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Android hacked to run on x86

2009-07-15T10:51:00.000-04:00

I foresee this being my weekend project http://androidcommunity.com/android-hacked-to-run-on-x86-20090714/

Wordpress Plugin: Displaying your Google Reader RSS subscriptions

2009-06-02T11:07:00.005-04:00

I've been meaning to write this code for a while, and I really wanted to take a stab at writing a wordpress plugin so here it goes.

The following takes in Google user credentials, and allows the user to display what RSS feeds they subscribe to on their wordpress blog

Example: The RSS that I read
Update: This plugin is now hosted by wordpress. click here


/*
Plugin Name: Google Reader Subscription List
Version: 1
Author: Timothy Broder
Description: Lists a users subscribed Google Reader feeds
*/

/*  Copyright 2009  Timothy Broder (email : timothy.broder@gmail.com)

    This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
    it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
    the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
    (at your option) any later version.

    This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
    but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
    GNU General Public License for more details.

    You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
    along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
    Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA  02110-1301  USA
*/


if (!class_exists('GoogleReaderSubList')) { 
 class GoogleReaderSubList {
  
  var $show_list       = 'show-google-reader-sub-list';  //the hook in a page
  var $login          = '';
  var $pass          = '';
  var $source         = 'wordpress-google-reader-sub-list-';  //the source the api sees when logging into Google
  var $service         = 'reader';   
  var $login_url        = 'https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLoginAuth?service=mail'; //URL to login to google
  var $subscription_list_url  = 'http://www.google.com/reader/api/0/subscription/list'; //URL that holds a users subscriptions
  
  function GoogleReaderSubList() {
   $options    = $this->get_admin_options();
   $this->login  = $options['google_login'];
   $this->pass  = $options['google_pass'];

   $this->source = $this->source . $this->login;
  }
    
  function show_sub_list() {
   $stop = false;
   if ($this->login == '' || $this->login == null) {
    echo 'Google login not set
';
    $stop = true;
   }
   if ($this->pass == '' || $this->pass == null) {
    echo 'Google password not set
';
    $stop = true;
   }
   
   //check to see if the zend plugin has been installed and activated
   //http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/zend-framework/
   if (!(defined('WP_ZEND_FRAMEWORK') && WP_ZEND_FRAMEWORK)) {
    echo 'The Zend Framework Plugin is not active.  Please install and activate it.';
    $stop = true;
   }
   if ($stop) {
    return;
   }
      
   $client = new Zend_Http_Client($this->login_url);
   
   //connect, authenticate, and handshake with Google
   $client->setCookieJar()
    ->setMethod(Zend_Http_Client::POST)
    ->setParameterPost(array(
     'continue'             => $this->subscription_list_url,
     'service'              => 'reader',
     'niu'                  => 1,
     'hl'                   => 'en',
     'Email'              => $this->login,
     'Passwd'               => $this->pass,
     'PersistentCookie'     => 'yes',
     'asts'                 => ''
    ));
    

   //$error_level = error_reporting();
   //error_reporting(1);
   $response = $client->request('POST');
   $client->setUri($this->subscription_list_url)->setMethod(Zend_Http_Client::GET);
   $response = $client->request()->getBody();
   
   if ($client->request()->getStatus() == 400) {
    ?>Unable to login with supplied Google login/passwordlist->object as $e) {
    $url = $e->string[0]; 
    $title = $e->string[1];
    $cat = $e->list->object->string[1];
    
    //make sure a feed is filed somewhere
    if ($cat == '') {
     $cat = 'unfiled';
    }
    $t = $hashmap["$cat"];

    //a category hasn't been used before
    if ($t == null) {
     $t = array($e);
     $hashmap["$cat"] = $t;
    }
    //category has been used before
    else {
     array_push($t, $e);
     $hashmap["$cat"] = $t;
    }
   }

   //sort the categories
   ksort($hashmap);

   //output
   ?>
   Tags: 
    $t) {
     echo "$cat";
     if ($cat != $endKey) {
      echo ', ';
     }
    }
    ?>
   
