Programmers' Tools

The site Programmers' Tools is just what it says. It has a category list that includes: basic, C, C++, C#, Java, Programmers editor, version control, debugging and several other items. The list of tools is far from exhaustive but it does contain many of the more popular tools.

Programmers' Tools

The site Programmers' Tools is just what it says. It has a category list that includes: basic, C, C++, C#, Java, Programmers editor, version control, debugging and several other items. The list of tools is far from exhaustive but it does contain many of the more popular tools.

Home PC Firewall Guide

The site Home PC Firewall Guide makes a good case for installing a personal firewall on each of your computers. This site is full of information for protecting your computer on the internet.

The Best in Freeware

Today I discovered Pricelessware. Pricelessware is a list of software collected from the "alt.comp.freeware" newsgroup. It is a list of what people have voted as "the best of the best in Freeware". The list is broken into several categories: Business-Home, Desktop, File Utilities,
Graphics, Organizers, Multimedia, Security, Web Design, Internet, Programming, Text and System Utilities.

What Tech Skills Are Hot For 2006?

ComputerWorld has a posting entitled 'What Tech Skills Are Hot For 2006?' According to the article there are three main tech skills in demand for 2006. The first is developers with Java and .NET skills, second is security experts with IT security certifications and finally Project Managers. It looks like 2006 may be a good to switch jobs and pick up a few dollars in teh process.

Foxit Reader - Free Reader For PDF

Scott Hanselman posted 'The end of Adobe Acrobat - Thank you Foxit.' I just had to give Foxit Reader a try. I have downloaded and installed 'Foxit Reader.' So far I 'Foxit Reader' is a great program. I think I have a new PDF reader for the Windows environment. I am going to need to perform some more testing before I make the switch. So far everything is good.

'Foxit Reader' is a small (about 2.5 Meg) and vary fast PDF reader. I opened a 23 Meg file with Acrobat. It took about 7 seconds to open where 'Foxit Reader' to about a second.

Seven Habits Of Highly Effective Programmers

Phil Chu over at Technicat has posted 'Seven Habits of Highly Effective Programmers.' I found the article to be right on the on money. Several of the points line up with my experiences in software development. I think I will make a few changes to my build and testing process based on this article.

Thinking Like A Genius

Over that the site 'Study Guides and Strategies' there is a neat article about 'Thinking Like A Genius.' The article lists eight steps to think like a genuis: find new perspectives, visualize, produce, make novel combinations, make connections, between dissimilar subjects, think in opposites, use metaphorically and prepare for chance.

GMail Mobile

Google has finally released a mobile interface for GMail. The URL for it is http://m.gmail.com. I fired up my Pocket PC and punched in the URL. I can't say that I was impressed. The user interface is lacking in the functionality that I have grown accustom to with the full program. I have done a little programming for the Pocket PC in the past so I understand the limitations for the device and the screen. I was expecting more out of the menus. We will have to wait an see how the interface improves.

FreeMind - Free Mind Mapping Tool

Check out FreeMind, a free mind-mapping tool written in Java so it can be run virtually anywhere. A mind map is a tool for visual thinking, learning, memory and brainstorming. It was during my college days when I was introduced to mind maps. I remember doing a few mind maps but they never really worked for me. It was just recently that mind maps have gotten my attetion. I had a programming issue that kept stumping me. I ended up talking about the problem with a friend. My friend made a quick mind map on a napkin. This has sparked a renewed interest in mind maps.

A quick Google search showed several mind mapping tools are out there. Right now I am trying out FreeMind because it will run in Microsoft Windows and on Linux.

Online Tech Support

A friend of mine has turned me on to 'Online Tech Team (OTT).' OTT is like having your vary own tech support shop. They offer 24x7 availability, worldwide accessibility of the online helpdesk, phone support, email support, web-based remote diagnostics, screen-sharing tools, and chat, support for hardware and software regardless of the brand, Microsoft Windows support, Microsoft Office support, real-time advice, find answers to computer-related questions, check and optimize the performance of your computer. They can even do remote diagnostics and screen sharing. For what I have been told OTT offers a wide range of support plans that range from per incident to yearly subscription.

I know that I spend a good part of my vacation time helping family members with computer issues. I thinking I may start pointing them over to Online Tech Team instead. The three month support plan would make an interesting addition to a new computer and new computer user.

