force to use Google.com, not any local search

Google is a smart ass when it comes to serve what people want. However, most of the time you find yourself aboard, they just assume you are one of local folks. That’s painful when you are searching something. You are likely to get most of local search results than what you are familiar with. So? what can we do with it? It’s varied by how you do things.

1. If you used to open browser, type “google.com” then find things from there. You will have to type a bit more than usual. Try “google.com/ncr” This time you will see same old buddy you saw/expected.

NCR – is likely to be an abbreviation of No Country Redirection.

2. If you are using Firefox, you will have to find new search engine. Lucky us, portugesemike did this for us all. You can just use this instead of regular Google one.

3. If you are using Chrome, you have to go through setting a bit as following.

Customize and Control >> Options >> Basic tab >> click at manage in default search section

Chrome search setting NO country redirection

You have to add *ncr* to keyword, then magic will happen.

Have fun with real Google.com search!

Popularity: 1% [?]

August 16, 2010 | sipp11 | Tags: , | No Comments »

Wireless XBOX controller keeps turning off

Symptom: your XBOX controller keeps turning off while you are playing; although it can be turned on instantly, but the mood is gone.

Cause: Firstly, check if batteries are empty or not. If not, it can be assumed that a contact in the battery compartment is moving. Thus your controller will shut off when the contact surface doesn’t touch the battery. It’s all about hardware, nothing is related to software or driver at all.

Solution: don’t try to bend the metal contact since it will be weaken the metal. What you need is something to put in underneath the metal contact and make sure of the contact will stay close to the battery at all time. Below figures are a dirty way to do so; it doesn’t look nice, but works nicely =)

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Popularity: 1% [?]

July 30, 2010 | sipp11 | Tags: , | No Comments »

Sync Contacts problem in Froyo?

Symptom: No matter how you tried, you will not see Twitter and/or Facebook data in your contacts.

Cause: When you upgraded your Android to Froyo, you are likely to face this issue–missing Facebook and/or Twitter contact in your existed contacts. It’s somehow broken the bond between Contact & Facebook & Twitter.

Solution: Go to Settings | Applications | Manage Applications – find Twitter and/or Facebook, then tap Clear data. Restart once, check if you have Sync Contacts turn on for those apps. You should be good to go now. If you still find a problem, try Clear data in Contacts too. It will be a bit slow to recover this time since it will have to start from scratch again, but you will have everything in order again.

Popularity: 1% [?]

July 28, 2010 | sipp11 | Tags: , | No Comments »

MOTOLORA: Buy from another company if you like to have custom ROMs.

MotoDEVThis has been addressed by Motolora couple days ago before upcoming Droid X, which is named to be the best phone yet, is available.

I really don’t understand yet how Motolora decided to piss customers (or soon to be customers) like this. As Nexus One owner, I can do pretty much all I want with phone. However, I still use stock ROM, why? I don’t like any custom ROM over vanilla one. Nonetheless, I do push some edited libraries I like to my phone such as light_mahimahi and indeed superboot image which is for root access. Nothing is better than what you’ve done by yourself.

The way I see this is Motolora can just do the way Google did with Nexus One. You can unlock easily, but the consequence is no turning back and surely voiding warranty. That is software part of course—if your phone turned to a brick, that’s yours since you gave your consent before unlocking. However, if hardware failure happens, that should be covered. There is a rumor about eFuse being used in Droid X as well, but that ain’t confirmed. If it’s true, it would be the worst move ever. By the way, we all know that rooted phones are just a minority; custom ROM phones are even less, but these are groups of people who are willing to buy every single new phone or considering as pretty loyal customers. I guess that Motolora never learned when Palm, Inc pissed off all loyal customers then.

For me, the worst thing of this issue is Motolora is like the only company so far that has a physical keyboard which I really want. Milestone was my target. This issue gave me a big pause—since I was waiting for superboot image for it for a while now. However, with new Droid X, I guess Motolora will have no real advantage to other companies then.

Good bye, MOTO until you change your mind.

updated: (July 28, 2010) It seems like DroidX can be rooted pretty easy w/o breaking anything; what a good sign that is.

Popularity: 1% [?]

July 15, 2010 | sipp11 | No Comments »

AT&T Nexus One to Froyo

It’s been a while after T-mobile one got Frozen Yogurt. However, it’s time to end since Google started pushing Froyo OTA update since last week. I got 2 OTA updates, but they both failed to complete the update. Why? because I rooted my EPE54B. Thus, OTA will not do the job nicely.

How? you can do all manual update =) As of now, Google released FRF85B. For whom you might not understand, all T-mobile and AT&T, which have their own build number, will have to same build, FRFxx. When Google first released Froyo to T-mobile Nexus One, it’s like FRF50. However, not it’s FRF85B which is official.

