Save Google Notebook!

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I am convinced that if enough GN users get online and actively protest the closure of Google Notebook they may rescind.  Stranger things have happened (7th Heavens 11th season).

So.  What do YOU have to do? (I’ve already done it…)

1. Comment on Google Notebooks blog.  As of now there are over 600 comments. Add your own.  I’ve learned something in life – numbers count in business.
2. Sign the online petition.  It can’t hurt.
3. Visit other blogs dedicated to bringing it back.  The least you'll do is arm yourself with info on where to go if Google doesn’t budge.
4. Blog, tweet, email about it!  Make some noise!
5. Keep using it! Just back it up, just in case…

ubernote and Google Notebook Downloader script – a perfect but sad combination

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I have been scouring the net to look for ways to get my Google Notebook data moved out of ìt to something else.

Let me make this perfectly clear – I don't want to do this. I love GN.  I use it every day, many times a day. My wife and I use it to research ideas, plans, trips.  wee even put our family Christmas wish list  there and invited the grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins t it so we were all on the same page…

Barring Google doing an about face and continuing to support GN, it is obvious that we need to move on.

As mentioned in a previous post, I have chosen ubernote, and now I was faced with the daunting task of getting all my various notes out of GN.  ubernote built

As I was doing some reading and found this entry on Digital Inspiration:

3. Download Google Notebooks in one go - If you have tons of notebooks in Google Notebook, you should look at this Grease Monkey script that adds a new "Export Notebooks" link on your Google Notebook page. You can click the link and download all your notebooks in either Atom (RSS) or HTML format.

Now, I have done this and I have a few things to say about this.

1. I had 67 notebooks!  And 450 notes! Woah! There were many notes I had forgotten about…
2. There is no easy process to download ALL notebooks into one atom file, or even bulk download all into individual files, and zip them together.
3. The ubernote importer only allows ONE atom file at a time! doing this with 67 files was tedious.  The whole process to install the script, figure out how to export all the notebooks and then import them all in took 1.5 hours!
4. ubernote is not Google Notebook.  sniff..  I thought it would import all my notebooks into their notebooks, but they don't seem to have the concepts of notebooks, but instead have singular notes.
5. their tags did not easily match my notebooks.  If they had I could probably live with it… However I now have 14 tags called ASP.NET with different single notes in each.

It will take me some time to adjust, but at least my GN notes are someplace else.

Someone needs to start working on the Ultimate Cloud Downloader/Syncer!

Moving to Ubernote – Google Notebook replacement

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Its a sad day when my friend Google Notepad gets kicked to the curb, like some unwanted china at a garage sale.

My wife and I have used GN daily, copying notes, getting our thoughts together, and clipping web pages that we’d like to share with each other or look at again in the future, but with some relevant context to remind us why we were there.

We loved the Addin for Firefox, and is the #1 thing I miss having primarily moved to Chrome.

Google wants you to move to Docs.  They just don’t work for me. I loved OneNote when I used a tablet.  I just like Notes.  I had never looked anywhere else because I loved the simplicity and the fact it was integrated with the same gmail account I use for everything else.

However, all is not lost as ubernote has come to the rescue with a Google Notebook Import Tool. that will allow all your GN notes to be migrated.

I am in the midst of doing this, and will post an update when I am complete.

Blackberry Weather app

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Thanks to BerryReview.com for this nugget.  A Java applet tgat displays the weather on your screen.

I am running it quite nicely on my Storm.

You can find the Weather App on the developers site at this link. OTA install is available at this link:weather.midlets.eu/dwn/. Just make sure to select the right Jar file for the size of your screen. The 320 version works like a charm on my Storm. Gergely recommends trying the 240 version if the 320 version does not work on your device.

Finally got my hands on a SocialScope Beta invite

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After trying now for a week, I finally snagged an invite to the new Blackberry uberTweet tool – SocialScope - thanks to Blackberry Cool’s efforts, and being in front of my RSS Reader at the right time.

So yet another tech toy, er, productivity suite for me to test out on my Blackberry Storm..

Stay tuned.

