The good news comes!

Then I muster up some energy and sit up. Deciding to go about my usual daily duties, I open the 1st message to read, which is a CNN news alert: “Google hinted today that they are making moves to get rid of Internet Explorer 6 for good, CNN”! What? wow, I thought. And I open the 2nd message…

Its a facebook status update from a web-designer friend of mine that says “Tired of fighting with IE6 bugs… I give up “, feeling sorry for him, I open the 3rd message, which is again a CNN news alert: “Google made a public statement saying that it has got positive feedback from yahoo, facebook, twitter, <add high-traffic BIG site names here>, about their intention of getting rid of IE6″!! What? that’s really interesting… wow, I get excited already.

More excitement awaits…

I get ready and rush to work. At the office, firing up my favorite browser… Firefox, I head straight to twitter, and see “Google” and “IE6″ trending! Now we are on to something really serious I think. While I read related news, I get that awesome text message. Yet another CNN alert that makes you have a loooong sigh of relief…

“Google and other top sites have decided to stop serving for IE6 starting from 04:45 GMT time”!!! Wow… thats my 3rd wow for the day and its a serious one. I just can’t believe that. How come it all happened so fast?.

I calculate the time quickly +05:30 from that GMT time means… it should be 10:15am in Sri Lanka. Whats the time now… oh It’s 10:12… just 3 minutes from now. I fire up my portable IE6 copy that I used to test sites on, and visit YouTube. I still see only a recommendation to upgrade the browser.

Believe in miracles!

I refresh the page… watch the time… 1 minute more… refresh the page… nothing new… 10 seconds more… refresh the page… times up! nothing new yet… refresh again… and… it takes time to load now… and…. oh! I see a new page…. a mostly empty page, which says: “Sorry, but your browser is too old. Please upgrade your browser using this link or, select an alternative browser to download from the following list”… yeahhhhh! They’ve done it!

I visit Google.com and see the exact same page. Google has provided the page to be linked, so that all site owners can use the same page when a user visits using IE6. Its gone… IE6 has gone forever… People would be forced to upgrade if they want to view their favorite websites. I jump up in excitement without thinking much of what I’m doing….

Ouch…

Ouch! That hurt. I hit something hard when jumping… oh it hurts… but.. how come my back hurts? err… where am I?… my back feels cold… Im on the floor!? in my room… oh my God… I’ve fallen off from bed… so it was all… a DREAM!

hmm… At least I saw it happening in my dream. Swift changes for nagging problems come only in dreams it seems. What a sweet dream

Note: That was not a real dream. No sleeping baby was harmed in the making of this post!

The reason why I selected a Sony Ericsson K800i is because… I still use it!   Though I use a SE K800i here to demonstrate the settings, I’m pretty sure you can use the same settings with any phone that supports IMAP to send and receive Gmail messages.

Off to the steps…

Enable IMAP access in Gmail

If you haven’t already done so, you have to enable IMAP access in Gmail, so that you can use the mail client in your mobile device to access your email.

1. Go to “Settings” in Gmail and select the “Forwarding and POP/IMAP” tab:

2. In the “IMAP Access” section, select the “Enable IMAP” under “Status”.

Remember to save your changes

Set up the mobile phone’s mail client

1. From standby, select “Menu” => “Messaging” => “Email” => “Settings”.

2. Select “New Account” and type a name for your account (e.g.: “My Gmail Account”).

3. When you press “Ok”, you will be taken to the first set of settings. Select “Connect Using” and select a data account you have set up in the phone (If you don’t have one, you will have to set up a data account with your mobile operator first. Without a data connection, you won’t be able to continue).

4. Once the data account is selected you will be back to the settings. Now select the next item, “Email Address” and enter your full Gmail address (including “@gmail.com”). Press Ok.

5. Next step is to select “Connection Type”. Select IMAP4 as the connection type.

6. Then change the “Incoming Server” option’s value to imap.gmail.com. Username should be your full email address and set your Gmail password.

7. Change the “Outgoing server” option’s value to smtp.gmail.com, and move on to the “Advanced Settings” option.

8. Under Advanced Settings, you can set your name (how you want it to appear in mails) and a signature. Under “Download S&R”, I recommend you select “Subjects Only” so that you can check the subject and decide whether to press the button on the mail to download it or not.

