Google Deskbar Shortcut

MSN Toolbar suite's Deskbar provides an excellent functionality of adding your own shortcuts. This is a naive attempt to incorporate a similar technique into google deskbar as a plugin. To use the plugin u need google deskbar and .NET runtime installed, then download the source+binary from here. Unzip and copy GoogleDeskbarShortcut.dll to C:\Program Files\Google\Plugins, and select this plugin from google deskbar menu (refer to deskbar help). A little help is given below:

To do this	Enter this in deskbar	Example
open a document, program, media file or website	@shortcut,[document/media file path, program name, website address]	@cv,c:\cv.sxwto use this shortcut, type !cv.@n,notepad.exe to use this shortcut type !n.@g,www.google.com to use this shortcut type !g.
to delete a shortcut	@shortcut	@n deletes the shortcut n.
to use a shortcut	!shortcut	!g opens up googles site in IE.

enjoy!

Bruce Eckel on Generics and Latent Typing

Bruce Eckel's MindView, About Latent Typing and Generics Aren't ... are two good weblogs by Thinking in Java author on Java generics.. check out!

Netbeans and J2SE 5.0

I have recently started porting all my apps to J2SE 5.0 (http://java.sun.com/j2se/) with the new netbeans IDE 4.0 (http://www.netbeans.org).

The Netebans IDE is really wonderful and rocks... i use a prettly old machine 550MHz with 320 MB RAM still i find it very sturdy and useful. :)

J2SE 5.0 is also having wonderful features that almost all of the java guys might be knowing now (generics, concurrency package, math enhancements, swing ++, enums, annotations etc.)

that's the good part, but the pad part is converting the pre 5.x code is a bit painful, especially if u totally rely on java.util package. I had to convert more than 200 lines of code (of the total of 20,000+ lines) using generics ... but worth it, until i came across a package that i use (not originally written by me, but modified by me) the jedit-syntax (http://v-ganesh.tripod.com/myNewSoftware.html) which uses Hashtable which contain multiple types:

Hashtable h = (key , {Hashtable | ActionListener})

the problem is that in new J2SE 5.0 i have not yet found a way to handle such a situation, without getting warning from the compiler. if some body knows a way please tell me :)

Another problem that i encountered was that for cloning:

      ArrayList a = new ArrayList;

      ArrayList b = a.clone(); // or even a.getClass().cast(a.clone())

                                        // generates a warning.

      

as a result i had to iterate through the elements of 'a' and copy it to 'b'.

any other solutions??

Google Quitely introduces gmail atom feeds??

i was really stunned to see the rss feed icon on firefox status bar! but it seems it didn't work well with firefox. the link refers to https://gmail.google.com/gmail/feed/atom and is a proper atom feed.

well what is it really?? any one any idea??

Find anything, anywhere fast with MSN Toolbar Suite Beta

Find anything, anywhere fast with MSN Toolbar Suite Beta
Well, yech true, a much better tool than Google. Better integration with the desktop and easire on eyes too. The only piece where google wins the the program size. The integration and realtime search with the MSN Deskbar is also really cool. For now i am using MSN Desktop search! but i guess better has to still come with yahoo! overtunes alliance.

Google Suggest

Google Suggest
Another great tool from google! It gives you real time suggestion as well as number of search results for the key words you type in the google search box. Its really wornderful! hope this is integrated into all google search services.

MSN Spaces

http://msn.spaces.com a blogging service from MSN looks promising... especially the integration of photo posting. i wish even blogger has this integrated service rather than make me download the picasa tool. check out my blog at MSN http://spaces.msn.com/members/werkonkani/

Google Deskbar API's

Its cool, googlers have really eaten up my mind ! ;)
Well I a currently working on something in computational chemistry (i can't tell the details here), for which i required certain updates to be posted on web (so as i can monitor from them from my home ;)) and guess what i wrote a the "search" tool as a plugin into google deskbar with in 5 mins!! Here is the code in C#:

-----------------------------------------------------------------

// A sample Deskbar plugin which searches for GAMESS Jobs on the phi-grid

//

// Copyright V.Ganesh 2004



using System;

using System.IO;

using Google.Desktop;



public class GamessJobSearch : ICustomSearch {

  public string Title() { return "Gamess Job List"; }



  public OutputType GetOutputType() { return OutputType.kViewer; }



  bool Match(string query, string name, string email) {

    if (email.ToLower().StartsWith(query))

      return true;



    string[] name_words = name.Split(' ');

    foreach (string w in name_words)

      if (w.ToLower().StartsWith(query))

        return true;



    return false;

  }



  public string Run(string query, OutputType browser_type) {    

    return "[MY COMPUTE SERVER]?q=" + query;

  }

}

-----------------------------------------------------------------

I have removed the URL as its a bit private, any way its fun to work with google stuff :)

Google Scholar

Google Scholar
Well google does it again! It has ones again read the minds of lots of researchers.. including me ;) It a wonderfull tool though there are some problems. like the cited references are not correct if i compare the results with say SciFinder Scholar. Any way it is still in Beta but a great tool to do referencing and research from home too!

Great going google... when will this be integrated in google tool bar? hope soon :)

Bash Shell and Beyond LG #108

Bash Shell and Beyond LG #108 provides an excellent tutor on bash shell.

baseportal - web database - easy, powerful and for free!

baseportal - web database - easy, powerful and for free!

here comes a new app on the web... i guess its a killer app. Online database and that too free ! wow... how come no one ever though of it... it is true to Sun Microsystems vision of network computers (these people think too much ahead of there times!)

MSN Sandbox

MSN Sandbox
... Copy copy ... but good for users... check the fantastic
google on desktop : http://desktop.google.com

Micro level find/ query tool for molecule viewers

Wrote a simple one-line interpreted language to define a powerful but simple microlevel find/ query tool for molecule viewers. An article describing it can be found here :
http://v-ganesh.tripod.com/papers/molfind.pdf

may be Google should give me more ideas ;)

PS. please site my site if u ever use it, and i am sure many will find it interesting :)

Hello! Picasa

Picasa and Hello are wonderful digital photo handling tools from google... MS will have to really worry now ... because for me these tools seem to be far more innovative and use friendly than those offered by MS! ... and now they are a part of Google!

Need a good software be complex to write?

... Frankly speaking i am also searching for the answer!
I had just started reading some of the initial pages of New Kind of Science by Stephen Wolfram
... and i have got a feeling that well it might be possible to write any software in a "more simple" way but not simpler.

For example i was trying to write a shortest program (in terms of condition checking) for finding all possible knight moves in fortran and ended up with the following, o/w a lot of thinking:
===================================

      program knight

      dimension id(16)

      data id /2,-1, 2,1, -1,2, 1,2, -2,-1, -2,1, -1,-2, 1,-2/

      read(*,*) i, j

      if(i.gt.8.or.j.gt.8) stop

      do m=1,16,+2

       k=id(m)+i

       l=id(m+1)+j

       if(IOR(k,l).gt.0.and.k.le.8.and.l.le.8.and.k*l.ne.0)write(*,*)k,l

      enddo

      end

===================================

thought i feel the code is compact, i have a strong feeling that the program can be reduced further. but to do so i have to do a lot of background thinking, which infact may complicate the understanding of the program it self!

... may be my conclusions are primitive, or completely wrong? ... i am still researching!

MSN Search

they have improved it they say ... but its far from what google offers!!!!

Google Toolbar

Google Toolbar
This integration of blog into google toolbar is great....

Waiting for gmail integration!!

Just for fun

I guess this blogger is much great than the one on tripod! :)