Update procedure: it will be 2 path for rooted N1 and unrooted N1.

1. For unrooted N1, EPE54B, you just grab images of your build below.

2. Rename the file to update.zip and copy to root directory of SD.

3. Reboot your N1 to recovery mode by holding volume down + power. You will get into HBoot/Fastboot mode.

4. Use volume up/down to select menu and power to select “recovery.” N1 will reboot again to /!\ page. That’s fine. Then, you have to get into recovery mode by holding power and press volume up.

5. You will see Android system recovery;you now can use your trackball to select any option. Choose apply sdcard:update.zip

6. Wait until reboot and have fun with Frozen Yogurt.

 

For rooted N1, you will have to take rougher route. You actually have many ways to do so. Custom ROM like Modaco or else, for example. However, I just prefer to have original ROM with root access. You can follow these steps to do so:

1. go back to original image.

2. update as unrooted N1 steps above

3. root FRF85B

For the first step, you need to download original image, here. Please check md5 too. Then you have to extract boot.img, recovery.img out to your android-sdk tools directory (c:\android-sdk\tools for me) Now you are ready to copy old image to replace superboot one by fastbooting. You have to get to Fastboot mode and check if it’s Fastbook USB which is indicated connection between N1 and computer.

c:\android-sdk\tools> fastboot devices  // to check if computer sees N1
c:\android-sdk\tools> fastboot erase userdata
c:\android-sdk\tools> fastboot erase cache

This 2 steps above are optional and if you use Amon_RA’s recovery, you will have to get into recovery mode to wipe those.

c:\android-sdk\tools> fastboot flash boot boot.img
c:\android-sdk\tools> fastboot flash recovery recovery.img
c:\android-sdk\tools> fastboot reboot

That would be all set for returning back to original image =) (well, not exactly true since we didn’t care about system.img and userdata.img which the update doesn’t bother.)

For the last step, download superboot image here. Then rename to update.zip and apply sdcard:update.zip in recovery mode like when you did with updating Froyo image.

Now you will be very happy AT&T Froyo Nexus One like I am.

 

Note: FRF85B root update.zip didn’t do the trick for me since it’s error while updating. If you face the same situation, just ask. You can do a manual way also =)

Popularity: 1% [?]

June 29, 2010 | sipp11 | Tags: , , | No Comments »

How to automatically share calendar to all users in Google apps

Answer: none, AFAIK. You might argue that you can just add user manually or share calendar by XML, iCal, or even HTML link. That’s just like the way regular Google account can do. What is good about Google apps then?

1. You can set your accout’s calendar to share with everyone in the organization. That would work too and it’s pretty easy to for others to add since that calendar has a name as your email account. But I bet you wouldn’t want to share what is yours to others, would you?

2. Add new calendar, then set share to everyone and share the link. It’s a bit harder then the first option, but that works.

What is a drawback of these two options? It’s pain in the ass if you want everyone that shares the calendar to add/edit too. You have to add each of the manually individually. In short, if you want then to just see, either of these is OK, but not for collaborate.

How? You think Google leave this out really, huh? No, they have a way for that.

[yourdomainname]_@domain.calendar.google.com

That’s the only one calendar ID that anybody can add, and everyone has full permissions! Anyone in the Google Apps can just put this ID to “add a coworker’s calendar” then simply “enter.” It will go to your calendar easily. For the sake of privacy? people outside your Google apps won’t be able to even see.

I would love to have more choices, but so far I have yet to find other ways. If you know any other, please share =)

Added [the day later]

The easier way, and probably better way, is using group. You have to create group then add users or add all. When you want to share, just add team email to the calendar. Google will send out invitation email to anyone in the group automatically. The calendar ID will be like [domain]_[calendar.ID]@group.domain.calendar.google.com and this works similar to domain.calendar.google.com—outsider can’t access in any way.

Popularity: 2% [?]

June 13, 2010 | sipp11 | Tags: , | No Comments »

Live: sign in with a single-use code

single-use codeMicrosoft might not be trend setter anymore these days, but they are working hard to be back. That’s for sure. Live Mail or hotmail is one of popular email in the world, regardless of how good it is. Once in a while I get in my account to check if there is any of my mail, besides loads of junk. Then I noticed something new, single-use code ??

 

It’s just like one-time password; use it and throw away. That’s for anyone who are concerned about leaking password on public network/computer. Yes, it’s pretty good idea, but is it practical? So I tried.

image

Above is what I got. My Google Voice number might be the cause of the issue, but if that’s the case, Microsoft should give up this option also.

