Archive for November, 2008
Gallery.live – only for Internet Explorer ??
Nov 17th
If you want to improve your Windows Live Writer experience in blogging by adding some interesting plugins, you’ll be pretty disappointed if you use another browser than Internet Explorer.
First I tried first to enter into Writer gallery with Firefox 3, which is my default browser, on http://gallery.live.com/results.aspx?c=0&bt=9&pl=8 … but surprise !
Below is the same web address, but in IE 7.
Later edit:
If you “insist” to use Firefox, the actual entry point in Windows Live writer plugin website is : http://gallery.live.com/results.aspx?bt=9&pl=8&ds=1&la=en&tier=0&st=3&p=1&c=0
PDC 2008 – Apps for babies in .Net 4.0
Nov 15th
My personal Software engineer model, Mr. Scott Hanselman, had a very nice presentation at PDC 2008.
He explained the usage of Microsoft’s .Net 4.0 framework in real life examples, creating an interesting environment for very young people (less than 4 years) using Silverlight, PDAs, the new Surface device, webservices, real time interrogation to data bases by auto updating reports and others.
http://channel9.msdn.com/pdc2008/TL49/
Join Scott Hanselman for this lots-of-code-minimal slides talk that walks through the sheer joy of building out a .NET Framework application with Visual Studio using many of the new advances in the .NET Framework 3.5SP1 and 4.0. We have a data layer with Entity Framework, use REST web services with WCF and ADO.NET Data Services, write an ASP.NET site for reporting using Dynamic Data and MVC. All the data will come from a WPF client application and a Silverlight application that the audience will run live! All this, plus it’s an application that babies and toddlers will love!
Enjoy!
Windows Vista Updates Download
Nov 12th
In Windows Vista you are constrained to use the default tool,Windows Updates, which is set to download only the files which need to be updated, by example if xxx.dll exists in Microsoft’s database as a bigger version and needs to be updated, then only this file will be downloaded from the Microsoft servers.
What if you need to reinstall your computer and you don’t have Internet connection available? Sometimes when you don’t know where your work will ask you to be, is better to have all updates archived safely and closely to you, on your harddrive. More >
Customize your Gmail web interface
Nov 7th
Google has been the most improving mailing web interface that I know. Having a whooping 2 GB storage space when launched, he slapped over the face all his competitors, whom at that time had 4- 5 MB of storage space. Now is 7.5 GB and increasing.
The interface is very clean and intuitive, but not lacking the good looking ( example of bad looking is Squirrel Mail who looks obsolete, due to the right angle corners, opposed to the round corners approach in Gmail). Also the code completion for emails, the spell checker and other goodies makes this interface the most interesting in my opinion.
Recently, I learn about something that is quite hidden in Gmail interface: the plugins.
These can be activated by going into Settings in your Gmail mail account, click on Labs tab and search the desired plugin. In order to add it’s functions on the interface, you must activate first by checking the Enable option. It will be applied as soon as you click ‘Save Changes’ button on the bottom of the page.
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I have activated the following plugins:
Give it a try! |
Secure signed and encrypted Thunderbird for your Gmail mail
Nov 4th
DISCLAIMER:
The following steps were done on a Windows Vista Business x86. You can follow the next steps but on your own risk. Also keep in mind that different operating systems can behave differently.
As I started the class of Security on the Internet, an interesting situation occurred: I needed to setup a signature and encryption for my emails. Our lecturer, Dr. Michael Nüsken, advised us to install Thunderbird and GnuPG as a proven solutions, but allowed us to use any other that we saw suited for doing the homework exercises.
Since I’m new in cryptography I choose to follow the advice, and later to find out if there are any more simpler good ways to accomplish the target of this class: secure and reliable communication over an unsecured environment as Internet is.
1. Enabling or checking that Gmail allows POP3 and IMAP connections
For this, you have to get into mailbox Settings area by clicking on top right link called Settings, then go on "Forwarding and POP/IMAP" tab, like in below picture ( click on it to enlarge ). Then be sure to check the following radio buttons: from POP area – "Enable POP for all mail" and ( if you need an additional way to access your mail ) from IMAP area: "Enable IMAP".
They also put at your disposition a comprehensive help for setting your mail connection in the links below each category.
Language switcher
Nov 1st
Copyright : You can use the code below on your website as long as you keep a post with a link to my WordPress (http://radupoenaru.wordpress.com/) website on your WordPress website.
Since I moved my presentation site to WordPress hosting, I searched for a simple plugin or widget to allow me to have content in many languages. The basic idea is that if I wrote all in English, my older relatives ( whom learned French and Russian when Communism ruled ) wouldn’t be able to read it.
So where to find this precious tool? Initially I searched the plugins offered in WordPress specialized area, some were nice and interesting. But another problem arises – since it is a free hosting, you just can’t ask for these plugins, nor install them by yourself. Even the most popular ones, tried, tested and proven reliable by users weren’t integrated in WordPress hosting website.
Since it is the era of internationalization I believe that the builders thought that all of us learned already English.
Next I was thinking how to overcome this. And I came up with the idea presented below – use tags as switchers for different language articles.
For easy switching between languages, I added a HTML placeholder in Administration area -> Design ->Text widget and I placed him in the first position – feel free to add it as you like.
The text inside the widget is :
<table border="0" width="100%"> <tr> <td align="center" width="50%"> <a href="http://radupoenaru.wordpress.com/tag/English"> <img border="0" src="http://radupoenaru.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/en.jpg" alt="Select only posts in English language" /></a> </td> <td align="center" width="50%"> <a href="http://radupoenaru.wordpress.com/tag/Romana"> <img border="0" src="http://radupoenaru.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/ro.jpg" alt="Selecteaza doar mesajele in limba Româna" /></a> </td> </tr> </table>
I used a table just for effect, to evenly space the flag pictures.
I use the images below, uploaded in this message, because WordPress doesn’t allow media uploading separately – only included in a page.
The simplest way to do this was to include a language tag in the tags collection of each post. I use "English" for English posts and "Romana" for Romanian posts. So the main thing you should set after is one of the tags for each article in either Romana or English.
