Tech-rank: 1
I figured I'd rank my blog posts between 1 and 10 on a "technical" scale, one being completely non-technical, 10 being hard-core stuff that even programmers may not find interesting if it's not exactly in their area of expertise.
I'll just add it up there, on the post itself, if I remember.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Morning blog1 - Windows 7
Tech rank for this post: 5
I read a blog post from someone who suggested that instead of reading emails in the morning, or reading the paper - you should maybe write a blog post. I figured that's not such a bad idea. I've made a habit out of making note of every subject worth blogging, so that I remember to write that blog post later on. In recent months I've been working 18 hour days, so blog posts weren't exactly my priority. Seems like I should have plenty of items to write blog posts about, but when I went over the list just now, many subjects seemed kind of old.
One of those subjects was "Windows 7, good and bad". I remember that this issue went through my head after I installed W7 Release Candidate on some relatively old machine that had to be reinstalled. I could immediately see that this IS something different - not another Vista (as a side note - I nicknamed Vista "the new ME" -named after the notorious Windows ME, yet another operating system that everyone skipped and went directly to Windows 2000).
The first thing I noticed about Windows 7 is that its name fits its Hard drive footprint. After you install Vista, 7Gb of your HD are gone (if you really must know why it's called that way - I found this post from the team). Not so long ago, 10Gb was acceptable, and 20Gb was plenty. Well, these days are over, and in the age of smallest HD being 160Gb, that's fine.
Being such a negative person, I had to find something bad to write about W7 - hence that "complaint" about footprint above, but honest to g-d, other than this W7 turned out to be my next XP (as opposed to Vista being compared to ME).
The UI finally makes sense (Mac anyone?). Seriously. Check this out:
(note there's a new Windows+tab app switcher that does this 3D effect of switching between windows)
I always wanted a Desktop that looks this cool. W7 finally takes you there very easily. I'm even persuaded not to turn off all the fancy animation bits that hurt performance. A quad-core with 4Gb of memory has its advantages. If your machine isn't that strong, the OS will decide on its own to deactivate some of the fancy-shmancy stuff.
I could go on forever, but this morning blog would become afternoon blog, and there are plenty of other reviews of W7 out there.
Just a couple more notes -
1) I am not usually an early adopter when it comes to OS, because I need to be productive, and don't have time to deal with v1 kinks. In this case it so much happened that I started to use virtualization on a large scale, and had to move to a 64-bit OS just in order to make better use of my RAM. My brother persuaded me that there's a good chance the 64-bit version of W7 works better than the XP one, and it actually made sense to me. I installed it knowingly, thinking that I'd run back to XP if anything goes wrong. It has been up there for a few weeks now, and for all practical purposes - I strongly recommend it to anyone with a reasonably modern machine (Dual core, >=2Gb RAM). Incidentally, I don't recommend the 64-bit, unless you truly know that you need it. It works fine, but if you're not a hard-core programmer, don't bother. 95% of the software is still 32-bit anyways. Most work fine on 64, but why bother having a bi-polar machine.
2) I know that it's really hansom, but we've always been to look at what's in the box, rather than the box itself. I can honestly say that finally the UI starts to make sense to me. Windows, to me, has always been about working AROUND its UI, rather than simply using an enjoying it. I've got plenty of productivity tools installed on XP machines, covering up for things that Microsoft just didn't do so well. I'm talking about trivial stuff like the windows explorer, notepad, clipboard, and a whole bunch of others (can you smell that next blog post coming?). With windows 7, there's a bit less of that, and a bit more usage of the tools that come out of the box. That's one nice thing.
But the nicest thing for me is that the entire UI and its behavior makes sense. My taskbar never gets filled up, and yet I can find all of my open programs easily, and this whole quicklaunch toolbar thing finally makes sense in its new form (again, behavior gracefully "stolen" from Mac).
Bottom line - go get one.
If you're a startup that fits MS relatively loose standards, you can get it free, along with every other piece of Software M$ usally sells for thousands of dollars. It's called Bizspark, and it's a good subject for another blog post.
Enjoy.