$t) {
    echo "";
    echo "$cat
";    
    foreach ($t as $e) {
     list($feed, $url) = split('feed/', $e->string[0]); 
     $title = $e->string[1];
    
     echo "$title
";
     
    }
    echo '
';
   }
  }
  
  function addContent($content) { 
   // Only do this if this is a page and it has the appropriate custom field
   if (is_page()) {
    $cust_field_values = get_post_custom_values($this->show_list);
    if ($cust_field_values != NULL) {
     if (defined('WP_ZEND_FRAMEWORK') && WP_ZEND_FRAMEWORK) {
      require_once 'Zend/Loader.php';
      Zend_Loader::loadClass('Zend_Http_Client');
     }
     $content = $this->show_sub_list();
    }
   }
   return $content;
  }
  
  function init() {
   $this->get_admin_options();
  }  
  
  function get_admin_options() {
   $admin_options = array('google_login' => '', 
    'google_pass' => '',
    'use_accordion' => 'true');
   $options = get_option($this->adminOptionName);
   if (!empty($options)) {
    foreach ($options as $key => $option) {
     $admin_options[$key] = $option;
    }
   }
   update_option($this->admin_optionsName, $admin_options);
   return $admin_options;
  }
  
  function printAdminPage() {
   $options = $this->get_admin_options();
   
   if (isset($_POST['update_greader_sub_list_settings'])) {
    if (isset($_POST['greader_sub_list_login'])) {
     $options['google_login'] = $_POST['greader_sub_list_login'];
    }
    if (isset($_POST['greader_sub_list_pass'])) {
     $options['google_pass'] = $_POST['greader_sub_list_pass'];
    }
    
    update_option($this->admin_optionsName, $options);
    echo '' .  _e('Settings Updated.', 'GoogleReaderSubList'). '';
    
   }
   //$submit = _e('Update Settings', 'GoogleReaderSubList');
   
   echo "         Google Reader Subscription List
     Google Login
     
     Google Password
     
           
     
    
   ";
  }
 }
}

if (class_exists('GoogleReaderSubList')) { 
 $greader_sub_list = new GoogleReaderSubList();
}

if (!function_exists('greader_sub_list_ap')) {
 function greader_sub_list_ap() {
  global $greader_sub_list;
  if (!isset($greader_sub_list)) {
   return;
  }
  if (function_exists('add_options_page')) {
   add_options_page('gReader Subscriptions', 'gReader Subscriptions', 9, basename(__FILE__), array(&$greader_sub_list, 'printAdminPage'));
  }
 } 
}

if (isset($greader_sub_list)) {
 add_action('admin_menu', 'greader_sub_list_ap');
 add_action('activate_google-raeder-list/google-reader-list.php', array(&$greader_sub_list, 'init')); 
 add_filter('the_content', array(&$greader_sub_list, 'addContent'), '7');
}

Quick Google Authentication in PHP

2009-06-02T11:02:00.002-04:00

Here is a quick way to authenticate against Google and retrieve a protected feed. It does not use the supported ClientLogin method but it does allow you to get to some unsupported feeds (Reader, Bookmarks, etc) The Zend Gdata library is required

$show_list       = 'show-google-reader-sub-list';  //the hook in a page
$login          = '';
$pass          = '';
$source         = 'wordpress-google-reader-sub-list-';  //the source the api sees when logging into Google
$service         = 'reader';  
$login_url        = 'https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLoginAuth?service=mail'; //URL to login to google
$subscription_list_url  = 'http://www.google.com/reader/api/0/subscription/list'; //URL that holds a users subscriptions

 
$client = new Zend_Http_Client($login_url);

//connect, authenticate, and handshake with Google
$client->setCookieJar()
->setMethod(Zend_Http_Client::POST)
->setParameterPost(array(
 'continue'             => $subscription_list_url,
 'service'              => 'reader',
 'niu'                  => 1,
 'hl'                   => 'en',
 'Email'              => $login,
 'Passwd'               => $pass,
 'PersistentCookie'     => 'yes',
 'asts'                 => ''
));


$response = $client->request('POST');
$client->setUri($subscription_list_url)->setMethod(Zend_Http_Client::GET);
$response = $client->request()->getBody();

if ($client->request()->getStatus() == 400) {
?>Unable to login with supplied Google login/password

Diggnation NYC, June 4th!

