http://sass-lang.com/

http://compass-style.org/

In the project I’m working on we happen to use the Zend Studio which is built on the Eclipse IDE. Normally when working with SASS / Compass you need to open a terminal window and enter a command to “watch” your .scss files. That way when a file changed it would automatically compile it into a .css file. Being lazy by nature I didn’t like the idea of having to open a separate terminal window in addition to launching the IDE to do compile the files so I figured I should be able use Ant to handle this task. It took a bit of research and some fiddling but I finally figured it out. Now every time I change one of my .scss files it is automatically compiled into a .css file. I’m a happy camper!

The following are the steps to make that magic happen. I’ve included two targets in the build.xml file: one for SASS and one for Compass. If you just want to use SASS and not compass choose the sass.compile target. For Compass use the second compass.compile target.

1. Install Ruby. Mac OS X already has Ruby installed. On a Windows system go to:

http://rubyinstaller.org/

…download and run the RubyInstaller application.

2. Install the Compass gem. From the command line type:

 gem install compass

This will install Sass, Compass, and a few other supporting Ruby gems.

3. Make sure that the Ant is installed. In Zend Studio go to Help > Welcome  and check Ant and click the “Apply changes” button. In Eclipse Ant is usually installed automatically. If not go to Help > Install New Software and you should be able to find it there.

4. Add the targets to your build file. If you already have a build.xml file in your project you can just add the sass.complie and compass.compile targets to your existing file. If you don’t have a build.xml file create a new one and copy all of the following in it:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project basedir="." default="">

<!-- Compile .scss and .sass files in the public/sass directory using SASS -->
<target name="sass.compile">
  <property name="sass.dir" value="public/sass" />
  <property name="css.dir" value="public/css" />

  <apply executable="sass" dest="${css.dir}" verbose="true" force="true" failonerror="true">
    <arg value="--unix-newline" />
    <arg value="--compass" />
    <srcfile />
    <targetfile />
    <fileset dir="${sass.dir}" includes="**/*.scss,**/*.sass" excludes="**/_*" />
    <firstmatchmapper>
      <globmapper from="*.sass" to="*.css" />
      <globmapper from="*.scss" to="*.css" />
    </firstmatchmapper>
  </apply>
  <eclipse.refreshLocal resource="xa/public" depth="infinite"/>
</target>

<!-- Compile .scss files in the public/sass directory using Compass -->
  <target name="compass.compile">
    <exec executable="compass" dir="${basedir}/public/sass">
      <arg value="compile" />
    </exec>
    <eclipse.refreshLocal resource="xa/public" depth="infinite"/>
  </target>
</project>

5. Open the project properties (right-click on the project and select “Properties”)

6. Select Builders and click the “New…” button

7. Select “Ant Builder” and click the OK button

8. In the Edit Configuration window enter a name in the field at the top (compass.compile) and make sure the “Main” tab is selected

9. Click “Browse Workspace” button and select the build.xml file from the project

10. Select the “Targets” tab and click the “Set Targets” button next to Auto-Build

11. Select the “sass.compile” target if you just want to use SASS or select the “compass.compile” target to use Compass.  Click OK.

12. Select the “Build Options” tab

13. Click the “Select Resources” button. Select the public/sass directory and click OK

That’s it! Now when you makes changes in any of the .scss files in the Sass directory the will automatically be compiled and .css files will be created/updated in the .css directory.

List the Portals

/mvp list [WORLD]

Lists all the portals or if a world name is specified, list all portals in that world.

Creating a Portal

There are a few steps involved in creating a new portal:

1. Get a Wand

You need to select a region of blocks where the portal will be. To do that you’ll need a wand. Enter this command:

/mvp wand

This will put a wand into your inventory that you can use to select a region to create a portal. The default wand is a wooden axe.

2. Select the Region

With your wand (the wooden axe) in hand left-click the first point in the region you want to be a portal. You’ll see the coordinates of the block you clicked appear on the screen. Next right-click the opposite corner of the region. This region should be large enough for a player to walk through. I can be made out of anything you’d like. A portal can even be nothing! For instance, you could start with an rectangle of blocks and select them as your region. Once the selection is made you could then remove those blocks and the area is still selected even though there’s nothing there.

