let_me_post

This is my personal blog. It will hopefully contain any kind of useful info I like to share.

[akalipetis]

Failed Attempt to Switch from Gmail Web Client to Mail App (Yet Another One)

While doing tremendous efforts not to study, I persuaded myself to give Mail App another try over Gmail web client. After two days, I decided today to stop trying and go back to the ease of use of Gmail, thinking at the same time the pros and cons of the two applications and why did I choose Gmail at last (once more...).

I'll try here to spot, at least from my perspective, the things that believe really matter in each mail client.

First of all, I'll start with my beloved Mail App.

Pros

Pretty nice UI, has a nice list of all your emails on your left and a nice preview space on the right

Fast switching between emails, come on, it's a native application and nothing can beat that

Keeps an offline copy of emails

You can easily switch between different signatures for different emails addresses

You can integrate multiple email addresses

 Cons

Pretty slow if the connection is wonky and no offline copy is available

Bad syncing in drafts, sent messages and so on

Absence of consistency if you do not have an iPhone (common Apple!)

Pretty bad compatibility with Gmail's Archive feature - it really kicks ass!

No compatibility with Gmail's tags, folders is not an option

No compatibility with Gmail's great features like Important emails, Starred and Marks saying that a message was sent personally to you or to a list

If your not on your computer, you're doomed!

  Last, but definitely not least, Gmail

Pros

Also a really nice UI, it is easy to read and is pretty neat and clean

You can easily theme the UI to the colours you prefer for reading and also use custom images as a background, if you want to

A lot of great features like Important emails, Starred, Marks saying if the message was send directly to you or from a list that really rock and are integrated directly into inbox, having different lists for different rules (like Starred, Important and Everything Else which is the one I am using)!

Important emails feature integrates machine learning and really understands the way you treat your inbox

Great use of tags over folders, this is a great feature and the way it is displayed using colours and text makes it really unique

Supports offline use, with Gmail Offline app for Chrome and with addons for other browsers (I have not tested anything except Gmail Offline for Chrome though)

Great, and when I say great, I mean really great, compatibility with mobile client for both Android and iOS - all applications just rock!

Availability from any computer with a browser, with two step verification and https for extreme security

Cons

It is web based, making it difficult and slow to work with a wonky connection, since even opening a new message or going back to the inbox needs basic communication with the Gmail server

Might have multiple default signatures for different accounts, but it does not support multiple signatures for a single account - there is a lab addon that gives a solution, but I hate it enough to prefer having just one signature for every account

Gmail Offline misses a lot of the nice features of the web client, it is just for minor offline use

Having multiple accounts is possible, but needs some good planning in advance to keep your emails organised (using tags and filters for optimum results)

As a result, I believe Gmail web client really rocks, but I have to admit that choosing your email client is a matter of taste. I am really used to using Gmail web client and I do not think I can easily switch to another email client, at least for now.

[akalipetis]

From C2DM to Google Cloud Messaging

(This is an article for Google Cloud Messaging cross posted from the Warply blog)

Google IO is over and we’re left with lots of interesting updates. We saw the new version of Android, Jelly Bean, we used Google Docs with Offline Editing and finally got Chrome and Google Drive to the iPad. The coolest thing of all, though, is what was introduced as Google Cloud Messaging, or simply GCM.

Google, over the past two years, had a service called C2DM, or Cloud to Device Messaging, which had a really big traction, despite being a labs project.

Android Cloud to Device Messaging (C2DM) is a service that helps developers send data from servers to their applications on Android devices. The service provides a simple, lightweight mechanism that servers can use to tell mobile applications to contact the server directly, to fetch updated application or user data. The C2DM service handles all aspects of queueing of messages and delivery to the target application running on the target device.

Since the Google IO 2012, this project got out of the labs after being polished, made simpler and easier to use and was renamed to Google Cloud Messaging.