2009-05-28T10:29:00.000-04:00

Veeeeery excited about this. Last year was a blast

When?

Thursday, June 4th, 2009
7:30pm

Where?

Webster Hall
125 East 11th Street, New York City, NY
view map

Streaming?

Live Event?

Yes

Venue Website:

websterhall.com

Google Maps F-Bombs street names!

2009-04-30T20:16:00.002-04:00

Good stuff. Link

How a Programmer reads your resume

2009-04-28T12:00:00.002-04:00

How to manage podcasts in Winamp (screw itunes)

2009-04-17T15:11:00.001-04:00

So I really have been digging the Windows 7 beta. However, Itunes does not sync podcasts correctly on the 64 bit version. IF syncing works at all, it takes a while. I had used winamp to listen to my music a while ago, but had switched to amarok when I started single booting linux (yes, I hated Vista that much). Now that I'm back to using windows a bit, I wanted my podcast experience to go flawlessly.

As much as I dislike iTunes, they have got podcast management down pat

search for podcast
subscribe to podcast
download episodes
sync with ipod
after an episode has been listened to, delete from computer hard drive

That last point is the most important part, everything else can be done manually

All this can be done with winamp. You will need two things, winamp and the ml_iPod plugin. While winamp does come with ipod support built in, ml_iPod has many more features. The following steps should get you up to speed on podcasting with winamp

install winamp
install the ml_iPod plugin (it will tell you it has to remove the built in ipod plugin, this is ok)
set a directory to save the episodes in
plug in your ipod
enable podcast support for the ipod
point it to your episode folder
set the query for when to delete old episodes
Add your podcasts by searching for them in the directory, or adding them manually using their RSS feed

After this you should be good to go. podcasts!

Big Appengine news: Cron, Java, Firewalled Data, DB Import

2009-04-08T09:45:00.000-04:00

Java Support: This was the first, and most popular request in the bug tracker. Followed closely by PHP support. Google has merged the simplicity of appengine with the robustness of java, and added it to their Eclipse plugin to boot.

Cron Support: The cron support works by calling a URL at a given interval. I'm not sure if cron jobs are also restricted by the timeout policy, hopefully they will be allowed to be longer.

Secure Data Connector: An exampled of this would be accessing data behind a corporate firewall. Might be a (good/bad) idea ;)

Bulk Uploader: Dump data into appengine from another database or a CSV file

Twitter Blog: Replies Are Now Mentions

2009-03-31T10:33:00.000-04:00

Twitter Blog: Replies Are Now Mentions Hopefully this is a step towards official support of @reply (or @mention) notifications again

First Google Chrome Extensions

2009-03-19T13:11:00.000-04:00

Extensions are coming for chrome.

Google’s Matt Cutts in a blog post says: “Extensions currently have very Greasemonkey-like functionality: you identify which web pages should be modified, plus JavaScript to be added to those pages. By default, the extension’s JavaScript runs after the page loads, but you can specify that the extension’s JavaScript should run before the page loads. Right now, you can only load one JS file, but that could change in the future. You also can’t currently load Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), but that might also change.”

