Keeping Dashboard Widgets on Desktop

Since my mac mini is connected to a 24" monitor, I have a lot more real estate to work with compared to a laptop or my old 19" monitor.  So why not keep some useful widgets on my desktop rather than bringing up the Dashboard with F12.  After I googled a bit, I found that there are some freeware that could do the job....but I really wanted a solution just using Snow Leopard.  I found one!

Moving a Dashboard Widget to Desktop:

1. Activate the Dashboard development mode.  Open a Terminal session, and type defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode YES and Enter.
2. You can either logout and login again or type killall Dock in the same Terminal session.
3. Press F12 to activate the Dashboard
4. Click and hold to drag the widget to be moved.  Press F12 and release mouse button.
   

Only steps 3 - 4 needs to repeated to move additional widgets to the desktop.  Note that F12 is the default key for activating the Dashboard.

Moving a Dashboard Widget from the Desktop Back to the Dashboard;

1. Click and hold to drag the widget to be moved.
2. Press F12 and release mouse button.
3. Press F12 to get back to the desktop.
   

Simple...

Unknown Device in Device Manager

Who among us have not seen an unresolved device driver for some device?  You may see after a new install of windows, or notice it on an existing system.  If you are familiar with all the hardware for that computer, you may know exactly what drivers might be required and go searching for it on the vendor site. What if you are not sure.......is there anything you can do?  Of course, there is!  Let's look at an example using Windows 7 installed on a very old IBM Thinkpad T23.



In the example above, the Network Controller has a device issue noted by the ? on Other Devices and the ! on the Network Controller.

Right-click on the unknown Network Controller, and select properties.  Switch to the Details tab.  Change the drop-down Property on that page to Hardware Ids.  I highlighted the Vendor with a value of 1260 and the Device with a value of 3873.

You can now use the website PCIDatabase.com to help identify the unknown device.

Using the values for Vendor and Device, it shows the unknown device is the wireless LAN card.

If you now click on the vendor, you can search for additional details.

Listed in the notes is a link to the IBM site for the latest drivers.  As it turns out, there was none for this device in order to run either Windows Vista or Windows 7.

What is Windows 7 - XP Mode?

So you have heard all the hype around Windows 7 and the geek in you wants to upgrade from Windows XP.  You buy a new laptop with Windows 7 or you upgrade an existing desktop to Windows 7....and then you realize that some critical software you use do not have an upgrade version yet (or at least for now).  What do you do now?

Windows 7 has a feature called XP mode that rescue this situation.  XP Mode will allow you to run your XP-supported application right inside of Windows 7.  in In order to run XP mode, these requirements must be met:
1) Your computer must have a cpu that supports hardware virtualization and it must be enabled in the bios.  Microsoft provides a tool to help you determine if your hardware meets this requirement.  As far as I can tell, VMware Fusion 3 does not support XP Mode running in Windows 7.
2) You must be running Windows 7 Professional, Ultimate or Enterprise Edition,

You can download it here from Microsoft.

Google Apps for your company/group

How can your company/group use Google Apps.  Let's first understand what Google Apps is?

Google Apps is a set of tools a group of people can use to communicate and collaborate online.  It includes:

• Gmail for email
• GoogleTalk for instant messaging
• Google Calendar for scheduling
• Google Sites for websites and group wikis, and
• Google Docs for online documents, presentations and spreadsheets.

To begin using, you need to own a domain name e.g.  geekwithme.com.  If you don't own one, and the one you want is not already owned, you can purchase from Go Daddy or surprisingly from Google.  So instead of a company using hotmail or gmail accounts, they can use Google Apps and instead be able to use email addresses like keith@geekwithme.com.  Additional users like ceo@geekwithme.com or janitor@geekwithme.com can be created each with their own email address and start collaborating with each other using the tools above.

The really good news is that the Google Apps Standard Edition is FREE with the limitation of 50 users and 7GB email storage!  So do you trust Google with your business data?

