Moving to new blog salmansarfraz.com

@all

I stopped blogging sometime ago and have decided to do it again but from now on, I'll use http://salmansarfraz.com/ as my personal blog.

How did i fix my iPhone 4S & iPad 2 battery life issue?

I'm an iPad 2 user and i had enjoyed excellent battery time with iOS 4.3.3 and even iOS 5.0 but after iOS 5.0.1 update, i clearly observed bad standby time on my iPad 2. However, i bought an iPhone 4S as well recently and thought that it might have loaded with iOS 5.0 but i was disappointed when i saw iOS 5.0.1 already running on it.


I read some reviews on web that iPhone 4S is having battery drain issues but it's not happening on all iPhone 4S mobiles. Well, i don't know whether it's true or not but in my case, my iPhone 4S was really having very bad battery timing issues. Even on Standby, battery drained crazily. For example, at night, my phone showed me 100% battery and in morning, it was on 73% without any use. 


So, how did i fix it?


I have been consistently searching on web; first waiting for an update from Apple (which never came) and then i found that Apple has released an update: iPhone4,1_5.0.1_9A406_Restore which many people reported about having improved their iPhone 4S's battery life. I thought, let's give it a try because battery time was already worst and there was nothing to lose even if it doesn't help.


Did iPhone4,1_5.0.1_9A406_Restore.ipsw help?


Well, not really but yes, it really improved battery time little bit. However, it did not help much  that could satisfy me. So, my iPhone 4S is now running iOS 5.0.1 (9A406) update. Then i was checking out Apple Community and someone had shared about a trick. Since, there was no loss so, i immediately tried it out.


What's the trick?


Well, it's nothing special. The guy just told about resetting your iPhone 4S's settings. You can do it by tapping Settings menu item on your iPhone 4S Home Screen menu. 


Settings => General => Reset => Reset All Settings


I was worried if it would delete any of my data on phone. But, luckily resetting all settings doesn't touch your iPhone apps or data. It even doesn't remove your email accounts (which you might have configured on your iPhone 4S). 


When you try to Reset All Settings, it reboots your phone, resets all iPhone settings and then tell you to configure your phone again. Don't worry. Just go ahead and configure it AS A NEW iPHONE. Don't try to configure it from your iCloud/iTunes back up (you don't need it because your apps/data/songs/videos are already there on your iPhone). 


So, once i was done configuring my iPhone 4S, next thing was to test whether this trick has improved my iPhone 4S's battery or not. So, i did the following:

• Turned on WIFI.
• Turned off Siri.
• Turned off Location Services.

And here is what i got with one time full charge (not bad, isn't it?):

In short, it's my 6th Day on iPhone 4S and the battery is still not dead (it has 1% to go :)) and WIFI was connected all the time in these 6 days. I never turned off WIFI. I think, my iPhone 4S is doing great. I did the same with my iPad 2 and it's also giving me better battery life. In short, now i am happy with my iPhone 4S and can comfortably take it with me while travelling without having any worries about charging it again and again. :)

Download Move Comment Confluence Plugin FREE

How did i know about this plugin?

One of my colleagues mentioned to me about a Confluence Plugin that we can use to Move a wiki page comment to other page or convert it to a wiki page itself. And interesting thing is that if you move a comment, its child comments also get moved. It was quite useful plugin for Confluence users.

How does it work?

Check below screen shot and you will see that how a new Move link is added to each comment.

And when you click on this Move link, it takes you to a page where it asks you about the wiki space and page where you want to move it. You can even check the Create new page checkbox if you want to convert this comment as a new wiki page. That's really useful.

Is it FREE now?

Obviously, No. When i searched for this plugin, i reached http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/CODEGEIST/Move+Comment+Confluence+Plugin where i got this plugin URL: http://www.adaptavist.com/display/free/Move+Comment+Plugin

This plugin is NOT FREE anymore. It was built by Adaptavist and they love plugins. That's why, they are not offering it free anymore. ;) This URL http://www.adaptavist.com/display/free/Move+Comment+Plugin now redirects you to http://www.adaptavist.com/display/Plugins/Move+Comment which allows you to download the plugin but on Try or Buy basis. This was not an option for me. I wanted the free version they were offering in the past.

It's FREE for you. Download now

I googled but did not find any old download links for that plugin. All of them were redirected. However, thanks to Google, i did manage to find an old download link from adaptavist website: http://www.adaptavist.com/download/attachments/42467930/moveComment-1.1.jar (looks like they forgot to redirect this one)

So, you can download from above link and in case if Adaptavist reads this blog post and redirect that link as well, you may download it from here.


Best of luck!

Evaluating paid apps on App Store is troublesome

I bought an iPad recently and spent some time on App Store reviewing apps. I liked few apps but there was no way i could test them without first paying for them. For example, i bought an app yxplayer and after it's installed, i found that it's quite buggy. It has too many issues like:

• Video is not synced with audio
• Playing videos directly through Samba server (from NAS) is very slow
• Video quality is not good

In short, i bought a bad app but i had to pay for it first. It's very bad. Apple should devise some mechanism that can allow users to first install the app and then decide whether they want to to buy it or not. It will save our money.

If you are looking for a video player for iPad that can play any video format, try OPlayer HD. It also offers a Lite version which is free but offers the same features as that of full version. It works great and video quality is also awesome. Just a tip for App Store users, when you need some app, always look for a FREE app first. I'm sure, you will find some free apps that can do what you want.

FIX: Unable to render embedded object: File (file-name) not found

We are using Confluence v3.3 and were noticing a strange error: Unable to render embedded object: File (file-name) not found on Wiki pages sometimes while inserting images. I tried renaming file names and it did work sometimes but it failed some other times as well  because i kept noticing such error messages on wiki pages. So, i was looking for a FIX to it.

I googled and found this http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/CONFKB/Seeing+%27unable+to+render+embedded+object%27+Error+for+Images+from+Certain+Pages where Atlassian has shared that it's a Known Issue because of a feature CamelCase Links in Confluence. So, disable this feature and it would fix the issue for you.

To disable/enable CamelCase Links feature in Confluence, you can check http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Enabling+CamelCase+Linking. It helped us and i hope it would be useful for others too so, thought to share it. :)

How to move a Wiki Space from one Confluence instance to another?

I have been asked many times by my colleagues about how to move a wiki space from one Confluence instance to another. So, here are the steps to do that:

• Export the desired wiki space to XML (since it includes everything i.e. attachments, comments etc.). For details, check http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/CONF32/Confluence+to+XML
• Once you get the exported ZIP file, next step is to restore that wiki space in the other Confluence instance where it needs to be imported. To restore the exported wiki space, check http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/CONF32/Restoring+a+Space 

What if the versions of source and destination Confluence instances don't match?

If the versions of Confluence in both instances don't match then first step is to know the Build Number of the Confluence where you want to restore the wiki space. You should check its Build Number (based on your Confluence version) from http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DEVNET/Confluence+Build+Information. Once you know the build number, follow below steps:

• Unzip the exported ZIP file
• Open exportDescriptor.properties file
• Change buildNumber=XXX (where XXX is the build number for your destination confluence version)
• Save the file
• ZIP the files again and use this updated ZIP file to restore the wiki space. 

Atlassian doesn't guarantee about this approach but it's the ONLY solution and it has always worked for me.