Category: Technology

Web applications idea

There are a lot of talks on the web about Google + Sun collaborations and the possibility of having them building web office suite or something of the kind for the past few days.

I am not quite sure yet on how this is possible to be done (although I have no doubt that it can be done), but overall I definitely like the idea of having some kind of web applications (or service based stuff) around.

From my view it will ease the work of system administrators and provide users with more flexibility. I am not really thinking of hosting office documents somewhere on [let\’s say] Google, but I would like to see some kind of nice solutions on having all these services running somewhere on the LANs web server so that administrators do not need to change much on workstations :)

I know that this concept is know and can be done by many means (terminal servers is one way), but I think something new here won\’t do any harm :)

ReactOS

While reading some news on the web found out this nice project: ReactOS. It is an Open Source analog of M$ Windows, compatible with drivers and other stuff. I do not know if I will ever make some use of it since I run Linux everywhere where have a choice, but still – quite cool stuff and I really think that there are many people who can make tons of use from this project, especially if the project will be developed far further :)

P.S.: downloading the image of SVN release to check on VMWare – I am very curious :)

SE P910, Bluetooth and KDE

I guess you can see that I am trying to get most of my new phone, computers and technology, thats why I another step was bluetooth and ability to exchange stuff between my computers and my phone.

To be honest, I thought that connecting my phone to my workstation with bleutooth will be a bit more tricky – strangely I didn\’t need to do anything have this done.

What I have is a tiny D-Link Bluetooth adapter (got it for CY15), my phone and KDE Bluetooth package. The installation process is more than easy – apt-get kde-bluetooth and I have software, plug in my D-Link toy and KDE Bluetooth immediately gives a notice than adapter is found and working fine.

There are few ways to send files to the phone: either use kbtobexclient from the KDE Menu (I found it in the Internet submenu on my FC4 box) or use \”Actions -> Send with Bluetooth\” from the context menu while right-clicking on the file in Konqueror file manager.

When sending files from the phone to KDE, you can see a confirmation dialog pops up from KDE Bluetooth applet and an option to save, delete and view the files you are receiving. As simple as that.

Other stuff which I am trying to implement is syncronization between the phone and Kontact. I have tried syncing contacts with vCards, but there are some fields that do not correspond and I tought to write a small script to adjust the vCards so I can sync my stuff.

I found a couple of articles on the web about using SyncML but they are kinda complicated and require some additional movements that I am too lazy to do.

I\’ll see what I can do to simplify the process and if I will ever succeed – will post the solutio here. On the other hand, if someone knows an easy was of syncing contacts, calendar and todo with Kontact PIM – please let me know :)

Soft I chose for SE910

Finally, after some days of playing around my Sony-Ericsson p910 I found many useful applications to make a life much more easier.

First of all, Handy Day 2004 – it is a very cool \”summary of events\” apps for me. It pops up automatically whenever I open up a flip of my phone and shows we todays appointments, reminders, todos, new messages, time, date and system information (how much memory free/busy my phone has). In addition, this nice app has a week view, desktop and easy access to some stuff like application and control panel. Good thing about Handy Day is that you can customize many aspects like font size, colors/backgrounds, pane sizes and others.
The only thing I noted is that Handy Day 2005 did not feet me as good as 2004 (some usability problems) so I left the 2004 release.

Second thing that I found very useful (so useful that I can not use any alternative) is Decuma Alphabetic Handwriting recognition. It is a much more flexible (compared to the original) character recognition mechanism. I can even teach this one how to understand my ugly handwriting :)

Another nice app is TravelClock and I chose it for my specific need of having flexible alarm clocks. I need the same alarm on Mo/We/Fr and other one on Tu/Th. The standard alarm mechanism allows you to have up to 3 alarms only with no option to choose custom days in the week when you need the alarm. In addition to alarms TravelClock includes: world clock, moon phases, timers, stopwatch, sun rise/set, city time, time calc, internet time and whatever else you might need about time.

Next comes SMan – a kinda system tool with very good task manager, file manager, system information, autostart, network info, simple (tree) overview of todays tasks and appointments and some other stuff. Personally, I use this for task manager and autostart.

Yet another utility is FileMan which has a number of extensions like show system files/folders, show ROM devices, change attributes, many sorting options and other stuff.

QuickContact is another piece of software which I loved from the very beginning. It includes some critical features like many groups per one contact, customize which details are shown in FC and FO modes, customization of colors (including per odd/even rows), fullscreen mode in FC, faster scrolling (by half of the page or so instead of one line). Nice sorting which is easy to use with Jog is also there.

There are some other cool utilities that I put on my phone including Advanced Call Manager, Symb Zip, PowerTorch, irRemote, PowerMP3, Advanced English Dictionary and ColorPanic game which just drives me crazy, but I if I will start describing each one of them – it will take me ages to write and you – to read. I don\’t find all these tools to be as critical as ones I have already mentioned, by I thought it would be still a nice idea to list them so someone could possibly check them :)

In addition to my review of the software I would like to give a link to this amazing website with many stuff in (free registration is required). All (or at least almost all) the applications mentioned in this post can be found there.