SocialScope Hands-on Impressions

– I wouldn’t download SocialScope yet if you’re a BlackBerry Storm user, as support isn’t really built in for it yet. If you must, then make sure to turn off Compatibility Mode.
– The amount of things I can do with my Twitter account via SocialScope is great - retweet, favorite, it’s all there. Facebook is a little more limited (I have to log in to Facebook to look at photos?), but I believe that is a testament to how much more open the Twitter API is. That being said, I love that you can add Facebook friends directly to your BlackBerry Address Book.
– Being able to ‘Tab out’ your favorite friends or followers is an incredible feature, and makes sure you don’t miss the important stuff.
– SocialScope users now have the ability to set their refresh rate. I don’t know what the ‘auto’ setting is, but the lowest is 5 minutes, which doesn’t seem low enough to me.
– Being able to customize what you receive notifications for is great. You can choose between Twitter replies, DM’s, or all messages (good luck!).
– Adding photos or links, even while not in SocialScope, is bonus. Great, great feature.

SocialScope Feature List

- SocialScope integrates your Twitter feed and Facebook updates into one application.
- A tabbed Interface so you never miss replies, direct messages or updates from specific contacts
- View all your social network status updates and picture updates in one place
- Address Book Integration allows you to save your contacts’ social network information and see there updates from the address book
- Support for standard BlackBerry shortcuts, r – reply, d – direct message, c – compose update, b – bottom, t – top, f – favorite
- Post updates directly from your Inbox
- Twitter search support with #topics highlighting throughout BlackBerry
- @username highlighting
- One click access to the “in reply to” messages
- BlackBerry spell checker support
- Tabbed Interface so you never miss replies, direct messages or updates from specific contacts
- A direct message interface that makes it easier to see conversations
- Post pictures via TwitPic from the camera or BlackBerry Media app
- URL Shrinking with bit.ly with the BlackBerry Browser integration
- NEW! Profile Notifications (Experimental) for each message type
- NEW! Refresh Rate Control (Experimental)
- NEW! ReTweet capability
- NEW! Added Follow/UnFollow
- NEW! Remembers posting preference

Circuit City closing and liquidating.. What about the Source?

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Now that Circuit City is shutting down in the US, what will happen to the Source by Circuit City?

Will it go through its 2nd rebranding in 3 years?

According to Foxnews.com

InterTAN Canada Ltd. ("InterTAN"), an indirect wholly-owned subsidiary of US-based Circuit City Stores, Inc. (NYSE: CC: undefined, undefined, undefined%), today confirmed that The Source by Circuit City stores across Canada remain open for business and are not included in the liquidation process announced earlier today by Circuit City in the US.

On November 10th, 2008, InterTAN sought and obtained creditor protection by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice under the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA). Since that time, the Company has been working with NM Rothschild & Sons Canada Limited to pursue a sale of the Canadian operations as a going concern and has been in active discussions with a number of interested bidders. InterTAN expects to receive formal proposals with respect to a going concern transaction on or before January 23rd, 2009. The Canadian sales process is separate and distinct from the sales process followed by Circuit City in the US.

InterTAN operates or licenses 765 neighbourhood electronics stores and dealer outlets across Canada under the trade name, The Source by Circuit City. All of these stores are fully staffed and open for business.

So I guess this means a reprieve for now, but they are still looking for a buyer.  My suggestion is to quickly spend any gift cards, and return anything now that they didn't want for Christmas.

New Bolt Browser for Blackberry blasts in

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I have had the privilege of trying out a new Java based browser on my Blackberry Storm.

Thanks to BlackBerry Cool blog, they were able to get some invites to the beta program of this new browser.

Bitstream is the company behind this new browser, and they have been a little bit taken aback by the popularity of their beta program.

As reported in Blackberry Cool:

To get your copy of the BOLT beta, you must head on over to their download page and use the following referral code: ‘berrycool’. Do this even if you had already sent a request previously.Bitstream has now automated the request process, meaning you should get an email with the download link much quicker now.

So far I find it somewhat awkward on my Storm, although the built in RSS Reader is REALLY Cool. I will be trying it out shortly on my wife’s Pearl.

