No Facebook in Ping After All · Yesterday on TWiG, Leo and Jeff and I discussed Facebook integration in Ping--Leo didn't know it was there, but looking at the screenshots on Apple's site, before I got the iTunes 10 download, I said it was there. But even though the Ping web page reads "Find even more music fans...by connecting to your Facebook account" right now, Kara Swisher reports that Steve Jobs told her there's no Facebook in Ping because they wanted "onerous terms that we could not agree to." So, I stand corrected. Ping is a completely walled garden. · 6 hours ago, 6 comments
Having a ball playing around with the just-released GoogleCL tool, which offers command line access to Google Calendar, contacts, Docs, Picasa, Blogger, and YouTube. With Python-based GoogleCL installed, you can do things such as list today's events on your GCal right in the terminal, like so:
$ google calendar today title
Coffee with Michael and Samir
Dozing off
Lunch at Flingers
Instant use case: Add echo "Next 24 hours:";google calendar today title to your ~/.bash_profile file to see what you've got scheduled for the day when you launch a new Terminal window. Some more GoogleCL fun inside.
On May 12, 2006, I hacked together my first bash script that was more than a dozen lines and published it on Lifehacker. todo.sh manipulated a todo.txt file at the command line using grep, tail, head, sort, and cat: all the shell-based text tools that I knew and loved. Back then, in Lifehacker's heyday, I was obsessed with the simplicity and portability of text files, mostly because Danny O'Brien featured them front and center in his original life hacks talk.
Since then, Todo.txt CLI has grown into a legitimate open source project with dozens of contributors, hundreds of people on the mailing list, regression tests, custom add-ons, and a Python fork. This script has literally run my life since 2006, but using it hasn't been its greatest value--the collaborative development experience has.
It's been awhile since I've had to deal with a malware-laden PC, but my long streak of luck ran out this weekend when a family friend--who describes himself as computer illiterate--called. "Every time I try to do anything on the computer," he told me, "I get a message saying it's infected, and I have to pay $69 to clean it, but I tried to do that and I couldn't." He couldn't even navigate to the Mozilla site to download Firefox; Internet Explorer was completely hijacked.
So, armed with a thumbdrive loaded with Firefox and AdAware installation files, I headed over there to take a look. Here's what I found:
The Norton AV trial subscription that came with Windows XP had expired and stopped protecting the machine, which was connected directly to my friend's broadband ISP with Windows Firewall turned off.
Windows XP hadn't been updated since before SP2 had come out, because a friend of my friend told him not to trust any automatic updates. Because they might be spyware.
Rogue software called XP AntiSpyware had taken over the machine.
I'm coming up on year four of using a plain todo.txt file and a simple bash script to manage my daily tasks in it, and I still love the CLI simplicity. But this year I'm juggling several different projects, and needed an easy way to see my todo list separated into sub-lists by project. Happily, the Todo.txt CLI is now extensible, which means several handy add-ons can make it do all sorts of things not included in the core script. One of my favorites is the projectview add-on.
Projectview lists your todo.txt by project (which you notate with the +ProjectName format in each task). Here's what a regular listing of some of my current todo's looks like, and then what projectview outputs.
Fill Every Last Megabyte of Your iPod’s Free Space · When you sync your iPod/iPhone in iTunes 9 and you've got space left, check off the "Automatically fill free space with songs" box on the Music tab to use every last free megabyte. As David Chartier at The Finer Things in Mac site notes, there's no way to see what songs iTunes pulls and adds there for you. I'd like to think it uses some sort of smarts to determine what songs you haven't synced that you should have. Either way, nifty feature for quickly filling up your player without having to check off playlists manually. · December 22nd, 2009, 3 comments
Got a surprising alert yesterday telling me two of the extensions I had installed on my PC's copy of Firefox have been blocked because they cause stability or security problems. (Click to enlarge the dialog on the right.) Specifically, the Microsoft .NET Framework Assistant and Windows Presentation Foundation extensions were the problem children that got kicked off the island. (In my defense, I didn't install these extensions myself--Windows Update did). My first reaction was, "Ugh, of course Microsoft's extensions have vulnerabilities!"
