Archive for 2011

Epic google error message fail

I just spent a day without being able to send email because I enabled two factor authentication on my work account. That and a complicated gmail setup that apparently appeals to no one else ;)

I forward all my mail from my work, google apps account into my personal gmail account so that all my email is consolidated for reading, filtering, etc. I then use the “Send mail as” functionality to email from my work account. Gmail even allows you to configure alternate SMTP information so that when I send from my work account people don't get a "Sent on behalf of..." in their Outlook.

Well, when I turned on the new two factor authentication for my work email account the smtp password stopped working and this all broke...silently.

No errors when I sent the email, no errors on the SMTP configuration page and worst: all my emails made it successfully into the "sent” folder!

I finally just guessed what must be happening and fixed it.

Nice.

Connecting to an untrusted certificate in java

Dan 3:38 PM

I was getting errors(unable to find valid certification path to requested target) in Alfresco trying to connect to LDAP over ssl using an untrusted certificate and found a great hint on the interwebs that I thought I'd share.

Most of the hits on google mention this post: http://blogs.sun.com/gc/entry/unable_to_find_valid_certification

My only criticism of that article is that it only minimally addresses how to actually use the fixed keystore. I downloaded their source and hacked it up a little change the name of the certificate store from "jssecacerts" into "cacert" which is the default certificate store for all java programs. My goal was to fix the certificate store for the entire machine.

To install an untrusted certificate into your keystore the process is like this:

Help improve the Kindle reading ecosystem.

Dan 9:12 AM

I sent this as an email to kindle-feedback but thought I would share it with the interwebs as well. Let me be clear that I am absolutely in love with my Kindle. I used to not particularly enjoy reading but the kindle has changed my opinion in two short weeks. With that said my major sadness about it was access to personal content. Hence this letter:

Dear Amazon,

Please improve the reading ecosystem represented by the kindle device, and the plethora of applications that also represent "kindle devices" e.g. the iphone, ipad, web, etc. Right now these other devices are treated like second class citizens because there is no way to get personal content onto them and to synchronize the reading of the content.

This hurts users who want to use their kindles as "reading devices" vs. "buying from amazon's bookstores" device.

One idea on how to improve this is to give access to a certain amount of disk space at Amazon, maybe 1 gb (per google docs) for free users and more for people that have bought kindles or have purchased books (maybe there is even a reward program, the more money you spend with Amazon, the more personal disk space you get). This space could be used to store personal documents that then appear in the "archived" section of people's kindles. Then you could add synchronization for: latest location, bookmarks, annotation. Now I can read documents i'm currently working on, review design specifications, etc. All on my kindle.

This changes my kindle from a device I use for an hour a day at home before bed into my preferred reading device at work, at home and on the road.

Thanks for a fantastic device and feel free to contact me,

--dan