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Archive for: December, 2009
Tired of lugging your laptop? Me too. Some day, we won’t have to
Posted by: Frank Ableson in Fun, Linux Magazine, Technology, Android, Blackberry, iPhone, Palm, Windows on December 22, 2009
I am presently putting (back) together my day to day computing environment. Fortunately for me, my Dell laptop gave up the ghost just a few weeks outside of its warranty. It really didn't owe me anything -- its taken a beating and many many miles in the past three years, one month and 17 days.. but who's counting? I wish I could just plug my phone into my keyboard and mouse... You guessed it, that is the topic of this week's Linux Magazine Upwardly Mobile column.
Have a Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah!
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Supercharge your Job Search with Linkedin slides have been updated
Posted by: Jason Matyas in Education, Career Resources, Social Media, Social Networking on December 18, 2009
I've added some additional content and updated the screenshots to reflect the new Linkedin interface and menu structure. Please take a look at the presentation called Supercharge your Job Search with Linkedin (on SlideShare).
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Palm continues to innovate
Posted by: Frank Ableson in Software Development, Technology, Palm on December 18, 2009
Palm just announced the availability of the beta their Ares development environment for webOS. In a word: "WOW". It is such an improvement over the Eclipse environment. I sure hope Palm gets some traction, because this environment has got some real potential. I spent just a few minutes dragging controls from the palette -- very cool. The only problem I have seen so far is that the new scene I created was not added automagically to sources.json. That's what betas are for, right? Learn more here.
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One Android to Rule Them All
Posted by: Frank Ableson in Linux Magazine, Software Development, Technology, Android, Unlocking Android on December 15, 2009
After working on Android for two years, the "Google Phone" is for real. I know a guy who saw it, as they say. Of course, I cannot tell you who or where or anything like that... I really should live in California..
Anyway, I wrote a bit about this for this week's Linux Magazine Upwardly Mobile column. Time to get back to work on the second edition of Unlocking Android.
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Browser based development for Android and iPhone
Posted by: Frank Ableson in Software Development, Technology, Android, iPhone on December 10, 2009
This is the first of two articles on mobile development for Android and iPhone, hosted at IBM's Developerworks. The article covers specifics of targeting mobile smartphones which use the WebKit browser engine. Enjoy.
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Building hybrid applications for iPhone
Posted by: Frank Ableson in Linux Magazine, Software Development, Technology, iPhone on December 08, 2009
This week's Linux Magazine contribution discusses the technique of creating hybrid applications for the iPhone platform. Similar to last week's piece on hybrid Android applications, this article goes behind the scenes on "how" this class of applications function. On this side of things, I prefer the Android interface to WebKit a bit more than the iPhone's interfacing technique.
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Unlocking Android 2.0
Posted by: Frank Ableson in Software Development, Technology, Android, Unlocking Android on December 07, 2009
Google (I mean the Open Handset Alliance...) recently released Android 2.0 -- which made its commercial debut in the "Do Everything Droid" phone from Motorola. So, what do you do if you spent many months working on a book about Android software development? That's right, you write another one! The first edits and additions to Unlocking Android are already underway. Looking forward to adding lots of cool content to this next edition. Something tells me that Android 2.x is just a whistle stop in this break-neck world of mobile software. Something to do 
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How To: Create Contact Groups for Mail Merge
Posted by: Phil Beach in Network Services, Tips and Tricks, Technology, Windows on December 04, 2009
There is no doubt that the Christmas season can be a hectic time of year, sometimes even creating its own technical problems.
Recently I visited a client to set up a Microsoft Word mail merge for Christmas card labels using contacts from Outlook. Everything proceeded smoothly and the customer was soon ready to print the labels. However, before I even began to entertain the thought of patting myself on the back, the customer had asked me a question I didn't know the answer to:
Is it possible to create a separate "group" or distribution list of contacts for a mail merge to a specific group of people?
The client had a specific group of people who would receive Christmas cards each year and didn't want to waste time selecting specific people from the contact list or labels and paper printing all of the unneeded contacts out. When I got back to the office, some quick hunting through Outlook led me to the solution. It turns out these separate groups can be created by placing contacts in a separate folder in outlook. Here are steps for Outlook 2007, although the steps are nearly identical for Outlook 2003 as well.
- Click the main Contacts tab in the lower-left corner of the screen.
- Click the drop-down list arrow next to the new button on the top of the screen and select folder
- Choose a folder name (Christmas Contact, etc.) and make sure Contact Items is selected under Folder Contains
- If you want to keep the contact in both your normal contact list and the new group you must select the contact(s), copy, and then paste (Using Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V or Edit->Copy and Edit-Paste) into the new folder. Drag and drop contacts into the new folder if you want to move them from one list to the other.
After that, when you enter the mail merge wizard from within Microsoft Word, you will be able to specifically select that group of contacts.
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Some Lemonade after picking some Lemons
Posted by: Frank Ableson in C12, General Business on December 03, 2009
I just came across a story about Luther Wright, former Seton Hall and Utah Jazz basketball player. I practiced one spring AAU season with Luther and played against him once during college. Seton Hall beat Cornell by 16 points at the meadowlands in 1993. It was actually a pretty good game, despite the scoreboard as I recall. Another player from that Seton Hall team as on my AAU team during high school: Terry Dehere. Terry was a fantastic college player winning many accolades as a collegiate, and then spent a number of years playing in the NBA.
Luther hit some *very* low marks -- lower than many will ever see. It appears that he is picking up the pieces and by God's grace moving forward. It is a sad, but good read.
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Another MSI student lands the job they wanted!
Posted by: Frank Ableson in Education, Career Resources on December 02, 2009
I just received an email from one of our students who went on an interview today where she made a presentation using a powerpoint slide deck she prepared. Sounds like it went well as she was offered a position on the spot. We are very excited for her and pleased to have been part of helping her gain the skills necessary for the opportunity!
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