Google Droid and International Calling

Did you know that if you make an international phone call and you use Google Voice and Google's Droid based mobile phone that you simply select the contact in your phone and your call is connected.  You may ask, what is special about this feature?  Google Voice allows you to make very low cost international calls in addition to being a voice mail system.  So the phone determines you are making an international call, so it uses Google Voice to get you the best rates.  The phone automatically contacts Google Voice then dials the international number you selected and gets you very good low cost international rates.

Makes dialing an international call from your cell phone as easy as calling across the street for pennies per minute!

Google Appliance and Reuters News

The Google Appliance which is Google's solution to bring the Google Search capabilities to the corporate environment is available from our business partner, Google.  Many success stories are available, click here to see a few.  We have highlighted one such story below from Reuter's News for your convenience.

“Users are definitely pleased to have the capability to search stock quotes, videos, images, background information, and breaking news, all from one search box”Leon Shklar, EVP of Technology, Reuters Media

Integration of Google Search Appliance & LANSA

We are experiencing amazing client results when we integrate the Google Search Appliance with our custom LANSA WAMS. We trigger searches from our LANSA code and integrate the results back to the LANSA WAM working lists. Below is a little video about some of the New GSA Features.

Printer Issues

I find it helpful to check and see that the printer is turned on before trashing everything and calling support.

Cloud Clipboard

New web clipboard for Google Docs that improves copy and paste This new clipboard temporarily stores items you’ve copied in the cloud, then allows you to paste them with proper formatting into documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Editions included: Standard, Premier, Education, Team and Partner Editions Languages included: All languages supported by Google Docs How to access what's new: While editing in Google Docs, select the item that you want to copy. Use the new clipboard menu to copy the item in question. Then, go to your other document, spreadsheet or presentation, and use the clipboard menu there to paste the item into the document. Please note that while items in your web clipboard are available across browsers and across sessions, they do expire after a month.

Rippe Tech Talk

This blog is dedicated to sharing technical topics with our clients and interested parties.  Check back for blogs that will be posted here that will contain network related items and topics.

Installation of LANSA V12.0 - my personal experience

I've just finished installing the new LANSA V12.0 onto both a "Master" I-Series and a "Slave" Windows XP workstation as a fresh new LANSA install.

There are a number of improvements. Firstly, all of the numerous CD's of the LANSA software have now been combined into one single DVD disk... Nice... Secondly, the installation DVD comes with a much newer, nicer, and improved Visual C++ engine wrapper.... So just working with the new software and documentation is much improved.

However, the largest changes and improvements ( that I have run into thus far... and I am still exploring ... ) are in the VL IDE workstation installer upgrades...

As most of you know, LANSA V12.0 is where LANSA introduces the change from running on the older Sybase SQL Anywhere SQL platform to running on the newer Microsoft SQLServer 2008 Express SQL database platform. That alone is a major change ( Make sure you follow the documentation on this on upgrades...)...

The installer, however, has a whole new look and feel and some improved dialogs too to go along with the new SQL database platform. You can relax though as many of the dialog questions remain the same as before... although there are some changes too...

The installation process ran very smoothly.... I did have to go through one "normal" reboot, but the installer just picked right back up again without so much as a single touch...

Starting the VL IDE for the first time caused the Partition Initialization to kick off and this set of dialogs has been changed into a nice neat little checklist.... so you can actually tell exactly where you are at, what is done, and what is left to do...

My first start of the VL IDE crashed, so I was a little disappointed at first... I called LANSA Support and they were very fast to respond... There was a small registry path error that me and my "fat fingers" had apparently introduced while answering all of the new dialogs... Once we had that ironed out, then the VL IDE came right up and ran like a champ... So, I'm chalking that one up to me and my "fat fingers"...

All in all - aside from my "fat fingers" episodes - the new LANSA V12.0 installation ran very smoothly and seems to include a lot of nice improvements...

I'm going to be back to exploring LANSA V12.0 next and then maybe try a little LANSA install upgrade action later on once I get a little more comfortable...

Meanwhile, I would definitely recommend that everyone give the New LANSA V12.0 a try...

