you have dualboot- change something in one OS, and it will synchronize with the other.

You can also access your Dropbox from computers that dont have Dropbox- just log into your account on the web and all the files are right there, reachable and downloadable from a browser.

Sharing is made possible by changing the settings of a folder to make it shared. This folder can then be shared between accounts, enabling you to have a single, on line folder for e.g. a school or job project that is the same for all members of the group.

What I did is I moved my whole “My Documents” folder into the Dropbox folder. Sure enough, soon after I installed Dropbox, there was a problem with my computer and I decided to reformat it. Rather than making backups of all my important files to a CD, DVD or USB, I just went ahead and formated my hard drive, installed my OS and Dropbox, and then Dropbox took care of getting all my files back on track on my freshly formated drive. Dropbox is definetely a solution that saves a LOT of time for its users and significantly lessens the trauma and trials of technology in everyday life. So use it! Its available for Linux too!

I’ve had Evernote on the back burner for a while now, wanting to get round to investigating its potential. Evernote presents itself as an ‘external brain’, remembering things so you don’t have to (using the elephants in the clouds). It’s client driven, so there’s a download involved, but there are a host of downloads for different operating systems and mobile devices. The client then synchronizes with your Evernote account (free or monthly subscription depending on how much you want to use it).

The current promo video is:

And I found this original video useful to explain Evernote’s uses.

I have to admit that I’m not a fan of sync’ing. I prefer to use online services that access the content directly on the server without having to use a dedicated client, with one or two exceptions. Consequently, I’m not sure I’ll be using Evernote as much as I anticipated. However, that might not reflect other people’s working practises, so I thought it useful to present some of what I would find Evernote useful for.

I think the main use for me is the way Evernote can allow you to search text in images. This has particular use for education if you take a photo or a screen shot of some relevant text, or hand written notes, possibly from a whiteboard, then suddenly you have a searchable object.

I gave it a try with possibly a difficult test of this image and did a search for “franc” (part of fancisco). The result was pretty good but not perfect.

Evernote also allows you to collaborate by sharing your ‘notebooks’

Further videos about Evernote and how to use it are available on their YouTube channel or the video page of their website.

If you ever used iTunes on Windows then you’ll notice that it really sucks! But that’s Windows right? On Mac, iTunes really isn’t that bad, because it works well with all the other features in the OS. But the one big drawback is that is built for iPods and iPods only. So if you want to sync your “non iPod” MP3 player then forget about it. Wait a minute! Don’t do that, I found a neat little app that will help you make your iTunes a little more useful. ITunesMyWalkman is a nice little app that lets you use iTunes to sync your MP3 player! This will work for any device that works as a removable drive, so not only MP3 players, but Cell Phones, Memory Card, Flash Drives… You name it! So to get started just download the app from here, and install it. Still with me? Then once the program is running, I would recommend installing the iTunes script. This will add a menu to your iTunes. Ok now go to iTunes, and you’ll see a new menu button next to “Window”, it looks like some “S” or something. In your iTMW preferences, make sure that the program syncs from the right playlist, the output folder is set up to your external device, and all the settings are how you want them. You can select to make playlists, even convert all the audio files to MP3 for compatibility. Now that everything seems good, close that, and in your iTMW menu, hit synchronies, and let it go, in a few minutes, you will have a nicely synced MP3 player. You can have it sync automatically when your device is plugged in, and has a few nice features that really make this a nice app. So get it today, did I mention that it’s free?

GIVE PEACE a DANCE

by UnseenPictures

‘you must be the change you
wish to see in the world”

Mahatma Gandhi

The Vision

the WHOLE WORLD DANCES TOGETHER on ONE DAY

to inspire GLOBAL PEACE and WORLD HEALING

the HIGHLIGHT of the EVENT is the GLOBAL PEACE PRAYER

which is a SYNCHRONIZED MEME in TIME

across the WORLD plays

THE SAME TRACK at THE SAME TIME

translated into any language

to create peace in the same time together

…

Beberapa waktu yang lalu saya mencoba (lagi) layanan email gratis dari Nokia : OVI mail karena tergiur dengan promosi hadiah yang ditawarkan di harian Kompas. Lumayan hadiah pertama senilai 10 juta rupiah. Cara mengikutinya gampang saja. Pertama anda harus punya account email di Ovi.com. Dari account email ini kirim email ke kejutan@ovi.com dengan subjek ‘Kesamber Jutaan’. Semoga anda dan saya beruntung

