E-Commerce Packages

I was asked a question about a decent e-commerce package for a small shop. As I haven't looked into those for a while, here is a great post that lists 10 such packages for a variety of platforms and frameworks. The list is a great reference for when you need an Open Source web site for e-commerce.

http://blog.webdistortion.com/2008/05/03/9-kick-ass-open-source-e-commerce-platforms-reviewed/

SIPDroid

SIPDroid FAQ explains quite a bit - http://code.google.com/p/sipdroid/wiki/FAQ

The useful part is the estimate of data use when calling through SIPDroid. Makes me wonder when are international calls all going to be routed through Internet.

WCF for jQuery

There is a great project at Codeplex that enables easy interaction between jQuery (or any other HTTP-based client) and WCF service. Support for Linq included.

Check out http://tomasz.janczuk.org/2010/10/wcf-support-for-jquery-on.html and wcf.codeplex.com

 

IIS Express

IIS Express (Beta) is available for download.

Have a look at Scott Gu's announcement - http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/06/28/introducing-iis-express.aspx

and then download from link at http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/868/iis-express-overview/

direct link - http://download.microsoft.com/download/D/5/5/D551345B-1E08-4578-B8D8-662AC6BE8277/iisexpress_x86.msi

Maps of the Internet

There are several great maps of the Internet today. They portray different statistics and show a lot. Let's see...

1. XKCD map of online communities (link), showing the size of online communities

2. World map of Facebook friend connections (link)

3. Web is Dead article (link), showing the breakdown of total US internet traffic from 1990 to 2010

Clear Gallery Thumbnails on Android

As I often transfer the photos from my (Android) phone to the PC, I delete them from the phone. However, the thumbnails remain in the Gallery application. They happen to be black, indicating there is no photo, but they are still there, which is a bit annoying. I tried some tips from forums to use Astro to clear thumbnail cache but that did not help.
To remove all the thumbnail data - go to Android directory on the phone (on Android 2.3.7 Cyanogen it is on SD Card in /mnt/sdcard/Android). Delete "com.cooliris.media" directory.
After this, you will notice the media manager rescanning the media and, when you open the Gallery, only the existing photos will have thumbnairs. Voila!

Troubles with Picasa People Albums and Folders

I wasted quite a few hours today figuring out how to restore some folders that have gone missing.
After installing Picasa, it did the face recognition and all. Then I moved some images from "Unnamed Person" to their respective owners' albums and deleted the Unnamed Person albums. Then I linked to Google contacts.
Somewhere during this process, some images have gone missing. Some folders were not shown anymore in the Folders list.
Funny, though, if I would search for these persons, the number of their photos in Picasa would come up right both in the search box and in the people organizer. But I could not get to them.
I tried adding files and folders manually, excluding and including them, changing folder monitoring preferences, turning on and off face recognition, and so on. None of it helped. Then I reinstalled and rescanned all the photos again and went through the ordeal of assigning the photos to people again.
However, the images from profiles would still not show in the albums nor in the folders list. Then I browsed through help forums and that was next to useless.

Finally, a tip from one of the forum questions, only somewhat related to what I was searching for, pointed me in the right direction (http://www.google.kg/support/forum/p/Picasa/thread?tid=5bd81d83e0134aed&hl=en). The move that did the magic was to turn on the "Small Pictures" in the View menu!
And there they were - all the people's profile images from pidgin directories. Phew!

Samsung Galaxy S Adventures

I've finally managed to settle everything down with the Samsung Galaxy S. After I won the item on Ebay for a good price in what was an exercise rather than a serious bid the surprises that followed were anything but expected. First I found that the device is next to useless without an internet connection that allows to link to a (Google) account. So first I tried to connect via Wi-Fi as that appeared as a supported way of accessing the Internet.

I had different experiences with Wi-Fi hardware. First I tried a USB Wi-Fi adapter but that did not support setting it up as an Access Point. Then I bought a wireless router and set that up as an AP. However, it took some time and a whole bunch of different software that did not work, to actually connect the device to the internet. For a while I used FreeProxy for connecting through the PC but most applications ignored the proxy settings, I guess, and simply did not connect to the sites on the Internet.

After suffering through different USB issues, I reinstalled Windows. Removed Windows 7 Ultimane N (wish it burns in Hell) with a regular Ultimate edition and *all* the problems were wiped away. All the devices were recognized correctly, all the software all of a sudden worked miraculously. Fantastic.

Then, after little fiddling around, it turns out that Internet Connection Sharing now worked, as well. So, disabling the proxy and a DHCP server and simply using Windows' ICS made it happen. The phone got an IP address and other settings and all the applications recognized that they now had a working Internet connection.

However, before figuring this out, I was lucky to also find an awesome prepaid plan with CrazyJohn's that I used for testing because it included data. So I used 3G connection for initial account setup and synchronization. Now I ported my number to this plan and am using it regularly. Now I'm getting used to being online almost all the time and having access to emails, maps, books, and other stuff wherever I am.

So, finally it is done. I have 3G network connection on the phone and can also connect through Wi-Fi at home. What a rollercoaster. Only two days ago none of the software worked (including Samsung Kies) so I could neither synchronize my data nor applications and the phone was pretty much a phone and an alarm clock. Now it is slowly becoming my main computing device. With 2x16GB of storage, there is more than enough to have all my important stuff with me at all times.

Outlook Duplicate Remover

Here's a neat tool for finding and removing duplicate items in Outlook. It does not delete duplicate items but moves them into a separate directory so they can be deleted manually after confirming the duplicates are valid.

http://www.vaita.com/ODIR.asp

Sync Outlook Contacts to Google

Here's a promising Open Source solution to synchronizing Outlook to Google contacts:

http://www.webgear.co.nz/Products/GOContactSync.aspx