In the last post I’ve talked about moving files from SharePoint to Google Site,
what about a Mediawiki site?
how to export it and upload it?
I’ve already covered the uploading files to Google sites via the Google sites API,
you can use java or python to write a script to mass upload all your files and htmls to your new google site,
but first you need to export everything out of the Mediawiki site.

here is a working method to export your site, these are the steps:

1. install python
2. download the mw2html script
3. export the mediawiki site

so lets start :

Installing python

If you are working from a linux distro with yum its as easy as typing:
yum install python

for windows – you will need to download and install from the python site:
the main python download page for windows
or you can just grab the latest version for September 4 2011 Python 3.2.2
Download and install the msi package.

next step is to add the installation to the computer’s path,
in windows 7  open the start panel and type in the search panel:
“view advance system settings”

press the “Environment Variables”

in the System Variables section search for the “Path” line and choose edit:

now to the end of the line add the path of where you have installed the python,
for example I have installed it to  C:\Python27 , and so i will add at the end of the Path line this:
;C:\Python27
notice the “;”  - this separates between the items on the Path line.

Now if you will type “python -V” on your command line it will run the python binary and will show you your version

now that we have the python working lets move to the next step:

Download the mw2html script

you can find it here:

from Connelly Barnes blog

this script will crawl all over your media wiki site and will grab all the html files and all the attachments there.

Exporting the mediawiki site

usage:
url – URL of mediawiki page to convert to static HTML.
outdir – Output directory.

-f, –force – Overwrite existing files in outdir.
–no-flatten – Do not flatten directory structure.
–no-lower – Retain original case for output filenames and dirs.
–no-clean – Do not clean up filenames (clean replaces
non-alphanumeric chars with _, renames math thumbs).
–no-hack-skin – Do not modify skin CSS and HTML for looks.
–no-made-by – Suppress “generated by” comment in HTML source.
–no-move-href – Disable <movehref> tag. [1]
–no-remove-png – Retain external link PNG icons.
–no-remove-history – Retain image history and links to information.
-l, –left=a.html – Paste HTML fragment file into left sidebar.
-t, –top=a.html – Paste HTML fragment file into top horiz bar.
-b, –bottom=a.html – Paste HTML fragment file into footer horiz bar.
-i, –index=filename – Move given filename in outdir to index.html.

Example Usage:
mw2html http://127.0.0.1/mywiki/ out -f -i main_page.html -l sidebar.html

 Important note:

this script will crawl all over your wiki site, but it does ignore all the files that do not have a link to them,
all the  ”orphan” pages, to solve this issue, instead of pointing to the main page, you can run the mw2html script while pointing to the orphans page,
it will get all the regular files from your site and the Orphan pages.
the link looks like:

http://yourwikisite/wiki/index.php?title=Special:Lonelypages&limit=500&offset=0

now that you have a folder with all your wiki page, you can edit the content of the folder,
remove all the files staring with the word “image_”
remove all the un-needed js files,
and do internal changes in the html files like change the links pointing to the original wiki site and point them to the new Google site URL.

now you can use the Google sites API to upload all your html to your new site.

Technorati Tags: export, Google sites, Google sites API, mw2html, wikimedia

This move allows for a department to share an internal web site that has easy access from home as well with the regular office google account,
it also allows for better collaboration with other branches of the same company located far away – as it saves the need for an office VPN, or the need to connect to a server that is located in a branch in another country,
instead – everybody just connect to Google.

But what do we do if our files are already on the office internal SharePoint?

apparently – the migration processes from SharePoint to Google sites is not as hard ,
here are two working options.

Exporting from SharePoint

Connect to the SharePoint and browse to where you keep the files you wish to move,
choose  ”Actions –>  Open with windows explorer”

you will get and explorer folder listing all the shared files there,
at this point you can select all the folders  and copy them locally to your desktop or to a network share – if the size of the files is too large.

The only folder not to copy over is the “forms” folder – as it is a system folder and you do not need to move it too.

Uploading files to Google Sites

Here we have 2 options:

1. Use native Google Sites files upload option

   This option works well only if you have a very small number of files and folder to upload
   

    

2. Use Google Sites API

    The Google sites API  will allow you to upload multiple files and folders, 
   it support now two languages -

• Java
• Pythonand you can read some more about in the Official Google Enterprise Blog .
  The API allows you to:
• create new sites
• retrieve , create , change and delete pages
• upload and download attachments and files
• change sharing settings
• and manage templates

Technorati Tags: Google sites, Google sites API, SharePoint

The whole list is about 1 hour to watch.

You can view the Supply Chain Management as 1 playlist in this post.

