Smartwombat Blog

Russell Beattie on Google…

Read this article and do not miss the comments at the end. AWESOME

"...I like Google Search and I like Blogger, but everything else they're doing is disjointed. They're slowly creating a mess of services with no real cohesive plan and it's just not compelling to me. Orkut, GMail, Froogle, Desktop Search, etc. are all in beta and have no common thread or business plan. How many logins do I need? How is any of this stuff going to make money? Orkut even uses Microsoft tech on the back end, is that a joke? I compare Google to Amazon, eBay, and Yahoo and it seems like amateur hour over there. No excuses that they're younger, I don't think their problems have anything to do with that..."

From <http://www.russellbeattie.com/notebook/1008115.html>

My favorite OneNote features….

One of the better features of Office 2003 is OneNote. This is a note taking application and it rocks. First I did not like it too much, didn't really see it as a useful application at all, even when using with a Tablet Pc. I thought OneNote is just like word with a fancy UI.

When I am working I tend to copy/paste small piece of text, url or some code and  I use notepad for this. At the end of the day I am usually having around 20 notepads open, so when I have to leave I choose not to close them, so at the end of the next day I end up with around the 30 notepad instances running and so on. The good thing with notepad is that it is easy to start and does not use up too much memory, the down side is that I have no way to organize my copy/pasted information and there is no automatic way to save it.

Then I started to use OneNote and it fits me perfectly. I do not have to worry about saving, it is done automatically and there are sections and pages to keep the whole stuff organized. Here is some of my favorite features and some of the missing ones too: 

• Spelling - my written English tends to be sometimes really poor  :)
• OneNote can be reached from the notification are. So it is always only one click away.
• Screen clipping - just hit windows logo key + s and select the screen area you want to capture.
• Record audio while creating notes. This one is a killer one….

What I would really like to see in OneNote

• To be able to save notes into some sort of xml format.
• To be able to do scripting
• To be able to write add-ins for OneNote in .NET. One killer add-in would be a way to copy out the page title and the urls from the currently running explorer windows. I tend to keep 10-20 explorer windows open at a time and I am always in trouble when I should restart my computer for some reason.

Microsoft collects resources for software startups.

http://www.microsoft.com/Business/Startups/

Under Gmail's hood.

From Jon's Radio (http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2004/10/26.html)

As early adopters discovered long before I did, there's an architecture behind this JavaScript/DHTML wizardry. The best description I've found is from Johnvey Hwang, who deconstructed Gmail's JavaScript code and created a .Net-based Gmail API. As Hwang described in his July 5 write-up, Gmail loads a JavaScript UI engine into your browser at the beginning of each session. Oddpost, he noted, was the first Web mail application to perfect this technique. That was a prophetic statement: Just four days later, on July 9, Yahoo acquired Oddpost.

Some Lessons iPod Photo Teaches

"...Advertising is one thing done right. I see plenty of iTunes/iPod television ads, and I don’t watch that much commercial TV. Some shows, like "Smallville," run Apple and HP iPod ads every week. Other than Napster, I don’t see much other music service advertising--and absolutely none for other portable music players. I keep wondering how much lack of competing music device advertising contributes to the iPod phenomenon.

When I look at those iPod ads, they don’t say much about the device or iTunes Music Store. Hey, we’re talking shadows dancing to music, right? I remember when Microsoft used to market that way and effectively. Best example: Windows 95 TV ads, which communicated basically nothing informational about the operating system. But the ads conveyed excitement and innovation with their fast-moving images--of people in activity interposed with the Windows 95 desktop and file menu. In those early Windows 95 TV ads, geek was cool and no one was a geek, just cool. They left the impression that Windows 95 would somehow enrich your life and open new horizons, new possibilities. And, as I recall, Microsoft sold a helluva lot of Windows 95 copies, too. Not since, have I seen Microsoft market so aggressively or effectively any of its products. (OK, Windows Server 2003 TV ads were quite good…"

From <http://www.microsoftmonitor.com/archives/004007.html>

Einstein is proved right again.

"An experiment using two orbiting satellites has proved that as the Earth turns it drags space and time around itself, like a spinning top in treacle.

The result is yet another vindication of Albert Einstein’s genius. His theory of general relativity, published in 1916, said that material objects warped space and time around them.

In 1918, Joseph Lense and Hans Thirring used Einstein’s equations to predict that a rotating body will twist space-time enough to disturb a small object orbiting it...."

from <http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=3659771>

Scraping Google Results

Scraping the results of a Google search into a comma-delimited file (from O'Reilly's hacks series).

from <http://hacks.oreilly.com/pub/h/164>

How to use your Pocket PC as VOIP phone….

This is an old article but really cool (from engadget.com).

This week’s How-To is a handy one for the folks out there who use the Vonage Voice Over IP (VOIP) service and happen to have a Pocket PC device with WiFi. We’re going to show you how to turn just about any Pocket PC PDA device in to a real telephone with a working telephone number. At the end of this, we’re also going to post our phone number so you can test it out (it might be a long distance call for you).

from <http://www.engadget.com/entry/6437880577833191/>

Home hacking projects for hobbyists

There is a new magazine called Make is in the works (created by O'Reilly). This new magazine offering "do it yourself" project for geeks and hobbyists. So if you wondering how to build mesh networks at home this is definitely something you want to read:

There're a lot of magazines about technology, about products, about platforms like Mac or Windows. They are about the devices themselves," Dougherty said. "Instead of products, we wanted to cover projects -- things that you can do."

The magazine is designed to appeal to techie and non-technical crowds alike. Every issue will have a primer on a basic topic, like soldering and de-soldering. Projects will be divided into small endeavors like how to use AirPort Express or how to build your own mesh network in your house, and major projects like building your own steadycam. Profiles of people or groups who make interesting projects will also be a regular feature.

Make - http://www.oreillynet.com/oreilly/make/

from Wired. <http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,65402,00.html>

Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005 Energy Blue Theme Pack

Download it from here http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=86268ffa-70b1-4814-bd00-2d380dc5a89d&DisplayLang=en

Why people are still sticking to VB6?

A large percentage of people are still using Visual Basic 6.0. There are enough people still using VB 6 that Microsoft is still looking for ways to make the transition to .NET even easier for these programmers and their applications. Many Visual Basic discussion forums, including Jupitermedia's own VBForums, continue to have high traffic in the "classic" (version 6) VB sections, and numerous articles continue to be published. While the world is being inundated with .NET articles, VB 6 is not being completely forgotten.

Within the forums, you'll find that many developers have stated that they see no reason to upgrade. In fact, many give reasons on why they don't plan to upgrade and why they believe most shouldn't upgrade. It is worth looking at a number of these reasons for sticking with VB 6. It is also worth noting how accurate the reasons are.

from <http://www.developer.com/net/vb/article.php/3422891>

Choosing a blog platform

So many platforms, so little time to compare and choose. This article looks at setting a blog on your own server rather than on another server.

from <http://channels.lockergnome.com/windows/archives/20041017_choosing_a_blog_platform.phtml>

Evolving the PC: Media Center Redefines the Platform

While the vendors focused on their products, what you may have missed was the magic of the entire Media Center system. The whole is now clearly greater than the sum of its parts. This was a demonstration of the power of Microsoft that is often overlooked. This is the power to get competitors to come together to build something that that none of them could have built alone.

From http://www.technewsworld.com/story/37361.html

Windows Media Center Edition

The section on Windows Media Center Edition on MSDN.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnanchor/html/anch_winxpmce.asp

How to tie a tie?

This is always a problem for me, so just for future reference…

http://www.neckties.com/knots.htm
http://www.tie-a-tie.net/
http://www.tieguide.com/tie.htm
http://www.krawattenknoten.info/krawatten/Krawattenknoten/tieknot.html

This should be enough!

Earnings Drop 20% For Nokia

"Nokia, the world's largest mobile- phone maker, said profit may drop for a second straight quarter. Earnings fell 20 percent in the three months ended in September because the company cut prices to regain market share. Earnings per share may fall to between 16 euro cents (18 U.S. cents) and 18 cents in the fourth quarter from 25 cents a year earlier, Jorma Ollila, chief executive officer of Espoo, Finland-based Nokia, said in a conference call. Nokia's profitability is declining as the company fights to win back customers. Samsung Electronics Co., Motorola Inc. and Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications Ltd. took market share by incorporating cameras in handsets earlier than Nokia. Nokia's operating profit fell to 13.4 percent of sales in the quarter just ended, the lowest since the second quarter of 2003."

from <http://www.smartphonethoughts.com/index.php?action=expand,6469>

Monday morning...

Monday morning is though and even the weather is miserable!

Some articles on Google desktop search

Google Search Hits The Desktop

from <http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news/article.php/3421671>

"She said even Web users who spend a lot of time online shouldn't fill up their disk space, however. "We're using some of the most advanced compression we can find, and disk utilization never gets above 2 gigabytes," she said. The lightweight application itself requires 400 kilobytes of memory, making it half the size of the Google toolbar. It uses 8 megabytes of memory.

Users can access desktop search via an icon installed in the Windows taskbar or at Google.com. Desktop search via the taskbar can be accomplished without an Internet connection.

"We host the user interface in HTML, and it runs on your local computer. We're running a small Web server on your machine," Mayer said. The idea was to make the desktop search experience as much like Web search as possible. "

Wondering how they are going to make money out of this?

Mayer said that a direct business model for Google Desktop Search wasn't apparent. "Google tends to release products that focus first on user needs and user experience and see if it delivers utility," she said. "If a product is high-utility, you'll find a business model easily." She pointed out that Google launched its now highly profitable Web search without a way to monetize it, then developed its AdWords advertising product.

But she said the company is betting that most users will access Desktop Search from Google.com or the Google toolbar on the browser, rather than via the taskbar. In fact, she said Google will train them to do this, because even when users go to Google.com and search the Web, the desktop client also searches the desktop. Then, when the page of Web results is delivered, it includes a note at the top that more results are stored on the computer.

"We believe that most people would like to search both the desktop and the Web at the same time," Mayer said. "If that's true, most people will access the functionality from the Google home page or task bar. So, people who used to do 30 searches a week will now do 40. If they're done on core Google search, they'll be monetized [via ads]."

News: Google Drops The Other Shoe - Google Desktop Search Launches

from <http://battellemedia.com/archives/000966.php>

Google Desktop Search Launched

from <http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3421651>

Google Desktop Search Released

from <http://www.byronprather.com/PermaLink.aspx?guid=fd7871d8-65c6-4462-92d2-bd5a417d3adb>

Google Desktop Search Becomes Reality

from <http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/041014-282>

Creating Karaoke, Windows Media Player Style

Article from MSDN describes how to write a Microsoft Windows Media Player Audio DSP plug-in that can remove primary vocals from audio files.

Source  <http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dnwmt/html/wmpplugin.asp?frame=true>

Google release Google desktop search

Wanted to try this but got the following error message when tried to install it:

Google Desktop Search is not currently compatible with another program on your system. You will need to uninstall this programif you would like to instal Google Desktop Search. The following my help to identify the program:

And pointing to my firewall client.

What is their problem with my firewall client? I do not think I will try this app yet :-(

from http://desktop.google.com/