Sense of accomplishment

IKEA has always fascinated me.

It isn't just a case of aesthetics - I am not one to care for much in that department. Nor do I have a particular affinity to particle-board furniture. Rather, what attracted me to IKEA was the fact that they offered a rare commodity - a frustration-free sense of accomplishment.

Case in point. We recently bought a regular ol' sofa, and while I was setting it up I came upon a very unwelcome sight. The main drill holes that were meant to attach the base to the back, had been drilled incorrectly. I had two options, pack the whole sofa that I had just unpacked after lugging it into the house from the rented SUV and take it back, or drill a couple of holes and fix it myself. Naturally I chose the latter.

That is when the problems began - the biggest drill-bit I had was too small for the bolts. When I got the pilot holes in, they were slightly off where they had to be. And to make matters worse, I did not have a long enough cord for my drill and had to constantly switch to the nearest power outlet. In short I spent more effort and derived more frustration drilling two holes, than I did finishing up the rest of the assembly.

I am sure most of that has to do something with me, but that is beside the point.

Contrast that with the IKEA experience. No holes to drill, no tool bigger than a screwdriver and every nut & bolt accounted for. Nevermind that every board I pick up is little more than saw-dust compressed together with glue; or that the mirage of the perfect IKEA room can never materialize in real-life. What IKEA sells is the experience - one that starts from impossibly perfect model rooms, to the warehouse with meticulously numbered aisles and bins, to the involved yet easy construction.

A frustration-free sense of accomplishment.

Liberating data using Scraper Wiki

Of all the wiki sites that sprung up after the original, one of the most useful and positively cool is ScraperWiki. Scraper wiki is an attempt to liberate data from websites and pdfs and instead populate spreadsheets with them.

There is a lot of data available on the net. But its value is severely limited by the fact that you cannot do much more than just browsing it. When you move data from a html page or a pdf file into a spreadsheet, suddenly the value of the data goes up many fold. Now you can analyze the data, sort it, look for trends and coax information out of it. ScraperWiki aids in the first step by scraping web pages and moving data into usable data sets.

ScraperWiki is two things. First it is a web-based compiler and reusable libraries (in Python, Ruby or PHP) that allows you to write and run a scraper. Second, it is a wiki store of scrapers written by others that you can then update, reuse or just run to get data.

There are quite a few interesting scrapers. This scraper collects data from weather stations across all of Germany, while this one collects the Location IDs from Weather.com URLs. Weather is not all scrapers do, this one for example collects basic info about all MLB players, while this one is an massive database of all soccer WorldCup matches.

Of all the untold millions spent by governments and corporations on digitizing their data and making web pages, a decent portion that went towards making html tables out of data sets. ScraperWiki is an attempt to reverse that. Cheers to liberating data from the shackles of the web.

Single use websites

I realized I had amassed over a thousand links on my delicious account, thanks in great part to StumbleUpon. Trolling through the list, I realized that there were a number of peculiar tools in that list - single use websites that basically serve one purpose (a very useful purpose at that) and do not do much else. No menus, no registration, very few linked pages and a single purpose is what identifies this list.

Online Conversion Tools

HTML-PDF converter is, as the name suggests, a useful tool to convert web pages to pdf format. Paste the URL, click the "Make PDF" button and wait for the download to appear.

VozMe is a tool that takes some text typed into a text box and creates an text-to-voice mp3 file that can be downloaded for use. Includes options of male or female voices.

Ever had the urge to keep a copy of the funny dog video, only to realize YouTube isn't friendly that way. KeepVid is the solution. Supports YouTube, Metacafe and a ton of other streaming sites.

Media Converter is an online converter of media across a number of formats - both audio and video. In addition it also allows the download of media from a number of online sources.

Zamzar is another great online tool to convert across different formats by uploading an original, or just use an online streaming site and download into a format of choice.

Email Tools

MintEmail is part of the new breed of disposable email tools that allows you to make and use a disposable email id for those annoying websites that need an email from you (you could just use the tools on this list instead). But if you need an email that works for 3 hours only - here you go.

