Use Google Services from the Command Line

Not every one likes beautiful interfaces with big buttons, controls for entering text and uploading files. Sometimes it's faster to type commands in a terminal.

GoogleCL is a project that makes it easy to use Google services like Blogger, Picasa Web, YouTube, Google Docs ans Google Calendar from the command-line. It's a wrapper for the Google Data APIs, so you first need to install Python 2.6 (or 2.5) and Google Data APIs Python Client Library.

It's not very difficult to install a Python package. For example, in Windows you need to extract the archive, open the folder in Windows Explorer, shift + right-click in a blank space, select "Open command window here" and type: python setup.py install.

After installing Python, Google Data APIs Python Client Library and Google CL, you can type commands that let you upload photos to Picasa Web, upload videos to YouTube, publish Blogger posts, add events to Google Calendar, find Gmail contacts and more.

Here are some of my favorite commands:

google calendar add "Meet Mary tomorrow at 10am"
(add an event to Google Calendar)

google picasa get "Album Title" c:\files\picasa\
(download the files from one of your albums)

google picasa create --title "Miami Beach" c:\files\photos\miami\*.jpg
(upload photos to a new Picasa Web album)

google youtube post --title "Summer in Rome" c:\videos\rome.avi
(upload a video to YouTube)

google docs get --title "Reports .*"
(download documents that have titles starting with "Reports" as text files)

google docs upload c:\files\*.doc
(upload the *.doc files from a folder to Google Docs)

For a more comprehensive list of commands, type google --help or read the manual.


{ via Google Open Source Blog }

Switch to HD When Playing YouTube Videos in Full Screen

YouTube added a clever option for those who want to see a better video quality in full screen. If a video is available in a HD format, you can view it in HD when switching to the full screen mode.

Just click on the drop-down menu for switching between formats, click on "Settings" and enable "Always play HD when switching to fullscreen (when available)". You can also change playback quality settings from this page.



Unfortunately, when you exit the full screen mode, YouTube doesn't switch to the previous format. As YouTube's help center explains, "if you play HD video in a small player, the computer works overtime to scale down the video to fit within the player, which may result in choppy playback. It's always best to play the video size that best fits the size of the video player."

{ Thanks, Sterling. }

Class dalam Pemrograman Java

"Om Swastiastu"

Hi young programmers, kali ini saya akan menjelaskan tutorial mengenai class dalam pemrograman Java. Setiap bahasa pemrograman pasti memiliki setidaknya satu class agar program tersebut dapat berjalan. Java disebut bahasa pemrograman berorientasi objek murni karena memiliki banyak class. Sangat mudah untuk mendeklarasikan class dalam java, berikut adalah contoh format class dalam java.

attribute_akses class namaKelas
{
  //isi dari kelas
}

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Built-in PDF Reader for Google Chrome

Chromium's blog announced that the latest Google Chrome dev build for Windows and Mac includes a plug-in for viewing PDF files. The plug-in can be enabled by going to chrome://plugins/ and clicking on "Enable" for the "Chrome PDF Viewer" plug-in.

When you click on a link to a PDF file, Chrome no longer opens the file using the Adobe Reader plug-in. Instead, Google Chrome uses a basic PDF viewer that lacks many useful features like pagination and bookmarks.


"PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML web pages, and basic interactions will be no different than the same interactions with web pages (for example, zooming and searching will work as users expect). PDF rendering quality is still a work in progress, and we will improve it substantially before releasing it to the beta and stable channels. To further protect users, PDF functionality will be contained within the security sandbox Chrome uses for web page rendering. Users will automatically receive the latest version of Chrome's PDF support; they won't have to worry about manually updating any plug-ins or programs," explains Google.

This is especially useful for Chrome OS users, who won't be able to install PDF viewers like Adobe Reader or Evince. Instead of relying on Google Docs Viewer, Chrome will be able to display PDF files faster, especially if they're saved locally.

{ Thanks, Arpit. }

Synchronize Google Chrome Extensions

After adding support for synchronizing bookmarks, preferences and themes, Google Chrome tests a new option that synchronizes extensions and their settings. The feature is available in the most recent Dev Channel build, but you need to add two flags that enable this feature:

--enable-sync-extensions --sync-url=https://clients4.google.com/chrome-sync/dev

For example, in Windows you need to edit a Chrome shortcut: right-click on the shortcut, click on "Properties" and append a space followed by the flags above to the target field.

