You may have seen the news recently that Gmail can not place calls to your contacts through the use of a browser plugin, and google voice’s VOIP infrastructure. All you need is a headset or microphone for your PC to send calls.
But the best part is the flip side — calls to my Google Voice number can reach me in Gmail chat !
So along with ringing my work extension and mobile phone, I will get your call in my (always open) gchat window !
Calls to google voice numbers can now also ring your gchat session
I recently had the need to get the ip address for a remote node. Wait, scratch that.. I had to get the IP addresses for about 60 remote nodes.
You’re right… I probably could have typed
nslookup targetNode
60 times. But I am a programmer! SO I decided to pass my choir off to a shell script.
If you have a similar need, read on!
read more…
I have been growing fond of JSF as of late, but was stumped by the simplest task.
How do I associate some value with a link? If I was using PHP I would just append a query parameter and grab the value. But with JSF it’s all done inside our xhtml files, so how do we set a value based on the link clicked?
Just use
<f:setpropertyactionlistener target="#{bean.property}" value="#{VALUE}"/>inside the commandAction.
This stores any expression into the specified bean’s property.
See below for a full faces example. Each Player link will set the backing Bean’s player object before calling the action.
read more…
Editing config files is the only certain thing above taxes and death (too lame?). Whether it’s your apache setup, or dns bindings its likely you use vi or another favorite editor to open your server’s files, make that needed update and save. If you were good you copied the file first to a backup tagged by date. .. But managing that process manually is just a workflow annoyance.
So the script below backups the file, tags it with the date, and opens it for edit. Additionally you can set a maximum number of versions to track any given day.
It adds no more effort than calling vi..
read more…
Everyone is posting the video that shows a rooted HTC EVO, but no one has details. The main reason is a lack of information for the hack author themselves..
But to understand from the source why the details aren’t forthcoming, see this forum post that highlights the details, and links to the hacker’s site.
Here’s the short - we will be waiting until at least the public release of Froyo (Android 2.2) on the EVO before the root hack goes public.
As many of you already know, Google announed during their second IO Keynote on Thursday that the latest version of Android (2.2 – Froyo) to start shipping will include WiFi tethering – or hotspots.
This feature allows you to share your mobile phone’s connection with any nearby computer – and its completely legit
Phone carriers can be none to pleased, as makers like Sprint already include a hotspot option on their latest EVO, but charge extra for the feature.
Since I was fortunate enough to attend Google IO i received the new EVO along with its 30 day trial of Sprint’s service. I must say that I am in love, but paying ~$80 a month for one phone and data is just too much..
Maybe I will share the phone with a loyal reader after my plan expires next month..
Anyone who has been to this site more than once likely knows of my Android application for Netflix users. The application supports Android phones like the Motorola Droid, The HTC Incredible, and the Nexus One (among other devices).
What none but a few “power users” know is that I am feverishly working to entirely refactor QueueMan in order to introduce long awaited features. The newer version will still be wicked cute, and simple to use, but there are some critical features lacking in the current version I need to address.
Like what? Keep reading…
More and more clients are asking for dynamic sites that allow them to edit specials and pages at will. This is great because it surely means they will come back for more questions and changes as they use the site. (read : more income).
What they want are CMS, or content management systems. What I give them is usually wordpress loaded with useful plugins. (If custom business logic is needed i turn to CakePHP).
ANd why not? The WordPress engine provides post and page management, RSS feeds and discussion features, and customizable “widgets.” But a few key features are needed to make the leap to a decent CMS.
Read This
(Update: FInally a CMS that clients can use! – found concrete5 CMS very recently, and first impression is wow!- trust me its worth a demo )
Besides, no matter how many times I explain creating a new page in drupal, or how to add a side box in joomla. There is just too many steps and switches for the average small business owner. (is that a huge stereotype? yes, I apologize..) But honestly, most non-technical users don’t think in terms of elements like footer, and side bars, and such. they think of pages! (and conrete5 does that in a spectaciular manner)
..but if you don’t want to give that a shot first, read on.
The plugins handle 4 critical areas for any decent site:
- Page and Menu Management
- SEO and Meta data
- Sitemaps
- Web 2.0 / Bookmarking / Sharing
SO what plugins come standard on a Edward A Webb hosted WordPress install? Read more to bathe in the glory of these awesome plugins.
read more…
I manage lots of domains, and offer my clients free backup and recovery service.
Nice selling perk, but I best be damn sure I am backing things up regularly. Since there is no way my space-cadet brain would remember that, I rely on my ‘nix friends: bash, cron and tar to neatly package every sub-directory of my webroot into their own little tarballs.
The bash script included after the break reads all directories into an array that we can loop through and manipulate as needed.
read more…
So I purchased a G1 from t-mobile when they were reasonably new, and have since was kindly donated a nexus one (best phone ever). But what to do with my old G1? Obvi - turn it into an Android Developer Phone that I can run without a sim card, and test my apps on anything faster than the emulator. Not to mention the value of actual phone, accelerometer and leds.
I know G1′s are locked, hence I took the action as a good citizen and called T-Mobile. Turns out if you have the phone for 90 days then they will just give you the Unlock Code. So I naively thought that would allow me to wipe the phone, and run sans sim. Wrong. Turns out that you only get the unlock prompt if you have a foreign sim card. But if I use a bunk sim, I wont have a data connection, and could not get past registration. I ended up with a useless piece of hardware that would do nothing but report the absence of a sim card.
Let me share a few other highlights:
- ADP “Dream” images can not be flashed to G1s due to signature issues of boot loader UNLESS
- You can root your phone and use sqlite to modify some system settings to bypass the protection HOWEVER
- Only RC29 or earlier OS releases have the vulnerability allowing this, mine did not BUT
- You can supposedly downgrade the image to RC29, root the phone and flash thereafter UNFORTUNATELY
- This just seems like a ridiculous way to get any functionality of a device I paid for and T-Mobile is willing to let me unlock anyhow
So I took a simpler approach.
SInce I am still a t-mobile customer with a data plan I just pulled my sim from the Nexus ONe, back into my G1, and registered a new bogus user. After the user is registered I turned on wifi, and usb debug, then restarted. After the restart I turned off the phone to remove the sim. (my first attempt of removing sim without a clean reboot resulted in a no sim card lockout) This way I can still lend the device to a co-worker as a dev phone, without worrying about my info.
So if any of you happen to have a legit way to bypass the sim card lockout and enter the htc/t-mobile provided unlock code to permanently eliminate the need for a sim card, please share.
