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PriceBlink Price Comparison Comes to iPad

Nov 19

Check out the video here:

and you can install PriceBlink for iPad by going here:

http://www.priceblink.com/priceblink-for-ipad

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Deleting Local Storage for Chrome Extensions

Nov 14

While testing our latest version of PriceBlink price comparison extension for Google Chrome we needed a way to delete our local storage. It’s not a problem to delete local storage programmatically, but we wanted to test a fresh install where the local storage object didn’t exist yet. The easiest way that I’ve found to do this is by manually deleting the storage file and restarting Chrome.

For Mac users the local storage file can be found in:

/Users/YOUR_USERNAME/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Local Storage

Within that folder you’ll see a bunch of files. To locate the file you want to delete you’ll need to find your extension’s unique identifier. This can be done by opening the Extensions tab in Chrome. For Mac users this is under Window > Extensions. Once you locate your extension simply click the arrow icon next to the extension name to expand details. You’ll notice an ID field that contains the extensions’s unique identifier. Now that you have the identifier you should be able to locate the local storage file in the folder I listed above. It will be of the format:

chrome-extension_[EXTENSION_ID_GOES_HERE]_0.localstorage

Simply delete this file and restart Chrome. The first time your extension reads from local storage you should see that your items are undefined and the first time you write to local storage the file will be created.

I know this isn’t the most elegant way to solve the problem so if you have any better alternatives then please post in the comments below.

Also, clearing browsing data in Chrome’s preferences does not clear local storage objects for extensions. That’s a good thing.

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Installing MongoDB on Ubuntu Jaunty 9.04

Oct 30

I have a Ubuntu Jaunty VM on Slicehost where I wanted to install MongoDB. Unfortunately Jaunty reached EOL on October, 2010. Since I didn’t want to upgrade my Jaunty installation I found a way to install Mongo DB from source as described in this article:

http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Building+for+Linux#BuildingforLinux-Ubuntu9.04and9.10

To make this work you need to install several dependencies as described in the article above. You need to update your /etc/apt/source.list from:


deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jaunty main restricted universe
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jaunty main restricted universe

deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jaunty-updates main restricted universe
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jaunty-updates main restricted universe

deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jaunty-security main restricted universe
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jaunty-security main restricted universe

to:


deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jaunty main restricted universe
deb-src http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jaunty main restricted universe

deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jaunty-updates main restricted universe
deb-src http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jaunty-updates main restricted universe

deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jaunty-security main restricted universe
deb-src http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jaunty-security main restricted universe

Note the old-releases which tells Ubuntu to pull packages from the old repos. After making this update you need to run:

sudo apt-get update

and then you should be able to follow the MongoDB installation process above.

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Changing Your Home Directory Name in OS X Lion

Oct 30

I just purchased a new MacBook Pro and ran into a small hiccup with my user home directory in OS X Lion. When I setup my new account and used the same shortname as I had on my previous MBP. Using Migration Assistant I was not allowed to migrate my old user account since it had an identical name. In my case the path to the user’s home directory was /Users/db. So for Migration Assistant to properly migrate my data via Time Machine I had to give the new account a short name of db_old. Now I do a lot of work from the command line and seeing /Users/db_old in my path was a little disconcerting.

Initially I used Terminal to mv /Users/db_old to /Users/db but this called all sorts of problems with my apps not loading not to mention other hassles. After doing a bit of Googling I found out this was possible by following these steps:

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1428

The Caveat was that the link to “Enable Root User” in this article was not applicable for my setup. I’m not sure that will be your case, but if it is then be sure to reference this article:

http://www.macosliontips.com/tips/enable-root-account-in-mac-os-x-lion.html

After enabling the root user I was able to proceed with the steps in the Apple knowledge base article above. I created a new account with a short name of db (my original short name) and then deleted my old account with short name of db_old. When I rebooted and logged into the db account I verified that everything was working properly.

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Older Mozilla Firefox Builds

Oct 28

If you’re doing any sort of Firefox add-on development or just need an older version of Mozilla Firefox then here you go:

ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/

I recently needed Firefox 4.0 for testing an add-on and was able to use the link above to download it.

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