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Add Twitter gadget on Gmail

admin — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 11:30:28 +0000

Gmail has been my primary email account because of its superb functionality. All my email accounts have been forwarded into one single gmail account which make it very easy for me to check my email. Now I can even add Twitter gadget into Gmail.

First we need to enable ‘Add my gadget by URL’ by go into ‘Lab’ function
Then we can go to ‘Settings’ > ‘Gadgets’ and put this URL into the textbox ‘http://www.twittergadget.com/gadget_gmail.xml’

Now we can login to the Twitter and enjoy tweeting in Gmail.

Source : http://twittergadget.com/

Legitimate unlock 3G iPhone in Australia

admin — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 12:17:47 +0000

I have been waiting for Dev-Team to release software to unlock 3G iPhone for a few months, but now I can’t wait any longer. Therefore, I decide to call Telstra to unlock my iPhone since it’s very annoying to wait for Dev-Team to release unlocking software every iPhone firmware update. The process is much easier than I though and worth $150 I spent. Here is a procedure:

Call 1800 782 489
The operator will redirect us to the automatic credit card processing to pay $150
After we paid, the operator will ask the IMEI number of your iPhone (Setting>General>About) to unlock it.
Done, the process will take at most 72 hours so I reckon we should check every 12 hours. (in my case it took 24 hours)

How to check? (Restore)

Change SIM card to the one that we want to use with unlocked iPhone.
Connect to iTunes, press home+power button for 10 seconds then release power button while holding home button
iTunes will ask to restore iPhone, proceed with restore process.
If your iPhone is unlocked, iTunes will activate you iPhone to the new service. Otherwise, please keep trying.

So my guess is, iTunes compares our iPhone IMEI number to Apple data for unlocking purpose. If your IMEI is not locked with specific provider, you’re free to use iPhone with any provider.

Upgrade harddrive for Macbook Pro

admin — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 11:37:39 +0000

After Western Digital released 500GB harddrive for notebook, I’ve been waiting for months until price is getting lower. Now I think the price is right, so it’s time for me to upgrade my Macbook Pro. Upgrading harddrive is more difficult than I though, since Apple did hide the harddrive too deep (unlike the new uni-body Macbook lines). Therefore, it requires a little surgery. However, the harder part is the software bit. Here is what I did:

I perform the last time machine back up so I can restore everything using only time machine image.
I did created a bootcamp image using DiskUtility so I can bringback Windows with all programs installed.
Now it’s time to disassembling the parts.
Remove the battery and unscrew the ram cover.

After removed ram cover, unscrew 4 more screws

Now we have to unscrew all 3 sides of it. (except the front)

Now we can lift up the keyboard, but be careful because there is a ribbon attached between keyboard and logic board. We have to unhook that ribbon first.
After we remove keyboard, the harddrive will clearly be seen.

There is one ribbon on top of the harddrive we have to gently lift it up.

Now we can swap the drives

Both drives are made in Thailand (Why I have to buy it here????)

Done, now we can put it back together by reverse all steps.
Boot it up and insert the OSX installed Disk in.
Restart again now hold C key so it will boot using DVD drive.
Go to DiskUtility to format the drive first.
And then use Time Machine to restore everything back to the state before upgrading.
It took me 4 hours for Timemachine restoring.
The bootcamp part is a little bit tricky.
After OSX have been restored, I can use Bootcamp Assistant to make a partition for Windows (This time I give 50GB for Bootcamp).
Insert Windows XP installer disc for the installation.
Format Bootcamp into NTFS when Windows installer ask to install.
Now when Windows finish copy all files, SHUTDOWN Windows immediately.
Boot in OSX and use DiskUtility to restore Bootcamp image back. This will save a lot of time installing all programs for Windows again.
Done now I’m so happy with my powerful Macbook Pro with 4GB ram and 500GB harddrive ^_^

Keynote presentation with iPhone

admin — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 14:49:01 +0000

Today I have a keynote presentation for my class but I couldn’t find my Apple Remote, so I think I can use iPhone to control my keynote wirelessly. I did purchased a $1.99 program called “Pointer”, a REMOTE FOR POWERPOINT AND KEYNOTE from iTunes [The developer link] and it worths every penny.

This program did more than just forward the slides. It consists of pointer, timer and presenter note. First thing to do is to install PointerServer (download from developer site mentioned above) on Mac machine, so iPhone can be able to communicate with Mac.

After launching the pointer on iPhone, it will show the selected Mac (it will not show if PonterServer is not installed). The presentation page shows up once I click on the selected machine. The presentation page consists of Previous, Next button so I can forward/reverse the slides. I can also change the pointer icon or the mode from pointer to cursor. The presentation page also include the presentation note which makes it very easy for me to follow the item, I want to talk about. In addition, the timer on this page is very helpful to control my presentation time.

The pointer can be move by dragging on tilting the iPhone. For me, I think it’s easier to just drag my finger on the iPhone screen to control the pointer. Overall, the software is a must have software for good presentation. Nevertheless, it comes with a drawback, now it works on Keynote 08 and PowerPoint 2004 on Mac OSX Leopard only. I guess the next version will have more features.

PS. The slide image will display on the pointer 1.1 on iPhone.

