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October 1, 2008

iPhone Hacks: tips & tools for unlocking the power of your iPhone and iPod Touch

iPhone Hacks Cover

What better way to celebrate the lifting of the NDA than to hack your iPhone?

iPhone Hackers David Jurick, Adam Stolarz, and Damien Stolarz have been hard at work on the upcoming iPhone Hacks. Because it's such a moving target, we decided to do an experiment with the folks at Near-Time. The authors are developing the book in a Near-Time space, which is a lot like a Wiki. It won't be long before we turn this into a print book, but with everything changing constantly, we wanted to get the information out as soon as possible.

The first chapter is available for free viewing, and we have a subscription option in case you want to subscribe to the whole book. On top of that, there's a forum where you can post your own hacks, and you can post comments at the bottom of every hack.

Collaborate. Contribute. Develop.
Join iPhone Hacks and gain advanced access to hacks, tips, and tricks to make your iPhone experience even better. You'll learn how to do things to your iPhone that would surprise even Apple engineers! Members of this community site can make comments, participate in the forums, and help author the book by submitting their own hacks. Start your 30-day free trial now!

iPhone Hacks

September 30, 2008

Today is the last day of the 10% off everything sale at the Maker Shed store, order something now

Today is the last day of the 10% off everything sale at the Maker Shed store, order something now and save some cash - if your order is over $25 you also get a free Maker's notebook. Halloween is coming up soon, here are a few scary/related items to pick up while the sale is still going on.

Bonus: If you're shopping for Make or Hacks books, you can take advantage of our back to school special: 35% off Make & Hacks Books. (Enter in the following code at checkout "BOOK4ME" and get 35% off at checkout! Offer good for the Make books & Hacks books only, magazines & box sets excluded.)

Mkvn1-2
Mkvn1-3
Animated Ghost Kit
Grab this cool kit for Halloween. Sound activated, the ghost flashes his little red LED eyes, vibrates and makes scary sounds! Easy and fun to build. Hack it!

Hallow07-2
MAKE: Halloween Special Edition
DIY HALLOWEEN from the editors of MAKE and CRAFT brings you 40-plus DIY projects for the holiday that's made for makers. From the craftiest costumes to amazing animated props and the latest in computer-controlled haunted house effects.

Mktet2-2
Mktet2-3
Twitchie Robot Kit
Twitchie is an open source multi-purpose robot kit. It has the capacity to frighten and scare, but also the power to love and care! It's a regular pathos-o-matic! Grown men scream! Maternal instincts long dormant, suddenly activated! It's a robot unlike any other, and you can make one with this kit. Cover your Twitchie any way you'd like to make it truly unique.

Msak-2
Arduino Starter Kit
Arduino is a tool for making computers that can sense and control more of the physical world than your desktop computer. It's an open-source physical computing platform based on a simple microcontroller board, and a development environment for writing software for the board. Arduino is open source!
We've put together our own Arduino Starter Kit, tossed in our bestselling Making Things Talk book, wrapped it up in some cool packaging so you can get started quickly without having to do a lot of shopping first. Check out the "How To" for some helpful links to provide support and contact with the growing Arduino community. Happy Hacking!

August 25, 2008

Display batting stats in a Google Gadget

Andrew Odewahn, editor of Baseball Hacks, sent in a link to this great article about how to display batting statistics in a Google Gadget:

This article demonstrates how to use several Google Code APIs using a baseball hack as an example. We will create a Google Gadget that displays Major League Baseball batting statistics. You will learn about Google Gadgets, the Google Spreadsheet API, and the Google Chart API. After reading this article, you'll have a good idea of the sorts of applications you can build using these APIs, know enough to get started writing your own applications, and know where to get more detailed information. This is the first article in the Google Code baseball hacks series.

The code is based on Hack #25 from Baseball Hacks, "Spider Baseball Sites for Data", and it's the first in a series of Google Code Baseball Hacks articles. Google Code baseball hacks: Display batting stats in a Google Gadget

Baseball Hacks

Baseball Hacks - Tips & Tools for Analyzing and Winning with Statistics

August 12, 2008

10 Google Apps Tips

1. Create special email addresses to better filter your mail

This one's an oldie but goodie. If you're using Gmail, you can append "+something" to your name in your email address to better sort incoming mails. For instance, if your name is John Doe and you wanted to separate work mail from family mail, you can use "john.doe+work@gmail.com" and "john.doe+family@gmail.com"... and then create a filter in Gmail to differently label incoming mail to these two addresses. Just use the Create a Filter link in Gmail, and enter your customized email in the "To:" field.