GMail Switcher

Google has released a tool call GMail Switcher. This tool helps you switch from your current email account to your GMail account. The tool helps you imports the contacts, announce your new gmail address, remind people that you switched. You will be able to keep and manage your old email account from within GMail.

Top 20 IT Mistakes

InfoWorld is running an article on the 'The top 20 IT mistakes to avoid.'

I am not going to list the items here but I will hit a couple of the highlights like offshoring, developing web apps on for IE, falling behind on new technology and my personal favorite violating the KISS principle.

Many of the articles I have ready about successful business people and inventors is that making mistakes was a critical element in there development. I have a strange feeling that we will be dealing with these type of mistakes for a long time to come. This list reminds me various business articles that I read 10 years ago. It seems that we are making the same mistakes over and over. Why can't we learn of these mistakes?

Holding A Contest? Here Is How To Get Free Stuff For The Contest

Over at SpottedWalrus there is a blog posting entitled 'Holding a contest: How to get free stuff to give away.' It basically boils down to just asking.

Just For Fun: Write Your Name In Elvish

Today I came across Ned Gulley's Blog Rambles at starchamber.com. One of the most popular posting on Ned's site is 'Write Your Name in Elvish in Ten Minutes.' The tutorial is really simple. This would be an interesting way to sign your email.

Free Pascal

Original: 2005.05.16
Free Pascal (aka FPK Pascal) is a 32 and 64 bit professional Pascal compiler. It is available for different processors: Intel x86, Amd64/x86 64, PowerPC, Sparc. The website also has links to lots a information sources.

Update: 2005.12.15
Free Pascal Compiler Version 2.0.2 was released last week. The whatsnews.txt contains a summary of the changes.

Tectonic has a quick posting about the release entitled 'Free Pascal speeding along.'

Convert Microsoft Office, OpenOffice, PDF Documents To HTML For Free

Over at Digital Inspiration there are insturction on converting doc, xls, ppt, rtf, pdf to HTML for Free. One of the features that GMail offers is the ability to convert various docment styles into HTML.

2006 Small Business Trends

The site 'Small Business Trends' has started its series on 2006 Trends. First up on the block is 'Futurist Watts Wacker’s Trends to Watch in 2006.' Cell phones, Small environmental footprint, Digital life, Global culture and Avocation to vocation are topping Wacker's list. Out of the list Avication to vocation is the item that interests me the most. I really like the idea of turning my hobbies and interest into a job. It will be interesting to see how people going about making jobs out of hobbies. If you are thinking about trying to turn a hobby into a job I would ask you to consider why you love the hobby and what benefits it brings you. If you are using your hobby to escape the pressures of life then I would suggest you keep the hobby as a hobby. I know for my self that the woodworking should always remain a hobby.

Next we have '2006 Workforce Trends by the Herman Group.' Intensifying competition for qualified workers, Gradually increasing attention to employee retention, Increasing investment in older workers, Shift in retirement plans to lifetime lifestyle funding, Continued off-shoring of some work, coupled with return of other work, Larger investment in corporate training, Growth in telecommuting, Expansion of staffing industry, Heightened flexibility in work arrangements, Employer dissatisfaction with product of schools are the hot trends for the new year. It looks like companies will have to put more effort into getting, growing and keeping good employees.

Updated: 2005.12.15
Here are the trends from 'Happy About': Energy, Internet democratization, Increases in Internet marketing, China’s impact on world commerce increases, Outsourcing expands to other sectors, Services play an even larger part in Western economies, mobile commerce expands, VOIP, Employer/employee relationships change, and Security will be on everyone's mind.

The 2006 trends for Microbusiness are: increase in the number microbusiness, energy and information will play a large role in microbusiness, increases in marketing to microbusiness, more business articles will be written about microbusiness, and politicians will take more notice of microbusiness.

Coffee and Soda

Both Coke and Pepis are coming out with coffee-infused drinks. From the Coca-Cola Company we get Coke Blak.' Coke Blak will be rolled out in France first and later in 2006 to the United States. Pepsi beat Coco-Cola to the punch on Coffee-Soda drinks. Pepsi Kona was tested in 1994 and 1996. Pepsi Cappuccino and Pepsi Tarik are already in the market.

I am looking forward to trying these products. I drink coffee and soda at different times in the day and enjoy both drinks. I am just not sure that I really want both to be combined.

