laneolson.ca » Personal

Using iGoogle To Simplify Job Searching

Lane — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 22:56:17 +0000

A few months back I read an article on how to build the ultimate iGoogle job finding dashboard. I found this article to be extremely helpful, but geared more towards people in the United States. After a recent move I’m currently in between jobs and I’ve created an iGoogle dashboard that completely simplifies searching for jobs online. I use a similar method of grabbing feeds to get updated on my favorite news and tech sites, but why not do it for job listings too?

The great thing about sites like Kijiji, craig’s list, monster, etc is that they all have RSS feeds for any search results.

Here’s a list of sites that I use to populate my iGoogle job dashboard, all of which offer RSS feeds of specific searches and categories. Feel free to add your own. Note: these are all catered to people in Canada.

Kijiji
Monster
Craig’s List
Workopolis
Wow Jobs
Career Builder (This one’s a bit tricky for Canadians, I’ll explain later)

Building the dashboard

The guide on how to build the ultimate iGoogle job finding dashboard has most of the specifics you will need to actually create the new tab and sign up for a Google account if need be, this article is more about getting the right feeds for your interests.

Adding The Feeds

Most of the sites offer their feeds in plain sight when you do a search or browse a category. Adding the feeds to iGoogle is easy once you have the link to the feed. Simply click on the “Add Stuff” link on iGoogle, then in the menu on the left there is a “Add feed or gadget link”. Click on that, paste the URL for the feed, and your set!

Finding the Right Feeds

Obviously you are going to want to use feeds that target the area you’re searching for a job in, and also the types of jobs you are interested in. For most of the sites it’s a pretty straight forward process. Go to one of the sites listed above, type in a search for the type of job you are looking for, then on the search results page click on the RSS feed icon and copy the url. Paste the URL into iGoogle. Here’s a quick example of doing it on Kijiji.ca.

Go to kijiji.ca, select your location, click on a category. You can also do a keyword search if you prefer that method.
Click on the RSS feed link towards the bottom of the page of results.
Lastly, copy the URL of the feed, and then paste it into the “Add a gadget” section of iGoogle.
Rinse, wash, repeat for the other sites!

Getting a feed out of Career Builder

On the Canadian Career Builder site, there is no link to an RSS feed in the results (unless my eyes are deceiving me). So, I had to find a bit of a work around to get that one to work. The US site has an RSS page where you can get feeds. If you go to this page and type in a search, or select a category you will received a feed. However, that feed will be for somewhere in the United States most likely. In order to get Canadian results you have to manipulate the URL a bit. Here is the feed URL for the Information Technology category:

http://www.careerbuilder.com/RTQ/rss20.aspx?rssid=RSS_PD&num=25&geoip=false&ddcompany=false&ddtitle=false&cat=JN008

Now, to make that give us Canadian results we can add the following parameters to the url:

&country=CA&city=Edmonton  (put in whatever city you want here)

Which gives the full URL to the feed as

http://www.careerbuilder.com/RTQ/rss20.aspx?rssid=RSS_PD&Country=CA&city=Edmonton&num=25&geoip=false&ddcompany=false&ddtitle=false&cat=JN008

Then paste that URL into iGoogle.

Finishing up

Once you have your feeds all added you can arrange them however you see fit, and adjust the number of postings each one shows. Here is what mine looks like:

Happy Hunting!

Happy New Year!

Lane — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 01:48:59 +0000

So it has been a while since I posted anything on here. It's been a busy couple months. I decided to move to Edmonton, Alberta and have spent the last little bit recording a CD of some of my own music. It has been a blast and I've learned quite a bit. The CD should be out towards the end of February 2011. Besides that I've been picking up the odd freelance job doing various design and programming work. Haven't had much time to work on any of my other projects besides the CD, but hopefully soon I'll have some more news on Swatchee.

Also, a few weeks ago I was invited to record a slot for BalconyTV Edmonton. It was a blast hanging out, playing some tunes and watching the game. Check out the video below!

I'd say 2011 is shaping up to be a pretty good year! All the best to you folks!

Introducing… Lucy!