Moreover, I hope to see Microsoft back in the game, but so far, Live Mail? ie? Zune HD?, Windows Phone 7? Windows Embedded Compact 7? I still don’t see a bright future for those yet. Firstly, they should have easier & more consistency name LOL.

Popularity: 2% [?]

| sipp11 | No Comments »

XP/Vista cannot load CD driver

If you have a problem that your CD/DVD-ROM cannot be seen in my computer or exclamation mark on CD in device manager and you can do nothing about it, it can be fixed.

How come does this issue happen? conflict happened when you have >1 CD drivers related installed. It might be from CD/DVD burning app, such as Nero Burning ROM, Roxie, or daemon app like Virtual CD, MagicISO and such.

How to fix: First, uninstalling anything won’t help, neither will updating. What you have to do is getting into Registry editor (start | “regedit”)

Then, find “LowerFilters” and/or “UpperFilters” and delete them. Look carefully, you have to delete only ones in HKLH\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E966-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318} whose Class key is CDROM. However, you don’t have to worry much if you delete in others, you might have to restart more than once since Windows will have to detect and install the hardware driver again.

After deleted those 2 keys, just restart once. Your CD/DVD will come alive.

Popularity: 1% [?]

February 22, 2010 | sipp11 | No Comments »

TeraCopy – the solution to slow multiple copies

If you face situations, such as, very very slow copy files when you drag a file at a time to another drive or NAS, you might want to try this tool out. It does integrate to your regular work flow without an interrupt since you can just basically do the same—drag & drop again and again. Teracopy will catch that and put in the queue automatically.

TeraCopy - Queue

I dragged and dropped files twice, an above figure was what I got. TeraCopy put the second batch on queue waiting for the first batch to finish first. This way is the most efficient way to do so and I constantly got around 40MB/s over gigabit LAN while I practically couldn’t achieve this if using only Windows Explorer. As you might already notice, Explorer will share throughput for each, but, in practice, Windows couldn’t share that efficiently. The speed will decrease dramatically over the time.

Enough said, Teracopy is such a nice alternative to stock Windows Explorer copy handler. As of yet, I have no disadvantage of having Teracopy. It is that cool. oh better yet, free version is more than enough!

Note: There are quite a number of similar applications like this, such as, SuperCopier, FastCopy, etc. If I have a chance to try them and they are better, I’ll surely update. Also, if you have experienced them, I would love to hear too.

SuperCopier2.2: People claimed that it gives better performance than Teracopy, but for me, it lacks of a queue feature. Therefore, it doesn’t qualify for me. As shown below, overall transfer speed over gigabit LAN is <10MB/s which is what we normally get with stock copy handler.

supercopier22

Popularity: 3% [?]

February 20, 2010 | sipp11 | No Comments »

Apple iPad – too big or just the right size

Apple iPad First of all, how the hell Apple manages to get *4:3 IPS panel* at this time while no others even care to get one. Kudos to Apple for that.

I don’t know what Apple plan for iPad; some says to beat netbook to death; some says to beat tablet pc; some says to create new category; whatever that is, I know Apple will find the way to establish their products well, regardless how big market share would be. When I first saw iPad, my react is like, “hmm they really did that!? I love to buy one,” but  when I got to specification and realized that it is 9” screen; it gave me a big pause, here. 9” is way to big to consider as on-the-go device and one-hand operation, I don’t know really how I’m going to use it if I have one.

Well, it’s iPhone OS. I’m not sure if that is a good choice for such a big device like this. If it were 7”, that would be awesome with iPhone OS. I guess I gotta tryout on this. The only reason why Apple use iPhone OS I see is the thinness since it runs on ARM CPU; I can’t imagine Apple uses such a low end stuff like Atom either. Imagine that Steve Jobs claimed that Apple works with Intel specifically to have such a powerful CPU package named Atom. Nah, it just never works out well.

ipad keyboard God almighty huge on-screen keyboard! That looks good. I think it will beat any on-screen keyboard indeed and yet, it might beat Apple own real physical keyboard as well since I have no clue why the heck they have that uncomfortable, thin and no tactile feedback for bigass iMac.

On the couch, it will be one of the hell device out there—no arguement here. I would love to see how IdeaPad U1 goes too since it’s basically the same thing as iPad, just differrent OS, which Apple already proved their supremacy, while Lenovo is just newbie. However, I can’t see iPad being used anywhere else. We’ll see if my imagination is too short here.

In short, this is just one of million opinions on iPad. We’ll see how it’s going to change when iPad releases.

Popularity: 1% [?]

January 31, 2010 | sipp11 | No Comments »
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