Well, what’s so great about this thing? Why does it get so much traction? The answer is simple. This service allows a server to send messages asynchronously to devices, making possible what is called the “send to sync” process. Instead of having the application polling the server between several time intervals, the server sends a message to the device, as soon as there is a new update. Then, the application simply requests an update from the server, knowing it exists.

Here are the primary characteristics of Android Google Cloud Messaging:

An application on an Android device doesn’t need to be running to receive messages. The system will wake up the application via Intent broadcast when the the message arrives, as long as the application is set up with the proper broadcast receiver and permissions.

It does not provide any built-in user interface or other handling for message data. C2DM simply passes raw message data received straight to the application, which has full control of how to handle it. For example, the application might post a notification, display a custom user interface, or silently sync data.

It requires devices running Android 2.2 or higher that also have the Market application installed. However, you are not limited to deploying your applications through Market.

It uses an existing connection for Google services.

Although the use of this service has many benefits, let’s point out the most important ones. First of all comes battery life. Opening the radio and polling the server is a really battery consuming operation, since the radio does not switch off instantly, leading to up to twenty seconds of battery draining. Since the application no longer needs to poll the server for the updates, it saves both battery and data usage. The application gets also updated in almost real time, since the message processing and sending is done in as little as 4.7ms!

Moreover, you can easily create applications that do not have a normal update interval, i.e. a Twitter client, but need to get updated asynchronously when, let’s say, a new offer comes, just like Warp.Ly applications do. Polling the server, i.e. once per day, until a new offer is available would be a really bad practice, but with C2DM and now GCM, this thing rocks!

Having said all that, let’s concentrate on the changes made to the C2DM service, making Google Cloud Messaging rock so much! The first thing you notice when you start the integration process is that you no longer need to do complicated stuff like getting an auth token, making sure it is always up to date and make everything work (believe me this process was not always working as it should). Now, you just go to the API console, get a server key, put it in your application and that’s it! You are ready to go. After you’ve set up everything, you can now enjoy the new features of GCM, like Message Multicasting (send the same message to multiple devices), Message Collapsing (collapse messages with the same collapse key, delivering only the last one), Multiple Servers for each Application (allowing you to pair an application with different services, let’s say send data related to your application and let Warp.Ly deliver awesome offers) plus many many more! An interesting improvement is the Message Lifetime field, which can vary from 0 to 4 weeks. T his feature allows you to send messages that can be saved in the cloud for as long as you decide if the device is offline and get delivered as soon as the device is available. Setting a Message Lifetime of 0 will send the message if the device is available, or simply discard it, letting you send messages personalized for the exact moment. Apart from that, you can now select to delay the messages if the device is idle, which will treat a device as offline if the device is online but not active. Combine the last two and you get really awesome results, making it possible to maximize the personalized experience.

Since examples are the best way to understand, let’s say that there is a football match. The company sponsoring one of the teams has a mobile application, which has decided to monetize and create traction using Warp.Ly. When the team scores a goal, it is possible to send an offer to all the people having installed the mobile app and are in the pitch using Wap.Ly’s geolocation filtering, lasting just one minute, in order to use the enthusiasm of the scored goal. Since the offer lasts just one minute, there is no need sending it if the user is not active at that moment. Doing this is now possible!

Last, but not least, let’s talk about the implementation. As mentioned before, the integration process is damn easy now! You just go to Google APIs console and enable the Google Cloud Messaging service. You grab the API key and the Project key and you are ready to start sending messages. There is already a Java library available for server side implementation, downloaded alongside with the Android SDK. For the client side implementation, you should also use the given library. The process here is really easy too. You just have to declare some backwards compatible (C2DM) permissions and use the pre made classes to register to the service. In order to listen the messages that have been sent, you just have to extend a special BroadcastReceiver, included in the library and you are set! Let’s not stick to the implementation process, since there is a more detailed guide which can be found here.

