An Introduction to GAEO web framework

I've been looking for a good web application framework that works well for the Google App Engine. I've found GAEO (Google App Engine Oil). It's still in early phase but I think it's quite promising. Here's a introduction by its developer.

An Introduction to GAEO web framework

View more documents from Lin-Chieh Shangkuan.

Plurk and Yahoo Emoticons for Google Wave

I've updated my Google Wave robot that provides plurk emoticons for waves, and it now also provides Yahoo Messenger emoticons (with a maybe few minor differences).  To use it, simply add devtools@appspot.com to your wave contacts and add Picon (that's the robot's name) as a participant in your waves.

The table of all available emoticons are shown here: http://devtools.appspot.com

Happy waving!

Google Wave Configuration

I've been poking around Google Wave (again) and I noticed that you can actually modify the behavior of your waves by editing some muted waves.  You will see these waves by clicking on All in your Navigation box.

Then, looking at the list of all your waves, you'll see muted waves like these:

The muted Profile wave allows you to easily change how you are displayed as a wave participant, that is, you can add your photo and change your name, status, website URL, as seen by other users.

On the other hand, the Extension Settings allow you to add/remove wave extensions that will be available in your future waves. By default, Google includes the "Yes/No/Maybe Gadget" and the "Map Gadget", which you'll see in the menu when you create a new wave.

For the moment, the Extension Settings wave is not really editable so you can't add gadgets directly into it yet.  But who knows, Google might decide to allow us to do it later (or there might be new ones) so check these muted waves from time to time.

Plurk Emoticons for Google Wave

I've created a Google Wave robot that will replace text emoticons with plurk emoticons.  I call the robot "picon", and it is based on the Emoticony robot.  If you want to use it, first add this email address to your Google Wave contacts: devtools@appspot.com. Then simply add this contact into your wave.

This is of course assuming that you already have a Google Wave account.  If not, request for such an account at wave.google.com.

If you're a plurker, the text you need to type are more or less the same as in plurk.  All plurk emoticons, both basic and extra, are included.  Have fun waving!

Android OS 2.0 has arrived!

The version 2.0 of the Android operating system has now arrived!  New features include multiple Gmail accounts and contact, enhancements to email and SMS, more camera software features, a more modern web browser with HTML 5 support, a more useful calendar, a revamped graphics architecture, better Bluetooth support, and a more powerful API for software developers.  Here's the 2.0 release video:

Skype on Ubuntu 9.04

It's been  about a year and a half since I bought my PC with pre-installed Windows Vista and I've had enough of Vista's quirks.  So when I bought a large hard disk and extra memory, I decided to go back to Ubuntu as well.  The only application I had to be sure to work is Skype, the cheapest way I can keep in touch with my family back home.

My main worry was whether Skype's video cha will work with my webcam.  So here's what I did.

I downloaded the deb package provided by Skype for Ubuntu 8.10 or later (I needed the 32-bit version).  After the deb package is downloaded to my desktop, I simply double clicked on it and Ubuntu's package installer smoothly handled it.  Once done, Skype is now available at Applications -> Internet -> Skype.

The problem now is that when I did the video test in Skype (right-click on the green taskbar icon for Skype, then Options, Video Devices, Test), I see a screen with static, mostly green colors.

At first, I thought it could be due to my old webcam (Labtec Webcam Pro, device ID 046d:08a2) but when I tried using Ekiga (another VoIP software for Linux), I can see a good video!  So there must be a way of using the V4L (Video for Linux) libraries to make my webcam work.

After a bit of searching the web, I found Stemp's (French) blog post describing how to use the gspca (a Linux webcam driver) with Skype.  By doing lsusb and lsmod, I already know that my webcam is properly identified by Ubuntu using the gspca driver:

allister@axxbox:~$ lsusb | grep Cam
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 046d:08a2 Logitech, Inc. Labtec WebCam Pro
allister@axxbox:~$ lsmod | grep gspca
gspca_zc3xx            55680  0
gspca_main             29952  1 gspca_zc3xx
videodev               41600  1 gspca_main

So I created a shell script (a simple text file which I saved as ~/bin/skype_launcher) to launch Skype with these lines:

#!/bin/bash

LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l2convert.so skype

Then I made this script executable:

chmod u+x ~/bin/skype_launcher

Then I edited my Applications menu by right-clicking on Applications, then selected Edit Menus, Internet, Skype, Properties, and replacing Command by:

/home/allister/bin/skype_launcher

Then I re-ran Skype using the launcher I modified.  Skype now works wonderfully on my Ubuntu desktop!

Google Chrome Themes

I had a pleasant surprise today with the Google Chrome browser.  When I opened a new tab, I noticed this for the first time the lower right corner of the browser:

It looks very inviting so I clicked on it and I was shown a gallery of Google Chrome themes!

There are two categories, as you can see: one for themes by artists and another by Google (more geeky).  Now my browser experience is less boring -- and time consuming, hahaha.  Anyway, thanks, Google developers!