Send Email is a simple anonymous email sender. Need to send a quick note to yourself, but do not trust a public connection - this is the answer for you. You could also choose to annoy a friend, but make sure you check the usage agreement first.

Phone Tools

I can't find my phone, is a tool for you if you have misplaced your phone (at home). Type in the number, and the site will give you a ring. Hope you do not have it on silent though.

File Sharing Tools

SendUIt is an easy to use file upload/download service that allows you to share files with anyone. The files size is limited to a 100MB, and you can set the expiration from 30 minutes to a week.

Wikisend is a similar site that allows upload and download of files up to 100MB.

Webdesign Tools

Color Scheme Designer allows you to pick colors for your website. You can choose the kind of color palette you are looking for and the tool helps you pick the individual colors.

Whats its color is a tool that helps pick the primary and secondary color of an image. Extremely useful when you want to build a color scheme around a photograph.

Web 2.0 Badges is a quick and easy way to generate those glossy badges for use on your site or blog.

Favicon.CC is an online icon editor. In addition to importing an image, the site also works as a standalone editor to create a 16x16 icon image.

Here is a clutch of other tools that generate those useful (annoying?) gif files you desperately need. Loading indicator, Stripe creator, Tabs Generator, Reflection Maker, Quick Ribbon, Glossy 2.0 Button Maker.

Roundpic, as the name suggests, takes any picture and rounds the edges to give you a fresh 2.0 look for your photographs.

Image Manipulation Tools

Resizr is a simple tool to re-size and rotate images. There isn't a lot you can do with this tool, but if all you want to do is re-size, this is the tool for you.

Pixenate is an easy to use web-only image manipulation tool. Along with the crop and re-size functions, the tool also allows basic color management and photo enhancement.

Mypictr is a photo extraction tool that allows you to easily pick out your own face from a snapshot to use on your profile.

Pixlr is pushing the boundaries of simple tools. Nevertheless, it is a one page online photo editor that is pretty powerful yet limited to one page.

Other Random Tools

Cost to Drive is a eco-conscious tool that calculates the cost to go from one city to another based on the type of vehicle you are planning to use. If not anything else, it helps prove that a Hummer is three times as expensive as a Prius.

Let me Google that for you. This is for all those people that find it more convenient to bother you with their question rather than google it for themselves. Once you use it you will realize what you have been missing all along.

Namechk allows you to check if a particular name is taken at a large number of social network sites. Useful if you want to use a consistent name across a number of sites.

Finetune, though primarily for the Wii, is a great way to listen to new music based on a type of song or author, without the complexity (Flash usage) of Pandora. I've written about it before.

Typeracer

Continuing with today's trend of posting about useful sites, here is another that I just stumbled upon - TypeRacer.

TypeRacer is a website where you basically race against others, by pitting your typing speed and accuracy against theirs. Every race starts off with a random excerpt, about a paragraph long and some randomly chosen opponents. The excerpts are selected from books, poems or even song lyrics.

One word at a time is highlighted in the excerpt, allowing you to type it correctly in a text box. If you make a mistake, you cannot proceed till you correct it. Once you type in the correct word, it disappears from your text box, the next word in the excerpt is highlighted. The first one to complete typing the excerpt wins.

The site, randomly pits you against opponents who are in the same typing speed range as you to keep things interesting. You can instead choose to practice yourself, or race against specific people.

As it turns out, I apparently type in the 88.5 percentile range. So the question is am I going to practice long enough to start making an appreciable difference in the type racing rating of mine.

Nokia 5800 - free space on C drive

If you are like me, capacity constraints have a tendency of sneaking up on you. And when they do, suddenly everything you do is hamstrung by the capacity limit you never even knew existed. Ignorance in this case, seldom is bliss. The same happened with my Nokia 5800, which led to this post.

