Priyank Patel's Notes

Priyank Patel - Google+ - Got Galaxy Nexus from rogers a week back. I am really happy…

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 10:56:00 -0800

Priyank Patel - 1:46 PM - Limited
Got Galaxy Nexus from rogers a week back. I am really happy with this phone overall. Battery life could be better but there are not many smart phones in market which get good battery life anyway.
One interesting problem, I was facing on nexus. Took me couple of hours of troubleshooting on phone and quick google search to resolve my issue.
Problem: Google Voice search and voice dictation or anything with voice would not work. It always threw "Server Error" at me. It was working after I changed the default language from "English (US)" to "English (UK)". Funny. As soon as I change the language back to English US, google voice search was back to server error. Even with English UK I wasn't getting good success rate of recognition.
Solution: Under Account and Sync. Disable google contact sync and voice search with English US will work. I am not sure what the problem is but this is the only way to fix it.
Frustrating and interesting at the same time. Check out the following link. I know link is for razr maxx but it fixed issue on my galaxy nexus. Give it a shot if you are getting this issue.

#galaxynexus #nexus #samsung #rogersEdit
(Google) Voice Search "Server Problem" on razr maxx - Page 5

via plus.google.com

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Cool levitation video: check it out.

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 07:23:00 -0800

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Article: The 8 Best Innovation Ideas From Around the World - Ross DeVol - Business - The Atlantic

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 14:01:38 -0800

The 8 Best Innovation Ideas From Around the World - Ross DeVol - Business - The Atlantic
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/11/the-worlds-best-innovation-ideas/248695/

(via Instapaper)

- Priyank Patel

Sent from my iOS device

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Google + Circles in Gmail? What's going on?

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 08:40:06 -0800

I noticed Circle in Gmail today morning. Interesting. Find emails by grounds/circles.

Let's see how this evolves.

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Geeky Business Card -- I want one :)

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 13:23:00 -0800

via reflectionof.me

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Running out of space in Gmail ? - Try FindBigMail to look for huge email messages

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 09:33:26 -0700

I started noticing that I am running out space on my gmail account, even though space in gmail is supposed to be unlimited. I am approaching dangerous limits of usage in my gmail account. I was looking for a good way to find the size of email message, but there is no good way to look for that in gmail web app.

Only thing you can do is to download all your message in thunderbird/outlook and check the size of the message there. What a bummer !! Google please implement size column in the gmail and give us a search operator to look for messages.

But until google does that, FindBigMail will help you. I plugged in my gmail address and gave access to my account and then after 15 mins or so, following results came up. It categorizes and tags the messages with appropriate labels. Works like a charm (if you are comfortable giving 3party webapp access to your gmail account :) )

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Happy Diwali !!

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 11:37:43 -0700

Wishing Happy Diwali to all my friends and family !! May this new year bring peace, love, prosperity to you and your family.

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Downcast - podcaster client for iphone

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 14:21:04 -0700

I switched from podcaster to downcast recently. One essential feature why I switched to downcast was scheduled update, so my audio/video are ready.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/downcast/id393858566?mt=8

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CoffeeCompany Wifi Headlines

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 07:41:00 -0700

Pop-up View Separately

CoffeeCompany WiFi headlines.

Holland’s largest chain of coffee shops is called CoffeCompany. They wanted to attract more students, so they installed WiFi in some of its stores near universities. The problem is, lots of students just come into the store for the WiFi but hardly look at the menu.

So CoffeeCompany decided to move the store’s menu into the WiFi menu of customers’ laptops. They periodically changed the wireless network name from the normal “CoffeeCompany” to hard-selling headlines. So as students looked for a network, they found menu lines such as “mmm….YummyMuffinsOnly1,99″

This is beyond awesome.

via parislemon.com

Now this is cool. Providing free wifi and getting your message across at same time. Nice way to get wifi users to buy one more coffee. :)

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Moviemagic kiosks in Wal-marts around Toronto.

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 17:59:18 -0700

I noticed these moviemagic movie rental kiosks in Wal-mart couple of weeks. I am starting to see more of these. They seem to have all new movies. Hoping to try out this service soon.

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Article: How To Encrypt Your Gmail & Facebook Messages

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 18:23:00 -0700

How To Encrypt Your Gmail & Facebook Messages
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/encrypt-gmail-facebook-messages/

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Amazon.com: Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II Camera Lens: Camera & Photo

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 13:33:00 -0700

via amazon.com

I am thinking to picking this up over the weekend. I will post some sample pictures later. Any suggestions or any Ideas for this lens?

