David Podhola

Producteev & Evernote Sync: Proof of concept

2011-11-06T13:19:00.000-08:00

Producteev & Evernote Synchronization

application to synchronize Producteev tasks with Evernote notes. It is still work in progress, but I would love to hear any comments. I plan to move pretty fast with this so stay tuned!

Create Producteev tasks directly from Word or LibreOffice

2011-10-23T04:56:00.000-07:00

I do often need to write down some notes e.g. from a meeting. And in fact there are not only information, but generally a lot of tasks as well! Would not be nice if you would be able to send them to Producteev?

Currently I am writing such notes in Evernote because I want to access them on all my devices, but at the end of the day I am sending them usually as a body of an email or PDF/Microsoft Word attachment.

Would not it be cool to create tasks directly from Evernote, LibreOffice or Word?

UPDATE: Read here.

Would Posterous and Google+ integration be helpful?

2011-09-30T22:46:00.000-07:00

Currently I am using several blogging platforms:

Blogger for my English posts about software development, personal development, GTD and Covey
Posterous for my Czech posts related maily to time management and how to live in balance
Google Plus for ... not quite sure yet, probably composition of both developments mentioned earlier
Facebook for sending links to other blogs and for companies propagation

Those are also linked to my different Twitter accounts (davidpodhola, twitter.com/naseukolycz, twitter.com/gassumo).

What I am missing the most right now is the way how to autopost from Posterous to Google Plus. I know Google Plus API is still in Beta, but come on, you can develop something on beta API as well.

I will try to have a look at those APIs and think about the possibilities. There is a difference in writing posts between Posterous and Google Plus: in Posterous you have title and content, but you have only "what is new" in Google Plus.

Will let you know :-)

Covey - First Things First - Roles

2011-09-25T10:57:00.000-07:00

I have been listening to Stephen Covey's First Things First recently. I like the part about different roles and their synergies the most. I wrote an excerpt on my NašeÚkoly.CZ blog (in Czech).

Moving my personal and Czech stuff to Posterous

2011-05-01T02:53:00.000-07:00

I will no longer post my personal or Czech stuff here. All those new posts will be my Posterous.

However I will update you with everything related to tasks, Google Outlook Android Tasks synchronizer etc.

Gassumo Outlook Android Task Synchronizer v1.0.0.7 Installation and first synchronization

2010-11-24T06:52:00.001-08:00

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Gassumo Outlook Android Task Synchronizer v1.0.0.7 Installation and first synchronization

View more presentations from David Podhola.

I have a new home page design

2010-10-23T12:50:00.000-07:00

My new homepage

Golf

2010-10-17T06:22:00.000-07:00

I started to play golf. OK, not yet, but we went to driving range on Friday and were totally amused. So I returned there on Saturday with my wife and today... I am buying "My personal trainer" for my Wii!

I was practicing swings on Wii Fit Plus, but I hope this will tell me much more about what to do better.

Beta tester to share info about Remember The Milk's official Outlook synchronization utility?

2010-09-28T10:21:00.000-07:00

As you know, Remember The Milk is probably creating it's own Outlook sync.

Is there anybody, that has already access to this synchronization utility and would like to share his feelings? It would be very interesting to know the approach of RTM.

I am a little bit playing with Android these days, but I am still excited if RTM would have it's Outlook synchronization!

Those who can't do, teach. Are you kidding me?

2010-09-24T10:51:00.000-07:00

I know that we are all following the AngelGate these days, but this subject is something that was stuck in my mind for a quite long period of time. And it is not because next Monday I start part time lecturing at Prague College again nor the discussions I had last few days with several people.

We are told (and it seems to be a thing all world around), that "if you're good enough to actually do, you wouldn't have time to be teaching." [Joomla4Web]

I like the argumentation on the Joomla4Web very much. However that is not exactly my case. To be honest, I started guest lecturing back in spring 2009, because my very good friend Veronika asked me to come and talk to her Computing students. I must say, I liked it.

It was only logical I started to lecture two HND computing units a week since January 2010. It is definitely not a full time job for me, but yes, I am getting paid, thanks for asking. I am also adding one HND business unit this semester (e-Business Strategy/e-Business implementation).

So to return back to the question in the title - there are several things that always follow in the discussions:

If you are a teacher, you just follow some books and you have never done this by yourself. Although I agree with Shari, that this is not the most important thing as "It is up to the student to digest the information he receives and find an application for it in his life, not for the teacher teach him each individual step" [BlogCritics], if you are wondering if I have enough practical experience teach computing or business, have a look at my CV.
If you are a teacher, you are not successful at you "normal" job so you have to teach to pay your bills". This one seems really very funny to me. Working more than 10 years for Sprinx, going to several conferences etc. I do not consider myself failing at my daily job.
Also check my currently running projects.
Teaching is paid so bad, it is "last resort" position for people. Again, that might be true for government schools. I lectured at CTU, FNSPE while studying and yes, I was not making a fortune there. But this is not my case anymore. If you are still not believing me, setup a consultant meeting with me through my calendar and mention this blog post as a source. I promise, I will charge you only the same sum per hour :-)
When you are teaching, you are loosing your professional experience. True. That is why I am running my projects and keeping my professional career. Just now I am learning how to develop for Android so I do not stay at the same place.

And yes, I am still enjoying that :-) And that is the most important thing for me.

SprinxCRM UniversalSync v6.2.4.12

2010-09-22T07:38:00.001-07:00

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

SprinxCRM UniversalSync v6.2.4.12

View more presentations from David Podhola.

Remember the Milk Outlook Synchronization by Remember The Milk?

2010-09-17T08:53:00.000-07:00

It it not the end of the year yet, but I saw something interesting last day and it reminded me of the thing I was doing from January till today...

That I saw was really interesting - Remember The Milk people are about to have their own Outlook synchronization.

It seems quite logical to me. If you read the thread at Remember The Milk forum, you can see there was quite a demand for Outlook synchronization from the very beginning (2007).

I am not sure what brought me to Remember The Milk the first time, but it was my wife who appointed me to this online task list the second time. I opened the web and ... surprise, surprise, it looked very familiar and I found out I was already registered!

