Tuesday, September 25, 2007

About Digg & How to get real Democracy in 10 steps

Saturday, September 08, 2007

weird windows behavior in XP

First I gotta say I love Macs but lack of dedicated software is the real drawback so im on a windows machine right now... that's why comes this short guide! Sometimes when i shut down XP leaving Windows manages quitting all the opened programs, i ran into trouble next time I load those programs: it happens cos windows writes weird values on pref files about programs location on the desktop. I found useful backup the application data, then load the program to generate a new pref folder; looking in this folder I got just few basic pref files instead of dozens in my backed up one. then try to figure out geometry position values and copy paste the new ones in the old configuration file; just restore the backup folder and it should work now.

Technorati Tags: windowsXP, Howto, UI

Sunday, August 12, 2007

managing a project online

it's a while by now I'm looking for a online solution able to do more or the same as creating Gantt charts, sending emails, sharing spreadsheets and docs.
so far I found wikis the best replacement for word docs as they are actually made for collaborations.
Meanwhile typing I'm trying out PBwiki.com; they offer wysiwyg editor and many plugins for chatting, calendar and so on
Zoho wiki doesn't have plugins but a nice sidebar housing  navigation, recent changes and most important a wiki's links index sorting out all links posted in the wiki.
Writeboards, a BaseCamphq.com satellite service, does what the name suggests; there's nothing about advanced features and wysiwyg editor; but Writeboards are even embedded in Basecamp project therefore easier to access from project homepage.

But this post was about online project managment so, here they are:
project.zoho.com
basecamphq.com
goplan.com

Basecamp has all the features but not specific date/time settings for tasks and i don't like how render the overview and upcoming activities.

Zoho just lacks an embedded wiki to be quite perfect; i like how task, milestones and dashboard are organized, like in a real Gantt. they also offer private forums and meetings manager in the 'social' side.

Goplan seems programming oriented but it is well packed for anyone; the important limitation on free accounts is 4 team member while others give unlimited.

my personal choice combines projects.zoho.com to keep up with tasks and people, with PBwiki.com to track progress, report, knowledge base.

Tuesday, July 03, 2007

RANMA 1/2 season 3

Sunday, June 03, 2007

ranma 1/2 season 1 episodes 1-11

http://tv-links.co.uk/show.do/3/2171

Saturday, May 26, 2007

ranma 1/2 episodes 11-18

ranma season 1 episode 11

ranma season 1 episode 12

ranma season 1 episode 13

ranma season 1 episode 14

alternative #1

ranma season 1 episode 15

ranma season 1 episode 16

ranma season 1 episode 17

ranma season 1 episode 18

Sunday, April 29, 2007

spend less phoning more people (and more...)

im gonna put down few lines about a bunch of new startups have been joining the tlc industry with such a disruptive set of technologies that make them powerful and sort of call 2.0

Let's start with a smaller one Callwave, that is, just a little widget for Google homepage, yahoo!, vista and apple. It's just works! it's fast and easy: first time need a small registration procedure with a code delivered to your phone, then your msg from callwave will look like coming from your usual number, but i sent a msg with max char allowed by callwave but has been splitted up into 3 sms. they have a free plan  up to 5 sms a day but a still struggle for more... meanwhile the people at Callwave are working on a premium version able to send more sms.
https://zyb.com/  plays  a role in the syncing thing, making possible store remotely all contacts, calendar and messages from most Nokia phones. It's useful the ability to add contacts from the web interface and import your Google calendar into Zyb, then sync it with your phone to have your gcal events show up in the standard calendar application in Nokia's phone. U can even send your SMS to a back up service number which take care of all your data and stores everything in your account. Just a complain is the lack of SMS editing and export function, that is, could be useful put down text through the web interface, export and send by the phone; then export as plain text locally as personal archive, but the overall concept and design has been made easy to use and reliable.
When talking about international calls here I found out many services, some weird, some just to difficult to keep up with, but most of them still require a phone and a computer with network in the nearby the get working; the basic is making international calls cost as local ones. Jajah simply asks u to put in the web interface your number and friend number, click call and wait ringing your phone: still need a computer with network in the nearby. Rebtel instead assign a rebtel number to your contacts, thus using these numbers to call friends and let apply just local fares.
Next for Skype lovers here a way to stay in touch with your contact there on the run: an interesting app for smart phones named soonr, that by the way sync hard disk content creating an access through mobile client. With Soonr the home computer acts as private phone operator forwarding calls on skype, so needs a computer running skype; pay to phone your skype account from the mobile.

emails, what do they offer?