Stormgrounds.com – An Awesome place for Blackberry Storm backgrounds and ringtones

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I discovered stormgrounds.com today quite by accident, and I must say I am impressed with the variety and quality of the backgrounds and ringtones this site has, amd the owner of the site is quick and responsive too…

Twitback.com – Create your own twitter background

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I have been looking and looking for a place to build my twitter background, and lo and behold, I found one!

Twitback is the place to go to get your own custom twitter background.  It loads your information, pics, links and puts it all together in one great package.

I found this at Twitdom which I found when I got a link from TechCrunch which was further linked from Microblink.

As you can see, I was following a long rabbit trail…

Windows 7 finished downloading

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After 5 hours, I finally have the Beta.  Now comes the fun of actually putting it on a few systems too kick the can…

Finally downloading Windows 7

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After waiting most of yesterday and last night for my “window” to download it, I am now in the process of being 1 of those 2.5 million people to jump at testing W7!

Hopefully later this week I will get the opportunity to test it.

UPDATE: Don't use Google Chrome to download it.  It doesn't seem to work.

30 Essential PDF Documents Every Designer Should Download

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I came across this post as I was looking for Twitter backgrounds. Suffice it to say, After getting lost on many rabbit trails, I found this...A collection of some of the best PDF files available on the internet written by the industries more prominent professionals.

read more | digg story

Trying to download Windows 7

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I think I like everyone else in the world is trying to download Windows 7. Where is it?  When will MS Nirvana arrive?

Drop box is a handy collaboration tool

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In our office  many times we work on projects collaboratively via the virtual office which means someone is in Ottawa, someone could be in Ashton, someone could be in Toronto.  For the longest time we have been emailing each other attachments of PDF files, documents etc.

In the web 2.0 age, this is ridiculous.  So we discovered dropbox.  And now we can save  our files like we normally do but instantly we have shared it across our different computers and can keep things in sync.  I like it. I like it a lot.

Teach your kid to code month

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I found this really cool blog post regarding teaching your Kids to code. It is December 2008, and it looks like there will be training involved in November.

Its aimed at kids 8-15.

I know this is a very good idea, and I am going to see if I can co-ordinate some code camps in the Ottawa and Carleton Place area for December. Who knows maybe we can even get some Christmas Vacation Camps going!

UMPY - A new Tablet is born

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I finally got down and bought the Asus R2H Ultra-Mobile PC from a retailer in Toronto. I checked hundreds of companies (OK, well, maybe tens of them) and even the ones who had it listed would not have it in stock for weeks. Until I found http://www.milestonepc.com They had it listed, and told me they could get it in stock that day. Well, I was in Ottawa that day, but I knew that I would be having a couple hour stopover in Toronto on my way to Regina, Saskatchewan. So I told them to make sure they had one for me.

I got on the earlier plane between Ottawa and Toronto so that I could make sure to completely cross town in order to be able to get back in time for my 4:30pm flight. Normally this takes about 1 hour to 1:30... Fortunately last Wed, it only took 25 mins.

So I bought it ($1070 +tax) and started setting it up at the airport, and while I was on the plane.
The most frustrating experience was when you first turn on the R2H the touchscreen or pen does not work and there is the Tablet keyboard in the middle of the screen. You need to manipulate the joystick mouse around to drag the kyeyboard away from what you are trying to enter on the screen , and then manipulate the joystick mouse to use the tablet keyboard. Took about 15 minutes to set all the settings.

But this thing is cool. It is sleek. When I saw the blog about unboxing the R2H, I was intrigued, but I am telling you that the experience of taking it out of the box was quite neat. The box is a collectors item!

One of the first things I did was hook up my T-3 machine (Toshiba R10 Tablet) and synced my documents using the USB EasySync cable. I have been wanting something like this for quite a while to work with the times I want to grab more files than fits on a flash key my other computers. The software auto-popped up on each computer that I had connected, and it was simple to figure out how to sync the directories. I really like this tool.

When I plugged the USB mouse in, the R2H forgot all about the touchscreen. Actually there have been several times where I rebooted and the touchscreen no longer worked. At one point I went into the Control panel -> Device Manager to see what was there, and I had re-enable the touchscreen, but there came a time where it seemed the driver just disappeared completely. Re-installing the Touch drivers seemed to fix that.

