IT world observations

Nothing _realy_ interesting happened

2006-11-09T13:05:00.000+02:00

As anyone can notice, I’ve made quite a break blogging here. But, actually, nothing _realy_ interesting happened in a while. Web 2.0 is still a buzzword, Google continues buying other companies (like YouTube or SketchUp) and presenting new products or improving old ones (like Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Google Earth or Google Code Search)...

Buzz about Blogger beta

2006-08-18T13:00:00.000+03:00

Everyone is talking about recently announced Blogger updates. Labels for posts, restricted audience, visual page creator, spell check – to tell the truth, these features does not seem to be revolutionary and worth all this buzz for me. Still, I’m waiting for my turn to migrate and try them…

Google analytics for everyone

2006-08-16T15:14:00.000+03:00

Great news – you don‘t have to wait for your Google analytics account any more. Also I’ve noticed the total number of profiles increased from 5 to 10!

ASP vs PHP

2006-07-04T13:40:00.000+03:00

Have you seen the legendary Googlefight ASP vs. PHP? As you can see here – it was always like that:

Google Labs

2006-06-27T15:16:00.000+03:00

It has been a while since my last visit at Google labs. So much new interesting stuff there. Spreadsheets, Notebook and Trends look extremely interesting.

Free web designs

2006-06-06T15:29:00.000+03:00

If you are looking for a free design for your site these links are exactly what you need: OSWD and Open web design.

Free DWG viewer

2006-05-10T14:21:00.000+03:00

Recently I was looking for a free tool for viewing AutoCAD schemes. At first I found Free DWG Viewer (what a descriptive name :) ). It worked OK, but sadly printing was not available with a free license. Then I found A9CAD, which I use now. Btw it works not only as viewer, but as editor too.

Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Express stays free

2006-04-26T08:55:00.000+03:00

Microsoft has decided to continue indefinitely a free development tool offer it launched last year. It is supposed to attract non-professional coders to Microsoft's software. Visual Studio 2005 Express comes in different editions, including those for Visual Basic, C#, J#, C++ and a Web development version that uses JavaScript.
Original post

Easier life with Google search box

2006-03-31T13:15:00.000+03:00

I think Google quick search box is one of the best things in the last version of Google Desktop. You have just to hit Ctrl key twice and search box appears in the middle of your screen. Type in your search phrase, hit enter and get a new IE window with results. I think this new way saves me approximately 5-10 seconds per search. Doing about 30-60 searches per day I’m awarded with average 5-6 minutes :)

ClustrMaps

2006-03-28T11:19:00.000+03:00

You have probably noticed a tiny world map in the lower part of my sidebar. I find it amusing to see geo location of fellow readers. This service is provided by ClustrMaps and is free to use in your blogs. Nice.

Web 2.0

2006-03-23T18:18:00.000+02:00

Everyone keeps talking about web 2.0 these days. As there are no set standards for what Web 2.0 actually means, implies, or requires, the term can mean radically different things to different people. Still I suggest you to check this great list of Web 2.0 sites.

Google toolbar v4 buttons

2006-03-21T13:41:00.000+02:00

I tried to create few Google toolbar buttons for news portals (Lithuanian) I visit. I am still not sure if it will be more convenient to find out what is happening around that way, but creation of the button went very smoothly :) Probably that’s because of an simple and accurate guide…

Google mars

2006-03-14T08:39:00.000+02:00

Do you now where these two “spots” are located? In Mars. And can be viewed with Google Mars. It seems that Earth is not enough for google.

Technorati

2006-03-08T13:51:00.000+02:00

To tell the truth I’ve heard a lot about Technorati, but never took a chance to try it. Just knew that is something about blogs. That was until yesterday. Singed up for the account very easily (strange, but no email confirmation was needed), claimed my blogs and today saw (using google analytics , of course) that traffic to one of them increased 20(!) times.

The web is alive. And Technorati is your guide. Give it a try!

And it seems that people do...

File splitter

2006-02-28T10:11:00.000+02:00

Never faced a problem while trying to bring home (work, university, etc.) one large chunk of information (500MB movie or install file for example) using two or three oldies – 128MB or 256MB USB keys? I did. And file splitting software was a real salvation for me. I used GSplit 2.0. That nice tool can split your file to several pieces (you can specify size, of course) and makes small .exe file, which combines them.

Recolored

2006-02-24T10:26:00.000+02:00

Look, what an interesting program I’ve found! This tool, called Recolored should be used for colorizing black and white photos. It was free and beta not long ago, but now, sadly, they released version 1.0 and now offer only 21-day trial…

Measure Map

2006-02-23T12:41:00.000+02:00

Most of you have already heard about Measure Map. Yes. Google bought it and now offers various statistics about your blog. It is like Google Analytics dedicated for blogs. Sadly, I submitted my email address about a week ago, but nothing happened since then…

Google Desktop version 3

2006-02-10T15:31:00.000+02:00

So, seems that news from Google are not going to stop. After presenting toolbar version 4 and integrating GTalk to GMail, Google offers Desktop Search version 3. Here you can drag your favorite panels on the desktop wherever you like, share sidebar panels with your contacts, play online games and even search on remote computers.

Google puts GTalk chat archives to GMail

2006-02-08T08:56:00.000+02:00

Yesterday GTalk asked me permission for storing all chats in GMail archives. I agreed, of course. (I have nothing to hide, anyway). But still will it be useful? Probably. At least there will be no need of copy-pasting to word or mail the excerpts of chats you want to remember.

Google toolbar version 4

2006-02-07T15:29:00.000+02:00

I installed a new version of google toolbar (version 4) about a week ago. So now I can provide some my experience about that.
Custom buttons are cool. Can’t say that they are very helpful by now, but they are cool.
Gmail button is nice – you can see all your unread letter as drop down menu and open any of them directly.
“Previous result” and “Next result” – these ones are my favorites. Extremely convenient.
Bookmark – At last. I really waited for this service. Tried Spurl! and others, but at last google integrated it the way I need.
PageRank, Check spelling, Fill form – these are already known from previous versions.
“Up one level” – seems convenient too – you don’t have to modify URL yourself to go one level up.
Send to – another simple feature, which lets you gmail or blog page or a part of it you are currently viewing.
Voting – that is something experimental, I guess… Let’s leave it for better days.
Highlight search terms – yep, you know that.

SourceForge. All time top downloads

2005-12-22T12:53:00.000+02:00

SourceForge had climbed over 100,000 projects not long ago. Of course there are many excellent products (free and open!) hosted at SourceForge. What kind of them are most downloaded? Lets look at Top10:

eMule (153,039,241)

Azureus - BitTorrent Client (107,753,356)

BitTorrent (51,596,430)

DC++ (32,588,745)

CDex (26,270,294)

VirtualDub (22,893,297)

Shareaza (15,566,016)

Ares Galaxy (11,166,604)

eMule Plus (10,723,367)

ZSNES (10,185,864)

70% of Top10 products (and 86.57% of Top10 downloads) are used for P2P, File Exchange and sharing. Two of the three remaining products are CD-Ripper and video processing and capture software. It seems that everyone likes FREE and convenient tools to get some stuff (usually EXPENSIVE) for FREE :)

StatCounter

2005-12-15T12:21:00.000+02:00

Remember I promised to tell more about StatCounter in some time ago?

So here is more detailed report.

You are not limited with one project in StatCounter. You are able to have lots of them.

For each project your are able to see its stats in graph or table (with export ability of course). Summary stats example is shown in the pictures below. Summary stats provide a lifetime daily (weekly, monthly, etc.) count of the totals of visitors to your website each day.

More kinds of stats you can find there:

Popular Pages – show which pages are the most heavily visited by your visitors. Also you can view Entry Pages and Exit Pages stats. All of them presented as a table with an ability to "Drill down" to the level of single pageload.

Came From, Recent Came From Activity – show a table (with "Drill down" ability, of course) of pages which from your visitors came.

Keyword Analysis and Recent Keyword Activity show, what visitors, that stumbled upon your site were searching for. Also you can check Search Engine Wars to find out which search engine bring most of your visitors.

Visitor Paths, Visit Length and Returning Visits let you analyze the behavior of your visitors.

Recent Pageload Activity, Recent Visitor Activity gives you more detailed information on your visitors ant pageloads.

And finally Country/State/City/ISP helps you to know geographical dislocation of your visitors, while Browser and System Stats give you information about their resources.

Sounds great. So where are the drawbacks? There is one, but important. In free version all the stats (except summary) are based on your log of the last 100 pageloads, what makes them very “momentary”.

Version control. Macromedia Flash and Visual SourceSafe.

2005-11-28T17:58:00.000+02:00

Version control is usually a pain. Many stand-alone programmers or small companies do not need any, or at least they think so. My group managed working without using any version control software also. But it was getting harder and harder each day because of the growing scope and quantity of projects. You just can not remember all the things…

Here are a few articles about, which I found helpful when setting Microsoft Visual SourceSafe to work with Macromedia flash:

At dmxZone

At communityMX

At ActionScripts.org

At LiveDocs

Visio and form design

2005-11-23T13:45:00.000+02:00

I used to make quick sketches on paper for my coworkers, when tried to explain what functionality of the form I need. Of course paper sketches management is far to hard task for any group leader :). I looked for some way of doing that in some electronic form – and, what a surprise, our old fried MS VISIO suites for these purposes perfectly.

Google base

2005-11-16T16:06:00.000+02:00

Another service just started...
Google base