Update on Buzz

Google announced a couple of further changes to Gmail Buzz, in relation to the privacy concerns people voiced in the past days. Following people will now require a more explicit, not so easy to miss opt-in action. Furthermore, Google Reader and Picasa sites won’t be auto-connected to your Buzz account now (even though they’re public). Third, Gmail will also include a new Buzz settings tab, in which you can (among other things) completely disable your Buzz account. Google in their post says sorry because they feel they “didn’t get everything quite right”.

One setting I’m not sure is easy to find at the moment though is to disable yourself from showing in the “follows” lists of profiles of others... does anyone know more about this? I’ve heard this can be changed by the setting “Display my full name so I can be found in search” in your profile, but if that’s true then it doesn’t seem to be very obvious. Something else I’m not sure about is which settings exactly stop you to be suggested to others to be followed.

Eclipse or Studio Plugin for LANSA

Allow me to ask everyone this question? Is it time for LANSA to provide a plugin for Eclipse or Microsoft Studio? (Maybe both!) Perhaps this might trigger some conversation at the Summit.

LANSA 2010 Solution Summit

Looks like the folks from LANSA are going to provide a teas of things to come.

Preview the LANSA Solution Summit at a Sneak Peek Webinar!

Thursday, February 19 - 1:00 p.m. ET

Register for the "Sneak Peek Webinar" by contacting Sherry Barnvos at 630.874.7071 or sherryb@lansa.com.

Google Experimental Fiber Network

Listen to this YouTube video on a new experimental fiber network. They are planning to build and test ultra high-speed broadband networks in a small number of trial locations across the United States. We'll deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today with 1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections. We plan to offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people.

What is all the Buzz About

Google lobbed a salvo at Facebook on Tuesday, adding Google Buzz, a new social networking capability to its popular Gmail Web e-mail service. Though Google Buzz is somewhat integrated with Twitter, along with a few other services – Flickr and Picasa, most notably – there's no integration with the social network of record, Facebook. And that's a hole Google will have to fill.

For now, Google is rolling the Buzz service out to all its users over the next few days, so sit tight if you don't have it yet. Check buzz.google.com to see if your account is activated

My Favorite Super Bowl Commercial

Nice Video Overview of aXes from LANSA

Are you still using IE 6.0?

If you are still using IE 6.0, you should take note of a notification from Google. It might have an impact on your users.

In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology. This includes faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5. As a result, over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.

We plan to begin phasing out support of these older browsers on the Google Docs suite and the Google Sites editor on March 1, 2010. After that point, certain functionality within these applications may have higher latency and may not work correctly in these older browsers. Later in 2010, we will start to phase out support for these browsers for Google Mail and Google Calendar.

Google Apps will continue to support Internet Explorer 7.0 and above, Firefox 3.0 and above, Google Chrome 4.0 and above, and Safari 3.0 and above.

Starting this week, users on these older browsers will see a message in Google Docs and the Google Sites editor explaining this change and asking them to upgrade their browser. We will also alert you again closer to March 1 to remind you of this change.

In 2009, the Google Apps team delivered more than 100 improvements to enhance your product experience. We are aiming to beat that in 2010 and continue to deliver the best and most innovative collaboration products for businesses.

Thank you for your continued support!

Browser Support for Google Apps

If you are still using IE 6.0 please take note:

In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology. This includes faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5. As a result, over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.

We plan to begin phasing out support of these older browsers on the Google Docs suite and the Google Sites editor on March 1, 2010. After that point, certain functionality within these applications may have higher latency and may not work correctly in these older browsers. Later in 2010, we will start to phase out support for these browsers for Google Mail and Google Calendar.

Google Apps will continue to support Internet Explorer 7.0 and above, Firefox 3.0 and above, Google Chrome 4.0 and above, and Safari 3.0 and above.

Starting this week, users on these older browsers will see a message in Google Docs and the Google Sites editor explaining this change and asking them to upgrade their browser. We will also alert you again closer to March 1 to remind you of this change.

In 2009, the Google Apps team delivered more than 100 improvements to enhance your product experience. We are aiming to beat that in 2010 and continue to deliver the best and most innovative collaboration products for businesses.

Thank you for your continued support!

Google Apps Promo from Rippe & Kingston