Working for Sprinx Systems at that time (and still now) and using Microsoft Outlook for my task management, I was looking for something that would synchronize Outlook with RTM. I was always interested in synchronization, wrote the very first version of SprinxCRM Outlook Sync ages ago and I wanted to use online task management.

Actually, that is why I started to develop SprinxCRM OutlookSync for Remember The Milk back in February 2010. Of course I did some research first and get my few beta-testers through a simple form here on the blog.

As far as I know the synchronizer worked pretty well from the beginning and when I saw the Software Engineer (Windows) opened position at Remember The Milk jobs page with explanation that the guy will be responsible for Outlook integration, I was amused. I even applied explaining that it the sync is already done, but apparently was not chosen.

However, I am very interested to see what was created by RTM people. Every competition is good, that is what I think about this. And that is also the story of OutlookSync - it evolved into UniversalSync and it supports not only Remember The Milk these days, but also Producteev and more will come in the future.

"Is 30% too much to pay a CRM sales rep for company lead?"

2010-09-15T10:20:00.000-07:00

I came across a very interested LinkedIn discussion about Sales Rep margins.

You can read the discussion here.

I like the guide from Million Dollar Consulting (Alan Weiss) mentioned by Pierre DeBois very much.

It describes what to pay as a finder's fee:

---20% for business that the other party closed and requires only your introduction and client acceptance of work.

---10% for business for which your introduction has been arranged, but your skills are needed to close the deal.

----A thank you and small gift for cold leads that require your skills to close the deal.

That seems pretty fair for me. Costs of sales are high these days and you have to pay enough to your sales teams or ... you know what happens to your profit if your sales team is moody or unmotivated. I will write more at my Gassumo CRM page.

Producteev connector for SprinxCRM UniversalSync

2010-09-10T10:07:00.000-07:00

Since I like to have more possibilities to choose from and since latest Astrid supports also Producteev online task list (also here), I decided to try to implement a SprinxCRM UniversalSync connector to Producteev.

I just started, but I already have a one-way synchronization from Producteev to Outlook. Have a look at Producteev Connector Homepage.

SprinxCrm UniversalSync Uninstallation

2010-09-08T03:26:00.001-07:00

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

SprinxCrm UniversalSync Uninstallation

View more presentations from David Podhola.

What Google Apps (mainly Standard Edition) synchronization are you missing the most?

2010-09-07T22:32:00.000-07:00

I started this Google Apps discussion on LinkedIn and even the very first post was very helpful with a lot of links, thanks Aaron!

Still thinking about more synchronizations... I am already planning to include Google Tasks in SprinxCRM UniversalSync and maybe I also do something more on Google Calendar Synchronization as I am not that much happy with the original Google one.

I hope to sort all those things soon and prepare the next generation of my synchronization utility.

More about how SprinxCRM UniversalSync works

2010-09-07T06:24:00.000-07:00

If you are really interested in how SprinxCRM UniversalSync works, how are Outlook tasks synchronized e.g. with Remember The Milk (RTM) task or Google Calendar events with SprinxCRM calendar, read here on Gassumo.

I will also try to create a presentation for this.

SprinxCRM UniversalSync installation, configuration, first synchronization

2010-08-03T05:36:00.001-07:00

If you just want to know more about SprinxCRM UniversalSync, check it's page at Gassumo.

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

SprinxCRM UniversalSync installation, configuration, first synchronization

View more presentations from David Podhola.

Where is SprinxCRM OutlookSync for Remember The Milk heading?

2010-08-01T10:26:00.000-07:00

If you are Outlook or Remember The Milk fan, I hope you heard about SprinxCRM OutlookSync for Remember The Milk. As mentioned in WebWorkerDaily, it is "an add-on for Outlook that enables two-way synchronization of tasks between the two apps".

It is almost 5 months since I started developing this little task synchronization utility. Interested where it is heading now? Have a look what is in development right now!

Outlook Android synchronization

2010-04-28T03:18:00.000-07:00

Thinking about syncing your Outlook tasks with Android? Are you obsessed like me to have your tasks with you all the time?

If you are experiencing something similar to me, you might be in a need for two sync utilities:

SprinxCRM OutlookSync for Remember The Milk
Astrid

They both allow you to synchronize your tasks with great online task list Remember The Milk. Simply create your account at Remember The Milk, install both tools and setup them to use the account you have just created.

And voila - your tasks from Outlook are sync'ed to RTM and from RTM to your Android phone!

Release Candidate 1 + end of survey for Outlook Remember The Milk synchronization

2010-04-01T09:59:00.000-07:00

So just few days after OutlookSync for Remember The Milk Beta 2.5 Release Candidate 1 is out!

You can dowload it from the new location at http://www.sprinxcrm.com/SprinxCRM%20OutlookSync%20for%20Remember%20The%20Milk.

I have also created the page on Facebook and I will update it with news, videos etc. If you are on Facebook and like this little piece of software, why not become a fan :-).

Since I think I have now enough of responses on my survey, I am closing it. I would like to thank very VERY much to all the participants and I am also preparing for you as a reward to helping me to get to this point. Again, thank you very much!

And 6 weeks later... beta 2.5 is here!

2010-03-30T15:04:00.000-07:00

I just want to let you know that I have just released Beta 2.5 of OutlookSync for Remember The Milk. You may download it from http://www.sprinxcrm.com/SprinxCRM%20OutlookSync%20for%20Remember%20The%20Milk/publish.htm. Simply click the red button and it should do all the work. There is a video on YouTube showing how it works.

I plan to freeze the features and publish Release Candidate next week. Version 1.0 should be available at the beginning of April.

SprinxCRM OutlookSync for Remember The Milk Beta 1.1

2010-03-08T05:02:00.000-08:00

I am quite busy developing, so just to let you know, I have already released two versions of SprinxCRM OutlookSync for Remember The Milk - Beta 1 and Beta 1.1. If you have subscribed through the form below, you already know.

Release plan for Beta 2:

Support for Remember The Milk lists - synchronized as Tasks subfolders
Support for Outlook categories - synchronized as Remember The Milk tags
Solving currently know issues: Outlook 2010 Beta, RTM timeouting, few COM Outlook problems

Almost there!

2010-02-24T10:23:00.001-08:00

OK, so I think the time for the first technology preview is comming!

