Matt Silverman

Just read about this new feature for Yelp’s iPhone application.  After relentlessly shaking my iPhone with no sign of the new feature, I deleted the App and then reinstalled it from the AppStore.  After shaking 3 times, like magic, the new augmented reality feature was born.  Follow these instructions if you have an iPhone 3Gs.

1.  Delete your current Yelp Application (if you have it)

2.  Download the Yelp application from the AppStore

3.  Go to the main yelp results page on the Yelp App (after selecting that you do not have a Yelp account, or logging in)

4.  Shake your iPhone three times and you will see this:

5.  Click the Monocle button at the top right, and prepare to have your mind blown:

Indoors it does not work so well, but the cool factor makes it well worth the install.

Edit 9/7/09: Use this link to receive $25 free from Lending Club when you sign up.

Microloans are all the rage now.  With my “high-yield” savings account getting around 1.4% interest as of date, I needed something with a little more oomph.  I had some success with Prosper (despite 2 of my 12 notes defaulting), and shortly after Prosper entered its “quiet period” I got into Lending Club.

The interface of Lending Club is clean, and because you can invest as little as $25 in a loan, they make it very easy to help hedge your risk by diversifying into many different small loans.  I only put a little money in to experiment, but so far it has resulted in impressive results:

Here are the notes I have invested in, with some details obscured for privacy:

Transferring in funds in and out of Lending Club has proven to be relatively painless, and I plan to continue small investments to see how my strategy works.  No defaults as of yet, but it is still early.  My first defaults did not show up in Prosper for at least a few months.

Anyone else have any success stories with Micro Loan sites?

Edit 9/7/09: Use this link to receive $25 free from Lending Club when you sign up.

After having many headaches getting a LAMP environment running on Windows Vista, many limitations were soon reached, and I decided to set up a local Linux development server.  Keep in mind, I had zero experience configuring Linux, so it came with its fair share of roadblocks.  Once it was up and running, however, I realized it was one of the best decisions I ever made.  Here are the parts I used:

• MSI Barebones Case (includes case, power supply, Intel Atom 1.6ghz processor, motherboard, LAN) – ~$135
• 1GB of ram (200 PIN) – ~$16
• 160GB WD SATA Hard Drive – ~$40
• Samsung DVD Burner – $27 (optional, could use any old CD/DVD drive, or install OS from USB key)
• CentOS 5 – free (or any other flavor of Linux)

I am still tied to Windows Vista for my environment at work, so I needed a way to edit my PHP code, and view live web pages on Vista (testing in Firefox, IE, Safari).  I realize this testing could all be done via VirtualBox with avoiding Windows altogether, but as mentioned, I need a Windows machine at work (for now).

I did the initial configuration of the server using a faithful KVM switch.   After the nitty gritty was done, I set up Samba to allow a networked drive in Windows that mapped to the /var/www/html directory on my Linux  server.

After Samba was set-up, even a Linux novice like myself was able to do the remainder of the PHP/MySQL/Apache set-up using an SSH client on my Windows machine.  Using my favorite code editor, I was then able to start development, saving onto my mapped network drive, thus completing my local development environment.

I recently came across an interesting tutorial on how to download FireFox using only the command prompt on Windows XP or Windows Vista, and I have made it a little more user friendly.  This may come in handy in a variety of different situations, or it may just be used in an attempt to convince your friends that you are a hacker. In the quick tutorial below, please note that when I use quotes, it indicates exactly what you should type in, but do not type in the quotes themselves unless explicitly noted.

1. Go to Start > Run > “cmd” and hit OK. This will load the command prompt.
2. type “ftp” and hit enter.
3. type “open releases.mozilla.org” and hit enter.
4. It will ask for a username, type “anonymous” and hit enter.
5. It will then ask for a password, type “anonymous” and hit enter.
6. Open the folder with the latest Windows release of Firefox by typing in:
   “cd pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/latest/win32/en-US” and then enter.
7. View the contents of the current directory by typing in “ls” and then enter.
8. Switch to binary file mode by typing in “type image” and then hit enter.
9. Choose the directory to download firefox to by typing “lcd C:\” (Typing this will save it right to the root directory of the C: Drive.
10. When you typed in “ls” from step 7, it should have listed a .exe file for you.  As of writing the latest version is Firefox Setup 3.0.11.exe.  In this case, we will type in: get “Firefox Setup 3.0.11.exe” (type in the quotes)
11. Now go check in your c:/ drive, and you should see the .exe file downloaded.
12. Type “bye” to exit the FTP mode, and then type “exit” to close out of the Command Prompt.

Even with the new Google Gears Offline Gmail function in Google Labs, I still wanted to have a non-google-related backup of my Gmail account.  After researching the various options, I found that the easiest way to do so is to set up an old fashioned POP3 account in Mozilla Thunderbird, and let it sit and send/receive for a a few days.  Thunderbird makes it sickeningly easy to set up Gmail, as it includes all of the POP3 Gmail set-up information.  No need to worry about enabling SSL and TLS ports.  Ready to get started?

1. Download Mozilla Thunderbird here.

2. Install Thunderbird using the default settings

3. Open Thunderbird, and close out of any Wizard that may open.

4.  Go to Tools > Account Settings.  Then click the “add account” button at the bottom right.

5.  Select “Gmail” and hit next.

6.  Type in your name, and the username of your GMail account, and hit Next.  Hit Finish on the following screen.

7.  You should not be back in the “Account Settings” Window.  Click on “Server Settings” under your Gmail Account.  Change “Check for new messages” from the default setting of 10 Minutes, to something shorter, like 3 minutes.

8.  Hit OK, and you should be in the main inbox for Thunderbird.  Now, hit “Get Mail” or use the shortcut CTRL-Shift-T to start your messages downloading from Gmail.

9.  Messages download in batches of around 50 to 100 messages per time.  For large inboxes, it may take several days to download all of your messages.

10.  I noticed a lot of older duplicate messages in my inbox, so I downloaded the handy Remove Duplicate Messages Add-on for Thunderbird.

11.  After installing the Remove Duplicate Messages Add-on from Step 10.  Right click on your Gmail Inbox, and select “Remove Duplicate Messages.”

12.  In the next window, all of your duplicate messages will pop up.  All you need to press is the “Delete Selected” button, which will delete all of your duplicate messages, but leave the original ones intact.