Here’s what the page looks like (big ups to Josh for the original design used in FreshBerry’s signup form):

InvoiceWatcher.com - not squatting

If you want to do the same, and like the look of that, I figured I’d post the code and share (the download is at the bottom of this post).

Necessary pre-requisites

• PHP (tested with PHP 4 and PHP 5)
• The ability to send mail from PHP (see: http://php.net/manual/en/function.mail.php )

Instruction to set it up

• Sign up for re-catpcha at http://www.recaptcha.net and copy your public and private keys.
• Open index.php and put your public key in the top
• Open send.php and put your private key and email address in the top

Download

NotSquatting.zip.  (No license, use as you wish, without restriction or warranty).  Have fun!  And don’t squat.  Squatters suck.

Install the Greasemonkey script here!

See below for before and after screenshots.

Without the script

With the script

Not a FreshBooks user?  Sign up now for free and start managing time, clients, invoices and expenses with ease.

Looking for FreshBooks for your BlackBerry – download Book Keeper now!

1. open command prompt:  type ‘win+r’ -> type ‘cmd’
2. run ipconfig
3. select and copy the value
4. paste into editor.

How annoying (soft links would be nice.  boo, windows).  So, yesterday, I decided it was time to end that and went out looking for an application that puts the IP address in the clipboard.  I found a few, but only one of them did that headless, so I could script it… and that one didn’t work.  Boo.  So, I wrote the dozen or so lines of Java code required to do that, bundled up an executable jar and assigned it a key in WinKey.  Now my process is “win+ctrl+A -> ctrl+v”.  That’s better.  Much less painful.  I was going to assign a script macro in Texter to do it automagically, but there is no way to tell Texter to pause after running one keystroke and the Java app needs time to run, so the ctrl+v to paste the IP address could be run before the data is in the clipboard.  Oh, well… it’s definitely good enough as-is.

While I’m blabbing, here are some other things I’ve “life hacked” in the last year….

• Installed Texter and setup about two dozen shortcuts.  Things like “addy” for my address, “email” for my email (I actually have one for all email addresses), “sigline” to drop in my signature line when not in GMail, and so on.  According to Texter, I’ve expanded 4,642 snippets, saving 87,357 characters which saved myself 3.64 hours (assuming 400 chars/minute).  Neat-o.
• Installed WinKey.  Now I can start apps without grabbing a mouse.  Mmmm, not grabbing a mouse.  I set it up so that “win+shift+CHAR” brings up a folder  (ex: “win+shift+d” opens up my Development folder), “win+ctrl+CHAR” starts an application, and “win+CHAR” starts an environment like cygwin or the command prompt with Informix paths setup.
• Built an ANT script that does the tedious export/import of an Informix database from a remote server to my local server.  Now I just run ONE task and get all the new stuff and can work on something else while it runs (it takes 30+ minutes to run completely).  This was a huge time saver.
• Built several greasemonkey (and IE7 Pro) scripts for making web apps easier.  This is really a HUGE life-hacking help for me.  Even things just as simple as removing one click in a process seems like it’s been so much more helpful – even if it’s not saving a ton of time, saving me from going “grrrr, why did I have to click the button after picking the element from the select list?” makes me more productive (not-raging = more productive!).  I’m to the point now where any annoyance in a website, I go reaching for my JS editor to write a script.
• Built a process for invoicing from FreshBooks that builds the report/timesheets and adds a signature to the PDF.  This has saved me from opening several files and editing a bunch of data.  It used to be about a 20 minute process and is now a few seconds.
• My BlackBerry development ANT task is a huge time saver also.  It’s nothing special, but I’m happy that it gives me “one-click deployment” for that environment.

As always, I’m glad to share any of the scripts, apps or tools I’ve written, just let me know if you want ‘em.

So, now, two weeks later, I really like the device.  I’m a big BlackBerry fan, but I would definitely use this device instead of a BlackBerry for personal use (for business use, the BES just can’t be beat, but that’s not a fair comparison).  Here’s what I’m really enjoying:

• The camera’s integration points are smoooooth.  This is thanks to the way Android allows applications to integrate.  I truly love taking a picture, reviewing that picture, clicking “share” and being able to choose to email it to people via GMail, post to my Picasa account, tweet it, publish in a blog, send as picture message, or whatever else my heart desires.  It’s great, smooth, and super damn easy.  And hooray for the environment, I love that I could build an app to integrate with that, just as smoothly as all of those.
• Google Voice is a first-class citizen.  I have no idea how this was implemented, since there isn’t a public API, but there is a Google Voice app that mega-rules and lets me do everything via Google Voice.  I selected to make all outgoing calls via Google Voice, so go into contacts, hit dial and bam, Google Voice dials out. Incoming GV calls are smooth, voicemails are sent to the notification tray, etc.  The app is open-sourced, so if I ever get un-lazy I’ll download the source and figure out the magic.  Maybe it’s just screen scraping/controlling the GV server in the background, which would be an interesting approach.
• Speaking of the notification tray, it’s awesome.  And again, woot for integration because any app can write to the notification tray.  Which means I get notifications that I’ve got new tweets, new emails from all accounts, calendar entries, google voice messages, and so on.

