Tag: software

Thoughts on Google Chrome

As you probably read or heard today, Google has released a beta version of their very own browser, named Chrome. You can download it today for Windows XP or Windows Vista, and Google promises that Mac and Linux versions are coming soon. I downloaded it as soon as it was available, and have been playing with it all day. Here are some of my impressions and thoughts so far:

  • The interface is surprisingly simple. I like it.
  • Chrome is fast. The two sites I’ve noticed the greatest speed difference with so far are Google Reader and Buxfer.
  • I love the “Create application shortcuts” feature. The first thing I did after testing that out was uninstall Mozilla Prism. This feature is what will keep me running Chrome.
  • I like having the status bar at the bottom of the window, so the fact that it is missing in Chrome will take some getting used to. Fortunately a box still appears when you hover over a link.
  • Firefox made an effort to look more “native” to the operating system with version 3, and I wish Google had done the same with Chrome.
  • A couple of my favorite Opera features are built into Chrome: paste and go, search shortcuts (such as “g” for Google”), and the “Speed Dial” page, though it is automatically created in Chrome vs manually created in Opera.
  • As a web developer, I’m incredibly grateful that Google built Chrome atop the WebKit rendering engine, rather than creating yet another one for us to test against.
  • I find it amusing that the Google Chrome logo has the same color scheme as the Windows logo.

Google very creatively launched Chrome with a web cartoon written by Scott McCloud. It’s quite long, but worth a look.

If you’d like to read more about Google Chrome, I suggest the following:

And for my own reference, here is the NYTimes launch article.

I’ll be sticking with Opera for now, but I’ll definitely keep my eye on Google Chrome.

Make Windows XP look like Windows Vista

You might think I’m crazy, but possibly my favorite thing about Vista is that it’s black and glossy. You’ve got to admit that Vista is an attractive looking OS! In comparison, Windows XP just looks terrible. The first thing I usually do is switch the default blue theme to the silver one. Even still, I have often longed for something better.

Recently, I came across BricoPack Vista Inspirat Ultimate 2. Quite the mouthful, but it’s really quite simple – download and install it, and it transforms your desktop into a Vista theme. Normally I wouldn’t give something like this a second glance, but I was feeling particularly curious one day, so I tried it. Of course, I created a restore point first, and I strongly recommend you do the same (here are the instructions). I didn’t run into any problems though.

I have to say, I love what Vista Inspirat did. My taskbar and windows are black and look like Vista. The “Start” menu has been replaced with the Windows orb. The icons, cursors, and sounds all mimic Vista. Two small programs run in the background to provide extra effects – Y’z Shadow adds a nice border and drop shadow to windows, and UberIcon provides some nifty animation for navigation. And best of all, I haven’t noticed any performance issues. The only two problems I have are that the user icon doesn’t show up in the start menu (it’s just a white box, big deal) and that “screen artifacts” appear somewhat more regularly (you know, parts of a window not refreshing right away). Otherwise it’s great!

One thing to note is that Vista Inspirat includes a utility called RocketDock, but it is an out-of-date version. I’d definitely upgrade to the latest version as it is more stable and includes some useful new features. RocketDock is pure eye-candy:

Looks like Mac OS X! It works quite well as an application launcher though. All you need to do is drag shortcuts or files to the dock.

One other thing you might need is the UxTheme Patcher, which enables you to install custom themes like Vista Inspirat. I say might need, because I already had it installed, so am not sure if it is strictly required. Here’s the download if you have Windows XP SP3.

Have fun, but be careful – backup anything important and make a restore point first!

Experimenting with Evernote

evernote For the last week or so I’ve been using a new application called Evernote. Actually, the term application may be misleading – Evernote is more of a service with the lofty goal of helping you remember everything. From the about page:

Evernote allows you to easily capture information in any environment using whatever device or platform you find most convenient, and makes this information accessible and searchable at any time, from anywhere.

So far there’s a web interface, and clients for Windows, Mac OS X, Windows Mobile, and iPhone/iPod touch. I’ve been using the Windows, web, and iPod touch clients.

My initial reaction was to compare Evernote to Microsoft OneNote, and while there are some similarities, I think the comparison is unfair. OneNote is far better than Evernote at taking notes – the interface is more fully featured, ink is properly supported, and it feels more like traditional pen and paper. Evernote on the other hand is better at organizing information and making it accessible no matter where I am. Both have their strengths and weaknesses.

