mere funde

Category: Tech

  • Google, GCalDaemon, and Geekery

    I was tired of writing and rewriting and then editing the BSchool essays, and wanted to hit the bed. God knows why I opened up GReader!!

    Anyway – I saw this article on how to jazz up the Windows desktop. Pretty useful and fun I would say. 10 minutes later, I had finished downloading and installing RainLendar and RocketDock.

    And then I thought how about syncing RainLendar with GCalendar. After some googling GCalDaemon came to rescue. I used the instructions on their website but the damn things wouldn’t work!!

    At Step 3 you would need to edit the location of the iCal file. Also, the sync by File method is not enabled by default and you would need to do it manually. Finally, I had a perfect system of syncing my calendars, and combined with an SMS service provided free of cost by Google, I have myself a perfect alert system. Wow!!

    Hang on. That’s not all. As I browsed the GCalDaemon website, I saw that I could use it to run a local LDAP server and replicate the Google Contacts within my Thunderbird system. By now I knew what needed to be done [enable LDAP] to get it up and running. At around 2 in the night, I had finished doing all this and was really satisfied with myself. I now have a less cluttered desktop, which not only looks awesome (I use this as my wallpaper), but is extremely useful!!

  • LinkedIn Reccos

    LinkedIn is a great professional networking tool. I have used it often to get answers to professional queries, and have also benefitted from the questions and answers posted by others.

    However, I was checking up something today when I saw this strange trend where people reccomend someone else, and the same set of people reccomend them back. I mean no harm done, but its wierd when a person has 20 odd reccomendations and you notice that a majority of them are from the same people they have reccomended. It’s like you scratch my back, and I will scratch your’s.

    Maybe LinkedIn should institute some method of highlighting such reccomendations. Any thoughts??

  • Vista rant!

    I have been using the Windows Vista on my brother’s Sony Vaio for a couple of weeks now, and am amazed at the uselessness of the OS. I would say that XP is at least a thousand times more user friendly and smarter OS. In fact it is so irritating at times that you feel like gnawing your arm off!!

    1. The UAC – Stupid. You are making an OS for people. Not for asses. If I click on Windows Update and want to go ahead with installing some update by clicking on “Install Updates”, it means I want it done. Please do not ask me if I want to continue with it!! If I did not want it, I would not have made two effing clicks.

    2. The Windows Update – The Vista applied some updates everyday till yesterday, and suddenly decided today morning to install the SP1. Can someone tell why the fuck did it not do it at the first go itself instead of installing a copy of those updates individually earlier when the SP1 has been available for months now?? Further, it would not allow me to install SP1 till I plugged my laptop into a power supply despite having 90% battery life left. For God’s sake – Stop being my mom!!

    3. Stability – Its a joke. It hangs more than Windows 98 I would say despite having very few installed software, latest drivers, and all OS updates.

    4. Speed – Yeah right!!

    Thankfully Vaio provides all XP drivers on its website and I am thinking of “upgrading” to Windows XP within the next couple of weeks. I think the Vista team can let go of the Mojave, and start being smart.

  • iPhone dreams smashed!!

    If you think the iPhone was expensive, think again!!

    Its a complete rip-off here in India. Both Vodafone and Airtel have priced the iPhone so high that I guess you won’t see it going mainstream in India anytime soon. Also, with India not having a 3G network yet, the new iPhone is not of much use anyways.

    The 8GB model is priced at ~USD 710 while the 16GB is priced at ~USD 830, without the data that is. The only option left now is to get an unlocked device from US (for ~USD 550) – sigh!

  • Facebook redesign flaw

    facebook redesign error

    The new Facebook interface has screwed the Google Reader Shared Items & Flickr. I think its the error in the FriendFeed like application Facebook has. Is anyone else seeing the same error?