I tried this feature using the latest Dev Channel build for Windows and a recent Chromium build. Most changes are synchronized almost instantly, but not everything is synchronized: Greasemonkey scripts are ignored and uninstalling extensions doesn't propagate to other clients.

It's important to keep in mind that this is an initial implementation of the feature and that Chrome Dev Channel releases are buggier and less reliable than the stable releases.

Chrome Dev Channel and Chromium, using the same extensions

On Google Chrome's Lack of Native Support for Feeds

Google Chrome is the only popular browser that doesn't have native support for feeds: it doesn't detect or preview feeds and it doesn't let you subscribe to feeds using your favorite feed reader. Most of these features are available in Firefox, Opera, Safari, Internet Explorer, but they're implemented in Chrome using an extension.

Chrome's RSS subscription extension was supposed to be bundled with the browser, but it was no longer included because not many people subscribe to feeds and the orange icon would've been distracting. A Google Chrome engineer offered a more detailed explanation:

"We originally intended to include RSS support by default as a native feature of Google Chrome (and we still might in the future) but we decided instead to implement this as an extension. This decision was made based on our philosophy of trying to limit ourselves to adding only the UI features that a vast majority of users need and allow each user to customize the browsers to fit their needs with Extensions. Given that most people are not familiar with and don't consume RSS feeds, we thought that RSS support would be a better fit as an extension, at least to begin with."

Here's what you see when you click on a link to the Slashdot feed:


... and here's the same feed if you use the RSS subscription extension:


Maybe not all users know the definition of a feed, but not many people know what a browser is and that doesn't stop them from using a browser. Orange icons for feeds are everywhere and many sites display them prominently.

It's strange to see that Google Chrome doesn't have native support for feeds, while Google Reader is the most popular online feed reader, Google's FeedBurner is the most popular service for managing feeds, most Google search services have feeds for search results and even Chrome's blog links to an Atom feed.

What's even more surprising is that Chrome doesn't parse XML feeds to show a human-readable preview. Google Chrome doesn't even recommend users to install the RSS subscription extension.

If you'd like to see native support for feeds in Google Chrome, star this issue.

Google Docs and Backwards Compatibility

When Google announced a new version of Google Docs in April, it was obvious that not only the user interface has been changed. The new document editor, code-named Kix, is so different that Google had to change the way documents are stored.

"The new Google document editor doesn't use the browser to handle editable text. We wrote a brand new editing surface and layout engine, entirely in JavaScript. (...) To you, the new editor looks like a fairly normal text box. But from the browser's perspective, it's a webpage with JavaScript that responds to any user action by dynamically changing what to display on each line," explains Google.

When Google launched an early preview of the new online word processor, you probably noticed that the only way to see the new version of the editor was to create a new document. All the existing documents were tied to the old editor and Google didn't offer an option to convert them. A Google blog post informs us that all the new documents will be created using the new editor:

"Beginning today and rolling out over the next couple of weeks, all new documents will be created using the new documents editor. Docs already created using the older editor will remain there. We will be sharing more information on how to move those documents to the new version soon."

The problem with the new editor is that it lacks many features that were previously available in Google Docs: translation, editing CSS and HTML, document settings, custom dictionary, comparing revisions etc. These features will probably be added to the new editor, but users expect to find new features in a major update, not missing features.

Another issue is that most documents will open in the old editor, while recent documents will open in the new editor. Google will offer an option to migrate the existing documents to the new format, but users shouldn't have to deal with converting between formats.

The new document editor should have become the default option when all the features from the old editor were implemented and all the existing documents should have been converted to the new format. Meanwhile, you can still create documents using the old editor if you use this URL: https://docs.google.com/?action=newdoc.

Also notice that the two document formats (Writely and Kix) have slightly different icons:

Top Email Service Gratis

"Om Swastiastu"

Pagi yang cerah, pagi ini saya akan memberikan info mengenai beberapa email service gratis. Semua teman-teman sekarang pasti memiliki email. Tanpa email, kalian tidak akan bisa mempunyai akun Facebook, Blogger, dan lain-lainnya. Dan saya yakin, kebanyakan dari kalian memiliki email dari yahoo atau google mail. Yahoo memberikan 3 buah ID email kepada kita, yaitu @yahoo.com, @ymail.com, dan @rocketmail.com. Apakah diantara kalian ada bosan melihat email yang itu-itu saja? Bagi kalian yang ingin tampil beda, kalian dapat menggunakan beberapa free email service dibawah ini.