OVI mail mendukung sinkroniasi dengan handphone yang berbasis Symbian. Namun sampai saat ini saya belum berhasil melakukan sinkronisasi di handphone saya (E90). Langkah-langkah yang dilakukakan:

1. Akses http://mail.ovi.com dari hp anda. Tentunya anda harus sudah mempunyai account OVI.
2. Add device. Pada langkah ini anda masukkan jenis HP anda dan masukkan no handphone anda (saya memakai kartu halo).
3. Selanjutnya akan muncul nomor pin security (4 digit) yang harus dimasukkan waktu anda membuka sms yang dikirim dari Nokia

Nah, problemnya adalah SMS ini tak kunjung tiba. Kemungkinan ini memang masih bemasalah karena di FAQ sudah ada dicantumkan bagaimana kalau SMS dari Nokia ini tidak kita terima. Karena untuk sinkronisasi diperlukan beberapa informasi yang diperlukan untuk setup awal.

Berkat bantuan om google saya menemukan contoh setting manual sinkronisasi OVI dengan handphone seperti di bawah. Namun sayangnya sampai saaat ini belum berhasil. Ada pesan error username atau password salah. Padahal saya sudah memasukkan user dan password OVI dengan benar.

Sync profile name: Ovi.com
Connection Settings
==================
Server Version: 1.2
Server ID: My Nokia Backup
Data bearer: Internet ( i use it over wifi)
Access point: Always ask (you change this if you like)
Host address: https://sync.ovi.com/services/syncml
Port: 443
User name:
Password:
Allow sync requests: Yes
Accept all sync requests: No
Network authentication : No

Contacts
Include in Sync : Yes
Database in phone: C:Contacts.cdb
Remote database:./Contact/Unfiled
Synchronisation type: Both ways (but i suggest you sync to server only to test the results first)

Calender
Include in Sync : Yes
Remote database:./EventTask/Tasks
Synchronisation type: Both ways (but i suggest you sync to server only to test the results first)
Notes

Include in Sync : Yes
Remote database:./Note/Unfiled
Synchronisation type: Both ways (but i suggest you sync to server only to test the results first)

Oh ya, kalau ingin menambahkan account ke aplikasi push email (saya menggunakan Seven) gunakan setting berikut:

username : alamat email ovi

Incoming Mail Server : imap.mail.ovi.com

Outgoing Mail Server : smtp.mail.ovi.com

I use this script to synchronize my files from my desktop computer to my usb pendrive:

#!/bin/sh
if [ -z $1 ]; then
echo "Error: missing source path"
elif [ -z $2 ]; then
echo "Error: missing destination path"
else
rsync -arRuv --delete --files-from=$1/bin/sync.txt $1 $2
fi

Save as sync.sh, for example. If you want to know about the rsync options I use, read the fine manual.

sync.txt is a file that contains the path of the files you want to copy from your $HOME, for example:

.xinitrc
.zshrc
TODO
bin
work/geoz/mainline.tar.bz2

But it is not limited to that. You can also synchronize from your $HOME to a remote host:

sync.sh $HOME user@host:~

This is also valid, to synchronize from a remote host to your $HOME:

sync.sh user@host:~ $HOME

Remember to have rsync installed on the remote host.

Just found out about this one today. With Dropbox you can store up to 20 GB of files for free.

You can save them as backups, which means if something happens to your OS or computer, your most important files will be safe and easily restored.

You can synchronize files with your other computers or mobile devices just by saving them in a special folder. They, along with your changes to them at any time , will appear on the server and your other computers right away.

You can also share your files with friends, although nobody, including Dropbox employees, can see your files unless you give them a link.

All you have to do is create an account and download the program.

https://www.getdropbox.com/referrals/NTE4MDY3ODc5

If you register via my link, both of us will get a 250MB bonus!

I was particularly impressed by Dropbox and its ability to backup, retrieve and share files so easily, but I am quite concerned about the security issues deriving from having your files on a remote, closed-source system. I think that a good remote storage solution should prevent the owner of the storage server from accessing private data. Is it even possible? It is, using the right approach: the client computer must perform encryption when storing remote files, and decryption when retrieving them. I put together a solution for Linux systems using sshfs and encfs.

