A few weeks after I got my Palm Pre my All Inboxes mailbox counter got out of sync. If I had any unread mail it would show +5 more than what I had. I think this occurred when I removed an account or had a crash or something. I’ve forgotten the details. Anyway, it was bugging the hell out of me. So today I decided to track it down. To my surprise it wasn’t too hard to figure out.

Initially I tried different things; like removing all the email accounts, rebooting the phone, and various other attempts to “trick” the Pre into resetting the unread counter for All Inboxes. And please keep in mind that the simplest way to solve this problem (for most people) will be to reset the Palm Pre to its factory settings. I haven’t tried a reset, but I’m pretty sure it will do the trick. For me though, I knew the unread counter was just a field in a record in a database somewhere on the Pre. And updating that field was a lot more fun than a reset would have been. Below I describe how I fixed the inbox counter.

The process involves rooting your Pre in order to get access to the SQLite database that most of the Pre’s data is stored on. Although rooting is fairly straight forward and this fix is only a few commands on a rooted Pre, I do not encourage anyone to root their phone and risk messing something up. If you don’t know what you are doing and don’t feel comfortable turning your Palm Pre into a paper weight in the spirit of adventure, you might want to stop reading this article.

For everyone else, let the fun begin.

1. First, like I said, you need to root your Palm Pre.
2. Next, from the root prompt enter the Pre’s relevant SQLite database with this command:

   sqlite3 /var/luna/data/dbdata/PalmDatabase.db3

3. Take a peek at the record that holds the unread message counter for All Inboxes:

   SELECT * FROM com_palm_accounts_ActiveRecordFolder WHERE syncKey='_All_Inboxes_';

   You’ll see something like this:

   |1|5|7|45079976738820|EMAIL|_All_Inboxes_|0|-9999991||All inboxes|0|0|48378511622153|44|4182610||||||0|0|0|0|0|All inboxes||||||||||||||||

   For those who care, you can see the details of the com_palm_accounts_ActiveRecordFolder table by running:

   .schema com_palm_accounts_ActiveRecordFolder

   That’s how I learned about the syncKey and the unreadCount used below.

4. Now let’s update the counter:

   UPDATE com_palm_accounts_ActiveRecordFolder SET unreadCount=1 WHERE syncKey='_All_Inboxes_';

   In the above example I set unreadCount=1 because I had one unread mail across all my email accounts. You’ll probably want to change the number to your actual unread count. At this point you should be able to look at your Pre and see that the counter is fixed.

5. Exit SQLite:

   .exit

That’s it. I restarted my Pre after doing this, but it probably isn’t necessary.

I hope this proves useful to someone/anyone. If you have any comments or need some help let me know. I’m really enjoying webOS and plan to learn more.

Note: If you happen to be a customer, relative, etc and are reading this, don’t take offense. Trust me, if you were trying to walk me through stuff you do at work every day, you’d be saying “WTF, this guy is an idiot” too.

It usually turns out that they know more about the web than that first response reveals. Their intelligence isn’t the problem. There is a deeper cause. And a lot of times I can rephrase and say “open Internet Explorer”. Or amazingly, if they don’t know what IE is either, I can almost always get away with telling them to “get on the internet” or “go to Google” (or Yahoo, etc).

The problem I think is that the web browser is such an integral part of a web users every day experience. It’s like a part of the operating system to them. It’s just there. And that creates another problem. Since many users don’t even know what a web browser is, how can they be expected to know “which” web browser to use. Or to keep it updated.

I guess as web developers, IT consultants, or whatever you call yourself, it is our job to educate the masses. We have to show them that there are choices, and make them aware enough to hopefully keep it up to date.

Below I describe three ways that can help web users understand web browsers and the choices they have.

So what is a web browser, really?

Sometimes you just need to explain to the user what a web browser is. Fortunately for us, Google has an excellent video that does just that.

Which web browser should they use?

Frequently when we interact with users, we like to give them a choice of which browser to use. Sure we have our preferences, but we shouldn’t force it on them. And most current browsers are great compared to the demon of yesterday. We typically provide the user with the following choices:

Mozilla Firefox

Google Chrome

Internet Explorer 8

Can you guide the user to a better web browser?

Yes, you can. If you develop sites that are dependent on having current web browser technology, consider prompting the user if you detect an older or unsupported browser. Let them know that the site may not operate correctly, or block them completely if needed. Some modern AJAX interfaces can really screw up in unsupported browsers. So, it is better to be safe; know which browser is being used.

Here are some related resources that can help you detect and mitigate cross browser issues.

Browser Detection and Cross Browser Support – in depth technical details of various detection methods

BrowserCam – test your website in multiple browsers

DualTech has a page devoted to helping users understand what a web browser is in the hopes that they will use a current one.

Update 3/4/2010: Google has a new Google Wave notification by email feature that you should check out. Other tools are still listed below in case email isn’t your thing.

Google Wave Notification – Firefox add-on

Google Wave Notification – Chrome add-on

Waveboard – Google Wave Client for iPhone and Mac

Google searches indicate that there may be a Windows Desktop notifier in the works, but I can’t confirm. If you know of any others please comment and I’ll add them to the list.

