When you’re tinkering, especially on a project with tiny screws, it can be intensely frustrating to have a screw disappear into the carpet or inside your project. Temporarily magnetize your screwdriver with this simple trick.

Instructables user Larry SDonald found that magnetized screw drivers were handy but they have the downside of being unsuitable for working around magnetically-sensitive equipment. His solution to the problem—rather than buying duplicates of all his tools in magnetic and non-magnetic models—was to simply attach a small neodymium magnet to the shaft of non-magnetic screw drivers to impart a temporary and powerful boost.

Once you remove the magnet the magnetism dissipates and the tool is rendered non-magnetic again. Have your own handy tool hack? Let’s hear about it in the comments below.

Go to Source

Temporarily Magnetize Your Screwdriver for Fumble-Free Repairs [MacGyver Tip] originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on November 14, 2009.

Want to get under AT&T's skin? Make fun of the company's 3G coverage. The wireless provider on Tuesday filed suit against Verizon Wireless for what AT&T considers to be false and misleading advertisements.

Verizon has been running a series of TV and print ads that compare Verizon's 3G coverage with AT&T's. AT&T claims Verizon violated false advertising and deceptive trade laws and filed suit in Georgia district court in an effort to get the judge to pull the ads.

In one of the ads (above), a Verizon customer wanders around a college campus watching videos on a smartphone, as a map of Verizon's 3G coverage area–which covers the U.S. almost in its entirety–follows behind. The camera then flashes to an AT&T 3G customer, and the ad says, "If you want to know why some people have spotty 3G coverage, there's a map for that." The AT&T 3G coverage map pops up, with large sections of the country blank.

Another ad features a group of Verizon customers getting together at a restaurant while another friend–an AT&T customer–sits on a bench, presumably having missed a call from the others. "If you want to know why your friend's 3G coverage keeps her out of touch, there's a map for that," the ad said as the AT&T 3G coverage map appeared again.

AT&T said it contacted Verizon about the ads on October 7 and asked the company to remove them or make them more accurate. Verizon responded by removing the "out of touch" line and putting a "voice and data services available outside 3G coverage areas" line in small font at the end of the TV ads, but AT&T was not appeased.

"Verizon's purported solution has done nothing to change the misleading message in its advertisements. By continuing to include the 3G coverage map in its advertisements, Verizon is still conveying a message that AT&T has no coverage in the white or blank space included in the maps, and thus AT&T customers cannot use their wireless devices in large portions of the United States," AT&T said in its lawsuit.

Verizon was not convinced.

“These ads are serving to inform customers where the coverage critical to operating a smart phone is available,” a Verizon spokesman said in an e-mail. “Considering their limited 3G coverage, our competitor should examine whether they are misleading customers with their fastest 3G network claim.”

Get the rest of this story on pcmag.com.

Go to Source

AT&T Sues Verizon For What It Considers Deceptive 3G Ads originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on November 5, 2009.

You registered a domain name and set up the free Google Apps Standard Edition to get Gmail, GTalk, GCal, and GDocs running behind it. Now, take a look at some advanced settings Google Apps (for your domain) makes available.

What the what? Sometimes we refer to all of Google's regular, free, public products as "Google Apps," but today we're referring to the product formerly known as "Google Apps for Your Domain" as just plain "Google Apps." (Note to Google: Come up with a clearer naming convention.) Give this flavor of Google Apps a domain name you own—like yourfamily.org or example.com—and it puts Google services behind it. If you've got a regular Google Account and you@gmail.com email address, that's cool—you can forward mail for you@yourdomain.com address to and from it. But Google Apps lets you create and manage several users associated with your domain and enable various services for them. Google Apps (for your domain) comes in several flavors: Standard Edition (free for individuals and non-affiliated groups, what we’re going to cover here), Premier Edition (for businesses), Non-Profit Edition, Education Edition, and Government Edition.

Nerd Threat Level: Orange

This flavor of Google Apps is only useful to people who own their own domain name (or want to purchase one), and who plan to set up a workgroup behind that domain. For example, if you’re Carol Brady and you register thebradybunch.com domain name, you’re going to want to set up several users at that domain. With Google Apps, Carol could create a greg@thebradybunch.com account, a marcia@thebradybunch.com account, all the way down to Cindy, Bobby, Alice, and Tiger. When Marcia gets hitched? Carol can add her spouse to the family domain. When Alice moves onto greener pastures? Carol could shut down or suspend her account.