I read a blog post from someone who suggested that instead of reading emails in the morning, or reading the paper - you should maybe write a blog post. I figured that's not such a bad idea. I've made a habit out of making note of every subject worth blogging, so that I remember to write that blog post later on. In recent months I've been working 18 hour days, so blog posts weren't exactly my priority. Seems like I should have plenty of items to write blog posts about, but when I went over the list just now, many subjects seemed kind of old.
One of those subjects was "Windows 7, good and bad". I remember that this issue went through my head after I installed W7 Release Candidate on some relatively old machine that had to be reinstalled. I could immediately see that this IS something different - not another Vista (as a side note - I nicknamed Vista "the new ME" -named after the notorious Windows ME, yet another operating system that everyone skipped and went directly to Windows 2000).
The first thing I noticed about Windows 7 is that its name fits its Hard drive footprint. After you install Vista, 7Gb of your HD are gone (if you really must know why it's called that way - I found this post from the team). Not so long ago, 10Gb was acceptable, and 20Gb was plenty. Well, these days are over, and in the age of smallest HD being 160Gb, that's fine.
Being such a negative person, I had to find something bad to write about W7 - hence that "complaint" about footprint above, but honest to g-d, other than this W7 turned out to be my next XP (as opposed to Vista being compared to ME).
The UI finally makes sense (Mac anyone?). Seriously. Check this out:
(note there's a new Windows+tab app switcher that does this 3D effect of switching between windows)
I always wanted a Desktop that looks this cool. W7 finally takes you there very easily. I'm even persuaded not to turn off all the fancy animation bits that hurt performance. A quad-core with 4Gb of memory has its advantages. If your machine isn't that strong, the OS will decide on its own to deactivate some of the fancy-shmancy stuff.
I could go on forever, but this morning blog would become afternoon blog, and there are plenty of other reviews of W7 out there.
Just a couple more notes -
The new paint
1) I am not usually an early adopter when it comes to OS, because I need to be productive, and don't have time to deal with v1 kinks. In this case it so much happened that I started to use virtualization on a large scale, and had to move to a 64-bit OS just in order to make better use of my RAM. My brother persuaded me that there's a good chance the 64-bit version of W7 works better than the XP one, and it actually made sense to me. I installed it knowingly, thinking that I'd run back to XP if anything goes wrong. It has been up there for a few weeks now, and for all practical purposes - I strongly recommend it to anyone with a reasonably modern machine (Dual core, >=2Gb RAM). Incidentally, I don't recommend the 64-bit, unless you truly know that you need it. It works fine, but if you're not a hard-core programmer, don't bother. 95% of the software is still 32-bit anyways. Most work fine on 64, but why bother having a bi-polar machine.
2) I know that it's really hansom, but we've always been to look at what's in the box, rather than the box itself. I can honestly say that finally the UI starts to make sense to me. Windows, to me, has always been about working AROUND its UI, rather than simply using an enjoying it. I've got plenty of productivity tools installed on XP machines, covering up for things that Microsoft just didn't do so well. I'm talking about trivial stuff like the windows explorer, notepad, clipboard, and a whole bunch of others (can you smell that next blog post coming?). With windows 7, there's a bit less of that, and a bit more usage of the tools that come out of the box. That's one nice thing.
But the nicest thing for me is that the entire UI and its behavior makes sense. My taskbar never gets filled up, and yet I can find all of my open programs easily, and this whole quicklaunch toolbar thing finally makes sense in its new form (again, behavior gracefully "stolen" from Mac).
Bottom line - go get one.
If you're a startup that fits MS relatively loose standards, you can get it free, along with every other piece of Software M$ usally sells for thousands of dollars. It's called Bizspark, and it's a good subject for another blog post.
Enjoy.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Bing not f@#$ing ready for Israel
My sincere apologies to all those who don't read Hebrew, but here's an explanation:
I entered the Hebrew word for "Movie" in Bing.
The fourth result read "Porn Movies". Then there's a very graphic description of what you'll get if you click the link, which I will not repeat in full. Suffice it to say it talks about a bathroom, a man, a semi-converted transgender, and certain body parts of both parties involved, all located below the waistline and above the legs.
I won't include a link, but if you write Hebrew, just enter the word סרט in Bing.
Let's see how quickly Microsoft removes this obscenity. It has been there for at least a few days now.
Yuck.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
The POJ Stage
I just came up with a new software phase - The POJ phase.
The way I see it, in software you have Alpha, Beta, Release.
