Google Guru

Yesterday I learned of a neat lab that’s available with Google Talk called ‘Google Guru’. It’s essentially a question and answer service that lets you do several types of queries using the Google Talk chat service. To setup the service, you first need to be signed into Google Talk, then add the contact guru@googlelabls.com. Now you can initiate a chat session with the guru and ask questions such as the weather in your location:

Sports scores:

Ask simple calculations:

Or translations:

I must say though that it is very hit and miss with the results:

I ran a similar searches in one of the best question and answer services around, Wolfram Alpha which had no problems handling such requests:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next I thought I’d throw it some curly questions and see how they compare. Firstly in Google Guru:

Then in Wolfram Alpha:

So the Google Guru might be useful for some basic queries and if you are a fan of Google Talk as your IM client, you may find it handy, but it certainly struggles with many of the requests I gave it and the results no where as good as those by other such services.

For more information on the service, go to http://guru.googlelabs.com/

Migrating Outlook Rules to Google Mail Filters

I’ve been following the practice of Getting Things Done by David Allen for some years now, and one of the core things that I have learnt is to keep my inbox for unprocessed work only. You will find there are many other strategies for managing your inbox but essentially they all discuss the same concept of and dealing with the overload of emails your receive on a daily basis. One of the important concepts of the Getting Things Done methodology is triaging you inbox. This is done by applying what they refer to as the 4 Ds:

1. If you can get it done in under 2 minutes: Do It.
2. If it will take longer than 2 minutes: Defer It.
3. If it isn’t important: Delete It.
4. If you don’t need to do it: Delegate It.

One of the best ways to manage my inbox I found, was to get Outlook to automatically triage as many incoming messages as possible through the use of rules. I created several folders in Outlook to help me process the messages:

• Inbox – CC

• Inbox – External

• Inbox – Alerts

Then I would have a series of Rules to move items out of my Inbox into the relevant folder. One of the key rules I had was to move items where I was being CC’ed into the "Inbox – CC" folder. The reason for this was that if someone included me on the CC list but not in the To list, this would mean that it was for my information rather than requiring any response on my part. The rule in Outlook looked like the following:

The Rules Wizard in Outlook covers many pre defined scenarios, so I was a little concerned with the move from Exchange Server to Google Mail that I wouldn’t be able to get the same functionality. There is however a very advanced search criteria functionality that comes with the filters which take a little getting used to. Many of the advanced functionality can be found at Using advanced search.

To re-create the above rule "where my name is in the Cc box", do the following:

1. Under Settings -> Filters select Create a new filter
2. On the Choose search criteria screen, set:
   1. To: -to:me (note the minus before the to)
   2. Has the words: cc:me
3. Use the Test Search button to test the criteria you have entered.
4. Click Next Step >>

   

5. In the Choose action screen, tick the following:
   1. Skip the Inbox
   2. Apply the label: Inbox – CC
6. Click Update Filter

   

Moving from Exchange Server to Google Mail for Windows Phone 7

As part of my organisations move from Exchange Server to Google Mail I needed to update my phone settings to sync to the Google server. To do this, from the home screen I select the right arrow at the top of the screen:

Then selected Settings:

Finally, select email & accounts –> Outlook.

My existing settings have the username as my network login  id, and the server set to exchange.mycompanydomain. To switch over to using the Google Mail server, I changed the username to my email address (e.g. david_cook@mycompanydomain) and changed the server to m.google.com. After saving I received an alert “Action Required” on the email & accounts screen. Selecting the Outlook account I was prompted to “Update your password for m.google.com and press Save” after re-entering my password the account showed “Synchronising”. and my emails are now syncing via Google Mail.

Moving from Microsoft Exchange Server to Google Mail

Today my organisation started the move from Microsoft Exchange Server to Google Mail and as part of the move I have been nominated what they are referring to as a Google Champion. This is effectively an early adopter from each department which essentially means to help iron out any issues during the transition and to help flesh out FAQs and training material that might be useful for the rest of the organisation. Having used Microsoft Outlook as my primary email client for well over 10 years I thought it might be useful to share my experiences with moving to Gmail. As part of the early adoption phase, I wanted to try and exclusively use the web client and make the most of the features they have made available rather than continuing to use Outlook and using the available sync tools.

Something many of us use in Outlook is folders, but Gmail doesn’t use folders, instead it uses labels. Therefore when my Exchange mailbox was converted, the folders actually get converted as filters with the emails within those folders also tagged with the relevant label. As you can see on the image on the right, the folder structure is a hierarchy, however the labels in Google Mail are simply a text label, therefore the representation of the tree structure gets converted to my folder structure include all folders will be converted as Level1/Level2/Level3 or given my folder structure Inbox/Reference Material/Personal.