3. Create You Portal

/mvp create {YOUR_PORTAL_NAME} [DESTINATION]

You’ll need to enter a name for your new portal. If you have multiple worlds in might be wise to include the world name in the portal name. For example:

World1_portal1

The second parameter, which is actually optional, is the destination, or where you want the portal to transport you to. This can be another world or another portal, even a portal on another world. For example you could say:

/mvp create World1_Portal1 p:World2_Portal1

…and this would create a portal that would transport you from World1 to Portal1 on World2. If you want to just be transported to another world enter the command like this:

/mvp create World1_Portal1 w:World2

This will create a portal that will transport you to the spawn point in World2.

It’s also possible to create a portal that will transport you to specific coordinates in a world. The command for that can be found on the Multiverse Portals Wiki Command Reference

Modifying a Portal

Sometimes you’ll need to modify the settings of a portal. Most often this is done to change the destination if you want to portal to transport you someplace new or if you didn’t set the destination when you created the portal. To change the destination of a portal enter this command:

/mvp modify dest {YOUR_NEW DESITNATION} -p {YOUR_PORTAL_NAME}

For example, to change World1_Portal1 to transport you to World2_Portal3 you would enter this command:

/mvp modify dest p:World2_Portal3 -p World1_Portal1

The destination can be either a portal or a world.

Removing a Portal

Sometimes you just need to get rid of a portal that you created. Here’s the command:

/mvp remove {PORTAL_NAME}

For example, if you want to remove World2_Portal2 you would enter:

/mvp remove World2_Portal2

…and like magic it’s gone. Be careful with this command. There’s no undoing it after a portal is removed.

And that pretty much cover all the basic commands that you’ll need to know to get started with Multiverse Portals. There is much more information on the Multiverse Portals Plugin Wiki in case you need more information.

Good luck and happy transporting!

Common Mulitverse Core Commands

The following commands are the ones you’ll probably be using most often while playing in the worlds on the CraftBukkit server.

Getting Help

/mv help

List all the Multiverse Core commands

Listing Worlds

/mv list

Prints out a list all the worlds currently loaded on the server

Teleport to the spawn point in a world

/mv spawn [PLAYER]

This command will teleport you or the player that you specify to the spawn point in the world.

Optional Parameters

PLAYER - The name of the player to teleport. If not entered you will be teleported.

Who’s Here

/mv who [WORLD] [-a]

This command lists the players in each of the worlds that have players in them.

Optional parameters

WORLD - Enter the name of a world and it will just list players in that world

-a - Lists all worlds whether there are players in them or not.

Examples

/mv who world1

Show a list of all the players in the world named world1.

Teleport Between Worlds

/mv tp [PLAYER] {WOLRD}

This command will teleport you or the specified player to the world that you specify.

Required Parameters

WORLD - You must enter the name of the world you want to teleport to

Optional Parameters

PLAYER - The name of the player you want to teleport (assuming you have permission to teleport another player).

Example

/mv tp tony world2

Transport player named Tony to world2

Less Common But Useful Multiverse Core Commands

Creating New Worlds

/mv create {NAME} {ENV} [-s SEED] [-g GENERATOR[:ID]] [-t TYPE] [-a true|false]

Creates a new world on your server

Required Parameters:

{NAME} -The name of the new world you want to create. If you want to use a name with spaces you will need to put quotes around the name. ex: “My New World”

{ENV} - The type of environment you want to create. Valid choices are: NORMAL, NETHER, or END

Optional Parameters

-s SEED - If you want to use a specific seed enter the ID here

-g GENERATOR - If you have a custom world generator installed on your server you can specify it here

-t TYPE - The type of world you want to create. Valid options are: NORMAL, FLAT, or VERSION_1_1 (only if you are running a version 1.2.x server)

-a TRUE | FALSE - This parameter lets you choose if you want structures to be created in the new world. TRUE if want structures, FALSE if you don’t. If left out this parameter defaults to TRUE

Examples

/mv create MyNewWorld normal

Create a new world named MyNewWorld using the normal environment

/mv create NewWorld2 normal -s 1.2.3abc -t flat

Create a new world named NewWorld2 using the normal environment, seed id 1.2.3abc and a flat terrain.

Importing Worlds

/mv import {NAME} {ENV} [-g GENERATOR[:ID]]

This command allows you to import worlds that you have already created either on another server or in a offline game. You will need to copy the world folder into the CraftBukkit server folder before you try to import it.

Required Parameters:
{NAME} - The name of the world you want to import. Remember the quotes if there are spaces in the world name.

