2005年12月7日
#
1. When does google desktop update its index?
I used to think that it should update the index every time I do some change to the file system. Actually it's not. I have installed GDS for months. But I rarely use it to search local files, because I can remember where I put everything. Today I did use it to find an old document. But it only show me the old directory, which already does not exist. I do find the document myself. But what in my mind is what the heck do I need GDS stay in my system any more. So I open GDS again and do the search for the same document. Well, GDS has updated the new location.
So I think when I opened the document, it triggered GDS to update its index. GDS didn't got update when I moved the file to a new location. But I think it should.
2. Google desktop cache rocks.
In the above search, even GDS didn't update the location of my document, it did save a copy of the document in cache. So even I did delete the old document, I can still get a cached Web version. This is a good backup.
So if you haven't tried any desktop search, you should.
2005年12月1日
#
I have been using the new del.icio.us firefox extension for days. And this saved two link button in my link bar. I don't use the toolbar which was released months ago, because my screen is small.
The best feature in this extension is the "Tag this link" context menu. A lot of time, we read posts in aggregators, like bloglines. Now with this feature, we don't have to load the page just for tagging. I have been dreaming for this for a long time.
If you haven't install the new extension,
go get it. I haven't got the final version updates in firefox yet. Did anyone get it?
2005年11月26日
#
They got two first prize, two second prize and two third prize. It's on today's
SJTU news.
2005年11月19日
#
This is found via referer to my TailRank URL hacking post. Someone has added it into
del.icio.us.
Tagsy is a social bookmark service that integrated with del.icio.us and flickr with a firefox extension. It's not ready yet, but it sounds exiting with their self description. From the
homepage:
tagsy's main objective is to centralize content and apply a universal tag-based hierarchy. The best way to do so is to integrate with other tag-enabled services such as Flickr and del.icio.us, adding up a powerful Firefox extension to make it all easy to manage.
2005年11月14日
#
I first came across
TailRank week ago. I was not quite clear about how the site works. Today I dug it more, and found it really useful. One thing you should make clear is the URL structure of the site. Once you are familiar with this, you can use the search feature in a command line way. That is productive. So I am going to write a small tutorial about the URL structure in this post.
A typical search query is like this:
http://tailrank.com/posts/recommended/depth/local/handle/lychen1109/hours/12/tags/microsoft
- The query means show me recommended posts in the last 12 hours tagged microsoft.
- "posts" in the URL means you are searching for posts. Yuo can use "weblogs", "people", "wikipedia" to search something accordingly.
- "recommended" is the default option. You can also use "shared", "recent", "tags" in this position. You can use "shared" to search for all the items you have tagged. "Recent" option will show you everything ordered by time. "Tags" will show you a tag cloud of all the tags used by everyone or yourself.
- /depth/local/ means from you or for you or have influence on you. Other choice is /depth/global/ and /depth/social/.
- /handle/lychen1109/ means in lychen1109's perspective. Yes, it's in my perspective. Other personalization site doesn't share this data, but TailRank shares everything. You can look the world in other people's view.
- /hours/12 is a time filter. You can change it accordingly.
- /tags/microsoft is just like tag search in other search engines.
This never can be a complete explanation. You should play with the site to know what everything means. And you may find more options.
To make the site useful, you should at least tag some posts, weblogs, and people. In this way you are introducing yourself to the system. When you ask somebody to give you a recommendation, you should first tell him who you are and what you want.
When you first see the homepage, you see recommendation posts for everyone. Don't be fooled by this. This surely is not very interesting to you. You should tweak the URL as explained above to get your personalized information.
I have been using
Odeo for several months. But I am considering changing back to iTunes to manage my subscriptions. Here are three complaints:
- There is a 30 limitations in you subscriptions in Odeo. My subscription number is already more than 30.
- Odeo changes all Album info to "Odeo". This makes me difficult to follow what I am listening on iPod mini.
- Odeo's dynamic feeds only gives you one chance to download podcast. This maybe not a problem to someone, but I got a 50% chance timeout in my middleband connection. So I even don't have a way to track which download failed.
2005年11月9日
#
I know
this site for a long time, but I didn't read it. Because most of its content is duplicate with news I can read from other English news sites, including its original slashdot. But I am still willing to help spread the words. See
Philewar's podcast from 1st Chinese Blogger Conference.
Actually I am waiting for a good chinese geek news site (CGNS) that deserves my attention. In my view, a good CGNS doesn't just means it's in Chinese Language. But most importantly, its content should be China focused. Just think about how US focused does content on slashdot. What we need is a site that can track geek news happens in China or China related, not a translation site about news all over the world.
One other reason of why content should be China focused. Comments is the most valuable part of such kind of sites. But who bother to comment on things that is not related to himself.
2005年11月5日
#
Currently
searchfox provides three time filter: last day, last week, last month. This is reasonable at first glance. And I was enjoying this for the last couple of weeks. But recently, I found there are problems in this. Here is why.
In the original design, users are expected to check last day first. Then spend less time to find missing articles in last week tab. If you have more time, you can check last month tab to pick up more missing articles. This is reasonable, right?
But just imagine you are a hurry user, who checks searchfox every day, just wants to know what's important in the last 24 hours. Can you just check last day tab for this? No, you cannot. Initernet is a global community. Important news comes irregularly. Even you check searchfox everyday, but not at a fixed time. Some important news will be filtered into last week tab, so you won't see it in last day tab.
So the problems of this design is to let users click last week filter, even they just want the most fresh content in last 24 hours.
Why not provide a more customizable time filter that I can set to last 48 hours, 72 hours or something similar according to my reading frequency.
In a
news report about how mp3 version of Jay Chou's Si Mian Chu Ge in his newest album November's Chopin was affected by virus, Internet users were warned not to download these affected versions. After some simple google, I found it's a big hoax. See
F-secure's hoax warning, mp3newswire:
MP3 Virus is a Hoax. And here is the original version of the hoax posted in 2001 which still can be found on Google Groups:
Music Virus to Attack File Swappers July 4.
So it's clear that music labels are in battle with pirate in the way that takes advantage of no-knowlege of normal Internet users. This is a bad move.
I finally couldn't resist the temptation to upgrade to firefox 1.5 RC1. Surely, all my extensions are disabled. But anyway, this made your firefox much clean. And one good thing is the bug fix I find when I check gmail. The bug is a problem of Lose Focus. Do the following things in gmail:
- Click any label with some unread mails.
- Select all the unread ones.
- Mark them read.
- Select none.
In firefox 1.0.7 and below, you will lose mouse focus. That means your mouse wheel doesn't work any more. You should click on some blank area on the page to regain the focus. In firefox 1.5, this bug is fixed. That will save you millions of clicks if you check gmail frequently.
PS: I am working on my new blog. Things are a bit slow, because life is a mess. More news to come late today.