Google Calendar's Event Scheduling Feature is Back

Last year, Google Calendar tested a feature that made it easier to schedule events with guests. The "sneak preview" was only available for a few months, but now it's back. Google calls it "find a time" and you can use it when you create an event. "If you're able to view your guests' calendars (via sharing, Google Apps shared access, or because they've made their calendars public), you'll be able to compare schedules and pick a time that works for everyone," explains Google.


Google Calendar redesigned the page that lets you create events and added a more intuitive dialog for repeating events. "The old interface for creating recurring events was clumsy and took up too much space on the screen," admits Google. "Now you'll see only a summary of your recurring event on the main event page; if you want to edit it, you can use a window that opens when you select the 'Repeats' checkbox."

Watch a Video in YouTube's HTML5 Player

In January, YouTube launched a player that used the HTML5 video tag. To try this player, you have to go to youtube.com/html5 and enable the player. If you have a browser that supports the video tag and the YouTube video doesn't use captions, annotations and doesn't show ads, you'll be able to watch the video in YouTube's HTML5 player.

What if you want to switch to the HTML5 player for a single video or you want to link to the HTML5 version? YouTube has a special parameter that lets you do that: just append "&html5=True" to the video's address. Here's an example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTl3U6aSd2w&html5=True (link)


For now, YouTube's HTML5 player works in Google Chrome (h.264; Chrome 6 adds support for WebM), Opera 10.6+ (WebM), Safari 4+ (h.264) and Firefox 4 (WebM).

Don't Click this Button in Google Voice!

Warning: This tip is only for Gmail users outside US.

Google says that the latest Gmail feature that allows you to make phone calls is only available in the US, but that's not true. If you set Gmail's interface language to English (US), you should see the "Call phone" option in the chat roster. You can also buy credit using Google Checkout.

If you're not in the US and you want to add credit to your account, make sure that you DON'T CLICK the "Upgrade your account" button from Google Voice. This feature is only useful if you are in the US, since it lets you get a Google Voice number. Unfortunately, if you click on that button and you're not in the US, you'll no longer be able to buy credit.


Here's what you'll see after clicking on "Upgrade your account":


I don't think there's a way to downgrade your account, so the best thing to do is to avoid clicking that button. Google could easily solve this problem by hiding the button for non-US users or by allowing users to stop the upgrade.

Update. You can cancel the upgrade if you use a US proxy (try UltraSurf if you use Windows).

Update 2. A Google spokesperson said: "We're looking into this and will keep you updated."

Membuat Program Font Property dalam VB 2008

"Om Swastiastu"

Tiap font memiliki property, seperti Bold, Underline, Italic, juga memberikan efek warna. Kali ini kita akan membuat program simple dengan untuk memberikan efek tertentu pada jenis huruf. Ini adalah program lanjutan dari program sederhana yang saya buat. Dimana dalam program sederhana tersebut kita memasukkan sebuah nama dan menampilkannya. Nah, kali ini kita akan mengedit nama yang sudah ditampilkan, dengan memberi efek warna, efek tebal, miring dan dengan garis bawah.

Untuk mengawali program kali ini, buatlah desain form seperti pada gambar dibawah ini:

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Google Tests Centered Layout

Some users report that Google started to test a centered layout for search results pages. It looks almost like Yahoo Search, except that the navigation bar isn't properly aligned.


The experiment could be related to the "live search" interface that adjusts the results as you type a query. Google's search results could become an extension of the homepage, which already has a centered layout.

{ thanks, Robert and James. }

Google Chrome Labs

Many Google Chrome features aren't enabled by default because they're not ready for primetime or they're too advanced. Unfortunately, you can't enable them from the interface and you have use command-line flags.

A recent Chromium build added a new internal page that lets you enable some advanced features: about:labs about:flags.

"Tabpose is currently the only lab on Mac, tabs-on-left the only lab on Windows. about:labs should not be visible on the stable channel. Labs that were enabled on the dev channel should not be enabled on the stable channel."



Tabs-on-the-left is especially useful on widescreen monitors, while tabposé is a Mac-only feature that adds Exposé for tabs.

Both features can also be enabled by adding command-line flags to a Chrome shortcut: --enable-vertical-tabs for side tabs and --enable-expose-for-tabs for tabposé. After enabling vertical tabs using the command-line flag, right-click on a tab and select "use side tabs".