Personally, I think they should just port greasemonkey directly so chrome can take advantage off all the existing scripts

Google’s JavaScript/ Chrome Experiments Showcase

2009-03-19T13:08:00.000-04:00

Google at ChromeExperiments.com released a showcase site for JavaScript experiments especially aimed as promotion to demonstrate their own Chrome browser’s capabilities. From games to 3D graphics, these demo's really show off what the chrome javascript engine can do

2009-03-16T16:51:00.001-04:00

Test post from sms (now supported by blogger http://tinyurl.com/bx6vao )

GrandCentral finally resurected

2009-03-12T09:46:00.000-04:00

GrandCentral lives again, as Google Voice. Google voice is rolling out, although currently only open to current GrandCentral users. To request an invite when it is open to all, click here

Features:

Google number - One number for all your calls and SMS
Call screening - Announce and screen callers Listen in - Listen before taking a call Block calls - Keep unwanted callers at bay SMS - Send, receive, and store SMS Place calls - Call US numbers for free Taking calls - Answer on any of your phones Phone routing - Phones ring based on who calls Forwarding phones - Add phones and decide which ring

Google voicemail - Voicemail as easy as email, with transcripts
Voicemail transcripts - Read what your voicemail says Listen to voicemail - Check online or from your phone Notifications - Receive voicemails via email or SMS Personalize greeting - Vary greetings by caller Share voicemail - Forward or download voicemails

Voice features - More cool things you can do with Google Voice
Conference calling - Join people into a single call Call record - Record calls and store them online Call switch - Switch phones during a call Mobile site - View your inbox from your mobile GOOG-411 - Check directory assistance Manage groups - Set preferences by group

Google Calendar gets offline access with Gears

2009-03-04T08:50:00.001-05:00

4 of my 5 most used Google apps now have offline access through Gears (Gmail, Docs, and reader being the other). I use picasa heavily also but there is way too much data there for gears. Head over to your calendar to add the feature.

Installing Ubuntu Netbook Remix (with Jaunty) on an MSI Wind

2009-02-25T15:51:00.002-05:00

I recently picked up a MSI Wind Netbook and love the damn thing. Ubuntu Netbook Remix brings in a great UI which makes navigating on the small screen much easier.I used Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope Alpha 4 as the base install, mainly because I didn't want to go through the trouble of converting my ext3 partitions to ext4 when it comes out on April 23rd, and the driver support is more complete. I haven't had many problems with it aside from a few random firefox crashes.

We're going to make a bootable USB stick to install Ubuntu
On a separate machine, Download the cd image. If you want to use 8.10, get the iso here
if you are already using an Ubuntu install of 8.10 or higher, skip to step 11
burn the image to a cd
Boot to the cd, do not install, load the demo OS
click System->Administration->Create a USB startup disk
point it to either the cd in your drive, or the iso
point to the correct USB stick
the rest of the settings can stay default
click Make Startup Disk
Insert the usb drive into your wind, power it on, and hit delete to go into the bios, change the first boot device to USB Drive
save and exit the bios
If the wind boots off of the USB stick correctly, you should see the same screen as when you had booted off the cd
Install Ubuntu
I made my partitions as follows:
|30 gig recovery partition|20 gig XP partition|15 Gig Ext4 Ubuntu Partition|4 gig swap partition|the rest of the drive as an ext4 partition
That last partition is where I will mount my home directory, as well as mount from windows xp using ext2fs (I havn't actually tried this yet)
Add the netbook remix repositories to your system. This can be be done in synaptic or by typing the following into a terminal
sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list
add the following:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/netbook-remix-team/ubuntu intrepid main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/netbook-remix-team/ubuntu intrepid main
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install go-home-applet
sudo apt-get install window-picker-applet
sudo apt-get install maximus
sudo apt-get install human-netbook-theme
Select the "Human Netbook Theme" in System Preferences>Apperance
go into System Preferences-> sessions->startup programs and confirm that "Maximus" and "window-picker-applet" are thre
Disable Compiz Effects System Preferences->Appearance->None

This is what is required to get netbook remix running, I continued with the following to tweak it some more
Delete the bottom panel by right clicking on it
Delete all the applets on the top panel by right clicking on them
Add applets to the top panel so it ends up like:
Window Picker Applet | Trash Can |Notification Area | MixerApplet | Clock
I also made alt+q the hotkey to show the desktop, makes navigating to it faster. Another option is the show desktop applet button that can be added to the top bar. Preferences->keyboard shortcuts->"Hide all normal windows....."