The Nokia 5800 comes with two storage options - the C drive (Phone memory) and the E drive (Memory card). The Memory card is the bigger storage, and Nokia bundles in an 8GB card with the phone. The problem however is the C drive or the phone memory. A fresh install will give you a tad more than 80MB, but you seldom get that in actual usage. Which is what makes it crucial to maximize the amount of phone memory you have to ensure the device does not let you down when you need it the most. Here are a few things you could do to make sure you have the most memory available on the phone.

• Install new applications on the Memory card: Fairly obvious, but as you get and install new applications on the phone, choose "E: Memory card" during installation. There are of course some applications (mostly from Nokia) that don't play nice and do not let you choose. Nothing much you can do there, other than to see if you can live without them.
• Remove any applications installed on Phone memory: Go to the application manager in the phone settings at Settings > Application mgr. > Installed apps. Applications installed on the Phone do not have SD card icon next to the application. Make sure you have the installable of the application handy before you uninstall it by choosing Options > Uninstall > Yes. Of course, there will always be some applications and components that need to be installed directly on the Phone and cannot be installed on the memory card.
• Delete the emails content from the Messaging client: If you are using the standard messaging client (The one that does both SMS and email) for email, then deleting the emails (and attachments) will free up some memory. Go to any of the email folders setup in the phone and do Options > Delete > Phone Only > OK. This will leave the headers in the phone but delete the email content to free up space.
• Delete unused mailboxes from Messaging: If there are email accounts setup that you do not want to use anymore, delete them by going to the Messaging application and Options > Settings > Email > Mailboxes, select the Mailbox you want to delete and click Options > Delete > Yes.
• Change default Messaging drive: You can also configure the standard messaging client to store data on the memory card instead of the phone memory. To do this go to the Message client and do Options > Settings > Other > Memory In Use, and select "E: Memory card".
• Reconfigure mailboxes on Nokia Messaging: You can reconfigure your mailboxes to manage the amount of data in the phone. Go to email.nokia.com, to choose which folders are synced with the phone. In the section "My email addresses" click on the link "Edit settings". In the section " Mail folders to sync" un-check the folders you do not want to access from your phone. To make sure that the phone is updated, open the Nokia Messaging application (This is different from the regular Messaging application with an icon that looks like the @ sign). Go to Options > Tools > Settings, and click the General Tab > Reset data. This re-loads all data in the email, but without the folders you have un-checked previously. Of course be warned that this make take a while.
• Configure Ovi Store to install on the Memory card: You can configure Ovi Store to install directly to the Memory card. Open the application and go to Options > Account > Settings > Installation Preferences, to set it to the Memory card.
• Clear downloads folder: Your download folders is probably set up on the memory card. Then it is not going to impact your Phone memory, but in the event that is not the case, make it a practice to delete the downloads as soon as you are done using them. Go to the standard File Mgr and go to C: Phone memory > download, select the downloaded files and delete them.
• Delete temporary & cache folders: You will need to download & install an alternate file manager like the Y-browser to do this. Once you have it installed you should be able to see and delete the following folders. C:\System\cache (This is the browser caches), C:\System\dmgr (This is where temporary files are stored by the browser). Both folders will be recreated the next time you start the phone browser. Next drop into the two temporary file locations C:\System\temp & C:\temp and delete any files you see in there.
• Clear Google Maps cache: Google maps downloads and stores a bit of data on your phone, depending on how much you use it. To reset the data cache in Google maps, start the application and go to Options > Tools > Reset, to get back some of that.
• Do a hard reset of the phone: This is a drastic step, probably not something you want to do unless the situation is dire and none of the steps above have helped. The site allaboutsymbian.com has a guide to perform a hard reset - follow it and good luck.

And that hopefully should get you some space back on your Phone memory, as it did mine.

Nokia 5800 Free Applications

I discovered this new awesome javascript library called the jQuery. And that helped me put together something I had wanted to do for a long time. Check out the list of ~43 applications all of which are free for the Nokia 5800.

What did jQuery do? Well, check out the neat plugin for jQuery, that allows you to sort tables on the fly.