I wanted to clean up the structure by simply renaming them back to a single level structure. This can be done under Settings –> Labels as shown below:



I simply renamed the Inbox/Reference Material to Reference Material:

When renaming the label, all emails also get their labels updated. You can also rename labels from the main page as follows:

 

 

 

 

 

After I started doing this, I discovered one of the greatest strengths of using the web client as opposed to a desktop client is the use of Labs. Under Settings –> Labs is a treasure trove of add ins for Gmail which provide a heap of extra functionality, and the gem I used in this instance was called Nested Labels. Enabling this add in as the name suggests gives us a hierarchy for labels which means I can keep the folder structure I had in Outlook.

Enabling the add in:

Renaming labels now allows for providing a hierarchy:

View of labels in the desired hierarchy:

2010 – The Year Of The Gadget

For any technologist out there, 2010 has to be declared the year of the gadget. Let me run you through the new technology which has shaped my year.

To kick off the year, I purchased an iPod Touch. I was forever losing my smart phone to the missus to play games on, so I thought the purchase of an iPod Touch would be a great investment mostly for the great number of simple and addictive games on the app store, plus it would allow me to get my phone back. A few months later my wife was given an iPhone from her work and we were simply able to transfer all the games across for her. Throughout the year, the iPod Touch has continued to prove a worthwhile investment not only for my wife and I, but we have also found a large array of kids learning and puzzle games. My 2 year old can now operate it better than I.

For mothers day, I purchased a Roomba for my wife. Many said buying your wife a vacuum cleaner is a terrible idea but it has been one of the best household buys for many years. The advantages we have found is we can simply isolate one section of the house and set the Roomba off while we play with the kids in another area of the house or simply go outside with the kids. This means the house gets cleaned while we can spend more time with the kids or doing other chores.

I have forever been struggling with home backup strategies and the growing volume of digital media led me to get a home server. Specifically I went with the HP Media Smart Server. Previous to this I had a collection of external hard drives including a Western Digital World Edition NAS drive. The problem with this solution was I had to manually juggle media across multiple drives. Further I had to manually manage backups of each of our home machines which unfortunately was growing. At this point in time, I currently have a home office desktop, 2 media centre pc’s, a netbook and a laptop. The automated backup features of the home server and the quick recovery options paid for itself when my desktop hard drive crashed and I needed to restore not only the operating system but all applications and data. Further, the ability to add 4 internal drives and more external drives and span them all as a single volume meant not more juggling media across drives.

This year my role at work involved attending many more meetings than previously. I struggled to keep up with the material that was being discussed and the action items raised. I therefore purchased a smart pen – the Livescribe Echo. This thing has saved my bacon on several occasions as instead of feverishly trying to take notes during meetings, I can let it record the meeting and I can simply take some points. Later I can upload to my laptop and review what was discussed. The only downside I have found is some attendees don’t like being recorded – so I have to remember to check first.

I’ve always enjoyed reading and part of working in Information Technology is the need to continually keep up with new practices. The difficulty in this is that many of the reference books are huge. Take for example one of the books I was wanting to read this year: Steve McConnell’s Code Complete. This book is over 1000 pages long, so try carrying that and anything else (such as a laptop) in your backpack to and from the train each day and you’ll soon be a chiropractors best friend. So with the explosion of eBook readers this year (and the parity of the AU and US dollar) I figured it would be a good time to get one. After doing some research I settled on the Kindle DX from Amazon. This proved to have the best resolution and the amazon marketplace was second to none. Also the large screen size and support for PDF suited the technical reference guides I am reading.

I was getting very annoyed with the cheap (and crappy) mouse we were supplied with our work desktops so figured I’d spend a few bucks on something better seeing as I sit using it for 8+ hours a day. A colleague had a Microsoft Arc Mouse and gave it to me for a day to take for a spin. It was extremely light and very responsive so it didn’t take long to win me over. Another colleague also wanted a new mouse so we gave him a spin and he too was won over. All up when I went to the local computer part supplier I came home with 7 new Microsoft Arc mice.

Probably the most anticipated technology for the year for me was the Windows 7 Phone. I had been surviving (just) with my iMate JasJam which I worked out was nearly 4 years old which in phone technology terms is prehistoric. The release of the Windows 7 Phone was late in November and I like any good technologist I queued up on release day to upgrade. With the release came several models and I went with the HTC Mozart and it hasn’t disappointed.

For Christmas my wife and I decided to get a joint present rather than lots of little things we didn’t really need. For several years we have been using a simple fixed focus point and shoot digital camera but we haven’t been overly happy with the quality of the shots and therefore we haven’t been taking many shots with it lately. As such we decided to go with a new digital SLR and after some research we went with a Nikon D3100. This is an entry level digital SLR which is ideal for us, it has all the auto settings for when we want to do point and shoot, but also has all the manual settings for if we decide to get more serious about photography.