On that note, you can also remove the dot in the name of your email -- as in "johndoe@gmail.com" -- and messages still reach you fine. (On yet another note, is there anybody out there who's actually really named John Doe? He must get an awful lot of spam.)

2. Check the online discussion of your blog posts

If you have a blog, you might want to check who talks about the things you post. There are many ways to go about this, and one involves Google Blog Search. Just type the full URL of your blog post in question -- say, http://example.com/archive/102.html -- and hit the search button (you can also use the "link:" operator preceding your URL, though Google adds that one automatically for you). To the right hand side you can now sort the results by date, and you'll see the latest other blogs linking to yours.

As another interesting way to keep updated on discussions circling around your blog, company or person, you can also use Google News Alerts (for extra usefulness, include spelling errors in alerts you set up -- like ["acme inc" OR "amce inc"]).

3. Prepare to be moved away from Google Page Creator

This is more of a warning than a tip... if you're currently using Google Page Creator as a website creation tool, note that Google on their help page for this service announced they're slowly closing it down! Instead of Google Page Creator, Google say they shifted their focus on the newer Google Sites, and new sign-ups for Page Creator are not accepted anymore. Google writes, "If you are currently a Page Creator user, you can continue to use Page Creator and your pages will automatically be transitioned to Google Sites later this year. We are committed to making this transition as smooth and easy as possible, and we will post more details as we get closer to the transition time. You can also manually move your web pages from Page Creator to Google Sites or other service providers at any time."

4. Get a replacement for Google Answers

Have you ever had a chance to see the Google Answers service while it was still active? Google shut it down for actual usage a while ago, but while it was live, it was a nice service to ask a paid question and then have a researcher get back with an answer to you (somewhat similar to Yahoo Answers, but in higher quality... if I may say so as an ex-Google Answers Researcher in 2002). However, there's a cool replacement for this service: Uclue. In fact, they have nothing but ex-Google Answers Researchers on board; I'm using that site quite a bit myself.

5. Create a quick link to your unread mails

You might have heard of the Gmail Labs which allows you to opt-in to special, prototypical features. I just wanted to mention my favorite experimental feature of them all: a Quick Link to your unread mail. Now first of all, let me say there's several user types in Gmail (as Gmail designer Kevin Fox explained), and if you're the kind of Gmail user who archives mails as soon as they're read, you won't need the following tip. If, however, you let everything flow into your inbox but you don't like to archive read mails, creating an "Unread mail" quick link comes in handy.

To do so, just click on Settings on top and switch to the Labs tab. Check the "Enable" box next to Quick Links. Approve by hitting Save Changes at the bottom. Now search Gmail for [in:inbox is:unread] (without the square brackets) and in the Quick Links box appearing to the left side, click Add Quick Link. Enter "Unread" for the title and approve the dialog. Next time you want to see all your unread mails in one go, just click the Unread link to the left!

6. Automatically expand spreadsheet sets

Are you using Google Spreadsheets as your web-based spreadsheet editor alternative to desktop programs like Excel? If you do, give the "magic" auto-completions a try. To understand what this does, enter "Superman" in the top left cell, and enter "Batman" and "Wonder Woman" in the cells below. Now select all three cells you created. Hold down the Ctrl key, and drag the bottom right corner of the selection downwards over the other cells. Notice something? Your list is now continued with entries like "spider man", "x men", "green lantern". (Admittedly, not all continuations make sense -- "star wars"? -- but where would be the fun in magic without surprises.)

What's happening here? Well, the Google Labs have a member called Google Sets. (Being from 2002, it's the oldest member still listed in the Labs, too.) This tool automatically expands a given set of items. Like "Batman" and "Superman", but also anything else that could be thought of as a group. For instance, entering "google" and "yahoo" also shows "altavista", "lycos" and "msn". Entering "tom cruise" and "nicolas cage" yields "brad pitt", "angelina jolie", "johnny depp" and others.

