Soocial, Sync Contacts Between Devices
Soocial is a new startup that claims to be a hassle-free solution to contacts. It’s job is to sync all your contacts between your phone and your computers, as well as other services such as Highrise by 37signals and GMail. They claim to be in private beta, but I call it more of a staggered public beta. You will basically have to wait about an hour before they let you in. The first thing to notice is the application is just stunningly beautiful; way better than it’s competitor Plaxo. It is also pretty easy to use, you won’t have a problem figuring it all out. Here is their introduction video (warning, it is very silly).
Now let’s talk about what they offer. They will sync contacts from your Mac’s Address Book, Outlook, GMail, your phones, and Highrise. I started off by syncing my GMail. The only problem I noticed is that it took a few hours to sync my GMail. They offered to send me a backup by email before they touched it, and as promised, I got a vCard file of my GMail contacts before Soocial touched it, excellent! Now, something I noticed while adding a device is that you can overwrite the service and use Soocial. That was great! I have two GMail accounts and one is a mess, while the other is the one I organized. The problem is that my main account was the messy one. So I synced up my secondary account, and then used that to overwrite my main account. Now I have a fresh and clean contacts list on my GMail.
The only thing that I noticed Soocial lacked was over-the-air syncing for mobile phones. I have an iPhone and I don’t like having to connect it to sync it. It may be my laziness, or the fact that I don’t get on my home computer too often. Anyways, what I ended up doing was using Nuevasync. Nuevasync offers you over-the-air syncing for iPhone and Windows Mobile with your Google contacts, calendar, and mail. I don’t need mail, but the other two were a great feature. You set it up as an Exchange server on your phone.
So overall Soocial is a great service. They still have a bit of work ahead of them, but the functionality they provide is great. In this day, it is crucial to have a platform independent sync solution. I am excited to be using them.
Quicksilver Growl Notifications in Leopard
I have gone months without the ability to use Growl notifications from Quicksilver. Every time I tried to install the Growl Notifications plug-in, nothing happened. I would check the Growl Preferences, and Quicksilver would not show up. Looking online, I found the Growl plug-in documentation for Quicksilver, which lead me in the complete wrong path. I felt stupid when I found out how simple it was!
Select Growl as the Quicksilver Notification Handler
To use Growl notifications from Quicksilver.
- Simply install the Growl plug-in
- then under Preferences, select Handlers
- change the Notifications line to use Growl and you’re set!
If only this documentation was online! I feel pretty dumb about not seeing this, but searching online gave me no answers, so I decided to post it, both as a future reminder to myself, and to help anyone that is stuck like I was.
Find Last Day of Month in PHP
Using PHP’s date functions it becomes pretty simple to find such a thing as the last day of the month. Here is a quick snippet on an easy and short way of doing it. I’m sure there is always other methods, this is just what I came up with.
date('d', mktime(0, 0, -1, date('m'), 1, date('Y')));
This snippet uses the current month, but you can always modify the parameters of mktime to use a different month/year. Feel free to comment with other solutions if you would like.
The Recycle Bin in Vista
I have never been very fond of the Recycle Bin icon. In fact, I am very annoyed by it. It clutters my desktop, when I try to keep it clean. I am not saying that I am opposed to having a recycle bin. It comes in handy in a lot of cases, unless you get into the habit of always using Shift+Delete, but that is beyond the point. Vista actually makes it extremely easy to get rid of it! No, you can’t go the “normal” route to get rid of it like you can with the other standard icons such as My Computer. Yet, you don’t have to run registry scripts like on previous of Windows. All you do is, …. Right click on it and hit delete! Yeah, amazing.
Update: Actually, Recycle Bin is now displayed under Desktop Icon settings.
GNOME Terminal’s Shorcuts For Keyboard Happy Users
I have to admit, I’m pretty keyboard happy. I detest having to go back to the mouse to do something as simple as copy, paste, or create a new tab. It’s really tedious to have to right click to copy or paste, or even open a new terminal. So I’ve taken the time to find out how to do these simple tasks in GNOME’s Terminal (gnome-terminal). Here is a list of a few common tasks and their shortcuts.
- Copy -
Ctrl+Shift+C - Paste -
Ctrl+Shfit+V - New Tab -
Ctrl+Shift+T - Move to Next Tab -
Ctrl+Page Down - Move to Previous Tab -
Ctrl+Page Up
That’s all, so next time, remememer the shortcuts and skip the mouse!
TextMate’s Sunburst (dark theme) for Eclipse
I’ve gotten tired of going back and forth from TextMate to Eclipse. I love Eclipse, but honestly, TextMate is much more attractive. I spent a few minutes today and tried to mimic TextMate’s Sunburst theme as closely as I could in Eclipse.
Before you import the theme, be sure to backup your current preferences in case you dislike the dark theme or want to go back.
To backup your current preferences:
- In Eclipse, select File > Export
- Under General, select Preferences, then hit Next
- Select the location to save it to, and hit Finish
Now to load the theme, first download the .epf (Eclipse Preferences File) at the end of this post, then:
- In Eclipse, select File > Import
- Under General, select Preferences, then hit Next
- Browse the file you downloaded, and hit Finish
- Quickly go through and check your Workspace and other path’s are correct, as the Preferences file tends to override those
Feel free to leave any input, and if you have any variation of similar themes feel free to send them to me. I would love to try them out.
- Download the Sunburst Theme for Eclipse: sunburst.epf (112 KB)
Welcome to the 4th Generation
Sprint has kicked off the 4G network today in Baltimore. The WiMax network, as it is called, is developed by Samsung, and will only be delivered through Sprint.
A few great things about the new network:
- 2-4 Mbps
- No long-term contracts
- $50/mo for 2 WiMax devices, much better than the current average of $60/mo for a 3G device
- Home and on-the-go services
Google Will Fix Chrome’s EULA
After the wildfire that went about between yesterday and today regarding Chrome and the EULA agreement, there is word that they will fix it. Google says that they used their generic EULA that they use in every service (makes sense) and will be updating it. They do not wish to have control over all data Chrome sees (maybe only some).
Read the full article over at Ars Techinca »
Ubiquity: Mozilla Says ‘Launch It!’ And I Say ‘Yeah!’
A launcher in Firefox? Think QuickSilver or Launchy. I would have never thought of something like this! Well, I had tried to use the address bar to support a lighter version of this feature but not anymore. Ubiquity is plain awesome.
Continue to the Ubiquity tutorial at Mozilla Labs »
Google Chows Down Again, Bye OpenX?
Google has now managed to move its overweight self over OpenX’s market, providing custom ad campaigns through AdSense.