With all that Google is providing free, it is easy to find many scenarios where this could be beneficial.  Let's consider a few scenarios.

1) A small business that want to eliminate the burden of email and spam hosting from your IT staff.  The transition is as simple as updating MX records for the domain.
2) A small company or a startup with a handful of individuals could present themselves in a more professional manner using a company email rather than some free email addresses
3) Social groups and clubs can use to share calendars and documents.

4) A large company with over 50 users that wants to avoid the internal management of email servers and capital expenditures for servers.  The cost for the Google Apps Premium Edition is $50 per user per year.
5) Individuals who have a web presence and prefer using their web site domain in their email address.

Take Control of VMware Fusion 3 ebook available free

If you are new to VMware and/or Fusion, there is a great ebook called Take Control of VMware Fusion 3 available courtesy of Take Control Books and VMware.  The ebook starts from the basics of getting the software installed to continues on with getting a Fusion virtual machine installed and configured.  It covers the new features in Fusion 3 such as support for Windows 7 and improved Unity view.   Download it now!

Riding the Google Wave - Take Two

As I am trying to learn how to use the wave, it continues to change in response to feedback from early invitees.

Whenever you click on a public wave, it used to automatically start staying in your inbox.  Before you know it, they were clogging up everyone's inboxes.  Now when you see a public wave that you are interested in and want updates, you can choose to follow by clicking the Follow button in the wave toolbar.  If you no longer want to Follow, you can click the Unfollow button.  There is also an option to Archive a  public wave in your inbox.  This only temporarily removes it from your inbox, and will return when there is an update.

I still have a few public waves in my inbox that I viewed earlier today.  They show as unfollowed, and as I understand they will leave my inbox as they get updated.  I will keep eye on this.  I will also Archive some of these and would not expect them to return.

This Google Wave Cheat Sheet below is for my reference as I continue to ride the wave.  It was copied from a public wave called Google Wave Cheat Sheet.

Google Wave Cheat Sheet

A great list of commands to use in Google Wave, found via Church Tech Matters.

Search Cheat Sheet

This is a quick guide to the operators and restricts supported by wave search.

Keywords

about:[keyword] — finds waves which have [keyword] occurring anywhere. Same as [keyword].
title:[keyword] — finds waves which have [keyword] in the title.
caption:[keyword] — finds waves which have an attachment where [keyword] occurs in the caption.
————————————————

Status

is:read — finds all read waves.
is:unread — finds all unread waves.
Note: you cannot currently do a search like “-is:read” by itself and get reliable results due to an outstanding restriction on megastore queries

is:mute — finds all muted waves.
is:unmute — finds all waves not muted
is:active — currently the same as is:unread.
is:note — finds all waves which have you as the only participant and contributor
————————————————

Participants

from:[address] — finds waves from the participant identified by the address. Special case of from:me identifying waves from yourself.
by:[address] — same as from:[address].
to:[address] — find waves which are a dialogue between you and the participant identified by the address.
with:[address] — find waves that have the participant identified by the given address explicitly listed.
owner:[address] — find waves by person, that they created.
only:[address] — finds waves to which only the participant specified by the given address contributed.
————————————————

Date Search

Currently, there are a few restricts:

past:[date term] — finds all waves in the last period.
previous:[date term] — finds all waves in the period before the last period.
before:[date term] — finds all waves before a certain period.
after:[date term] — finds all waves after a certain period.
which can be combined with date terms:

day
week
month
year
So you can have past:week, past:year. There is also support for

past:N[date term] where N > 0. So you can have past:3days (today, yesterday, the day before yesterday).
Also you can have

past:Ndays
past:Nweeks
past:Nmonths
past:Nyears
Finally, you can abbreviate days, weeks, months and years to a single letter (d, w, m, y). Thus you can write

past:3d
past:2w
————————————————

Folders

in:[folder name] — find waves in the folder with the given name. For example, in:inbox.
in:[search name] — find waves in the saved search with the given name.
is:unfiled — find waves which have not been moved to a user folder.
is:filed — find waves which belong to some user folder.
————————————————