{ENV} - The type of environment that the world uses: NORMAL, NETHER, or END

Optional Parameters

GENERATOR[:ID]
If the world was created using a custom generator you must specify that here

Examples

/mv import MyGreatWorld normal

Import the world named MyGreatWorld that was created using a normal environment.

Reloading the Worlds

/mv reload

This will reload all the worlds in the worlds.yml file. Handy if you make changes in the .yml file.

Unloading a World

/mv unload {WOLRD}

This command will unload the speicified world from the server. This might help if you want to free up resources.

Required Parameters

{WORLD} - The name of the world you want to unload.

Removing a World

/mv remove {WORLD}

This command will remove a world from the worlds.yml file.

Required Parameters

{WORLD} – The name of the world you want to remove.

Deleting a World

/mv delete {WORLD}

This command will remove the world from the worlds.yml file and DELETE the folder containing the world from your server.
** NOTE: Be Careful – You could lose data with this command! **

Required Parameters

{WORLD} – The name of the world you want to delete

Setting the Spawn Point

/mv set spawn

This command allows you to change the spawn point in a world. Just move your character to the place you want the new spawn point to be and enter the command. Now when someone transports to the world this will be where they appear.

Being a good computer nerd I liked the idea of setting up a server. I looked around figuring that someone had created the software I wanted and sure enough they had. I found the CraftBukkit server with the Multiverse plugins which was just what I was looking for. I’ve been playing with the server setup on my local system to get everything worked out before moving it to my wife’s computer, replacing the standard Minecraft server. It took me a little while to figure out how the server and plugins all work together so I decided to write these instructions to help out others who want to setup a similar system. It will also help me six months from now when I will have completely forgotten how it all works.

I did my work on a Mac OS X system. The steps should be pretty much the same for a Linux system. There will be differences running it under Windows especially in getting Java installed and setup but hopefully these instructions will be of some help there as well.

So without further ado here’s the steps I followed to put this all together.

Setting Up the CraftBukkit Server

1. Download the latest version of the Craftbukkit server. This link will download the lastest “Recommended Build”:

http://dl.bukkit.org/latest-rb/craftbukkit.jar

Note: If there has been a recent update to the MineCraft client then even the latest “Recommended Build” of Craftbukkit may not work. I this case you might need to download a beta build or even the nightly development build which can be found here:

http://dl.bukkit.org/downloads/craftbukkit/

2. Create a folder named “CraftBukkitServer”.

3. Copy the Craftbukkit .jar file into the newly created folder.

4. Since the .jar file has the version information in the name of the file I like to create a link (or alias, or shortcut depending on what kind of system you’re running on). This allows me to have a standard name that I can use in the startup script file but still be able to easily see what version I’m running. When there is an update I just delete the link and create a new one pointing to the new file and everything works correctly.
To create the link on a Unix-like system (such as Linux or Mac OS X) open a terminal window, cd to the Craftbukkit server directory, and enter the following:

ln -s <name of the downloaded craftbukkit .jar file > craftbukkit.jar

5. Next we need to create the startup script. Open your favorite plain text editor and copy the following lines to a new file:

#!/bin/bash
 cd ~/Desktop/CraftBukkitServer/
 java -Xms1024M -Xmx1024M -jar craftbukkit.jar

You’ll need to change the directory name on the first line to point to where you created the CraftBukkitServer. This one points to a folder in the Desktop directory of my home directory on a Mac. Yours may be different.

If you are on a Linux system name the file craftbukkit.sh. On a Mac name the file craftbukkit.command so you can double-click the icon to start the server.

You can change the Java memory settings depending on how much memory you have in your computer and how much you want to server to use. More is better of course. Common values you can change the -Xms and -Xmx values to are 512, 768, 1024, 2048.

Finally, you’ll also need to change the permissions on the startup script to allow it to be run. Do that with this command:

chmod +x craftbukit.sh

or if you’re on a Mac:

chmod +x craftbukkit.command

Your CraftBukkitServer folder should now look like this:

6. Start up the new server by double clicking on the craftbukkit.sh file (or run it from the command line if you wish). You should see a terminal window come up and a bunch of text scroll by as it sets everything up. Once it’s done you can shut the server down by typing “stop” in the terminal window. Running the server for the first time sets up a bunch of files and directories in the CraftBukkitServer folder. We’ll be using some of these shortly.

