Programs like Commercialisation Australia have a 2010 budget of $15m and a 2011 budget of $31.9m.

The total budget for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research in 2011 is $6.15b, (2002 budget was $3.04b).

http://www.innovation.gov.au/General/Corporate/Documents/Budget%202010-11/2010-11ScienceResearchandInnovationBudgetTables11May.pdf

It does have the downside that files have to meet a particular Sky Drive criteria that they can not be larger than 50MB. To get around this, have a look at SDExplorer tool (windows XP and later), which integrates Microsoft SkyDrive into Windows.

The two biggest differences between the free version and the Pro version (apart from the price) are:
* the Pro version lets you open directly files from the SDExplorer drive
* the Pro version does away with the SKyDrive limitation of 50MB per file.

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

I’ve just been reminded (via Hack Your Day) of the simplest, safest, way to mount an .iso image. The program, supplied by Microsoft, is only 23K program, and comes with a 9K sys file driver.

The one downside is that this file is not actively supported by Microsoft, meaning they are not developing it, and probably won’t accept any support requests for it. However, I’ve used it extensively on Windows XP (SP 3) and Daniel Pataki of Hack Your Day is using it on 32bit Windows 7 and it works perfectly for him.

First of all, download winxpvirtualcdcontrolpanel from the Microsoft servers. It is a self extracting zip file, so just execute it, and tell it to place the files in a folder. I stored them in a folder in my Program Files folder, as if it were a normal application.

To install the program and it’s driver:
1. Execute VCdControlTool.exe
2. Click “Driver control”
3. If the driver is in the same directory as VCdControlTool.exe, it will be found automatically. Otherwise click the “Install Driver” button is available, navigate to the %systemroot%\system32\drivers folder, select VCdRom.sys, and Open it, then click “Start”.
4. Click OK.

5. Click “Add Drive” to add a drive to the drive list. Ensure that the drive added is not a local drive. If it is, continue to click “Add Drive” until an unused drive letter is available.
6. Select an unused drive letter from the drive list and click “Mount”.
7. Navigate to the image file, select it, and click “OK”. It works OK with mapped network drives, as well.

You may now use the drive letter as if it were a local CD-ROM device. You can close the application as soon as the image has been mounted, but if you want to unmount the image, just restart the exe and click unmount, or stop the service in the device manager. That’s it, task done, no memory footprint, not bloatware, nothing, just a mounted disk, wonderful!

While the initial installation may seem more technical, it is quicker than Daemon Tools or Power Iso or something like that. Furthermore, the light weight means there’s much less impact on your system.

Thanks, Microsoft!

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.

When Word Press introduced one click upgrade for pluggins, it was like Christmas in July. But this time maybe on the actual Christmas or perhaps slightly earlier with the release of Word Press 2.9, we will now be able to upgrade multiple pluggins with one click from our WordPress Admin Panel.

Optimize/Repair Database Functionality

WordPress has added a new feature to the core which allows you to repair and optimize your database. In order to activate this function, you will need to add this line in your wp-config.php

define(‘WP_ALLOW_REPAIR’, true);

Once you have added it, you will now be able to run the script which is located at this URL:

http://www.yoursite.com/wp-admin/maint/repair.php

WordPress Recycle Bin / Trash

One useful thing most desktop operating systems have is the trash bin or recycle bin. WordPress has now added similar functionality; instead of permanently deleting posts, pages, and the comments, you can now trash it and then later on empty the trash once you are completely done with what you were doing. By default WordPress will empty the trash every 30 days, but you can change the time limit by simply entering the following code in your wp-config.php:

define( ‘EMPTY_TRASH_DAYS’, 10 );

Image Editor

The image editor is something that a lot of users were waiting for and it is included in this release. This editor will let you make simple changes such as cropping, rotating, scaling, etc.