“Check Interval” can be used if you don’t want to use Push email. Setting a check interval won’t keep the phone connected always. Instead it will check for mail periodically when the check interval elapses (This is recommended if your phone has battery life problems!).

Turn “Push email” on if you want to be notified about incoming email as it arrives (like in a BlackBerry!). This option will not be available at this time. But it will be available AFTER you create the account. The only warning I would give is that it will drain your battery fast. So if it is a problem, leave it off and use the “Check Interval” option to an appropriate value.

9. Now select the “Encryption” option. You will find two sub options in it. Select SSL for “Incoming Server” option and select “TLS” for the “Outgoing Server” option. Use the back button on the phone to come out of the “Encryption” settings.

Select the “Outgoing Username” next and enter you full email address (including “@gmail.com”). And enter you Gmail password for “Outgoing Password”.

Set the “Incoming port” to 993 and “Outgoing port” to 587. That is the last option under the “Advanced settings” section. Now press the back button to come to the previous settings screen. Press the back button again to come out of the email settings altogether.

You should get a popup saying: “Account created. Select the new account if you want to use it as your active account.”

(Note: Hope you remember, I said that the “Push” email option wouldn’t be available until the account is created. Now, either you should get another popup sooner or later saying that Push access can be enabled asking whether to enable it, or you can go into the settings again and turn it on).

To go back to edit any settings you should follow:

Messaging => Email => Settings => (now highlight the account) => More => Edit Account.

10. To send and receive email, come into the email inbox => More => Send & Receive. You can mark mails for deletion. To clear the emails that were “marked for deletion”, you should select “Clear Inbox”.

That’s all folks.. enjoy Gmail through IMAP4, using an old brick.

Hope that helps at least another Sony Ericsson K800i user!

Further Reading:

1. Gmail Help – Configuring other mail clients
2. Gmail Help – Getting started with IMAP for Gmail

When the annular eclipse was at its peak in the region from where I was watching it (Nugegoda, Sri Lanka), I saw some peculiar shadows on the ground. It occurred to me only after several seconds that they are caused by the Solar Eclipse!

When the sun’s rays hit the ground passing through small gaps between tree leaves, they create the “Pinhole Camera” affect. These are actually small inverted images of the sun projected on the ground. Refer the Wikipedia article for more information about the Pinhole Camera: http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinhole_camera.

Checkout these pictures I took at that time:

It was a beautiful pattern to watch during the dreamy-darkness of the eclipse. The reduced temperature due to the eclipse, felt good on the skin too

Get to know when future solar and lunar eclipses would happen from this NASA eclipse website: http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse.html

Peace.

Christmas has become a celebrated day for non-Christians (like me) too. So let’s celebrate the birth of one of the holiest men ever to walk on this planet!

I would like to wish all my friends, relatives and the global Christian community, a Merry Christmas…

These represent the “white space” characters such as the space, tab, carriage return etc.

How to turn it on or off:

1. You can press the key combination CTRL+E, S (can be different if you have modified). OR
2. Select: Edit » Advanced » View White Space

It’s actually a helpful feature to examine a code file to see what the white space consists of (tabs or spaces). But it can be annoying to keep the feature always turned on.

It has happened at least 5 or more times for me and I always forget what I did the last time to turn it off

I decided to post about it so that someone (including me!) can find this and remember what to do to turn it off (or on).

Hope this helps

Reproducing the problem:

Right-click on a table and generate a CREATE TABLE script from SQL Server 2005 Management Studio:

Paste the generated script in SQL Server 2000, Query Analyzer and verify the syntax by clicking on the “Parse Query” tool button or press CTRL + F5:

Query Analyzer would report syntax errors:

You will get a load of “Incorrect syntax near ‘(‘ ” or similar errors depending on the number of table queries you generated.

