All posts by Peter Ridge

Peter is a product development and management professional whose career has spanned from computer hardware and software engineering to product packaging, print advertising and user experience design. He is a published author and has applied his skills to a variety of businesses from start up ventures to top-10 media companies.
Software

Custom Color Palette for Google AdSense Referrals Ads

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Google AdSense for Content and AdSense for Search allow you to create a custom color palette so that the ads can blend or contrast with your page’s color scheme. However, for some reason, the custom color palette can’t be selected for Referrals ads. So, I added the color definitions to the ad code manually.

  1. After creating the Referrals ad, copy and paste the ad code as you normally would. For example, your code might look like the following 
    <script type="text/javascript"><!--
google_ad_client = "pub-xxxxxxxxxxxxx";
google_ad_width = 250;
google_ad_height = 250;
google_ad_format = "250x250_as";
google_cpa_choice = "CAEadPE0aicm8BvfUaU";
//--></script>
<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js"></script>
  2. Next, add the color codes in the section where all the “google_ad_” variables are. Here’s the same example with the colors added: 
    <script type="text/javascript"><!--
google_ad_client = "pub-xxxxxxxxxxxxx";
google_ad_width = 250;
google_ad_height = 250;
google_ad_format = "250x250_as";
google_cpa_choice = "CAEadPE0aicm8BvfUaU";

/*** Custom colors ***/
google_color_border = "FFFFFF";
google_color_bg = "FFFFFF";
google_color_link = "336699";
google_color_text = "333333";
google_color_url = "336699";
//--></script>
<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js"></script>
  3. Edit the google_color_border (ad border), google_color_bg (background), google_color_link (link/ad title), google_color_text (ad description) and google_color_url (URL text below description) values to the desired colors.

Note that these color codes exist for Content and Search ads. I don’t know why the Referrals ad generator left them out. A person posted on the AdSense Help group that a few months ago, he/she was able to select a custom palette from the generator and asked why it no longer worked. There was no answer yet, so I did this workaround to make the Content and Referrals ads look the same.

Software

Thunderbird Run Now Filters Fail on Custom Headers in IMAP Messages

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After updating from Mozilla Thunderbird 1.5 to 2.0, I noticed that a manual filter that I had set up stopped working when I clicked the Run Now button. Today, I found a painless and effective workaround for it.

This problem occurs under the following conditions:

  1. The folder is on an IMAP server
  2. The mail filter contains one or more rules that match a custom header
  3. The filter is run manually by selecting “Run Filters on Folder” from the Tools menu or by going to the Message Filters dialog, selecting a folder from the “Run selected filters on” drop down list and then clicking the Run Now button

Note: Filtering on a custom header will work on incoming IMAP mail, just not when run manually on IMAP folders.

The reason the filter fails is that the filter functionality in Thunderbird 2.0 was changed to search the local cache instead of the server and the cache doesn’t contain custom header information, only the standard headers. This change was made because some IMAP servers either don’t have search capability or their implementation is broken.

So, in order to get the filter to work again, Thunderbird needs to have a local copy of all the message headers. Bug 184490, After-the-fact Filters on custom header (eg “User-Agent” or “Newsgroup”) won’t match for IMAP messages, documents this problem and David Bienvenu, in comment #50, gave a very nice workaround for it.

The workaround simply downloads all the messages with all the headers to the local repository for offline use. Hence, Thunderbird can now see all the custom headers and filter on them. To employ the workaround, simply do the following:

  1. Right-click on the folder you want to filter
  2. Select Properties
  3. Click on the Offline tab
  4. Select the “Select this folder for offline use” checkbox
  5. Click the Download Now button to make sure your local copy is up to date
  6. Click the OK button

Now, when you manually run your filter(s), they work! What a relief it was to find this.

Software

VirtualBox: Free Virtualization on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X

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Innotek released version 1.5.0 of VirtualBox, their open-source virtualization product, the other day. In addition to many fixes and improvements, this version includes seamless window virtualization when running Windows in Linux so you can have Windows applications running right beside Linux ones.

I guess you could call this the summer of virtualization with all the buzz about saving energy via server consolidation, running Windows in Mac OS X with Parallels Desktop and VMWare going public with extraordinary gusto. However, what if you want to get into the game without using closed source software or without spending a lot of money while having support for many platforms? That’s where VirtualBox comes in.

VirtualBox runs on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux and enables you to use a variety of guest operating systems in it including DOS, Windows, Unix, Linux, Solaris and OS/2. As I mentioned before, when running Windows inside VirtualBox on Linux, through seamless virtualization Windows applications will run right beside Linux ones on the Linux desktop. For other operating system combinations, the guest OS will still have its own desktop window like it did in VirtualBox 1.4.0.

If you’re currently running Linux, many distributions already have VirtualBox available for installation from their software repositories. For example, in Ubuntu, Kubuntu or Xubuntu, just run Synaptic or Aptitude and choose VirtualBox from the list of packages. Otherwise, you can get it from the VirtualBox download page.

Software

Google Earth’s Flight Simulator Easter Egg

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Just saw over at Mashable that Google hid a rudimentary flight simulator inside Google Earth. Pressing Ctrl+Alt+A (Windows) or Command+Option+A (Mac) opens a dialog window where you can select one of two aircraft, your starting location and whether or not you want to use a joystick (keyboard and mouse are also supported).

I had often thought it’d be nice to combine the open-source FlightGear Flight Simulator with the ground imagery of Google Earth/Maps. This is a step in the right direction but it’s hard to say if Google would ever go that far. It’d be nice, though.

Software

Getting Things Done (GTD) Online

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Trying to get things done while living in a digital world needs a digital solution. Web Worker Daily had a nice article today called, GTD for Bloggers: The Art of Stress-free Blogging. But it’s not limited to just bloggers. I found that I use some variation of many of these methods to manage my (mostly) paperless life, especially at work. No Daytimer, Moleskin or inked lists of tasks for me. It’s digital all the way, baby.