Alpha means what Beta used to mean before Google set up new standards. It means the software may break unexpectedly, but it mostly works.
Beta means what Microsoft used to call "V1", and sometimes "V2", and sometimes even "Vista". It's a product that works. Every software product has bugs, even after 10 years in the market. The standard that Google set for all of us is that Beta should work pretty much flawlessly.
Release only has significance in the MS world, and it is the equivalent of most of everyone else's Beta in recent years. It means the software should work flawlessly in its normal course of usage. Some previously unknown bugs may pop here and there in extreme cases.
This blog is not about that. It is about a new phase I just named POJ - the Piece of Junk Stage (I wanted to name it FPOJ but it's hard to pronounce and not very polite).
And why did I think this new term? Because I just tried using Google Wave. It's not Alpha or Beta or Gamma, It's in the POJ phase.
The POJ stage means "I can't use it for what I think the author intended me to use it for". The software can even work pretty well technically, but I just wouldn't be able to become a beta-tester of it, because it's missing important features, or important things break.
In the case of Google wave the first and most annoying problem of it is that I have to keep it open all day (and it's not easy on the RAM, CPU and browser, mind you). I don't get notifications when a wave has changed via email. Neither do any of the people I tried to surf the waves with. This is a killer - I update a wave, then go on to send an email to people telling them to look at the wave. That's when a short cry comes out unintentionally - WHAT A POJ!
Other things that bother me:
Other people can see what I write, and the "draft" box is disabled. Can you tell from this blog I'm a bit impulsive, and sometimes write nasty things? I do that over email too - but before I hit "Send", I hit Ctrl+A, Del, then I write a more polite version of what I wanted to say. It's my therapy and no one gets hurt. If people could read the initial versions of my polite answers to them, I'd be committed in a psychiatric institution. Well, now they can. Not good.
Kudos on the technical implementation, Stephanie (one can only imagine what it takes to perform this technically, assuming the whole world may be using Wave). But what the !@#$ were you thinking?
And why isn't reply working for me? I guess it's just a bug. I can only reply to my own messages - if I try to reply to other people, it comes out as new message. But that's a bug I can live with. There are others, I'll keep them off this blog an in the bug report (where is it, by the way?)
The Call for action:
Google - let's move out of the POJ stage, and into the Alpha stage,A-Hoes :) Please.
The way I see it, in software you have Alpha, Beta, Release.
Alpha means what Beta used to mean before Google set up new standards. It means the software may break unexpectedly, but it mostly works.
Beta means what Microsoft used to call "V1", and sometimes "V2", and sometimes even "Vista". It's a product that works. Every software product has bugs, even after 10 years in the market. The standard that Google set for all of us is that Beta should work pretty much flawlessly.
Release only has significance in the MS world, and it is the equivalent of most of everyone else's Beta in recent years. It means the software should work flawlessly in its normal course of usage. Some previously unknown bugs may pop here and there in extreme cases.
This blog is not about that. It is about a new phase I just named POJ - the Piece of Junk Stage (I wanted to name it FPOJ but it's hard to pronounce and not very polite).
And why did I think this new term? Because I just tried using Google Wave. It's not Alpha or Beta or Gamma, It's in the POJ phase.
The POJ stage means "I can't use it for what I think the author intended me to use it for". The software can even work pretty well technically, but I just wouldn't be able to become a beta-tester of it, because it's missing important features, or important things break.
In the case of Google wave the first and most annoying problem of it is that I have to keep it open all day (and it's not easy on the RAM, CPU and browser, mind you). I don't get notifications when a wave has changed via email. Neither do any of the people I tried to surf the waves with. This is a killer - I update a wave, then go on to send an email to people telling them to look at the wave. That's when a short cry comes out unintentionally - WHAT A POJ!
Other things that bother me:
Other people can see what I write, and the "draft" box is disabled. Can you tell from this blog I'm a bit impulsive, and sometimes write nasty things? I do that over email too - but before I hit "Send", I hit Ctrl+A, Del, then I write a more polite version of what I wanted to say. It's my therapy and no one gets hurt. If people could read the initial versions of my polite answers to them, I'd be committed in a psychiatric institution. Well, now they can. Not good.