Beside the wonderful daily service being provided by Gmail, there are some interesting things making email a real complete system of messaging. Anyway ill stick a bit at Gmail cos even that system could be tweaked a lot thanks to Google API. the main sources of customizations are userscripts.org and userstyles.org/ where lots of JS code is hosted; the only requirements are Firefox and the Greasemonkey add-ons.

here a list of JS for Gmail:

All the JS listed above come from userscripts.org cos I haven't dug enough into userstyles.org where it's more likely find CSS layout as well.

Next im gonna talk about anonymous remailer as an option for private anonymous communications; the tools needed are a PGP crypto utility and a public key from a remailer service. First type in your msg and add a header with destination address and encrypt this text with remail public key; then send this encrypted text to the remailer which will take over the email decrypting and sending without any tracks in the header. This way there's lack of replying ability but is the safer method. Otherwise there're Pseudonymous remailer which simply takes away the email address of the sender, gives a pseudonym to

the sender and sends the message to the intended recipient (that can be

answered via that remailer). (source: wikipedia)

next there are not so useful tools but still worth of mention like mailboxes without any password required, that is, public mailboxes handy when not want to put your email in a registration form but still have the ability to check and register. plus it's a smart way to gives away 'your' email to people you don't fully trust, can even think a nick in the very moment you write it down for someone!

Last, whenever wants to keep secrets, as not spreading your mail to not intended fellows, a tool comes in aid: ever heard about Mission:Impossible? hehehe yeah self-destructive email! U set up time count-down like 30 sec then the email when opened by recipient lasts after 30 seconds! firing up through an animated GIF! it works converting text into a GIF hosted by bigstring servers which triggers as u set up. people at bigstring.com offers a way to keep editing ability even on sent emails.

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

the definitive solution for browser shortcuts

YubNub able to accept hundreds of commands without adding any key before. The interface resemble that found in standard bash command line; for instance there're commands like "ls" returning a list of commands and "man" to call manual pages searchable with ease through embedded searching feature. mainly YubNub should be employed this way: say to make a currency conversion, so first of all I had simply to type in in the address bar a query (in this case 'currency conversion' should be ok), after the 'ls' (list commands) operator. Then the results show up and, let's say, I pick out a command called 'xe', now I need to look at the synopsis to figure out how input data, so type 'man xe'. As I understand how the command work, it's time to make a regexp to query: in this case 'xe' make currency conversion as needed and data must be input in this pattern; xe -amount 10 -from USD -to EUR. It looks like working on a linux bash shell but online. Anyway whenever we need social bookmark to get synched across a bunch of computer why not do the same for shortcuts? Plus the online platform make possible for developer to create and update new extensions while the already set up hotkeys are so comprehensive that most useful commands are ready to be deployed. Moreover people have built a lot of extensions for desktop OS, considering always multi platforms issues when coding. concluding it's even a trusted source of reference sites and search engines. The only complain is a lack of management for all the commands that sometimes looks just like clones of the same command or simply link to a personale page, of course