More info is available here.

Google App Engine Blog: The sky's (almost) the limit! "High CPU" is no more.

2009-02-17T11:16:00.000-05:00

It looks like the app engine infrastructure is improving. No more High CPU request warnings, the response deadline (timeout) has been raised from 10 to 30 seconds, and the static file limit is now 10MB.

The Matrix Runs on Windows

2009-01-28T14:39:00.001-05:00

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

How to get brightkite photos into an RSS feed (to post to a blog)

2009-01-26T10:11:00.003-05:00

I started another blog so I have a place to rant about comics or movies or whatever else I need to get off my chest, and I needed an excuse to play with wordpress (something I've been wanting to do for a while). I plan on posting how I did certain things on that blog on gPowered. One of the things I really wanted to do was have my twitter photos show up as posts on that blog. For a while I have been using twitpic, but have recently changed over to brightkite. Brightkite provides an rss feed of all your activity, but I was only interested in the photos. Looked like a job for Yahoo! Pipes.

I imported the bkite feed into pipes, filtered on the items that were photo posts, and renamed the title so it would have the title of the photo instead of the bkite location (by default bkite photo titles are the location where you most recently checked in). I also did some URL generation so anyone could use the pipe The next step was to get this into wordpress. I Installed the FeedWordPress plugin and set it up to import the pipe's RSS feed. You can tweak the the settings on what user should be used to write the posts, categories, tags, permalinks (I set mine to point directly back to brightkite). Hope this helps someone out there, enjoy

Finding unread gmails (or: the best gmail filter ever)

2008-12-23T10:45:00.001-05:00

As the year starts to wind down, I figure I should start the year off with a clean inbox. I try to keep no unread messages in my inbox, instead I tag and archive. These past few weeks however, my inbox has gotten a little crazy.

I found this filter to show me all my unread mail that is still in my inbox, hope it helps someone organize like it did me

is:inbox is:unread

Happy Holidays all

Google Reader gets a facelift

2008-12-05T09:20:00.000-05:00

It's now less "bubble" looking. I'm wondering if its pulling from my gmail theme, but I unfortunately can't check that from work. I really like being able to hide the stats in the upper left. The only one I ever look at is how many total unread items I have.

Set / Change / Reset the MySQL root password on Ubuntu Linux (Ubuntu)

2008-11-24T18:53:00.001-05:00

This came in veeeerrryyy handy just now...

Stop the MySQL Server

sudo /etc/init.d/mysql stop
Start the mysqld config

sudo mysqld --skip-grant-tables &
Login to the server as root

mysql -u root mysql
Ser your NEWPASSWORD

UPDATE user SET Password=PASSWORD('NEWPASSWORD') WHERE User='root'; FLUSH PRIVILEGES; exit;

Gmail adds voice and video chat

2008-11-11T17:54:00.000-05:00

Is the death of Skype iminent?

The plugin isn't out for Linux so I can't test it out just yet. Hopefully I'll be able to try it out on Laura's mac later. Until then, more info is available here. If you've tried it out, let me know.

Foxtrot Android

2008-11-10T09:37:00.000-05:00

Android Market now open. Full source released

2008-11-03T09:28:00.000-05:00

The Android Market is now open, register to add your apps! http://www.android.com/market/

The full source code for Android is now available: http://source.android.com/

GWTPHP = Google Web Toolkit + PHP 5

2008-10-09T16:28:00.000-04:00

I know there is a pretty high number of programmers who haven't tried to dable GWT yet because out of the box, the back end is java only. PHP developers rejoice!

Unlike most of the other frameworks, GwtPHP is a framework for both client and server part. In GwtPHP you don’t need to hack JavaScript, you work with modern, object oriented languages. User interface (client) is programmed in Java, then compiled by Google Web Toolkit (GWT) to browser-dependent JavaScript. Server part uses PHP 5.

Not yet available to the public, but you can sign up to be notified when it is