Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

Scott Hanselman's annual list of developer and power user tools for Windows is just out, and there are a lot of good tools in there - many of which I use every day. They range from memory joggers and notetakers to DOS emulators and deep debugging tools.

It's one of those lists that every time you look at it, you'll find something more and something that solves one of those nagging little issues (like the application that take a screenshot of your desktop every hour or so, so you can remember just what you were doing when...).

There's one area where Scott doesn't have some of the problems I have - working with more than one machine at a time. I try to keep distractions off my main screen when I'm working, so I have a laptop on an old monitor stand on my desk. I can just pull it out to type on when I need it. These days, however, I don't even need to do that.

A software keyboard mouse switch does the work for me, and all I need to do is slide my mouse of the side of one screen, onto another - in fact on to another machine. I'm currently on my third tool of this type. I started out with Synergy, but the project started lagging OS development and there hasn't been a new build for years. Then I switch to Multiplicity, but it too drifted off into the realms where updates are few and far between.

So I'm now using Input Director, which is one of those Ronseal applications, that just does what it says on the tin. It's easy to set up, easy to use, and works well with Windows 7.

That's me happy.

I've switched to using Google Reader as my main RSS platform (as my long term synchronisation tool Newsgator is turning off its platform at the end of August).

The change has been relatively painless thanks to the tools built into the latest beta versions of FeedDemon and NetNewsWire, and as an added benefit it means I can now use its Shared Items feature to highlight RSS feed items I found particularly useful or interesting.

If you think you might find what I find interesting interesting, you can find my shared items here. I've also made it an LJ syndicated account, as sbisson_shared.

Share and enjoy!

I've been looking for a back-up brain for sometime now, and the latest version of Evernote is an interesting step along that road.

It's a notetaking application that mixes mobile, desktop and web tools to make sure that you can take notes anywhere, and synchronise them through one service. I've found it very useful over the last few days, and it works across my Windows and OS X machines, as well as through my Windows Mobile phone. I can take a note on the road, and it'll be on my desktop as soon as I get back. Clipping tools let me copy text from web pages straight to the web service too...

I've got nine eight seven beta invitations to give away. Ping me if you want one!

Desktop is Windows XP, Vista and OS X Leopard, and mobile is currently only Windows Mobile - Java and iPhone versions should be along soon...

I'm trying out the beta of the latest version of the Flickr Uploadr, and I'm already tempted to say: "Great job, chaps". Sure, it's beta code, and there are still known bugs, but it seems to fix most of my issues with the Uploadr.

This is a complete rewrite of the old Uploadr, using a completely different set of technologies. The biggest visible change is a cross-platform UI built using Mozilla's Xulrunner. The result is an application that looks very similar to the site's recently updated web-based uploading tool, but with many more features.

My favourite feature so far has to be batch tagging, the ability to select a group of images, and quickly apply the same tags, descriptions, and titles (as well as other basic image settings). That's the big win for me - it makes uploading a day's images a lot easier, and reduces the time taken tagging. Group management has been improved too, and if an upload fails, tags and targeted groups are saved for the next attempt.

The result is a big improvement in work flow. I can get a batch of images tagged and uploaded in a few minutes, when using a mix of the old Uploadr and the web UI took at least three times as long...

Recommended.

I've just started using a really useful browser extension.

I'd used to keep a Temporary folder in my bookmarks, where I'd keep links I wanted to read later. However, to be honest, it got clogged up, or just plain forgotten about.

Friday I came across Read It Later. It's a really simple idea - it just adds a new option to the browser's right click menu, and a couple of extra buttons in the menu bar.

Right click Read it later instead of opening a link (or click the Read Later button in the toolbar when you're on a page), and the page is added to the Reading List. When you want to read the page, just click on the Reading List drop down, and when you're done click the Mark as Read button to remove from the list and add to any of a whole host of bookmarking services (including Firefox's own...).

Simple, and sensible.

Now all I want it is a synchronisation web service, so I can access the same Read It Later bookmarks from my laptop and my desktop.

It's not easy setting up a new PC when you're 8 timezones away from your network and servers - especially when your router has decided it doesn't want to pass VPN packets, and your mail software decides it needs a direct connection to the server as part of its initial set up...

A bit of googling threw up a rather useful piece of software: Hamachi. Now run by the folk at LogMeIn, Hamachi is a cloud-based UDP VPN that needs very little configuration. All you need to do is install the client software (available for Windows, OS X and Linux) on all the machines you want to connect to the network. These build UDP tunnels to the Hamachi servers. You can then define a network name (and password), and your systems can then be connected to each other through your new network. There's a free version which runs as an application, and a premium paid version that can be run as a service. The free download gives you 30 days of premium service - a good way for LogMeIn to add paying customers!

Sensibly the Hamchi servers issue IP addresses from the 5.x.x.x range, so there's very little chance of colliding with IP addresses on the local network (something that happens all too often with traditional VPNs which try to map one network's structure onto another's...).

It's not quite the promised zero-configuration VPN - I did find that I needed to open up one set of UDP ports on my home network firewall, but everything else ran smoothly, and I'm back with email at last...

Another tool for the mobile computing toolbox.

Or perhaps we do.

Here's Google's library of more than 600 new search buttons you can add to the newly customisable Google browser toolbar. There's a nice selection of reference sources, and buttons that'll search many other search engines.

Useful...

New PCs tend to be full of shovelware - applications and ISP trials you'll never use. You could do a vape and reinstall, but if you don't have a vanilla OS to hand you're probably stuck with a restore image that'll just put the shovelware right back again. That's where today's neat tool comes in: The PC De-Crapifier. Regularly updated, it's a one stop shop for cleaning out a new PC.

Run the script, and it'll remove most of the most common shovelware:

( see just what it kills behind here! )

Originally designed for Dell PCs (and originally called the Dell De-Crapifier), this is one for that USB key of useful tools you end up having to carry every time you go visit your relatives...

Drew Benvie sums up the responses he's had so far to his social media tools survey.

Some useful sites and software in there.

Drew Benvie at Lewis PR was wondering what social media tools various folk use. His list is pretty decent and has given me a new tool to try out...

So what are my five tools?

Newsgator: it's my standard RSS reader thanks to its Outlook integration, and it synchronises with its online reader well. The online side needs a bit of work to catch up with Bloglines or NewsAlloy, but it's pretty decent all the same. On the road I tend to use RSS Bandit, as it's small and fast. However, I'm looking forward to what the Newsgator folk do with the RSS technologies in Windows Vista and 2007 Office System. I keep a local archive of my RSS feeds and index it with Lookout. That gives me a whole long tail on RSS that turns it into an excellent research tool.

Trillian: IM is the ultimate in social media tools. While I use Skype and Skylook for work purposes, most of my social network is managed through IM (friends, colleagues, contacts, folk from previous jobs), and having a single tool that gives me access to MSN, AIM, Y!, ICQ and Jabber is vital. Its metacontact tools make managing all my many IM contacts incredibly easy. Now that my main blogging tool has turned on a Jabber server it's opened up a whole new layer of interaction - that's already more than proved its worth.

LiveJournal: my main blogging platform with a built in social network tool. LJ's "friends" model may be a combination RSS reader and buddy list on steroids, but it does give the LJ platform something lacking from other blogging tools - a community. As I've got a permanent LJ account bought several years ago when the service was needing new servers urgently, I get a lot of benefits that have more than paid for my $100 contribution to the service - and I've mapped my LJ blog to a personal domain. I also use Wordpress for a more esoteric occasional technical blog that I really must do more with... LJ's also blessed with a whole range of offline blog editing tools, which leads me neatly on to...

Semagic: an excellent free blog post editing tool. It works with LJ, Blogger, and Wordpress (even MSN Spaces!) - and also links to online photo hosting services. An excellent little tool, with a lot of powerful features. It's also free. It's not the only tool I use. I keep a copy of PocketPoster on my Windows Mobile 5.0 device for moblogging, and I occasionally use the Firefox Performancing extension for quick blog posts without leaving my browser.

Flickr: I photoblog a lot, and a good image hosting service is important - and it needs to be social media friendly. Flickr wins out by a long way here. It also has good tool support - and API that lets me do and find out interesting things with and about my pictures.

So there you have it - five social media tools (and combinations of tools) that are an essential part of my day.

What do you use?