Now Digging, Feeding my Friends and a Facebook App Worth Installing!

OK, just a quick update that serves two purposes:

1. I've signed up to a couple of new services. And I installed a Facebook application! I can't remember the last time I did that!
2. I am testing a new Live Writer plug in :)

OK, in an effort to try and organise myself a bit better online, I have finally signed up to the two following services/sites:

digg (http://www.digg.com)
I think digg is a great idea, and since I spend so much time checking out blog posts, I kind of owe it to digg them more, and hopefully one day get some digg's myself :)

Digg also serves as a great hub for finding new content.

FriendFeed (http://friendfeed.com)
Another fantastic site designed to aggregate data from several social networking sources as well as website's. I think key ones here are blogs, twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google Reader. Updates to all of these are then centralised on your personal FriendFeed page. Excellent stuff. Good news is that anyone who is a friend of mine on Facebook doesn't need to check it as you can also add a neat little application to Facebook that broadcasts updates to your news feed and profile. Very, very nicely done!

Special thanks to Loic Le Meur for inspiring me to do it via his blog post!

Technorati Tags: digg,friendfeeder,social networking

No Easy Way to Say It - Some Geek's are Dicks

I read this post on Jeff Atwood's blog (CodingHorror) and I have to say, it really upset me. As I commented on the post, us geek's can/are often privy to very sensitive, highly confidential information. The "normies" (non-geek's) give us implicit trust when they load our software/user our services, it should never be abused.

I have often seen a lot of information that could be used to really screw people, both in the workplace and personally (especially when sorting computers for friends/family). Since they have asked me to do a job/favour as a [trusted] geek, I do what I am supposed to do, sort the problems they are having, then privately give them the "heads up" on what I found/saw and advise them on how to secure their information.

For example, I had a friend who had posted their contact information on Facebook. They had listed quite a lot of information including full date of birth, and address, and it was publicly viewable, and a huge security risk (in the wrong hands you could actually be talking identity theft with that information).. Now many people are kind of oblivious to this, why? because they trust us geek's to bail them out. I got on the phone to them immediately and told them what I had found, then spent 30 minutes guiding them through how to sort their public profile out and hide confidential information. I also advised them on how to set up Google Alerts so they can actually find out what information is available on them via a Google Search. They were amazed at how much they learnt from me in that 30 minutes - and a little bit shook up, they truly had no idea. They didn't stop saying "thank you", and it made me proud and pleased to be able help them out. I also got that lovely little warm fuzzy feeling you get when you know you have done the right thing.

So fellow geek's, please don't be a dick, it makes the rest of us look bad.

Technorati Tags: geeks,ethics,privacy,security

Excellent Tool List from Scott Hanselman

I had a post come up on Google Reader the other day advising me to check out an updated Tool List from Scott Hanselman. I am glad I did, I added another couple to by "Tool Box" (ha). You do not have to be a developer, maybe just someone who uses their computer a lot!

It was nice to see that a few of the tools I have picked up of my own accord in my own "quest for the right stuff" appear on his list (Paint.NET, FoxIt Reader and Daemon Tools to name a few).

I definitely recommend checking out the list, its pretty comprehensive and their is bound to be something you might pick up. One thing I was surprised to find on there was DarkRoom - interesting app, and something I have never really thought of before! There has been so many times where I have wanted to just write. This app is ideal, you get a blank screen and a cursor, that's it! No messy desktop, toolbar's or any other crap. Just a cursor. Excellent!

So thank you for this excellent list Scott! Appreciated.

Technorati Tags: blogging, applications, tools, utilities, developer, power user

Another Great App.. Virtual Desktop Manager "Virtual Dimension"

Following on from my recent post on a "Nice PDF Reader App", it got me thinking, maybe I should invest some more time in finding a good, free app to deal with some of my other annoyances (I'm an easily-annoyed person when it comes to software).

So, my next problem.

I always find my Taskbar cluttered, I don't like the grouping that Windows provides as I like to see the names of the windows themselves. I can make my Taskbar taller, but then I lost some screen real-estate.

So, I figured a Virtual Desktop will be the way to go, back when I was running a Linux distro on my desktop for a while (openSUSE Linux), I really liked the virtual desktop, and it seems most Linux distro's have it. I won't apologize for my lack of knowledge on Linux, I didn't like it!

For those of you that do not know what a virtual desktop is, it basically allows you to have separate "views" of your desktop. So, for example, you could have a document you are working on in the foreground, and your emails and stuff tucked away a virtual desktop in the background (still running), when you want your email, you then switch to that desktop. Neat, and tidy! Obviously, there is some overhead with this, and it is easy to forget you have all these app's running, and then wonder why your system is running slow when you are only staring at Notepad. Oops! I forgot I have my email, some mp3s, two games and disk defragmenter running on three other desktops in the background. Be warned! So, I hope you get the idea.. Very useful for people like me that tend to have a lot of unrelated but necessary stuff open.

So, I began checking out what is available, for free. Here's what I found!