I have been searching everywhere for a foldable Bluetooth keyboard for the R2H , but the only one I found in Regina ( I am here for another week...) was an HP Ipaq one. It only works with PocketPC's... Sigh... I am currently typing this with a USB connected keyboard I am borrowing from my client.

The R2H is fast...enough... and the screen is sharp. The sound is incredible. I right now have a Motorolla HT820 Bluetooth Headset attached, listening to Aelsin Debison... Really crisp music. No white noise... I also hooked up a slimline DVD-RW DL disk to it, and watched some movies last night. Really good video and sound. I thought we'd have some delay and choopiness, but it seems to be good enough. Not as good as T-3, but quite tolerable.

Only 3 other things that drive me really crazy with the R2H.
1) Battery life sucks. 2h15min... I am getting a portable pad to extend it
2) It gets really hot. Hard to hold when it has been on and plugged in for a while.
3) The tablet TIP keyboard on screen seems to have some serious redraw issues. I click Shift, and then a key, and it correctly capitalizes the character onto the screen, however, the shift button stays highlighted. It doesnt continue to capitalize, however the keys on the TIP keypad still have capitals, until I click on them and they revert to the lower case characters. But if I hit SHift again, it doesnt work. I have to hit it twice to get it back to Shift mode. I dont know whether this is a table bug, or an R2H bug.

1 really cool thing I found out is I bought the R2H at the exact right time. If I had bought it a few days earlier, I wouldn't be eligible for the free Vista Upgrade. But alas, I bought it on Nov.1st and I am eligible.

And the last really cool thing is my wife now has one too, so we are going to be able to figure all kinds of neat things we can do with our UMPY's...

Stay tuned as I throw some pics on here!

Asus R2H UMPC seems realy really cool

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In my Gmail today, they pushed a webLink to me that just jumped out at me. I was looking at this on Friday and Saturday when I was writing my previous article on what kind of a tablet based PC I need for what I do.

It seems everyone
loves the Asus UMPC. The only 2 complaints we hear are: 1) All the preloaded stuff bogs things down quite a bit... (so remove it!) And 2) The battery life is 2h12m, or 3h20m with it in powersaving.

I am very fascinated by this model, and I think I will probably take the plunge this week. I will figure out how to tweak it and use better battery powered chargers etc..,

Stay tuned!

Pulling Origami - Searching for the right UMPC

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I have been vary fascinated by Tablet technology over the last 5 years. So much so that I was an early adopter 4 years ago with Acer's Travelmate C100 tablet. It was very small, very portable, but very slow. "Tabby" went everywhere with me, and I loved the fact it was portable. Between Tabby, Microsoft OneNote and Frankin-Covey's TabletPlanner, I was in Organized Guy's Heaven. Then I lost my contracts, needed to feed my family, so I sold Tabby to some guy off the internet.

A year later I decided to go with Acer's Travelmate C310 Tablet. It was fast, powerful, upgradeable, but big. It was a good laptop, and it had tablet functionality. So "Tabitha" let me do some powerfhouse programming, detailed schematic modeling, and kept my schedule in check. But I had to sell her when I lost my job. It was pay mortgage, or keep Tabitha. Again, my family won out.

Not enter 2005. I had several big contracts on the go, and again I was struggling with needing to be mobile, and keep all my notes in sync. So my wife and I agreed. It is time to get a Tablet again. So I did a lot of research. I needed a really good laptop and a really good tablet. I need to be able to demonstrate enterprise server software, develop .Net applications as well as number crunch spreadsheets. I needed lots of diskpace and good video. I needed a tablet that I could take notes when I was in meetings with customers. And I did not want to spend an arm a leg, and my first born son. So I chose after great deliberation, the Toshiba R10. I love it. It is a wonderful laptop and a great tablet. And so "T-3" was born. I am using it currently to write this entry.