Kudos on the technical implementation, Stephanie (one can only imagine what it takes to perform this technically, assuming the whole world may be using Wave). But what the !@#$ were you thinking?
And why isn't reply working for me? I guess it's just a bug. I can only reply to my own messages - if I try to reply to other people, it comes out as new message. But that's a bug I can live with. There are others, I'll keep them off this blog an in the bug report (where is it, by the way?)
The Call for action:
Google - let's move out of the POJ stage, and into the Alpha stage,
Friday, August 14, 2009
The before and after...
A recent micro-discussion on facebook prompted me to create and upload this.
My before and after....
For the brave of heart - Click the pic to enlarge...
Believe it or not, there's a 40 pounds (20kg) difference between the left and the right halves of the picture. There's also a 5-7 years difference, and the kid on my shoulder on the right side is the little brother of the baby on the left (and please don't call child services on either one...)
My before and after....
For the brave of heart - Click the pic to enlarge...
Believe it or not, there's a 40 pounds (20kg) difference between the left and the right halves of the picture. There's also a 5-7 years difference, and the kid on my shoulder on the right side is the little brother of the baby on the left (and please don't call child services on either one...)
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Large text file editing GEM
Whenever I find a hidden gem utility, I feel like I need to share.
Granted - I'm a utility freak. I have it on my todo list to post a few on utilities that I use, but this is for later.
Today I just wanted to mention one utility that I bumped into.
I was on a 45 minute call with someone who sent me a log file to view, and for 30 minutes out of the 45 was trying to view a 0.5G text file, crashing all possible programs - notepad, notepad++, word, wordpad. The guy on the other side of the line said he opened it with Textpad, but that's commercial and for text editors I really think there's enough good free stuff out there.
Then I entered "view large text files" in Google, and among all sorts of suggestions to split large files, on one of the sites, in one of the comments I found this amazing piece of software called "Programmer's File Editor", or PFE version 1.01 (catchy...). Found it here: http://www.lancs.ac.uk/staff/steveb/cpaap/pfe/
This software took less than 2 seconds to open this file, that all other software crashed after a few minutes of cranking at it.
The interesting bit is that this software works on Windows 3x... It was written in 92 by a guy on the Lancaster UK University staff, and was last updated in 99. There's still a note in the readme asking you to report any Y2K bugs if you find them...
Amazingly, it still not only works like a charm, but it is extremely fast and efficient opening files that are larger than what used to be the average memory size of computers back when it was written (maybe that explains why it's so efficient...)
If you're looking for a solution to open huge text files - I highly recommend it. In fact - go download it right now. Who knows when this 17 year old will vanish from the web completely...
Granted - I'm a utility freak. I have it on my todo list to post a few on utilities that I use, but this is for later.
Today I just wanted to mention one utility that I bumped into.
I was on a 45 minute call with someone who sent me a log file to view, and for 30 minutes out of the 45 was trying to view a 0.5G text file, crashing all possible programs - notepad, notepad++, word, wordpad. The guy on the other side of the line said he opened it with Textpad, but that's commercial and for text editors I really think there's enough good free stuff out there.
Then I entered "view large text files" in Google, and among all sorts of suggestions to split large files, on one of the sites, in one of the comments I found this amazing piece of software called "Programmer's File Editor", or PFE version 1.01 (catchy...). Found it here: http://www.lancs.ac.uk/staff/steveb/cpaap/pfe/
This software took less than 2 seconds to open this file, that all other software crashed after a few minutes of cranking at it.
The interesting bit is that this software works on Windows 3x... It was written in 92 by a guy on the Lancaster UK University staff, and was last updated in 99. There's still a note in the readme asking you to report any Y2K bugs if you find them...
Amazingly, it still not only works like a charm, but it is extremely fast and efficient opening files that are larger than what used to be the average memory size of computers back when it was written (maybe that explains why it's so efficient...)
If you're looking for a solution to open huge text files - I highly recommend it. In fact - go download it right now. Who knows when this 17 year old will vanish from the web completely...
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Things are getting warmer....
Speechless
This is a lecture given by Seth Godin.
If you're in the business of making products - watch it. Invest 60 minutes of your time, and you won't regret it. If you don't have time right now, come later. If you can't afford 60 minutes at once, watch it in parts.
Watch it.
