Chris Cargile's Wordpress Blog

A tutorial here..the finished product here

You can try their latest at: http://office.live.com/, which essentially adds a lot of what has been existent on google docs for some four or so years now.  Multiple users can access a shared spreadsheet and make edits simultaneously.  In excel, simultaneous edits are controlled via last-edit-wins approach.  (For the non-technically familiar, this is different than concurrent version editting, as far as Word documents are concerned.)

In order to fully bring excel into the web-environment, additional features will need to be added, which are a matter of time, if the open-source community gets ahold of the source code, I’m sure.  Perhaps, there is already a project to make such a hosted application available on the internet from within the open-source community, and I’m just not aware of it!.. Let’s hope so, and in the meantime, I’m working to understand how typepad’s cometd instance worked, so I can determine whether I would be capable of setting up an instance of a spreadsheet editor similar to Microsoft/Google’s, myself.

For an alternative online, collaborative word-editor, head to pirate-pad.net, a publicly hosted version of the software created by EtherPad, which was acquired by google last year.

Isn’t it a pain dealing with message (inbox) quotas in your Outlook and seeing the “you can go ahead and auto-archive your messages by clicking here” prompt..?  Even worse, sometimes you can be waiting on something on which timely receipt and response to is critical to find that your lack of knowing that your quota has been reached causes the (e-) mis-communication.

For this reason remembering to back up your inbox, deleted items, etc or set-up autoarchive is critical, but often times you do not wish to archive your messages into the abyss ie, you still want to get to them in Outlook for searching, sorting, etc. but you need to move them.

The first way is setting up a folder that is not on the email server for archived messages and manually moving your inbox messages from the server folder (default inbox) to the archive folder (you set up).  A more convenient way in which the capabilities of your computer are fully utilized and your coworkers’ reliability of remembering to complete this action (particularly where the bottom line to the business is at stake) is needed to make the archiving process easier.  Provided that the tip (here) on using Macros in Outlook functions properly, we should be able to accomplish the archiving automatically through a script (great!!).

If the script doesn’t work, I will write back here, or appreciate your comments so I can work on getting this instruction fixed and a work-around going for all of us dependable office workers..

Code:

'This example uses inbox, but you can convert it.
Set myInbox = Application.GetNamespace("MAPI").GetDefaultFolder(olFolderInbox)
Set archFolder = Application.GetNamespace("MAPI").Folders(CurrentArchiveFolder)

For Each myItem In myInbox.Items
    If ShouldArchive(myItem) Then
        Debug.Print "Moving Item: " & myItem.Subject
        myItem.Move archFolder
    End If
Next myItem

Good luck!!

MoGO X54 Mouse/Presenter – this device is pretty cool. I found it when I was getting tired of using my scrollpad for work/reading on the go.  Everyone gets tired of the drawbacks of the portability-functionality tradeoff sometime, but Newton Peripherals decided to get even with their ultra-portable rechargeable device for said purpose – it’s stowable in the generally unused Express Card slot of your laptop.

Bottomline: I’ll be trying it out soon.The cost is about $50 and it has gotten good reviews from a lot of people on “google shopper”

RADAR and CALO meet google goggles..

no but seriously, if the google goggles tech doesn’t emerge, we’ve got the google QR code generation API to count on (as rivalling MS’ format) and which is already being considered for great uses in rural areas such as India!

Hey folks, you’ve been hearing about my explorations in applying technology/computers to solve problems if you’ve been around me since graduation from USC.  My feeling that many answers lie within the realm of technology has not changed, and in fact, has become stronger of late.  If you are debating the essence of this concept, consider that the first employer that took me on after graduation required me to sit in front of a computer 8 hours/day for 2 years — all of that time paid off for them because I did not stair at my monitor(s)  (need a better word here, “obliviously?”) – no, this was the start for me to understand what I could really do to solve this employer’s business problems.  That employer wisely realized the value in implementing business logic through computers in order to retain knowledge, recreate the building blocks of their marketing program, and restructure their organizational processes: Result?

KPS attracted additional clients, branded itself as a tech-saavy results-oriented strategically-minded contractor, and achieved the status set forth by its reputation to do such.  The opportunity cost was none: the workload was unmanageable without having hired additional help who could manipulate the software utilized in performing the data entry and contract administration tasks for the position.  The benefits of hiring somone with an affinity for technology are not esaily calculable because their company was positioned to take advantage of an unfilled market niche by having access to resources that would bolster their capabilities against the competitions’ for some time to come.

Case-in-point #2:  SAIC required competence w/ technology in a moderately different fashion as all IT components for Fortune 500 companies undergo considerable design/integration review and are subject to technical review delays before they can be implemented.  Nonetheless, in my >8 hours/day time there for a period of 1 year, I observed many briefings via the (2) monitors I had and all of them involved ways in which the company planned to be better positioned as a result of technology.

Bottomline: kids and teachers must learn the stuff and governments need to pick up on it.

As I’ve tried to continue my personal education, I’ve accepted responsibility for learning Java of which I may or may not “need” to know for contract administration, but I have undoubtedly realized gains by learning to better understand/communicate with the most integral player on my team (in business and socially), so far: the PC.

Java is essentially the interpreter that helps me get what I need to get done by putting my requirements in terms the computer can understand.  With Java, I can manage teams from all sorts of backgrounds (Linux, Windows, Mac, etc) and I can generate detailed reports of what each of my ‘workers’ is doing via its well-developed platform.

Further, Java is not one of the employees who will be taking their retirement pension soon.  If it were, I’d make a business decision to mitigate the time invested in learning the characteristics of that one employee to focus on the others who stood to make bigger contributions to the goals of the organization.  Rather, Java is the kid in the top of his class and Java has won many superlatives.

In addition to great communication skills, Java’s dependability (ie: can understand what it is doing consistently and is a consistent ‘performer’) and desire to help with so many projects make it a great addition on my personal team – the wisest I have made, so far, perhaps.

It stands to reason that the younger generations (literal semaphore) will benefit from so many novelties we were not privy to and that, if used wisely, they will be able to understand our good decisions and become more efficient by taking on the good.  With that in mind, it is believable that Java will be accepted in their circles as a keen role model to them and will probably influence them in bigger ways than imaginable at this time.

In the computer world which is occupying ever-growing portions of our worlds, Java is becoming ubiquitous.  As of this post, Java is fundamental to ASF which created the software which runs the website via which this post was accessed and can be commented on, etc.; Java communicates between the core hardware that runs your home machine and the software that runs on it; Java communicates to databases and enables secure access to local resources and resources known as stateless resource (ie: google); and Java can be used for most other things involving a computer, including Graphics, Scripting on a Remote or Local Machine, or creating entirely new programs/operating environments.

The web will continue to grow and invariably become more integrated at the classroom level and Java is at the heart.  Therefore, teaching Java to children from the start and can only help provide the necessary learning tool for them to become effective in their future goals.

For this reason, a software program called “alice,” written in Java was developed to teach children about, well, itself.  perhaps the most notable authority on all things computer science, education/ software engineering related (the Association for Computing Machinery) recognized efforts on this end by accepting for publication in their annual proceedings digest an abstract of an investigation into the benefits of deploying Alice at the classroom level and has featured several-such related studies in other ACM Digital Library resources.

Tools I’m tring..

For Windows XP
Dia (04/27/10) – UML tool (37.6MB) – comments: set-up went well..initial test-run fantastically helpful and evident that Dia is a viable, business-oriented application for (basic?) UML needs

..ermm, on home machine, linux (ubuntu 9.04 karmic), installing not as easy..got through ./configure to here. Simply, this would be my not understanding compiling in linux, it seems. Switching to synaptic worked fine for install, and program looks/functions on ubuntu identically to its sibling windows variant. SVG file works fine in firefox, so presumably the mechanics are similar enough for practical purposes, for my situation, at least.

two examples are here: svg made from Dia windows, svg made on ubuntu

If you want your own external solid state drive (SSD) for faster r/w access, faster start ups (assuming you set up the partitioner w/ the swap on your SSD) and less likelihood of data loss due to power interrupts, you might consider investing in SSD tech.

The first reasonably available external SDD I’ve found is aluratek’s (much cheaper than ioSafe’s, although at CES, there was more talk of the future of SSD.

Be sure to read up on the CES presentations to do some homework on this new tech before investing!

I could say more about xiph/theora but we all know that Flash is abominable. How can we get move people to move away from Flash/actionscript faster and towards Theora sooner?  One point that Carlo makes is that Theora is simply better quality rendering in the browser.  Based on his experiences, I trust his assertion..

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