The two key advantages to using Google Apps this way are: 1.) you get a custom you@yourdomain.com email address that you can take with you to another email provider if Gmail goes away or you want to transfer it. Your regular @gmail.com address is married to Google’s service, so you can never use it with another provider. 2.) You get system administrator-level capabilities for setting up your workgroup’s IT needs with Google’s easy interface. We’ve already done an an overview of what Google Apps can do; if you haven’t already, here’s how to get it set up with your domain.

If you’re not using Google Apps but you’re interested, know that it takes a low level set of system administrator skills to get it up and running. You’ll need to configure domain settings, such as your email MX record for your domain at your registrar. It depends on who you used (I recommend NameCheap), but most likely your registrar offers a settings panel to configure these things. You’ll also have to verify your domain by adding files to the web site, most likely via FTP or another method.

With me? Good. Take a look at some of the gems buried in Google Apps’ administrative interface. Access it at google.com/a/yourdomain.com, replacing the “yourdomain.com” part with, well, your domain name.

Name Your Domain

Google Apps give you the option to give your domain a human-readable label beyond just example.com. For fun and an inflated sense of self-importance, I called mine "Gina Trapani Enterprises," which you'll see in many of the screenshots here. You can set up your domain's name in the Google Apps Dashboard, under Domain Settings>General. You and your domain users will see this name in your apps tab titles, and when you sign into any service.

Map Multiple Domains to Your Account

If you own multiple varieties of your domain name—for instance, multiple top-level domains like example.com, example.org, and example.net—you can map those to a single Google Apps account using domain aliases. To add another domain to your primary domain, from your Google Apps Dashboard> Domains settings> Domain names, click "Add a domain alias" to set another up. (This is located at https://www.google.com/a/cpanel/yourdomain.com/DomainSettingsDomains, but replace "yourdomain.com" with your domain.) As you can see from the screenshot, I've got both ginatrapani.org and ginatrapani.com running under Google Apps. This means that if someone emails user@ginatrapani.org or user@ginatrapani.com, those messages all wind up in the same place. This also works for totally different domains, not just different top-level domains (.org, .com, .net, etc).

Manage Domain Users and Groups

If you've got only a few users to create, you can add them to your domain one by one. However, if you've got a large group, Google Apps offers a bulk upload option. To use it, you make a spreadsheet of user's first and last names, username and password, and upload that to your Google Apps Dashboard. (Visit https://www.google.com/a/cpanel/yourdomain.com/Users, but replace "yourdomain.com" with your domain.) You can also create user groups or mailing lists with various flavors of permissions—accessible to the outside world, only reachable from people sending from inside your domain, and with custom roles for each user (member or owner). For example, a softball league might have an "Umpires" group, a "Coaches" group, and a "Players" user group.

Activate Your Services

Once you’ve set up your domain’s users, it’s time to activate the services you want to provide. Google Apps Standard comes with Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, an iGoogle-like start page, Google Docs, Sites, and Mobile services. (Sadly, there’s no Google Reader. Wah!) Activate servcies from the front page of your GApps Dashboard, and log in and use them at the /a/yourdomain.com URL provided in green below each service.

If you click on the “More Services” link, you’ll see more (less popular) services, like Contacts (for accessing your contacts list outside Gmail in Calendar and Docs), Sites (which appears to be a simple intranet application), custom applications hosted on Google App Engine, and even Labs services that include a URL shortener and Google Moderator. I haven’t used any other services extensively besides Gmail, GCal, and GDocs in my Apps account, but the more adventurous should dive right in.

Enable Pre-Release Features

One of the biggest complaints about Google Apps accounts is that they’re usually the last to get new and experimental features like Gmail Labs. (Yes, that took an excruciatingly long while.) To speed up the process and get new features in your Google Apps account faster, in your Dashboard under Domain Settings>General, check off "Enabled pre-release features."

(While you’re there, it can’t hurt to check off “Enable SSL” box in the section below that to encrypt your users’ sessions automatically for a higher level of security.)

Create a Catch-all Email Address

One of the advantages of having your own domain name is that you have control and access to every single word combination @ yourdomain.com email address that you want. If you create a "catch-all address," you can forward any email that comes to your domain and doesn't match a user to a specific address. This means that if you wanted to use custom email addresses on the fly—like amazon@yourdomain.com when you register for an account at Amazon, or lifehacker@yourdomain.com when you register for an account at Lifehacker, you can do so without having to create custom addresses. Instead, set up your domain's catch-all address to forward to your user account. To set up a catch-all address, in your Google Apps Dashboard, from the Service Settings drop-down choose Email. There you can either reject mail that comes to addresses that don't match a user, or set up a catch-all forwarding address as shown above.