I used two computers: a server and a client, but for testing purposes just one computer is needed. The server acts as a storage provider, using an ssh server. It can serve multiple users, and each user has a box where he can put anything. A user that connects to the server creates an encrypted space using encfs, and fills the box with private data.

On the server

• Add a user, for example remote_user1
• Prepare a directory that will be the remote_user1 personal box. For example:

# mkdir /srv/boxes
# mkdir /srv/boxes/remote_user1
# chown remote_user1.remote_user1 /srv/boxes/remote_user1

• Install ssh server. On Debian-based systems:

# apt-get install open-ssh-server

• edit /etc/ssh/sshd_config to include the following options (this will prevent the users to use ssh to do anything but file transfer on their personal box):

Subsystem sftp internal-sftp
ChrootDirectory /srv/boxes
ForceCommand internal-sftp

• Reduce read/write permissions on the root server directory. This is done to prevent the user to mount the root directory and list its contents.

# chmod 711 /srv/boxes

• Restart ssh server, for example:

# invoke-rc.d ssh restart

On the client

• You can add a user, for example user1, or continue with an existing user.
• Install ssh client, sshfs and encfs. On Debian-based systems:

# apt-get install open-ssh-client sshfs encfs

• Add user1 to the fuse group

# adduser user1 fuse

• Log in as user1 (if you are already logged in as user1, log off and log in to render the fuse group effective)
• Create a folder that will contain the encrypted file system mounted through sshfs

$ mkdir ~/.box_enc

• Mount the remote directory, providing remote_user1 password (boxserver is the computer where we created the remote boxes before)

$ sshfs remote_user1@boxserver:remote_user1 ~/.box_enc -o uid=$(id -u) -o gid=$(id -g)

• Create a folder that will contain the unencrypted file system mounted through encfs

$ mkdir ~/box

• Mount the encrypted directory, creating an encfs environment encrypted with a password. After this step, the directory ~/box can be used as any other directory, but everything in it will be encrypted and stored in a remote folder, specifically the /srv/box/remote_user1 folder in your server. If you list the content of that remote folder (that is also the content of ~/.box_enc folder in the client computer) you will only see encrypted content and the xml file that encfs uses to keep the environment settings.

$ encfs ~/.box_enc ~/box

• To unmount the directories, execute, in order:

$ fusermount -u ~/box
$ fusermount -u ~/.box_enc

Tips

• You can setup ssh with key authentication instead of password authentication to avoid typing the password every time you want to mount the encrypted remote folder. To do so, on the client side:

$ ssh-keygen
$ cp ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub ~/.box_enc #~/.box_enc must be mounted

On the server side, logged in as remote_user1:

$ mkdir ~/.ssh
$ chmod 700 ~/.ssh
$ cat /srv/boxes/remote_user1/id_rsa.pub >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
$ chmod 600 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
$ rm /srv/boxes/remote_user1/id_rsa.pub

• You can setup encfs to read the password from a file, using for example:

$ read -s -p 'password>' pwd
$ touch ~/.encfs_pwd
$ chmod 600 ~/.encfs_pwd
$ echo "$pwd" >> ~/.encfs_pwd
$ pwd=
$ encfs --extpass='cat ~/.encfs_pwd' ~/.box_enc ~/box


• You can use the mounted directory as a backup, and use rsync to synchronize a local folder and your backup folder. For example:

$ #To pull your files from your backup folder:
$ rsync -uav ~/box/ ~/Documents/
$ #To push your files to your backup folder:
$ rsync -uav ~/Documents/ ~/box/

• Then you can schedule a job to keep them synchronized. To run a sync every minute:

$ crontab -e
* * * * * rsync -ua /home/user1/box/ /home/user1/Documents/ && rsync -ua /home/user1/Documents/ /home/user1/box/

• To change the behavior of the server so that only a certain group of users are restricted to the file transfer functionality of ssh, you can use the Match keyword inside the sshd_config file, before the “ChrootDirectory” and “ForceCommand” lines. (see “man sshd_config”)

Security

The security implications of this setup are complicated. Mostly, this setup is as secure as the combination of encfs and your client computer. The remote server cannot see the content of your files unless it knows the encfs password, but it can see the number of files and the directory structure (see http://www.arg0.net/encfsintro and encfs man pages for more details). Theoretically, it could be possible for someone with access to the remote server to understand what kind of files you have on your box. For example, a big 400MB file could be a movie, a compressed file or a CD image; a directory could have a structure that resembles that of a Firefox profile folder.