Microsoft's Virtual Desktop PowerToy for XP
Didn't like this at all really, I found it slow running, and not a "slick". Some app's seemed to stay available on all desktops without me knowing why. Not very customizable. Promptly uninstalled.

"Virtual Desktop" on SourceForge.net
I thought this one would be the keeper TBH, runs as a service in the background, so no additional clutter on the (already cluttered) desktop. Took me a while to find out what the keys are (no readme was attached - that I could see). But ran OK, simply ALT + Number (1-4) to switch to that desktop. Few little kinks to iron out ("Run" and "Minimize All" only work on the first desktop), but on the whole, I would have stuck with it, until I found...

"Virtual Dimension" on SourceForge.net
This baby has it all. It's quick, it runs well, its very customizable and has all the features I need/want. The only think I could suggest for it is that it has a thumbnail preview of the desktops on the preview window. Other than that, it's staying right on my desktop!
In fact, I am typing this blog within my second desktop (I have a Visual Studio Project open on my first) right now!
Put simply, get it!

If anyone else has any suggestions, then please let me know!

Technorati Tags: applications, virtual desktop, microsoft, powertoy, sourceforge, virtual dimension

Nice PDF Reader App that Deserves a Mention

Well, it's been a long time coming, but I finally had enough of the stupidly long load times for Adobe Reader. Like a lot of people now, I use PDF's a lot for printing (via CutePDF) articles for later review, print shopping receipts for online transactions, passing documents via email rather than paper and so on and so forth. PDF's are handy!

When you just want to check something within a few seconds, waiting 10 seconds+ for Adobe to fire up is a more than bit of an annoyance, and as I have become more reliant on PDF's, I have become more annoyed.

So I finally took the plunge and decided to invest some time in finding a lightweight, free reader that can give me basic functionality (such as search, various views etc.) and load as quickly as possible. After about 10 minutes, I came across FoxIt Reader, its reputation preceded it on many forums, so I figured it would be worth a look.

Well it has a good reputation for a good reason, its great, it simple, its quick, its easy. That's what a document READER should be, nothing fancy, just a bit of kit to read documents and be good at it.

Well done to the guys at FoxIt, great job!

Live 2008 Final Beta are Released!

We are almost at release stage with the suite of Live applications from Microsoft.
In the bundle is:

• Live Messenger (Instant Messaging)
• Live Mail (Mail Reader with Integrated RSS - Great Outlook Express Replacement)
• Live Photo Gallery (Online Photo Storage and Organization)
• Live Writer ("Universal" Blogging Tool)
• Live Family Safety (Make Sure the Kids are not Being Naughty!)
• Live SharedView (Desktop Sharing Tool)

As well as the host of services offered by Live such as (and not limited to):

• Live Spaces (Profile/Blog)
• Live SkyDrive (Free, Secure File Hosting)

I personally use the Live Messenger, Live Writer, Live Spaces and Live SkyDrive applications/services a lot. And I have to say, I love them.
We all know that Spaces & Messenger are great, they are pretty mature already due to their massive amount of usage. The two you may not be so familiar with are Writer and SkyDrive.

Live Writer

Live Writer is designed to be the blogging tool you use for all of your blogging needs.

I only had one single gripe with Writer. When posting to Google Blogger, you were unable to post images from within Writer, well guess what folks, this has all changed with the final and third Beta release, image uploading to Picasa is now supported!. This is a huge plus in my eyes.
Here are the main selling points for me:

• You can write straight from your desktop, no signing into websites.
• You can write and save drafts for posting later.
• Categories and tags (from many providers) are supported.
• You can quickly and easily post content to several blogs providers.
• It's genuinely easy to use!
• Install process is almost one-click, and it never fell over.
  NOTE: it was slow though, I was sat looking at "checking for installed products" for a while - be patient!)

The culmination of all of that is a one-stop tool for all your blogging needs! Sold!

Live SkyDrive

I got wind of the existence of SkyDrive via an RSS feed. So I thought I would check it out, at this point I was using Messenger and Writer extensively, and really impressed with both, so was keen to see what else the Live guys at MS where offering.

Live SkyDrive is basically a free file hosting solution, all you need is a Live ID. And you can post up to 500MB in your account. You can then make these files available to the public, or contacts (which also need a Live ID for authentication) or just keep them for yourself.

I have found the transfer speeds can be a little slow in today's terms (30k/sec download) but hey, it's free, and I think it is all ad-supported, but I never noticed anything obtrusive. So thank you very much Microsoft!

Technorati Tags: Live, Messenger, Mail, Photo Gallery, Writer, Family Safety, SharedView, Spaces, SkyDrive

Disadvantages of Agile

Read this good blog from Kelly Waters on the disadvantages of agile development. It's great to see an agile fan actually looking at the flipside rather than just trying to "sell it". I am not saying that everyone else does, but it's very easy for people to focus on the positives rather than the negatives.

On this, may also be worth pointing out there is a great site containing essays on anti-hacking software development called hacknot, I've found many of the reads enjoyable and thought-provoking.

Sorry for the gap in me blogging, been dead busy lately!

Technorati Tags: agile, software, development, disadvantages