Ability to add Post Thumbnails

You have probably seen many sites displaying posts on the homepage with a post thumbnail. Or many sites having the post thumbnail next to each post in their index. Before version 2.9, it was done through custom fields. In this release, you can simply add the thumbnail when writing the post and displaying it in the template is even easier.

In order for you to have this functionality available in the admin panel, you must have a theme that supports this function. However, a quick way to add it now is to visit your theme’s functions.php and add the following code:

add_theme_support( ‘post-thumbnails’ );

Once you choose the thumbnail, you display it on the template using the following code:

<?php the_post_thumbnail( ‘thumbnail’ ); ?>

Extend User Contact Info

The WordPress user profile page is quite old and many new networks have gain popularity such as twitter and facebook. Prior to version 2.9, it was really hard to add a custom field in the contact area, but thanks to Joost De Valk for his contribution, now this feature is available.

Simply open your functions.php and add the following function:

<?php
function my_new_contactmethods( $contactmethods ) {
// Add Twitter
$contactmethods['twitter'] = ‘Twitter’;
//add Facebook
$contactmethods['facebook'] = ‘Facebook’;

return $contactmethods;
}
add_filter(‘user_contactmethods’,’my_new_contactmethods’,10,1);

?>

This will add extra fields in your user profile pages.

You can display these on author profile page by using the normal $curauth variable or the_author_meta variable.

New Excerpt Filter

Up till WordPress 2.8.6, if you added the_excerpt code in the loop, it would display content with a 55 word limit and once the word limit was reached, it would add [...]. With this new ability, You can now specify a function and control both excerpt word count, and the more text. Implement this by opening your theme’s function.php file and add the following code:

// Changing excerpt length

function new_excerpt_length($length) {
return 60;
}
add_filter(‘excerpt_length’, ‘new_excerpt_length’);

// Changing excerpt more
function new_excerpt_more($more) {
return ‘…’;
}
add_filter(‘excerpt_more’, ‘new_excerpt_more’);

All thanks goes to Ramiy for suggesting this feature.

oEmbed making Embedding Easier

Thanks to ViperBond007 that this feature was added to the core of WordPress 2.9. It is a specification that allows media providers like Flickr, YouTube and others to provide data for consumer applications like WordPress about media.

There are many many more features that are being included in this version. To see a full list check out version 2.9 page in the codex.

If you want to create or verify MD5 or SHA-1 checksums on windows, have a look at Microsoft’s FCIV tool.

The File Checksum Integrity Verifier (FCIV) is a command-prompt utility that computes and verifies cryptographic hash values of files. FCIV can compute MD5 or SHA-1 cryptographic hash values. These values can be displayed on the screen or saved in an XML file database for later use and verification.

The FCIV utility has the following features:
* Supports MD5 or SHA1 hash algorithms (The default is MD5.)
* Can output hash values to the console or store the hash value and file name in an XML file
* Can recursively generate hash values for all files in a directory and in all subdirectories (for example, fciv.exe c:\ -r)
* Supplies an exception list to specify files or directories to hash
* Can store hash values for a file with or without the full path of the file

In 1978 the Port Kembla steelworks (then called Australian Iron and Steel or AIS, now owned by Bluescope Steel and supported by CSC Asustralia) received a water cooled IBM 3032 mainframe with 4M of memory, a replacement for it’s existing CDC machines. One of the first things written for the IBM was an application “development/runtime environment” called STANDFAST. It provided a standard way to use IMS for the application programmer and a standard “look and feel” for customers. All on-line IMS applications developed on the mainframe for AIS used STANDFAST.

According to the internal documentation the first programs were written in May 1979 or 30 years ago this month and they are still going strong.

BHP, then owner of the Steel Works, outsourced computer services to CSC in 2000. Later on, BHP divested itself of what became Bluescope Steel. However, support for the mainframes (and their applications) remained with CSC.

The upshot is a 30 year old application, still being supported by some of the original implementers.

They have a large array of useful WordPress tips and tricks, including another recent one about 10 awesome .htaccess hacks for WordPress.