Here’s a quick tip for Flex developers using Flash Builder. For a given .AS file, you can remove/clean-up any unused import statements by hitting Ctrl+Shift+O or by clicking on Source –> Organize Imports.
A co-worker pointed me to a great tip that improved my build times within Visual Studio 2010. If you work with a large solution/project, this might help you.
Under Tools –> Options –> ‘Projects and Solutions’ grouping –> Build and Run –> Check ‘Only build startup projects and dependencies on Run’.
Check 'Only build startup projects and dependencies on Run'
Again, this is probably only useful if you have a larger solution like mine. In my case, it brought my wait time down from minutes to under a minute.
Thanks Andy!
Note: This is a test post from the WordPress app for Android. Please excuse any mistakes caused by my “fat fingers.”
T-Mobile has been going from city to city, upgrading their network infrastructure to enable HSPA+/4G speeds and become one of the largest (if not the largest) HSPA+/4G networks out there. I’ve been with T-Mobile for a long time (7+ years?) and it’s kind of cool that without having to pay a extra dime, my phone’s bandwidth in Denver went from fast to really fast without having to do anything. Check out the snapshot of my recent bandwidth test below:
2011.03.03 T-Mobile Denver speed test on Nexus One.
Throw in better customer service (this is my opinion – I’ve had both AT&T and Nextel in the past) and the peace of mind that I’m getting a good deal on my cell phone plan, I can’t help but give T-Mobile props.
Have you ever composed a piece of mail in Gmail, started to type the name of a recipient in the To field, and been annoyed that an email address for a recipient is not the first option in the list that shows up for that person? You might even always send email to that person using one particular address, but Gmail just never wants to make it the default or first option.
Or…
Have you composed mail to a (Gmail) contact group you created and found yourself having to replace unwanted/incorrect email addresses of recipients with the one you were intending?
Or…
Have you wanted to add contacts to your Gmail chat widget/box, clicked the ‘Add contact’, only to find Gmail providing non-Gmail addresses for suggested recipients in your top contacts?
Well, be inconvenienced no more! For each of your contacts that you would like to set the default email address for, edit their contact file, and set the address you want to use as the default as the FIRST address in the contact’s file. (I hope my choice of verbiage makes sense.) Unfortunately, until Google provides something like a ‘Use as default’ checkbox, this is only way I’ve found to make a contact’s email address their default.
If you stumble across my post and this helps you, please leave a comment! Thanks!
Update: This is no longer a valid method. Google has “retired” the form.
I’ve been using Google Voice for a number of years now. I actually started using the service back when it was owned and branded as GrandCentral. When I received word that Google would be acquiring them, I was delighted. Since then, Google Voice has gotten progressively better and it has become a service I use nearly every single day.
However, once I moved my personal domain to GApps and started using my GApps account exclusively as my primary Google account, this was the one service that I was not able to use with my new GApps account. Well, let me be clear…I was able to use the Google Voice service with my GApps account, but not with the Google Voice number/account I had been using for years. This was because my number/account was tied to my old personal Google account. Unfortunately, the Google Voice interface does not provide a way (as of the timing of this writing) to transfer your number/account to a different Google account. So this problem meant that I could not fully abandon my old personal Google account since I still needed it to access my Google Voice account. That was until…
I found a way to resolve this issue. Google provides a form you can fill out in case “you accidentally associated your Google Voice account with the wrong Google Account.” You can find it here:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=cjlWRDFTWERkZEIxUzVjSmNsN0ExU1E6MA
Now, of course I didn’t accidentally associate my Google Voice number/account with the wrong account. I had been happily using my number under the right account for years. But I filled out the form anyway and indicated that I was not requesting this transfer due to a mistake, but that I was now using a different Google account (a GApps account) as my primary, and would like to have my account transferred to it. Lo and behold, a couple of days later, I received an email indicating the transfer of the account was complete!
