Peter Fisher's – Phyn3t

First thing first I see Android as the second best if not close to first best mobile platform. It’s open, it’s easy to develop on and it allows for inovation with little to no governing.

I think two of the biggest problems with Android are:

1. To many new and better devices coming out.
2. All devices have different base versions.

Devices coming out quickly might at first seem like a good thing. We should never stop inovation! But if I was an Android user that purchased a Driod and a month or so later the “amazing” nexus one comes out I’d be pretty pissed. And this happens constantly (HTC). I think for consumers this gets very confusing on what Android phone they should get. And for all the nerds out there this would just piss you off if you don’t want to constantly buy a new phone.

For the second issue of different base version; it seems every Android device is on its own little special version of Android. And there is always a better version then what’s on your phone. It also seems the major milestone releases don’t even work on hardware that’s a YEAR old. Most contracts here in the US are two years. I wouldn’t want the latest build of Android to not work on my phone that’s < 2 years old…

I’m going to create an application in Java that will sync your Kindle Clippings with Evernote.

To get a better understanding of what Clippings are it’s any of the following:

1. Highlighted text in a book
2. Typed Notes
3. Bookmarks

The above three types of clippings look like the following:

Highlighted Text:

Typed Notes:

Bookmarks:

Notes

These clippings will be synced to a note in evernote. Each note will be  considered a book. And all future clippings will be appending to the existing notes that contains previous clippings.

Synchronization

Synchronization will happen as the following:

Load each Clipping into a hashmap with the Key equal to the Title of the Book and the Value equal to everything else for that clipping.

Once all clippings have been added to the hashmap we can then iterate through them checking to make sure it doesn’t already exist. This isn’t efficient at all  and Ill think of a better way to do it when I get to this point in the program.

GUI

And lastly I will need to create a GUI for users to login. Later we or I can add stuff for such books or clippings not to sync etc.

Source Code and Project Planning

You can find the github page here: http://github.com/peterfisher/Kindle-sync-with-Evernote

There is also a Google Wave page that will be used for todo and stuff: [Syncing Kindle Clippings with Evernote]

-

Anyone is free to join in! Since I will most likely be the only one working on this it will be slow since I work full time and also attend college full time!

If its not already apparent we are moving more and more towards the cloud each month.  If its not some new online application its a blog or something similar. The first thing we do when we get onto our computers is start some type of online application. Most young people these days don’t even have a use for a computer that isn’t connect to the grid in some way.

As we move more towards cloud computing and living online, system administrators need ways to control this. All of the legacy user account permissions are becoming  irrelevant now that everything is becoming more internet based. The web doesn’t care that you are a limited or a root user. It’s going to serve you the same content regardless of your group.

This is where services like OpenDNS.org and other such providers come into play. DNS services will soon be the front line of defense against malicious websites and prohibited content. opendns is well before its time, and in the future could be the leader in providing protection against the wild west (internet).  I think there is going to be a big market in the future for DNS providers such as opendns.org and other related services.

The current DNS providers are also very limited in the services they provide. In the future I think we will see more customizable DNS solutions. Such as:

• Giving some users different access to the web
• Allow access to only certain parts of a domain (apps.facebook.com)
• Limiting non web browser traffic, such as IM and other protocols
• Actual applications running on a machine to filter traffic based on domain

It’s just a matter of time before we are going to see such services booming as administrators scramble to secure their network clients.

Please note I in no way think there should ever be a filtered or internet. Such as in China.

Flash has been around for quite some time and has been very popular by developers for games and other applications on the net. I’m sure it got its popularity from being available on all host platforms and allowed developers to deliver innovated applications at the time. Such as MP3 streaming and many other new exciting web content. Now though flash is falling behind and becoming out sourced by HTML5. For good reason, flash is a horrible platform now.  It’s a resource hog taking up far more resources then it should. Even if the developer of the flash application is at fault, Adobe is the one that’s going to pay. They shouldn’t have APIs that can destroy a users experience.

If Adobe flash doesn’t work well on desktop PCs how it can be useful on a mobile platform is beyond me. People wonder why the iPhone and the iPad don’t support Flash, well it’s really simple. Apple isn’t going to allow anything other than the best on its platform. They want the best user experience for its customers. Apple would rather go out of business than ever release something they don’t believe to be working in good order.

So to conclude I hope Adobe Flash is phased out by HTML5 soon.

I drafted this forum post the other day and I titled it, “Save MySQL” but now I’m not sure if that’s the correct title for the post anymore.

If you haven’t heard the news Oracle  is trying to acquire Sun Microsystems. Currently the US officials have approved the deal but is now waiting to see if the EU officials will do the same.  They have until January to block the deal or approve it. And this is where the problem comes up… Should Oracle be allowed to purchase Sun who owns MySQL.

If you don’t know much about MySQL or Oracle they both sell two products that are fundamentally the same (both are Databases). A lot of people might disagree with that statement but the bottom line is they are both databases. Oracle does sell other products and services…The large difference between the databases is that Oracles 10G database is not open source and you must pay for it (unless you choose express). MySQL is totally free and open source.

So the problem; how can Oracle who sells a proprietary pay for database acquire Sun who has a free open source database.  What people are afraid of happening is that Oracle will stop developing MySQL if they acquire Sun. They could also change the licensing behind MySQL…

But the contrary arguments could be as follows: Oracle puts a lot of much needed money into MySQL and further develops it. Oracle DB doesn’t compete with MySQL. And if Sun doesn’t get help it very well might go out of business. It isn’t doing the best as you can see from their balance sheets here: http://bit.ly/6Y12M9 .