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Loving podcaster iPhone app. If you are looking for a good #podcast #iphone app check it out.

Wed, 31 Aug 2011 13:18:03 -0700

You can also export and import your subscription from podcaster so you don't have to work over and over again.

Great App !!

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Spin down idle drives in Ubuntu Server to save electricity - Lucid, Karmic, Jaunty and Intrepid

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 07:54:00 -0700

Spin down idle drives in Ubuntu Server

Since this server will be running 24 hours a day the running costs are something that should not be ignored. One way of reducing power consumption is to spin down the hard drives, or put them into "standby", when they are not in use. I've never managed to get the system drive to spin down but additional drives can be spun down quite successfully. The utility to spin down drives is called hdparm.

To spin down a hard drive after x minutes of inactivity issue the following commands:

sudo vim /etc/hdparm.conf

and enter your password if prompted. This will open the hdparm.conf file.

Next, scroll down to the bottom and then press the [Insert] key once (this will take us into "edit" mode) and then type the following:

command_line {
hdparm -S 241 /dev/sdb
}

The above command sets the idle standby/spindown time for the 2nd hard drive (/dev/sdb) to be 30 minutes.

Repeat this command for each drive you want to spin down.

If you're not sure of the names of your drives then you can issue the following command in a Terminal/Putty session to list them:

sudo fdisk -l

If you have more than one drive installed you will see them all listed. For example:

....
....
Disk /dev/sdc: 2000.4 GB, 2000398934016 bytes
....
.....

So, you would use /dev/sdc in the command_line { command above, in place of the/dev/sdb, if you wanted to spin down this particular drive.

When you have finished editing the hdparm.conf file press the [Esc] key once and type:wq to save and quit out of the file. If you make a mistake at any time then issue :q!instead of :wq to abort your changes.

You will need to reboot your server for the changes to take effect. Reminder: sudo reboot -h now in a Terminal/Putty session.

hdparm has loads of different options. To see what they are simply type man hdparmin a Putty/Terminal session to bring up the manual. Use the Page Up, Page Down,Cursor up and Cursor down keys to navigate the manual and press q to quit out of the manual.

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Search for #googlecircle on #google. This shows up. Have you seen this link before? Looks interesting. Take a look.

Tue, 15 Mar 2011 21:36:00 -0700

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Making Sense of your Credit Card Number - Good Read !!

Mon, 31 Jan 2011 10:22:00 -0800

You credit card number may look like a random string of 16 digits that’s unique in the world but those digits reveal a little more than you think.

For instance, the first digit of the card represents the category of industry which issued your credit card. American Express is in the travel category and cards issued by them have 3 as the first digit. If you have VISA or MasterCard, your card’s first digit should be either 4 or 5 as they are from the banking and financial industry.

The first six digits of your credit card number identify the institution that issued the card to you. VISA cards follow the series 4xx while MasterCard uses 51-55 as the prefix.

You may even verify if a given credit card number is valid or not using simple addition. The following visual illustration courtesy Mint.com will help you understand more about the anatomy of your credit card.

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How to make Google Chrome Install on non-system drives/disks?

Tue, 16 Nov 2010 08:02:00 -0800

Chrome is the latest browser from Google which sets bars really high with its great performance and innovative UI. Chrome has extension support just like Firefox. Chrome Extensions are available here. If you have not heard about Google Chrome, you have been living under a rock.

Download Google Chrome today, You will be impressed with how fast it is.

If you are not using Chrome, you can download it stable version from here.
If you are comfortable using Beta software version, you can download beta version of chrome here.
If you want latest dev build, get dev channel build here.
If you want to live on bleeding edge and get previous nightly build, get canary build here.

For regular users, I would recommend stable or beta build. For power users who want to see latest features which are mostly stable, check out dev channel build. I don't recommend canary build for regular users under any circumstances.

Overall this is a great browser with one flaw. While installing Google Chrome doesn't allow user to select installation drive/directories. By default it will install on your system drive, which might create some issues for some people like me who has small system drive C:\ around 20-25 GB. This usually happens in work environments where corporate IT has created an Image of OS which they put on all the machines.

Depending upon your usage and cache setting, Chrome install directory's size will increase.

