CRM 2011 Star Ratings

Came across a nice script for star ratings on CRM 2011 form. CRM 2011: Star Rating Form Control Thanks Carlton Colter for sharing.

My two cents here.

If some other field/logic on the form updates the star rating value, you may want to refresh the iframe with the WebResource and you can do it with the following script

var f = Xrm.Page.ui.controls.get('WebResource_Rating');
f.setSrc(f.getSrc());

Android Launcher Pro Activity Shortcuts

I am enjoying the slick laucher Launcher Pro (free edition) these days on my Android phone Samsung Galaxy S. I was quite fortunate to discover the fantastic capability of this this slick app that allows you to link from one of your home screens to the internals of installed apps called activities.

Here is how you create activity shortcuts:

1. First you’ll have to download and install the homescreen and launcher replacement LauncherPro. Then, follow these steps.
2. Press the center key on the phone. You’ll get two options on the screen: ‘LauncherPro’ and ‘TwLauncher’. Select LauncherPro. Let LauncherPro load.
3. Now again press the center key and this time select TwLauncher.
4. After it loads, press and hold your finger on an empty spot on the screen.
5. In the list that pops out, select Shortcuts.
6. Then select Activities.
7. After a few seconds you’ll get a long list of Applications. Scroll down to Your desired app. Touch app name header, it’ll expand to show more options – which are activities offered by the app. From this expanded list, select the desired option (not all are able to run independently)
8. That’s it. You’ll now have a shortcut to the app activity on the homescreen.
9. After this is done, simply go to Settings>Applications>Manage Applications and uninstall Launcher Pro if you don’t want to use it.
10. If you do want to use it, press the center key, tick ‘Use by default for this action’, then press ‘LauncherPro’ (Much better than the Samsung Launcher and homescreen, except for the less colorful icons).

Here is a list of activity shortcuts that my home screens rock this days:

• Compose Activity from Gmail App
  com.google.android.gm.ComposeActivity
  jump straight to the compose form (app equivalent of https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?hl=en&shva=1#compose) for creating new email, there is a select box to choose account you want to send email from.
• Call Log Activity from Phone App
  com.sec.android.app.dialertab.calllog.LogsListActivity
  takes me straight to the call log view, so that I dont need to tap ‘dialer’ and then ‘call log’ to return last missed call!
• Agenda View Activity from Calendar App
  com.android.calendar.AgendaActivity
  your PA; just a tap away!
• Video recorder or CamCorder Activity from Camera App
  com.sec.android.app.camrea.Camcorder
  Android had a separate icon for direct entry to camcorder mode in 1.5? (I have seen it seen envifully on HTC Magic!). In FROYO, it is not there. I created mine without a single line of code here.
• Timer Activity from Clock App
  com.sec.android.app.clockpackage.timer.Timer
  For GTD based time management experiments, I use Timer often, here is a shortcut for it.
• Compose Activity from Memo App
  com.sec.android.app.memo.MemoCreateActivity
  Why do I have to see the ‘notes-list-splash-screen’ when I want to quickly jot something down? Not anymore with this shortcut.

The above steps are shamelessly stolen from here where I found out today that I could do the same with another app – any-cut. But, I am happy to use the same functionality that came OOB as bonus with Launcher Pro (Free).

Feel free to ask and share your discoveries into the anatomies of the android apps!

The doors opened thrice…

…Today, Monday morning, as I walked into the building where I work, on the ground floor, there was  a bunch of people waiting for the lift to come down. I joined them, and within seconds I found that there was one of the four lifts that was labelled “OUT OF ORDER”.

Everytime one of the ladies pressed the button marked ‘up’, the same life will go ‘ding dong’ and open the doors for us.

In fact, this happened twice, the same lift that was marked ‘OUT OF ORDER’, would again open the doors for us and no one will get in. Fortunately, I was the closest to that lift, and I thought, I am going to take  this chance – this lift was like inviting me. (and others), had been doing that for last two times and just because of that A4 printed OOO sign above it, I thought, I should not waste my time. I decided and announced a bit loudly, “I am gonna try this”. And I entered the opened doors….