7. See the images of a website

Do you want to get to see only the images of a particular website? You can, by using Google Image Search in combination with the "site:" operator. To see all images Google crawled on Makezine.com, for instance, you'd search Google Images for site:makezine.com. This returns around 44,800 images, though as things go, Google will restrict you to look at around the first 1000 pics. Note that you can combine this search type with other keywords, too -- like the keyword "screenshot" -- and you can also mix it with other settings from the advanced image search page... like by checking the "faces" box to show faces only (with 117 results for that one on Makezine.com).

8. Use the Google Toolbar to translate a document

I like my Firefox browser relatively uncluttered but there's one or two features I don't want to miss... like the Google Toolbar's "Translate Page into English" functionality. You can find it as part of the Google Toolbar for Firefox. On any page you're on, you can click the arrow icon next to the translate button, and pick Translate Page into English. The translated page will load in place of the original one after some seconds. Not only is this approach quite quick, it's also useful if you're not sure which source language the page in question is held in (like when you check discussions in other blogs by using tip #2 above).

9. Search through several sites at once

If you often search through a set of sites to discover something, creating a Custom Search Engine can be helpful. Already in a normal Google search, you can enter something like [site:makezine.com google] to get all Make posts containing the keyword "google". But what if you want to have results on that keyword from all O'Reilly blogs?

First, let's assemble a list of some O'Reilly blogs. Open up oreilly.net/blogs/ and note down the URLs of the sites printed in the footer, like http://radar.oreilly.com, http://ignite.oreilly.com, http://craftzine.com, http://makezine.com and http://hackszine.com. Now jump to the Google Custom Search Engine service and hit the "Create..." button. Name your search engine -- like "O'Reilly Search" -- and provide something for the other fields as well. Leave the "Search engine keywords" field empty, but in the "Sites to search" field, enter the URLs you assembled above one by one. Hit the Next, and then the Finish button, and you're done. You can now visit your Google Custom Search Engine's homepage (as listed in the dashboard) and enter a keyword as usual -- you'll see the results will be restricted to those hosted at the sites you previously provided.

10. Find online content to re-use

Do you want to find content on the web you can re-use on your blog, homepage, and other places? The Creative Commons license comes to the rescue. Creative Commons is an effort to bring a more relaxed copyright system to people in order to better share and re-use content (check out their homepage to see how you can license your content as Creative Commons).

To search for content using this license only, skip Google's normal search box and go right to their Advanced Search, as linked from the Google homepage. On that page, expand the part linked as "Date, usage rights ...". Select "free to use or share" or a similar license in the "Usage rights" field, and enter a keyword on top as usual. Now when you hit the Advanced Search button, you'll note how pages in the results are using the CC license; clicking on the respective license on a page will let you know what specifically you can do with this content, as there are different CC frameworks available.

From the Maker Shed:

Google Apps Hacks by Philipp Lenssen - all about Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Presentations, and more! Price: $29.99 Buy it in the Maker Shed

[This post originally appeared at Lifehacker]

June 30, 2008

Google Apps Hacks Slashdotted today!

Yay! Philipp Lenssen's Google Apps Hacks just got reviewed on Slashdot by JR Peck, who had some kind words for the book:

Well, this book is an excellent introduction to Google's many on-line applications. I use many already and still learned of a couple new ones when I read this book. It also does bring all that instruction into one place, and provides a very user-friendly style of instruction. There is also a very nice feature, 8 sections that take the reader "Beyond Google...". Each of these sections informs the reader about alternative software that provides similar functionality to the Google software described in the preceding chapter. This is really a great resource and an unexpected bonus for anyone who reads the book.

Slashdot | Google Apps Hacks

(In the review, JR raises a good point about the definition of a Hack. We use the definition "A non-obvious solution to an interesting problem", although JR leans toward some other definitions mentioned in the review).

From the Maker Shed:

Google Apps Hacks by Philipp Lenssen - all about Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Presentations, and more!
Price: $29.99
Buy it in the Maker Shed

June 23, 2008

How we made Google Apps Hacks

When Philipp Lenssen started writing Google Apps Hacks, we made up our minds that we'd develop the book in Google Docs. A while back, Philipp wrote up Part I of the story of how we made the book. From Writing a Book in Google Docs:

Currently, my editor Brian Jepson and I are collaboratively writing the book (tentatively titled) Google Office Hacks by O'Reilly using Google Docs. I wanted to outline the process we came up with, and maybe it's helpful for you too for certain needs.