Rediscover how reading news

After TechCrunch covered the best (or ones of the best...) web 2.0 app out there I thought back to how I use to get fresh information from the web and, as for everything else, keeping up is always required.So far Rojo was enough to deal with all the feed subscriptions while the social layer provides tagging and rating system helping discover stories and store them. meanwhile I still point my browser to rojo daily but now i move even on to other services. I recover suddenly to look around Digg since when I had used to the service, was mainly technology centered and discussed anything else with poor coverage.By now it's a grown service that streamline the process of news picking with readers acting as editors as well; moreover the feedback system offer the ability to create threads of comments as seen in forums.these two piece of software help track your feeds(rojo.com) while keeping an eye on what people think of it, this way people may easier run into some interesting feed never heard before, then subscribe and keep track of news;the latter instead is something like a gate collecting any kind of stuff worthy to be known and when they really worth some visibility, being praised by sticking on the homepage for a while. They both deploy social layers to filter what publish on their homepage but therefore being an active user means spend time editing posts, tagging, and digging/mojoing headlines. Another family of service have an opposite approach to filtering, that is aggregation through a bot scanning the web for trusted sources and doing so looking at how much a blog post or news post is linked by others. This way a post with a lot of trackbacks is rightly considered popular, therefore ranked in the popular news; the most popular ones reach the homepage making all the process human-free and very accurate since many times news need a day more to show up in mainstream news channels. By the way I'm talking about Techmeme on cutting edge of tech, Memeorandum for politics and Wesmirch as gossip homepage.

news feed web2.0 rojo digg techmeme

Tuesday, January 02, 2007

sometimes chatting is addictive

last few months i missed to keep up with the latest nitty-gritty software available for symbian platform so last few weeks I made up for lost time. first the phone firmware had to be updated only by retailers therefore taking up weeks just for a 5 minutes job. anyway the most interesting part cover the software i found out: the new version of opera for mobile phone finally bring a decent internet experience on phones as I tested it for a while by now there's almost no complain regarding how they can make do so nice with an average hardware package close to what we can find on fifteen years old tower computer (I'm looking at 2nd generation UMTS phones and nokia 6630 in particular). besides the old set of weird programs like screenFTP, a nice piece of software able to convert files/text into sequence of jpeg files easy to catch by the built-in camera that every cameraphone bears, there is a lot more for mobile users now. I mean the clients provided by google for instance, gmail have close functionality compared to the standard web interface and gmaps is a good option for those like me who yet dont carry a gps...I miss a Gcalendar client as well since it's my favourite online calendar and synching is not like a charm sometimes: thanks to developer of zyb.com now there's a simple way to backup contacts and calendar entries even if they are still working on two way synch with Gcalendar, the interface is clean on i look at the mass of potential user of kinda online tool. Last words I wanna spend in this post are up to a geeky service provided by danish people who make possible to log into MSN with the standard IM client found in symbian phones. they set up a server which work as a static point for user login and status while on the move. works pretty well as tested for a few thumb chats last month. they can be found at chatnu.dk and I hope they set up a english version in the meanwhile since danish isn't so painless to translate in some bot. Recalling the title here, chatting have a new way to be addictive everywhere, whenever possible.
mobile wireless

Monday, January 01, 2007

about blogging

I'm always on line, during the last year even i was, but sometimes simply the web doesn't fit, in particular a blog, for certain stuff people had better hold thoughts for themselves...anyway I'm back again as i kicked off, that is by the flock browser. I should say that geeky people and simple users shall enjoy a fully web 2.0 browser for a truly web 2.0 experience without mid-high knowledge of cutting edge on line technology. For instance I wonder whether i discovered flock or del.icio.us first, however thinking about the everage user it's likely to be flock the simplest way to figure out settings for social services in a single place. there're complains too for example del.icio.us features have not the same feedback as the firefox plugin does have, i mean when tagging there's no total items tagged count, which helps pick out the best consistent tag in a collection(besides that del.icio.us built-in is totally outdated in how it milk the API). Features like photosharing were good when flock launched however by now people demands a more cohomprensive file sharing service supporting any file type (I have in mind something close to allPeers, the firefox plugin)......nonetheless i was not interested by reviewing flock in this post!!but as im here Ill end up this review talking a lil about the wonderful search feature built-in: that's a reason why migrate from firefox in my opinion. I'd really like to see more services embedded into the searching results and now im thinking at more integration with advanced bookmarking services as furl and kaboodle along with del.icio.us.I see a good karma around this project and the best browsing experince is already here....just to be made up few steps further.

flock

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

the black jack game

im gonna upload a tutorial with all planning and brief well organized into some html pages, plus a section with source code and executables