Adding the Multiverse Plugins

7. The plugins we want to add are:

Multiverse Core – the main plugin that give us the multi-world capability
Multiverse Portals – this gives us the ability to create portals to trasport us to the other worlds.
Multiverse Nether Portals – this plugin lets us use the nether portals to transport between worlds and allows custom world scalling on all worlds.
Multiverse Sign Portals – Allows you to use signs as portals
PermissionsBukkit – Allows you to manage the user and group permissions for the server and all the worlds

You can download the plugin files from the following links:

http://dev.bukkit.org/media/files/572/413/Multiverse-Core.jar
http://dev.bukkit.org/media/files/572/414/Multiverse-Portals.jar
http://dev.bukkit.org/media/files/572/415/Multiverse-NetherPortals.jar
http://dev.bukkit.org/media/files/572/416/Multiverse-SignPortals.jar
http://dev.bukkit.org/media/files/577/104/PermissionsBukkit-1.6.jar

Note: Once again, if there has been an update to the Minecraft client you may need to get the latest development builds for the plugins to work correctly. To find these go to the plugin webpage (see links above) and click the “Dev Builds” link.

8. Once downloaded, copy the plugin files to the “plugins” folder in the CraftBukkitServer folder.

9. Start up the server once again to let the plugins do the setup that they need to do. You’ll see that more new folders and files are created within the plugins folder. Once it’s done type “stop” in the terminal window to stop the server.

Server Configuration

10. We need to setup some initial permisions for our new server. To do this open the permissions config.yml file which can be found in the CraftBukkitServer/plugins/PermissionsBukkit folder. This config file is broken up into three main sections: users, groups, and messages. In the users section we specify the permissions we want to grant to individual users. The groups section allows us to specify permissions for groups we want to define. These users can then be assigned to these groups. We won’t worry about the messages section right now. The following is probably a good starting point for your config.yml file:

users:
  <your user name>:
    permissions:
    groups:
    - admin
groups:
  default:
    permissions:
      permissions.build: false
      multiverse.teleport.self: true
  admin:
    permissions:
      permissions.*: true
      multiverse.*: true
    inheritance:
    - user
  user:
    permissions:
      permissions.build: true
      multiverse.access.*: true
      multiverse.teleport.*: true
    worlds:
    inheritance:
    - default
 messages:
   build: '&cYou do not have permission to build here.'
 debug: false

Note: the YAML format does not accept tabs for indenting the lines. You must use spaces. This was something that I learned the hard way. If you find that your permissions aren’t working like you think they should be check for tabs in your file and replace them with spaces.

You’ll want to change the text <your user name> to your real user name. This will make you a member of the admin group which will give you all the permissions you need to get started. The users group has perssion to build in the worlds and teleport between them but not create new worlds. The default group is the most restricted. This group can transport between worlds but can’t do any building. This is the group that new users will be in until you give them permission to do more.

11. Edit the config.yml file in the Multiverse-Core folder. If the “enforceaccess” setting is set to  false, which is the default, all users will be able to be able to access all the worlds on your server regardless of what is set in the permissions file. Change the setting:

enforceaccess: 'false'

to:

enforceaccess: 'true'

…and handle all the permissions in the config.yml file we edited previously. That way all the permissions are handled in one place.

12. You may also want to edit the worlds.yml file found in the Multiverse-Core folder. This is where all the parameters for the worlds on the server are stored. SInce I like to play in peaceful mode I changed the difficulty parameter from easy to peaceful in this file. You find setting for each of the worlds that the server loads in this file.

That’s about it. You can now start your server and begin playing. With the Multiverse plugin you can create news worlds and even import your existing worlds into your server. Instructions for this and much more can be found on the Multiverse wiki. There you will also find instructions on setting up portals between all your worlds. Maybe soon I’ll write another post as I explore all the commands available with the CraftBukkit server and Multiverse plugins.

That’s all for now. Good luck and happy digging!

MagWords Demo Page and sourcecode

It took me about 15 minutes to setup. Nothing too complicated. They have pretty good step-by-step instructions on the Obihai website. Once done I tried calling my Google voice number which worked fine. I then place a call from the phone attached to the Obi unit and it worked as well. New phone setup in under 30 minutes. One thing to note is that the Obi unit does not support 911 calls.