Share Calendars, Contacts, and GDocs Within Your Domain Only

Where Google Apps really shines is in its workgroup-level permissions-handling. In Google Docs as well as Google Calendar, you can choose to share docs and calendars with everyone within your domain only. That means if someone leaves your team and you suspend their account, they automatically lose access to sensitive workgroup data in one shot. You don’t have to remove them from every doc and calendar you’ve ever shared with them. Conversely, when you choose the “Share” option in Docs and Calendar, you have the option to share with everyone in your domain, instead of individuals, as shown here.

Likewise, Google Apps can automatically share a global address book across your domain users. When you add, remove, or update a user from Google Apps, with Contact Sharing enabled, everyone’s Google Apps Gmail Contacts list gets automatically updated. (So when someone changes his or her name, that change goes out to everyone’s address book in the domain, too.)

Essentially, Google Apps Standard Edition gives you IT director-level administrative control over your workgroup’s domain, for free. For more adventures in Google Apps migrations, see Scott Hanselman’s thorough writeup on how he switched his family from Outlook and Thunderbird to Google Apps.

This article only scratches the surface of what you can configure Google Apps to do. GApps users, what are your favorite tips and settings? Give ‘em up in the comments.

Gina Trapani, Lifehacker’s founding editor, likes her GApps goodness and a portable domain name, too. Her weekly feature, Smarterware, appears every Wednesday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Smarterware tag feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

Go to Source

Trick Out Google Apps for Your Domain [Google Apps] originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on October 28, 2009.

Most people rarely ever have to rename a whole lot of files at once. Let’s face it — batch file renaming isn’t UNIX kernel reprogramming, but it’s one of those irritating tasks that can be a surprising amount of trouble for casual or even more experienced users without the right tools. As a web designer and developer, I find myself having to numerically rename images a lot or add “_tb” suffixes for thumbnails, for example.

Luckily for Leopard users, there’s Name Mangler 2.0, a donationware app by Mac developer Many Tricks that does all the stuff you might need a batch file renamer to do: change case or extension, prefix or suffix a file name, remove characters, the works. You can even store renaming configurations as droplets that you can drop files or folders on to.

Unfortunately, Name Mangler is Leopard-only. Many Tricks has an earlier app, File List (direct download link), that apparently does the same thing for pre-Leopard systems; another alternative app is File Wrangler, which resides on my 10.4.9-running MacBook Pro quite happily, or the venerable and powerful A Better Finder Rename.

[via Lifehacker]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Name Mangler: batch rename your files originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on October 26, 2009.

Most people rarely ever have to rename a whole lot of files at once. Let’s face it — batch file renaming isn’t UNIX kernel reprogramming, but it’s one of those irritating tasks that can be a surprising amount of trouble for casual or even more experienced users without the right tools. As a web designer and developer, I find myself having to numerically rename images a lot or add “_tb” suffixes for thumbnails, for example.

Luckily for Leopard users, there’s Name Mangler 2.0, a donationware app by Mac developer Many Tricks that does all the stuff you might need a batch file renamer to do: change case or extension, prefix or suffix a file name, remove characters, the works. You can even store renaming configurations as droplets that you can drop files or folders on to.

Unfortunately, Name Mangler is Leopard-only. Many Tricks has an earlier app, File List (direct download link), that apparently does the same thing for pre-Leopard systems; another alternative app is File Wrangler, which resides on my 10.4.9-running MacBook Pro quite happily, or the venerable and powerful A Better Finder Rename.

[via Lifehacker]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Name Mangler: batch rename your files originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on October 26, 2009.

You don’t have to have a fancy Microsoft Word template or a gorgeously tweaked document layout to build a clean looking and complete resume. Sure, you can choose a pretty template for your favorite desktop publishing or word processing app, but if you’re like me, you wind up spending more time tweaking the look and feel of the document than editing the actual text.

Thankfully, there’s CeeVee: a free Web-based resume builder that not only helps you put your resume together and fill in the important details about your skills and your work history, but it  also helps you share it on popular social networks that may help you get a job.

CeeVee is free to use. You’re immediately launched into the process of creating your own resume on the Web once you’ve signed up. You can upload a photo if you’d like to include one with your resume. You can also add or remove sections that are applicable to the types of jobs you’re applying for, and tweak all of them in-line. The service offers a number of clean-looking themes and typefaces to choose from, all of which read well on the Web and lend themselves to easy sharing and printing.