Usability

The setup I just described is quite easy to follow if you know Linux well. It is tricky if you’re not expert. This solution can be automated in some aspects, for example an installation could setup the remote box to mount at login. Moreover, a nice GUI could be developed to do a quick start, to select backup options and security settings. The performance is not so great, since the data must be encrypted two times: one for encfs and one for ssh; it is however faster than I thought (I have not done benchmarks); moreover both sshfs and encfs have options (like cache and compression) that could speed up the file transfer. About the Operating System: this setup works on Linux, but I think it should work also on Mac OS X thanks to the macfuse project that enables, among others, sshfs and encfs. On Windows sshfs is available through Dokan libraries, but I can’t find anything for an encfs port.

Final considerations

This experiment is satisfying from a technical point of view, but it lacks the usability to be considered a full-blown alternative to Dropbox; I think that a better alternative could be Novell’s iFolder. Currently, from what I found, iFolder server kinda works on non-Novell distros, but it needs some hacks and the installation is not straightforward (see http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1163192&page=3), but it’s promising. I think I will try to install a complete setup when I have the time.

[Update]

I found a blog that reports stability problems with sshfs + encfs setups. I haven’t found the timestamp problem he mentions, but the two computers I used are tightly connected. I didn’t do a “heavy load” stress test either, just syncronizing a directory containing the sources and binaries of a small project.

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

I’m been a huge fan of DokuWiki for many years now.  Since I worked in a huge corporate development environment where structured documentation was hard to set-up I managed to pull a great number of resources together using DokuWiki and make it available to my whole team.  The culture was such that I was pretty much the only person keeping it up to date … but that’s a different story.

I’m now using it to with a portable web server and DropBox to keep it synchronised across multiple Internet connected devices – which works as I’m the only person contributing to this one.  But I can see a need (in my current organisation) for one team to move away from individual wikis (or more precisely TiddlyWikis) that are manually copied centrally from time to time; and towards a set-up which is a shared wiki – the way wikis were meant to be.

Whilst our latest pilot of SharePoint would certainly fulfil the sharing criteria, it won’t allow all users to work in the way they need to.  The reason for this is Internet connectivity.  Not everywhere and everyone has an always on 100% reliable connection.  Just try travelling on a cross-country train for example.  This is a big issue for an increasingly mobile workforce like ours.

The solution is certainly non-trivial as there are synchronisation issues to deal with.  Even if you had a wiki that you split into spaces for individuals you would find that as well as the potential for producing fragmented content (e.g. two users posting complimentary information in two separate locations), there is also the issue of how to automatically rebuild search indexes.

I’m always on the look out for something to tackle this sort of issue and the nearest I’ve ever seen until now has been SocialText’s TiddlyWiki inspired check-out solution.  But now it looks like the solution may have been right under my nose for some time and I’ve never noticed.

DokuWiki is based on a simple file system structure rather than a database structure.  Not hugely scalable in performance terms, but a little inefficiency on something inherently straight forward like this means that faster hardware can be applied to mitigate the situation.  DokuWiki’s author Andrea Gohr has developed a synchronisation plugin for DokuWiki that seems to take care of everything.  Whilst it won’t merge multiple-author edits (i.e. the original page was updated online and a new edit based on the old one has been created offline) automatically it will flag them for manual edit. For me I wouldn’t want to risk the loss of information or the creation of a nonsense page through automatic handling so really this is a non-issue.  Everything else seems to be handled including the usual DokuWiki login based restricted access, separation of name spaces, etc.

I’m not sure why I’ve never come across it before but now I have I’m met with another quandary.  Before I recommend this internally I’d like to try it out and given it a field test of some sort.  However Andreas has chosen an interesting experiment for releasing this particular plugin.

The plugin was written many months ago and he is asking for donations towards its release.  When released it will be available to everyone to download and use for free and will effectively be released under the usual GPL2 licensing agreements.  He’s most of the way there in terms of donations, but not quite so I can’t yet evaluate it just yet.  Given the financial processes we have in place for purchasing things from sources who aren’t preferred suppliers (i.e. directors and credit cards vs. accounts and purchase orders) and the current pressures on the public sector during these financially unstable times I don’t feel as though I can provide enough of a business case to try this when we’ve invested so recently in a system based around very similar collaboration for the whole organisation.

For now I’ll have to hang in there and keep an eye on the total and this interesting “Liberationware” experiment*.

