i have moved

i have moved to another url: http://mobile247.blogspot.com

see you there! =)

GetJar.com

just found a great resource for free java games and applications for java enabled phones, it's called GetJar. they have shareware, demos and full versions of lots of java applications! one great thing about this site is that it offers the option to download the software to your pc or directly to your phone (using gprs/wap). oh and did it tell you that it's free? :D check it out! i'm sure you'll find lots of applications you can use :)

clonespy

someone asked me recently, "how often do you do back-ups? i'm asking 'coz i've never done a back-up." with a smile, i replied, "as often as i need to."

so how often to i back-up? well, for this post that's neither here nor there, what is important is that i do back up although in very unorganized way. and as a result of my poor back up methodology, i end up with lots of duplicates of my files stored in who knows how many folders!

i was trying to get myself organized yesteday and realized just what a pain those duplicates could be. imagine going through dozens of folders that are 2 or 3 folders deep just to check if you already have a copy of that file somewhere in there. it's a total nightmare, i tell you.

i decided to get some help. i thought, someone probably had a similar problem and wrote some application to help solve it. i did a bit of googling and finally ended up with clonespy from snapfiles. it's a great piece of freeware! you just specifiy the folders you want to scan, and it can check for files with duplicate filenames, duplicate contents, or even files with similar sizes. and did i mention that it was freeware :D it's perfect for checking for duplicate pictures or downloads.

from the site:

Do you often download files from the internet? Is your hard drive crowded with these files? Have you ever asked yourself which files you already downloaded more than one time? CloneSpy can help you saving hard drive space by detecting and removing duplicate files. CloneSpy can find files that have exactly the same contents regardless of their name, date, time and location. Moreover Clonespy is able to find files that are not exactly identical, but have the same filename. Perhaps you have different versions of a file and you want to find all of them and remove the older versions. In addition, the program can also find zero lenght files. You have the option to decide what you want to do with the found duplicates, CloneSpy shows you the details of each file (and it`s proposed duplicate) and allows you to either keep, move or delete.

if you're like me who works with multiple workstations, i'm sure you probably have duplicate files somewhere. go check out clonespy and see how much of a God send it is :)

the ipod rocks!

i recently got my hands on an ipod mini (1st gen) and i'm loving it so far :) it's so sleek, compact, and easy to use, practically idiot proof! (and as a software engineer, that's saying a lot!) there is a down side, of course, battery life is just not too good (a measly five hours). it's a good thing it comes with both a usb and a firewire cable so i can charge anywhere there is a usb (or firewire) port. maybe after my warranty expires i can build up enough courage to open up my mini and do a diy battery replacement.

that's about all i'm going to say about my ipod, this is after all not a review about the ipod. if you're looking for one, just google for it, you'll probably get millions of hits :)

so what have i done with my ipod? created playlists and then filled it with songs of course! during the first week or so my ipod was filled to the brim (less than 10mb free i think) with mp3s. i just had to put everything i could squeeze into it! i figured i'd want to have every type of music to match my current mood. i ended up having too many unplayed songs taking up valuable disk space (the 1g ipod mini only has 4 gigs of hard disk space)

i initially set itunes to manual sync because i wanted complete control over my ipod. but then i realized that doing a manual sync means that the play statistics of the songs in my ipod aren't synced back into itunes. what a bother! after all, these statistics are important, they tell me which songs should stay and which songs should go. i googled for a while to look for some tool or method to bring these information back into itunes but the only solutions i found where for macs (you lucky bastards!) i finally decided to meet itunes half way and set it to sync only my selected playlists automatically. this way before it replaces any songs from my ipod with my changes in itunes, it first downloads all the song information and updates the itunes database. i guess this will have to do for now :)

that's it for now, more on my next ipod related post...

my ipod...

gmail smart-delete button

wow, i can't believe i haven't posted since january! i guess i must have been busier than i thought :) anyway, here's a little quickie for you gmail+firefox users out there.

i've been using gmail as my main account now so i get tons (well maybe not tons =P) of emails every day. most of them are automatically archived and applied their respective labels while some are captured by gmail's built-in spam filter. every so often i get some junk email (to me at least) that isn't caught by the filters. so what do i do? move it to trash, of course.

this two click process (click on the more actions drop down and then click on move to trash) is not too annoying if it's just one item. it starts to get irritating when there are a lots of them. i mean, it's probably fine if i can immediately tell from the subject that an email is junk but more often than not, i'd have to open the email first to be able to tell. it gets worse, of course, sometimes these messages span several pages (i know, i know, my fault for not cleaning up my inbox more often :D)! that's when it gets downright irritating!

i'm probably whining about something you don't mind at all. unlike me, you can probably spare the extra second to make that second click. but if the convenience were available, why not take advantage if it, right?

first of all you have to be using firefox. (what do you mean you don't know what firefox is? are you from the dark ages or something? :D) if you're not using firefox then i'm sorry but i can't help you, but if you are, here's what you need to do:
1. install greasemonkey
2. restart firefox
3. visit paul's blog
4. right click on the script and select install user script*

*sometimes this step doesn't work right. as an alternative, you can just click on the link to open the script in your browser and then go to tools (the menu on top, the item beside help) and click on install user script.

it's a great script my only problem with it is that it places the delete button right before the archive button. i'm a creature of habit so and i'm so used to the archive button being the first one that i'm sure i'll accidentally click delete (all the time!). here's a little modification i did to paul's script to address this:

changed line 101 to:

if (0==id || 1==id) insert_point=insert_point.nextSibling.nextSibling.nextSibling.nextSibling;

added the following right after line 102

if (2==id || 3==id) insert_point=insert_point.nextSibling.nextSibling.nextSibling.nextSibling.nextSibling.nextSibling;