Once you’re logged in, the majority of the page is taken up by your resume. Controls for adding and removing sections are on the right side of the page. For example, there’s a huge debate over whether or not “summary” or “objective” sections in resumes are worthwhile, so depending on how you feel about them you can add or remove a summary section from your resume with a single click. You can edit the contents of each section in-line with the rest of your resume, so you don’t have to leave the resume view to see how your changes will affect the overall document.

CeeVee’s resume builder makes it easy to copy/paste information from a resume you may already have, or to add information about your work experience, studies, and special skills from scratch. The entire resume interface is interactive, but when someone else views it they only see the static page with all of your information on it that they can easily print. Also, since many of us work for companies that don’t take kindly to their employees updating their resumes, you have the option to make your resume private at any time so no one can see it.

Once you’re finished configuring your resume, CeeVee allows you to print it, save it to a PDF document that you can send around with job applications or upload to job search sites, or share your resume on Twitter or Facebook. The site even supports Facebook Connect, so you can log in using your Facebook credentials and connect your CeeVee account to your Facebook account.

CeeVee reminds me a lot of VisualCV, another Web service that’s designed to take your resume out of your Documents folder and put it on the Web where more people can see it. The difference here is that unlike VisualCV, CeeVee doesn’t build an additional social network onto the app and instead makes use of the social networks you already use.

Although CeeVee’s is much trimmer and doesn’t showcase quite as much information, CeeVee, much like VisualCV, gives you a custom resume page you can show off to friends and potential employers. CeeVee doesn’t sport video introductions like VisualCV does. However, CeeVee cuts to the chase and lets you quickly export, print, and edit your resume on the Web.

Go to Source

CeeVee Makes Web-Based Resume Building Quick, Easy, and Free originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on October 22, 2009.

“Freeware PDF Unlocker is a free PDF Password remover tool that can help you in the above situations.To remove the first type of restrictions, simply drag your PDF document onto a shortcut on your desktop or alternatively onto the PDF Unlocker icon on your desktop. Instantly, it should remove the password and allow printing or copying & pasting the contents from the PDF document.”

I used that and it worked in a few seconds.

Via Techblissonline

Remove PDF Passwords originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on October 19, 2009.

Quoted from source below:

I mentioned before that Windows XP does not allow concurrent sessions for its Remote Desktop feature. What this means is that if a user is logged on at the local console, a remote user has to kick him off (and ironically, this can be done even without his permission) before starting work on the box. This is irritating and removes much of the productivity that Remote Desktop brings to Windows. Read on to learn how to remove that limitation in Windows XP SP2

A much touted feature in SP2 (Service Pack 2) since then removed was the ability to do just this, have a user logged on locally while another connects to the terminal remotely. Microsoft however removed the feature in the final build. The reason probably is that the EULA (End User License Agreement) allows only a single user to use a computer at a time. This is (IMHO) a silly reason to curtail Remote Desktop’s functionality, so we’ll have a workaround.

Microsoft did try out the feature in earlier builds of Service Pack 2 and it is this that we’re going to exploit here. We’re going to replace termserv.dll (The Terminal Server) with one from an earlier build (2055).

To get Concurrent Sessions in Remote Desktop working, follow the steps below exactly:

1. Download the termserv.zip file below and extract it somewhere. (You have to be registered to see the file)
2. Reboot into Safe Mode. This is necessary to remove Windows File Protection.
3. Copy the termserv.dll in the zip to %windir%\System32 and %windir%\ServicePackFiles\i386. If the second folder doesn’t exist, don’t copy it there. Delete termserv.dll from the dllcache folder: %windir%\system32\dllcache
4. Merge the contents of Concurrent Sessions SP2.reg file into the registry.
5. Make sure Fast User Switching is turned on. Go Control Panel -> User Accounts -> Change the way users log on or off and turn on Fast User Switching.
6. Open up the Group Policy Editor: Start Menu > Run > ‘gpedit.msc’. Navigate to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Terminal Services. Enable ‘Limit Number of Connections’ and set the number of connections to 3 (or more). This enables you to have more than one person remotely logged on.
7. Now reboot back into normal Windows and try out whether Concurrent Sessions in Remote Desktop works. It should!

If anything goes wrong, the termserv_sp2.dll is the original file you replaced. Just rename it to termserv.dll, reboot into safe mode and copy it back.

The termserv.dl_ file is provided in the zip is for you slipstreamers out there. Just replace that file with the corresponding file in the Windows installation disks.

Concurrent Remote Desktop Sessions in Windows XP SP2 originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on October 19, 2009.

TapLynx is a framework for building media-based iPhone apps without needing to do any programming.

It’s a tool for developers, though — you still use Xcode to build the app. You configure it via a property list file, add artwork and feeds, build it, upload it. (You build a fully-native Cocoa app: it’s not like compiled Flash or something like that.)

Though programming isn’t required, you still can do some programming: a tab can have a custom view controller. An example case: you’re building an app for a sports team. TapLynx provides the news display, photo galleries, and audio and video. But you want a tab that shows scores and stats — that’s the tab that you write. But since TapLynx provides the other features, you can save time, make more money, and concentrate more on the part that makes your app special.

Some technical details

TapLynx is a static library. It’s a whole app in a static library. Since the views are things like UITableViews and UIWebViews, there’s no need for xib files. (I’m not anti-xib, by the way. But when a view is just a table — and it needs to be configured in code — a xib doesn’t make sense.)

The SDK provides a sample skeleton app that links to the library. The skeleton app has no code other than its main method.

The features, colors, feeds, and so on are all configured in a single property list file. Artwork is added to the Xcode project just as you would with any other project. There’s no black magic going on, in other words.

It’s 1.0

The future of TapLynx will be driven by the needs of developers. We can’t know in advance everything you’ll want and need, but we’ve had some experience building iPhone apps and we know what the basics are.

For instance, I’m sure you’ll need more programming hooks, ways to customize and add features via your own code. But I don’t know in advance what those will be. (The custom tab was obvious: the next step isn’t obvious.)

So we’ve set up a Google Group for TapLynx as a place for feedback. I’d love to hear what would help you make apps faster, make your clients happy, and make you money.

It’s also for web developers

We’ve seen people build apps who aren’t Cocoa developers — or who hardly ever even use a Mac, let alone Xcode.

We quite definitely had website agencies and web developers in mind. For example: when specifying a color, you just use the hex value, as in #48EF93. We were thinking of you.

My favorite feature: over-the-air updates

When we were working with All Things Digital on their app, they wanted to have the same kind of immediate control over the app as they have over their website.

Well, in the world of iPhone development, we all know there’s no such thing as immediate. (At this writing, I’ve had a crashing bug fix — a two-line change — for NetNewsWire for iPhone in review for 10 days now.)

We came up with this: the config file that you edit to create the app can also be hosted on the web. The app will read that config file periodically (a period you can configure). Whenever there’s a new config file, it will re-configure itself.

This way you can add and remove feeds, change look and feel, etc. You might add a tab for a special event (Olympics, election, winter weather, whatever) and take it down later. Or add a photo gallery.

It even downloads the necessary artwork.

So you don’t have to do an App Store update and hope it gets up in time for the special event.

(It can’t download code, though, since that’s against the developer agreement with Apple. New code requires a new build and uploading to the App Store.)

A sort of homecoming

You probably don’t know this, but my experience before NetNewsWire was six years at UserLand Software where I worked on tools for developers and web publishers. I was there during very exciting days, during the early days of weblogs, during the development of RSS, XML-RPC, and OPML. I’ve been working with this same technology ever since.

But I forgot, until recently, how much I love doing developer tools. They’re fun to make — yes, totally — but even more fun is working with the folks who use them. It’s been coming back to me, and it’s like coming back to a great place I thought I’d never see again. (And some of the same people are there!)

Twitter

Yes, you can follow TapLynx on Twitter.

Go to Source

TapLynx 1.0 originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on October 17, 2009.

There's a certain list of things we routinely clean, but your debit and credit cards probably aren't on that list—although they should be! It's easy and can greatly extend the life of your card.

Photo by ohadweb.

You might be wondering why you should bother, but if you’ve gone cardless for a few days while waiting on a replacement, the extra step of cleaning your cards can go a long way toward preventing such a hiccup. (As someone who once worked in a bank, I can vouch that this method works like a charm.)

All you need is an eraser and a damp towel. Wipe the card clean with the towel to remove any grimey build up deposited onto your card from your wallets or card reader machines. It’s not something that gets extra dirty, but the small particles when compacted with continuous swiping/use can rub off the magnetic strip holding your card’s information.

Next take the eraser (we prefer Pink Pearl erasers, but the one on the end of a pencil will do just fine) and gently erase/rub the magnetic strip on the back. It will remove any gunk that’s built up over time. This trick also works with old school cartridge based gaming systems, just in case you really have the urge to play some NES Duck Hunt.

Got your own methods for successfully cleaning off your grimy credit card and getting more mileage out of it—at least while you're waiting for a replacement? Sound off in the comments.

Go to Source

How to Clean Your Debit and Credit Cards [Cleaning] originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on October 13, 2009.