No cover when uploading to Google Play Books

If you upload a book to Google Play Books in EPUB format and one of these things happens: The cover isn't showing up The cover looks like the above image The book doesn't open/gives you a 404 error Here are some things to try: First of all, wait! Google has to extract the cover from the file, and for some reason it can take a long time for it to show up. I would recommend waiting at least an hour, if not longer. Yes, this might...

Import playlists into Google Play Music

I've already covered getting playlists out of Google Play Music, but what if you want to import your playlists into Google Play Music? The easiest way to do this would probably be to get your playlists into iTunes or Windows Media Player and use Google's Music Manager to sync your playlists. Being a Linux user, that's not the best option for me, so I came up with another way. This one's not for the faint of heart, so be sure you've...

The best alternative to Astrid Tasks

Update: see here for a better alternative: The best task/to-do app for Android Yahoo recently purchased the excellent Astrid Tasks app and discontinued its development. I've looked high and low, and the best alternative to Astrid Tasks appears to be (drum roll) ... Astrid Tasks. Yep, there really aren't any good alternatives. I've tried: Any.do Checkmark To Do & Task List GTasks Task List by taskos Wunderlist and more, and none of...

Dell iDRAC: The Virtual Media native library cannot be loaded

If you get the above error when trying to open the virtual media on a Dell iDRAC console session (Virtual Media --> Launch Virtual Media) and you're running 64-bit Linux, you may need to install 32-bit Java. Here's what I did on Ubuntu 12.04: First of all, I happened to run into this issue on an iDRAC that was running old firmware, so before continuing, I'd recommend updating to the latest firmware if possible and seeing if that fixes...

Typing Arabic vowels/diacritics on Android

If you would like to type Arabic vowels/diacritics/harakat on Android, you first need a keyboard that supports it. I've tried most of the keyboards available, and I've listed the ones that fit the bill. Most surprisingly, my keyboard of choice (Swype) doesn't support Arabic diacritics. Guess it's time to switch! The first thing you'll need to do for all of these keyboards is install Arabic in the settings for each keyboard, which is normally...

Import Catch notes into Evernote

If you haven't heard, Catch Notes is shutting down at the end of the month. It was one of the nicest note taking apps for Android. There are a lot of alternatives out there. In most cases I opt for whatever Google has to offer, and in this case they have a note app of their own called Google Keep, but it only allows you to organize notes by color instead of Catch's useful spaces and tags. I don't know about you, but trying to find a note by a...