If you're in the business of making products - watch it. Invest 60 minutes of your time, and you won't regret it. If you don't have time right now, come later. If you can't afford 60 minutes at once, watch it in parts.
Watch it.
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Today, in our "knock it off" series... MS annoyance.
Yes, I realize that the line that breaks case REALLY IS unreachable code, due to the "return" statement right above it, but seriously! Do you honestly expect me to omit the break statement? Would you consider that good practice ? (Damn, I just noticed I forgot to add it for the default block...)
I vote for MS removing this annoyance from the IDE, and allowing programmers to always have a break after case, without pointing a green finger at them.
Who's with me !?
Monday, July 13, 2009
The Paris Hilton Search Paradox
Everyone who ever had a professional encounter with search engines is familiar with the Paris Hilton Search Engine Paradox.
For those who have no idea what I'm talking about, in short - think about what happens if you decide to go to Paris, you want to stay at the Paris Hilton, and decide to look it up on Google to find good deals or whatever. You immediately become a victim of the paradox because if you run "the paris hilton" in Google, most of the results you'll get will be for Miss Paris Hilton.
The Paris Hilton search engine paradox refers to the problem search engine programmers have when they need to figure out what the person was really looking for when a search phrase is very ambiguous. The case of Paris Hilton is particularly problematic, since Paris Hilton is really a sibling of the Hilton family, owners the hotel chain. Hence, even the search phrase "Paris Hilton Hotel" may still mean that someone is interested in the lady and not the city (since she is the inheritor of the hotel chain). It would be extremely difficult, probably impossible, to figure out what a person meant without knowing a bit more about the person, the context, or something else. It would, however, not be very morale to provide search results based on profiling the person (it's a 14 year old male - must be interested in the Paris, the girl, because they cannot afford the hotel and because of other reasons I can't write here ;) ).
Aaaaaanyways, I got carried away with this post - what I really wanted to share with you is this Saturday Night Live sketch my brother sent me, which noticeably took this paradox to different place: Enjoy.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Do you know Andy Hey ?
I just wanted to ask you - since there are people talking to me three times a week about signing this dude, Andy Hey. This guy must be mighty popular if everyone wants to sign him, but I couldn't really figure out who he is.
So, if anyone out there knows who Andy Hey is, please send me his contact details. I know of a number of people who want me to sign him.
P.S. If a tree falls in the forest, and all people who can hear it fall signed an NDA, did it make a noise?
Knock it off with your NDAs, will ya? You're making me publish really stupid blog posts.
So, if anyone out there knows who Andy Hey is, please send me his contact details. I know of a number of people who want me to sign him.
P.S. If a tree falls in the forest, and all people who can hear it fall signed an NDA, did it make a noise?
Knock it off with your NDAs, will ya? You're making me publish really stupid blog posts.
Monday, July 6, 2009
Web development companies. Sheesh!!
Have you ever had this? Did you ever feel like you were alone in the world, you and your so-called "high" standards? Have you ever had a contractor deliver some seriously suboptimal deliverables? (let me see those hands...) Have you ever had an argument with your contractor, where he just couldn't see what was so embarrassing in what they did, and you thought you were going out of your freakin' mind?
I was recently involved in a project that required building a branding website. We hired Israel's top leading company in Drupal to do the development (no names mentioned), despite the relatively high price-tag, because we wanted the best, and we didn't have any room for mistakes, and had a short deadline, yada yada yada.
We set the timeline. Everyone was happy. We were looking over the developer shoulders constantly, and we saw they were not working fast enough to reach the milestones. We started whipping them, and in parallel started dropping features from the deadline, so we can make it there on time. We finally made the deadline (WE ALWAYS DO! It's a principal to work by) with less than half of the applicative content we had planned for, but with sort-of enough content.
All this we've seen before, and I refuse to get excited about it anymore. It's a general form of practice with web companies in Israel. Sometimes in the states too. You promise one thing, and deliver something else. You promise top quality product, on time. You end up delivering low quality on time, or top quality two months late, or low quality not on time. We've actually gone to the point where if you received one of the two - either quality or timely deliverable - you are a happy camper.
But the thing that drove me mad is the fact that the web company felt it was adequate to release the site with things like the above image (and this is merely an example. There was plenty more). To me this just reads "unprofessional" all over the canvas. Meeting the deadline with everything that was agreed upon is one thing. But releasing something to a production system that embarrasses your customer in front of their customers is a whole different ball-game.
