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Use Google Wave to Blog
I have been thinking about this idea ever since I started playing with Google Wave. How about creating a blog post by embedding Waves – one for the post and the other for comments. The former Wave will be editable only by me, while the latter will be editable by anyone (with a Google Wave account).
A blog post using Google Wave for content and comments
This became possible, recently, with the introduction of the read-only access feature. I created a blog post with a Wave talking about the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about Google Wave and a blank (to start with) Wave for comments. Click here to see this blog post. This was achieved as follows:
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Occasionally (or often), when one sends you Office 2007 files (docx, xlsx, pptx) and you are using OpenOffice, you wonder how to open it? I can suggest, my tried and tested solution on OpenOffice, on Linux. Earlier I had been converting Office 2007 on Linux command line using OdfConverter as per the instructions at http://www.oooninja.com/2008/01/convert-openxml-docx-etc-in-linux-using.html. Today saw Ubuntu Linux opening Office 2007 files in OpenOffice 2.4. I have been using Fedora (as of this writing I'm running Fedora 9) on my laptop.Definitely there had to be something similar, for OpenOffice 2.4 in Fedora 9. Found it at the following URL: http://katana.oooninja.com/w/odf-converter-integrator
- Fedora users can install the RPMs from http://katana.oooninja.com/f/software/odf-converter-integrator-0.1.5-1.i386.rpm
- Once this RPM is installed, double clicking any Office 2007 file will open the corresponding file in OpenOffice.
- It basically registers a script - a python script - called odf-converter-integrator (found in /usr/bin directory) which is associated with the MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) types of Office 2007 files.
- This script uses the same OdfConverter binary which I used before and converts the Office 2007 file on the fly.
- While this will open an Office 2007 file using double click, you cannot open an Office 2007 file using File->Open in OpenOffice.
- Don't expect to be able to save the file in Office 2007 format. You will have to choose one of the OpenOffice supported file formats (like ODT, DOC, ODS, XLS, ODP, PPT etc.).
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Frequently Asked Questions about Google Wave
The content of this blog post comes from Google Wave. You will need a Google Wave account to view or post comments. The best way to view this post is to first login into your Google Wave account and then goto/refresh this page.
Refer to this post on how to use Google Wave for blog posts and comments on your own WordPress powered blog.
Official WordPress app for Android
After having played with wpToGo app (though for a very short time), the announcement of an official WordPress app for Android phones caught my attention. These apps allow you to manage your blog posts and comments from your Android phone.
I fired Android Market on my phone, searched for “wordpress” and the official app was right at the top, proudly named as WordPress, just WordPress. Yea, that’s indeed the official app!
Kindle to India: Frequently Asked Questions
I ordered an Amazon Kindle for a friend of mine. Before ordering the Kindle, there were various doubts and apprehensions about it’s functionality, cost and shipping to India. It took me numerous Google searches to conclude that Kindle is a safe and good buy for someone in India.
You cannot browse the Web using Kindle (Global Wireless) in India. Image source: Wikipedia.org
Subsequently, I placed an order on behalf of my friend and the Kindle was shipped to New Delhi, India to my residence in about 2 days. I got to setup, configure and play with this nifty device, before I could hand it over to my friend.
Web Scraping with Firefox and PHP, using XPath
Last year, I faced two projects which required automated Web scrapping – to aggregate content from web pages. I evaluated different methods for Web scraping with varied level of success. Thanks to the changing structure of Web pages, non well-formed pages and URL redirects.
Amongst using regular expressions and DOM (Document Object Model) parsing, I used XPath too. XPath works great for well-formed Web pages.
Read Only Google Wave
I have been using Google Wave, ever since I got the developer sandbox access in July 2009. Subsequently, I got the invite for the Google Wave Preview. I started putting Google Wave into an obvious use - documentation. For example: I wrote a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) about Google Wave itself.
But hell broke loose, when I made the Wave “public”. While it was thrilling to see the comments of the participants, the Wave no longer looked like an organized list of questions and answers. Thanks to the blips (messages) from others inserted in between. What I wanted then, is launched now by Google – Read-only participants.
Drupal Views: Hide or display alternate text for 0 (zero) comments
I have been playing with Drupal Views extensively for the last three months for a Website project. Whenever I overcome a hurdle with Views, I end up realizing how powerful and flexible is the Views module. It is just me who doesn’t know all the syntax to tap it’s power. Here is one such example. With about four lines of code, I was able to get rid of an annoyance in an otherwise neat-looking View.
For the Website project, I built a View to show the recent blog posts along with their title, author, post date and the number of comments. All looked fine expect the comments. It pinched me to see “0 comments”, in the View, against the posts, which did not have a comment.
My list of must-have Android apps
Ever since I ordered and got my Android Dev Phone 1 (a.k.a. ADP1), I have been taking it through various updates. The phone shipped with Android version 1.0 and upgraded to version 1.6. After 1.6, I opted to go for ROMs from CynaogenMod.
Each time, I upgrade my phone, I wipe off its data. This is because I took the upgrades as an opportunity to wipe off applications which I install, but do not use or use occasionally. But, following is the list of Android applications which I crave to install after each wipe off. These applications are my must-haves on my Android phone.
Joomla: Hide breadcrumb on the Home page
Typical requirement this is. You want to display the breadcrumb on the top of every page but the home page – also called the default page or the frontpage in Joomla. This is because you don’t just want the text “HOME” hanging on the top of your Joomla’s home page.
The “Home” may be already highlighted in the main menu, visitors know that they are on the home page and the breadcrumb is not aiding any navigation. Unfortunately, the breadcrumb module (called mod_breadcrumbs) in Joomla 1.5 does not provide any option to hide it on home page and show it on other pages.
FTP Backups made easy
I do not recall backing up data over FTP (File Transfer Protocol) in the near past. Thanks to the SSH (Secure SHell) suite of programs like SCP (Secure Copy) and SFTP (Secure FTP), and RSync. But recently I had to setup a scheduled and unattended backup of data lying on a shared hosted server using FTP – the only available option at my disposal.
Wget is a popular and obvious choice to try out for FTP backups. But it didn’t work for me and threw an error saying cannot find .listing file. While I was about to dwell more into wget, I spotted the forgotten hero – lftp.
Firefox 3.5 (Final) on Fedora 11
Firefox 3.5, the final release, has made its debut and is ready for download from here. Typically (and unfortunately) it may take about a day or two for Firefox 3.5 final to appear in the Fedora 11 repositories and across all the mirrors. When it appears, upgrading from the current version (Beta 4) of FireFox to the final release would be a matter of issuing ‘yum install firefox’. But we may not have to wait!
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