I am already successfully synchronizing my Outlook tasks with Remember The Milk. I have also implemented an archiving plugin as I had a lot of completed tasks in my default task folder and I had bad luck trying to find some Outlook Auto-Archive settings to clean this up.

I would like to do more testing till the end of the week and release a Beta version on the beginning of the next week. Stay tuned!

Please help me by filling my short survey so I have the right testing environment. Thanks!

No results in Outlook Remember The Milk Survey for few days?

2010-02-22T10:45:00.000-08:00

Silly me... I was not receiving new entries in my Outlook Remember The Milk Survey for few days so I blamed weekend for that ... but no, the form was too tall for the windows so you would not be able to submit it ... I am very sorry for that, please submit again, if you can now... My apologies...

Remember the Milk Outlook Synchronization?

2010-02-14T06:37:00.000-08:00

Please go to my Gassumo page about SprinxCRM OutlookSync for Remember The Milk to read about the synchronization utility, to download latest versions etc.

You may also want to read about the latest addin - Producteev Connector for SprinxCRM UniversalSync.

UPDATE 4!

Go to SprinxCRM OutlookSync for Remember The Milk homepage.

UPDATE 3!

Install

UPDATE 2!

Release Candidate 1 is out! Please read more here. The survey is closed for now. Thank you!

UPDATE!

After about 6 weeks I am happy I can tell that Outlook Sync for Remember The Milk is reality!
It is still in a beta stage, but you can download it from here. Happy synchronizing!

I am a great fan of Remember The Milk. I have registered long time ago, but stopped to use it when I found out that there is no Outlook Synchronization. After buying nice Google Android HTC Dream/G1 phone, I have returned back to them and would be really lost without keeping my tasks both on the web and on the phone using Astrid.

Since I have started to develop things again and I am currently developing Outlook Addins, I might consider developing Remember The Milk Outlook synchronization. It will probably just synchronize tasks and attach correct labels.

What do you think, would you use that? Please answer below or click here and open the form in new window:

What am I doing these days? Synchronizing Outlook!

2010-02-11T11:26:00.000-08:00

These days I am pretty busy creating a new version of SprinxCRM OutlookSync. There are 450 millions of Office users around the world and I assume a lot of them are using Microsoft Outlook.

To start - don't take me wrong, I think Outlook is a great product and I really like it. But it is not a CRM. Once again - Outlook is not a CRM.

I hear you to disagree with me and I understand there are plenty of people using Outlook as a CRM, but let me quote SearchCRM:

"Again, without knowing more about your situation, this can be a very effective approach -- especially for a very small (3-5) group of users with no remote (disconnected) requirements. But BE CAREFUL, because you may find that you quickly exceed the capability of Outlook to scale to your requirements. Sure, you will find work-arounds, but 1-2 years later you will likely end-up with a disjointed system, unhappy users, and poor quality data. More than likely, your users will simply stop using the application when it becomes too kludgy" (http://searchcrm.techtarget.com/answer/Using-MS-Outlook/Exchange-for-CRM)

What I am trying to achieve with OutlookSync is to connect Outlook with SprinxCRM and bring those CRM benefits to the Outlook users.

The benefits:

you will be able to attach an appointment to a company or person so you would know who you will speak to or where to go for the appointment as you have the address of the firm in the CRM
send and received emails will be automatically uploaded to CRM and categorized to the person you are emailing with. For example, if you would receive email from Joe Doe , this email will be automatically categorized to Joe Doe in your CRM.
when planning future activities with your business opportunity, those tasks will appear in Outlook as well so you will not miss them. Even better, if you keep your Outlook synchronized with your mobile phone, you can mark them done exactly at the time the are really completed for example after you call that guy or had that business lunch.
you will never lose any data again as the copy is archived in the CRM
you can access your Outlook data from any place as you connect to the CRM using internet or even from your mobile phone if you open the mobile CRM version on e.g. Blackberry

Where to practice End-User Support

2010-02-02T11:05:00.000-08:00

I am teaching End User Support at Prague College.The really funny thing is that I am currently dealing with serious support issues with Buxfer. I have bought the highest possible subscription but as of today,I am unable to use it. Have a look for yourself here and here...

Always look on the bright side of life - at least a great example for my students: always check the Service Level Agreement...

UPDATE: Not sure yet how it will end with Buxfer after Unable To Use Buxfer After Setting Projections so I will still give them time to solve it.

UPDATE 2: Finally I have been able to "hack-login" into Buxfer using combination of Buxfer Mobile and Firebux and send the priority support request. My issue has been solved in less than 24 hours then. I understand the need to login first to send the support request, so they know your SLA level, but still, if CRM for service would be in place, they would know just from my email...

UPDATE 3: Yes, finally I am a Buxfer user again. Thanks guys!

How to burn a DVD in Ubuntu from command line

2009-09-06T04:35:00.000-07:00

Go to the directory you want to burn in the root of your DVD and:

growisofs -dvd-compat -input-charset=ISO-8859-1 -Z /dev/dvd -R -J -pad .

Really useful when CD+DVD creator stops working.

How do you handle entity statuses?

2009-09-06T02:18:00.000-07:00

As part of what I am developing now, I needed to handle different entities' statuses. Although developing for decades, I was yet tempted a little bit to use a boolean. Fortunately ;-) found a great status patter description with explanations!

Software Development Tasks

2009-08-27T12:24:00.001-07:00

Just a few unsorted thoughts about tasks that needs to be done by somewho in the development/managing team:

Prioritize tasks/issues
Define how should it be implemented (how should we treat overlapping appointments in function GetNextAppointment() )
Choose the best technology/strategy/...
Estimate the time
Check the progress according to the estimation
Review the final code

SOLVED claws mail Google Apps mail sending problem

2009-08-25T22:40:00.001-07:00

For few weeks I have had a problem with email sending from my Nokia using claws mail client. Finally today morning I went through Q/A to find out,that I need port 587 to use STARTTLS. It works now.

How SprinxCRM looks from Wikipedia CRM Part 1

2009-03-10T14:22:00.000-07:00

I decided to take a look at the Wikipedia Customer relationship management term and add what SprinxCRM has to tell to it. Please note that most of the text is the Wikipedia article. This text is also licensed under GNU Free Documentation License.