Google Realtime Search Has a Homepage

Google Realtime Search was only a section of Google's search sidebar that allows you to restrict the results to Twitter, Facebook, Google Buzz and other sites where you can post public updates. Now it's a full-fledged service that has a homepage, a logo and a name.



Even if Google Realtime's homepage is at google.com/realtime, you'll miss two important new features if you don't go to this special URL: filtering results by location and showing the context of a message using a conversation view.

Restrict search results to a location to find out what people from a certain place think about a topic. "You can use geographic refinements to find updates and news near you, or in a region you specify. So if you're traveling to Los Angeles this summer, you can check out tweets from Angelenos to get ideas for activities happening right where you are," suggests Google.


If one of the search results is part of a conversation, Google shows a link to the full conversation. "Often a single tweet sparks a larger conversation of re-tweets and other replies, but to put it together you have to click through a bunch of links and figure it out yourself. With the new full conversation feature, you can browse the entire conversation in a single glance."


Google also added a new feature to Google Alerts: updates, which is another name for realtime results. It's not a good idea to choose the "as-it-happens" option because you'll receive a lot of email alerts.

Download Rune Factory 2: A Fantasy Harvest Moon NDS ROM

"Om Swastiastu"

Ini adalah game RPG baru lainnya dalam Nintendo DS. Seperti judulnya, game ini memiliki dasar yang sama dengan Harvest Moon, yaitu bercocok tanam. Tetapi ada yang lebih menarik pada game ini. Rune Factory 2: A Fantasy Harvest Moon menyediakan quest atau misi dimana kita sebagai tokoh utama mengunjungi dungeon untuk menjinakkan monster-monster. Kalian harus menaikkan level karakter kalian, juga kalian dapat melakukan magic dengan Rune (seperti game Suikoden) untuk melawan monster-monster.

Game ini memiliki banyak hal yang membuat kita harus memainkannya. Disini kita juga bisa memasak berbagai macam masakan dan masih banyak lagi. Selain itu, tampilan game yang 3D juga menambah kesan emas dari game ini.

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Menambahkan Item ke dalam ListBox di VB 2008

"Om Swastiastu"

Ini adalah program sederhana lainnya pada VB 2008. Kemarin saya sudah membuat program ini. Dan memang sangat gampang dipelajari untuk pemula. Dimana kita mengetikkan sesuatu dan menambahkannya kedalam ListBox. Ini adalah hal yang dasar jika kalian ingin membuat program yang besar nantinya. Pertama buatlah desain form seperti gambar dibawah ini:

Dalam form diatas terdapat 1 buah Label, 1 buah TextBox, 1 Buah ListBox, dan 1 buah Button. Pada program ini saya lupa menambahkan Button Exit, tapi itu tidak masalah karena tanda X pada pojok kanan atas juga bisa digunakan untuk menutup program. Jika sudah membuat desain form seperti gambar diatas, double click Button1 lalu ketikkan kode berikut ini:
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Make Free Phone Calls from Gmail

Gmail added a long-awaited feature: making phone calls. If you install the voice and video chat plug-in, you can call phones in the US and Canada for free. You can also call in other countries, but you'll have to pay. Fortunately, Google's rates are really low and the service is cheaper than Skype.

"Calls to the U.S. and Canada will be free for at least the rest of the year and calls to other countries will be billed at our very low rates. We worked hard to make these rates really cheap with calls to the U.K., France, Germany, China, Japan — and many more countries — for as little as $0.02 per minute," informs Google.



If you have a Google Voice phone number (anyone in the US can get one), you can also receive phone calls in Gmail. Now that Google Voice integrates with Gmail, a lot more people will use it.

To try the new feature, make sure that your Gmail interface language is set to English (US) and that the voice and video chat plug-in is installed. You get an initial calling credit ($0.10), but unfortunately you can only add credit if you're in the US.

Android Market and Piracy

Google has recently released a licensing service for Android applications that is supposed to make it more difficult to pirate paid apps. The service is not yet part of the operating system and it works by sending a query to Google's servers in order to determine if the user has bought an application.

Android Police found that it's quite easy to circumvent Google's verification, especially if the application's code is not obfuscated. "Because the License Verification Library is not part of the Android OS, an app developer needs to package it with the app that uses it, making it an easier patch target, without requiring root access. (...) The method is so simple, even a novice programmer could write a script to automatically patch most apps."