Adding it in System > Preferences > Startup Applications doesn’t properly load it into the panel, which confuses it and causes it to constantly pop back up when you try minimize it. This was driving me crazy. What’s more, when shutting down or rebooting, Jungle Disk doesn’t cleanly exit and leaves a few session files laying around. This causes an error about multiple copies running when you try to run it on boot.

Fortunately I was able to work around these quirks. I’m happy to report that Jungle Disk is loading and working as expected now. Here is what I did:

1. Put the following into a text file:

   #!/bin/bash
   if [ -f ~/.junglediskworkgroupinstance ]
   then
   rm ~/.junglediskworkgroupinstance;
   fi
   if [ -f ~/.com.jungledisk.workgroupservice.status ]
   then
   rm ~/.com.jungledisk.workgroupservice.status;
   fi
   sleep 30;
   /usr/local/bin/junglediskworkgroup;
   

2. Make the file executable with “chmod 755 /path/to/file” or something similar.
3. Add the new command to System > Preferences > Startup Applications.

You might change the sleep period for more or less time as needed. 30 seems to work well for me. And I’m sure there are better ways to handle this. If you have a any recommendations, let me know.

vboxmanage setextradata <vmname> “VBoxInternal/Devices/VMMDev/0/Config/GetHostTimeDisabled” “1″

Just replace <vmname> with the name of your guest. On Windows hosts, you’ll need to change the command to “VBoxManage”.

You will most likely want to set the client to sync with a time server after this. On Windows clients, just double click on the time and go to the Internet Time tab. Check the box and choose time.nist.gov (better reliability).

I needed to solve this because QuickBooks Pro 2000 complains about the system time being changed continuously while in multi-user mode.

I found this simple VirtualBox time sync tip in a post titled Synchronize a Virtualized Domain Controller with External Time Servers.

1. Open a terminal and enter

   sudo gedit /etc/synergy.conf

2. Add an options section with keystroke lines something like this

   section: options
   keystroke(Alt+1) = switchToScreen(comp1)
   keystroke(Alt+2) = switchToScreen(comp2)
   end
   

3. Save the file and exit
4. Restart Synergy (reboot if you don’t know how to restart otherwise)

You will need to replace “comp1″ and “comp2″ with your computer names or aliases. These should be listed in the screens section of your synergy.conf. And of course, if you have more than 2 screens, just add more keystroke lines.

You can learn more about Synergy’s options on the Synergy configuration page.

Update July 3, 2010 – I added client installation instructions and headings that hopefully will clarify a few points.

For an Ubuntu Server:

1. Install Synergy if you haven’t already
   • Frontend applications like QuickSynergy will install Synergy for you
   • Otherwise, you can go to System > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager, and search for “synergy”
2. Create your synergy config file
   • If you are using QuickSynergy, you can copy an existing config from ~/.quicksynergy/synergy.conf
   • If you are using a different frontend, look around for their synergy.conf
   • Or, you can build the synergy configuration file from scratch
3. Store the synergy config in /etc/synergy.conf
   • From a terminal type sudo gedit /etc/synergy.conf
4. Set synergy to run on boot
   • Go to System > Preferences > Startup Applications
   • Add Synergy, entering /usr/bin/synergys (note the s on the end) for the command
   • Reboot to test it out

For an Ubuntu client

1. Install Synergy if you haven’t already (as in step 1 above)
2. Make sure the Synergy server is up and running. You can ping it’s hostname or ip address
3. Set synergy to run on boot
   • Go to System > Preferences > Startup Applications
   • Add Synergy, entering /usr/bin/synergyc <server>
     • note the c on the end of the command
     • <server> is the hostname or IP address you were able to ping in step 2
   • Reboot to test it out

I’m sure there are many other ways to accomplish this. If you are interested in learning more about Synergy, the Synergy-plus project maintains an excellent list of Synergy Related Projects.

Over the last 3 weeks we’ve been working hard in our secret lab. We’ve been pouring in extra time and effort on a tool that will help revolutionize the way people get things done. Although our new application is still a work in progress, we just couldn’t wait any longer to start sharing our creation.

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You can grab the plugin using git or by zip from the SmartRedirect Plugin project page on GitHub.

All you need to do is extract the file and drop the smart_redirect folder into your app/plugins directory. After that, add SmartRedirect.AutoReturn to your components list. Something like this:

var $components = array('SmartRedirect.AutoReturn');

Now when you add, edit, or delete records in your application, you’ll be returned to the page you were on before.

The plugin does use a custom view, so may conflict with other plugins such as Debug Kit.

http://book.cakephp.org/view/97/Elements

Sometimes though you want to reuse a regular controller view without moving the code to an element. In fact, if the view code is specific to the controller, it is good practice to keep it in the controller view.

Fortunately this is fairly simple. Just create the view and then reference it like this:

<?php echo $this->element('../projects/menu'); ?>

In the example above, I’m accessing the following file: /views/projects/menu.ctp

As always, the element will have access to all existing view variables (the ones typically passed using $this->set()).