I held my hand across the door sensor as if I invited more people in. and to my later surprise, everyone out there gathered a bit of couge! Everyone came in and did reach the floors they wanted.

I am still amused at how much time was wasted because of that misguiding sign up there. If the lift were a man, he would have already sued the company for defamation by that label!

(I later realised that there are chances that none of the other lifts would have opened except someone took and brought one down from the upper levels, that again is a very thin chance on a Monday morning at that time. Because, while there is one ‘working’ lift carriage already at the ground floor, it does not make much sense to me, as a programmer, to send another one to the same floor, despite of the multiple button-pressed requests.)

I was left pondering, how many decisions we take in life, how many of our choices are influenced by the people who really don’t care about us! Would the man who pasted that sheet over the lift doors have had any idea how many Monday mornings he could possibly make worse?

What do YOU think?

Create a big wall paper or poster from your point-an-shoot camera photos for cheap

You probably have a point-and-shoot compact digital camera that can take pictures of upto 12MP resolution, like I do and you want to print a big poster without spending a lot of money, like I do, then I suggest the trick is ‘divide and rule’!

1. Open the picture in GIMP portable.
2. Resize the CANVAS (and not image, as you may distort it to end up making it look ugly!) (with resize all layers option) it to match a 4X6 pattern i.e. Crop (or expand with white space around as needed like piller effect in videos) so that it is a ratio of 4X6. (This is a suggestion only, and with further geometric calculations you may comeup with better sizes)
3. Insert guides (click and drag one of the rulers to create horizontal and vertical guides) at distances that will create a grid for the Guillotine. E.g. for a picture of 400 X 600 size you may create three vertical guides at 100, 200, 300 and five horizontal guides at 100, 200, 300, 400, 500 pixels (you can drag to exact location in zoomed-in picture and keep an eye on statusbar to position perfectly on dot pixels!) to create a grid of 24 sections.
4. Use Image > Transform > Guillotine to break apart the image into several (24 in above example) new files that have been given names. Tedious though, but here I could not find a way to save and close all so you have to save and close all of them individually (Window 7 allows to click on taskbar item of GIMP and select close all windows, causing a series of prompts to save the files, all you do is repeat Alt+S to select save for all files)
5. Usually this creates sections as separate files well named based on the original file name as siblings of the original file in the same folder.
6. You may want to move them to a new subfolder ‘Poster’ and copy to USB and goto your nearest print shop to print them for cheap (I use OfficeWorks.com.au print services where on Kodak machines, they print each 6X4 for just 10cents these days, I think HarveyNorman.com.au also do at similar rate – in fact I have been told that they keep the prices in ‘sync’ due to competition). If you select print all under that folder, your life is usually made easy by printing the files stacked in filename order which is handly later when you want to stick them together or past on wall!

This quick walk through is for my own reference as I spent half an hour to find out again how I did that last time! Feel free to comment to know more about this method or please do share your modifications and suggestions in comments.

Enjoy!

With smarter phones come smarter challenges

How I got my Samsung Galaxy S GT-I9000 back!

My wife wanted to play with the Samsung Galaxy while I was in taking the shower this morning. I had told her the unlock pattern so she was confident enough to ignore the fifth attempt lock warning – totally unknown to the fact that I had to change the pattern in the meantime, and guess what – the phone did lock ME out!

She told about this to me and the next time I tried to unlock the phone, all I could see was the login prompt to key in my email credentials (gmail, of course!) to validate myself as owner and use it. and that DID NOT WORK. I felt miserable with this expensive electronic brick/paperweight in my hands! I had to give up attempts as had to go to work. During the day I confirmed that I can receive calls but cannot make calls.