I just wrote Part II of this story, and Philipp's posted it to the Google Blogoscoped blog. From From Google Docs to InDesign:

One of the tricky parts for us was getting the chapters into InDesign, the book layout program we use for our books and magazines. I know where we were coming from - Google Docs' HTML format - and where we were going to - InDesign's tagged text format.

From the Maker Shed:

Google Apps Hacks by Philipp Lenssen - all about Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Presentations, and more!
Price: $29.99
Buy it in the Maker Shed

February 28, 2008

Excel Hacks: Display a "please wait" message

Excel Hacks, 2nd Edition Cover

Here's Hack #111, Display a "Please Wait" Message, from David and Raina Hawley's Excel Hacks, 2nd Edition. Millions of users create and share Excel spreadsheets every day, but few go deeply enough to learn the techniques that will make their work much easier. Yet there are many ways to take advantage of Excel's sophisticated capabilities without spending hours on advanced study. In Excel Hacks, you'll learn how to:

Reduce workbook and worksheet frustration--manage how users interact with worksheets, find and highlight information, and deal with debris and corruption.
Analyze and manage data--extend and automate these features, moving beyond the limited tasks they were designed to perform.
Hack names--learn not only how to name cells and ranges, but also how to create names that adapt to the data in your spreadsheet.
Get the most out of PivotTables--avoid the problems that make them frustrating and learn how to extend them.
Create customized charts--tweak and combine Excel's built-in charting capabilities.
Hack formulas and functions--subjects range from moving formulas around to dealing with datatype issues to improving recalculation time.
Make the most of macros--including ways to manage them and use them to extend other features.
Use the enhanced capabilities of Microsoft Office 2007 to combine Excel with Word, Access, and Outlook.

Hack #111: Display a "Please Wait" Message - Link

Related:

Excel Hacks, 2nd Edition @ the Maker Store - Buy now
Excel Hacks, Second Edition--New from O'Reilly: Hook Up with Excel Expert Hackers - Press Release

February 27, 2008

Excel Hacks: Display negative time values

Excel Hacks, 2nd Edition Cover

Here's Hack #87, Display Negative Time Values, from David and Raina Hawley's Excel Hacks, 2nd Edition. Millions of users create and share Excel spreadsheets every day, but few go deeply enough to learn the techniques that will make their work much easier. Yet there are many ways to take advantage of Excel's sophisticated capabilities without spending hours on advanced study. In Excel Hacks, you'll learn how to:

Reduce workbook and worksheet frustration--manage how users interact with worksheets, find and highlight information, and deal with debris and corruption.
Analyze and manage data--extend and automate these features, moving beyond the limited tasks they were designed to perform.
Hack names--learn not only how to name cells and ranges, but also how to create names that adapt to the data in your spreadsheet.
Get the most out of PivotTables--avoid the problems that make them frustrating and learn how to extend them.
Create customized charts--tweak and combine Excel's built-in charting capabilities.
Hack formulas and functions--subjects range from moving formulas around to dealing with datatype issues to improving recalculation time.
Make the most of macros--including ways to manage them and use them to extend other features.
Use the enhanced capabilities of Microsoft Office 2007 to combine Excel with Word, Access, and Outlook.

Hack #87: Display Negative Time Values - Link

Related:

Excel Hacks, 2nd Edition @ the Maker Store - Buy now
Excel Hacks, Second Edition--New from O'Reilly: Hook Up with Excel Expert Hackers - Press Release

February 26, 2008

Excel Hacks: Highlight alternating rows and columns

Here's Hack #21, Highlight Every Other Row or Column, from David and Raina Hawley's Excel Hacks, 2nd Edition. Millions of users create and share Excel spreadsheets every day, but few go deeply enough to learn the techniques that will make their work much easier. Yet there are many ways to take advantage of Excel's sophisticated capabilities without spending hours on advanced study. In Excel Hacks, you'll learn how to:

