php-mode
I have been doing some php development in emacs. I have been missing syntax coloring and indenting. php-mode adds this functionality.
Installing third-party .el files
This blog post has a link to a program to install elisp program from within emacs.
Seesmic Desktop on Ubuntu
I mentioned before that I am using Seesmic Desktop as my Twitter client. The Seesmic Destop client web site states that it is available for Mac and Windows. Since it is an Adobe Air application, I figured that I could get it to work on my Ubuntu Laptop.
I downloaded the air file, and then ran the Adobe AIR Application Installer and selected the downloaded file. The installation worked, and Seesmic Desktop runs perfectly.
Subversion in Xcode
This page has a good description of using subversion in Xcode 3.0. The integration works pretty well.
I have found that it is easiest to add a new Xcode project to the subversion repository manually, instead of letting XCode do it. I just create the project in Xcode, and then on the command line, I run svn add. Then from that point on, Xcodes integration works well.
Google Profile and social networks
Google recently added the abilty for people who have a Google Account to create a "profile". This is a way for people to create a page that has personal information that could be shown when a search is done for their name. This allows the user to specify which information should be shown on this page. So for example, you can include links to your flickr page or Facebook profile.
In addition to specifying information can been seen by everyone, you can also specify "private" information like email address or phone numbers. Then you can specify which people you know can see this informaion. This is similar to the way that most social networks work.
The problem that I have is not with the feature, but with Google’s various definitions of who friends are and what a profile. Currently Google Profile uses the list of the contacts in your Google Talk list as "friends". But this is a seperate list than the "friends" when using Google Friend Connect. In addition to the different list of friends, Google Friend Connect also has it’s own concept of a profile for a user.
I think it would be great if Google consolidated these into a single friends list and a single profile. Because until then, these things will not take off.
Upgraded to Kubuntu 9.04
I have just finished upgrading my computer to the 9.04 version of Kubuntu (Ubuntu with KDE as the default window manager). I was looking forward to trying the new notification system and the new versiion of KDE.
I decided to do the upgrade online, instead of downloading the CD, and upgrading from it. The I started the upgrade at 10pm on Thursday, and at 8am on Friday, the download finally finished. I assume that the slow download was caused because of the number of people doing the upgrades at the same time.
Once the upgrade pretty much everything worked. I did have to do a few things to make things work
- Install plasma-widget-network-manager with apt-get. I needed this in order to get KDE to use my wireless network
- Followed the steps on this page to make sound work well with PulseAudio
- Reset permissions on /usr/lib/libaoss.so*. I had done this before, but setting permissions fixes audio for VMware Workstation.
- Uses this page as an example to reconfigure my trackpad. It looks like now, trackpads are not configured in xorg.conf but are not configured with hal. I was able to reapply my old configuration in the new way
Google Mail / Calendar on iPhone
I have been very happy with the integration with Google Mail and Google Calendar with the iPhone. Gmail has a good IMAP implementation that works well in the iPhone’s mail application. Google Mobile Sync’s Exchange support works well for synchronizing the iPhone’s calendars.
The one problem with the integration with the native applications is that the iPhone’s applications doesn’t support as many features as Google’s. For example, there is no way to send an invite to a meeting to someone else from the iPhone’s calendar application.
Google’s mobile version of Google Calendar works well on the iPhone. I can use this to schedule a new meeting, and invite other people, all from the iPhone. Also, the new version of the mobile Gmail works well as well. I will not be using these everyday, but when I need a feature that is missing from the iPhone’s version of the apps, I will use the web versions.
PlayOn and vmcPlayIt
I have been wanted to be able to cancel our cable service for a while. The thing that I have been wating for is a good way to get the TV content available on line on our TV, without having to use the a keyboard and mouse. (And ideally integrated into Windows Media Center)
PlayOn is sotware that implements a DNLA server. Instead of leting you play local content, you can use PlayOn to play videos from Hulu, Amazon Video On Demand
Undercover for iPhone
A while ago I was interested in Undercover for Mac OS X. This application is supposed to help you recover a stolen computer. It connects to their service periodiocally. If your computer is stolen, you contact the service and then the next time your computer connects to the service, it takes and uploads a picture of what ever is in front of the computer and the service logs the location of the ip address.
It looks like they now have an iPhone application. It pretty much has the same functionality (I don’t think it takes the photo though). The problem that I see with this solution is that it requires that the person to launch the Undercover application in order for the information to be logged to their service. I don’t see people launching random applications if they steal an iPhone. Most likely, they will wipe it, and get a new SIM card. This will make Undercover pretty much useless.
Also, in my case, I lock my phone. So there is no way that the Undercover application will be launched for the service to log the iPhone’s location.
Ideally, for this functionality, iPhone would allow applications to run in the background. Then it wouldn’t require that the user launches an application. Alternatively, this could be a service that the cellular provider would provide
VMWare Workstation Unity
I use VMware Workstation everyday. I run Windows XP in it for running iTunes for my iPhone and for playing XM Radio online. Today I tried out VMware’s Unity. This makes the Windows XP windows appear along side the Ubuntu windows. Also when Unity is enable, the KDE task switcher also shows the Windows programs.
I am happily surprised about how well VMware’s Unity works.