Customer relationship management (CRM) consists of the processes a company uses to track and organize its contacts with its current and prospective customers. CRM software is used to support these processes; information about customers and customer interactions can be entered, stored and accessed by employees in different company departments. Typical CRM goals are to improve services provided to customers, and to use customer contact information for targeted marketing. SprinxCRM contains all the modules and functions you would need to work with customers and their interactions.

While the term CRM generally refers to a software-based approach to handling customer relationships, most CRM software vendors stress that a successful CRM effort requires a holistic approach (See Malthouse, Edward C; Bobby J Calder (2005). "Relationship Branding and CRM". in Alice Tybout and Tim Calkins. Kellogg on Branding. Wiley. pp. 150-168.). CRM initiatives often fail because implementation was limited to software installation, without providing the context, support and understanding for employees to learn, and take full advantage of the information systems. (See Rigby, Darrell K.; Frederick F. Reichheld, Phil Schefter (2002). "Avoid the four perils of CRM". Harvard Business Review 80 (2): 101–109. doi:10.1225/8946.) SprinxCRM addresses this issue by being very intuitive and simple. You can start using SprinxCRM right after opening its homepage. Typical training takes less than two hours.

Other problems occur (see Paul H. Selden (April/May 1996). "SFA Myths Abound". Sales and Marketing Strategies & News 6 (3): 51 and 53.) when failing to think of sales as the output of a process that itself needs to be studied and taken into account when planning automation (see Paul H. Selden (November 2000). "The Power of Quality Thinking In Sales and Management". Quality Progress: 58-64.).

How to Convert a YouTube Video to an Animated GIF

2009-01-30T05:30:00.000-08:00

Although our SprinxCRM YouTube is great, sometimes an old animated GIF suits better. In that case simply follow Chuck Caplan's guide.

Automatically Start YouTube Video Playback

2009-01-30T05:15:00.000-08:00

When modifying homepage of SprinxCRM Online, I needed our YouTube videos to start automatically.

I did a very quick Google search and found this article so simple adding

&autoplay=1

just did it all :-)

SprinxCRM does twitter

2009-01-06T09:21:00.001-08:00

I have created SprinxCRM twitter. I do not want it to be dead and I will update it with new things regularly as they appear in the release plan of SprinxCRM. Stay tuned :-)

Maemo Mono programming links

2009-01-01T06:19:00.000-08:00

Maemo on Mono

Example Programs from the Gtk# NodeView Tutorial

GtkSharp TreeView Tutorial

How To Write A Mono Application

Prevayler and Bamboo

2009-01-01T05:56:00.001-08:00

When thinking about offline client synchronization, I have recalled Prevayler and his impplementation Bamboo. I am just thinking about uploading all the 'change files' to the server and then playing them there. I know that there is no conflict resolution and so on, but this might not be that difficult. Hopefully there will be time at Saturday to try to iimplement that ;-)

How to use MonoDevelop for Maemo

2008-12-28T11:16:00.000-08:00

I needed to create a simple application for Nokia N810 running maemo. Because I am used to C# and Microsoft.NET and I knew that there is Mono available for Maemo, I decided to write it in C# using MonoDevelop.

Everything is working fine, but you have to change the GTK# support exactly for 2.10.3 in MonoDevelop, Project Options, General, GTK# Settings, Options. If you do not do that, when you run the application on your Nokia, you get The following assembly referenced from ... could not be loaded.

The advantages of crisis

2008-11-23T08:16:00.000-08:00

Nowadays when the financial crisis is slowly changing into recession, we are reading more a more positive news about what this is bringing to us. Not only anti-cyclical sector is starting to grow as people are remodeling their houses instead of buying new ones, dealers of used cars are selling more and people are going more to the sport centers, but at least this helps us understand more what has happened.

These days investors are mostly putting money into safe investments like gold, bonding funds or state bonds.

But business needs to take actions as well and there are four areas you should concentrate on:

1. Save time
2. Increase revenue
3. Cut costs
4. Improve efficiency

There are many ways how to get this done, but there are three main domains that may help fast and may be achieved easily:

1. Make sales force productive sooner
2. Eliminate travel and delivery costs
3. Improve the productivity of channel partners

Although it might not be clear, you can make a lot with with a sales force automation tool. If you allow the sales people to fill prepared forms instead of writing sales order, activity reports and call sheets and that saves a lot of time. And if you are using not only a sales force automation tool, but CRM, not only it allows you sell more because of the reduction of non-selling time, but there are other people benefiting - mainly marketing. And if we are in the middle of crisis, where would a business owner invest more then in the marketing? Did you know that many successful marketing agencies and consultancies were actually started during a recession?

Have you heard that CRM is not easy to work with, you have to enter tons of data and is it costly? Have a look at SprinxCRM and see for yourself.

The end of silence

2008-11-22T08:43:00.000-08:00

I know I know ... I have not been posting anything here for another 3 month, but I was really extremely busy with all the changes that were needed as the result of the financial crisis that started so long ago and nowadays even we here in the Central Europe feel the consequences.

But things are changing a lot, I promise :-)

How to run X Server and Maemo environment in Scratchbox

2008-08-30T12:09:00.001-07:00

From Prog80X.blog:

1. in a new terminal window run: Xephyr :2 -host-cursor -screen 800x480x16 -dpi 96 -ac -extension Composite

2. in Scratchbox run:

export DISPLAY=:2
af-sb-init.sh start

Ubuntu preparation for Scratchbox

2008-08-30T11:58:00.000-07:00

I use Scratchbox to setup an environment for developing for my Nokia N810. I have created a small script to setup few system variables to get Scratchbox working.


sudo sh -c "echo 0 > /proc/sys/vm/vdso_enabled"
sudo sh -c "echo 4096 > /proc/sys/vm/mmap_min_add"
sudo sh -c "echo 4096 > /proc/sys/vm/mmap_min_addr"

I am back ....

2008-08-30T07:04:00.001-07:00

OK, so I am back and lots have changed during the last ... Uhm ... Let me ... 3 months? Yes, is is sad but true.

I am writing this from my Nokia N810 and I must say that along with the switch I am very happy with all this.

What do I use an why? The first three are here.

MaemoWordPy to write blog posts like this one. This is one of the biggest advantages of the tablet - is is instantly ready for use.