But after all this time, I have discovered something. These Tablet/laptop hybrids are very big and bulky. You have to turn them on fully to get to write your quick scribly notes. Checking your calendar is awkward unless you have the laptop on. I still have my Cellphones (I use only Microsoft Windows Mobile Technology phones - I could write a whole other article on my Smartphone/PDAPhone experiences) but they are only good for taking quick short notes, reading emails on the go, and making phone calls. Cellphones are not computers, even though they have some features.

So I need something else. I look at what I have turned to just recently. I now have 2 books I carry with me wherever I go: A writing pad to stire all my notes, thoughts, todos, and I have a Week-at-a Glance Agenda that has all my appointments and this weeks todos. Why do I have them? Well they are small (8" x 5") and fit in any thing I need to take with me. They are quick to turn on, and they let me write anything anywhere I want. But I am still using yet another thing that is not c`onnected to the wired/wireless world I live in. I use GMail, Google Calendar, spreadsheets and docs and Notebook for flagging, collaborating all my thinkstuff. So I have to replicate this on paper. Or vice versa. (I have the same complaint about the Microsoft based PDAPhones.... Their broswers suck so Google's neat AJAX features nver work properly. I still to this day cannot sync my Gcal to my UTStarcomm 6700)

So what do I need? I need something that meets the following criteria:

• Small enough to fit in my hands (8"x 5")
• Needs to be powerful enough to be a real computer - 1Ghz
• Needs to have enough hard drive space to hold a reasonable set of documents
• needs to be a portable multimedia device - MP3's etc...
• Needs to be quick to turn on and get to
• Needs to have really great Wireless networking so that I can get all my Google based knowledgeware
• Needs to be expandable to meet the needs of other technologies as they come down the road.

So we come up to the Ultra-Mobile PC's (UMPC). These devices have been talked about for over a year. I remmber the whole lead up to the origami launch... But a year has gone by, and there has been little more than a fair whisper of the manufactures delivering these things.
Especially in Canada. It is hard to find sources for Tablet PC's forget UMPC's!

But now I hear word that Asus is finally delivering on their R2H and it will be available in Canada for under $1000. It does everything I want, although battery life isn't that great. It even has a camera built in, GPS built in. Will I be able to upgrade it? Put more memory, larger harddrive etc? The release annoucnement and many of the reviews are making me salivate. But can I justify it?

We'll see. And if I do get it, you will see a review for it here soon.

Neat Tool: The Mobile Secretary

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Windows Mobile Team Blog : The Mobile Secretary
This seems to be an interesting idea to allow people to get more details about why you cannot answer them than a voicemail message.

It makes the missed call interactive.
I plan to install it and write a review on it in the next few days.

IBM Rational Clearcase 7.0 Released!

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Just as I suspected, IBM Rational released their newest version of their Flagship products ClearCase and ClearQuest. I am trying to get my hands on the release so that I can update my training materials for my fall session.

Among the changes that have been announced are the following:

• IBM Rational ClearQuest® is extended to enable tracking of when a build starts and ends, and can maintain a solid record of other status information. It can automatically track each milestone as a release progresses through the build cycles, test harnesses, and established approval gates before deployment into production.
  
• The records for build and deployment can be associated with each other, and with other development artifacts such as requirements, code changes, test cases and test results, enabling traceability across the full lifecycle.
  
• With the integration of IBM Rational Build Forge®, detailed build information can be automatically created and updated, allowing for detailed audit records and extended traceability.
  
• 
  IBM Rational ClearCase® and IBM Rational ClearQuest can also be integrated with IBM Tivoli® Provisioning Manager. This enables deployment of approved build files directly from the source code repository into a variety of test environments, and into production.
  
• Delivers software configuration management of life cycle assets. With this release, it provides automated release management through an integration with IBM Rational ClearQuest and IBM Tivoli Provisioning Manager.
  
• Java™-build auditing with ANT extends build auditing to Java developers and enhances traceability.
  
• Enhanced WAN access and large file support improve development flexibility
  

With Full UCM with ClearQuest support in the ClearCase Remote Client, and the Java ant build auditing, I think that ClearCase 7 will take us to the next level in Configuration Management. I look forward to assisting my clients with the migration, and finally answering the questions of “how can we use ClearCase to do remote and distributed development?”