* I was going to use the term “Ransomware” but according to Wikipedia that’s not the right definition!…

Many people will soon be forced to choose between one of many browsers in Windows 7 so here we made a small article in basic language which helps them pick the Web Browser that is right for them.

The Novice Guide to choosing a browser :

1. Internet Explorer (Download) :

You can use this browser if your used to it, but it’s the uttermost basic browser there is. It doesn’t provide extended functionality, lacks some functions to display websites correctly and is somehow considered unsafe, especially when your e-banking.

Pros : Basic, Simple

Cons : Unsafe, Bad displaying of websites, Lacks functionality

2. Firefox (Download) :

Firefox is the most “fun” browser and is the best browser if you are too used to Internet Explorer but still want to try something else.

You can change its looks by using personas to display backgrounds behind your buttons. It displays the web correctly, is light and is also extendible by using plugins to eg. display all google pages on one one page so you don’t have to click the next buttons anymore.

A downside is that it isn’t the fastest browser and that you still have to install features through the plugin system that are default to most other webbrowsers.

Pros : Fun, Decent, Simple, Extendible, Light

Cons : Extensions are hard to install for novice users, Not the fastest

3. Safari (Download) :

Safari is the browser from Apple, the manufacturer of iPods, iPhones, Macs and iTunes. It has its own look but still doesn’t differ much from what you are used to in layout. It still looks basically like internet explorer and Firefox to decrease the learning curve.

It’s the best browser if you want synchronisation with iPod Touch or iPhone. It’s the fastest browser together with chrome and supports all possible web technologies.

It also has an astounding way to let you open all your favorite websites, by displaying all your favorite websites in a 3D wall, which automatically puts a star next to all websites which were changed since the time you last visited them.

Pros : Best usable with Apple products, Fastest, Simple, Easy access to favorite sites, Displays websites correctly

Cons : Heavy, Lacks Functionality

4. Chrome (Download) :

Chrome is a browser from Google, yeah that’s right, the Search Enige Google. It is considered the fastest browser by many sources, but this is disputed by Apple’s Safari.

It displays websites as well a Safari and has a different look and feel than most browsers. It’s simple and more or less functional, but it is a big step from Internet Explorer since the interface differs too much. It is updated a lot and is considered very safe.

Pros : Very Safe, Different, Fastest, Displays Websites Correctly, Updated a lot

Cons :  Not so easy for Internet Explorer users, Heavy

5. Opera (Download) :

Opera is the least known of this browsers and isn’t made by a huge organisation or a computer giant, but still gets around well.

Opera displays websites quite well, but it definitely isn’t the fastest browser. It has a whole lot of functionality and has a huge amount of features to enhance your user experience. It is always the first to come out with fun features like Opera “Unite” which let’s you chat or share images or other files with other people who use Opera.

Opera is also the browser which looks the least like the traditional browser. It differs from Internet Explorer tremendously and is criticized because many of its features are hard to access.

Pros : Many features, fun, always innovating, different

Cons : Slow, Hard to use, doesn’t feel like a normal browser, not customizable

What do we suggest?

Firefox or Safari

Why?

Firefox has all the things a browser needs and if you need to get more advanced features you can use the plugins, also the personas are a lot of fun, to get eg. your favorite singer to appear behind the buttons.

Safari because it is in our opinion the fastest and because the 3D “Top Sites” feature is the best way to access your favorite websites, something you won’t find in any other browser by default.

What do we avoid?

Internet Explorer

Why?

Many people who make websites agree, Internet Explorer is ruining the web, where Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari already support 3D animations in websites and the ability to watch video’s without needing Flash Player, Internet Explorer just lacks these features. If less people start using Internet Explorer you would have websites you can walk through, view youtube video’s without slowdowns or without needing Flash Player and could play eg. World of Warcraft or The Sims directly in your browser.

Word List :

-Flash Player : A tool created by Adobe that enables you to play games and watch video’s on the Internet.
-Personas : A feature of Firefox which allows you to set a background images behind the buttons at the top of your webbrowser.

-Opera Unite : A feature of Opera which enables you to display applications in your webbrowser which allow you to eg. Leave notes for other users, exchange files or images or host your own website. It is still being developed and isn’t included in Opera at the moment.

-Top Sites : A feature of Safari which enables you to display miniature versions of you websites in a 3D wall to allow you to easily access your favorite websites.