Solution for people who manage the target SQL Server 2000 database using SQL Server 2005 Management Studio

I found this solution when I Googled: http://www.waynejohn.com/post/2008/03/21/Scripting-a-SQL-2000-Database-from-SQL-2005.aspx

But note that Wayne John, the author of the blog says he couldn’t find the “Scripting” section in the “Tools –> Options” dialog box in one of his systems, where he had only SQL 2005 installed!

The solution for people who don’t have SQL Server Management Studio installed at the target to manage the SQL Server 2000

So If you are like me… using SQL Server 2000 + Query Analyzer at the target server while the source is a SQL Server 2005 + Management Studio, you can use the good old SQL Server Database Publishing Wizard to export schema.

The queries generated using the SQL Server Database Publishing Wizard worked perfectly with SQL Server 2000′s Query Analyzer (though a query for even a single table would look scary!).

But make sure you select “SQL Server 2000″ as the value for the “Script for target database” property in the “Select Publishing Options” in the wizard.

NOTE: Double-check the “Drop existing objects in script” option to make sure it has “false” (unless you really want to drop objects)

There are plenty of other tools out there too, for example from Red Gate Software. But as a free piece software SQL Server Database Publishing Wizard offers enough for my needs of exporting schema and data from/to SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2000 databases.

Microsoft Photosynth

Adding to the excitement was the use of Photosynth to present the ‘moment’ of the oath using a huge multi-touch screen by a CNN anchor (click here to see CNN’s Photosynth of the moment). Microsoft’s Photosynth can create an interactive 3D panorama from multiple still images.

Around 2 million people were present at the ceremony according to CNN and thousands have sent photos to them which was added to the Photosynth of the moment.

A special moment “captured” in 3D.

Thanks to Photosynth, the 44th US President’s historic swearing-in moment is captured in 3D and can be revisited by future generations, to experience it from many angles (unlike recorded video, which is not interactive… at least until ‘Holographic Video’ becomes a reality!)

So, go ahead and experiment Photosynth (which you can install if you don’t have it already)

The Royal Navy has begun using a modified version of Windows XP on their nuclear submarines. And about security (since these are nuclear submarines), they have mentioned that all hack-prone elements of Windows XP were fixed during the modification (wonder if anyone can buy this Windows For Nuclear Submarines!)

Take a look at this modified version of the Bliss wallpaper in flickr. It would be a perfect match for the workstations in the nuclear submarines

I was once an excited user of StreamLoad/MediaMax, who offered 20GB of free online storage. Those are not the only 2 names they had. They had been acquired by many, and they changed a dozen names that I don’t even remember now. I put so many GBs of my precious files in their online drives and lost everything, when they shutdown the website. They said they are free and took all our files into their drives, and when they announced they are going to close the site, they asked for money to give our files back… How rude is that!

But now, this is Windows Live SkyDrive. Something from Microsoft, which is why I am a little more confident to use the service. And for those anti-Microsoft guys, I should say, even if for some reason Microsoft had to bring SkyDrive down one day, they won’t do what my previous online storage folks did to my files (I don’t even like to repeat their name more than once ).

There are other tools like GMail Drive, which is a useful piece of tool that uses the GMail’s storage as a virtual drive through a Windows Shell extension, which I have not tried yet.

Other online storage tools that I have personally tried are:

DropBox – Is an excellent free online storage, that not only stores, but also synchronizes multiple storage locations. Currently they offer 2GB of free online storage.

DropBoks – Is another free online storage that offers 1GB. Simplicity is their strength.

Since I have learned a lesson with my 1st online storage experience, I would not recommend anyone to store their most precious collection of files only in an online storage.

Hope this helps someone.

Then I googled (as usual) to see whats up and got to know that the .NET logo has been changed… cool!

It looks better this time in my opinion. I didn’t like the lowercase “.net” in the old logo, so this makes me happy! And it also reminds me of the Silverlight logo which I like so much.

I saw some negative comments too, in some forums, saying that the new logo is ‘not cool’ for several reasons… one of them is “everything is becoming blue recently when it comes to Microsoft and the web”.. and I also agree with that.

Anyway, Microsoft’s reasons for the logo change are given in this post. And they say “The design is strong, simple and distinctive”… Checkout what they are talking about, here are the vertical and horizontal logos.

Lets embrace the change