Google's Tim Bray responded by saying that "the first release shipped with the simplest, most transparent imaginable sample implementation," which didn't focus on security. He recommends developers to obfuscate the code and to use other implementations. Tim Bray also says that "the best attack on pirates is to make their work more difficult and expensive, while simultaneously making the legal path to products straightforward, easy, and fast. Piracy is a bad business to be in when the user has a choice between easily purchasing the app and visiting an untrustworthy, black-market site."

Tim Bray's answer is ironic, if you think about it. Google's Android Market lets you install paid applications only if you are in one of the 13 supported countries. The "legal path" is neither "straightforward, easy, or fast" if you don't live in one of the 13 countries that are supported. Maybe instead of focusing on developing anti-piracy services, Google should add more locations to the paid Android Market.

Download Rubik's World NDS ROM

"Om Swastiastu"

Satu lagi game menarik bagi para penggemar rubik's cube. Game yang diperuntukan untuk console Nintendo DS ini adalah game Rubik. Dimana kita bisa bermain dan menyelesaikan Rubik. Bagusnya, disini kita tidak hanya bisa memainkan rubik kubus seperti 3x3, 4x4, dan lainnya. Tetapi disini kita juga bisa memainkan berbagai Rubik unik lainnya.

Penasaran dengan game ini? Langsung saja download ROM nya pada link dibawah. Jika kalian belum mempunyai Nintendo DS Emulator, silahkan download NDS Emulator disini.

DOWNLOAD RUBIK's WORLD

"Om Santhi, Santhi, Santhi, Om"

Chrome Extensions Can Add New Items to the Context Menu

Chromium's blog announced that extension developers can add custom actions to the context menu, now that this feature is available in Google Chrome 6 Beta.

"The new context menu API allows extension developers to register menu items for all pages or for a subset of pages. Developers can also register menu items for specific operations, like right-clicking on an image or movie. For example, you could create an extension that makes it easy for users to share interesting images from images.google.com with their friends on Google Buzz."

Here are 3 extensions that use the new APIs:

* QR Code Generator, which generates a QR code from a web address (right-click on a link, select "Generate QR code" and use Barcode Scanner for Android or another application to scan the code).


* Imgur Uploader, which uploads images to Imgur.

* TweetRight, an extension that lets you share images, links, webpages and selected text on Twitter.

You can try these extensions if you use Chrome 6 Beta, Chrome 6 Dev Channel, a Canary build or a recent Chromium build.

Chrome 6 supports two other APIs for managing the browser's cookies and detecting when the computer's idle state changes, but there other interesting changes.

{ Thanks, Arpit. }

Membuat Program RGB Color dengan VB 2008

"Om Swastiastu"

Ini adalah program sederhana lainnya. Kalian tentu tahu RGB color kan. Biasanya ketika kalian mengedit poto di Photoshop atau aplikasi lainnya, maka pasti terdapat warna ini. Ini adalah warna kombinasi dari Red, Green, dan Blue. Dan tiap warna memiliki nilai 0 sampai 250. Bagaimana kalau ini kita implementasikan dalam Visual Basic 2008? Bukalah aplikasi VB 2008 kalian, lalu desain sebuah form baru seperti gambar dibawah ini:

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Contoh Program Quick Sort dalam C++

"Om Swastiastu"

Quick sort adalah salah satu metode pengurutan dalam bahasa pemrograman. Proses sorting atau pengurutan dilakukan berdasarkan metode divide and conqueror. Quick sort ini mengurutkan data dengan sangat cepat. Tetapi tentu saja quick sort ini memiliki kekurangan. Misalnya, proses sorting yang dilakukan secara rekursif. Walaupun prosesnya sangat cepat, tapi menghabiskan memori yang besar jika data yang diurut banyak. Selain itu, quick sort juga tidak cocok jika digunakan untuk mengurutkan data dalam tabel yang berukuran kecil.

Nah, jika kalian ingin melihat bagaimana kira-kira contoh quick sort dalam C++, silahkan lihat sintaksnya dibawah ini:

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Orkut Lets You Communicate with Groups of Friends

Orkut, Google's social network that has a lot of users in Brazil and India, has received a major update. Groups of friends are more visible and you can send messages to the members of a group directly from Orkut's homepage. Orkut also updated search results pages and application pages, while testing a new platform for communities.