So far I’ve been using Evernote as a collection of digital post-it notes. Instead of jotting something down on paper, I create a new note inside Evernote. The advantage, of course, is that I can access it on any computer or on my iPod touch when I’m on the go.

There are other ways to use Evernote too. The desktop client contains a “clipper” feature which makes it easy to take a screenshot or copy text from an application. There’s a “web clipper” for your browser, which makes it easy to save items you find on the web. And there’s integration with Outlook, which makes it easy to save email messages.

Evernote is fairly impressive already, but I think there’s lots of room for improvement. I’d like to see richer note editing, better support for importing from Word and other applications, and improved Tablet PC support. Coming at it from another angle, I think it could be interesting to add some social networking aspects to the site, to make it easy for me to share things with other Evernote users.

If you’d like to give it a shot, head on over to the Evernote website. You can also check out their blog, their FriendFeed page, and their Twitter account.

Just use OpenDNS

warning! Unless you frequent tech publications on the web, you’re probably not aware that a critical flaw in many DNS system implementations was found recently (DNS is what translates http://www.google.com into an IP address – learn more at Wikipedia). On July 7th, news of the design flaw that researcher Dan Kaminsky discovered started to spread. The next day, many vendors (including Microsoft, which hosted the press conference) participated in a coordinated release of patches. A few days ago the first exploit code started to appear, making it even more critical that DNS systems are patched soon.

As of today, many major ISPs are not patched and remain vulnerable. You can see if your ISP is vulnerable by visiting Kaminsky’s site and clicking the “Check My DNS” button on the right side.

Or, you can just switch your DNS servers to OpenDNS and be done with it. I came across OpenDNS on the day it launched two years ago, and have used them on some machines ever since. Turns out that OpenDNS is one of the few that were unaffected by this flaw:

I’m very proud to announce that we are one of the only DNS vendor / service providers that was not vulnerable when this issue was first discovered by Dan. During Dan’s testing he confirmed (and we later confirmed) that our DNS implementation is not susceptible to the attack that was discovered. In other words, if you used OpenDNS then you were already protected long before this attack was even discovered.

Switching your DNS settings to OpenDNS is really simple and takes about two minutes. To get started, just visit http://www.opendns.com/start and follow the instructions. Or if you know what you’re doing, then the nameservers you want are 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220.

As always, make sure you have installed all of the latest patches for your computer (that would be Automatic Updates for Windows users).

Five iPhone / iPod touch applications I want

appstoreI finally got my iPod touch updated to the new 2.0 software today. I had tried repeatedly yesterday, but eventually gave up due to all the errors. The download was about 230 MB, and it took about an hour to get installed with all my data restored. The update costs $9.95 for iPod touch owners and is free for iPhone owners.

The first thing I did was poke around the App Store in iTunes. Pretty quickly though I realized that the best way to browse it is actually on the device itself. So far I’ve installed Twitterific, Evernote, the New York Times app, and the Facebook app. The second thing I did was get Exchange working. The applications are cool, but right now the Exchange support is what makes the update worth it for me.

I know that more applications will appear over time, but right now it seems like there aren’t very many useful ones. Here are five applications I’d love to see:

  1. Remember the Milk – They’ve already got a web app for the iPhone, but I’d love to see a full app complete with offline access to my task list. I’d be surprised if they didn’t create one, actually. This is the app I want most.
  2. Buxfer – I use this app all the time to manage my personal finances, and I’d love to have on-the-go, offline access.
  3. Brightkite – Apparently they have one in the works, and it should be ready by the end of the month. I hope it has some sort of auto-check-in feature (based on the network I’m connected to or something).
  4. Ping.fm – The current web app works great, but it would be better to not have to open up the web page and possibly log in.
  5. WordPress or Windows Live Writer – I’m not sure how often I’d post to my blog from my iPod touch, but it would be cool just to know that I can.

A couple of honorable mentions: a better weather app than WeatherBug (from Environment Canada would be wicked) and some sort of FriendFeed app.

What applications do you want?