Reduce workbook and worksheet frustration--manage how users interact with worksheets, find and highlight information, and deal with debris and corruption.
Analyze and manage data--extend and automate these features, moving beyond the limited tasks they were designed to perform.
Hack names--learn not only how to name cells and ranges, but also how to create names that adapt to the data in your spreadsheet.
Get the most out of PivotTables--avoid the problems that make them frustrating and learn how to extend them.
Create customized charts--tweak and combine Excel's built-in charting capabilities.
Hack formulas and functions--subjects range from moving formulas around to dealing with datatype issues to improving recalculation time.
Make the most of macros--including ways to manage them and use them to extend other features.
Use the enhanced capabilities of Microsoft Office 2007 to combine Excel with Word, Access, and Outlook.

Hack #21: Highlight Every Other Row or Column - Link

Related:

Excel Hacks, 2nd Edition @ the Maker Store - Buy now
Excel Hacks, Second Edition--New from O'Reilly: Hook Up with Excel Expert Hackers - Press Release

February 25, 2008

Make a remote connections to Windows Home Server

Windows Home Server may seem like an unusual piece of software, but it's worth playing around with if you are considering a home server for your Windows systems. You can get a 120-day evaluation version from Microsoft, and OEM versions are available from retailers like Newegg.com. Here's a Windows Home Server hack from Preston Gralla's Big Book of Windows Hacks. This one shows you how to connect remotely to your home server so you can keep an eye on things back at home. Hack #129 - Link

Related:

Big Book of Windows Hacks @ the Maker Store - Link
Big Book of Windows Hacks--New from Make: Tips & Tricks for Unlocking the Power of Your Windows PC - Link
Hack #156 from Big Book of Windows Hacks: strip down your Windows installation - Link
Big Book of Windows Hacks #16: a grab bag of Vista interface hacks - Link

Excel Hacks: Reduce workbook bloat

Here's Hack #15, Reduce Workbook Bloat, from David and Raina Hawley's Excel Hacks, 2nd Edition. Millions of users create and share Excel spreadsheets every day, but few go deeply enough to learn the techniques that will make their work much easier. Yet there are many ways to take advantage of Excel's sophisticated capabilities without spending hours on advanced study. In Excel Hacks, you'll learn how to:

Reduce workbook and worksheet frustration--manage how users interact with worksheets, find and highlight information, and deal with debris and corruption.
Analyze and manage data--extend and automate these features, moving beyond the limited tasks they were designed to perform.
Hack names--learn not only how to name cells and ranges, but also how to create names that adapt to the data in your spreadsheet.
Get the most out of PivotTables--avoid the problems that make them frustrating and learn how to extend them.
Create customized charts--tweak and combine Excel's built-in charting capabilities.
Hack formulas and functions--subjects range from moving formulas around to dealing with datatype issues to improving recalculation time.
Make the most of macros--including ways to manage them and use them to extend other features.
Use the enhanced capabilities of Microsoft Office 2007 to combine Excel with Word, Access, and Outlook.

Hack #15: Reduce Workbook Bloat - Link

Related:

Excel Hacks, 2nd Edition @ the Maker Store - Buy now
Excel Hacks, Second Edition--New from O'Reilly: Hook Up with Excel Expert Hackers - Press Release

February 22, 2008

Knoppix Hacks: Install Windows patches securely

Knoppix Hacks, 2nd Edition Cover

Here's Hack #94, Download Windows Patches Securely, from Kyle Rankin's Knoppix Hacks, 2nd Edition. Knoppix Hacks offers a collection of tips and techniques for using the enormous amount of software Knoppix offers--not just to work and play, but also to troubleshoot, repair, upgrade, and disinfect your system without having to install a thing. The book includes scores of hacks covering both the standard Knoppix live CD and the feature-rich DVD "Maxi" distribution (included with this book). In this book, you'll learn how to:

Investigate features of the KDE desktop and its Internet applications
Save settings and data between reboots with persistent storage
Use Knoppix as a system administration multitool to replace failed servers and more
Use the CD/DVD as a rescue disc to repair filesystems or a system that won't boot
Rescue Windows systems with Knoppix to back up files and settings, hack the registry, and more
Explore other live CDs based on Knoppix
Use Knoppix to automatically detect and configure hardware
Remaster Knoppix to include favorite software and custom branding