People are often asking what tools and apps I am  using, and I usually struggle to remember. Therefore, I thought I would create a run down of a selection of tools that are essential to me. Rather than a simple list I have tried to add some value by way of some tips and tricks I have discovered to get more out of these tools…

Dropbox

This is a killer application/web service for synchronizing files, a real lifesaver if you use multiple computers/laptops. You sign up for an account, install a small service program and it creates a folder on your computer the contents of which are uploaded to their server and instantly synchronized to any other computer you have set up with that account. You can also access them from anywhere using a web browser, which also works great on the iPhone (an app is also on the way).

It makes problems knowing which computer has the latest version of a file a thing of the past, and the fact you can access all the files online or offline is really useful. You can also share folders with others which was a lifesaver for sharing hard to track down reading on my PGCE course.

Get it here, or if you want a little extra free storage than the stock 2GB  you can sign up using my affiliate link.

Trick > Sync Apps Preferences and Data

If your on a Mac you can also use it to keep applications synced. Most apps store their data in your Home library folder (eg Address Book is in /Users/[User_Name]/Library/Application Support/AddressBook/ ). If you move this folder to your dropbox, then create a symbolic link to this moved folder in it’s original location on all the computers then you can keep the app synced across all your machines.

For example to sync your address book, move the /Users/[User_Name]/Library/Application Support/AddressBook/ folder to /Users/[User_Name]/Dropbox/AddressBook/ .

Then open a terminal and type:

‘cd ~/Library/Application\ Support/’

and then ‘ln -s ~/Dropbox/AddressBook AddressBook’.

This creates a shortcut where Address Book is looking for it’s files which points to the folder in your dropbox. On your other machines delete the original AddressBook folder, and repeat the terminal commands. Address Book files are now synced across all your machines.

Google Reader

I watch an awful lots of blogs, and the only way I have found to keep track of them all is using Google reader. Instead of visiting each of the sites you want to keep track of to see if there are new posts, Google Reader aggregates all of them into one place, showing you when they have new articles and posts. All you need to do is Sign up to Google Reader, then find the link to the ‘RSS feed’ on the sites you want to follow. If you click on this link and choose to open it with Google Reader then it will be imported and you will never have to check the site for updates again!

Trick > Share items to Twitter.

Every article on Google Reader has a ‘Share’ button at the bottom. when you click this the article is published to your own personal ‘Shared’ page, so you can share interesting articles. This page is available at www.google.com/reader/shared/[YourUserName]/

However, this page also has it’s own Atom (Similar to RSS) feed. If you sign up to a service like Twitterfeed, you can get any RSS or Atom feed automatically tweeted and shared with all your followers. Just copy the link to the Atom feed, and paste it into this service. Now whenever I click the shared button on an article I am reading it is automatically tweeted- a much more useful way of sharing than your public shared page. Note there is a delay on this, it checks feeds every half hour.

Calendars

I am a big fan of iCal on the Mac, and the calendar on my iPhone is constantly in use to keep me organised. I also like to be able to access my calendar on a large screen wherever I am, so I also use Google Calendar. I use a variety of methods to keep all of these different solutions in sync.

Firstly I use Spanning Sync installed on all my Macs which synchronizes my iCal calendars to Google Calendar. This is an inexpensive and powerful program which is linked to your Google account so you can install it on as many Macs as you want. I then use Google Calendar Sync to keep these calendars synchronized with my iPhone. This might take a bit of setting up, but it is far cheaper than a MobileMe account from Apple, and Google Calendar is way better than their online application.

Google Docs & Gears

Google Docs is (are?) brilliant. Not only is it a complete office suite for free, it makes your documents available from any computer with a web browser. The collaboration features are also amazing, and put an end to having email chains with multiple copies of files with different revisions having to be collated. Everyone can simply work on the same Google Doc, and all the revisions are kept track of in one place.

However, it does present a problem if you use a laptop which is not always online, as you have to access your office suite through the net. Step in Google Gears, which is an extension for your web browser which allows it to synchronize your Google Docs so that you can work on them even without an internet connection. Just install Gears, log in to Docs, select ‘offline’ from the top right and it will guide you through the quick set up.  It can even allow you to read and send your GMail when you are offline.

