BluePad: Controls Presentation from Your Phone

Recently I had todo a lot of presentations which made me thinking into getting presentation pen, but since my E71 includes a pre-installed Wireless Presenter (WiPresenter), I’ve buried that thought, who needs an expensive presentation pen when a phone can perform equally when?

Bluepad remote control

But as WiPresenter is only compatible with Microsoft Windows operating system, I’m forced to use keyboard or mouse-clicks to control my presentations when I’m using Ubuntu Linux operating system. This is a drawback as I could perform the task easily thru my phone when I’m on Windows XP.

EnterBluepad, an application which enables your mobile phone to act as a Bluetooth controller. Bluepad consists of two applications, a server and a client. The server application sits on your operating system, monitoring for incoming Bluetooth connection. The client application requires a JavaME compatible mobile phone with JSR-82 (Bluetooth) feature.

The installation is straightforward for both client and server side application, the only thing to remember is to activate bluetooth on mobile phone before starting the client application. After that, you can start OpenOffice Impress and use the the phone to remotely control the presentation.

How to Generate Barcode in OpenOffice.org

I found this extension as I was searching for a great application to generate EAN-13 compatible barcode. This OpenOffice.org extension allows you to generate 5 different types of barcode generally found in the market, such as :

  • UPC-A (the most common barcode in the US)
  • EAN-13 (the most common barcode in Europe)
  • JAN (the barcode used in Japan, basically EAN-13 with the country code for Japan)
  • ISBN-13 (the barcode used in books after 2007, basically EAN-13 with a superscript)
  • ISBN-10 (the barcode used in books before 2007, basically EAN-13 with a different superscript)

Here’s how to install the extension :

  • First go to OpenOffice.org extensions website, then search for the barcode extension
  • Download the extension – barcode.oxt
  • Then start OpenOffice.org, go to Tools and select Extension Manager
  • When a dialog appears, click on Add, then find and select barcode.oxt, the extension will be installed on your OpenOffice.o
  • rg

  • To test the extension, start OpenOffice.org Draw, go to Insert, and selects Barcode, you can choose any of the barcode type to generate inside OpenOffice.org, type in the barcode value and it will be displayed on the page, with no extra effort!

Openoffice

Openoffice

Openoffice

Google Malware Warning Fucked up?

I don’t know when this thing happened exactly, but I noticed it around 10:57 pm MYT (GMT+8) when I was searching information for Yaesu VX8R handheld radio.

It seems somehow the Google Malware Warning fucked up and labels all the search result as “may harm your computer”. Funny thing is, Google labels its own website as potentially spreading malware.

Google Calendar site is spreading malware?
Google Terfakap

This incident has showed me how reliant to Google i’ve become, which made me wonder what would happen if suddenly somebody might take advantage of our dependency to Google, and do nasty things to us and to our data? By the way, Google already know what you do, who you are, and where you live.

Update: This event has been slashdotted, MAKE Magazine blog also covered the story.

Update 2: Google somehow have fixed the issue at 11:22 pm MYT (GMT +8). Let’s see what they would say about this strange phenomenon.

Update 3: Thanks to Manley, it seems Google has not fixed the issue, but rather disabled the Malware warning on its search result.

Final Update : Google issued a statement in their official blog as well as StopBadware.org

New GNOME Weather Applet does not have Alor Setar option!

I’m frustrated with the new GNOME Weather applet included with Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex. For some reason, my hometown is not included in the list.

Weather Applet

I wonder why, as my hometown is present in all previous releases of the Weather Applet. Seems now I can’t monitor the weather condition of my hometown (Alor Setar) anymore from my desktop :(

This bugs me as I use it occasionally to monitor weather conditions and to make decision on my ham radio activities.

Is your hometown / place listed on the Weather Applet?

Enabled WP-SuperCache for my blog

I’ve decided to install and enable WP-SuperCache plugin for my blog. This does not mean that I’ve been receiving thousands of site hit everyday, but as a precaution because I’ve noticed spikes of traffic on the server log that might effect the overall performance of the web server.

Since most pro-blogger suggested WP-Supercache, I might as well take their advice and install it. Hopefully this would improve the server load during the spike (which I suspect contributed by ill-behave webbots/crawler) as well as loading time for my blog.

I’ll keep my fingers crossed

Watched My Wife, The Ghost shorts

Watched My Wife, The Ghost – a short by a group of New Yorkers, a story that filled with puns and cliche common to tv series in the 60s. It consists of 5-minutes episodes. The next-week plot advances in form of cliffhanger of the current episode.

My Wife The Ghost, mypapit, sarah burns, upright citizen brigade

Funny, although filled with repetitive puns (plus some amateurish acting), it is much better than some of the hour long tv series that i’ve been watching for the rest of the week. Why cant anybody create a tv series as good as this anymore?

You can download My Wife, The Ghost from Channel 101:NY website.

p/s: This is not an actual 1960s tv series. Also available from Youtube.com