Hack #94: Download Windows Patches Securely - Link

Related:

Knoppix Hacks, 2nd Edition @ the Maker Store - Buy now
Knoppix Hacks, Second Edition--New from O'Reilly Media: Using the Linux Live CD to Hack, Repair, and Enjoy Your PC - Press Release

February 21, 2008

Knoppix Hacks: Wipe a hard drive

Here's Hack #59, Wipe a Hard Drive, from Kyle Rankin's Knoppix Hacks, 2nd Edition. Knoppix Hacks offers a collection of tips and techniques for using the enormous amount of software Knoppix offers--not just to work and play, but also to troubleshoot, repair, upgrade, and disinfect your system without having to install a thing. The book includes scores of hacks covering both the standard Knoppix live CD and the feature-rich DVD "Maxi" distribution (included with this book). In this book, you'll learn how to:

Investigate features of the KDE desktop and its Internet applications
Save settings and data between reboots with persistent storage
Use Knoppix as a system administration multitool to replace failed servers and more
Use the CD/DVD as a rescue disc to repair filesystems or a system that won't boot
Rescue Windows systems with Knoppix to back up files and settings, hack the registry, and more
Explore other live CDs based on Knoppix
Use Knoppix to automatically detect and configure hardware
Remaster Knoppix to include favorite software and custom branding

Hack #59: Wipe a Hard Drive - Link

Related:

Knoppix Hacks, 2nd Edition @ the Maker Store - Buy now
Knoppix Hacks, Second Edition--New from O'Reilly Media: Using the Linux Live CD to Hack, Repair, and Enjoy Your PC - Press Release

February 20, 2008

Knoppix Hacks: Install multimedia codecs

Here's Hack #39, Install Multimedia Codecs, from Kyle Rankin's Knoppix Hacks, 2nd Edition. Knoppix Hacks offers a collection of tips and techniques for using the enormous amount of software Knoppix offers--not just to work and play, but also to troubleshoot, repair, upgrade, and disinfect your system without having to install a thing. The book includes scores of hacks covering both the standard Knoppix live CD and the feature-rich DVD "Maxi" distribution (included with this book). In this book, you'll learn how to:

Investigate features of the KDE desktop and its Internet applications
Save settings and data between reboots with persistent storage
Use Knoppix as a system administration multitool to replace failed servers and more
Use the CD/DVD as a rescue disc to repair filesystems or a system that won't boot
Rescue Windows systems with Knoppix to back up files and settings, hack the registry, and more
Explore other live CDs based on Knoppix
Use Knoppix to automatically detect and configure hardware
Remaster Knoppix to include favorite software and custom branding

Hack #39: Install Multimedia Codecs - Link

Related:

Knoppix Hacks, 2nd Edition @ the Maker Store - Buy now
Knoppix Hacks, Second Edition--New from O'Reilly Media: Using the Linux Live CD to Hack, Repair, and Enjoy Your PC - Press Release

February 19, 2008

Knoppix Hacks: Rock out with Knoppix multimedia

Here's Hack #18, Rock Out with Knoppix Multimedia, from Kyle Rankin's Knoppix Hacks, 2nd Edition. Knoppix Hacks offers a collection of tips and techniques for using the enormous amount of software Knoppix offers--not just to work and play, but also to troubleshoot, repair, upgrade, and disinfect your system without having to install a thing. The book includes scores of hacks covering both the standard Knoppix live CD and the feature-rich DVD "Maxi" distribution (included with this book). In this book, you'll learn how to:

Investigate features of the KDE desktop and its Internet applications
Save settings and data between reboots with persistent storage
Use Knoppix as a system administration multitool to replace failed servers and more
Use the CD/DVD as a rescue disc to repair filesystems or a system that won't boot
Rescue Windows systems with Knoppix to back up files and settings, hack the registry, and more
Explore other live CDs based on Knoppix
Use Knoppix to automatically detect and configure hardware
Remaster Knoppix to include favorite software and custom branding

Hack #18: Rock Out with Knoppix Multimedia - Link

Related:

Knoppix Hacks, 2nd Edition @ the Maker Store - Buy now
Knoppix Hacks, Second Edition--New from O'Reilly Media: Using the Linux Live CD to Hack, Repair, and Enjoy Your PC - Press Release