In the evening, when I came back home, I googled the issue and tried some tricks.  Regardless of whatever combination you type in – it will simply+instantly return to the ‘now familiar’ invalid-username-or-password screen. I later found out that this is a reported bug and well-grieved-about on the forums. I had a long chat with Three Mobile customer care’s technical support person over 133320, who seemed to be either ignorant to newbie to such problems. What they said was like – we don’t know much about the phone yet as it is a fairly new addition, and hence you will have to call Samsung Australia about unlocking it properly, we don’t have exactly guidelines about performing ‘hard reset’ under such circumstances, and yes, forget not that should you need to bring this phone to one of our service centers, unfortunately we will have to charge you about $39 for recovery as this is not covered under warranty (like water/moisture damage or physical breakage)!

I tried hard to find a way to keep the data and get out of this screen

Some of the posts on internet (Google: Samsung galaxy S pattern lock) suggested what “3BR” a three button reset with the Up Volume+Menu+Power (in same order) to get the recovery options screen and select to do a factory reset. (Nice UI there, they provide you a list of ten options, all being ‘No’ except one and only the eighth option that is “YES Please go ahead and wipe all my personal data from the phone!”, so you have to press the down key literally seven times to highlight the Yes option and click the middle button to accept the selection!). I did that about three times, did NOT work!

I was so frustrated and angry with the stupidity of the smartphones, that I almost decided to flush the phone. But due to the Samsung TouchWiz inteface that I have liked since I used to use Samsung Jet S8003 and especially the SWYPE input tool that I love, that did not look like an options – I was also afraid of losing the warranty, even though I was sure by this time that probably I know more than that three support center guy just by googling things about the phone!

Now, I took a break, spent some time on clearing the backlog of Google Reader list and on the next google search I found this guy talking about a code to be dialled to factory-reset the phone (whiskeybro gives the code *2767*3855# on http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=706719). I remembered that the unlock with email login screen offers access to dial pad for making emergency calls, but when I tried to call this number, the locking BI was fine enough to identify the number to be not an emergency number and hence denied access.

HERE IS WHAT WORKED
Now I remembered also that when I received a coupla calls from friends, the call screen allowed me to ‘Add call’ to add a conference call. I called myself from my partener’s mobile and while on call, used that ‘Add call’ button to dial *2767*3855# and pressed call button on screen. Voila! it reset!

Typing this at 2AM more to help someone out of frustration than to advertise win in the battle with the ‘simply amazing’ gadget! Hope it helps!

X-Lite setup for cheap VOIP calls from a computer

SIP Config SuperNerd VOIP Phone X-Lite Setup

I wanted to try the flexi of calling from computer with managed addressbook, call history maintenance and higher quality while I am actively looking for my next job these days. So, I just setup and used the x-lite on Supernerd‘s Ultimate Naked ADSL2+ plan offering 140GB (70 / 70) for $59.95/mo. Enjoying the service so far. That comes with a outgoing VOIP feature with pay-as-you-go like payments at cheap call rates.

1. Download and install x-lite from http://www.counterpath.com/x-lite.html
2. Start the application and right click on the phone like main interface screen and choose SIP Account settings if it does not automatically lead you there on starting.
3. Ignore the empty account and click Add to jump to a screen where the screen looks like the picture above.
4. Visit your modem-router’s admin page (i.e. http://192.168.1.1/ in my case, as visible in the background of the image above) and go to a section for configuring VOIP calls (voice > SIP Configuration at http://192.168.1.1/voicesipview.cmd in my case).
5. Copy the information from the relevant fields as indicated by arrows in the image. (call your ISP for configuration details, if empty).
6. Click OK to save and close the dialogs to return to the Phone interface, dial a number and get connected.

You have to have VOIP services in Broadband plan, and have a compatible modem-router to allow making VOIP calls from computer. You may want to test the functionality with an regular analog phone plugged in the modem-router  first. You may need to call customer care especially technical support department of your Broadband provider (1300 888 090 for SuperNerd) for these configuration (especially the number and authorisation password) details beforehand. You can tweak the account config further as I have unticked the “Check for VoiceMail” from the VoiceMail tab on account properties page as I don’t have an incoming call facility on this service (We have three 3 mobile phones in home, almost one-per-head which is more convenient for the usual callers, free 3-to-3! so why pay extra $5/mo on rarely incoming phones on VOIP phone?)