Mauku to microblogging on Jaiku and Twitter. I am a fan of microblogging as an alternative to instant messaging.

Pidgin for instant communication with friends. I will write few words about the difference between IM and u-blogging.

Switched all to the Google Apps

2008-05-30T12:13:00.002-07:00

Although it might look very funny, I have "created" about the third reincarnation of my home page. Finally I have found out Google Apps the least painful way.

More to come as I use it.

Where to change which X server Ubuntu 7.10 uses

2008-04-19T23:38:00.000-07:00

If you have multiple X servers installed like me, you might need to change between them. The configuration file is stored at /etc/X11/xorg.conf. The X server is located in section "Device" at line Driver:


Section "Device"
 Identifier "Generic Video Card"
 Driver  "vesa"
# Driver  "fglrx"
 Option  "VideoOverlay"  "on"
 Option  "OpenGLOverlay"  "off"
 BusID  "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

HawkWikiEx Open Source Wiki Engine in C# - 0.6.0 released

2008-04-06T01:42:00.000-07:00

You can download the 0.6.0 version from CodePlex. It adds diff file generation and very simple authentication with commercial barcode generator.

The upcoming release will be 0.7.0. It will add really modular architecture and the email authentication provider. It will be released when the code cleanup is completed and when my wiki will be able to run on this version.

How to deploy HawkWikiEx on Linux (Ubuntu 7.10)

2008-04-05T05:15:00.000-07:00

1. Create a directory let's say /var/www/wiki.sample.com
2. Depending on your Apache2 configuration, create or open your site file e.g. /etc/apache2/sites-available/default on Ubuntu 7.10 and add a new virtual host:


<VirtualHost *>
        ServerName  wiki.sample.com
        ServerAdmin your@yourmail.net

        DocumentRoot /var/www/wiki.sample.com

        <Directory />
                Options FollowSymLinks
                AllowOverride None
        </Directory>
        <Directory /var/www/wiki.sample.com>
        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
        AllowOverride All
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all
        SetHandler mono
        DirectoryIndex Default.aspx
        AddType application/x-asp-net .wiki
        AddType application/x-asp-net .showcode
        </Directory>    

        ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/error.log 

        # Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit,
        # alert, emerg. 
        LogLevel warn 

        CustomLog /var/log/apache2/access_wiki.log combined
        ServerSignature On

    <Location /mono>    
        SetHandler mono-ctrl
        Order deny,allow
        Deny from all
        Allow from 127.0.0.1
    </Location>

</VirtualHost>

3. Depending on your Mono-server configuration create a new WebApp file let's say /etc/mono-server/wiki.sample.com.webapp and add:


<apps>
    <web-application>
        <name>HawWikiEx on my domain</name>
        <vpath>/</vpath>
        <path>/var/www/wiki.sample.com</path>
        <vhost>wiki.sample.com</vhost>
    </web-application>
</apps>

4. Download a binary release of HawkWikiEx from Releases and put it in /var/www/wiki.sample.com
5. Restart Apache2 and Mono-server with (on Ubuntu 7.10)


sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 reload

6. Open your favorite browser and navigate to http://wiki.sample.com. HawkWikiEx StartPage should appear.

Introducing HawkWikiEx

2008-04-05T04:51:00.000-07:00

As I have written before, I have been modifying HawkWiki to work under Ubuntu 7.10 with Apache2 and mod_mono.

Now welcome to HawkWikiEx! It adds new features like

Rendering done by NVelocity. It allows really easily to change the layout etc.

Standard ASP.NET authentication with built-in very simple authentication mechanism based on email authentication

change management and diff document generation between changes with Diff

simple built-in search based on NLucene

It already powers http://wiki.podhola.net.

HawkWiki - patch to run under Mono

2008-03-02T02:01:00.000-08:00

UPDATE!
If you are interested in HawkWiki successor, please have a look at HawkWikiEx.

I wanted to have HawkWiki running under Mono as my wiki. I have created a small patch and uploaded it to the HawkWiki source code repository. Hopefully it gets to the official source code :-)

If you want to download it, you can get the patch either from CodePlex or here. I have also uploaded just the three changed files, so you can grab WikiRenderer/WikiGenerator.cs, SampleWiki/WikiDataProvider.cs and SampleWiki/WikiHandler.cs.

How to highlight a phrase on results from Lucene.Net

2008-02-17T08:17:00.000-08:00

You came here probably because of Google search or mentioning this page on Stack Overflow. However this down is from 2008 and I am pretty sure it is not working anymore, last time I checked, there were no Lucene.Net.Highlight in Lucene.Net 2.4, sorry...

If you are Outlook, Remember The Milk or Producteev user interested in synchronization, you may have a look at my Outlook synchronization pages.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Adding Lucene.Net based search to HawkWiki was really easy. The results page was showing only the links and I wanted to see also a part of the resulting page. I decided to use the highlighting feature in Lucene.Net.Highlight. I have not found Lucene.Net.Highlight.dll compiled, so I have compiled version 2.0.0 and you can download it. The code to highlight part of the page was also very simple. First instantiate the highlighter based on you search query:


Lucene.Net.Highlight.QueryScorer scorer = new Lucene.Net.Highlight.QueryScorer( query, reader, ContentsField );
Highlighter highlighter = new Highlighter( scorer );

If you are going through search hits, open the content and let highlighter to highlight the content:


StreamReader sr = File.OpenText(path);
string content = sr.ReadToEnd();
sr.Close();

string fragment = highlighter.GetBestFragment( analyzer, ContentsField, content );
result[ i ] = new Result();                            
string relPath = path.Replace( rootDir, "" );
result[ i ].Path = relPath;
result[ i ].Title = relPath.Remove( 0, 1 ).Replace( ".wiki", "" );
result[ i ].Fragment = fragment;

Simple, isn't it.

Wiki

2008-02-11T12:13:00.000-08:00

UPDATE!
If you are interested in source code of wiki.podhola.net, please have a look at HawkWikiEx.

I have started a wiki on wiki.podhola.net. Why? You can find it on the start page there. The other reason was to have a wiki implementation working on Mono. I have started with HawkWiki and changed it a little bit. You can downloadit if you want.

