XxDesmusxX.NET Simplicity is underrated.

1Jun/100

AweSync: Bridging the Gap Between Lotus Notes and gCal

Lotus Notes to Google Calendar sync

Do you use Lotus Notes? Do you use Google Calendar in your web browser or on your phone? I've searched high and low looking for an option to bridge this gap -- luckily AweSync solves that problem. Initially I was hesitant to give new software a shot because I had fears that I'd mess up my work calendar. Fear not! AweSync's software worked splendidly. The software setup could not be simpler -- I selected my Lotus Notes account, provided my Google Calendar authentication information, selected the Google Calendar I wanted to sync with, and clicked sync. That's it! I went from maintaining two calendars to having them completely in sync within 5 minutes of finding out about the application. The only suggestion I have that I hope AweSync eventually moves to use OAuth for the Google authentication instead of using username/password like they currently do. I highly recommend this application for anyone in the situation I was. $20 is a very reasonable price to make my life easier.

27Jan/100

iPad = iFailure

It's really really rough right now, but maybe in a generation or 3 it'll be worth buying.

Obvious shortcomings:

  • 16GB of memory (on the base unit)
  • Still no Flash in the browser
  • No camera
  • Still no multitasking
  • No SD card slot (no expandable storage)
  • No replaceable battery
  • It's almost 2x the price of some netbooks today

It's just a glorified iPhone right now. It's needs a generation or 3 to mature into something worthwhile. It's no netbook killer, that's for damn sure.

26Dec/080

Playlist.com – Soon to be popular? Or dead?

A new site called Project Playlist has popped up recently. It lets you create playlists (duh) and listen to music for free. You can then embed these playlists as music players in various web pages, but not Facebook or MySpace for the moment. The record labels are quite obviously not too happy about this considering you can listen to full songs an unlimited number of times effortlessly. We'll see if this site sticks around, but for now try it out and enjoy the player embedded below:


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7Oct/085

How to download any song from Favtape.com

I've had my doubts about posting this information because quite honestly I'm a big fan of Favtape.com and I don't want to see them get in trouble and/or close. That being said, I suppose it can't hurt that much to put this information out there. Here's a quick and simple way to download any song that you can play on Favtape.com

  1. Use Firefox (it's not required but we all know that when you use IE god will kill kittens).
  2. Go to Favtape.com (duh) and find a song that you want.
    FavTape.com songhover

  3. Click the name of the song to begin playing it.
  4. When you hover over the name of the song you should see something like this in the status bar: http://favtape.com/play/**Artist**/**Song**.mp3  (**Artist** and **Song* obviously replaced with the appropriate information). Click on the image to the right if you don't understand what I just said.
  5. Now you can't simply right click and "Save link as". You actually can't right click at all. So how do you get the MP3 file?
  6. Method 1 - no tweaking involved:
    1. Open a new tab in Firefox (control + t).
    2. Click + hold the Artist - Song Name and drag this onto the new tab you just created.
    3. That's it! The song should not start to download, but you'll need to rename it because it'll save as "fetch.mp3".
  7. Method 2 - tweaking the Firefox settings:
    Click for full size

    1. In Firefox goes to Tools --> Options
    2. Go to the "Content" tab
    3. Find "Enable Javascript". To the right of this you will see "Advanced" click on this.
    4. Find "Disable or replace context menus". Uncheck this box.
    5. Click "OK" and then "OK" again.
    6. Now you can right click on the Artist - Song Name and select "Save link as".
    7. That's it! You can now just save the MP3 file we saw in the status bar earlier.
    8. Important Note: You may want to re-enable the "Disable or replace context menus" option because many web applications use this functionality.
30May/08Off

Interesting Links 5.30.08

  • TimesMachine - New York Times - TimesMachine can take you back to any issue from Volume 1, Number 1 of The New-York Daily Times, on September 18, 1851, through The New York Times of December 30, 1922.
  • SuperLame! Comic Word Balloon Engine - Simply add speech bubbles to photos you upload. Useless? Sure, but fun.
  • Introduction to CSS3 - Part 4: User Interface - CSS3 brings some great new properties relating to resizing elements, cursors, outlining, box layout and more.
  • Introduction to CSS3 - Part 5: Multiple Columns - CSS3 introduces a new module known, appropriately, as multi-column layout. It allows you to specify how many columns text should be split down into and how they should appear.
  • Design Critique: Blog Platforms - Most designers are familiar with the relative pros and cons of different publishing tools – but what about the websites of the blog platforms themselves?
  • TinySong - type a song, get a link, share the full song with your friends. It's really that simple. Works great for those "have you heard this song?" moments.
  • Adobe Labs - Adobe has released the first betas for Dreamweaver CS4, Fireworks CS4, and Soundbooth CS4. Note: betas only work for 2 days unless you have an existing CS3 serial number.
  • Fixing Twitter - I am getting sick of talk about twitter and it’s scalability problems and also frankly unqualified people slagging the service for it’s unreliability and also coming up with stupid ignorant answers to how it should be fixed.
  • Read at Work - it looks like you're being productive, but you're definitely not. Kind of funny, but I can't imagine actually using it.
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16May/08Off

Interesting Links 5.16.08

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4May/08Off

A New Chapter: Things to do this Summer

I thought I'd briefly update what I plan to accomplish this summer. The semester is finally finally done and over with (see my recent post regarding the ridiculous amount of things I needed to finish in the past 3 weeks).

  • Reinstall Windows Home Server (WHS). Never mind, not going to reinstall.
  • Read “Head First SQL.
  • Read “A History of God”. Never mind, this looks to be quite boring.
  • Read “The Hobbit or There and Back Again”. DONE
  • Have some type of relaxing vacation.
  • Decide if I will keep my web hosting.
  • Reinstall XP on my desktop because Vista sucks (even with SP1).
  • Rewrite my current blog theme from scratch (it’s using tables right now…ick!). Never mind, not applicable any more.
  • Update my laptop to Vista SP1 (why not reinstall XP? don’t ask). DONE
  • Work related: apparently I'm going to be learning Visual Basic this summer. We'll see.
  • Work related: I also may be learning Ruby on Rails (jRails specifically). We'll see.