Archive for the 'Projects' Category

Save The Data

On Last weeks episode I spoke about an easy way to get a little better data piece of mind. This of course was after a horrible, data laziness accident.

My accident wasn’t catastrophic, it was some pictures of the my dog. But they were the only pictures, and of course I wanted salvage them. I tried hooking the hard drive up to an external enclosure and connecting via windows. Boy did that give all sorts of pain to Windows. It saw the drive, and either just said ‘Do you want to format’ NO!!!!! or it just locked up file explorer.

So, the easy way was out. I needed to come up with a better plan. I decided to download DSL Linux. DSL linux is a small linux distribution that can be booted off a CD/USB Stick. Once you boot into it, it has a bunch of tools and utilities for file system exploring, as well as Wifi Sniffers and other utilities that you may want to tinker with, but dont want to set-up configure a whole Linux roll-out.

After some experimentation with copying the files to a good drive, removing that drive, and checking to see that I didn’t copy a corrupted file, I came up with a very smooth and easy method.

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Is it a sine?

A few years back, I watched MLSNI turn off their consumer facing website because members took the stance that this was reducing broker/agent centric website exposure. Ironically, seemingly overnight, this almost perfectly coincided with the flash flood of Syndication Portals (Trulia, Zillow, GoogleBase, etc).

At first, the industry was very apprehensive to giving their listings away for free. Over time they eased up, and saw how they can leverage these advertising vehicles. In all essence, they are just a more refined online classifieds model (such as the newspapers, but focused). More and more of these advertising sites began to appear, somewhat diluting the benefits, increasing the work for exposure (see Andrews Syndication Article to battle this issue) and calling more attention to what was really going on. These sites were filling a critical void in the consumer marketplace.

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Online Advertising vNext.0hhhhh!

gadget.jpgThe talk of the blogoshpere today is Google Gadget Ads. Google has been quietly rolling out a new advertising platform for the last few months. They are taking their gadgets and adwords and mashing them together. What you get is interactive, data rich ads whose main limitation is the creativity of the campaign creator. These ads can be HTML, Flash, Javascript or a combination, all of which can access real-time data feeds, images, video, and other content. So what could this mean for the Real Estate ad market?

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Deep Links - May 25, 2007

Ian’s Deep Link’n

Keith’s Deep Link’n

Andrew’s Deep Link’n

Chris’ Deep Link’n

Deep Links May-17-2007

Keith’s Deep Link’n

Plotr is a lightweight charting framework that allows you to create bar, line, and pie charts using just a few lines of JavaScript code inside plain HTML files.
http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=07/05/04/1457210
http://solutoire.com/plotr/

CSharp syntax and formatting mode for emacs
http://mfgames.com/linux/csharp-mode

A good thread from Joel on Software on where to get an SMS number. Looks prohibitively expensive in the US.

Joe Gross’s procmail tutorial.
http://www.stimpy.net/procmail/tutorial/

I’m thinking about getting this Ogio backpack as a new laptop backpack. Anyone have any experience with them? I’m having a hard time finding one in a store to check out.
http://www.ogio.com/product.php?product=128

Chris’ Deep Link’n

Encrypted bandwidth-efficient backup using the rsync algorithm
http://duplicity.nongnu.org/

Broker Website of the Future!

$100 Dollar Laptop Project First Shipments! I want one!
http://olpc.tv/category/children/

622 RSS Feeds over Coffee! I thought I was bad!

Software License Tracker

SMS 101: Understand the Power.

Unlimited Yahoo! Mail Storage: About time!

25 Hours in a day coming soon.

Meebo Launches Chat Rooms for IM service.

Gordon’s Deep Link’n

Who is Gordon? - Gordon is the Technical Project Lead from The Greater Vancouver Board

CREA Commercials - a h00t!

Your Maps are My Maps Too

Last Saturday, Chad Curry from NAR Government Affairs and his wife, Julia, organized and hosted an art exhibit to raise funds and awareness for the conflict in the Sudan. They enlisted local Chicago neighborhood businesses to help sponsor and support their event. To highlight the participating establishments, Chad stumbled upon a new(ish) feature of Google Maps, My Maps.

Once he plotted all the points of interest, he showed it to the local Chamber of Commerce. Their reaction was one of awe as to how easy and useful something like this could be. I think the real kicker came when he told them that it was free!

So what exactly is My Maps? Well, the embedded map shows a bare bones overview of what Chad made.

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Images From The Index

A while back, I made a little Gadget to deliver a rotating image from the Google Image Index. It is semi-popular, usually from those that just need a little distraction while couped up in cubicle world.

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Production != success

code.gifOne of my favorite daily reads (via RSS) is the website Worse Than Failure. The site used to be known as The Daily WTF, but the guy running the site decided to officially rename it so WTF is “worse than failure” instead of what WTF stands for to most of us. A lot of the readers complained about the name change and What Could Possibly Be Worse Than Failure? was an article posted in response.

What I really liked about the article is the main concept he pushed: being in production does not mean that the software project is a success.

While seemingly obvious, its something I never consciously thought of, and its definitely something I’ll keep in mind in all future software tasks. How much better would IT be if everyone had that mindset?

Yes, I’m obviously behind in my reading.

Momma Said Knock You Out

Microsoft’s new operating system in close to 5 years has finally arrived! If you felt a tiny bit of sarcasm in there, you probably aren’t that far off. Vista, or as those in the know called it ‘Longhorn’, hit the shelves yesterday - or for those die hards at 12:01 Monday Night (or is that Tuesday Morning, I never can tell - I usually just say the next day starts when I wake up).

I really do not have much to say about Vista, I haven’t used it, let alone seen it in action. I do usually follow two commandments when upgrading any piece of software.

  • Is it really needed for the cost, and can my machine even handle it
  • For Operating Systems: WFTFSP

So what is WFTFSP. It is simply ‘Wait for the first Service Pack’. Why pioneer? Although, it seems that Mr. Gates has caught onto this golden rule, so they are already preparing a service pack.

Let me reiterate, if a service pack is already in the works - why not wait? I’d wait anyway even if it wasn’t already planned. This waiting period will give you time to see others trials and tribulations, and get a feel if it is even needed, and more importantly, if your computer will handle it. The last thing you want to do is force yourself into a hardware upgrade by buying software you didn’t really need.

Enjoy, and keep those pot handles turned in!

Update: Maybe this Decision Flowchart will help.

RETS Renewed

RETS, the Real Estate Transaction Standard, has been in active development for over 8 years signaling the industry’s, as well as the National Association of REALTORS®, vision to simplify data access of Real Estate listing information. Although RETS intended effect on the industry is apparent on many levels, its impact on it has only started. However, over the past 6 months, RETS has seen a major transition in every aspect of its development - ranging from leadership down to the aesthetics of the website. This marks its transition from infancy to adolescence.

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