Stop waiting, go play with GCM and feel it’s power. If you want to see some stuff in action, check our platform, Warp.Ly and start monetizing your apps with awesome offers. It simply rocks!

Antonis Kalipetis

[akalipetis]

Menu Creation Error in Joomla

As I was trying to create a new menu for a friends website, I always got the following error.

Save failed with the following error: MenusTableMenu: :_getNode Failed -

I've searched around and found out that this error is produced because one row in the menu table of SQL is missing and so Joomla cannot populate any additional menus. I have not found out why this happens, but I've found a solution at the Joomla forums.

The only thing you have to do, is log in to phpMyAdmin and execute this script. You only have to change the database name with the one your site is using and the prefix of the menu table. They are both in capitals to drag your attention. Afterwords everything will be working fine again.

Logging in to phpMyAdmin

To log in in your phpMyAdmin, you need your hosting plan credentials. You have to log in to the administration panel of your hosting (NOT the myjoomlasite.com/administrator) and there you will find it, maybe under some databases tab.

Executing the script

Somewhere it should say "Execute SQL command" or maybe you'll find an SQL tab. Copy and pass the code there and then hit Go.

[akalipetis]

PowerPoint Animation: Transparency animation, focus at only one image at a time

Today I was trying to make a presentation and I stuck for about an hour in a slide. In this particular slide, I wanted to "tell a story" while keeping the related image in my slide at no transparency and the others at 50%, so that the audience can focus on the image I want, while being able to see the others too.

After a long time searching, I could not find a solution to my problem. PowerPoint has a lot of pre-made animations, but it does not have an animation that changes the transparency of an image to 0%. It just has an animation called transparency, but this just increases the transparency of the image to 25%,50%,75% or 100%. That said, I could not use this one, as I wanted to lower the transparency of the image I wanted to focus on and the animation does not have a 0% option.

After a while, I found a solution to my problem Not that productive though, but it works :)

I applied "Transparency" animation to all my pictures, with duration "Until next click" and start "With previous". With this one, my slide starts with all my images washed out to 50%, so I can tell an introduction.

Then , for every image I wanted to focus, I selected all the other images and applied the same animation as the one I mentioned before, with only changing the start to "On Click". Since the previous animation stops being active when I click, all images gain 0% transparency again, but because of this animation, all but the one I want to focus on get washed out again by 50%.

I know that this stands for a lot of clicks, but I could not find any other solution. Comments and maybe a more productive solution are always welcome!

[akalipetis]

Wildfire 2.2 Root, finally made possible!

After some hours of searching and experimenting I managed to root my Wildfire running 2.2 Froyo. This was not possible until the Alpha Rev guys made S-off (security off) a reality. So I am so excited and I would like to share my experience and a small tutorial with you. Tutorial (about 10-15 mins) First, go to the Alpha Rev X Beta page and download the binary for your OS (both Linux and Windows are supported, tested on Linux). Wait with the form opened because you will need it in a while. Go to the downloaded file and extract it in the downloads folder. Run the extracted file (for Linux use ./<downloads-directory>/alpharevx). It asks you for a key. Now go back to the form you left open (if you didn't just do again the first steps) and type in the serial number indicated in the installation (alternatively you can find it from the device settings). For the bootloader version start your device while holding the Volume-Up key and you will find it there. Copy the generated key and paste it to continue the installation. In about 1-2 minutes it will say that the process completed successfully. Security is off now, so we can root the device. Download the GingerBreak-v1.20.apk from here. Copy it to the phone's SD card and install it using a common file explorer like File Expert. Now start GingerBreak, making sure SD card is mounted and USB Debugging is enabled. Wait a couple of minutes and yeah! The phone is rooted! If the phone is not restarted automatically and an error message is displayed, do not worry, restart it manually and you are ready to go! Credits go to: Alpha Rev for the S-off option finally for Wildfire 2.2 Chainfire for the GingerBreak app.