The information provided here may not be complete and is an overview only and try at your own risk as depending on your broadband subscription, the call charges vary.

Buzzlet

Today I created a bookmarklet based on instructions by Google to post current page on Google Buzz and named it “Buzzlet”.

Click and drag this link to your bookmark bar.

Buzzlet

visit marklets.com to see a huge collection of bookmarklets.
The Code:

javascript:(function(){a=function(){if(!window.open(“http://www.google.com/buzz/post?url=“+encodeURIComponent(window.location.href)+”&message=”+encodeURIComponent(document.title+”\n\n\nBuzz with Buzzlet manishmistry.wordpress.com/2010/06/10/buzzlet/ “),’buzzlet’,'location=yes,links=no,scrollbars=no,toolbar=no,width=690,height=415′))location.href=f+’jump=yes’};if(/Firefox/.test(navigator.userAgent)){setTimeout(a,0)}else{a()}})()

Comments and updates welcome, Enjoy!

XPS helped when PDF form failed!

The other day, one of our family friends was struggling to handle a 3 page printable PDF form he downloaded from a Government website in front of a computer without printer at home. The trouble was that you can fill in the form, using Adobe Reader, but have to print it just after filling it in as you can not save the form with data in the fields. So, what’s wrong, just print it. Yes, but Officeworks would not edit the document before printing and he could not print it at home just after editing. He rang me for a solution and after a short call we agreed for him to visit his Uni to print it. Soon after, he called me again to say that he was able to save the PDF file with data. I was quite surprised.

Later, when I was at his home, I asked to see that file he saved. and to my pleasant surprise, it was an XPS file. He used his laptops default printer, which was set to XPS printer, for printing the PDF form with data, without realising that it is not PDF! (Should I say luckily?) He was able to open the file at the print center and successfully print it!

So, if you dont have access to printer, try looking for XPS printer option! For that matter you can consider a PDF-printer-driver, or Send to One note printer as well. In a nut shell, look for any thing that does not look like a known printer company brand in your printers list in print dialog box.

Use Google Docs for Quick Unicode Printing

My friend typed some paragraphs in “Pramukh Typepad” as he wanted to print and share them with friends. Now, as his computer was recently reset (re-formatted), he did not have Unicode fonts installed on his Windows. He had MS Word and he was trying to create a word file just to print those paragraphs. So, he copied the paragraphs from the Typepad web page and pasted into the word file only to get those weird I-don’t-know-what-you-are-talking-about missing-font boxes. Changing the fonts to Shruti (One of the quick solutions for Gujarati/Indic fonts) did not work somehow. As the call was going longer, I suggested a shortcut.

I suggested him to paste the contents to a new Google Docs file and Print. Not just that it worked but he was also able to export it to PDF in order to distribute with formatting ready-to-print!

Extra Mobile Charger for FREE!

My LG Viewty is a multimedia extensive mobile and hence it often runs out of battery. OK, I can also be blamed for not charging it everyday! But, by going dead, it leaves me into a difficult situation when someone can not access me on mobile despite of paying a hefty amount for the service.

I thought of keeping the charger at work so I can charge it in the daytime. That might create troubles in weekends (especially long weekends) and holidays when I make more calls. Second thought was that of another charger. I could buy a new or a second hand charger for cheap. but why buy? This morning, I suddenly got this idea. How about keeping the USB data cable at work and charger at home. I prefer to use Blue Tooth  to transfer files to laptop. So, the cable is almost unused at home. Being on the computer all the working day, I can easily have it plugged when it seems low on battery.

Most 3G mobiles provide a USB Data cable that double as a charging point from your computer. This way, they can be used pretty easily as a charger.

I implemented it right today. and now no more drained-batteries, and dead-mobiles!