Finally there is one more gadget which is currently sitting under the Christmas tree which I can’t wait to get my hands on, an XBOX 360 + Kinect. While this is supposedly for the kids, I’m sure I’ll get a bit of mileage out of it as well.

So it has been a very good year for gadgets and technology. Here’s hoping we have another cracking year next year.

Re-enable the Zune Start-up Video

I downloaded the latest version of the Zune software on my home PC and was very impressed by the start-up video, however on my work pc I upgraded from a previous version and upon start-up the video was missing. I found that you can re-enable this through a simply registry edit. Open Regedit and navigate to HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Zune\FUE. Find a key called ShowFirstLaunchVideo and set its value to 1.

 

Next time you launch Zune you will be presented with the start-up video.

Downloading Tech Ed Australia Content

So its Tech Ed time again, this time Tech Ed Australia held on the Gold Coast. Over the past couple of days the team have been encoding and uploading the session videos and slides. You can access much of this information from Tech Ed Online, but as per my previous post Downloading Tech Ed Content, I have put together a couple of scripts to save you having to right click the file types you want to download (video / PowerPoint slides) and ‘Save Target As’. There are two scripts you will need, the first is a downloader script which takes a single parameter to indicate the file type you want to download. These include WMV, WMVHIGH, MP4 and PPTX. The second script is a renamer which also takes the same parameter as the downloader and this will rename the files from the session id to the session title (e.g. ‘DEV362.wmv’ becomes ‘Unit Testing with Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server(DEV362).wmv’). The scripts are called ‘TechEdRenamer.txt’ and ‘TechEdDownloader.txt’ and can be downloaded from from my SkyDrive. Simply rename to .bat files and follow the instructions in the previous post regarding getting curl etc.

Note: At the time of posting, not all of the sessions were yet available, but if you check back over the next couple of days you should see them all appear.

Downloading Tech Ed Content

Last Week Tech Ed North America was held in New Orleans and if like me you were not able to attend, you can view most of the sessions and get access to most of the slide decks through Microsoft Tech Ed Online.  Rather than right click and save each of the sessions and slides you can download all of the content using the following method: (Note: Thanks to Scott Dorman and his PDC09 download script and instructions).

1. Get the latest build of curl and extract into a folder.
2. Download the script TechEdDownloader-Dev and extract the .bat file into the same folder as above.
3. Run the downloader batch file from a command prompt. This takes a single parameter which indicates the file you want to download. This can be:
1. WMVHIGH
2. WMV
3. MP4
4. PPTX
4. Download TechEdRenamer-Dev and extract the .bat file to the same folder as the downloaded content.
5. Run the renamer batch file from a command prompt to rename the files to the session title. This batch file also accepts a single parameter as above.

Note the downloader and renamer are currently just for the Developer Tools, Languages & Frameworks stream. Check back for downloader and renamer batch files for the other streams.

Working with Camel Case in Visual Studio

Recently I was shown a cool feature of CodeRush which allows you to navigate within words in Visual Studio based on its Camel Case. The standard navigation in Visual Studio is using CTRL+Left Arrow and CTRL+Right Arrow will progress you one word to the left and right respectively. But if you have say a method named Test_CreateNewUser_Succeeds and you want to edit the middle part of this, you need to Right Arrow from the start to the point you want to edit. What would be nice if you can jump within the word based on the Capital Letters – such as jump to C for Create, then N for New.

I am using Visual Studio 2010 with ReSharper 5.0 which has a feature called Camel Humps which you can turn on within the ReSharper options.

The problem I found after turning this on, is that it replaces the default behaviour for CTRL+Left Arrow and CTRL+Right Arrow. What I would like to be able to do is to continue using the default behaviour of CTRL+Right Arrow jumping to the next word, but use an alternative to jump within the word. I found that CodeRush uses the key mapping of ALT+Left Arrow and ALT+Right Arrow to achieve this so to replicate this behaviour in ReSharper you need to do the following:

1. Open the Visual Studio Options window from Tools –> Options
2. Expand Environment and scroll down to Keyboard
3. Map the two commands ReSharper_HumpNext and ReSharper_HumpPrev to the key mappings you wish (E.g. ALT+Right Arrow and ALT+Left Arrow) by selecting the command from the list and entering the key mapping in the Press shortcut keys textbox, then click Assign.

Problems installing Team Review 2010

During the installation of Team Review 2010 you may encounter the following error:

To resolve this you need to make sure you have the Visual Studio add-in folder for the current user:

• %APPDATA%\Microsoft\MSEnvShared\AddIns

Depending on the operating system you are installing this on, the folder will be either:

• Windows XP: “C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Microsoft\MSEnvShared\AddIns”
• Windows 7: “C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\MSEnvShared\Addins”

If the required folder does not exist, simply manually create it and re-run the installation.

This problem relates to Release 1.1.2 and the issue has been raised on CodePlex.