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Google IO sessions in Google Calendar-compatible CSV

Here you go, everyone. googleio.csv, 56k

  1. Open Google Calendar
  2. Add a new calendar if you want the sessions in a separate calendar, then go back to your main Google Calendar display
  3. Click the "Add" link at the bottom left, the one with the down-arrow icon, select "import calendar" from the submenu
  4. Select the file from your local computer, and choose the calendar you wish to import into.

Here's the other post I wrote a few days ago with some auto-generated CSV's you can use to sort/scan for your favorite sessions.

See you at Google IO!

   

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In-line upgrading to Ubuntu 11.04 on my workstation at the office.

I love Debian's in-line upgrades, especially with how seamless Canonical has made it within Ubuntu. Still, I have to question the speed of their CDN when downloading 1800 packages is going to take 8 hours. Comcast and Speedtest.net have verified we have 10Mbit-15Mbit connectivity, so why all the slowness?

One of my favorite features about World of Warcraft was the bittorrent client in their upgrade/installer software, allowing you to download patches in a fraction of the time. I don't understand why Ubuntu's installer can't parallelize the download process to use more of my available bandwidth by downloading from other sources.

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Google IO Session dates/times (auto-generated!)

I saw a Twitter message this morning:

@jeffthms: Session times and locations are hidden, just view the source of the session page to see them - http://bit.ly/gAkyah #io2011

... which is correct. View the source, look at the 'noscript' tag for where the div tags are rendered, and voila, you see the day/time/room of every session.

So after some quick parsing during a coffee break this afternoon, here's a CSV file for everyone. Sort it however you want.


Update: April 28, 9am
The CSV file is now auto-generated when you click the link below, but only if I can scrape the dates/times from the Google IO "Sessions" page. If scraping fails, you'll get an old copy.

download: google io session schedule (google.csv, ~48kb)

 

Update: April 28, 6pm
Google released a public schedule today, but their schedule doesn't specify rooms, or 'level' (101, 201, 301) of the sessions, so I reworked my scraper to build a better schedule.

download: google io session grid by track/level/times (google2.csv, ~8kb)
 
 

   

Posted in misc, mobile, webdev.

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Dare to Compare: Cloud Hosting vs Dedicated Hosting

My buddy Subash re-tweeted an article he read about the real cost of cloud hosting. While there's nothing too surprising in the article when comparing basic hardware and data center costs to running on Amazon's EC2 platform, I'm curious how well you could compare those costs to Google App Engine. Granted, there are more question marks when planning to use (or move to) App Engine for a web application, and that's partly why I'm headed to Google IO to learn more and maybe chat with the team. The fact that your app can scale "automagically" is both fascinating and scary to me, especially when (as far as I can tell) you are not notified of scaling, it just happens for you. As the DevOps guy at my full time job, and managing our own EC2 clusters, it makes me all that more curious to figure out what it would take to move our entire infrastructure/code to Python and host it with G.A.E. to see what the costs would be. My buddy Jorge has rebuilt an online store and inventory system on App Engine plus using Amazon's "Route 53" for DNS service, and he says he has yet to pay a dime to Google for any of the traffic or bandwidth.

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Upgraded my wife to a Sprint Epic 4G this morning

My poor wife. Not only does she have to deal with me as a husband, she's got a 2.5yr old boy who loves dumping baby powder on everything at 7am when I'm trying to get ready for work and drop him off at day care, plus a newborn baby boy who some days won't let her put him down. On top of all of this, she has to deal with T-Mobile.

Let me back up a little.

I like T-Mobile. Let's make that clear. Their service is decent, call quality is good, and their Android phone selection is pretty great. And the fact that their spokeswoman, Carly, is also Canadian, y'know, just icing on the cake.

What they DON'T do well, however, is handle customer service when it comes to insurance.

Backing up a little more: in early 2010, my wife and I switched from AT&T to T-Mobile after several years of AT&T "service". Or, as some might call it, "serv..hello? hello?" I got the HTC Nexus One as my first Android device, and my wife got a Motorola Cliq because she needs a physical keyboard on her phone. Over the years, we've both been using Google services more and more, and the idea of sharing a calendar directly on our phones was extremely appealing. Unfortunately (for her), the Cliq was already close to end of life (EOL) but T-Mobile never told her that. They also sold her a $5/month insurance policy against loss/damage. A month later, she needed to get her Cliq replaced because the touch screen wasn't responsive. A few months later, she lost it, and T-Mobile told her to go through the insurance group, Assurion, to get a replacement. Assurion sent her a refurbished model with a broken keyboard. They replaced *that* one with one with another unresponsive touch screen. Finally, they had one that sorta-kinda worked, but the Android 2.1 update was just coming out and then her newest replacement phone started having serious lag/responsiveness issues.

We called T-Mobile, who told us that because THEY hadn't replaced the phones, they could only exchange the phone at a store for another refurbished unit, and that they'd have to replace it in-store three times within 90 days to warranty getting an entirely different phone, but that they got to choose the model and couldn't guarantee it would have a keyboard. Or even be an Android phone. We tried in vain to argue with the customer service rep about how Assurion was sending out bad replacements, and they told us they couldn't do anything about that, and the replacement phones given through Assurion didn't count towards T-Mobiles 3-in-90-days replacement guarantee.

So why the heck were we paying T-Mobile $5 a month for insurance if they weren't counting those replacements?!

Bewildered, we gave up trying to argue our point. I tried to convince my wife at Christmas to let me get her a new phone. I had already written a review for Sprint's Epic 4G for AndroidPolice.com in August 2010, but she didn't want to spend the money at Christmas. Thankfully, Sprint ran a special through March and April this year where porting your number to Sprint with a new contract would give you a $125 credit to offset any ETF fee. Since her ETF with T-Mobile after one year was now only $100, we actually came out money ahead in that regard. So, we got her the Epic 4G, and she loves the AMOLED screen and the bigger keyboard. Now if we could only get Froyo/Gingerbread on there for her without rooting it and going to CM 7...

Update: April 27: Speculation is that since Sprint is launching their Nexus S 4G on Mother's Day, May 8th, and Google IO is on the 10th, that maybe Google will be giving away the Nexus S 4G at IO2011. If that's the case, I might offload my T-Mobile phone, too, and switch to Sprint. If that IS the giveaway, and if it comes with 30 days of free service like the giveaways last year, it'll give me some time to see whether the Sprint version has better coverage than T-Mobile at home and office.

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