Think about it - the whole idea of the website is creating new contact. You spend money on online advertising, leading your new potential customers through funnels, and when they finally push the button you wanted them to push most, splaaaaaaaat.
I sent the above image to the web company so that they know what my problem is.
Needless to say they had no idea why I am so upset. The feedback text is there, ain't it...
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Farewall RAZR...
About three years ago I bought me a top of the line, bleeding edge mobile phone - the Motorola RAZR V3.
About three weeks ago I bought me a top of the line, bleeding edge iPhone 3G.
It is amazing to see the distance that the mobile phone industry traveled in three years, courtesy of Apple. However, this is a subject for another post.
This post is dedicated to saying goodbye to my V3.
I've been a big Motorola phone fan since I was the proud owner of Motorola Timeport.
But RAZR V3 blew me away. At the time it was one mean piece of equipment - the first one to carry a USB plug for both charging and syncing, and a great step in the non-proprietary direction in that. The same charger is used to charge my phone and my bluetooth earpiece, and my MP3 player. I can charge my phone from my Laptop. Oh, wow.
And there is one thing that I have to tribute to the UI folks in Motorola. It seems like all they do all day is sit and count how many clicks it would take to get a trivial task done. If it's more than 3, it's back to the sketch-board.
I recently had a setback of 3 days where my iPhone stopped working (upgraded to 3.0, long story...). I went back to my ancient V3, and I have to tell you - I was actually having fun.
Suddenly an operation that would take 10 clicks on the iPhone, and would actually make me think about it while I was doing it, was being done by my fingers automatically in 2 clicks. Something as easy as pulling out my recent calls is done in one click. Dial to one of my contacts? 3 clicks.
Now, granted, that the iPhone, the most amazing piece of common computing equipment ever to be invented by man, carries "a bit" more features than my V3. Still, being the commandline geek that I am, I want to be able to do common tasks in one or maximum two clicks.
Am I not going to be able to do that in the modern world of mobile phones being cool-small-computers?
Time will tell.
Meantime, I just wanted to thank my V3 for a wonderful 3-4 years. I'm going to miss you like you miss an old dog that passed away.
I have a new iPhone puppy ;)
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Multiple Adwords and Gmail accounts - finally resolved (for me)
I've had this issue as long as I can remember - Adwords and Google accounts collide. If you are an intense user of both, you know what I'm talking about.
It is a great mystery why Google invests so much money in developing magnificent products that generate 0 revenue, and the one product that brings in all of its revenue - adWords - remains a step child. It is the only product that works really badly with the whole Google single-signon system. To take just one small example - the password strength requirement is different in AdWords. AdWords requires a stronger password, so if you attempt to sign up for a new Adwords account, your good ol' password from your Google account may not be strong enough.
Anyways, that's enough whining for one post. The reason I'm writing it is to explain how I finally got all my logins lined up without getting thrown from one account to another unexpectedly or getting logged out in the middle of writing an email.
First, the problem:
My problem was simple (turns out) - if you log in to a Google account (gmail, calendar, whatever...), and this same account has an Adwords account associated with it, you are automatically logged in to your Adwords account, even if you were already logged in as another user to your Adwords. As you find out about it, and sign out from AdWords, then sign back in with the AdWords account you wanted to be logged in with, you later realize that you were signed out of your email account as well. This cat and mouse game can continue forever.
Why is that?
If you're like me, your first adwords account was your gmail address. Then you got to manage one or two account more. Then maybe you thought you'd want to use the My Client Center to manage multiple account.
When you signed up to the MCC, you were told that your gmail address cannot be used as login for the My Client Center. So you created a new account. Then you added all the other accounts you were accessing individually into your MCC account. Great. It all works.
Now you went back to your gmail, and found out you were logged out from it when you clicked the "sign out" link on AdWords, so you log back in, read some emails, etc.
Then you go back to your AdWords MCC account, only to find out that you have been logged in to the original gmail AdWords account and out of the MCC account. If you log out from the Adwords account now, it will log you out from gmail.
Darn it.
Here's the solution:
You cannot have your gmail account as an Adwords account if you are using multiple AdWords account. What you need to do is this:
1) Log in to your AdWords account with your main gmail account.