There are two Obi units available, the 100 and the 110. The only difference is that the 110 adds a port to connect an existing land line if you have one so that calls from Google Voice as well as you land line will ring through to your phone. The price of the Obi 100 on Amazon is $43.99 and the Obi 110 is $49.99. Given that it’s only a $6.00 difference I went with the Obi 110.

So, if you want to get rid of your land line, add a business line, or just add another line in your house, the Obi might be just what you’re looking for.

Post Ender is now available  at in the WP.org plugin repository

As they say, necessity is the mother of invention. In one of our recent meetings for the SportsDashboards project it was decided that we wanted to add some text at the bottom of each post on the Sports Stories blog with information about SportsDashboards. I knew there I could probably find a plugin to do this out in WordPress land but it seemed easy enough and I’ve been wanting to write a plugin for a while now. So I set out to do just that.

More than just write a plugin, I wanted to create a simple framework for creating other plugins. Nothing too fancy, just a class-based structure that I could use for any plugins I wanted to write. I’ve wanted to do this project for quite a while now but never got around to it. Now I had a real task that needed to be done so it was time to tackle plugins. I’ve looked around at a variety of plugins to see how they were written and there didn’t seem to be any standard way of structuring a plugin. Most seem to be just a bunch of PHP functions in a file. Functional, but not very pretty or maintainable in anything but a very simple plugin. The plugin I need would be a very simple one so I could have just put together a few PHP functions and saved myself a lot of time but I this was the opportunity to create the framework I was thinking about and to learn more about writing plugins.

I did do a search for WP plugin frameworks and found a few interesting ones but they all seemed to add more bells and whistles than I wanted. So the Post Footer plugin was born. Post Footer does one thing. It adds text to the bottom of every post. Oh, I did add a few lines of code for a [post_footer] shortcode in case someone wanted to add the text to individual posts.

The main idea is to separate the code into sections: common code, admin code, and front-end code. I saw this technique in another plug that I ran across but I unfortunately can’t remember which one  it is to be able to give credit where credit is due. The main file looks like this:

if ( !class_exists("PostFooter") ) {
    class PostFooter {

        function PostFooter() {
            <-- constructor code goes here -->
        } end PostFooter

        function init() {
            if ( is_admin () ) {
                // Load the admin page code
                if ( @include ( dirname ( __FILE__ ) . '/inc/admin.php' ) ) {
                    $PostFooterAdmin = new PostFooterAdmin ();
                } else {
                    PostFooter::deactivate_and_die ( dirname ( __FILE__ ) . '/inc/admin.php' );
                }
            } else {
                // Load the frontend code
                if ( @include ( dirname ( __FILE__ ) . '/inc/frontend.php' ) ) {
                    $PostFooterFrontend = new PostFooterFrontend ();
                } else {
                    PostFooter::deactivate_and_die ( dirname ( __FILE__ ) . '/inc/frontend.php' );
                }
            }
        } // end init

    } // end PostFooter class

}

As you can see there is logic in the init function to look at how the plugin is being called and load either the code to display the admin page or the front-end code for adding the text to the posts. The options page, which is mostly HTML is also broken out into a separate file to make it easier to maintain.

The code to add the text to each post was made easier by similar code in the book “Smashing WordPress: Beyond the Blog” by Thord Daniel Hedengren. The plugin example in the book shows code to add text at the end on each post using a template tag. It was pretty simple to change that to either use a shortcode tag or an option on the options page.

So there you have the Post Footer plugin. It was fun to write and hopefully it might be a helpful example to someone else trying to write there first plugin. You can find more information and download the code here. Sometime soon I hope to have this pushed out to the WordPress.org plugins directory so you can install it directly from there.

Happy Coding!

“You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.”

– Plato

Working from home can be a mixed blessing. For the most part it’s great. Your commute is measured in steps rather than miles saving probably an hour a day, not to mention the price of gas and wear and tear on your car.  You can work in your pajamas if you’d like (assuming you don’t use video conferencing in which case you probably should put on a nicer shirt and make sure your hair is combed).

On the down side you’re all alone at home.  It’s easy to get distracted with chores around the house. But most of all, for me at least, is a sense of isolation. You can’t yell across the cubicle wall when you have a question.

These days our work requires new tools to be able to e able to collaborate effectively with others, especially if you’re working from home or working in a distributed environment. We’ll take a look at some of the best tools that I’ve found for communication, sharing and organization and hopefully start a discussion about other great tools.