Ubuntu 7.10: server install from network on software RAID1

2008-02-09T08:35:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I am writing the steps I took to get Ubuntu 7.10 Server on my computer. I had to use the installation from the network as I am not able to boot from CD (have a look here why). As I was unsuccessful last time I started from scratch.

(The first part is taken from this tutorial)
1. let's say you have Windows XP
2. create folder C:\boot
3. download files linux and initrd.gz to c:\boot
4. Download Grub4Dos from project page on sf.net
5. unzip grub4dos-0.4.3.zip
6. Copy c:\boot\grub4dos-0.4.3\grldr to C:\
7. create folder C:\boot\grub
8. Copy c:\boot\grub4dos-0.4.3\menu.lst to C:\boot\grub
9. Open Command Line: Start - Run - cmd
10. run attrib -a -r -s -h c:\boot.ini in the command line
11. run notepad c:\boot.ini in the command line
12. add C:\grldr="Start GRUB" at the end of boot.ini and save it
12. return to the command line and run notepad c:\boot\grub\menu.lst
13. to the end of the file add


title Ubuntu Installer (hd0,0)
kernel (hd0,0)/boot/linux vga=normal ramdisk_size=14972 root=/dev/rd/0 rw --
initrd (hd0,0)/boot/initrd.gz

and save it
14. remove CD and floppy and restart
15. when booting choose Start GRUB option from Windows loader (press F8 to get there)
16. after a while you should see GRUB4DOS window. Select the last option Ubuntu Installer (hd0,0)
17. Ubuntu installer should start after a while (Choose language)
18. Configure everything and choose also your network mirror
19. The installer should stop at "Partition disks"
20. We need to create 2 same layouts on both disk - the easiest thing how to do this is to create partitions RAID partitions from the end on both disk (8GB let say), do not forget to set the type to Linux raid autodetect
21. We also need to have a partition with root filesystem so let's create it on the second disk from the beginning the same size as Windows partition
22. Once installed, you can reboot and have your system running
23. run sudo fdisk -l to make sure the partitions are the same size and the correct type Linux raid autodetect
24. download the software raid tools sudo apt-get install mdadm
25. create the RAID by sudo mdadm --create /dev/md0 -l 1 -n 2 /dev/sda2 /dev/sdb1
26. format the new disk by sudo mkfs -t ext3 /dev/md0
27. mount the new disk sudo mount /dev/md0 /mnt/
28. we have to copy all the data from current root (e.g. /dev/sdb2) to the new disk:

su
tar cl --exclude=/media/sda1 -–exclude=/proc -–exclude=/mnt -–exclude=/sys  / | tar xvC /mnt
exit

. You should ommit --exclude /media/sda1 if windows partition is not mounted. You should not ommit the other excludes. You might check the status cat /proc/mdstat
29. we have to change fstab of the newly to-be-booted system by sudo nano /mnt/etc/fstab. Change the beginning of the line with / from something like UUID=03... to /dev/md0.
30. create ommited folders sudo mkdir /mnt/proc /mnt/sys; sudo chmod 555 /mnt/proc
31. it the RAID partition on the same disk as the original bootable partition is not set as bootable, set it sudo fdisk /dev/sdb and then a 1 and w.
32. we have to change booting with GRUB so sudo nano /boot/grub/menu.lst. Find the default entry, copy the lines before the default entry and change root (e.g. from root (hd1,1) to the new RAID partition on the same disk root (hd1,0)). Also change kernel line from root=UUID=xycxcxy... to root=/dev/md0.
33. copy changed file to mnt as well sudo cp /boot/grub/menu.lst /mnt/boot/grub/menu.lst
34. change /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf by


su
mdadm --examine --scan > /tmp/mdadm.conf
cat /tmp/mdadm.conf >> /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf
cp /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf /mnt/etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf
exit

35. change /usr/share/initramfs-tools/init by sudo nano /usr/share/initramfs-tools/init and add line /sbin/mdadm --assemble --scan before mountroot
36. build init by sudo update-initramfs -k all -u. copy sudo cp /boot/initrd.img-2.6.22-14-generic /mnt/boot/initrd.img-2.6.22-14-generic.
37. install grub to the boot sector sudo grub-install /dev/sda and sudo grub-install /dev/sdb.
38. reboot. You should be up and running. Check by mount - the / partition should be /dev/md0, if you check cat /proc/mdstat you should see md0 : active.

Hope you find this helpful and enjoy it. If something is going wrong, you can always boot the second option,mount your RAID on /mnt and go through the files. You still need the original linux partition as it contains boot files.

RAID1 as root filesystem on Ubuntu 7.10

2008-02-09T06:05:00.000-08:00

OK, so it was not that easy but following the very nice quide and finding some information how to solve my problems on Ubuntu here, here, here and here, I had RAID up and running for a while...

The most important part was changing /usr/share/initramfs-tools/init and adding mdadm --assemble --scan there. You have to run sudo update-initramfs -k all -u then and also sudo grub-install /dev/md0.
Also do not forget to add something like ARRAY /dev/md0 level=raid1 num-devices=2 UUID=cbc59996:6e0056a8:325ecf68:79913751 at the end of your /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf.

The strange thing is, that I am still stuck at the boot now, but I hope I will be able to get over it.

.Net Twitter Badge

2008-02-04T13:52:00.000-08:00

I needed something very simple to show my twits on my homepage and written in DotNet (C#). I have downloaded the code from RSS.NET, compiled it into .NET 1.1 DLL and created a very simple code that you can embed into your .ASPX page. The library is here and it should be put in /bin folder in your website folder. The code could look somehow like this:


<%
string url = "http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/8607272.rss";
Rss.RssFeed feed = Rss.RssFeed.Read(url);
Rss.RssChannel channel = (Rss.RssChannel)feed.Channels[0];
foreach (Rss.RssItem item in channel.Items)
{
 Response.Write( item.Description + "&nbsp;" );
 Response.Write( "<small><a href='" +item.Link + "'>" + item.PubDate + "</a></small><br><br>" );
}
%>

Make sure your page has .ASPX extension and starts with famous


<%@ Page Language="C#" Debug="false" %>

The Silence of the Fans

2008-01-29T13:58:00.000-08:00

Inspired by this, I will post what was needed.

sudo aptitude install alien
sudo aptitude install snmpd
sudo aptitude install tcl8.4
sudo aptitude install fakeroot
sudo aptitude install rcconf

Download files from http://h20293.www2.hp.com/portal/swdepot/displayProductsList.do?category=LINUX

sudo apt-get install libstdc++2.10-glibc2.2
sudo dpkg -i hpasm-7.8.0-100.etch26.i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i hpsmh-2.1.7-167.debian.i386.deb

sudo /etc/init.d/hpasm configure

The only thing is, that it has not helped at all... yet...