I personally don’t want to see Oracle purchase Sun. I think Sun Microsystems should be left alone and should never be acquired by a company that doesn’t have the same outlook (open source) as them. I believe they should go out of business instead of helping a proprietary company such as Oracle.

Here are some interesting reads if you want to read further:

http://monty-says.blogspot.com/2009/12/help-saving-mysql.html

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704193004574588112464008166.html?mg=com-wsj

Well as of late I’ve heard a lot of bad things about the iPhone application approval process and I must admit I’ve never had to go through it.  I understand developers could be very frustrated and pissed at how Apple does it, but it seems to me to be exactly how things should be.

The App store market is clean and contains mostly apps that function properly and I don’t have to worry about running a malicious application. Unlike other app repos that contain out dated, crappy, and potentially malicious apps; the app store is clean and fresh.

Apple has always had one thing in mind, and that’s the customers experience. They don’t want to give us something that doesn’t work or that we might potentially get frustrated over. They want it to just work, and well. They would rather have the consumer NOT have a product then to give them a half ass one… I think that’s something some people miss.

Just like with Flash and the iPhone, sure they could get flash on the device but they wont until the hardware can support it well enough to where the user experience is enjoyable and reliable.

Comments? Is there a side I’m missing? I’m sure there is =)

I wanted to spend a few minutes on how I use evernote and maybe give some people ideas on how they can use it as well.

The first thing I should let you know about how I use evernote is that I use evernote for EVERYTHING. Not just for work, or for a specific area in my life but for my whole life. I store every bit of information I need in evernote as it does a better job of categorizing (if inputed properly) and later retrieving then my brain can do most of the time.

So for example I will use evernote during meetings to write down what people want done and at the same time ill use evernote when I go to a restaurant and want to remember the menu (such as when they serve a certain soup). I just take a picture of it with my  iPhone and store it for later.

One thing that I love to do with evernote is to use my tangible note books to write and draw things in and at the end of the day just scam them to a USB and upload them into evernote. It allows me to access this data from anywhere; I don’t have to lug around all my different notebooks. And evernote scans through all of my written data and when you search evernote it can sometimes (most of the time it fails) find words in your writing.

So to conclude use evernote for everything, no matter how little some piece of information might seem at the time just throw it into evernote add one simple tag and maybe later you will really need it. Also note don’t attempt to make tons of tags for everything and spend time adding titles just add a tag or to and be done with it.

@thursdaisy with any tips you might want to share about evernote =)

If you are like me when you purchase software you want to save as much as possible since times are pretty hard right now economically and I’m a college student.

I’ve been drowning in projects and todos at both work and in my personal life and I found that using remember the milk just wasn’t cutting it anymore. It’s a nice free service but I wasn’t liking the yearly fee of $25 to use the service on my cellphone. I would rather pay a one time charge for such a service.

After reading a few things I found omniFocus which is a todo / remembering application that has a unique style. I’m not going to explain how it works or what’s the best way to use it since I know there are a few books and tutorials out there on how to use it. There is also a great iPhone application that syncs up with your desktop client that’s very helpful when you are out and about and need to check what you need to purchase or do a certain store that you might be at.

If you scroll down to the bottom of this page: http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnifocus/ you will find more information on how to use omniFocus.

You can also find two screencast here:

http://www.screencastsonline.com/index_files/SCO0178-omnifocusbasics.php (basic)

http://www.screencastsonline.com/index_files/SCO0180-omnifocuspt2.php (advance)

There is a book here that details some things about omniFocus:

http://books.google.com/books?id=WXcHwzaUd4MC&pg=PP1&dq=getting+things+done&ei=hc-iSv64OJSQlASmhsyHCA&client=safari#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Well I just purchased a kindle 2 and I mus say it’s pretty amazing but ill do a full review later. What I want to talk about now quickly (need to get to bed have a flight in the AM) is how well the wall street journal look and feels on the kindle 2. Before I purchased one this was a big concern for me since I love the wsj and wanted a nice thing to read it on. And I can’t get it delivered anymore since I live in an apartment =(

So my first impressions were “this sucks” how do I navigate the thing?! When you first take a look at it you think you have to go from article to article as you can see in this screen shot here.

But actually that isn’t true, you can select “sections” and navigate via the different sections they have in the journal as you can see here. Once you select one of the sections you can then browse all the articles for that section here. And finally one of the coolest things I noticed playing with i for about ten minutes was that you can SEARCH the whole paper as you can see here.

Well that’s i for me now, ill report in later with more information on the kindle 2 and what I think about it over all.

Also a side note check me out on tumblr if you are using it: peterfisher.tumblr.com or pwf.me

Cheers

Here is a quick reference sheet for derby DB queries that I’ve been using. Currently creating a private client that Ill be using to query my DBs. I know there is currently one out there but I wanted to create my own client so I could practice using it, currently using it for a large personal project I’m working on…

For all of these queries you can use the following methods (you need a few other things to get this to work so please note that):

Insert (just like anything else):

Deleting a table (make sure you replace tableName with your table):

Create table:

Selects everything from your table and displays it…

Ill update this as I go along…