A Googley Holiday Season

Posted by Jim Zhuang, Software Engineer

Season's greetings, everyone! To help ring in the New Year, we've got a great holiday present for you: an update to Google Desktop for Linux. The biggest addition in version 1.1.1 is support for 64-bit platforms, but we have also made many stability improvements that should be welcome to all of our existing users. Our team has worked hard over the past few weeks to get the new version out before the end of the year, and we're glad to have succeeded. So have fun with the new release, and have a wonderful holiday season � from all of us here at Google.

Desktop Gadgets for the Holiday Season

Posted by Kathy Walrath, Technical Writer

Developer-elves have been busy creating new Desktop gadgets to celebrate the holidays. Here's a guide to the some of the most recent additions.

	Christmas Tree by Benjamin Schirmer Deck your desktop with a one-of-a-kind tree. This tree starts out plain, with only animated snowflakes as decoration, but you can easily make it yours. Just right-click (Windows) or ctrl-click (Mac) wherever you want to add a decoration. If you're not in the mood for animated snowflakes, you can easily turn them off.
	Holiday Countdown 2007 Gadget by Beepem Count down to the holiday of your choice � Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or Festivus! Snowfall is optional.
	Hanukkah Menorah by Glenn Rivkees It might seem a little late to feature Hanukkah gadgets, but we couldn't leave out this beauty. It's both a countdown to Hanukkah and a menorah that lights candles on the appropriate days. Hanukkah 2007 may be over, but this gadget tells me there are only 368 days until Hanukkah 2008!
	CALGOT and MAIMAI Christmas Tree by 12STUDIO Inc. Here's the perfect desktop decoration and Christmas countdown gadget for fans of CALGOT and MAIMAI. The pretty images, animated star, sparkling highlights, and delicate snowfall help make this gadget an eye catcher.
	CALGOT and MAIMAI Christmas Wreathe by 12STUDIO Inc. If you think the snails just aren't prominent enough in the CALGOT and MAIMAI Christmas Tree gadget, try this one.
	Christmas Countdown by Bijoy Thangaraj This simple gadget counts down the seconds until Christmas.
	Fancy Christmas Frame by Bijoy Thangaraj Click inside the frame to add a random decoration. Each decoration fades out over time, so you'll have a blank slate unless you keep clicking!
	Merry X'mas by Lahiru Lakmal Priyadarshana Decorate your Google Talk buddy's tree! Here's how: Make sure you both have this gadget. (If not, your buddy will automatically get an IM saying where to get the tree.) Click the people icon (at the lower right) and choose an online Google Talk friend (one with a green icon). If necessary, click the item preview (at the upper right) so you see a star with a + sign. Click a decoration from the items palate (upper left). Click your tree to place the decoration. Repeat steps 4 & 5 as many times as you like. Click the Send button (upper right).
	Countdown To New Year 2008 by Teodor Filimon This holiday gadget displays a different picture and message every day until New Year's Day, 2008. You can have animated snow, listen to holiday songs, and even go shopping. On New Year's Eve, you'll get a countdown to midnight.

Want more seasonal gadgets? Check out the holiday gadget page.

Happy Holidays from the Google Desktop Team!

Google Docs Rocks

I ran across this story on Techcrunch. It states only about 0.5 percent of people are using online Word processors like Google Docs.

The numbers don't surprise me. I was a bit skeptical myself, but I have been using Google Docs for about 3 or 4 mounts now and just love it. Basically, its an HTML based Word Processor that runs in your browser. Its reasonably fast, does everything I need, and allows me to store all my documents on the Internet. Thus I can get to them no matter where or what computer I am on. Plus, I can export any document to Open Office if I need to do anything "fancy".

The numbers are not big right now, but pretty soon, in the near future, all of our desktop office applications will run from our browser.

Amazon SimpleDb

Ran across a link to this Amazon announcement today at work. This goes along with other types of utility computing initiatives they have started over the past year.

Given that my ISP Dreamhost gives me 5 TB of bandwith for about $7 a month, the loading of data looks kind of expensive. But if you look at the data transfer out price, then things start to look very attractive. Interesting stuff.

Of Mice and Garage Doors

Last Tuesday or Wednesday on one of the coldest days of the year so far, I went to open the garage door so I could shovel some snow. The door went halfway up, made a mournful wailing sound, and promptly died. I waited a day or so to see if it was just the extreme cold. But alas, on Thursday the old garage door opener (it was about 12 years old in my estimation) was pronounced dead.

So now the terrible task was upon me, find a company to replace the door opener. So being a good geek, I looked up some companies in the phone book and started Googling. I ran across this article from 7 news. They did an investigation last year to see who would charge the best prices to fix a door. From this, I found Arko Garage Doors gave one of the better estimates for the job. And some more Googling around found that several people had called Arko in to fix some messes made by other companies.

