Software Spot

Meego 1.1 on Aser Aspire One AOA 110

2010-11-03T15:03:00.000-07:00

I've previously covered some to the modifications required to improve Meego on the Acer Aspire One. Having just reinstalled Meego 1.1 (note, the the no easy upgrade form 1.0, the recommended approach is a fresh install), here is a summary of the Meego AA1 tweeks.

Enable right hand side SDHC Card Reader
Add the following line to /etc/rc.local

/sbin/modprobe pciehp pciehp_force=1 > /dev/null 2>&1

Increase battery life

Add the lines suggested in the "Increase Battery Life" section at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AA1/Using to the end of /etc/rc.local

Fix suspend issue when SDHC cards are mounted
At the following line to beginning of /usr/sbin/pm-suspend

umount /dev/mmcblk*p*

Changes bfrfs settings for SSD usage

Modify /etc/fstab to change realatime to noatime and add the btrfs option ssd_spread

/dev/sda2 / btrfs defaults,noatime,nodatasum,ssd_spread 1 1

Reduce SSD disk IO use tmpfs

To reduce the disk IO use tmpfs for directories /tmp /var/tmp and /var/logs

Add the following lines to /etc/fstab

tmpfs /var/log tmpfs defaults 0 0

tmpfs /tmp tmpfs defaults 0 0

tmpfs /var/tmp tmpfs defaults 0 0

Put the browser cache in tmpfs

You can also put the Google Chrome or Chromium browser cache in tmpfs to prevent SSD IO that can slow down the AA1. Add the following line to /etc/fstab replacing the username with your login id

tmpfs /home/username/.cache/google-chrome/Cache tmpfs defaults 0 0

Note: the directory location will be different for the Chromium version of Meego

You will want to clear out the existing cache data before rebooting

cd /home/username/.cache/google-chrome/Cache

rm -Rf *

Install Dropbox on Acer Aspire One running MeeGo

2010-08-22T19:11:00.000-07:00

[03-Nov-2010] Updated for Meego 1.1, yum isn't included with Meego 1.1, changed procedure to use zypper instead.

I managed to install Dropbox on my Acer Aspire One AOA110 running MeeGo Netbook Edition. These are the steps that worked for me.

1. Download the Dropbox source code bundle from http://dropbox.com, nautilus-dropbox.0.6.4.tar.bz2

2. Extract the source files

$ cd Downloads
$ tar -xjvf nautilus-dropbox.0.6.4.tar.bz2
$ cd nautilus-dropbox.0.6.4

3. Install the pre-requisit dependencies

$ sudo zypper install gcc make
$ sudo zypper install nautilus-devel docutils

4. Compile the Dropbox source (see the README files for details)

$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo make install

5. Run the Dropbox installation

$ dropbox start -i

follow the prompts to complete the install

6. Set Dropbox to autostart

$ dropbox autostart y

MeeGo 1.0 Netbook OS

2010-05-30T13:07:00.000-07:00

I've had using Moblin as my netbook OS since sometime last year, and I've been keenly waiting for it's reincarnation as MeeGo. When Ubuntu 10.4 came out last month I decided to ditch my old Moblin 2.1 on my Acer Aspire One AOA 110 netboook and give the latest Ubuntu UNR distribution a try. I think Ubuntu is a great desktop Linux distribution, but for me UNR still doesn't really stand out as a solid netbook OS compared to Moblin, so with MeeGo 1.0 released this week I was eager to give it a try.

The MeeGo distribution is offered in two variants, one with Google Chrome as the default browser, and another with the Chromiun browser (the open source variant of Chrome). Installation was easy, and the boot time (like Moblin before it) is amazingly fast. The MeeGo UI is ideal for a small netbook sized display and the revised layout of the home screen is very nice, with a calendar overview, unread email count, favorite apps launcher, and combined visual feed of twitter post and recently visited web pages.

The number of applications included with the MeeGo distribution is minimal and the number of applications available through the MeeGo Garage is currrently very limited. Some reviews have counted this a limitation, but it's early days and I think of (and use) MeeGo more as a "Cloud" OS than a fully featured desktop OS, it is after all a "NET"book. There are plenty of great online apps such as Google Docs and other online tools, so why bloat the OS with unnecessary applications.

My first impression is that MeeGo 1.0 is a solid netbook OS that I would certainly recommend others to try out.

Tweeking MeeGo for the Aser Aspire One

My AA1 has a solid state hard disk (SSD). MeeGo installs using the btrfs file system rather than the more common ext3 or ext4. Reading up on btrfs it is apparently better tuned for SSDs, however as the AA1 SSD has a rather slow write speed I applied some additional tweeks improve SSD performance and reduce disk IO based on suggestions from the Ubunu AA1 wiki and btrfs FAQ

1. Modify /etc/fstab to change realatime to noatime and add the btrfs option ssd_spread

/dev/sda2 / btrfs defaults,noatime,nodatasum,ssd_spread 1 1

2. To reduce the disk IO I also followed the Ubuntu AA1 Wiki suggestion to "Reduce SDD Wear" by using tmpfs for /tmp /var/tmp and /var/logs

3. Apply the changes to /etc/rc.local suggested on the Ubuntu AA1 Wiki to "Increase Battery Life"

Sony Reader Touch Edition

2010-01-10T18:15:00.000-08:00

Added another gadget to my collection, I recently got my first dedicated ebook reader - the Sony Reader Touch Edition PRS-600.

