Neil Jenman's Blog

When you add a new column to a Sharepoint list you can decide for the new column to be a lookup field to a different list.

By default the lookup will show the title of the list item in the lookup list. When adding the column (either via the web or programmatically) you can lookup to a field other than the item's title. However,

Look up fields will only reference fields that are of type "Single Line of Text". You can in code set them to other field types, such as DateTime fields, but Sharepoint will ignore this and default to Title.

There is a bit of a hack around where by you fool Sharepoint into looking up to a different field type. You create the column as a single line of text, create a lookup to it then change the target field from a single line of text to the data type you require. I wouldn't advise this though, it is unsupported and it is best to treat the column you are adding as the data type it represents, also doing this programmatically is a real Kludge!

Ever had more than one machine on your desktop but wanted only one Keyboard and mouse to control them both? In the past I have used hardware KVM switches like the one below to physically plug the keyboard and mouse into both machines.

Recently I discovered a software KVM called Synergy. Synergy means you don't need a hardware KVM like the one above as it uses the network instead.

Here is my setup at the moment. I have a desktop PC with a Keyboard and mouse and screen plugged into it. I also have a laptop.

Both machines are plugged into the network.

Synergy can be installed on the PC as a KVM 'server', making its keyboard and mouse available on the network.

The Laptop runs the Synergy client application and connects to the PC over the network. Once the connection is establish I can use the mouse and keyboard as if it was a standard dual screen setup. I drag my mouse to the right and it appears on the laptop, I drag it left and its back to the PC.

There is an initial configuration of Synergy that can be a bit confusing. You essentially have to tell it where your screens in relation to each other and map the usable space. Below is how I've got mine setup.

In the screens you add the network names of the machines you want to use. The links here define a route right from the PC into Laptop territory and a route left to get you back to the PC.

Now I can seamlessly switch between the machines that are in front of me, they even share a clipboard so you can copy and paste from one to another. The only issues I've come across is that it locks you out from UAC elevated applications and it won't work on ctrl-alt-del login screens, for obvious reasons.

Just to see if I could I tried the following setup just for fun.

Sure enough you can move your mouse left and right between all these machines and use them, it even works with the PC that has two monitors.

Synergy is open source and released under the GNU Public License (GPL) and is available here.

UPDATE: Yes running as admin allows you to set it as default.

There are a couple of odd things about Google's first beta release of its new web browser, Chrome.

Firstly, why does it install to C:\Users\<USERNAME>\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application ?

Secondly it is not able to assert itself as the default browser in Vista.

If you go to tools > options in Chrome you see the following button to make Chrome your default browser.

This button did its job on my XP box but on my Vista box I received the following:

Fortunately, Microsoft shipped Vista with a built in tool for managing your default applications. However, Chrome does not appear in the list of programs and you cannot browse for it:

Next stop, 'Set file associations'. From here I was able to set windows to open .htm and .html files with Chrome:

However, when it came to setting a protocol such as http and https, there was again no option to browse for an application:

I also tried running Chrome as Admin and hitting the button and copying the app to program files, just in case windows would find it and place it in the programs list. No joy with this so far, but hey, things like this are what you expect with beta software. Knowing Google, it will stay in Beta for a few years just to abstain them from any responsibility.

Apart from this I am enjoying the browser more than I thought I would. Its far from innovative, but it is well made. Its really quick, I like that tabs run in separate processes and the search and find features are unoriginal but well done.

I will just wait for another release to solve the default issue, let me know if anyone finds a solution.