Fitur yang kalian dapatkan juga sangat berkelas. Kalian akan diberikan tempat penyimpanan email yang besar, penyaringan spam yang efektif, program email desktop dan akses dari handphone atau mobile, dan masih banyak lagi.
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YouTube Video Editor

YouTube has a new video editor that lets you create videos using excerpts from the videos you've already uploaded. You can also add a music file from the AudioSwap library, but YouTube mentions that it might display ads if you use some of the audio files.



In 2007, YouTube launched a more advanced Flash-based video editor called YouTube Remixer, but it was discontinued. The service was based on Adobe Premiere Express and, despite offering features like transitions, captions, adding images, it was slow and buggy.

Here are some videos created using YouTube's new video editor.



{ Thanks, Kevin. }

What's Still Missing in Google Chrome?

When Google released Chrome almost two years ago, many people complained that Google's browser lacked basic features that were available in all the other browsers, it didn't support extensions and could only be installed in Windows. Since then, Google Chrome has added many missing features (bookmark manager, form autofill, options for disabling cookies, images and scripts, full-page zoom, themes, extensions), the browser has been ported to Mac and Linux and it continues to be fast and to evolve rapidly.

While Google Chrome focuses on implementing useful features for improving the transition to web apps (HTML5 features, cloud printing, desktop notifications, extensions for web apps, Native Client, WebGL), many basic features are still missing. Google Chrome still can't print selected text and lacks print preview (both features should be available in Google Chrome 6), you still can't drag text from a tab to another tab, there's no way to find the size of an image or to automatically clear the cache when closing the browser.

What other basic features would you like to see in Google Chrome? Please keep in mind that Google Chrome is a minimalist browser and it shouldn't include features that would be used by a small number of people or features that could be implemented as extensions.

Google Chrome's homepage in Google Chrome 1

Google Chrome's homepage in Google Chrome 5

Array Dalam Java

"Om Swastiastu"

Kali ini kita akan melanjutkan tutorial java programming. Materi yang akan saya berikan adalah array dalam pemrograman java. Array adalah sekumpulan objek yang memiliki tipe data yang sama. Misalnya array dari integer adalah array yang terdiri dari suatu rangkaian integer. Array digunakan untuk menyimpan sejumlah nilai pada sebuah variabel. Nilai-nilai yang tersimpan dalam array disebut elemen. Untuk mengakses elemen tertentu pada array digunakan angka index. Index menunjukkan nomor urutdari posisi elemen yang ingin diakses dalam array. Untuk sekedar pemberitahuan, Java memulai angka indexnya dari 0, bukan 1.

Berikut adalah contoh program array sederhana dalam java:

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Fall Out Boy - I'm Like A Lawyer With The Way I'm Always Trying to Get You Off (Me and You)

"Om Swastiastu"

Lama ga pernah posting karena sibuk dengan tugas dan nonton World Cup, hari ini saya sempatkan untuk memposting lagu. Lagu yang akan saya berikan kali ini adalah lagunya Fall Out Boy, berjudul I'm Like a Lawyer With The Way I'm Always Trying to Get You Off (Me and You). Panjang banget ya judulnya.

Seperti postingan lagu lainnya, saya akan memberikan download link dari lagu ini kepada kalian diakhir postingan.

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Google Earth Includes a Web Browser

Google Earth 5.2 no longer uses the operating system's web browser when you click on links. Google Earth comes with a WebKit-based browser, so you'll never have to leave the application to open a Wikipedia page or the website of a local business.

"Sometimes when you want more information, you may want to click through to a link to see the full Google Places page for a business, or learn more about a photographer whose photo you really enjoy. In the past, this has required opening a link in an external browser to see the full page. For Google Earth 5.2, we've added an embedded browser that lets you browse the full web. Click on a link, and the browser pane slides across the screen. When you want to return to the Earth view, just click the Back button," explains Google.



Apparently, Google Earth uses the Qt port of WebKit (QtWebKit) and it doesn't include the V8 Javascript engine from Google Chrome. I tried to run the V8 benchmark suite in Google Earth and the result was very poor: about 10 times lower than the latest Chromium build.

As in the previous versions, Google Earth for Windows and Mac also includes a plug-in that lets you embed a Google Earth view in any web page. Google Maps is the most popular service that lets you use Google Earth in your browser. Now you can browse the Web in Google Earth and use Google Earth in a Web browser.

If you don't like the embedded browser, you can disable it by going to Tools > Options > General and checking "Show web results in external browser".