Posts in category "software"

Like most people, I store information in many different places. Lots of data is stored directly on my work laptop while yet more data is stored on my computer at home.

• Mail folders
• Address book
• Text files
• Corporate blogs
• Presentations
• Word documents
• Intranet resources
• Whitepapers
• Web history
• RSS feeds
• Photos
• Music

Even more data is stored on external servers

• Gmail
• Blinklist
• Web site, blogs and mySQL databases at Bluehost
• Post-it on fridge
• Mobile phone
• Palm PDA
• My head (last resort)

I first used Google Desktop a couple of years ago when it was first launched. Back then, the ongoing indexing process seemed to add a unreasonable load on my laptop, so I decided to uninstall the program and revert to old-fashioned searching in Windows Explorer and Outlook (and now Thunderbird).

However, recently I decided to give Google Desktop another go because I am a Google whore. The initial index of the entire computer took a few hours to index a grand total of 131,854 items (44,118 emails, 5,059 Web history and 82,677 files).

After the initial index was complete, the overhead of the ongoing index process barely seemed noticeable (although my laptop has also been upgraded to a higher specification in the interim).

Google Desktop scans email folders, text files, PDF, Powerpoint, Word documents, Gmail and Web history. As you might expect, the search is lightning fast, much faster than searching within Thunderbird although the range of options isn't as comprehensive.

I find myself using Google Desktop a lot. Often I am not looking for a specific email, article or document but researching a topic, trying to locate all possible relevant information from the different sources available. Google Desktop makes this type of searching across multiple, disparate data sources very easy and quick.

Google Desktop caches data locally so you can search Gmail folders and even Web pages while offline. There is also a Preview option available.

I can also increase the accuracy and quality of my search results and save some disk space by deleting dated, obsolete or irrelevant information as I find it.

Another neat feature which worries the men in white (or black) hats is a positive bonus to me. Google Desktop can be configured to search documents and Web history from my home PC. This feature would be even better if my domestic email folders could be included as this would potentially enable me to reply to Dave's email message about drinks next Thursday or Friday from a hotel room in Prague.

Currently, I would have to call the wife, ask her to log on to the computer, educate her how to search in Thunderbird, locate the correct information and mail me the results. All of this is too much trouble given she moans at being asked to perform the simple task of setting the video to record 'Lost'.

The only minor issue I have encountered thus far is that Google Desktop does not search within WinZip archives despite claiming to 'search the full text of Zip files'. This is less than ideal as most of my formal reports are Word documents zipped up to save space. Just as well then, that there is precious little of technical value buried deep within those archives.

Coincidentally, Google Desktop has just been updated to 5.1 (beta) with a dark, transparent sidebar, improved gadget support and enhanced security. Although I have experimented with the sidebar, I don't actually use this feature as I find it too invasive (i.e addictive and time wasting).

Darren Prowse kicked off an interesting discussion asking what makes you unsubscribe from a feed.

This prompted me to revisit my list of my inactive blogs in Google Reader. Normally, I tend to leave most blogs intact because I don't religiously unsubscribe purely because an author hasn't posted in a while. However, I find it useful to occasionally check the status of sleeping blogs to see whether the feed has actually died or migrated elsewhere and prune my subscription list accordingly.

The blog on my reading list, showing the longest period of inactivity is Andrew Campbell's Oracle Stuff I Should Have Known. The last post to this blog was made way back on 24 September 2006.

Now, this is an interesting, technical Oracle blog so I will remain subscribed because the next post could be a gem and might even be imminent. In any case, the beauty of RSS means I will be notified whenever the blog is updated so I don't have to waste any time checking the site for updates.

However, what interested me more was the StatCounter statistics for Andy's blog. Despite not being updated in five whole months, the blog still attracts in excess of 3,000 unique visitors per month.

So that's the secret then. I'm hibernating. See you all in July.

This post put me in a quandry. I found the video very amusing so I was torn between leaving a grateful comment on Donncha's blog and awarding the article a (Gold) Star in Google Reader.

But if I only did that, my friend and a couple of (ex-) colleagues who might appreciate the joke may miss it. That would be very selfish. Forgive me Father, but briefly, I toyed with reverting to Web 0.1 (beta) and sending an mass email to 'Friends/Ex Colleagues'.