Problem with partitioning Bootcamp

admin — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 12:50:56 +0000

I was trying to use a program on Windows for my GIS project but it seems to me that the memory wouldn’t allocate well enough on virtual machine. So I have to try on the bootcamp instead. This was when I faced another problem!!! Bootcamp assistant couldn’t partition my harddrive. Here was the error that I’ve got.

The disk cannot be partitioned because some files cannot be moved. Back up the disk and use Disk Utility to format it as a single Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume. Restore your information to the disk and try using Boot Camp Assistant again.

This is very annoying since I don’t want to spend a whole day installing everything all over again. Here are some possible fixes:

Use iDefrag to defrag your harddrive (this works for many people)
Delete big file on your system (Bigger than 1 GB)

However, none of those work for me (Don’t know why it works for some people). Here is what I did

Backup everything with Time Machine to external HD
Boot with OSX DVD (press C while rebooting)
Go into Disk Utilities and then format a whole disk
Go into Timemacine and restore to previous Timemachine backup
After restoring, now I can be able to partition using Bootcamp assistant again

Tagging, new approach of organizing

admin — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 14:31:00 +0000

I think it’s time for me to start dumping an old traditional way of organizing my files using folder structure. Instead of categorizing my files in to sub-folder with label name corresponded to the files, I’m now much happier with a new way of organizing, using ‘Tag’.

Tagging gains rapid popularity over the past few years, after several major applications now support tagging system. Take Wordpress for example, the ‘Tags’ is making ‘Categories’ fading away.

Why tagging make my life easier?

spotlight comment

I still remembered how painful it was to find a single file from heaps of folders categorized in another folder, even though the spotlight might reduce the time a bit. Putting tag in ’spotlight comment’ is a good start. At the moment, I’m putting tag on everything on my Mac. If I want something, I just type keyword that come to my mind and spotlight will list everything that related to that keyword.

In addition, I can created ’smart folder’, and tell my smart folder to put anything relevant to the specific tag. For example, I can create a smart folder called ‘@study’ and tell it to put every file that tagged with ’study’ in spotlight comment field.

smart folder

Right now, I’m so happy with my file system with benefit from third-party software named ‘Leap‘. The tagging system totally replaced my old way of hierarchy file and folder.

Leap software

Happy tagging ^_^

My computer timeline

admin — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 12:43:22 +0000

Computer timeline

I am having an idea to keep record of some stuffs that going through my life. I think it’s gonna be cool to look back after a few years. The first thing coming to my mind is “my computer”. Basically, I have changed my computer every few years, however I just found out after I plot a timeline that sometimes I changed my computer every year.

I found a very nice timeline web application at http://mnemograph.com

and my computer timeline is at http://mnemograph.com/app/viewer.php?uid=line_0c27341ae2b6b5fa733cec1a7ef1475d

Mac QuickPwn on iPhone 3G

admin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 05:57:56 +0000

Yahoo!! finally I got the Installer back on my iPhone 3G. After I bought iPhone 3G a month ago, I tried to jailbreak many times using Pwnage tool. The process went well, I can jailbreak my 3G but I can’t get signal back. I guess Pwnage tool needs iTunes to restore firmware back on it and iTunes can’t bypass the activation process. That’s why I loss the signal from Telstra.

However, after QuickPwn launched Mac version yesterday, I tried again. This time it works beautifully because QuickPwn doesn’t require iTunes to restore firmware back on iPhone. The whole process took less than 10 minutes, so it definitely worths trying.

Download Mac QuickPwn from torrent

Leopard Mail unexpect quit

admin — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 11:47:36 +0000

Today my Leopard Mail quits unexpectedly, so I can’t even start my mail. I don’t think I did something to Mail App at all, it just happened to quit. I start to think may be this is something that MobileMe and Google Mail have something todo with it since I have only these two settings in my Mail App. Thus, I have to start all over by delete com.apple.mail.plist from ~/Library/Preference and start Mail App again. However, I have to setup all the account all over again.

Install Geoserver-Tomcat on Leopard

admin — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 13:22:53 +0000

My next project is installing Geoserver on my Mac OS X (Leopard). First thing I have to do is to install Tomcat on Leopard. There are heaps of instructions on the net but it’s quite complicate. I though Leopard already came with Apache built in, thus should be easy to just add Tomcat on to it. I guess, I was wrong. Tomcat set up is more complicate than I thought. It requires lots of Terminal commands and environment setup.

Nevertheless, I’m lucky enough to find the easiest way to install Tomcat just one click from NetBeans. I download the OSX NetBeans pack which already have Apache Tomcat 6.0.16 bundle with it. This is the easiest way to install Apache Tomcat on your Mac, trust me. After Tomcat installed, I can check if server is running, by go to http://localhost:8084

Next and last step is Geoserver installation. I did followed the instruction on Geoserver website and it works just fine. Here is what I did

1. Download the GeoServer-x.x.x-bin.zip version from the download page on the GeoServer home page
2. unzip to the directory of your choice
3. Open up a terminal and go to the unzipped ‘geoserver’ directory on the command line.
4. Configure your Java environment, on recent versions of Mac OS X this is done by typing

export JAVA_HOME=/Library/Java/Home

5. run bin/startup.sh
6. Go to http://localhost:8080/geoserver to configure your server
Now you can enjoy simple Mapserver on my Mac. It took me two days to find the way to do it but 15 minutes for installation both of applications.

Cheers