"Network and Sharing Center" "Server execution failed"

2008-01-28T01:26:00.001-08:00

Would net localgroup "Administrators" "Local Service" /add from here help?

What will make sense in few days...

2008-01-27T12:30:00.000-08:00

Specification

Cylindric.net about Ubuntu on Proliant

Up and running

2008-01-26T12:18:00.000-08:00

Is not this nice? I have Boo and MonoDevelop and ASP.NET running on the top of my Ubuntu Desktop installation with Apache2 and mod-mono from Mono...

For today I have started with

2008-01-26T00:37:00.000-08:00

sudo aptitude install apache2

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

sudo aptitude search mono

and finally

sudo aptitude install libapache2-mod-mono

Just another very old one that I like...

2008-01-20T11:44:00.001-08:00

An article about Pharma CRM

2008-01-13T03:13:00.001-08:00

just in case you can read Czech language - here.

I know it is a little bit late, but ... :-)

2008-01-06T11:28:00.000-08:00

Boo Castle ASP.NET

2007-12-29T07:06:00.000-08:00

OK, so after a help about Global.asax in ASP.NET 2.0 and ActiveRecord initialization, first version is working. Stay tuned :-)

Castle Boo - II

2007-12-29T05:10:00.000-08:00

I am trying to write a small project to understand both Boo and Castle Project.
I have already written my first two small rules here.
Today I try to solve the question of inheritance. It may seem silly to ask a question wheather EnteredBill should inherit from Task if EnteredBill is Task in my concept, but as I have written before, I like the generics and it is not yet completelly usable in Boo (read here).

I will update this when I find the suitable way.

Castle Boo

2007-12-25T11:19:00.000-08:00

Using Castle in Boo

Finally I got to write few things about my ongoing work. I am not sure that this is completely correct and how it should be done.

I need to write a really simple tracking application and I decided to use Boo and Castle to both finish the task and to learn those two exciting technologies.

There is a simple inheritance structure in the project and few relationships and so I have finished with these two simple rules to follow:

1. generics is better so do not try to define your own base class. Use

[Castle.ActiveRecord.ActiveRecord]
class Event(Castle.ActiveRecord.ActiveRecordBase of Event):

2. if there is HasMany/BelongsTo relationship, use:


 _expenses as IList = ArrayList()
 [Castle.ActiveRecord.HasMany(Expense, Table:"Expense", ColumnKey:"accountid", Inverse:true) ] 
 Expenses as IList:
  get: return _expenses
  set: _expenses = value

on the "parent" side and


 _fromAccount as Account
 [Castle.ActiveRecord.BelongsTo("accountid")]  
 FromAccount as Account:
  get: return _fromAccount
  set: 
   _fromAccount = value
   _fromAccount.Expenses.Add( self )

on the other. This way it works the way I like: setting Account property but being able to read list members at the same time.

To get the examples working...

2007-12-07T13:47:00.000-08:00

... you need to have Boo dlls registered in GAC or you have to have them in the bin subfolder. I will correct it in the next "release".

On Microsoft Internet Information Services 6.0 you'll also need to create a wildcard mapping to "aspnet_isapi.dll" to mask the .rails extension. It may be done on a virtual directory only; it is on the Directory tab under Configuration button.

BrailTest3 - layouts and AJAX

2007-12-06T04:44:00.000-08:00

Just a little bit of layouts and AJAX to change the design easily and to try to get the date dynamically. Grab it from here.

BrailTest2 - current time at least

2007-12-05T13:23:00.000-08:00

Ok, ok, the first sample was a little bit about nothing, so I have created a second one showing a data from controller at least. Download here.

To set it up, just unpack it all on Windows to C:\inetpub\wwwroot so you will have folder C:\inetpub\wwwroot\BrailTest1\. In IIS management console, create a virtual directory from the BrailTest1 folder, set it up to run under ASP.NET 2.0 and corresponding application pool. If you open http://localhost/BrailTest1/, you should get redirected to http://localhost/BrailTest1/home/showtime.rails that is showing your current time. The method is defined in this file C:\inetpub\wwwroot\BrailTest1\controllers\HomeController.boo.

BrailTest1 - downloadable empty sample

2007-12-05T06:11:00.000-08:00

I am still very interested in modern programming techniques. I have always liked the MVC concept and disliked the wiring concept in WebForms. I decided to try Castle, Boo, MonoRail and Brail. I will post samples here, the first is just simple empty structure to entend. Download here.

What will your obituary say?

2007-11-25T23:53:00.000-08:00

http://www.quizgalaxy.com/quiz_114.html

'What will your obituary say?' at QuizGalaxy.com

One Lead

2007-10-18T05:57:00.000-07:00

I have found this article called Sales and Marketing Alignment: One Lead, One View, One Result. We have already implemented the first two points of "Roadmap to Success" mentioned there let say 5 months ago in Sprinx (or Sprinx CRM? It is the same in fact as far as we are considering Sprinx as the CRM company). Today we are about to implement the third one in upcoming release.

This was really very interesting article on CRM Buyer!

That wasn't in the original specification

2007-10-14T06:35:00.000-07:00

Another one from one of my favourite blogs here http://ayende.com/Blog/archive/2007/10/14/The-Consulting-Game.aspx. I really hate people hiding behind the specification without seeing the bigger picture - it is applicable not to developers only, you know...

15 minutes

2007-10-14T06:23:00.000-07:00

I can still remember how nervous I was when a colleague of mine had been working on an assigned task for more then few minutes. I have found much better story here http://ayende.com/Blog/archive/2007/10/14/Failure-and-trashing.aspx.