I compromised by posting an article on my blog referring to Donncha's article so he sees the pingback and gets the credit for spotting the video. So Donncha's happy, I'm happy, everyone's happy.

Well - not exactly because I had to write some additional words on my article to justify its existence. This is exactly the situation that Google Shared Items is for. > These items might be interesting or useful snippets of information > quickly noted in passing which I wouldn't necessarily blog about.

I just want to display a RSS feed on my blog for articles like this that I find interesting, amusing or thought provoking. This is trivial to implement in WordPress so I simply grab the feed URL for 'Shared Items' from Google Reader and create an RSS widget to display 'What I am currently reading' on the sidebar in this blog.

Unfortunately, that didn't work. The feed and article names were displayed but the formatting of the links was broken on WordPress 2.1. Curiously, I tried the same configuration on a test blog on hosted Wordpress and it worked fine.

A little research revealed that the WordPress RSS widget does not appear to support Atom 1.0 format (which is precisely the format used by Google Shared Items).

No problem. Just create a Feedburner feed and see if that works. This should automatically, dynamically and intelligently convert the feed format into a format the recipient can digest. Unfortunately, it doesn't. Sigh. Give up in disgust and make a note to ask in the WordPress/Reader forums.

Only you can't give up. You want this to work and this is now a challenge.

Read the Feedburner FAQ which implies that SmartBurner is what you need. This automatically, converts the original feed format for the consumer on the fly. However, SmartBurner is enabled by default so I wonder why it isn't working.

Examine the configuration of SmartBurner. By default, the output feed preserves the format of the original feed (Atom 1.0 in this case). However, it is easy to force conversion to different format (RSS 2.0) by setting the 'Content-Type'.

Revisit the WordPress RSS widget. Success !

So, after all that time and effort, I sincerely hope you both enjoy my 'Google Shared Items' feed.

Throw away that Mavis Beacon touch typing CD.

This hilarious video shows that speech recognition is the key to (not so) rapid application development.

Reminds me of working in tech support and the torture of spelling out Unix commands over the phone to customers.

OK. OK. I give in. Please stop hurting me, Brin. I now realise that resistance is futile.

Look I did what you asked. I have now converted to Google Reader. Please, no more. I will do anything you want. Please, Sergey - let my wife go.'

Even my son (newly hired Google enforcer) has now installed Google Desktop and is busy indexing the entire contents of the PC.

Just about the only remaining product in the Google portfolio I don't use is Adsense.

Am I a fully fledged Google whore yet ? If not, what else do I need to do ?

'Oh no - you've discovered I am not using Blogger. No Sergey. Please. I beg you. Please, Brin. Show some mercy. Not the pliers and electrical cord. Please stop. Aaaarrgghhh. I give in. Please stop now.'

Email

1. You use ELM on a VT220.
2. You use Emacs and Gnus.
3. Corporate standards force you to use Microsoft Outlook and you don't even mind.
4. You use Gmail for all work and personal email.

Documents

1. Quill and parchment.
2. XEmacs.
3. Microsoft Word with 37 macros.
4. Microsoft Excel for all documents .
5. Google Documents for all correspondence.

Newsgroups

1. What are newsgroups ?
2. You use Emacs and Gnus.
3. Your company doesn't run an NNTP server for security reasons.
4. Newsgroups are just another data source mashed into your aggregator.

Home Page

1. Blank - just like your mind.
2. SourceForge
3. Personalised Google home page.
4. Multiple Firefox tabs that take 4 mins to initialise.

Browser

1. Lynx on an amber VT220.
2. Emacs and W3
3. IE 6.0
4. IE 7.0 - feverishly hunting for the File menu.
5. Firefox 3.0 (alpha)

O/S

1. Ubuntu Linux with self-modified device drivers for wireless support on an old 386.
2. Emacs.
3. Windows XP - to provide technical support to all your relatives.
4. OS X because all your trendy Mac friends can't be wrong.
5. Vista because you really do need to manage all those photos of your cat.