There are a lot of changes and it will be interesting to see if Google tests these features in Orkut before launching Google Me, a social network that will compete with Facebook.

One of the major changes in Orkut is the focus on groups. "You love your grandma and you're friends with your boss, but that doesn't mean you want them both seeing the conversation you're having with your friends the day after a party. With orkut, you can now build separate groups of your friends reflecting how you interact with them in real life." This is one of the ideas from "The Real Life Social Network", a presentation by Paul Adams, Senior User Experience Researcher at Google.



Google's Rahul Kulkarni mentioned last year that Orkut will change a lot. "The new Orkut adopts the latest Google Web Toolkit platform and includes features such as built-in simultaneous chat, photo tagging with automatic face detection and private sharing of photo albums including new safety features. This is the beginning of a new direction for Orkut, where users will be able to increasingly share and communicate with groups of friends from their lives."

Hide Gmail's Links to Contacts and Tasks

Gmail tweaked the interface two weeks ago and many users complained about the links to the contacts manager and to Google Tasks, which are now displayed at the top of the page, above the Compose button. If you rarely use the contact manager and you don't need a task management app inside Gmail, the two links can become annoying.

Google added a small button that lets you collapse the group of links, but the setting wasn't preserved when you reloaded the page because of a bug. Now you can permanently hide the links to "contacts" and "tasks".


If you ignore the blue bar at the top of the page and you don't click on "Mail", you'll no longer see the two links. Gmail could add an option to move the horizontal navigation bar below the list of labels, even as a Gmail Labs experimental feature. I partially solved this problem by enabling "Quick Links" in Gmail Labs and adding links to the contact manager and to a mail view (is:unread).


Another option is to use this userscript that moves the links below the labels. The script should work in Firefox (Greasemonkey is required), Chrome and Opera.


Apparently, Gmail's links bar is quite important and it's likely that Gmail will add links to other services. A Google employee detailed its purpose:

"Gmail is home to a few different apps, including Mail, Contacts, and Tasks. The links on the left below the app navigation change depending which app you're using, while the app navigation links remain consistent so that you can go between apps. If you're in the Contacts app, the big action button becomes the way to add a new contact. We use this button as the way to create things in other products like Google Docs and Google Calendar, too."

New Google Calendar Favicon

You might have noticed that Google Calendar has a new favicon that replaces a monthly calendar with a daily calendar.


Google Calendar is not the only Google services that has recently updated the favicon: Google Sites and Google Translate have new shortcut icons and it's likely that many other Google sites will use the colorful images from this page.


{ Thanks, James, Bastian, Matt, Lasse, Gamer and Neil. }

Sequential Search Program in C++

"Om Swastiastu"


Sequential Search adalah teknik pencarian data dimana data dicari secara urut dari depan ke belakang atau dari awal sampai akhir. Kelebihan dari proses pencarian secara sequential ini jika data yang dicari terletak didepan, maka data akan ditemukan dengan cepat. Tetapi dibalik kelebihannya ini, teknik ini juga memiliki kekurangan. Pertama, jika data yang dicari terletak dibelakang atau paling akhir, maka akan membutuhkan waktu yang lama dalam proses pencariannya. Kedua, beban komputer akan semakin bertambah jika jumlah data dalam array sangat banyak.

Disini IT Programmer akan memberikan contoh sintaks dari Sequential Search dalam C++. Tidak ada penginputan data oleh user dalam program ini, karena data telah dideklarasikan terlebih dahulu. Kalian dapat mengubahnya sendiri jika kalian telah lebih menguasai bagian ini. Silahkan lihat sintaksnya dibawah ini.

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Program Dasar Sederhana dengan VB 2008

"Om Swastiastu"

Bagi para pelajar atau siapapun yang baru mempelajari Visual Basic 2008, kalian dapat dengan mudah membuat sebuah aplikasi sederhana. Misalkan, kali ini kita akan membuat program untuk menampilkan String yang diinputkan. Anggaplah String itu adalah nama, maka kita akan memunculkan Nama yang telah kita inputkan kedalam program. Buatlah desain form seperti gambar dibawah ini

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Google's iPhone App Adds Notifications for Gmail and Google Calendar

I rarely use the native email clients from Android and iPhone. Gmail's mobile web app has a better interface and it's easier to use than those applications, but there are some limitations that force you to switch to the native apps: you can't attach files and there's no support for notifications. Until mobile browsers add support for these features and integrate with the operating system, native apps will continue to be more powerful.