2) Go to My Account->Access, and invite yourself to be an admin of the AdWords account, using some other email that you have (Gmail or other).
3) Accept the invitation, confirm yourself (this requires some logging in and out, back and forth - very annoying, but it's for a good cause and you won't have to do it again once you're done).
Important: As you sign up for the new AdWords access, remember the credentials you're using.
4) Log in to your original AdWords account using the new login you've created in steps 2-3. Then remove access to the original gmail account.
5) What just happened is that your gmail account just lost its Adwords privileges (you can still access the same account with the new login you created in steps 2-3). This means that when you log in to your gmail next time, it's not going to log you out from whatever Adwords account you were logged into. And vice-versa - when you log in to any adwords account, including MCC, you will not be logged out of your gmail.
Problem solved.
Optionally - you can now change your MCC account to use your main Gmail account, but I haven't tried it myself, so if you do, and you like, let me know.
Good luck. Be happy to help with more answer if I can (comment, and I will responde)
It is a great mystery why Google invests so much money in developing magnificent products that generate 0 revenue, and the one product that brings in all of its revenue - adWords - remains a step child. It is the only product that works really badly with the whole Google single-signon system. To take just one small example - the password strength requirement is different in AdWords. AdWords requires a stronger password, so if you attempt to sign up for a new Adwords account, your good ol' password from your Google account may not be strong enough.
Anyways, that's enough whining for one post. The reason I'm writing it is to explain how I finally got all my logins lined up without getting thrown from one account to another unexpectedly or getting logged out in the middle of writing an email.
First, the problem:
My problem was simple (turns out) - if you log in to a Google account (gmail, calendar, whatever...), and this same account has an Adwords account associated with it, you are automatically logged in to your Adwords account, even if you were already logged in as another user to your Adwords. As you find out about it, and sign out from AdWords, then sign back in with the AdWords account you wanted to be logged in with, you later realize that you were signed out of your email account as well. This cat and mouse game can continue forever.
Why is that?
If you're like me, your first adwords account was your gmail address. Then you got to manage one or two account more. Then maybe you thought you'd want to use the My Client Center to manage multiple account.
When you signed up to the MCC, you were told that your gmail address cannot be used as login for the My Client Center. So you created a new account. Then you added all the other accounts you were accessing individually into your MCC account. Great. It all works.
Now you went back to your gmail, and found out you were logged out from it when you clicked the "sign out" link on AdWords, so you log back in, read some emails, etc.
Then you go back to your AdWords MCC account, only to find out that you have been logged in to the original gmail AdWords account and out of the MCC account. If you log out from the Adwords account now, it will log you out from gmail.
Darn it.
Here's the solution:
You cannot have your gmail account as an Adwords account if you are using multiple AdWords account. What you need to do is this:
1) Log in to your AdWords account with your main gmail account.
2) Go to My Account->Access, and invite yourself to be an admin of the AdWords account, using some other email that you have (Gmail or other).
3) Accept the invitation, confirm yourself (this requires some logging in and out, back and forth - very annoying, but it's for a good cause and you won't have to do it again once you're done).
Important: As you sign up for the new AdWords access, remember the credentials you're using.
4) Log in to your original AdWords account using the new login you've created in steps 2-3. Then remove access to the original gmail account.
5) What just happened is that your gmail account just lost its Adwords privileges (you can still access the same account with the new login you created in steps 2-3). This means that when you log in to your gmail next time, it's not going to log you out from whatever Adwords account you were logged into. And vice-versa - when you log in to any adwords account, including MCC, you will not be logged out of your gmail.
Problem solved.
Optionally - you can now change your MCC account to use your main Gmail account, but I haven't tried it myself, so if you do, and you like, let me know.
Good luck. Be happy to help with more answer if I can (comment, and I will responde)
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Thank you, Taiwan.... NOT
In one of the ventures I was involved with recently, I had to get myself a laptop that would be convenient to carry. I got an MSI Wind. An absolutely gorgeous piece of work. It weighs less than two pounds and is about as powerful as my Desktop used to be 5 years ago.
I was so impressed, that when I moved to the next venture and needed to leave the wind behind, I simply bought another one (they're dirt cheap, did I mention?).