With a whole slew of new ebook readers hitting the market (with new announcements at CES) and the growing popularity of the Amazon Kindle (now available in Canada) why did I pick the Sony device? Well a number of reasons, firstly it's the only one I've been able to get my hands on and try before making a purchase, I find the device is good size, solid, with good build quality, although may be a little on the heavy size. I was tempted by the smaller Sony Pocket Reader but found the screen a little too small and I found the touch screen on the PRS-600 more intuitive.

The Amazon kindle looks like a nice device, but I was put off but the keyboard and the and lack of support for the epub ebook format which seems to be solidifying at the "standard" format outside of the Amazon eco-system. Amazon currently use a propriety ebook format which only works with the Kindle, I'm sure this closed eco-system does create a nice easy to use user experience, but I like to leave my options open for upgrading to a different device in the future and I don't want all my book purchases locked to a single vendor. I'm sure Amazon will have to move to support epub eventually, just as the Apple iTunes Store moved from AAC to MP3 for music downloads, even Sony (the master of propriety formats) switched from their previous proprietry .lrf format to now supporting epub as the primary ebook format.

I just started a separate site to record my experience with using my ebook reader and my search for finding good quality sources of ebooks (free and paid) at Where to get ebooks (wheretogetebooks.blogspot.com)

Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix on Acer Aspire One

2009-05-09T16:43:00.000-07:00

I took the plunge and replaced the Linpus Linux OS that came with the Aser Aspire One with the lastest Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR) release, and so far I'm very impressed.

I have to say the that UNR 9.04 is an excellent replacement OS.

The Ubuntu documentation provides a good starting point for installation details.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AspireOne

Before I started with the installation I backed up the Linus Linux OS using partimage running from a bootable USB drive with SystemRescueCD, saving the disk partition image to a second USB drive. Once the Linpus OS was backed up I created a Ubuntu UNR bootable USB and ran the installation.

Out of the box Ubuntu 9.04 runs great on the AA1. The Ubuntu documenation lists some tweeks to get the wifi LED working. Even after applying the patch I found that the LED blinks on and off randomly, rather than staying on to indicate the wifi is on.

As I have the AA1 with the 8GB SSD I used the following tweeks to optimize Ubuntu for SSD performance

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AA1/Using

I was initially torn between using the UNR launcher or switching to the standard Ubuntu Gnome desktop. I've settled on the UNR launcher for now. I really like the way it optimizes for the the AA1 screen size putting the window title into the top launcher bar. With a small netbook screen reclaiming a few extra pixels really helps.

My only complaint with the UNR lanucher is that it doesn't work well with the enhanced desktop effects (compiz) turned on. But I can live without the wobbly window effects.

Update (June 6 2009): after a few weeks of using Ubuntu UNR 9.04 on my here are a few more tweeks that I made. I found the machine would pause from time to time due to disk activity, this used to happen with the original Linpus OS, but was more nociable with Ubuntu. After doing some reading ended up doing a complete reinstall, this time formatting the drive to ext2 (used ext4 originally), ext2 doesn't have journally so there is less write activity to the disk. AA1 has a fairly low write speed for the SSD. I also turned off the swap partition as by commenting out the entry in /etc/fstab . This did improve the performance with less noticable pauses.

First experiences with Windows 7 Beta

2009-01-17T01:00:00.000-08:00

Started taking a look at the Windows 7 public beta this week. The target machine for the install is my older PC, a Sony VAIO VGC-RA820G, that I have connected up as an HTPC. As this is a older machine I had held out form upgrading this machine the Vista I didn't want to upgrade or wipe out the existing XP installation on the this machine, so as a first step I created a blank 30Gb partition for the Windows 7 installation using SystemRescueCD.

Installation of Windows 7 was very smooth, once everything was up and running it also downloaded the latest updates. The Aero interface was working right of of the box, even without installing latest drivers which was nice, and looks great. I decided to install the latest video drivers anyway. A quick search on the ATI website located the ATI Windows 7 Beta drivers. Installed without a hitch, so far so good.

Like previous versions of Windows it nags you to install some Anti Virus software and suggests a few options including Norton and AVG. I've used and loved AVG in the past on XP and Vista, but my current favorite anti virus application is Avira Antivir.

I encountered my first problem with Windows 7 while trying to download the ATI drivers and Aviria installation - IE 8 locked up on me a couple of times, and crashed. Windows did detect that the process had stopped responding and sent the crash reports to Microsoft, but it was annoying as it happened more than once - so my next next download, Google Chrome.

Now on the Windows Media Center, as this is my home theater setup. At first glance Media Center looks similar to the version in Vista. