furman87's essential reviews

Balsamiq Mockups

2009-06-09T23:18:00.007-04:00

I'll just get this out in the open right now -- I pretty much suck at web design and need all the help that I can get when laying out new pages. Don't get me wrong, I know what looks good and I'm pretty good at "borrowing" the best parts of other people's designs, but when I'm staring at a blank screen, I get a little overwhelmed. And when I get overwhelmed I procrastinate.

So what should I do? I have to move forward with my projects, but I don't want draw stuff in Photoshop -- that's too tedious and time-consuming and my customers want to see things right now! Mocking stuff up on paper is also time-consuming, and makes it hard to email things to my clients. Hmm, there must be something out there that lets me quickly mock up a screen, export it to an image file, and send it to my clients. A friend had told me about Balsamiq Mockups, but I didn't see the point at the time. Until I had this new web project to do. So I checked it out and it looked incredible, exactly what I was looking for. The best part? Wait for it, wait for it, wait for it...

It costs only $79 for the desktop version!

I couldn't believe it either, and once I started using it this past weekend, I was actually having fun while working on my new project. And look what I created...

In a nutshell, here's how it works -- you choose the screen elements (windows, text, links, grids, etc) that you want to use and drag them onto your mockup. You can then drag them around, size them, change the text, group them, and lock them in place if you want. The grouping is awesome because once I got a section of the screen to my liking, I grouped everything in that section together so I could easily move it around.

The program is amazingly intuitive to use, and I never had to wonder how to do something -- there is always a partially-transparent menu floating nearby, and to edit your text, just double-click, change the text, then hit enter. Simple.

No matter what level of screen designer you are -- from pros down to amateurs, you need this product if you are going to create web pages or desktop applications. Your design will be much better, you can test different ideas, your clients will love you, and you will look like you actually know what you're doing. All for only $79. That's dirt cheap for a good reputation and to make work fun again, don't you think?

Joomla!

2009-06-05T12:19:00.002-04:00

I've been searching for the perfect content management system (CMS) for a while now, and when my host offered an easy way to install several different ones, I tried them all. I needed something that was easy to modify the content, was modular, had a large user base, and was easy for me to support. I know that people get pretty fanatical when it comes to software, so please remember that this post is merely on my experiences with a product, namely Joomla.

Joomla is super easy to install, I think it took me 5 minutes and it was working perfectly and has been working fine ever since. Create your database, upload the Joomla code, run the install process by answering some basic questions about the site, and that's about it.

There are so many extensions for Joomla, that you can add just about any feature you want. Sure, some of the extensions are better than others, but there are typically several to choose from in each category to suit your needs.

There are also lots of nice themes for Joomla, so you can give your site a nice, professional look without too much work. I joined RocketTheme's Joomla template club for $75 per year and it was worth every penny to be able to have access to so many awesome themes at such a great price. Not only do you have access to dozens of nice templates, each one is very customizable so you can use the same theme on different sites and have a totally different look and feel for each site.

Inside Joomla, it is pretty easy to figure out and navigate, but some things are not as intuitive as you might expect. Overall, I would say that it requires above-average technical knowledge to get some things working, but most people with avereage technical abilities should be able to get a basic site working.

Of course, if you need help with your site, my services are always available. :-)

I know that other CMS solutions are out there, and I'm sure that there are pros and cons to each, but Joomla has my vote so far for putting together a nice site pretty quickly.

AutoPager Firefox extension

2009-02-26T22:39:00.000-05:00

Like everyone, you use Google to search for things and the thing that you're searching for is not always on the first page of results, right? So you click the "Next" button, scroll, scroll, scroll, click "Next", scroll...you get the picture.

Wouldn't it be nice if you could just search and then scroll and keep scrolling through the results until you find what you want? What about popular blogs like Engadget, Gizmodo, and Lifehacker? On almost any popular site you can think of, you're always having to click "Next" when you really just want to scroll.

That's where AutoPager comes in -- when you get to a site that it knows how to handle, it asks you if you want to enable it. Click "OK" and you're ready to scroll through blog posts and search results, never having to pause to click on the pesky "Next" link.

Disclaimer: geek talk ahead. Autopager uses lazy reading, so it won't hurt your browsing performance.

Sorry Internet Explorer users -- this only works for Firefox, which you should be using anyway.

Ultramon

2009-02-18T10:20:00.002-05:00

If you have two or more computer monitors, you know how nice it is to be able to move your applications from one monitor to the other to make yourself as productive as possible, or at least appear that you're productive.

I hate to sound like a complete sloth, but moving those windows around can be a pain, which is where Ultramon comes in handy. Ultramon allows you to easily move application windows from one monitor to the next using your mouse or a specified hotkey. It also allows you to maximize your application across both monitors in case you have something really, really wide that you're working on. I can't imagine working on something that wide, but I'm sure someone is doing something like that out there.

One pretty cool feature of Ultramon is that it provides a "smart taskbar", which gives each monitor its own task bar and can show only the applications that are on that monitor. It takes a little while to get used to, but it's pretty cool. If you just want one really wide task bar, you can do that, too.

One annoyance that I've found is that there does not seem to be an option for moving the mouse along with the window. You can assign a separate key to move the mouse to the other window, but I would imagine that you would have that option for $39 USD.

After using Ultramon for a while, I can honestly say that I'm underwhelmed. It does its job well, but I built the same basic functionality by myself with Autohotkey in 36 lines of code.

Ultramon works well, but I'm not sure that it's worth $39 USD. If it were more attractively priced at $19 or $25 USD and also had the option to move the mouse along with the window, I'd definitely recommend it.

Addendum: Reader NewKreation posted a comment about an Autohotkey script called WindowPad that I've tried out and it works great. Save yourself the $39 USD and get this script instead. It's free and offers more functionality than Ultramon. I smell a future blog post...

Sennheiser PX 100 Collapsible Headphones

2009-02-10T13:56:00.000-05:00

Did you recently get a shiny new iPod? How does it sound? Great, huh? Well I can assure you that it doesn't sound as great as it could because the headphones that Apple ships with the iPod are pieces of crap. How does music sound through your computer? Pretty bad, doesn't it?

I have a simple and inexpensive way for you to solve your audio problems -- go get a pair of Sennheiser PX 100 headphones because I think they are the best headphones for the money. I don't often rave about products, but I have literally gotten at least five of my friends (yes, I do have at least five friends) to get these headphones. Every time they put them on, they can't believe how great their music sounds, and one co-worker even bought one set for home and one for the office because he loved them so much.

So why are they so great? First of all, they're inexpensive, at around $35 per pair. But the main reason is that they sound awesome, with strong bass and great response through all frequencies. I'm not an audio expert, I only marginally sound like one since I'm writing something that will be posted online.

The only thing that some people might not like is that these headphones are on-ear, which means they won't naturally block out surrounding noise at low volume. Some people don't like on-ear headphones, so if that's the case with you then you probably won't like these very much.

They're light, comfortable, collapsible, come with a nice carrying case, and most of all they sound incredible, especially for the price. No matter what type of device you plug them into or what type of music you listen to, it will sound so much better when listening through these phones.

Check them out here -- you won't be disappointed.

Easynews

2009-02-03T13:43:00.004-05:00

I absolutely love Easynews and anyone who wants access to the limitless amount of content hidden within newsgroup servers, Easynews is the best way to get to it.

So why should care about newsgroups and why on Earth would you want to pay $9.95 a month for it? Because newsgroups are the original forums, places where people discuss all kinds of topics in a specific place. No matter what your interest, there are newsgroups for it. Especially if you like binary content. The problem is, you have to put large stuff out there in little pieces, and some of the pieces get lost because newsgroup content is generally not kept around for very long.

Enter Easynews -- they keep their newsgroup content around for a long time, much longer than most providers and they make the binary treasure trove hidden within very easy to get to. Music? Check. Movies? Check. Games? Check. It's all out there, tons of it, but you just need the right service to get to it all and get to it easily.

And Easynews is definitely the right service. Check it out -- they have a free three day trial so you can see just how good it is.

Free Commander

2008-01-10T14:08:00.000-05:00

It's no secret that the Windows file explorer is pretty much useless for anything other than getting frustrated. When I was looking for a dual-pane file explorer replacement, I found xplorer2, an excellent piece of software that does all kinds of nifty things. The only problem is that it also costs $30. I went ahead and bought it after hearing rave reviews, and then last week I happened upon Free Commander, a free alternative to xplorer2.

The nicest, and most obvious, feature of Free Commander is its dual-pane display, allowing you to view two directories at the same time, and easily copy files between them. Besides that great feature, it also has the following advantages over the horrible Windows file explorer...

You can click anywhere in the path of the current pane to quickly navigate to that part of the path. For example, if I am in D:\Dev\Projects\SuperWidget, and I want to quickly get to D:\Dev, I just click on the "Dev" part of the path and I'm there.
Open a command prompt window at the current directory.
Extra tree view in addition to the flat file/directory listing.
A drive bar over each pane that lets you quickly get to another drive.
Color-code your files based on certain specifications. For example, I color all of my read-only files blue.
Built-in archiving and unarchiving.
Easily access your favorite folders (also allows you to pick a favorite for the inactive pane).
Easily access your favorite tools.
Easily access your Desktop, Control Panel, My Documents, and Start menu items from the toolbar.
Display subdirectory sizes.
Built-in file viewer.
Incremental searching for files as you type. This also limits the arrow keys to only those files that match.
Incremental file filter that you can toggle on and off.

There is much more than I could list, and those are just the highlights that Free Commander can do. So check it out, and put away that piece of crap that ships with Windows. Oh yeah, and did I mention that it's free?

TrueCrypt

2007-02-23T16:21:00.000-05:00

Do you wonder if your spouse, kids, or network administrator is rifling through your, um, sensitive files on your hard drive? Wouldn't it be nice to know that you could store your pr0n, proprietary source code, or top secret spreadsheets in a place that only you could access? Well that's where TrueCrypt comes in.

TrueCrypt creates an encrypted file on your hard drive that you can mount as a regular Windows or Linux drive. Once mounted, this virtual drive reads and writes just like a normal drive, except that the contents are encrypted and decrypted on the fly. Encryption is 256-bit, so it's very unlikely that anyone is going to be breaking into it anytime soon.

Another cool feature of TrueCrypt is inner and outer passwords. Let's say you're a spy carrying top-secret info, such as naked pictures of Hillary Clinton. Well if Hillary's goons get hold of you, they might try to strong-arm you into giving them the pics. With TrueCrypt, you can store a few files that look secret in the outer vault, but the really good stuff is in the inner vault. If you feel like you're in danger, you give them the outer vault password to get them off your back and hopefully spare your fingers from getting broken. Obviously they don't see the inner vault stuff, so you can rush it to the Enquirer after you've been let go.

To anyone accessing your drive, the TrueCrypt file is just a mass of unreadable garbage, and you can rest assured that no one will be accessing your files. When you are through reading and writing to your encrypted drive, simply unmount it and everything is safe and sound. TrueCrypt is free, has Windows and Linux versions, and also can be used on USB drives. Go get it before your wife finds all of your pr0n...

Screenshot Captor

2007-02-15T22:41:00.001-05:00

I thought I had already reviewed this fine piece of software, but due to laziness, parenthood, and my job, it somehow slipped my mind. All bullshit aside, go get Screenshot Captor now, whether you think you need it or not. Because you do -- you really do.

"So what's so damn hot about this program?" you might be asking yourself. Well, I'll tell you. Screenshot Captor (I'm going to call it SC from here on out) can capture all or any portion of your screen, then allows you to enhance the captured image with borders, arrows, text, transparent shapes, and even blur the background to highlight certain screen elements. It will capture long screen areas such as web pages that need to be scrolled, and can even capture its own image if you happen to be writing a software review and need a screenshot of the tool that takes the screenshots.

Our QA department was using SnagIt to capture screenshots for reporting bugs, but once I told them about SC, they let their licenses expire because SC did everything SnagIt did, but for free. Even though I don't use it in my daily work, I use SC at least every few days to capture images for software reviews, and for use on my StumbleUpon page.

If you have even a remote chance of needing to capture your screen, get Screenshot Captor. It's a fantastic piece of software and you can't beat the price -- free. The fine folks at DonationCoder have done it again.

Miranda Instant Messenger

2007-02-03T22:49:00.000-05:00

I originally picked Trillian as my instant messenger client of choice because it supported multiple protocols and had a skinnable interface. I maintained my allegiance to Trillian until a co-worker pestered me to try Miranda. The only thing that intrigued me about Miranda was that it supported Jabber, and the only way to get Jabber support in Trillian was to pay $25. I have no problem buying software if it warrants it, but in this case it didn't. So I installed Miranda, along with the Miranda IM Pack, and was instantly hooked.

Beside the fact that it is free, supports just about every protocol under the sun, and is skinnable, Miranda does just about anything you'd want an IM client to do. You can customize every aspect of your contact list, and their plugin architecture has yielded a lot of support. RSS feeds and letting the world know what Winamp tune you're currently listening to are just a few of the plugins that are included in the Miranda pack, and there are a lot more out there.

Miranda is definitely my current choice for an IM client because of its cost (free), protocol support, plugins, and customization options. The only complaint about Miranda is that it is almost too configurable, and finding the location of an option to change is sometimes difficult. Other than that, it's awesome.

ID3-TagIT

2006-02-23T08:52:00.000-05:00

If you're as anal retentive as I am, you first must ask yourself, "Is anal retentive hyphenated?" Well, I'm anal retentive about some things, and my MP3 tags are one thing I obsess over. There's nothing worse than looking up at your music player to see songs in the wrong case, misspellings, or maybe nothing because there are no tags in the file. Another annoyance is when you have songs named differently because you chose a different scheme when you ripped your songs.

All of my problems are now solved with ID3-TagIT. This software does everything, and I mean everything related to managing your MP3 tags and file names. I'm just going to go over the highlights of what this thing does, but believe me when I tell you it does it all. For free.

If you are missing tag information, it can either extract tag info from the file names or look it up in the FreeDB database.
If the tags are correct but the files are named differently than you normally name them, it will rename the files the way you want. You can save different templates if you have different naming schemes.
If the tags are file names are correct but some dumbass decided to be cool and put everything in lower case, it will correct the case for you.
Besides merely managing the tags and file names, it also does file management duties like looking for duplicate files, moving, copying, and deleting files. It will also find and highlight files where the tags and file names don't match.

There's not much more I can say about this tool other than it has saved me hours and hours of my valuable time. If you have lots of MP3 files and you want them named correctly with accurate tags, then this tool is for you. Even though it's free, and I don't like to pay for software, I gladly made a PayPal donation to Michael Pleumper for his brilliant and well-written software.

jEdit

2006-02-01T22:52:00.000-05:00

If you're in need of a very good text editor, look no farther than jEdit, the self-proclaimed programmer's text editor. It handles any kind of editing task you can throw at it, and I've been very happy with it since I switched from TextPad.

I'll start with my only real complaint -- since jEdit is written in Java, it takes longer to load than native Windows applications. But the fact that it is written in Java is also its strength because it runs on just about any platform. Once loaded, jEdit is a snappy performer and shows none of the lag that I've experienced in other Java desktop applications.

Since it is designed to be a programmer's editor, it handles the normal programmer's editing tasks such as syntax highlighting, auto brace indentation, and auto tag closing (in HTML and XML). It also allows you to write scripts in BeanShell, which is very powerful and something that TextPad lacked -- the easiest way to learn BeanShell is to record a macro and see what code it produced.

jEdit also has a number of plugins and I use several of them -- XML indenter, XPath Tool, XSLT Tool, and the Text tool that supplies text manipulation (such as sorting) that I'm surprised did not come with jEdit out of the box. The Plugin Manager is great -- you find, download, and install the plugins from within jEdit so there's no searching around for plugins.

jEdit also supports code folding (collapsing and expanding blocks of code such as classes, functions, loops, and try/exception), which is very handy for keeping your place in larger chunks of code (the ones you wrote when you were younger and less experienced).

I know that editors are very sacred to programmers, but if you're the slightest bit unhappy with your current editor, I suggest giving jEdit a try. And it's free, so you don't have anything to lose but a little bit of time.

Clipboard Help+Spell

2006-01-17T16:23:00.000-05:00

I started developing my own clipboard monitoring program a few years ago. As I started listing all of the requirements, I realized how much work was going to be involved. Being a lazy developer, I scoured the Internet for programs that already did what I wanted, but I never found one that did everything that I needed. A friend told me about DonationCoder.com and that they had a lot great software, so I checked it out.

The first thing that caught my eye was Clipboard Help+Spell -- I immediately downloaded it and tried it and I haven't stopped using it since. This program does everything that I wanted my own project to do, plus much, much more -- things I never even considered. Here's everything that it does that will help you daily:

It saves everything that you cut or copy to the clipboard so you'll have it later if you need it. This one feature is a life saver and a time saver because it allows you to collect information by copying, and then put it together later.
You can name and categorize your clippings so you can easily find them later. If you have to type or recall large blocks of text regularly, you can use the incremental search to quickly find them and paste them to the clipboard, then into whatever program you're using at the time.
To keep your clip database from getting too big, it will automatically move old clips to an "old" folder, then to a "trash" folder after x number of days or hours. To save something, check it as a favorite, or move it to another folder so it won't get automatically deleted. Everything else, eventually will go to the great bit bucket.
It has a quick paste mode that lets you type a hot key (Ctrl+Alt+Q by default) that will display a menu of the last 10 or so clips. To paste them into the current application, type the number of the desired clip and the text will be inserted at your cursor.
It has spell check -- misspelled words are highlighted in the application.
You can format your text right in the application, even using regular expressions. You can strip carriage returns, extra lines, and do search/replace (even using regular expressions!). The best part is the search/replace is done as you type, so you can see how your clip will be affected in real-time. Brilliant!
You can also rearrange the panes in the window according to how you work.

If you cut/copy/paste a lot of text, or if you want to start using this valuable untapped resource, this program is for you. Another fantastic program brought to you by DonationCoder.com. After you download it, please give them a little cash to let them know how much you appreciate their work -- everyone will feel better after you donate.

Find and Run Robot

2006-01-17T14:36:00.000-05:00

Find and Run Robot is an awesome piece of software written by the fine folks at DonationCoder.com. These people provide really great freeware apps, but I highly recommend contributing a small amount of money to their site to help keep things going. They create these programs on their own time and for the good of the community, so please help them out -- they churn out great programs.

That said, Find and Run Robot is a must for anyone who runs lots of programs all day and constantly has stuff covering up their desktop icons. The way it works is that you simply start typing the name of what you want to run, and Find and Run Robot will, as the name implies, find it for you and then run it when you hit the Enter key. It searches incrementally, so it usually only takes a few keystrokes to find what you want to run.

For example, to run Excel you must invoke Find and Run Robot by pressing Alt-Spacebar or the Pause/Break key. Then simply type "exc" and Excel should be at the top of the list. If it is, hit the Enter key and Excel will start. If Excel isn't at the top of the list, but is visible in the list of found programs, simply typing the number next to Excel will run it.

There are tons of options to get Find and Run Robot to behave exactly the way you want it to -- and once you get used to it, you'll never have to go to your Desktop or Taskbar to find the program to run. Just Alt-Spacebar, type a few letters and you're ready to go.

Oh, and don't forget to donate a little cash these guys -- their programs are well worth the money.

WinAmp

2006-01-08T11:20:00.000-05:00

I have been searching for the ultimate application for playing music for a long time. I have tried Windows Media Player (WMP), WinAmp, Quintessential CD Player (QCD), and various offerings from other companies for a long time and just couldn't be satisfied for some reason.

QCD is nice and has progressed nicely since I first tried it several years ago, but didn't fit the bill for reasons I just can't remember at this point. That left me bouncing between Windows Media Player and WinAmp for a year or two and I finally settled on WinAmp, and here is why:

WinAmp is free for playing all content, including video and tons of high-quality Internet radio stations. If you want to rip music at a decent bitrate, you need the Pro version for $19.95, but there are a number of good free rippers out there if you want to avoid this one-time cost. I know WMP is free, but I needed to mention that WinAmp is also free.
WinAmp is skinnable and has so many skins developed for it that you're sure to find a look and feel that appeals to you. In addition to the look, skins also can make WinAmp more usable by exposing features that are sometimes buried in menus and submenus and more submenus. The windowshade mode, coupled with the "Always on top" option means WinAmp is always available. Again, I know that WMP is also skinnable, but WinAmp has more skins available.
I really like the library and playlist support. At first the music library interface looks cluttered, but when you start using it you realize how powerful WinAmp is. As you type a search in the music library, WinAmp searches incrementally through the artist and title, only displaying artists and songs that match. From there, you can highlight an artist or album and click "Play" or "Enqueue" to quickly play your songs.
If you're at a loss as to what songs you want to play, WinAmp can help you out. It uses a technology from Predixis called MusicMagic that allows you to highlight a song and WinAmp/Predixis will find 20 songs similar to the highlighted song. You have to have all of your library indexed so Predixis can work correctly, but it's worth the one-time scan of your music.

I could go on and on about the various features of WinAmp, but I've got more software to write about. In the meantime, I'm going to crank up WinAmp and listen to some Arctic Monkeys.

FileLocator Pro

2006-01-04T21:16:00.000-05:00

Let's face it -- the Windows Search utility sucks balls. Not only does it take forever to find (or not find) what you're looking for, but it only supports basic wildcards like * and ?. You'd think the all-powerful Microsoft could provide a utility that could actually find files quickly. Since it can't, you need to try FileLocator Pro.

I first tried this great program as the freeware program Agent Ransack, but it lacked the one feature I really, really needed -- the ability to go right to the row and column of the text file I found. Since I'm a software developer, this was very important to me. I gladly paid the money for FileLocator Pro and the fact that it is always open on my desktop should tell you how much I use it.

The biggest advantages of FileLocator Pro is that you can use regular expressions in the file name, text to search for, and directories. I used this feature today to search for all text files with "log" or "est" extensions that contained the numbers starting with "4413" in log directories that began with "06". Anyone who knows the power of regular expressions will really appreciate the fact that a search program has this ability. I'm sure there are others out there that do the same thing, but I can assure you that FileLocator Pro is among the best.

Oh yeah -- it's really fast, too. And it doesn't have a cartoon dog getting in the way. OK, just go check it out.

Gmail

2006-01-03T22:32:00.001-05:00

Again, Google has redefined the way that an application should work. While most web-based mail services feel like traditional web sites, Gmail feels almost like a desktop application with its heavy use of client-side scripting to handle more activity in your browser.

So why do I like Gmail? Let me count the ways. First, Gmail is free and gives you a copious amount of storage space -- more than any other free web-based email service.

Second, they created a novel way to view conversations (or threads) -- by stacking just the subject lines in chronological order so you can see who responded and when. This approach makes it easy to keep up with a thread of multiple responses.

Third, Gmail uses the concept of tags, much like Flickr and del.icio.us, to categorize mail messages. For example, you could assign a tag of "Orders" to all of your online orders to easily find all messages relating to orders.

Fourth, Gmail employs filters to allow you to automatically forward, categorize, archive, star, or delete your incoming mail.

Fifth, Gmail's spam filtering is pretty accurate. I have had very little of my mail wrongfully marked as spam.

Sixth, Gmail uses shortcut keys to allow you to quickly handle your mail. A lot of people don't know about or use this feature, but I can quickly reply (r), forward (f), archive (y), or go back to my Inbox (u) with just a keystroke instead of hunting for the correct button or link to click on.

And last but not least, Gmail uses Google's famed search engine to allow you to quickly find the message you need. With all these things going for it, it's no wonder I love Gmail so much.

StrokeIt

2005-12-28T10:03:00.000-05:00

I don't know why this software wasn't in my first post, because I can't live without it. Despite the name that conjures up visions of a porn site, StrokeIt is a piece of software that I'm surprised that no one thought of sooner.

I found StrokeIt after using Opera's mouse gestures -- I got really used to them and wondered why mouse gestures weren't part Windows (that's part of a Microsoft "innovation" rant, so I won't go there right now), so I Googled "gestures windows" and StrokeIt was the first result. I downloaded and installed it, and was immediately impressed.

StrokeIt has always been stable -- I don't think it has ever crashed and I've been using it for at least two years on multiple computers.

In addition to StrokeIt being stable, its design is elegant -- you can define global mouse gestures that apply to all windows, and can override the action that a gesture performs in another application if you want. For example, the gesture "C" closes a window by default. But in certain MDI applications (such as tabbed windows in Firefox), I like "C" to close the MDI child windows, not the whole application. If you want to disable StrokeIt in an application, you can do so easily.

Here are a few examples of StrokeIt's usefulness -- to minimize a window, do a quick diagonal gesture toward the lower-left corner. No need to go up to the top corner, find the minimize button, then click it. To close a window, just a quick "C" gesture and the window is closed. These are just a few examples of how to use StrokeIt, but hopefully you get the idea.

The best part about StrokeIt is that it's free, so you have nothing to lose by giving it a try. But be forewarned -- once you start using it, you won't be able to stop using it.

Pobox.com

2005-12-13T10:46:00.000-05:00

Are you tired of sending out emails to all of your friends telling them you have a new email address? Wouldn't it be a lot nicer to just give everyone an email address that never changes? Well that's what the Pobox email service offers -- a permanent email address that isn't dependent on your ISP.

It works like this:

Sign up for Pobox (for a nominal yearly charge) and pick an email address (like john.doe@pobox.com).
Tell Pobox up to three real email addresses (like johndoe@comcast.net, jdoe@gmail.com) to which you'd like your mail sent.
Let all of your friends and family know your new Pobox email address.
That's it -- now you can check your regular email accounts, but all of your friends only know your Pobox account.

What if you switch ISPs? No problem -- just go to Pobox and tell them where to send your email. It switches almost instantly and you're now in business with your new ISP.

Besides being your new permanent email address, Pobox also performs decent spam filtering to keep the spam in your inbox to a minimum. I've been a Pobox customer since 1998, and I'll gladly keep paying for it.

del.icio.us Firefox extension

2005-12-13T10:26:00.000-05:00

The del.icio.us Firefox extension gives you easy access to the del.icio.us social bookmarking website. It works like this -- first, sign up for a free del.icio.us account. Then, while you're surfing the Internet and you see a site you want to bookmark, click on the TAG button, which opens up a window to a new del.icio.us entry. You add tags that categorize the entry, so you (and other del.icio.us users) can later find your entries utilizing the tags.

The real power of del.icio.us is that it allows you to see other people's bookmarks, allowing you to find new websites that interest you. Let's say you're a web designer and you want to find some good sites on CSS. Go to del.icio.us, put css in the search box, and it will display all of your bookmarks related to CSS along with everyone else's bookmarks that they have categorized with the css tag.

del.icio.us is a great site, and this extension makes it that much better.

Greasemonkey

2005-12-13T10:00:00.000-05:00

Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension that runs scripts that can change a web page's behavior. For example, I have a Greasemonkey script that adds a Delete button to Gmail. There are others that strip advertisements from pages, show negative feedback of eBay users, and countless others that fix some of the annoyances of our favorite web pages.

You can get Greasemonkey here, and go to userscripts.org to get your hands on some great scripts that will let you browse the web the way you want to browse it.

TaskSwitchXP Pro

2005-11-29T11:41:00.000-05:00

The other day I had about 15 applications open and was using the built-in Windows task switcher via the Alt-Tab keystroke. As I was cycling through the windows, I thought to myself, "Self, why can't I use the mouse to just point to one of the windows in the list?" I tried, but it doesn't work.

So I Googled "windows task switcher" and ran across this gem -- TaskSwitchPro XP. Not only does it allow you to use the mouse to point to the window you want to switch to, but it shows you a thumbnail of the window as you point to different windows. I just installed it, so I haven't fully investigated it yet, but there are dozens of configuration options that let you tweak it just the way you want.

If you often have more than 2 or 3 applications open at a time, and want quick access to them, then this application is for you. It appears to be well-written, stable, and offers all of the functionality that Microsoft neglected to include in the Windows task switcher. Oh, and best off all it's free!

Firefox

2005-11-21T16:07:00.001-05:00

You've probably heard all of the hubbub about Firefox during the last year or so, and guess what? It's all well-founded hubbub. So go get Firefox now. I'll wait. OK, good. Now you've got the best web browsing experience there is. The biggest advantages of Firefox are increased speed, tabbed browsing, web standards compliance, extensions, and themes.

Tabbed browsing allows you to have several websites open in one browser window, so you don't have to keep switching between browser copies to get back to another website.

Web standards compliance simply means that Firefox adheres to the W3C (the people that write the web standards) standards for rendering web pages. Not all browsers follow the standards (uh...Internet Explorer comes to mind), so web designers must work around their limitations. Since Firefox follows the rules, you see web pages the way the W3C meant them to be seen.

Extensions are small add-ons that add functionality to the browser. There are already so many extensions, it wouldn't make any sense to list them all here. In the near future, I'll be suggesting extensions that I regularly use -- in the meantime, go visit the Firefox extensions page to see everything that's available.

Themes allow you to change the look and feel of the browser to your liking. You can create your own, or go to the Firefox themes page to choose one of the many themes that have already been created by the Firefox community.

Mailinator

2005-11-21T15:25:00.000-05:00

Imagine this scenario -- you're registering for a website that requires an email address and you're not quite sure if you want to give them your real email address. But the site looks interesting and you want to join. Your mind is swimming with indecision -- give them my real address, where it could be sold to who knows who, or go and create a new fake email address with one of the big free services?

Enter Mailinator -- when an email is required, you can enter any address @mailinator.com (anyaddress@mailinator.com, earl@mailinator.com, screwyou@mailinator.com -- you get the picture). Later, go to www.mailinator.com, enter the email address you just entered, and it will display your mail. Very handy for registering for sites that require you to click on a link to complete your registration.

A few notes -- the email accounts are created on the fly as mail arrives at the server, so no password is required. This means that anyone can read your mail, and you can read anyone else's mail if you guess an existing account. The mail only stays around for a few hours, and any attachments are stripped from the mail. You cannot reply using Mailinator, only read incoming mail.

Mailinator is one tool to keep in your spam-prevention arsenal -- a great tool that does its job well.