Google Voice Account Transfer Complete
Now, this might not be the “correct” way this should be done. But it worked for me. I would imagine Google will eventually have a better way of doing this kind of thing down the road. Until then, if you have a need for transferring your Google Voice number to a Google Apps account, filling out and submitting the form might work for you.
1) It’s free! This speaks for itself.
2) Cloud-based storage and accessibility of my data.
3) Utilizing the previous factor, my data could be synchronized with my mobile devices (e.g., Android, iOS, Mac OS X). I could literally have my data anywhere I wish.
4) Management & service tools that were intuitive and easy to manage (e.g., Gmail!).
5) The best email spam filter I’ve ever used.
So, I signed up and configured GApps core services for my needs. This worked pretty well. But I never thought my GApps hosted domain provided enough benefits to stop using my long-time, personal Google Account (and repective @gmail.com email address). That wasn’t until I found out that Google was going to merge GApps accounts with personal Google Accounts. When this became available and I had gone through with the merger process, a whole slew of services that previously required a personal Google Account were now available for my GApps personal domain. Things like Google Reader, Picasa Web Albums, & Google Voice were all open to my GApps onyxmueller.net domain.
With this now possible, I recently I took the plunge to retire the use of my personal Google Account (including my @gmail.com email address). I still own and access the account/email address, but it’s mainly used to forward emails still being sent to my old address and for other odds & ends. My Google experience (if you will) & email from hereforth, is now being done with my GApps hosted onyxmueller.net personal domain. So far, I’m enjoying the ride.
A co-worker/friend recommended using Twitter Tools for integrating my WordPress blog with my Twitter account, so I thought I would give it a shot. Twitter Tools makes use of a Twitter application that you need to create as a medium for your blog/Twitter communication. After cruising through the process of creating a Twitter app and entering the consumer/access keys required to configure Twitter Tools, I ran into a problem. Every time I would try to hit the ‘Connect to Twitter’ button on the Twitter Tools options page, it would lead to a blank page (and an indication from my browser that the server had returned a HTTP 500 error code). Since there was no error message (of course!), I was clueless as to what was going on or what I was doing wrong. Searching around, I found a WordPress Help Center article describing the same issue I was having and what the root cause was.
The solution was to install/compile cURL extension support into PHP5. If your blog runs on a Linux VPS (virtual private server), you will probably run a command similar to this:
apt-get install php5-curl
If your blog is on a hosting environment (without shell access!), you’ll need to find a different way to have the extension installed.
Once cURL is successfully installed, restart/reload Apache. One way to do that would be to run the following:
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 reload
That fixed the problem for me. I hope it helps someone out there that finds this post!
After a long hiatus from blogging, I’ve decided to give it another go. You might be asking “When in the hell did you ever blog before?!” Good question.
My first attempt was back in college, somewhere in the 2003-2004 time frame. Back then, Blogger had grown in popularity and had been recently acquired by Google. I thought if Google was this invested in Blogger, there must be some value. So, I decided I wanted to find out what this blogging was all about. But instead of using the Blogging service, I decided to roll my own home-made version. I’m not sure why I decided to “re-invent the wheel”…perhaps it was because I wanted to see what it would take to build such as tool. Anyway, I built my entire home-made system and was blogging in no time. The core of the system was architected with Perl logic and a MySQL datastore. It worked OK. It was mostly a kluge, but it got the job done. I was even able to re-use most that system for a baseball team site of a team I used to manage and play for during one summer in college (the 2004 MABL Northern Colorado Red Sox!).
But I digress. I’m back to trying to keep a blog and be proactive with it. This time through my blogging experience, instead of writing my own software, I’ve decided to use the current industry standard, WordPress, as blogging platform. I like it so far. It wasn’t very hard to setup and to customize, making getting a blog up and running a cinch. I’m still not sure what exactly my blog is going to be about…probably a whole plethora of topics. We’ll see. Stay tuned for more, you non-existent visitor…you.