HOW TO eject USB device with a keyboard shortcut

Source: Flickr/ekosystem

Most people will agree with the sentiment that "life is too short to remove USB safely"

But did you know,  you can configure a keyboard shortcut to invoke the Safely Remove Hardware Dialog?

The above trick requires you to create a Desktop shortcut. I assigned Ctrl+F12 to this shortcut as it is easy on the fingers.

You can also assign an memorable icon as detailed in the comments to the article specified in the link.

If you would also like the “official” icon, right-click on your new shortcut and goto “Properties.” In the resulting dialog, goto the “Shortcut” tab and click on the “change icon” button. Browse for the %SystemRoot%\system32\hotplug.dll file (or just copy/ paste) and select one of the icons of your choice.

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UX anti-patterns & other avoidable annoyances

The Screenshots of Despair blog collects samples of discouraging messages/goofs in applications. This is interesting because it lets web developers & UX folks learn from other's mistakes/oversight.

Here are a couple of such messages I ran into in recent times:

I thought Opt Out meant "Don't show any ads at all". The Google Personalized Ads Preferences setting screen above warns you that you will see more less-personalized ads if you opt out.

Message in Windows 7: The password for this account has expired. To change the password, click Cancel, click Switch User and then log on - Where's the Cancel button?

The WTF Mobile Web blog similarly highlights problems in mobile websites through crowd-sourced screenshots.

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Free Pluralsight videos

I'm a fan of Pluralsight & video-tutorial based learning. Pluralsight is doing a great job of getting experts to deliver sessions on Microsoft technologies. My favorite presenters are Scott Allen & Robert Cain.

My annual Pluralsight subscription got over recently & considering that they keep adding new videos regularly I plan to get a subscription again in the near future.

I recently recommended it to a colleague. I asked him to check out these videos from their collection which are available for free, before purchasing a subscription -

1. Building Applications with ASP.NET MVC 4
2. Introduction to ASP.NET 4 WebForms 
3. Introduction to ASP.NET MVC 3
4. Introduction to the ASP.NET Web API
5. Introduction to WebMatrix 
6. Introduction to Visual Studio LightSwitch 
7. Orchard Fundamentals 
8. Facebook Platform Overview
9. Teaching Kids Programming with C#
10. Learning How to Program with Scratch
11. Learning to Build Apps with App Inventor

Multiple sections of the following courses (but not entire content) are free:

1. Introduction to Visual Studio 2010 - Part 1
2. Introduction to Visual Studio 2010 - Part 2 
3. ASP.NET 3.5 Fundamentals
4. ASP.NET 3.5 Security 
5. Microsoft StreamInsight Fundamentals

As Pluralsight occassionally announces some of the courses they offer for free viewing for a limited time, you can start following Pluralsight on Twitter.

Happy learning!

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Visual Studio and Crystal Reports

Crystal Reports has probably the most complex branding history among software products. Originally created by Crystal Services Inc., it was acquired by Seagate Technology followed by Business Objects and is currently owned by SAP.

Microsoft bundled it with Visual Studio versions 2003 through 2008. Although it is not integrated with Visual Studio 2010, it is available as a free download. It is called "SAP Crystal Reports, version for Visual Studio 2010".

One of the benefits of "SAP Crystal Reports, version for Visual Studio 2010" listed on the download page is "Simplified royalty-free runtime licensing". Clicking on the "Licensing Explained" under the Additional Resources page opens up a 22-page PDF.

The fine-print for the asterix next to the exhortation to "Upgrade Directly to SAP Crystal Reports" reads:
SAP Crystal Reports can open and edit files created with SAP Crystal Reports, version for Visual Studio 2010 (and vice-versa), providing a fuller set of report design features compared to SAP Crystal Reports, version for Visual Studio 2010. SAP Crystal Reports does not include tooling to support the Visual Studio 2010 development environment but developers can use the SAP Crystal Reports, version for Visual Studio 2010 runtime engine to deploy SAP Crystal Reports RPT files with all the extended design features.

Now does that mean SAP Crystal Reports is better or SAP Crystal Reports, version for Visual Studio 2010?

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Web Apps Watch - 1

As a web developer, I like to track interesting features, UI patterns used on popular Web Apps & also related trivia.

Here are a few things I noticed this week -

* Hotmail can help you organize emails from senders of bulk mail:

* I previewed some content from an ASP.NET book on Google Books and noticed their localization for India & acknowledgement of  popularity of Indian online stores - links to Indian online stores from where I can purchase that book:

* ChromeCacheView reveals interesting URL of where YouTube videos are coming from when I browse them over Airtel Broadband:

* Finding out what browser a visitor to your website is using, their IP address, screen resolution and if cookies are enabled in their browser, is old hat. There are scripts for just any website to find out if a visitor is logged into Gmail, Twitter & Facebook as this Wall Street Journal page shows:

* There have been times when I've wanted to add context notes to an email I've received so that I can reference it later. Messages in Gmail can be copied to Google Docs & you can add your notes there using a Labs feature.

* Twitter now provides local trends for 6 cities in India -Ahmadabad, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Delhi, and Mumbai.

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Hidden features of ASP.NET

On the StackOverflow forum, you'll find questions like "Hidden features of" technology X to be popular with a lot of up-votes. Such questions are sometimes closed as they are too subjective & do not fit into the expected Q&A format of the site. They however contain insightful answers.

Here is a list of "hidden" gems in ASP.NET that I've discovered (work in progress) and wanted to highlight them as the don't easily show up in the top results while googling -

• Tag property for server controls - Just like the rel HTML attribute can be added to an element to store extra  info when it is required in a client-side programming scenario, the Tag property can be used with server controls to store some extra info that may not fit into regular properties.
• RepeatLayout Property of  CheckBoxList server control - this property used to allow 2 possible values "Table" and "Flow" till ASP.NET 3.5, but from version 4 onwards it supports OrderedList and UnorderedList as well.  If you need to style a group of checkboxes generated through the  CheckBoxList server control, the default "Table" layout may be restrictive.  "Flow" and the other new options provide more flexibility in modifying the layout through CSS.

Related:
StackOverflow: Hidden Features of ASP.NET

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Online, SMS-based services to get distance, approximate autorickshaw fare

It's common knowledge that most auto-rickshaw drivers in Indian cities fleece their customers at every chance they get.

Here is a list of online and SMS-based services to get distance, approximate autorickshaw fare and other location-related info (currently for South-Indian cities - Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai):

+ LatLong.in - Helps you locate places, get directions & find places near you. This service is accessible directly from their site, over SMS & their mobile site.


To know where a particular place is,
send <place name> to 90088 90088
To get help to go to a particular place,
send <place name> FROM <starting point> to 90088 90088
send <place name> TO <starting point> to 90088 90088

+ Suruk - provides autorickshaw fare and helps with routes via SMS via textWeb's platform. To use their service, send SMS/text in the following format to 9243342000 - @autofare <city>, <source>, <destination> 

Suruk also provides a smartphone app to pre-calculate auto-rickshaw fare, possible routes for a journey, a digital meter to verify if the autorickshaw's meter is rigged and driver conduct (!!) based on experiences of Suruk users (who lived to tell their tale).

+ MeterPodu - crowd-sources auto-rickshaw fares between places and shows the approximate distance (via Sid). You can find info through their site or via their Twitter account,  @meterpodu

The messages have to be in the following format:
@meterpodu get+auto+CHN+T.Nagar+Mylapore
@meterpodu add+auto+CHN+T.Nagar+Mylapore+70

Use these city codes for respective city:
Chennai-CHN, Bengaluru-BLR, Hyderabad-HYD

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"Had to scramble to get dressed when someone wanted video on a call."