Module 1: What is Supply Chain Management? [8:05]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mi1QBxVjZAw

Module 2: Buy It: Managing Supply [3:46]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYbtZ0x9_SA

Module 3: Make It: Manufacturing and Operations [4:23]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncli94xodm8

Module 4: Move It: Transportation and Logistics [3:45]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZpHiMTwOdM

Module 5: Sell it & Service It: Retail Considerations [3:39]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUO2EaJnb-w

Module 6: Supply Chain Integration [4:41]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_yMW2b0kNk

Module 7: Global Supply Chain Management [4:07]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuQ200JAViA

Module 8: Socially Responsible Supply Chain Management [4:33]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdbKvXh6sLU

Module 9: Business Processes [4:13]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUInjQvzIkE

Module 10: Measuring Performance [5:17]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4HPYYR5iLw

Module 11: Quality Management [3:20]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJNVrY_Z2NM

Module 12: Supply Chains and Information Technology [3:53]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXDvHgjRNDQ

Technorati Tags: inspiration, Management, Online Tools, Online Training

This Online tool can be found here:

A very Easy to use online stop watch for all your IT needs, including:

• limiting meeting sections (lets not talk about this subject more than 10 minutes)
• counting time to measure a time limited action (how much time it really took the switch to reboot)
• testing to see if an IT action was able to finish within the time limit set (DB switch should be completed in 5 minutes)

etc …

it has 2 useful modes:

• Stop Watch
• counter

both look like this:

but you setup the counter with this preliminary screen:



I love HBR articles – Harvard Business Review Web site is great, and full with interesting readings,
but I can’t afford buying them for 5$ each,
still they can be easily accessed with an easy to use pdf search engine,
here is a simple example:

Lets say I’ve stumbled over this nice article I wish to read:
“How Leaders Create and Use Networks” by Herminia Ibarra, Mark Hunter.

It looks nice enough and I want to go over it, but I don’t want to pay the 6.95$ HBR are asking for it,
a very simple way to find it would be to search for it in any given PDF search engine available, or even google engine itself.

For example:
Go to http://www.pdfsearchengine.org
and search for:

hbr  How Leaders Create and Use Networks

The First result will send you to:
http://www.tenseattle.org/resources/Documents/Networking-HBR-%2001-07.pdf

which includes the entire article in a PDF version ready for reading

Google search:

just write in the search panel the name of the article you are looking for and “filetype:pdf”
For example, in our case I will search for:
How Leaders Create and Use Networks filetype:pdf

from the results I got,
one option lead to http://www.sail.co.in/Growth_April_June_2007.pdf#page=101
which included a nice reading Article Digest for this HBR article

another option lead to http://www.brittenassociates.com/documents_articles/Leaders%20Creating%20Using%20Networks.pdf
which also included the full article in PDF ready for reading and typing.

Happy reading

Technorati Tags: Harvard Business Review, hbr, pdf search

From Wikipedia:

Visualization is any technique for creating images, diagrams, or animations to communicate a message.

Information graphics or infographics are graphic visual representations of information, data or knowledge. These graphics present complex information quickly and clearly^[1], such as in signs, maps, journalism, technical writing, and education.

These are techniques to deliver a large amount of data in a simple and quick way which will be easy to grasp the amounts of data involved.

The Concept seen above is the Microsoft’s Education Competencies representation,
It is showing the full set of skills a successful manger should hold,
The PDF can be found in Microsoft’s Education Competencies Website.
The Wheel lists all the different area a new manager should be trained for.

Periodic Table of Data Visualization

The Periodic Table of Data Visualization,
segments the different areas where data visualization has been efficient so far:

• Data
• Information
• Concept
• Strategy
• Metaphor
• Compound

Data Visualization collections

Some more good resources online about data visualization:

Smashing Magazine Data Visualization collection
A beautiful collection of modern approach to the subject, with many samples.

Gapminder Statistics Visualisation
The Gapminder stats tool can show you how your data changes inside a time frame

Creating your on Visualization Tools

Wheel-Like Data Visualization With MooWheel
MooWheel is a mootools based script which visualizes data and connections between items like a wheel.

TouchGraph google browser
free Java application to explore the connections between related websites

Technorati Tags: dashboards, Management, statistics

I’m always searching for better tools to do my work,
and today I have found this nice DNS online testing tool made with Ajax,
It’s quite nice and fast, and its good when you do not have a Linux distro at hand,
or have a problem with whois test from a proxied server.

The site offers:

• Live DNS test
• whois search
• IP whois
• HTTP headers

and more tools like it, very handy tool and works fast.

I do appreciate it when someone thinks of the GUI also and not just the functions in a tool.

Technorati Tags: DNS, Online Tools

Some people just know how to write better,
I’ve read this blogger – http://blog.cubeofm.com/
He doesn’t exactly talk about how to make money of the internet,
although he had mentioned he is making a nice sum of money out of a few internet based projects,
he does talk about some of the methods he uses.

One of these was discussed in this post: The subtleties in outsourcing using RentACoder
where he talks about what the site is offering, what kind of different coders are available there,
which is best for which project and how to best work with the site.

Another very good post – and judging by the amount of tweets the post is showing one of his best is
Your high IQ will kill your startup where he talks about skill vs. intelligence and explain in great writing,
why you need to keep practicing.

this touched a cord in me when thinking about my early school days and how easily being good at everything turned arround on me when i had to really sit down and studying – which i never actually done before,
and then my grades suffered.
this post also connected well to the book i’ve just read – Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell
where he also talk s about the importance of training, and how no wonder talent just got there by strolling,
but only with a lot of years practicing behind him.
Gladwell talks about the 10,000 hours rule – practice and learn something for 10K hours – And you will be
a World class talent at it.

Highly recommended – go read the posts and the book