Attachments

has:attachment — finds waves with an attachment. This changed from “is:image”.
has:document — finds waves with an attachment which is a document. (coming soon)
has:image — finds waves with an attachments which is an image. (coming soon)
caption:[keyword] — finds waves with an attachment with caption containing [keyword].
filename:[keyword] — finds waves with an attachment with filename containing [keyword]. (coming soon)
mimetype:[keyword] — finds waves with an attachment with mimetype containing [keyword]. (coming soon)
————————————————

Tags

tag:[tag name] — finds waves with the tag [tag name].
————————————————

Gadgets

has:gadget — finds waves which contain a gadget.
gadget:[keyword] — finds waves which contain a gadget with name containing keywords. e.g. chess, fridge, map, risk, sokoban.
gadgeturl:[keyword] — finds waves which contain a gadget with urls containing keyword.
gadgettitle:[keyword] — finds waves which contain a gadget with a title containing keywords.
————————————————

Expressions

foo & bar — match waves with foo and bar.
You can use AND, or skip the operator altogether, as the logical and is the default.
foo | bar — match waves with foo or bar (or both).
foo OR bar — match waves with foo or bar (or both).
-foo — match waves that do not contain foo. (There is an outstanding bug that causes searches with only negative terms to fail. To get around it, use to:me -foo)
“foo … bar” — matches waves that contain the exact phrase “foo … bar” (There is an outstanding bug for live search not working with phrases)
foo & (bar | -baz) — matches waves that contain foo and either bar or do not contain baz.
————————————————

Phrases

“[multiple terms]” — match waves with one or more terms in sequence:
“hot dog” catches waves with the terms hot and dog in sequence. This is also required for other operators such as in:”new inbox” where say “new inbox” is a saved search.
————————————————

XML Search

tags:subtag — find all waves which have this combination.
tag:[tag] — find all waves which have this .
attribute:[value keyword] — finds all waves which have < …. attribute=value …> where keyword is a token in value.
————————————————

Wave ID

id:”” — find a wave with a specific wave id.
————————————————

Zero Inbox

If you want to zero inbox, you can hack this temporarily by saving a search “my inbox” with the query:

in:inbox is:unread this:week. You can then use the menu option “Mark as read” in the wave panel.
Alternative zero inbox: in:inbox is:unread past:7days -is:mail
————————————————

Saved Searches

A search can be saved using one of two methods:

Create a search in the search box and then press the Save search button at the bottom of the Digest panel.
Add a search using the searches Add button on the Navigation panel. Then add the search query and name of the search in the Saved Search popup panel.
Saved searches can be edited and managed using the pop-up menu which shows when hovering over the saved search in the searches section of the Navigation panel.
————————————————

Filters

Filters are saved searches which also have an action to apply to all waves which match the saved search. The actions supported are

skip inbox – removes the wave from inbox. Whilst this wave continues to match the search, it will continue to stay out of the inbox. Skip inbox will shortly be renamed archive.
mark as read – Whilst the wave continues to match the search, it will be marked as read.
————————————————

Folders

You can add a folder by using the Add button on the folders section of the Navigation panel. A folder is added by typing the folder name in the text box given and hitting enter.

Folders can be managed using the pop-up menu that shows when hovering over the folder on the Navigation panel.

Add folder – A subfolder can be added under the current folder.
Rename – rename the current folder.
Delete – delete the current folder.
————————————————

Language Filter

Much thanks to Geoffrey Spear for the help and insight:

The problem is that these tags aren’t exclusive; if a Wave has any English in it at all it will show up under “lang:en” even if it’s mostly in another language. This is particularly a problem since the search terms themselves are all English so a Wave in, say, Portuguese about using Wave will tell people they need to use “with:whatever” and the system will see “with”, an English word and suddenly the Wave is in both lang:en and lang:pt.
“group:public@a.gwave.com lang:en -lang:es -lang:fi -lang:hu -lang:pt -lang:nl -lang:ja -lang:he -lang:fr -lang:ru -lang:sv -lang:zh -lang:de -lang:no -lang:da”
… is fairly effective, although you basically need to keep adding more as you find Waves not in one of these languages. Not a really good solution 

Riding the Google Wave - Initial Impression

I FINALLY received my Google wave invitation from Google exactly one week ago!  When I first signed in, the interface was very confusing at sight.  It sorta look like an email client with my folders and contacts to the left and my list of emails (I guess it is now call waves) in the middle.  When you click on a wave, the window to the right shows the details of the wave.  I had a handful of waves from Google to help me get started.  I had 3 contacts listed.  I assumed these were my Gmail contacts who also had a wave account.

A couple of days later (at least that's when I noticed), I received 20 invitations.  I immediately gave one to my brother for us to experiment with.  Initially, our wave was no different than email as neither one of us was around when we replied to each other.  Next I also gave invites to my kids.  The behavior changed as it was more like a chat client.  The kids had a blast knowing that as soon as someone typed on one screen, it was showing up on the other.  It is a bit mesmerizing watching someone type and then change their thought and then retype again.

It is easy to see that you can you use Google Wave to collaborate on a document with multiple contributors working on the same document at the same time.

I did find a good resource to learn more about Google Wave.  Currently it is called The Complete Guide to Google Wave and it is available online of Gina Trapani and Adam Pash.

Google Dashboard

Google Dashboard is a new service from Google that shows a summary of all the data Google has stored associated with your account.  For me, the dashboard showed my name, email address and stats for Blogger, my calendars, my contacts, Google Docs, Gmail, iGoogle, Orkut, Picasa Web Albums, Reader, Google Talk, Tasks, Web History and YouTube.  That's not all!  Google will be adding more of there products in the future such as AdSense, Bookmarks, Groups, maps, Sites and Wave.

There are my paths to the Google Dashboard.  One quick way is via http://www.google.com/dashboard.

Stock quotes using Google docs spreadsheet

Do you use Yahoo Finance or some other site to track stocks you either own or want to buy?  Did you know that you can do so using Google Docs using GoogleLookup and GoogleFinance functions?  Once I heard this, I decided to give it a try.

Let's assume you put the name of the company such as Google you are interested in cell A2, with the stock ticker symbol in B2

=GoogleLookup(A2,"ticker")   will give the stock ticker symbol of GOOG
=GoogleFinance(B2,"price")   will give the current stock price
=GoogleFinance(B2,"low")     will give the lowest stock price of the day
=GoogleFinance(B2,"high")   will give the highest stock price of the day

In addition to the parameter of price, low and high, you can also use priceopen, volume, marketcap, tradetime, datadelay, volumeavg, pe, eps, high52, low52, change, changepct, closeyest, shares and currency.  Most of these are self-explanatory.

Using these functions in a spreadsheet, I can now analyze companies in a given sector much easier now.  There is so much more here that can be explored and I will continue to do so.

The only problem I encountered was finding the stock ticker symbol for a few companies using the GoogleLookup function.

Language Translation using Google spreadsheets

Google provides a function GoogleTranslate that allows text translation from one language to another.  The syntax is  =GoogleTranslate("text", "source language","target language").

An example is =GoogleTranslate(A1,"en","fr").  This  will translate the text in A1 from English to French.

LinkWithin Widget

I found the perfect widget that would be useful for a food blog called LinkWithin.  LinkWithin is a blog widget that can be placed under each post, linking to other related posts from your blog archive.  If a reader initially arrives at the blog for a particular recipe or post, then there is a tremendous opportunity to hold their attention a bit longer with another related recipe or enticing photo of some other dish.  Best of all, the widget is free and ad-free!  You can see it in action at Culinary Aspiration blog.

I wonder if this would work in a Tech blog?

Window 7 Clean Install Using Upgrade Media

Sadly, Microsoft has provided very little information on the Windows 7 upgrade process.  Fortunately, Paul Thurott has shed some light on this and has identified what is possible.  In an article titled "Clean Install Windows 7 with Upgrade Media" on his website Supersite for Windows, Paul identifies 3 methods for perform this clean install  (1) Boot with the Upgrade Setup media  (2) Registry hack, and (3) The good old "double install" method.  Please visit his site for further details.

 

Printable Recipe Page

I just started a food blog called Culinary Aspiration.  One useful feature I noticed on other blogs is the Printable Recipe page.  I found a quick and easy way to accomplish this.  Here is the link on how to make a Printable Recipe Page.

Language translation for Web pages

To help my daughter research her most recent school project, we needed the help of a French-to-English and an English-to-French translator for web pages.  For the most part, we used the Unofficial Google Translate Firefox Extension 1.4 and it worked to our satisfaction.  Yes, my daughter is a firefox user.....she calls herself a geek as well!

Since then I found a couple of other translators that both work on clipped text or web url.  They are
Google Translate and Yahoo Babel Fish.  I will them them a whirl next time.

Language translation for Email

Since last month, teachers for my both daughters send emails along with attachments almost every day.  The problem was they are all in French.  With my French limited what I learned in high school so many years ago, I needed a quick way to translate them to English.

To my rescue came Gmail Labs.  There is a feature called Message translation which translates emails you receive into another language.  When I open the emails from their teachers now, I am presented the option to translate to English or other language of my choice.  As you might expect, when I open attachments, they are still in French.  I usually copy the contents and paste it into an email and then send it from my hotmail to Gmail account.

Microsoft Security Essentials

I have been running Microsoft Security Essentials on my Windows 7 RC image for over a month now.  Microsoft provides this software at no cost and it provides real-time protection for your pc that guards against viruses, spyware, and other malicious software.  Is it working?  I don't know as it has not identified anything....but then again, I would not expect it to based on the sites I normally visit.

Prior to running Microsoft Security Essentials, I was using AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition.  Other free alternatives include Avira AntiVir Personal - Free Antivirus and Avast Home Edition - Free Antivirus.

VMware Fusion 3

VMware Fusion 3 was released a couple of weeks ago.  I downloaded the 30 day trial and installed on my mac mini.  The 30 day trial license key can be obtained from the VMware Team Fusion blog.  I was able to quickly create virtual machines for Windows 7 RC, Windows Vista, Ubuntu 9.10 and Solaris 10.  The only issue I encountered was if any of the virtual machines is running, both the VM and Snow Leopard would run slow.

After looking at Activity Monitor, I decided it was time to upgrade the memory.  My mac mini has a 2 GHz Core 2 Duo with 2 GB memory.  After a bit of research I decided on Kingston ValueRAM 4GB (2x2GB) PC3-8500 DDR3 1066mhz (KTA-MB1066K2/4G) as I could get it quickly from Canada Computers.  I followed the excellent video instructions at OWC and had it installed very quickly.  Note that I have upgraded both memory and hard drives on mac mini's before.  With 4 GB, both the host and virtual machines now run as I would expect.

I am enjoying using the new version of Fusion and have not encountered any other problems.  The one thing I still want test is the DirectX support.  With the freely-available Virtual Box, many of games my kids wanted to run would fail miserably.

Ninite - Software Installer

For those of us who build new Windows images often, it can be quite tedious downloading and installing all the software we use on a regular basis.  Well, there is a fantastic tool call Ninite that can save you tons of time!  I tested on a Windows 7 RC image by choosing Chrome, Safari, Skype, iTunes, VLC, CutePDF, Evernote, RealVNC, 7-Zip and Notepad++ on their webpage.  Next you get the customized Installer and you are off to the races.  The latest versions of the software you chose will then be installed in the background.  Awesome!! 

There are lots more free for personal use software to choose from.  Ninite also runs on Windows XP and Vista.