Social networking tools

1. Five-a-side followed by the pub.
2. Emacs mailing lists.
3. You are a fan of Ajax but only to clean the sink.
4. You have gold membership on Flickr.
5. You spend more on Skype than your landline.
6. A 'mash-up' is when you play with your food.
7. You finally book an appointment with your GP about your 'long tail'.
8. You think TechCrunch is a breakfast cereal.
9. You think 'First Tuesday' is an investigative TV program hosted by Trevor McDonald.

Blogging platform

1. Large text file in Emacs.
2. Embryonic, unused corporate Wiki.
3. Blogger Beta (101 Oracle bloggers can't be wrong).
4. Hosted WordPress with Snap plugin.
5. Self-hosted WordPress with custom theme and 347 useless plugins.
6. Irritating tendency to send humourous 3MB attachments on a Friday afternoon to colleagues, friends and family.
7. Wooden crate in corner of Hyde Park.

Employment

1. You have 10 years service for a large IT company and a silver pen to prove it.
2. You are a successful, highly paid company director, err, well a mercenary Oracle contractor.
3. You demand money to mind visiting fans' cars at the City of Manchester Stadium.
4. You have founded four failed startups but, undeterred, are contemplating the next.

Answers:

• Mainly 1 - you are stuck in an 80's timewarp.
• Mainly 2 - you probably have a beard and may well be Richard Stallman.
• Mainly 3 - you are a technology Luddite.
• Mainly 4 - you are a Web 2.0 aficionado.
• Mainly 5 - you count Matt Mullenweg and Robert Scoble as close friends.

As part of my job, I often have the pleasure of walking around call centers where agents use headsets to enable them to interact with a computer while conducting a telephone call with a customer.

I have often wondered whether it would be cool or nerdy to use such a headset myself. To date, where possible, I tend to use my mobile phone on speakerphone so I am free to continue to type. For lengthy conference calls (abroad), this isn't a particularly cost-effective option but please don't tell the CFO.

With the increasing adoption of VOIP within Oracle and the recent delivery of my deluxe headset, I am typing this while listening to a team meeting using Cisco Communicator. This is really neat technology, the sound quality surprisingly good and even better, the telephone call is free, completely free. So please tell the CFO.

As for cool or nerdy, let's just say I will only be doing this from the privacy of my own home or possibly my office.

My kids think my adoption of this technology is absolutely hilarious. They keep smirking whenever they come into the kitchen for a snack and if I happen to be actually speaking on the device, they simply can't contain their hysterics and have to leave the room.

In addition, my wife keeps smiling and repeatedly asking me whether she can get a motor insurance quote.

Over the past couple of days, much to my surprise, I have actually managed to answer some questions.

1. The parameter ExtractStartDate was set to 11/01/2007. This means that Siebel will ignore all appointments and tasks prior to this date. The default value of 'ExtractStartDateFormat' is 'MM/DD/YYYY' which equates to '01 November 2007'.
2. Install Cygwin, sed -n -e 'x,yp' < bigfile.log
3. If the Exchange Connector and SSSE Engine component are run by accounts in different domains, trust must be established in order for RPC calls to work correctly. Alternatively, use two separate accounts (least privilege) in the same domain.
4. In the heart of London, surprisingly.
5. Install OHS from the OAS Companion CD
6. F11

And now for the questions...

1. Why, oh why, does Siebel stubbornly refuse to synchronise any of my appointments and ToDo's to Outlook ?
2. How do you print lines x to y of a file too large for notepad ?
3. Why, oh why, don't multiple SSSE engines on different servers work ?
4. Where is London City Airport exactly ?
5. Where do you get the version of OHS (with Apache 2.x) needed for Siebel 8.0 ?
6. How do you switch from full screen mode back to console in VMware ?

I am probably most proud of number 6. If only all my answers were as succinct and technically correct.

A couple of interesting papers discussing the portability issues and challenges involved when trying to port Drupal to the freely available versions of Oracle and DB2.

Last night, I happened to catch my wife composing an email. I noticed that when she sent a personal email to her friends, she invariably typed From Norma as the subject line. This just seemed really weird to me.

I asked her what she thought of the 'semantic web' and whether she had given any thought to adding tags to her personal emails such as 'Norma' and 'From' to help build a valuable taxonomy for her friends.

She looked at me blankly and said 'Just because you work with computers, you think you're so clever, don't you ?'