The latest version of Google Mobile App for iPhone solves one of these issues by adding push notifications for Gmail and Google Calendar. You no longer have to use Google Sync to get notifications when you receive an email message or an event is about to occur.

"Now Google Mobile App can help with push notifications from your Google account to your iPhone -- an icon badge shows you’ve got new mail in Gmail, and Google Calendar event reminders appear right on your home screen."


After updating Google Mobile App 0.6, it seems that Google only shows a badge when you get a new message, just like the native mail client.

Update: Google's mobile blog says that "you will only receive pop-up messages and sound/vibration for calendar alerts - new email is shown using the unread count on the Google Mobile App icon and in the apps tab".

Caitlin Roran Makes an Unexpected Appearance

You probably remember the name "Caitlin Roran" from Gmail's promotional pictures. Many screenshots from Gmail's help pages showed messages received from people like Caitlin Roran or Nathan Wood.



Gmail's fictional characters are now at Facebook. Someone spotted Caitlin Roran and Nathaniel Woodward in Facebook's privacy page. Go to Facebook privacy settings, then choose "Custom" and click "Customize settings." Under "Include me in 'People Here Now' after I check in," click "See an example." You should see some of your friends, plus Caitlin Roran and Nathaniel Woodward.


It's worth pointing out that Paul Buchheit, the ex-Googler who created Gmail, is now a Facebook employee and he's not the only former Gmail engineer who works at Facebook. According to Christopher Harley, Caitlin Roran is a fictitious name used by Ana Yang, while Nathan Woodward borrowed Casey Muller's photo. Ana Yang and Casey Muller got married last year.

"Ms. Yang and Mr. Muller met in May 2008 while working at FriendFeed, a startup social networking Web site in Mountain View, Calif. 'I was the first employee hired,' said Ms. Yang, who enjoyed being part of the hard-working, fun-loving group. They spent 10 to 12 hours at desks in a cavernous work space in which they also rode bicycles and played Ping-Pong. She loved sports, yet her colleagues, though all male, were not big fans. Then Mr. Muller joined the company, which was sold to Facebook in August, and told her how much he liked basketball."

"Before FriendFeed, Ana worked on product marketing at Google for four years, leading Gmail marketing for three years," mentions FriendFeed's site.

Don't miss this brilliant story about Caitlin Roran found in a Wikipedia page that has been deleted.

Upload Picasa People Photos to Google Contacts

Picasa 3.8 makes it easier to upload pictures for your Google contacts. After scanning all the photos from your library and adding name tags to your photos, you can go to the Tools menu, select Upload and click on Upload People Thumbnails.


Picasa asks if "you want to upload and replace all the thumbnail photos from your People Albums to your Google Contacts". If you click on "Upload", Picasa saves the photos to Google Contacts and you can see them in Gmail or in any other application that synchronizes with Google Contacts (for example, Android's Contacts app or iPhone's Contacts app, if you use Google Sync).

If you don't want to upload photos for all your contacts, you can click on one of the people from Picasa's sidebar, right on a photo and select "Set as Google Contacts Thumbnail". You can also enable "Upload people album thumbnails to Google Contacts" from Tools/Options/Name Tags (or Picasa/Preferences/Name Tags on a Mac) to upload the new thumbnails you select in Picasa.

It's strange to see that Google didn't add this option to Picasa Web Albums and that the photos tagged in Picasa Web Albums aren't displayed in Google Contacts. Google could at least offer the option to pick one of the photos tagged in Picasa Web Albums when you add a picture to one of your contacts. Right now, you can only select a photo from your public albums.

Google Image Search Lets You Find More Sizes for an Image

Google Image Search added a feature launched by Bing in March: showing more sizes for each result. If you mouse over an image, there's a new option called "more sizes" that lets you find other versions of the same image. This is useful if you want to find higher-quality version of an image or if you want to list all the sites that include a certain image.



Most likely, Google uses the same technology that lets you find similar images, but restricts the results to images that are almost identical if you ignore the resolution or some minor editing.

A similar service is TinEye, a search engine that finds different versions of an image you upload. "TinEye is a reverse image search engine. It finds out where an image came from, how it is being used, if modified versions of the image exist, or if there is a higher resolution version."