Inspired by Chris Shipton who illustrates tweets, I drew this when I found this funny thought -

When someone says Skype call, you dont know whether it is audio/video. Had to scramble to get dressed when someone wanted video on a call.
— Sriram Krishnan (@sriramk) March 1, 2012

Related:
Doodling for Dollars

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What is SPDY?

• SPDY, pronounced “SPeeDY”,  is an experimental application-layer protocol from Google developed as part of its "Let's make the web faster" initiative to help reduce the latency of web pages.  
• This new protocol transports the existing HTTP protocol more efficiently (up to 50% faster). 
• It is NOT a replacement for HTTP. It replaces some parts of HTTP, but mostly augments it. At the highest level of the application layer, the request-response protocol remains the same. SPDY still uses HTTP methods, headers, and other semantics. But SPDY overrides other parts of the protocol, such as connection management and data transfer formats.
• SPDY is supported by Chrome web browser & Firefox 11 (disabled by default)
• Amazon has baked SPDY support into its Silk browser for the Kindle.
• Chrome SPDY indicator is a Chrome extension to visualize SPDY support in your address bar.
• Twitter joins Google Search, Gmail in serving webpages over the SPDY protocol when available
• SPDY may become part of HTTP 2.0
• The problems with HTTP that SPDY tries to address are: 
• the server cannot initiate a connection
• headers are always uncompressed (N.B. cookies are sent in the header)
• in a persistent connection, all headers are resent for each request
• data is not always compressed
• everything is in clear text       

• SPDY addresses these issues by:
• allowing unlimited and interleaved requests through a single connection
• prioritizing requests (controlled by the client only)
• compressing headers
• allowing the server to push resources to the client without the client's asking (e.g. you're going to want the CSS file anyway)
• allowing the server to suggest in the header what other resources the client might want to request (so no need to wait for the HTML to be parsed before knowing)
• always using SSL

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HOW TO quickly capture screenshots/frames from a parallely running video in MS Word

This tip applies to MS Word 2010

MS Word lets you add an image from any application running on your PC. If you are watching a instructional video and would like to jot down notes, this feature comes handy.

The Screenshot option is in the Illustrations section of the Insert tab. After selecting that option you can also choose the Screen Clipping feature to grab only a part of a frame of a video running in a different window.

If you use this feature a lot, juggling with the mouse to walk through the steps may get cumbersome. Instead, you can create a custom shortcut.

Right click the the Screenshot option & select the Add to Quick Access Toolbar option.

Now, the next time you want to add a frame from a video, just press Alt, then the number key corresponding to the number tooltip that shows up under the Screenshot icon in the Quick Access Toolbar (it's 7 in my copy of Word) and "C" key. So Alt + 7 + C keyboard shortcut inserts a slide from a running video into an open Word document after allowing me to crop it.

To replicate this shortcut, you'll have to replace the "7" in the shortcut to whatever number the Alt key shortcut shows under the Screenshot icon.

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The trouble with Kindle is...

Also see:

The trouble with going early to work is...

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Brace matching for JavaScript/jQuery in Visual Studio 2010

With jQuery you will need to write lesser code than you would with JavaScript but it will probably use more braces, brackets & parentheses. While programming with jQuery, it's easy to miss an ending brace, bracket or parenthesis.

Although Automatic Delimiter Highlighting is available with  C# code, it's sorely missed while you're working with JavaScript or jQuery. Thankfully there is a time-saving open-source VS Extension in the Visual Studio Gallery that bridges this gap - JScript Editor Extension. Besides other features, this nifty add-on automatically highlights the matching opening or closing brace to the one currently at the cursor. It supports matching parenthesis: (), square brackets: [], and curly braces: {}

I like Notepad2's Ctrl+Shft+B keyboard shortcut that highlights the entire area between matching brace, bracket or parenthesis.Ctrl+B is an easy to remember shortcut to find matching brace in that editor.

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