So I called them up Friday. Got an appointment for Monday. They showed up on time. They installed a new opener in about an hour and I'm all set. And at a good price, woo hoo!

If you need to repair your garage door or opener in the Denver Metro area, give them a call.

Change Netbeans System Font Size

Here is another example of someone trying to make me go blind. I could not find a way to change the font size of the system controls and menu's in Netbeans. I have been doing my testing in a Windows Virtual machine using VMWare Fusion for the Mac. Well the tiny fonts used for the Project tab and other controls was driving me crazy.

Well it turns out if you go into c:\program files\netbeans 6.0\etc\netbeans.conf you can add the following parameters to the command line that launches the app:

--fontsize 14

That seems to fix things up. Now if I could just change the font family too, I'd be in business.

Using Subversion with Netbeans 6

The other thing I did last night was to experiment with Netbeans 6.0 and Subversion. I wanted to figure out how it interacts with a Subversion repository.

For a typical Subversion project, by convention you want to setup 3 directories:

• branches - This directory is used for branching your code so development can occur in more than one place in your repository.
• tags - This is essentially a snap shot directory. Whenever you provide a release, you make a snapshot here. That way, the code's state is preserved for all time.
• trunk - This is where all the main development takes place. You checkout and commit your code in this directory.

Well, Netbeans 6, does not setup these directories for you when it writes your project to the repository. So, if you want to follow convention, you need to set them up first.

I was also not sure how Netbeans 6 would handle an Enterprise Java project that has a main project, and potentially, 3 more: an ejb project, an application project, and a war project. Does Netbeans 6 include the code for all 4 projects when you do an import? Or, do you have to setup separate set of directories for each project?

Well, I first tried it with an old project to see what happened. I opened the main project and did an import. Only the main project was imported. "What a pain in the rear end!" I think to myself. Not good. As this implies I would need to setup a set of directories for each subproject.

But upon further testing I discovered that if you have all of the projects open when you do the first import of the main project, it picks up the other three subprojects. Yay!!!! That's how it should work. All 4 projects are included in the same trunk directory. So just remember, make sure you have all subprojects open when you do your first import. That way, Netbeans will automatically include them.

Getting Subversion for Netbeans on Windows

I'm working on a JPA project a work and now that I'm getting into the more advanced stages of the project I wanted to put my code under version control. Being a a fan of OS X, Linux, and Solaris, I'm a bit of a command line weenie and prefer using the command line version of Subversion. However, I was having very little luck finding a command line version for Windows. As I was about to install TortoiseSVN, an SVN plugin for Windows Explorer, I started playing with the Subversion support in Netbeans 6.

When I tried to do anything from the Netbeans 6 Subversion menu, I got an error stating that Netbeans needed a command line version in the system path to use this feature. Much to my delight I was pointed to this site:
http://netbeans.open.collab.net/
which contains the latest precompiled versions of subversion clients for a number of OSes. I downloaded the Windows version and installed it. Instant Netbeans command line client for Windows. Thanks Netbeans team!!!! :)

Media Sites are trying to Make me go Blind

Have you been to My Yahoo! lately? The O'Reilly site (the books place, not the dude)? Any newspaper site?

It seems 8pt fonts are in vogue. Many of these sites are trying to cram more and more stuff onto their sites. Why? To make them more confusing? To make them unreadable? One begins to wonder. Maybe they look ok at 1027x768 but on a big monitor they look awful.

At least allow me to change the settings. One gets tired of hitting Cntrl-+ all the time. Grrr.

-- End of rant for this week --

Tin Man

If you didn't see the Scifi Channel's Wizard of Oz rethink this week, I highly recommend you see a rerun. The miniseries was surprisingly good. I like how they made a completely new story out of the old one and found a number of ways to pay homage to the original.

The wicked witch, played by Kathleen Robertson, was especially good, both hot and evil at the same time. :)

JotSpot Wiki

While scrounging around some of my site registration data, I found out that I had signed up for JotSpot a while back. If you didn't know, Google bought the company a month or two back. Rumor has it that they are planning to replace Google pages with JotSpot.

I didn't remember playing around with the Wiki, so I have started using it this week. And so far, I'm very impressed. It has all the standard features of most modern wikis. You can edit pages in text or wysiwyg. But what sets it apart is it has a series of applications you can install as wiki pages. For example, a blog application that is simple, yet has all the basic features. A powerful to do list manager that supports hierarchical lists. It also has a project manager app that I haven't tried yet.

My understanding is Google plans to make the application free, which would be awesome. It makes me wonder if I will even need to keep the wiki software on my site. Will I be able to mash it into the page much like I do this blog? Hmmmm. Maybe. I bet it will be part of Google Apps too.

The day is coming where all our applications will run from our browser not from our operating system. And if that day isn't already here, its coming very soon.