In general, it’s a great device.  Voice quality has been great, the 3G network has been great and it smoothly transitions to wireless when I’ve got a network setup.  I also bought an app for my daughter that shows pictures of animals and plays a sound for each one and she absolutely loves it.  Now to figure out how to get it working on my AT&T network.  Yikes.

So, enter the Apple store at Lenox mall.  I walk in and instead of seeing shiny and awesome, I see croweded and hectic.  I actually was meeting Josh, and he wasn’t there yet, so I bolted and bought a new pair of Pumas, trying not to panic and be all introverted and bothered by the insane crowds.  So, I go back and start playing with a Mac.  It was shiny.  And nice.  Though, really, they should have them positioned at a higher level, because damn my wrist hurt quickly using a mousepad at such a low level.  I try to figure out how to get a sales person over to help, so I do my “Hi, my name is Eric and I’m awkward” deal and throw my hand up and say “help”.  Some guy sees me, kind of looks around like “is there anybody else who can help him” and then slowly comes over.  I probably screwed up, because I started off with “I’m a windows user looking to leave, and have very specific high maintenance requirements”, and then asked “can this macbook pro drive two external monitors?”.

“uhhmmm, yes”.

“Really?  Without anything extra?”

“Oh, you’d need an adapter that is like $20″

Josh chimes in: “Really?  Is that new, I thought it couldn’t be done without external stuff?”

“Hmmm, I’ll have to go find out for sure”

He returns several minutes later with a printed out blog post about how you actually can’t do it without external stuff.  Hmmm, sales guy has to go to Google to find out the answer?  This is not looking good.  So, I go and request another sales person to help me and get the poor first week on the job guy.  I tell him about the experience with the last guy (again, in hindsight, this served no purpose) and he didn’t fully understand and said “yeah, you can drive two external monitors!”.  Sigh.  The rest of the conversation went similarly “can I do x?”, “uhmmm, let me go check”.  What the hell?  Josh knew far more than they did about their own product.  The last question I wanted answered was what the return policy is.  He said “14 day full return policy” and when Josh pressed the issue, he went and checked and came back with “errr, there’s a 10% re-stocking fee”.  Beyond their sales guy not knowing anything about their product (he said he just completed a week of training… wonder if there was a test at the end of it that asked anything Mac related?), I think that return policy is terrible.  If they believe in their product, they’d offer a full refund.  Ecco shoes does, because their shoes are friggin’ awesome.

So, long story short, if you want it, it’s yours. Just be the first to comment here and willing to pay-pal the shipping cost to me and I’ll send it to ya. If I don’t hear anything by the end of next week I’ll take it to the library (and I will know that (a) nobody reads this blog and/or (b) nobody wants a first edition book that I just gave a less than favorable review). Alternatively to pay-pal and shipping, if you are an Atlanta peep, come get it.

Alternatively again, if you want to pull off a trade, I’m up for that and we can just pay our own shipping costs. Programming stuff I’m interested in learning more about lately include: Python, Django, Objective C, XPath/DOM/CSS Selectors, whatever. I’m sure there is a nice book trading service somewhere out there (if not a few hundred of ‘em), but I felt the urge to post it here, so here it is. Lemme know if you want it.

How’s that for a title, “Fresh” and “Berry” all over the place.  I’m finally venturing into the Micro ISV arena and building a BlackBerry application for FreshBooks.  It’s set to Beta around the end of February with a subset of the final features.

The planned features for version 1 are:

• Enter time for a specific project/task
  • Directly by entering number of hours
  • Using a timer
  • Entering time for any day
• View time for a particular day
• View clients and interact with the device to:
  • Map client addresses
  • Call clients
  • Email clients
• Add clients
• View Invoices and
  • Enter payment
  • Send payment notification

Potential future features include:

• Create invoices (this gets wonky and complicated, but would be useful)
• Send late invoice notifications
• Add alerts for invoices on the BlackBerry calendar (maybe helpful to manage late notices)
• Custom BlackBerry app for clients to view your invoices to them, with your icon on the BlackBerry ribbon.  Not sure if this is even useful, but something I’ve thought about.

To subscribe for more information signup at the FreshBerry site: http://www.freshberryapp.com, or send an email directly to info@freshberryapp.com.  I’d love to hear feature requests or anything else on your mind about this application.

[NOTE: This application has been renamed "Book Keeper" and is now available to the public at:http://www.bookkeeperapp.com]

Download it from userscripts.org

See the screenshot below: