Blog - news, ideas and thoughts from Chandesh Parekh

Boost a WiFi signal using cardboard and foil

mik@cynergise.com (Chandesh Parekh) — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 07:59:09 +0000

For the last few days I've had huge drop in my wifi signal at home, so much so that my desktop couldn't see the router at all! The router definitely needs checking but in the interim I fashioned a booster in about 3 minutes using a piece of cardboard and some aluminium packing foil and I was back browsing at almost normal speed.

To get a better idea of how to do this in a bit more of a professional way check out this video...

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Google acquires reCaptcha

mik@cynergise.com (Chandesh Parekh) — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 06:56:24 +0000

If you use online forms it's likely you've used a 'captcha' (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) system that prevents a computer script from using the form to send out spam.

Google has acquired reCaptcha, the captcha system that not only prevents spam but at the same time uses the text you type as the digital substitute for that word - basically the words you see as an image have been scanned from books that are being converted to a digital format however some words cannot be recognised effectively by OCR (optical character recognition) and so the words you type are substituted in. Make sense? No? Ok, maybe the short video below explains it better...

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Capitalism: A Love Story - Michael Moore's latest movie

mik@cynergise.com (Chandesh Parekh) — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 16:17:26 +0000

Michael Moore, the film director every Republican and corporate fat-cat hates, is back this year with "Capitalism: A Love Story" - check out the preview below as well as the link to the article about the movie on Time.com

Prototyping using Pencil and Firefox

mik@cynergise.com (Chandesh Parekh) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 08:04:04 +0000

Prototyping is the method by which a designer/developer mocks up pages/screens for a web site or some piece of software, to help the design and development team visualize the product. Sketching out on a piece of paper is generally best as at this stage of development there are likely to be many changes and sketching on paper is quick and cheap.

However, if you need to create sketches that are a little more professional, e.g. for a presentation to the Board, then it helps to use a tool like Pencil, a plugin for Firefox, which allows you to build a prototype using actual screen elements e.g. buttons, text fields etc. Using it is dead simple and very quick - just drag and drop elements onto a canvas and edit the properties to suit. I made the one on the right in under a minute.

Get Pencil for Firefox here

Inspiration for logo design

mik@cynergise.com (Chandesh Parekh) — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 17:00:59 +0000

Designing a new logo, or updating a current one, can be difficult and it always helps to get a little inspiration by checking out the work of others; Logopond has a gallery of over 2,500 logos - enough inspiration to help anyone get over their creative block!

This logo here and this one are two of my favorites...

LG watchphone on Orange next week

mik@cynergise.com (Chandesh Parekh) — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Star Trek fans everywhere will rejoice at the news that the LG watchphone (LG-GD910) comes to Orange next week at £500 on pay-as-you-go, half that of what the pricing was thought it might be.

Check out the LG GD910 here...

Booklet 3G Netbook from Nokia

mik@cynergise.com (Chandesh Parekh) — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Nokia is set to expand its portfolio by launching a Windows netbook named the Booklet 3G, which includes 3G connectivity and integrated GPS.

Check out the story on v3.co.uk...

Ruby and Rails extension for Dreamweaver

mik@cynergise.com (Chandesh Parekh) — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000

If Dreamweaver is your IDE of choice for web development and you're working on Ruby or Rails projects then the RubyWeaver extension is for you.

Here are some of the features of the extension, taken from the RubyWeaver site

Inserts a “Rails” object with tools to automatically insert VTL code into your document (appears in “Insert” toolbar in MX 2004 and up).
Adds .rb, .rhtml, .erb, .rxml, .rjs, .yml, and .sql extensions in Dreamweaver and associates those files with Dreamweaver for editing.
Adds Rails RHTML, Rails ERB, Ruby, YML, and SQL as a new document types in Dreamweaver. Also adds default pages which will open as the new document when these types are selected.
Supports color coding, tag hints, etc.

The extension works with versions MX through to CS4. Download the extension here...

HTC Hero Android phone review

mik@cynergise.com (Chandesh Parekh) — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000

The HTC Hero smartphone running Google's Android OS is looking really good in this review on The Register's Hardware web site, getting a rating of 80%.

Check it out the review here

and the official HTC Hero site here

Send snail-mail using Snailmailr

mik@cynergise.com (Chandesh Parekh) — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000

It's interesting how things come full circle. When email was introduced some 20 years ago it was thought 'snail mail' would be phased out but it seems the very technology that could make snail-mail extinct is giving it a new breath of life.

Snailmailr is a simple service which prints out a letter and mails it on your behalf for $1!

Check it out here...