Turns out that Firefox is blocking extensions with serious bugs from major companies beyond Microsoft, including Apple, Yahoo, and AVG. Here's the full list of blocked extensions and the bugs that are causing the blockage. (Ironically, the AVG extension is called "SafeSearch.") In a blog post, Mozilla security chief Mike Shaver says the .NET Framework Assistant has been unblocked, but as of writing it still shows up on the published list. Kudos to Firefox for taking a proactive stance and protecting its users against buggy extensions that could degrade the browsing experience. Did you have a buggy extension installed?
Googler Matt Cutts tweeted a Chrome tip a few days ago that made me switch from the stable build to the developer version of Google Chrome. In it you can right-click on a tab and choose "Pin tab" from the menu. Like Firefox's FaviconizeTab extension (a favorite when combined with Better Gmail 2 and the PermaTabs extensions), that option shrinks a tab down to only its favicon and sends it to the far left, which saves you tab bar real estate. Note that pinned tabs do not persist between Chrome sessions.
Now that I've been spending a lot of time in Google Wave, I'm spending a lot more time in Chrome (because, you know, I don't use enough Google products). I miss my Firefox extensions, but in Chrome's dev version there appears to be extension support. Guess I should look into porting Better Gmail 2 and friends. In the meantime you can get early access to the developer version of Chrome here. (Thanks to Matt for the nudge to transition to Chrome's dev channel.)
Microsoft finally gave up on the paid subscription approach and is now offering a totally free virus and spyware blocker called Microsoft Security Essentials. MSE is a decent utility: it's a light download which offers real-time (as you save files) protection, and can do a quick, advanced, or custom scan. The interface is simple and it schedules regular scans by default.
I admit: since my desktop is behind my router's firewall and I'm super-careful about what I do on it, I haven't run AV or spyware blocking utilities on my PC in years--without a single problem. Happily MSE gave it a clean bill of health. It didn't try to upsell me for a paid subscription, and it didn't report that it quarantined harmless browser cookies (a common red herring that malware cleaners use to make you think they're saving you). While security experts who make their living selling you this kind of software will tell you not to depend entirely on it, I'll replace AVG Free on Grandpa's computer with this this weekend. Kudos to Microsoft for finally offering malware protection at the right price.
I used to use an Automator action for this, but Mac OS X Hints unearthed a sweet Snow Leopard shortcut for geeks: the ability to show or hide hidden "dot" files in any Open or Save As dialog. The magic combination to start imprinting into your fingers' muscle memory is Cmd+Shift+Period. Press it again to toggle the visibility. Hit the play button above to see what it does in my Mac's home directory.
One of the biggest stumbling blocks for Mac users who try out my Todo.txt CLI is finding and opening hidden "dot" configuration file (which is the standard Linux naming convention), so this will help me help them. Sadly this shortcut does not work when you're just browsing in Finder. [via DF]
On each new episode of This Week in Google (details) I’ll highlight a tip for using cloud/Google apps smarter, faster, and better. I’ll document those tips here.
If you've upgraded your Mac to Snow Leopard (10.6), it's now dead simple to synchronize iCal with your Google Calendar. While in Leopard you had to either know detailed CalDAV settings or install a helper application, in 10.6's iCal you can just open up the Preferences pane. Under Accounts, click the + button to add an account. Enter your full gmail address (you@gmail.com) and your Google Account password, and iCal will detect and configure the CalDAV settings for you. This is full two-way sync, so changes you make to events in iCal show up in GCal and vice versa.
Pro tip: Google Apps account users, iCal won't automatically detect you're using a Google Account. From the Account type drop-down, choose "Google" and then enter your full email address and password to get your GCal in iCal. This also works for Yahoo Calendar, Exchange 2007, and any other CalDAV server as well.
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On May 12, 2006, I hacked together my first bash script that was more than a dozen lines and published it 
I'm coming up on year four of using a plain 
Googler Matt Cutts 
Microsoft finally gave up on the paid subscription approach and is now offering a totally free virus and spyware blocker called 
I'm 