Communication

“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”

– George Bernard Shaw

One of the first things we need is a way to talk to people. You can of course use a regular phone for this, which works well if you need to talk to one person. There are other online solutions that provide other features such as conference calling and better call management. My current favorite services for voice calls are Skype and Google Voice.

Voice & Video

Skype

This is usually my first choice for making calls while working on my computer these days. It’s really convenient to be able to plug-in my headset and have my hands free to work. Calls to other Skype subscribers are always free. There is a charge to call regular phone numbers but for about  $30/year you can get unlimited calls to all phones in the US and Canada.

One of the nicest features of Skype is the ability to have conference calls with up to 25 people. This comes in really handy for daily or weekly check-in calls with clients or co-workers.

Google Voice

Overall I’ve never been too impress with Google Voice for making calls as it lacks the conferencing abilities of Skype. One great feature though is the being able to get a phone number for your account, which can then be forwarded to your cell phone or a land line and provides a powerful tool for managing your calls.

You can setup rules for how and when the forwarding will happen. For instance, you might want your Google number to be forwarded to your cell phone during work hours, say 9 to 5, and to your land line during non-work hours. You can even setup up rules based on who’s calling so that only calls from your co-workers will ring through to your land-line after hours. Other calls can be set to be sent straight to voicemail. You can also have the call on your phone giving you the opportunity listen in on the message being left and decide if you want to pickup the call.

Instant Messaging

Skype
Since I tend to use Skype most of the time for voice calls and it’s usually open on my computer I also tend to use it for sending instant messages. Most of the time this is usually to ping someone to see if they’re available for a voice call.

Yahoo Messenger
This is another very popular instant messaging system. I use it on rare occasions when someone else I’m working with uses it.

Google Talk
I haven’t used this except to test it to see if it worked (which it did). This is one of the services I use only when I’m working with someone else who happens to prefer it.

Windows Live Messenger
I’ve used this in the past but have convinced most of the people who were using this to get a Skype account.

Adium
Pidgin
If you have a need to use multiple instant messaging systems there are programs that will help consolidate these so you don’t have to have multiple messaging programs open. Since I’m on a Mac I tend to use Adium for any IM tasks other than Skype. Pidgin is also very popular and is cross platform.

Online Conference Rooms

Last year I had a opportunity to work with Automattic Inc. (the people who run WordPress.com) for a couple of months. It was a really interesting experience as Automattic is a complexly distributed company. They don’t have a real office and people in the company are spread out all over the world. They have developed a number of ways to facilitate communications using, email , Skype, P2 blogs (which we’ll talk about in a minute) but most of the daily communication took place in private IRC chat rooms. This provides a capability similar to being able to yell over the cubicle walls in an office. The big advantage of using IRC was that you could just log into a chat room, see and send messages from anyone else in the room and leave when you wanted. There’s no setup like a conference call. The “room” is always there ready and waiting.

The disadvantage of IRC is that it’s not very user friendly and can be a bit intimidating when you first start using it. IRC is a text-based protocol. Commands are all given via a command line interface and are rather complex. For this reason I’d probably recommend looking for a more user-friendly private chat room environment. There are a couple that I’ve found that seem pretty good.

CampFire
Campfire, run by the folks at 37 Signals (the creators of BaseCamp), provides a very nice private chat environment that’s easy to use. Cost for this service starts at $12/month.

Chatzy
Always on the lookout for a free alternative, I came across another service named Chatzy that provides private chat rooms for free. I tried it out a bit and while not quite as polished at Campfire it gets the job done.

Email

If email is dead how come my inbox is full every morning? Despite all the newer forms of communication such as IM, text messages, VOIP we still tend to depend on good old email for much of our work.

Google Apps
Setting up email for you domain used to be a bit of a problem. You could either setup your own email server or find some email provider that charged too much for too little. That all changed when Google started offering Google Apps. Now you can point the email for your domain at their servers and be able to access your email via POP, IMAP or the Gmail web client. It free for up to 50 email accounts that should accommodate most small companies. It also includes Google Docs, Calendar, and a number of other services. It’s also possible to setup email services for free through domain registrars and hosting services such as GoDaddy and Dreamhost but given the features offered by Google it’s hard to pass up Google Apps.