There was something weird about this laptop. It got warm much faster than the previous one did. I thought this was due to the larger battery, but after a few days I noticed that this machine was so much quieter than the previous one. I read somewhere that the newer models were indeed quieter on the fan side, but this one was a bit too quiet. Plus, the mouse pad was getting so hot that my finger would burn.
Finally, when I opened it up as part of adding more memory to it, and took a look at the fan, I found out that out of the three little sockets of the fan wire, one was slightly smaller than the rest (a plastic drip or something). Looks like the guy or girl who put it together couldn't care less about it, and they just shoved it in the slot real hard, bending one of the little iron thingys to the side, until they managed to fit it. The poor fan was not getting any electricity. I stuck a pin and widened that socket just a bit, and used the same pin to straighten the little wire, reconnected, and voila - the fan was working and the Wind no longer burns my fingers.
Now I'm really pissed at the guy or girl assembling this thing in Taiwan. I mean - I know you're getting paid peanuts, but this is my work you're talking about!! Other than burning my fingers doing what you did also means that you have shortened the life of my CPU dramatically.
Have some consideration people!!
Contact me if you happen to have an MSI wind that gets terribly hot, specially on the mouse pad side (that's where your CPU is).
I was so impressed, that when I moved to the next venture and needed to leave the wind behind, I simply bought another one (they're dirt cheap, did I mention?).
There was something weird about this laptop. It got warm much faster than the previous one did. I thought this was due to the larger battery, but after a few days I noticed that this machine was so much quieter than the previous one. I read somewhere that the newer models were indeed quieter on the fan side, but this one was a bit too quiet. Plus, the mouse pad was getting so hot that my finger would burn.
Finally, when I opened it up as part of adding more memory to it, and took a look at the fan, I found out that out of the three little sockets of the fan wire, one was slightly smaller than the rest (a plastic drip or something). Looks like the guy or girl who put it together couldn't care less about it, and they just shoved it in the slot real hard, bending one of the little iron thingys to the side, until they managed to fit it. The poor fan was not getting any electricity. I stuck a pin and widened that socket just a bit, and used the same pin to straighten the little wire, reconnected, and voila - the fan was working and the Wind no longer burns my fingers.
Now I'm really pissed at the guy or girl assembling this thing in Taiwan. I mean - I know you're getting paid peanuts, but this is my work you're talking about!! Other than burning my fingers doing what you did also means that you have shortened the life of my CPU dramatically.
Have some consideration people!!
Contact me if you happen to have an MSI wind that gets terribly hot, specially on the mouse pad side (that's where your CPU is).
Saturday, March 7, 2009
I've got gmail HTML+Inline image signature working perfectly!!
Long time and a lot of effort, but there finally is a way to create nice signatures, styled with HTML, and have embedded emails in there - yes, the type of images that do not require your recipients to confirm "display images", because the embedded email is considered safe.
And it's so easy... Ready? Here goes.
1) Create the signature you like in an email client. Use outlook, thunderbird or whatever you want. Note that you don't need to create the signature as signature within the client - simply create an email that has the signature you need. You can include images from your local computer, and format it however you like.
2) Send the email to your gmail account.
3) Enabled Labs in your gmail account, and specifically enable "canned responses".
4) Open the email you've received from yourself. Start forwarding it.
5) Once forward email is open, clean up anything you don't need, and make it look like the signature of your desire.
6) Find the "canned response" link, and save the email as canned response called "signature"
That's it. From now on you can add this signature to any outgoing email by starting the email, hitting "canned response", insert->signature.
Good luck.
This was too good not to share.
And it's so easy... Ready? Here goes.
1) Create the signature you like in an email client. Use outlook, thunderbird or whatever you want. Note that you don't need to create the signature as signature within the client - simply create an email that has the signature you need. You can include images from your local computer, and format it however you like.
2) Send the email to your gmail account.
3) Enabled Labs in your gmail account, and specifically enable "canned responses".
4) Open the email you've received from yourself. Start forwarding it.
5) Once forward email is open, clean up anything you don't need, and make it look like the signature of your desire.
6) Find the "canned response" link, and save the email as canned response called "signature"
That's it. From now on you can add this signature to any outgoing email by starting the email, hitting "canned response", insert->signature.
Good luck.
This was too good not to share.
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