According to the home page (http://www.jot.com), registration is closed until they relaunch under the Google banner. But I do have a form for sending invites. So if you are interested in giving it a try, let me know. We will see if that form works.

Netbeans 6.0 Out!

Netbeans 6.0 is out as of Monday. Been meaning to write a post since then, but here it is Thursday already.

Netbeans 6.0 definitely feels faster on my machines. And based on my current project, the EJB and JPA interface areas seem much cleaner. Have not had a chance to play with the Netbeans/Ruby IDE yet, but hopefully will on the weekend.

So if you get the chance, check it out at http://www.netbeans.org.

Android Emulator in Action

Android Emulator is included in Android SDK. It can be involved inside Eclipse IDE, or run as a standalone application.

Featured Gadget: Concise System Info

Posted by Kathy Walrath, Technical Writer

This blog periodically features a Google Desktop gadget and a quote from someone who uses it. If you'd like to recommend a gadget, send an email to desktop-gadgets AT google DOT com.

Roger Pack, a Google Desktop user, says: "Concise System Info rox! I just set it floating at 75% zoom and then minimize Google Desktop. When my computer slows down I can restore gadgets and immediately know why my system is slow."

More information | Download gadget

Install Android SDK and Eclipse's Android Development Tools plugin

out-dated information!!!
Pls. refer here, "Install Android SDK on Eclipse 3.5 Galileo", for update information. ~edited 2009-07-18.

In order to setup Eclipse for development of Android, both Install Android SDK and Eclipse's Android Development Tools plugin are needed.

Download Android SDK and unzip it in any folder you want, it's "C:\App\android_sdk_windows_m3-rc22a" for me.

Android Development Tools plugin can be download inside Eclipse IDE.

1. Start Eclipse, then select Help > Software Updates > Find and Install....
2. In the dialog that appears, select Search for new features to install and press Next.
3. Press New Remote Site.
4. In the resulting dialog box, enter a name for the remote site (e.g. Android Plugin) and enter this as its URL:

   https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/eclipse/

   Press OK.
5. You should now see the new site added to the search list (and checked). Press Finish.
6. In the subsequent Search Results dialog box, select the checkbox for Android Plugin > Eclipse Integration > Android Development Tools and press Next.
7. Read the license agreement and then select Accept terms of the license agreement, if appropriate. Press Next.
8. Press Finish.
9. The ADT plugin is not signed; you can accept the installation anyway by pressing Install All.
10. Restart Eclipse.
11. After restart, update your Eclipse preferences to point to the SDK directory:
1. Select Window > Preferences... to open the Preferences panel. (Mac OS X: Eclipse > Preferences)
2. Select Android from the left panel.
3. For the SDK Location in the main panel, press Browse... and locate the SDK directory.
4. Press Apply, then OK.

Gmail 2.0 performance issues

The new Gmail 2.0 interface kills the performance of my Dell Inspiron 3500 laptop running FreeBSD 6.2 with the Fluxbox-0.1.14 x11 window manager and the Firefox 1.5 web browser.

Using /usr/bin/top shows the difference. Once Gmail 2.0 loads up and the initial load spike settles down 'top' shows CPU activity between 10-30%. Switching back to Gmail's Older Version drops the CPU down under 2%. Also, I configured /usr/local/bin/pine to use the Gmail IMAP interface (gmail -> Settings -> Forwarding and POP/IMAP), in the meantime, so I can read my email w/o Firefox.

I hadn't noticed the performance issue at work where I run FreeBSD on a dual AMD64 platform. However on my ~10 year old Dell Inspiron 3500 laptop Gmail 2.0 sucks the life out of the PII CPU.

$ uname -a
FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE-p9 FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE-p9 #0 Thu Nov 29 04:07:33 UTC 2007 root@i386-builder.daemonology.net:/usr/obj/src/sys/GENERIC i386

$ dmesg | egrep "CPU|MB"
CPU: Pentium II/Pentium II Xeon/Celeron (397.05-MHz 686-class CPU)
real memory = 134152192

Also, it appears the new Gmail interface is buggy. In fact, while typing this entry the browser (Firefox 1.5) crashed and left a nice core file for me in my /home directory. Apparently, according to PC World, I'm not alone in my complaints.

Install Eclipse

Eclipse is a free Open Source IDE, it can be download from http://www.eclipse.org/ or the download page here.

The first package, Eclipse IDE for Java Developers, contains what you need to build Java applications.

Click the selected package to involve the mirror selection page, select your closest mirror site, start download and save it to any position on your machine you want.

After download, un-zip it on any position you want. It's the installed folder, "C:\App\eclipse\" on my setup.

When you run the application "C:\App\eclipse\eclipse.exe", you will be asked to select the workspace, it's "C:\App\eclipse\workspace" for me.

Remark: JDK is assumed to be installed before install Eclipse.