SubSonic 2.1

subsonic I’ve been using SubSonic for about a year now, and I’m a big fan. As the website says, SubSonic is a open source toolset for .NET developers that helps a website build itself. Essentially what SubSonic does is automatically generate your data access layer for you. It saves you from having to write the same boilerplate code over and over. Developers like to talk a lot about improving productivity, and SubSonic actually helps in that regard. The latest version, 2.1, was released on Tuesday.

SubSonic is known as an Object-Relational Mapping (OR/M) tool. What that means is that it generates objects that reflect your database structure. So if you have a table called “User” it will create an object called “User”. Unlike most OR/M tools however, SubSonic prefers convention over configuration. This is my favorite part about SubSonic – there are no mapping files! You don’t need to say that “User” is a table you’d like to use, and that the “Username” column is a string. SubSonic figures that out on its own. Everything just happens automagically.

I like to run SubSonic manually on the command line, so that I can stick the code it generates into a class library. You do this by running SubCommander. The objects SubSonic generates by default are Active Record objects. You use them like this:

User user = new User();
user.Username = "mastermaq";
user.Save();

The newest version of SubSonic also supports what’s known as the Repository Pattern, for developers who don’t like the Active Record way of working with objects. You can learn more about that here.

Also new in SubSonic 2.1 are query factories, which let you write fluent code like this:

return new Select()
    .From<User>()
    .Where(User.Columns.Username)
    .IsEqualTo(username)
    .ExecuteSingle<User>();

Doesn’t that look wonderful? It almost makes working with the database enjoyable!

If you are still writing your data access code by hand, I’d definitely suggest taking a look at SubSonic. If you’re using a different OR/M tool, you might want to see how SubSonic compares. It currently works with SQL Server 2000/2005/2008, MySQL, and Oracle.

You can download SubSonic 2.1 from CodePlex. Check out the SubSonic website for more information, and also Rob and Eric‘s blogs.

Putting the Caps Lock button to good use with Enso 2.0 Launcher Prototype

enso launcher

All keyboards have a CAPS Lock button, but how often do you actually use it? If you’re like me, you probably press it accidentally more than you press it on purpose. What if you could put that button to good use? Wouldn’t that be great?

Unless you’ve just installed a fresh copy of Windows XP, chances are your Start Menu is a ridiculously large list. As you install applications over time, it becomes more and more difficult to find the one you want! What if there was an easier, faster way to launch applications? Wouldn’t that be great?

Humanized’s Enso 2.0 Launcher Prototype solves both of these problems at once.

I’ve been using a launch utility called Launchy for quite a while now, but the latest version has been nothing but trouble for me. It uses far too much memory and CPU, and most of the useful plugins from the old version don’t work in 2.0. So I went looking for something better (to be clear, this is far less of an issue on Vista thanks to the search functionality of the Start Menu).

Eventually I came across Enso. I noticed that there was a new “prototype” version out, and decided to download that instead of the stable release. I’m glad I did! Enso 2.0 Launcher Prototype runs in the background, and is summoned simply by holding down the CAPS lock button.

It’s important to note “holding down the CAPS lock button”. One of the unique things about Enso is that it is quasimodal – as soon as you let go of the CAPS lock button, it disappears. The way most applications work is with a hotkey, they are modal – press the button and the window appears until you get rid of it. You can read more about that here. It might seem awkward at first, but it actually makes a ton of sense and is pretty easy to get used to.

enso 2

I guess Enso 2.0 is actually quasimodal and modal…that is, you hold CAPS to open Enso, and type the “open” command to get the modal box shown above.

Enso does more than just launch applications, websites, files and directories. It has some other handy commands such as “uppercase” which will convert whatever text is selected into uppercase letters. It can also do things like calculate “2+2”. More than a launcher, Enso is a command system.

My only complaints thus far are that Enso seems to launch after everything else does on system startup, and occasionally it crashes. It’s definitely solid enough for day-to-day use though.

If you’re looking for an excellent launch utility, give Enso 2.0 a shot, and put your CAPS lock button to good use! (for the record, you can configure it to use a different key)

My favorite things about Opera 9.5

opera 9.5 Everyone is talking about Firefox 3, but I’d like to take a moment to talk about a different browser! On June 12th, Opera released the latest version of its desktop web browser. Version 9.5 includes a bunch of new features and lots of incremental improvements. Here are some of my favorite things about it so far:

  • Faster. Opera says the new version is twice as fast as 9.2 at rendering HTML and Javascript, and my experience would support that. I haven’t timed it obviously, but 9.5 does indeed seem quicker.
  • Quick Find. Firefox 3 has the so-called “awesome bar” that remembers page titles and such, allowing you to type in the address bar to find pages you’ve visited in the past. Opera 9.5 does this too, and a whole lot more – it indexes the actual content of pages! Remember a word you read on a page you visited? Type it in the address bar, and Opera will help you find it again. Very slick.
  • Vista stability. I don’t think this is an official improvement, but 9.5 definitely seems more stable on Windows Vista than 9.2 did.
  • New look and feel. When I first launched 9.5, I was a little surprised at the black default theme. After a day or two of using it though, I’m hooked. I love it. It looks great on Vista too.

Opera 9.5 also has support for Extended Validation (EV) certificates – finally!

One new feature that I haven’t tried yet is Opera Link. It allows you to synchronize your bookmarks and Speed Dial settings between computers and devices. Firefox 3 has a similar feature. It’s a great idea for the average user, but for someone like me who uses del.icio.us, it’s kind of useless.

Of course, my list of ten things to love about Opera from last year is still valid too!

Want to give Opera 9.5 a try? You can download it here.

Let Microsoft run Exchange for you

microsoft exchange Live Mesh and other consumer facing initiatives tend to garner the majority of the headlines related to Microsoft’s cloud computing initiatives, but it’s the simple, more boring things like hosted Exchange services that will probably have a bigger direct impact on the bottom line. I’ve run my own servers for a long time now, and while it isn’t incredibly difficult it is time consuming. I’d definitely welcome a switch to having Microsoft run them for me. They seem think it’s going to happen very quickly:

In an interview ahead of the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit, Chris Capossela, who manages Microsoft’s Office products, said the company will see more and more companies abandon their own in-house computer systems and shift to “cloud computing,” a less expensive alternative.

“In five years, 50 percent of our Exchange mailboxes will be Exchange Online,” said Capossela, who expects a portion of Exchange Online customers to come from customers switching from International Business Machines’ (IBM.N) Lotus Domino system.

When you run your own Exchange server, there’s a lot of things you need to worry about. You need to ensure it is patched with the latest updates, that the junk mail filters are configured correctly, that data is being backed up properly, etc. It would be much better if Microsoft just did all of that for me.

I know there are already companies that do this sort of thing, but there’s something about having Microsoft behind the service that appeals to me. They should be the experts on their own software, after all. And I’m sure they’ll eventually offer a suite of these services that’ll just be a no-brainer for small businesses.

Why buy, install, and support an increasingly expensive Small Business Server, when you can just pay Microsoft a monthly fee to do it all for you? That’s where cloud computing will have the biggest impact on businesses.

Read: Yahoo! News

Microsoft's Live Mesh

live mesh One of the big tech stories today was the launch of Live Mesh, Microsoft’s new platform for synchronizing files, applications, and other stuff across different devices. I read quite a few articles about Live Mesh, and I have to admit I find it daunting to comprehend. Here’s the definition from Mary Jo Foley:

“Live Mesh is a ’software-plus-services’ platform and experience from Microsoft that enables PCs and other devices to ‘come alive’ by making them aware of each other through the Internet, enabling individuals and organizations to manage, access, and share their files and applications seamlessly on the Web and across their world of devices.” If I were in charge of defining Live Mesh, I think I’d go with “a Software + Services platform for synchronization and collaboration.”

Complex, exciting, and confusing all at once. Scoble says synchronization is just the beginning too.

Here’s what Live Mesh means to me: Microsoft is serious about cloud computing, and they’re prepared to be an important player in the space.

That’s really all I care about at this point. I’m sure Live Mesh will look vastly different in two years than it does today. I’m just glad Ray Ozzie is behind it. I absolutely love Groove and expect that Live Mesh will be like Groove on major steroids!

Some observations:

Developers, you can get started here. It’s not live yet, but they’ll have a technology preview program soon. For everyone else, check out the pretty pictures here.

Read: Ten things to know about Microsoft’s Live Mesh