Lane — Fri, 07 May 2010 21:24:17 +0000

I’ve been a little behind on my posting for the past couple months. My time has been consumed by a few projects, better weather, and a little puppy named Lucy. We picked her up just about a month ago, she is a pure bred chocolate lab. This is my first puppy and I am surprised how much time they can eat up! I’m slowly getting into a routine now and am finding a few packets of spare time here and there. Hopefully I’ll be able to catch up on my posting again soon. Here are some pictures of her at 8 weeks old:

In other news I have a few projects in progress. The main one that isn’t work related is called Swatchee. It is a simple web app that generates syntax highlighting schemes for a variety of editors starting with vim, textmate, and notepad++. The app is based on jQuery, HTML5, and the Lithium framework for PHP. If you’re interested in testing or would like to lend a hand with development post a comment or send me an email at lane [at] laneolson [dot] ca.

MultiBeast: The Ultimate Tool For Getting Your Hackintosh Up and Running

Lane — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 21:58:48 +0000

A tool called MultiBeast, that takes the hassle out of getting everything working on your Hackintosh, was released yesterday by tonymacx86. As the post says:

MultiBeast installs everything you need to get your system 100% in one convenient package including Bootloader, Graphics, Sound, Network, DSDT, Kernels, Extras, and Utilities.

This is great for those who have always wanted a Hackintosh but were too intimidated by the manual terminal work. MultiBeast provides a straight forward GUI for performing the grudging tasks of getting your hardware to work with OS X.

I have been a loyal reader of tonymacx86's blog for the past few months since his guides have got me up and running with a Core i5 Hackintosh of my own. His guides are very thorough and easy to follow. The introduction of this tool makes things so much easier. Thanks tonymacx86!

Links:

tonymacx86's blog - guides and various p55 i5/i7 hackintosh information
tonymacx86 forums
MultiBeast Installer - The Ultimate tool for Hackintosh Post-Installation

Critical Files on Dropbox: A Cautionary Tale

Lane — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 16:03:27 +0000

Note: Wow, I just realized that Dropbox has the ability to retrieve previous versions of files through the web interface. This pretty much renders the post below useless, but nonetheless I’m going to leave it here because I believe the message is still important. One backup is never enough!

This weekend I had somewhat of an unsettling experience with Dropbox. Typically I keep my KeePass database stored within Dropbox so that it is automatically synchronized between all of my computers. I’ve felt quite confident that, because the file is synchronized to multiple computers, it is safe from being lost in the event of a hard drive failure or the like. I do make backups of the file but only around every month or so. I’m sure there are others that probably do the same thing as I do and I have a warning for those people… Backup your vital files (like password databases) somewhere else besides on the cloud. Here’s why:

I logged onto my computer late Friday night from my laptop. I decided I was going to login to one of my blogs and start writing a new article. Upon logging on I saw that faithful message from Dropbox in my notification area, “2 new files were synchronized successfully”. I proceeded to fire up KeePassX and type in my password and was greeted with the following error:

“The structure of the current database file is invalid. This can either happen if the user-supplied composite key is invalid or if the file is corrupted.”

At first, I had thought that I entered my password wrong. So I tried again, typing more carefully this time. Same error. Then I thought maybe there was an issue with my key file, so I restored one from backup and tried again. Same error. I’m sitting in front of my laptop in disbelief, wondering what the hell I’m going to do if I can’t access the hundreds of password in that file… some of which have no method of recovery. I ran downstairs and logged into my computer there only to see the same “2 new files were synchronized successfully” notification. CRAP! Had I been thinking I would have disconnected the network cable to make sure the files couldn’t synchronize. Of course I was getting the same error on that computer. I had only one other computer that my dropbox synchs to, and that computer is always on. I knew that all of those files were going to give me the same error. I still had a backup from a few weeks ago, but some critical passwords had changed that I would be unable to retrieve.

This story isn’t all bad though. I was able to google the error and find a Repair Instructions for my KeePass database that got it back up and running. However, this could’ve ended a lot worse. I’d probably have a hard time explaining to my boss that I can’t do my job because I lost my passwords. Lesson learned. Everytime I make a critical password change in my database, I back it up twice to two different secure locations where I’m confident that these files will be safe. It is a little bit of a pain to do, but is absolutely worth it if I am ever faced with a similar situation where I cannot repair the database.

I really hope this brings light to anyone who keeps important data synchronized in the cloud via Dropbox or other services. Just because your files are copied onto multiple computers does not mean that they are safe from corruption or data loss. Make a backup. Do it now.