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April 8, 2010 7:48 am

Use goo.gl to create QR Codes

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by Martin English    in Google,Personal,Productivity

I just picked up a new trick relating to QR Codes (via Matt Cuuts….

Google’s url shortener at goo.gl can also generate QR codes (See my previous post on how to use the QR Scanner included on Nokia Phones for more information) just by appending “.qr” after the goo.gl url.

So the url http://goo.gl/1hwd does a redirect to http://www.martin-english.com/whatsup/ just as it always did…

But now the url http://goo.gl/727X.qr will generate a QR code that also goes to http://www.martin-english.com/whatsup/. Check the source of the image below.


<image src="http://goo.gl/1hwd.qr" >

FWIW, I’ve also included a bookmarklet for using goo.gl. Drag the link to your toolbar or bookmark list, then when you want to goo.gl a page, just select the bookmarklet from your toolbar or bookmark list
Goo.gl this page

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January 11, 2010 7:20 am

Synchronise Lotus Notes with Google Calendar

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by Martin English    in Enterprise,Google,Productivity,Technology,Work

There’s a lot of software for synchronising various webmail or MS Outlook Calendars with Google Calendar. However, there’s not that much around about synchronising Lotus Notes calendars….

At the moment there are three methods that I have used or know of.

goosync

I use a Nokia N95. It synchronises it’s calendar with Lotus Notes using the standard s/w that came with the phone. I use a product called goosync to synchronise the phone with my google calendar. They provide a free trial period, and various levels of service / payment after that.

For those using an iPhone the 3g is supported by goosync, but without one myself, I can’t help you getting the lotus notes calendar to the phone.

Device setup guides are at http://goosync.zendesk.com/forums/31074/entries.

awesync

awesync is (currently free, due to being in beta) software that synchronises your Lotus Notes and Google calendars. Some of the features include:
- Automatic scheduled synchronization at defined intervals of time, or manual on-demand synchronization;
- Full two-way synchronization, or one-way with defined data source, i.e. either Notes to Google, or Google to Notes;
- Comprehensive conflict handling – newest wins, or defined data source overwrite;
- Selection of one or more Google calendars for synchronization.

lntogooglecalsync

An entry on Intoiphone talks about an open source tool, hosted on sourceforge, called lntogooglecalsync that synchronises directly from your Lotus Notes Calendar to Google Calendar. The original web page is quite old, so I checked the Intogooglecalsync site and its still under development (for example, the original release didn’t support auto-sync, but it now does).

Summary

I find the combined method – Lotus to Nokia, and Nokia to Google to be sufficient for my needs. However, this is because 99.9% of my calendar originates from Lotus. The other pieces of software may be more relevant if you have updates flowing both ways.

Please feel free to add any other utilities (free or not) for synchronising Lotus with with Google calendar or any other Google products in the comments.

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July 22, 2009 4:24 pm

Apollo 11 Source Code on GoogleCode

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by Martin English    in Google,History,Technology

The Google Code guys have been busy getting some of the source code for the Apollo 11 spacecraft online.

On this day 40 years ago, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the Moon. This was quite an achievement for mankind and a key milestone in world history.

To commemorate this event the Command Module code (Comanche054) and Lunar Module code (Luminary099) have been transcribed from scanned images to run on yaAGC (an open source AGC emulator) by the Virtual AGC and AGS project.

For more information on this project, I recommend looking at the website and the open source project.

While the ultimate destination of this program was possibly a bit more important than anything I wrote, this takes me back to my IBM Assembler days, when hardware resources were minuscule, and lots had to be done with a little. I even recognise the comment style.



VRTSTART	TS	WCHVERT

# Page 801

		CAF	TWO		# WCHPHASE = 2 —> VERTICAL: P65,P66,P67

		TS	WCHPHOLD

		TS	WCHPHASE

		TC	BANKCALL	# TEMPORARY, I HOPE HOPE HOPE

		CADR	STOPRATE	# TEMPORARY, I HOPE HOPE HOPE

		TC	DOWNFLAG	# PERMIT X-AXIS OVERRIDE

		ADRES	XOVINFLG

		TC	DOWNFLAG

		ADRES	REDFLAG

		TCF	VERTGUID

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October 28, 2008 2:04 pm

Has Gmail gone all AOL on us ?

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by Martin English    in Google,Technology,Web / Web 2.0

I am was a great fan of gmail. Lots of storage (I haven’t deleted anything since June 2004), excellent spam filtering, accessible from anywhere that has a ‘net conenction (including my phone).

Unfortunately, I loved it so much that its entrenched in all my Social Nets, personal contacts, domain registrations etc. Unfortunate, because google have introduced emoticons into gmail.



I can only think is that this is in response to some huge groundswell of demand. On the other hand, the thing I love about gmail (and most Google products) is the simplicity and cleanness of the screen. Yes, emoticons are content, not user interface, but if I wanted pretty little icons, I’d go use AOL mail.

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August 1, 2008 2:18 pm

Make Gmail the default Firefox 3 Mail Client

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by Martin English    in Google,Open Source,Productivity,Technology,Web / Web 2.0,software

If you rely on online mail clients such as Gmail then you might like the following tip coming directly from the official Gmail blog that describes how to to make Gmail the default Firefox 3 Mail client (i.e. the mail client that is loaded whenever a mailto link is clicked in Firefox 3.

You’ll need to complete the following steps.

  1. Head over to Gmail and sign in as usual.
  2. Once that is done paste the following line of Javascript code into the location bar of Firefox 3 and hit enter. This will add Gmail as one additional protocol handler for the mailto protocol:javascript:window.navigator.registerProtocolHandler("mailto","https://mail.google.com/mail/?extsrc=mailto&url=%s","Gmail")
  3. A line will appear on top of the screen asking if you want to add Gmail as an application for mailto links. A click on Add Application adds the handler, a click on the X button closes the request and changes nothing.
  4. Now head over to Tools > Options > Applications in Firefox 3 and filter for the mailto protocol.
  5. Use the drop down menu on the right side to select Gmail as the default client for mailto links and make sure to hit ok to confirm the change.

Congratulations, you just added Gmail as the default Firefox 3 Mail Client.

4 comments!
July 29, 2008 9:55 am

Export the Feeds from a Google Reader Folder

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by Martin English    in Code,Google,Productivity,Technology,Web / Web 2.0

Most feed readers let you import and export subscriptions using the OPML format. For Google Reader, you find this option in Settings > Import/Export. But what happens if you want to export the feeds from a single folder so you can share them with a friend or upload them to a site? Google Reader lets you export the feeds from a Public folder:

http://www.google.com/reader/public/subscriptions/user/USERID/label/FOLDER i.e. http://www.google.com/reader/public/subscriptions/user/00907783891347362261/label/humour (you should replace USERID with the appropriate userid number and FOLDER with the actual name of the folder)

This can also be used if someone shares a folder with you and you want to obtain the list of subscriptions from that folder. If someone shares a folder:

http://www.google.com/reader/shared/user/13577231804381328821/label/googlers, then you can easily obtain the link to the corresponding OPML file by replacing shared with public/subscriptions i.e. http://www.google.com/reader/public/subscriptions/user/13577231804381328821/label/googlers

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July 17, 2008 7:23 am

Google Docs now have templates

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by Martin English    in Code,Google,Productivity,Technology

Google Documents now have templates

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July 16, 2008 12:25 pm

Finding the name behind the gmail address

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by Martin English    in Google,People,Security,Web / Web 2.0

From the SecuriTeam blog

You can get hold of the first name / last name behind a gmail / google account. There’s a bug / feature in the google ecosphere that displays the first / last name associated with an account when you share a google calendar with that account.

A different way of getting to the relevant fields is :
- Go to the ‘Calendar Settings’ via the Manage calendars link, if necessary
- Go to the ’Share this calendar’ or ‘Shared: Edit settings’ link
- and add the gmail account to list of shared people

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May 9, 2008 3:10 pm

Backup Your iGoogle Page

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by Martin English    in Google,Productivity,Security,Web / Web 2.0

 

from GoogleSystem at Blogspot.com:

iGoogle (the personalized Google homepage), offers two options to backup your gadgets and feeds at the bottom of the settings page. 

image

There’s an option to backup the iGoogle page on Google’s servers. While this may seem pointless, it’s useful to backup your page before adding gadgets that might create problems.

This is the Backup button.

The second option is to download an XML file that includes all the tabs, layouts and themes, the feeds, gadgets and their settings. The XML file can be imported in any iGoogle page, so this is a good way to migrate the page to a different Google account. You can also download the XML file to change the settings in a text editor and then upload the new version.

image

This is the Export button.

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April 15, 2008 8:56 pm

Google data center locations

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by Martin English    in Enterprise,Google,History

Pingdom (a paid service that, amongst other things, can alert you when your site is down) put together a map of Google data centers based on approximate information from the unofficial Google Data Center FAQ. From Pingdom :

If you include data centers that are under construction, Google has 19 locations in the US where they operate data centers, 12 in Europe, one in Russia, one in South America, and three in Asia. Not all of the locations are dedicated Google data centers, since they sometimes lease space in other companies’ data centers.

But as the unofficial FAQ disclaims in regards to the number of data centers, “Nobody knows for sure, and the company isn’t saying.”

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