WMIC - Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line Tool

I was listening to the podcast 'In The Trenches.' One of the items they talked about was WMIC. This sounds like a great little tool. WMIC is a tool that enable systems management from the command line. Here is a short list of links I have found.

• Using the Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line (WMIC) tool
• WMIC - Take Command-line Control over WMI
• WMIC.exe
• WMIC

Firefox Resources

The first resource I have for you today is the 'Firefox Tweak Guide' from TechSpot. This is not your typical speed tweak guide. This tweak guide covers Profiles, Toolbars, General, Privacy, Content, Tabs, Download, Advance, Plugins, Extensions, Themes, Advance Configuration, Auto-Updates, Bookmarks, Caching, Connections, Rendering and Scripting. In short this guide is what you really would have like to be the help file.

The next resource is the 'Gmail Manager'. This extension allows you to manage multiple gmail accounts and receive new mail notifications.

Resource For A Lazy Programmer

DotNetSlackers - ASP.NET News for Lazy Developers is a website that is aggregating the content of several other sites. There are two points of interest for me. The first is the large number of websites they are dealing with. The second point of interest they provide the news content as a webservice. This will make it simple to display related blogs, stories and news on a site.

Dictionary of Algorithms and Data Structures

Check out the 'Dictionary of Algorithms and Data Structures.' This site lists general algorithms of common functions and problems. The site does not include algorithms that pertain to business data processing, operating systems, distributed algorithms, programming languages, AI, graphics, communications or numerical analysis.

Beginner's Guide To Search Engine Optimization

Getting listed in a search engine is fairly easy. Most search engines have a page that allows the manual submission of a URL. It normally takes a day or two for the search engine scan your page. Now that you are listed in a search engine you will want to try to increase your page ranking.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a set of practices that you can apply to a website in an effort to increase its ranking within a search engine.

Getting started with SEO usually several hours of reading. Reading SEO related websites for relevant information and reading search engine FAQ's. To help cut through the clutter and get started on the right for the site SEOmoz.org has a great posting entitled 'Beginner's Guide to Search Engine Optimization.'

I have quickly scanned the article and noted several places where I am going to have to re-read carefully.

X-Ray Magazine Issue #8

X-Ray Magazine Issue #8 is now on-line. This issue features: News species discovered, Deep sea discoveries, Treasures up for sale, Turtles heading for Scotland, Flourescent sharks, South Africa Theme, Cafe fur seal heaven, Getting close with a White shark, Ragged Tooth shark Biology, Toying with Tiger Sharks, Safaris, Profile: Andre Hartman - the Shark man, Equipment News, DEMA report, Gifts for the Holidays, Photography: Let there be Light.

Sed Tutorials

In an effort to improve my Lunix/Unix knowledge I have stumbled across two tutorials for Sed. Sed is short for Stream Editor. Why would I want to use Sed? Sed is great for performing repetitive edits that would take a long time to do manually. For example you could use Sed to every instance of 'Bob Smith' to 'Mr. Robert Smith.' Sed does this by sequentially reading a file a single line at a time into memory. Sed makes the changes to the line in memory. The changed line can be sent to screen or file.

The first resource is Sed - An Introduction and other comes from Oracle Using the sed Editor.

Python And .NET

Yesterday I stumbled across a couple of Python and .NET resources. The first resource GotDotNet called IronPython. IronPython is a version of Python that runs on the .NET implementation. The second is Visual Python which is an plug-in to Visual Studio. Visual Python looks fairly interesting there is a trail version you can download.

Some Thoughts On Why To Learn Another Programming Language

I am always looking at other languages. I like to learn programming languages. Not only does this increase the tools in my toolbox but it gives me another way of thinking about a problem. Each programming language was built to solve a need. That need sets the context in which the programmer thinks. As I learn new languages and new ways of thinking about problems, I try to apply that thinking to languages I ready know. This has lead me to simpler and more productive solutions. I encourage you to take the time to add another langauge to your toolbox and let me know how that new language has impacted the way you address a problem.

Try Ruby

I was John Lam's blog posting 'TryRuby' on Less is Better yesterday. His posting about an on-line tutorial for Ruby. What is really cool about this tutorial is there is no software to install. You can give it a try yourself at http://tryruby.hobix.com/. If you like the tutorial you can get get a one-click Ruby installer at RubyForge.

St. Louis DotNetNuke User's Group

Chris Hammond has started a DotNetNuke User Group in St. Louis.

You can find the offical website for the group at http://www.dnnug.com