Trick > New Docs Offline

One thing that does annoy me is that Gears won’t let you create a new document when you are offline, only edit existing ones. A trick I picked up (I can’t remember where from!) to get around this is to create lots of blank documents when you are online. Name them ‘Blank Doc 1, 2′ etc. Then when you are offline and want to start a new document, simply open one of these blank documents and get started.

I hope these tricks and examples are useful to some people, and I am always looking for more tricks like these so let me know if you have any to share..

   Looking for a Backup solution which don’t pull out your wallet? Here it is PureSync although there are other application which does the same job for free as this one but this one really caught my attention.This application does all the job which is expected from a backup program such as two way synchronization and one way backup .

      PureSync synchronizes content between folders on different drives, creates backup copies of selected folders and helps you extract photos from your digital camera and other devices you can connect to the computer. You can create multiple syncing tasks, each of them with its own name and configuration options, and set them to work according to a schedule or only when you manually start them.

    PureSync is very easy to use: a step-by-step wizard guides you through the whole process of creating each syncing task. The program’s interface displays a summary of all the actions applied to files and folders, using a color code to distinguish different types of synchronization.

      PureSync supports also incremental backup copies – that is, copies only those files that have changed – and can be seamlessly integrated with Windows Explorer.

PureSync- File synchronizer and backup tool Features

Synchronize

• Synchronize files and folders

Backup

• Backup of files and complete folders

Compare view

• Control what will be synced in which direction

Easy to use, clear user interface

• E.g. there are wizard and tool tips, support for Drag & Drop of folders

Automatic synchronization and backups

• Scheduler
• when a file has been modified

 Special Foto-Sync for digital cameras

• copy e.g. only the new fotos from the camera-. Though fotos that have been sorted out but still at the camera are not copy again.

    Note that this is personal version only for private use but the Professional (non-free) version of PureSync supports additional functionality, such as the ability to sync locked/open files, a commercial/business license and FTP support, so you can resume files that are partially downloaded.

Download PureSync2.1.1 Personal Edition

For More information visit here.

Not long ago I found out about this new Microsoft product called Live Mesh. The idea was appealing, if you have some data that you want to synchronize between your computers (PC or Mac) or even with your mobile phone, then you just had to install the Live Mesh client, sign in for a Windows Live ID account and it’s ready to use. Microsoft synchronized data among the computers and mobile phones and also with a Remote Desktop which is located somewhere in some Microsoft server and has a 5GB storage space.

At first this seemed like an amazing idea! Was it really? Of course not!

As soon as I heard about this Mesh thing, I installed the Live Mesh Client thing in both my desktop and my laptop. As I was working in a project that used a SVN repository, I wanted to synchronize the SVN local folder between my desktop and my laptop automatically to avoid having to do a SVN update on both computers every time I changed something. Live Mesh looked like a great option for that!

However, one beautiful day, the SVN just crashed in my laptop while updating. Then, as usual, the .svn folder became corrupted, the cleanup wouldn’t work and so, I had to delete the whole folder and perform a complete checkout again. Problem is, that when I deleted everything that was inside the folder, Live Mesh synchronized and deleted everything on both the Remote Live Desktop and in my desktop. Well, that kinda makes sense, because I actually wanted to delete the whole project, right? The problem comes when I do a new full project checkout… For some stupid reason, as the new files were being downloaded from the SVN, they were imediately deleted by Live Mesh! Why? Because it synchronized with the desktop and the Remote Live Desktop and decided that those files should definitely NOT be there… And this would happen everytime I did a checkout, so if I kept Live Mesh working I would have lost the entire project. Thank you Microsoft!

But you may say that this happened because this is a beta version! Oh c’mon, this is a problem that is too serious to be left undetected and released to the public! Either this reveals an amazing lack of testing or an amazing ammount of naiveness…

However, this is not the only problem… When you install the Live Mesh client,  your computer is automatically open to Remote Desktop Connections (RDC). With a RDC you can control your computer over the internet and perform any action that you would do if you had physical access to the machine. Of course that this feature should only be enabled when its really necessary because it represents a serious security issue… But Mesh does not even ask! It just opens the RDC and controls it as it wishes… The access is locked to your Windows Live ID account, of course, but… What if your Windows Live ID is stolen/hacked?

Not only do you lose control of your MSN, Hotmail, etc. but also to your computers now! Every single one that is connected to the Live Mesh! This is too serious to be put aside, and as far as I know, I refuse to use Live Mesh until this is solved! Once again, thank you Microsoft for making me lose my time and work!