Screen Sharing & Remote Control

They say a picture’s worth a thousand words and that’s certainly true when you’re trying to help someone with a computer problem over the phone. Being able to see the other persons screen or showing your screen can make work go much faster. For simple one-to-one screen sharing you can use the handy new feature built into Skype that will show your screen to the person you’re chatting with. Other times when you need to share your screen with more that one person or take control of someone’s screen (or give them control of yours) other services such as GotoMeeting, WebEx and Abobe Connect come in really handy. I’m most familiar with GotoMeeting myself and have found that it works really well. The cost for this service is $50/month for an unlimited number of conferences with up to 15 participants. It’s not cheap but it can pay for itself with the time saved if you don’t have to drive out to a client’s site a couple of times a month.

GotoMeeting
Adobe Connect
WebEx

Sharing

“Our best thoughts come from others.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

There are always files, images, and other miscellaneous that need to be shared when working on projects. Luckily, there are some pretty easy ways to either transfer the files or, better yet, provide a collaborative workspace where everyone can work.

Dropbox
Dropbox provides a quick and easy way to transfer files to others. You setup your account and you can get 2GB of space for free (you can get more free space if you get other people to sign up). That should be enough for most files. If you need more space they have paid plans to give you 50GB or 100GB of storage. They have a small application that once installed on your system (Windows, Mac, or Linux) presents your Dropbox space as if it was another drive on your system. You can set folders to be public, private or shared. You then just send the URL of the file or folder to who you want to share it with and your set.

Google Docs
Google Docs is a great place to create and edit shared documents. Multiple people can edit a document simultaneously. It also keeps track of revisions to your files so you can always go back to a previous version. Once again this is a free service and you get 1GB of space to store uploaded files and unlimited space for Google Docs files. It’s also possible to upload any document type (Word, Excel, PDF, etc.) and either store the file or convert it to a Google Docs format.

Evernote
I’ve been a fan of Evernote for a few years now. I was always looking for a place to store various bits and pieces of information and notes and this fit the bill perfectly.  Now whenever I have something that I don’t want to forget it goes into Evernote. They have apps for mobile devices as well so you can access your information wherever you are. You can also access your stored information via their website. One new feature that they’ve recently added is the ability to share notebooks (everything is stored in “notebooks” on Evernote). You can either make a notebook public so anyone can see it or select who you want to share with.

WordPress P2
When working with Automattic I was introduced to the P2 blog theme and was pretty amazed at how it works. It’s kind of like Twitter meets the blog. There’s a “post” box at the top of the page. You type in what you want and it’s instantly published. People can reply to your posts and the replies are instantly published as well. P2 is simply a WordPress theme that you can use on any WordPress installation. It’s even available on WordPress.com so you can quickly setup a P2 site for a project and be posting in minutes. Matt Mullenweg wrote a good article explaining  How P2 changed Automattic.

Staying Organized

“Don’t agonize, organize.”

– Florynce R. Kennedy

Google Calendar
It used to be that if you wanted to have any sort of decent calendar you needed to setup a Microsft Exhange server and use Outlook. There just weren’t many choices out there for shared calendars. Google has come to the rescue once again with Google Calendar. You can create multiple calendars, share them, send invitations to meetings and events, and track RSVP’s. You can even sync with your desktop calendar if you’d rather work with a local app. It’s a great application for keeping everyone’s schedule synced.

Pivotal Tracker
This is a great tool for tracking all the tasks associated with a project. It allows you to break up a project into “user stories” and then schedule when and by whom these stories will be done. It was born out of the Agile Software Development movement (you can read more about Agile Development here) and provides a great way to organize, assign, and keep track of project tasks. It used to be completely free but they just started charging for the service. They do have a couple of free levels that may be suitable to some projects.

Basecamp
This is kind of the Swiss army knife of project organizers. It has facilities for communication, file sharing and to-do lists all in one place. It also integrates with their Campfire product mentioned earlier. Pricing starts at $49 per month.

Freshbooks
Keeping track of the money end of things was never something that I like about doing contract work. Freshbooks makes this much easier to do. It handles invoicing, time tracking, estimates, and expenses among other things. The web-based interface is easy to use. You can get started with up to 3 clients for free. If you need more than that they have plans starting at $19.95 per month.

Other Helpful Tools

“If you can dream it, then you can achieve it. You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.”

– Zig Ziglar

TimeScroller
When working with people spread out across the globe I found it hard to keep track of what time it was. The TimeScroller widget (only available for Mac and iPhone, sorry) really helped.