2007-10-12T08:58:00.000-07:00

From http://www.crmlady.com/2007/10/dynamics-crm--1.html

As mentioned in earlier posts I attended the 1st Microsoft Dynamics CRM v4.0 Partner Readiness Event (in NYC). During this event I took notes on all the highlighted and demonstrated top 25 new features and yet I also realized that there are sooo many existing features in v3.0 that many a partner does not know about. In future days I will also be focusing on these untapped gems. Today however we will focus on a few of the "oh cools". Understand that these are from my NOTES and as such can be misinterpreted either by me or anyone else and are simply shared as is, no guarantees to complete perfect accuracy.
The list is in no particular order.
• Multi-currency: Oh not just localized versions, but the ability to mix currency choice within one specific company.
• Multi-language: The same as above and a big thank you to the team from the many companies with multiple global offices!
• Support for roaming profiles when using terminal service environments
• Significant development around increased WAN performance
• Multi-layers of advanced duplicate detection. A major thank you from me to the team! They went above and beyond on this one (although this demanding little gemstone can always find more to want)
• Support for SQL Monitoring and SQL Clusters
• Support for alternative deployments
• "self updating" installation
• Diagnosis and process monitoring
• Embedded Auto-Complete on numerous fields
• More Bulk Changes and Data Cleansing features
• Web Based Mail Merge
• A new Report Wizard to empower customers to extract all the data they want to extract in the way they want to extract it
• Integration with Office Communicator (think embedded IM)
• Presence control (who is on-line)
• 360 Degree View of the Customer
• Cross entity advanced find enhancements
• Role based report foundation
• New Deployment Wizards which include bulk importing of users from Active Directory
• OneNote Integration
• A new level of Bi-Directional integration to Excel (Export to Excel, make changes, re-import into DynamicsCRM)
• New workflow Wizards, Templates and libraries
• Web based/Client Workflow configuration
• Break down any workflow into stages
• Multi-criteria e-mail tracking. E-mail tracking token can be turned off.
• New more flexible licensing options such as device versus user CALs
• Role based Report Foundation - Reporting can be dependent on the user's rights, security and roles
• New Microsoft Dynamics CRM Resource Center
• Reconfiguration/Redesign of the Outlook Client for CRM to allow for the wide variety of outlook footprints and variables in the field
• Diagnostic Tools in the Outlook for CRM client
• The Windows Workflow Foundation (WWF) with more integration to MOSS (SharePoint)
• Many to Many Relationships
• System to System Relationships
• Pop3 Support/Exchange 2007 Support (64 bit)
• Direct External Interface into Dynamics CRM without a required VPN
• Asynchronous processing
• Offline and On-line use is consistent no change of features when offline
• New Data Mapping features
• Multiple ways to Authenticate
• Various components from within Dynamics CRM can be split out onto different application servers including API Calls, WorkFlow, UI Calls, etc.
• Greater Organization Visibility
• New Client Migration Toolkit
• Multi-Tenant platform for enterprise hosting
• E-Mail Topology changed to support more multiple choices of e-mail routing
• E-mail routing can be done without Exchange
• Reporting stored within the database for easy disaster recovery planning
and sooo much more!

How to Use Microsoft Dynamics CRM Service Module for tracking issues

2007-10-05T03:41:00.000-07:00

If you came here, it was probably because of a Google search for "service module" for Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Please note that this is quite old now and there is Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Beta available now.
If you want to know about CRM software, follow my CRM page on Gassumo.

From http://www.crmlady.com/2007/10/how-to-use-micr.html

ITC = Information Technology Consulting Firm
So you already own Microsoft Dynamics CRM (partners get it in their action pack) and you want to automate your business. Here is how you track time and service in Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
1) As a service is needed you go into MS Dynamics CRM, Choose the Account and Create a new CASE (you can rename CASE to TICKET easily with configuration if you prefer).
This case is the big picture bucket for all work that will be preformed to resolve a problem or complete a service.
2) Create open Activities that need to be done to complete the service/problem/case and assign these to the case. These can include an appointment to visit the client, a task to research the problem, an e-mail to request more details or a service activity to assign and schedule resources or a phone call.
3) Do the work. As you complete each activity, mark that activity completed, make notes and assign the duration.
4) Once the case is completed - RESOLVE the case - This will role up total time from all closed associated activites.
5) Using the Dynamic Excel Spreadsheet feature of MS Dynamics CRM on completed activities you can actually have a report of total time by client/case/date/etc.
Why are Microsoft Partners not using Microsoft Dynamics CRM for their Professional Service Automation?
1) They are being reactive as opposed to pro-active. Tracking time in Microsoft Dynamics CRM in a reactive manner is painful. There are just too many steps. If partners can be pro-active then cases can be created, resources assigned and processes automated easily.

What is new in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4

2007-10-04T01:25:00.000-07:00

From http://blogs.msdn.com/crm/archive/2007/10/03/titan-first-look-videos.aspx

• Multi-tenant web services
• Duplicate Detection
• Windows Live ID Authentication with a SOAP web service
• New relationship features
• Workflow
• Multi-Lingual User Interface (MUI)
• Plugins/Assemblies in CRM 4.0
• Windows Workflow Foundation Activities
• The CRM Live 'experience'
• The Internet Facing Deployment (IFD) 'experience'
• Outlook Client enhancements
• Task Management
• Web Import
• User Management
• Multi-Currency
• Metadata API
• Lookup Auto Resolve
• Translating the User Interface
• The Resource Center
• Mail Merge
• Offline SDK

Microsoft CRM 3.0: Lemonade Stand

2007-09-12T01:36:00.000-07:00

I am really not sure what to think about this ad ...

Install BlogThis! + patch

2007-09-05T11:52:00.000-07:00

I wanted something that would make blogging easier. As I am using Internet Explorer 7 and there is no BlogThis! button in Google Toolbar, I have downloaded and Installed BlogThis. It took only a few minutes to change the script to make it compatible with last Blogger. I will put the script here.

Bluetooth Remote Control for Windows Mobile

2007-09-05T10:59:00.000-07:00

I have found this piece of software today. We have been discussing my last analysis of CRM with the customer and during a break he showed me something like this on his Sony Ericsson. I think it is cool and I am very happy I have found Bluetooth Remote Control for Windows Mobile as well.

The Machine is Us/ing Us by mwesh

2007-09-03T13:54:00.000-07:00

This is really a great video about Web 2.0, simple, informative, awesome! Found here.