Tag: c plus plus

Monday, May 22, 2006

last

testere
no more on this issue...

testere on technorati

Thursday, May 18, 2006

how to send feedback email pressing a keyboard button(WIN)

Introduction

i gonna have up to 3 remote desktop computer that need help desk; therefore im planning to set up a skype network to avoid chatting with slow typing people and then some tool that automate sending by email screen captures through a keyboard shortcut. To manage file sys samba could be enough and work great on both win,mac,linux .
Another option is Remote Desktop System, like VNC and sons; for windows and mac there's and embedded into OS tool the provide such a functionality Microsoft remote Desktop How to's

Create an automate-email feedback shortcut

ok, first of all, need to install an smtp server as service and Microsoft embed this tool in the "Internet information service" packages which is simply intalled through "Add/remove programs" panel -> Add windows components(on the left bar). Then get through set the SMTP server up for granted IP addresses SMTP server set up How to's
Ok now u have the SMTP running and able to get connected only by the local machine(the safer set up).
Here we need a tool to encode email messages with MIME type attachments(i want to send a jpeg with the email) and then a tool that actually carry off the email to the default address(me@example.com) using the SMTP server running on my machine.mpack & bmail -command line tool for DOS-
Assuming to have already Cropper installed(screen capture util), we have to write a batch file called with a keyboard shortcut to automate the whole thingBatch files FAQ
i'll put down the batch very soon to carry out this thread!

Tag: mail

Thursday, May 11, 2006

italian soccer is the best in the world

Pairetto a Dondarini prima di Samp-Juve:«Devi vedere anche quello che non c'è» - Corriere della Sera

tra Dondarini(arbitro corrotto internazionale) e Pairetto(designatore corrotto arbitri corrotti)

Guarda ti giuro se non c'erano i giocatori della Juve che mi aiutavano io non so come finiva

Monday, May 08, 2006

C++ compiler(gcc) basic how to's

gcc works as standard compiler for many languages, but here im just focusing on command line options used by c++ language, so
follows a simple command which compile a c++ source file called 'simple.cpp' which implements elements from the Standard Template Library(STL) ;in fact simple.cpp begins including header '#include' to make use of standard objects, as streaming output and so on.
_command:
gcc simple.cpp -lstdc++ -static -o simple
_explanation:
-l+stdc++ -> '-l' is the prefix for calling libraries followed by the name of the library u want to include(stdc++ in this case);
'-static' tells the compiler to link against the library in static mode(at load time), rather than in dynamic mode(at runtime)
'-o' specify the output file destination(the .exe extension is added by default)

That's all, just as quick reference after months without compiling anything!!!

UPDATE (compiling in WINDOWS environment with Win32 API)

assuming want to compile under windowsXP an indipendent executable linked against standard Microsoft DLL using GCC compiler released with CygWin;
gcc win.cpp -mno-cygwin -lwin32k -o win
_Explanation:
win.cpp -> c++ source file
-m -> hardware models & configuration -> no-cygwin -> dont link against Cygwin API
-l -> options for linking -> win32k -> DLL win32 API
-o -> output file (otherwise output to stream out)

UPDATE (avoiding include the '-lstdc++' option) & (compiling with custom header)

'gcc' command invokes just the frontend of the compiler, but if u need to compile just C++ source files, it's a best practice invoking 'g++' command insted; this way it's no more needed the '-lstdc++' option which is included by default.

When splits code in multiple files organized by headers, u need to pass the implementation file to the compiler just before the source file storing the 'main' entry point. Assuming sample.cpp the implementation file, sample_app.cpp the entry point file, the command to pass comes:
g++ sample.cpp sample_app.cpp -o sample

Saturday, May 06, 2006

test tagging (to delete)

try using technorati tagging system tag:testtag
testtag

Friday, April 28, 2006

uncle's hardware

i figure out two choices upon this:

Sell my desktop, therefore replace it with new hardware for me(budget->350+400=750)

find out a used or new desktop either mac or win affordable for my uncle(up to 500)

thinking of upgrading my desktop anyway, i'd better trade it with my uncle as it still reach a good value.