Droplr
Another Mac and iPhone only utility but one I find immensely useful. You start up the app and it puts an icon in the menu bar. You can then drop any file on the icon(I use it mainly for sending screenshots) and it will upload that file and create a link that is placed in your clipboard. You can then send that link to someone via email or IM and they can access the file. Quick and easy.

Apture
This is not really a tool specifically for working remotely but something that I’ve found incredibly useful. Apture is a browser add-on that I stumbled upon recently and is available for Safari, Firefox and Chrome browsers. The way it works is you highlight any text on the page you’re viewing and a little “Learn More” button will pop up. Click that button and a pop-up window comes up with information from around the web related to the highlighted text. You can click on any of those links to dig deeper or click the close button and the pop-up goes away. This functionality can also be added to any website even if the user doesn’t have the Apture plug-in by adding a bit of Javascript code to your pages. When I first saw this feature I wasn’t sure how useful it would be but now that I’ve used it for a while I find it strange when I’m on a computer that doesn’t have it.

The cabinet itself looks pretty good with a few little dings and some wear as would be expected for a well used 50 year old piece of furniture. The front panel looks pretty clean and all the knobs are intact. The turntable also looks to be in fairly good shape with all parts accounted for, even the adapter for automatically changing 45′s is there in it’s compartment. There’s even a nice gold colored metal plate inside the front door with a registration number imprinted on it. Looking on the backside of the unit the amplifier/tuner looked very dusty but in good shape. No rust and all the tubes seem to be intact. To my surprise even the speakers seemed to be in good condition with no obvious tears in the paper cones.

I then decided to plug it in to see what happens. I cautiously inserted the plug ready to yank it out at the first sign of smoke. Nothing happened, a good sign. I then found the on switch and turned the unit on. As expected there was a rather loud hum coming from the speakers but still no smoke. I played with the controls a bit to see if I could hear anything besides the hum and found that I was able to tune in some radio stations. I then started looking at the turntable. I turned it on and the plater made halting motions like it wanted to move but wasn’t sure how. I tried switching the speeds and it moved a bit more with each change. The speeds themselves are interesting. There’s selections for 16, 33, 45 and 78 RPM. I’m not sure I’ve never run across a 16 RPM record so once I get this working I’ve have to find one to try it out.

All in all I found nothing unexpected in how the unit functioned. The loud hum is caused by worn out 50 year old capacitors which I knew would have to be changed. The fact that I was able to hear some radio stations tells me that the tubes and other components are probably all in working order. The turntable seems to have a working motor and probably just needs a good cleaning and adjustments. I’m a little leery about my ability to do that part of the restoration but it shouldn’t be too hard. I did a little research online and was able to find the diagrams and schematics for both the amplifier/tuner and the turntable. There’s actually some incredible resources out there for repairing old radios.

Here’s a link to an article that goes into great detail about replacing capacitors on old radios:
http://www.antiqueradio.org/recap.htm

And this link to a thread in the Antique Radios forums that shows step by step details of restoring an RCA turntable that is very similar to the unit I have:
http://antiqueradios.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=116541&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

The image at the start of this post is from an old RCA ad for what appears to be a model very similar to the one I now own. I ran across this on one of the websites I found while researching the unit. They sure don’t make ads like they used to. The old art work is wonderful.

I love how when you start thinking about something it all of a sudden shows up in your life. It just means you need to choose your thoughts carefully. This is going to be a fun project. I’ll post more pictures and info when I start pulling it all apart. First things first though, I’m going to to have to do my least favorite part of the restoration; cleaning the garage so I have some room to work.

A couple of months ago I started hearing strange buzzing noises coming from the surround speakers while watching movies. A few weeks ago I finally got around to investigating the noise and found the foam surrounds on the woofers had completely disintegrated, hence the unsavory sounds. Time to replace the drivers again. I had recently been introduced to Parts Express which has a great selection of parts for building (or re-building) speakers. I found some likely replacement candidates for the existing drivers. I decided to replace the tweeters as well even though they were still working well. I pulled out the old Radio Shack drivers, put in the new ones and once again I have a pretty good sounding pair of speakers. Ready for another 25 years of use.

At some point in the not to distant future I’d like to replace all the speakers in our living room. I’m currently considering the Intimus speakers from Aperion Audio. These look like they’re solidly build (kind of like my flea market boxes), the price is right and they’ve gotten very good reviews. At that point I’m thinking I’ll move the newly re-built speakers into my office where they can live on.