GUI broken ?

Isn't a GUI utterly broken, when the status bar (of the main window (!)) says "Opening Main Window..." for half a minute ?

Windows file type registration for OOo 3.0 Beta for Windows

Just installed the latest OpenOffice.org 3.0 build over the previous one, and all the Windows Explorer integration was lost.
I googled around a bit, and found this on GullFOSS:

"If you test the OpenOffice.org 3.0 Beta on the Windows platform, you might be wondered about the missing system integration. Well, we decided to avoid the system integration in the Windows registry, because it conflicts with an existing system integration of an OOo 2.x, that you are probably using for your daily work. But if you know, what you do, you can of course get the complete system integration for your Beta tests. You only have to set the global property WRITE_REGISTRY, that is used as condition in the Windows Installer database. So please use

setup.exe WRITE_REGISTRY=1

or if you prefer the direct call with Windows Installer service:

msiexec.exe /i WRITE_REGISTRY=1"

I reinstalled with setup.exe WRITE_REGISTRY=1 as stated above and it worked like a charme.

VirtualBox 1.6.4 released

There's a new maintenance release for Sun's VirtualBox: 1.6.4

Firefox 3 - finally

I finally moved to Firefox 3.

Because one of my favorite extension (add-on) was not FF3 compatible, I was still using FF2 only.

ConQuery was (is) the culprit. It is only 2.0.0.* compatible, and even if you "patch" the max version to 3.0.* it of course does install and run, but cannot parse the opensearch plugins from mycroft. So it was unusable.
Interestingly is was working with those search plugins nicely under FF2 ... odd.

I had FF3 only running in my virtualbox, but not on my "main" desktop. And once you get used to the speed of FF3 you will get annoyed when you have to repeatedly go back to FF2.

Only yesterday, I found out that I was kind of using the wrong extension in the first place, since there is a Context Search add-on for FF as well, which runs perfectly with opensearch, FF2 and FF3.

So there was no more obstacle...and I'm on FF3 now.

So much faster.
And the awesome bar is really awesome... or at least better than the old one.

As an IT guy ...

via Geek and Poke.

Dopplr and Twitter problem fixed

A couple of weeks ago, Dopplr (the social travel network) announced support for twitter (and email and sms). That is, you can send a tweet to the dopplr user on twitter with your travel details, and it will automatically get added to your Dopplr account as a new trip.

Of course you first have to register your twitter user with your Dopplr account... (why this is, and why the number of identity silos as ever increasing is a different story, and I'm sure I will rant about identity in social networks soon here).

You do so, by sending a (private/direct) message to the Dopplr account with a secret key (kind of thing) that you get from Dopplr. Once you sent this, the link between your Dopplr account and your twitter name is established, i.e. messages from this very twitter name will be associated with your Dopplr account.

From then on, you send messages like

“I'm going to munich from Sep 23rd to Sep 29th“

to Dopplr and the trip will be added automatically. Confirmation is sent both via twitter and via email.

In my case, however, the registration failed.

Dopplr just would not react to my registration message. Simply ignored it. I first thought, that I did something wrong, but today I got an email from Matt Biddulph , the CTO of Dopplr:

Subject: Apologies for a recent problem in Dopplr's Twitter support

This morning we discovered a bug that has affected about 60 Dopplr accounts, including yours. It meant that when you sent us a message to associate your account with your Twitter account so that you could send us trips, it didn't work correctly.

We've just fixed the bug and deployed new code to our servers. If you'd like to try again starting at http://www.dopplr.com/account/twitter then the process should now work.

I'm sorry for this problem, and hope you enjoy using our new Twitter feature.

Matt Biddulph,
Dopplr CTO.

I tried the registration again, this time it worked.

Dopplr replied with

Thanks, now we know who you are on Twitter. Full usage instructions are at http://dopplr.com/account/twitter

within a minute or so, and then I was able to add my sample trip to Munich (this is just an example, don't expect me in Munich at that time).

Which is then confirmed by an email:

Subject: Re: Your twitter message to Dopplr

Thanks for sending us a message by twitter.
We automatically created a trip to Munich, Germany (from Vienna,
Austria) between September 23rd and September 29th

We won't share coincidences from this newly-created trip with your
fellow travellers until August 13th. This is to give you a chance
to check and correct any problems in interpretation.

If you'd like to check, go to
personal link deleted

Yours sincerely,
The Dopplr Team.

I love the idea to put the new trip into a kind of quarantine for 10 days, but still publish it then by default.

So it works great now.

I was so surprised by Matt's email, that (I guess for the first time ever) I replied to him thanking him for the service.

Unusual... even for cool startups.

(email published with Matt's consent)

Update on gmail mobile vs https

As reported earlier, I had problems with both the new "Always use https" option on and still use gmail from my mobile.

So, first of all, I installed v1.5 of gmail mobile for my 6233. This did not go through the JavaME update process, because it seems Google changed the download URL for it. Just point your (built in) mobile browser to http://gmail.com/app and you can download from there.

According to the gmail blog and help center there should be a way to have "Always use https" on and still use the mobile app.

If you have the latest version of the app (1.5), you can work around these errors by also enabling the app's own 'Always use secure network connections (slower performance):' setting from your device and then signing out:

1. Select Menu > Go to > Settings.
2. Check the Always use secure network connections (slower performance): option.
3. Make sure the 'Always keep me signed in' option is NOT checked (in order for you to sign out).
4. Save your changes.
5. Select Menu > Exit Gmail.
6. Restart the app and sign in.

(from help center)

I tried this, i.e. activated both, the "Alway use secure network ..." on the mobile and the "Always use https" on the web (and turned "Always keep me signed in" back on again after a while.

Now I always get signed out of the mobile application whenever it tried to connect to gmail with a

Username and password do not match. You provided (...)

error message.

So, still does not work.

Had to turn "Always use https" back off again...