Google Wave

Recently I have had the pleasure of toying with one of Google's latest technologies, Google Wave.

At first glance, Wave looks like an enhanced e-mail system... which is a pretty cool thing within itself; e-mail is one of the most outdated technologies in use. Electronic communication has grown into so much more than what an electronic version of a paper letter can provide... but that subject warrants its own blog post.

Wave is actually so much more than what it initially appears.

Wave is a collaboration tool to be utilized by anyone and everyone, whether it's between friends, family, coworkers, classmates... or any combination of the above.

It all starts when someone initiates a Wave, which is similar to an introductory e-mail or conversation... and it lets loose from there. Collaboration happens in real-time. You watch as you and everyone invited into the wave reads, types, changes, and uploads all at the same time. It's not a static document that gets sent around.... everyone is looking into a window of what everyone else is doing and thinking right at that moment.

It is a living, breathing, fluid document.

It is dynamic... people can be added at any time, reply and share in the middle as well as the end, adding 'gadgets' for maps, games, drawing, charts, and so much more...

Wave is still in Preview and access to it can be requested here.

I can't wait until it is released to the general public... to use it for virtual meetings, study sessions, sharing pictures with my family...

I believe it will revolutionize the way I communicate with people. I hope it does the same for everyone else as well.

File Renaming

This is such a nice trick, I have to share it.

I recently had the task of renaming about a thousand files. Not the easy type of rename like appending characters or changing the file extensions; each file had to be renamed something specific. It seemed like it was going to be a very tedious, time consuming task, and I was quite upset about it.

However, I did (luckily) have an Access database that contained all of the current file names along with what I needed to rename them stored in a table... I decided there had to be a better way to handle this than manually changing every file name.

After a friend headed me in the right direction, I found applications that (based on their descriptions) seemed like they would do the trick, but they would cost me $30 - $50 or more. Since I would likely only use the progam one time, I was trying to find a free or open-source application.

I never did find one, but what I did find was a tip by borntoweb in a discussion board that explained how it's possible to export the data from a database to a .csv file, alter it, rename the file extension to .bat, and voila! A file renamer tailored to your needs.

I tried it, and it worked beautifully!

Here are the steps to rename multiple files based on a .csv file:

1. If necessary, export the data from your database to a .csv file. It is also easy to copy and paste the data from the table to Excel and save the Excel to a .csv file.

2. Alter the data in the .csv file so that the first column is blank, the second column contains the current file names, and the third column has the names you want the files named to.

3. Put the word 'rename' in every cell in the first column (without any quotation marks)

4. Save the .csv file, and close it.

5. Change the extension of the file to the .bat extension.

6. Make sure the .bat file is in the same directory as the files it will be renaming.

7. You should probably make a backup copy of the files before you try this for the first time...

8. Run the .bat file. Your files are now renamed!

It may seem like this is a complicated procedure, but it's really only a three step process - export the pic data, format the data in the .csv file, and rename the extension to .bat. After the first time, it's easy.

Gadgets

As I am trying to get myself to write more often, whether it be blogging or tweeting or whatever... I am trying out more Windows Gadgets. I think with the gadgets sitting on the side of my screen already signed in and ready to go, that I will be more likely to post a quick message every now and then.

At the moment I am trying Blogger Buddy and Twitter Explorer. They seem to work so far; no glitches or anything... however, it doesn't look like I can add tags to my blog posts with Blogger Buddy, though it does have tools for adding pictures and hyperlinks. I will just need to make sure to add tags and spell check at a later time...

DNS Troubles - Final Update

Well... GoDaddy responded to my e-mail and said no one had changed my A-Records. Actually, what they originally said was that I was not using their name servers... which was incorrect. So I replied back that yes they do, and then they replied that no one changed my records but me...

I really wish I had taken a screenshot of the screen when I logged in to GoDaddy's site and was prompted for the A records... it had never done that before, so somehow something had changed - and I wasn't even home.

At this point I am considering changing Domain Registrars... I was perfectly happy with GoDaddy, but now I'm upset. It's not that my site was down, that's really not important it is just a personal site, but it's the principal of having my data changed by someone or something besides myself. I don't like that.

I believe when I signed up for Google Apps that Google offered to transfer my domain to them. I may take them up on that offer. Google hasn't upset me yet.

Anyone else out there have their A records mysteriously changed on them?

DNS Troubles - Update

Well, my site just came back up, so adding back those A records did the trick. I e-mailed GoDaddy's customer support asking how they could have been changed - no one can change them but me, right??

After I recieve their response, I will look further into what could have caused this..

DNS Troubles

I have been working on setting up Google Apps on my domain for a few days now... not that it's taking a long time because it's difficult, they actually have a very good help system but I don't have much free time after work.

Originally, I set it up on a sub domain of my domain for testing purposes. I didn't know how it would work with my site being hosted with FreeHostia and didn't want the service to interfere with it. I couldn't find any info on that topic, so I was afraid to try it at all on my domain.

But, after I got it set up on my sub domain and figured out how to customize my URLs and got comfortable with editing my MX and CNAME records for all the apps and discovered that it all runs off of sub domains of it's own that don't interfere with my own domain at all, I decided it would be okay to set up on my primary domain...

So I did. Everything seemed to set up exactly as I had done it before... but then tonight my website won't come up. At all. Not my homepage or any of the other pages...

So I log in to GoDaddy, my domain registrar, and take a look. It warns me as soon as I log in that it needs A records. What??

So I enter in the info for the records FreeHostia requires, and I am anxiously waiting to see my site working again....

I received an e-mail from GoDaddy after I updated the A records warning me that they had been changed, and what they had been changed too... but I don't know what happened in the first place. Changed from what? Why weren't they working? Where did they go? And why didn't I receive an e-mail if they changed somehow in the first place?

I don't quite know what happened yet, but there has got to be some sort of a correlation to putting Google Apps on my site... and I don't know if I even fixed it... but here's to hoping :)

First Post

This is an introduction post to my tech blog. I don't intend this to be an expert type of blog like most other tech blogs; I intend to use this to document my techie 'travels' as I mosey through the digital world...

I love technology and I am constantly learning more about it. Every aspect of it. I am always curious about how it all works, works together, the ins and outs... the future, the past. Everything.

I have plenty to blog about :)