If you are limited by how size on system drive, you have 2 options.

Move chrome install on different drive without impacting it using folder links.
Other option is to get a portable version of chrome which you can extract on to other drive entirely. But doing this you will lose some functionality provided by regular Google chrome install like auto update. Download Google Chrome Portable from: http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/google_chrome_portable

Continue reading if you chose option 1.

For Windows XP

By Default, Google Chrome installs under "%HOMEPATH%\Local Settings\Application Data\Google". This path will resolve to "C:\documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Application Data\Google".
Download Link Shell Extension from http://schinagl.priv.at/nt/hardlinkshellext/hardlinkshellext.html. They have different version based on your OS and 32-bit or 64-bit. choose correct version. After install, this will add a menu item to your right click menu.
Go to "C:\documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Application Data\". Make sure directory named "Google" doesn't exist.
Go to higher capacity drive for example D:\. Create folder where you want your chrome install to be. for example, I created folder in "D:\software\Google". Right click on "D:\software\Google" and click on "Pick Link Source".
Go to "C:\documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Application Data\" and right click in white space in folder and click on "Drop As.. > Junction". This will create folder link called "Google".
Once this folder is created, Start install of Google Chrome. Since we have create a junction, all installation files will be stored on second higher capacity drive.

You can do similar things with Windows Vista and Windows 7 if required.

Good luck.

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SimpleNote and ResophNotes

Wed, 10 Nov 2010 13:22:27 -0800

Tag: Reviews

I have mentioned that how much I like Evernote as my note-taking tool before on this blog. I have been using Evernote for a quite a while now. I keep all kinds of stuff in Evernote. Read my previous post on how I use Evernote. This post is not about Evernote. It is about a new note taking service named, SimpleNote. I was looking for new application in productivity section on iPhone app store, I found SimpleNote app at this time. I downloaded the app and signed up for SimpleNote.

Since then, I have been using SimpleNote for a quick note taking on iPhone since then. SimpleNote iPhone app is light weight and fast compared to Evernote iPhone app. After some use of the iphone app, I accumulated lots of notes on iPhone. SimpleNote web application has a simple {duh..} interface. It became useful when I wanted to do a quick processing on captured notes.

At this point, it was obvious that Evernote and SimpleNote can exist in my work flow without any collision. So I started looking for easy way to sync SimpleNote notes on Windows. Found a great piece of software named ResophNotes. ResophNotes can sync SimpleNote notes on windows. It also has lots of options if you want to customize how your notes and displayed and how they are stored (1. as a database or 2. text file for each note).

(image from Resoph.com)

I would highly recommend taking a look at both SimpleNote and ResophNotes. There are lot more different downloads available at http://simplenoteapp.com/downloads/.

Take a Look. Have Fun !!

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BleachBit - Junk file cleaner

Thu, 04 Nov 2010 11:21:00 -0700

If you are a windows user, CCleaner is all you need to remove junk files, fix registry error on your windows computer. I was using BleachBit to cleanup Ubuntu installation. Now, BleachBit is also available for Windows.

At features page, you can find more information. http://bleachbit.sourceforge.net/features

See the full gallery on Posterous

This is not Mac OS X: I am running MacBuntu on Ubuntu

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Revo Uninstaller - Powerful Replacement for Add/Remove Program

Thu, 04 Nov 2010 10:18:00 -0700

When you install software on Windows, It creates entries into several places like temp folders, registry and user profile or App data folder. When you decided to remove installed program, Window's default add remove program doesn't cleanup all entries and temp files created when program was installed. This leaves your machine with bloated registry and lot of temp folders which are not really required. This can result into slow machine overtime.

Revo Uninstaller can help with this issue. Revo Uninstaller is a replacement for Windows default add remove program (windows xp) or program features (windows vista, windows 7). You can remove programs using Revo Uninstaller. Revo Uninstaller finds entries created by installed program in file system and registry. You can delete these temp files and registry entries in Revo Uninstaller. This leaves your system clean of any unnecessary files and registry entries.

Revo Uninstaller also comes with other tools like Autorun Manager, Junk File Cleaner, Track Cleaners (Browser Cleaner, Office Cleaner, Windows Cleaner, Evidence Remover etc).

Revo Uninstaller works on Window xp, Windows Vista, Windows 7 on 32 bit or 64 bit.

Rather than getting installation of the software, you can get portable download of the software here.

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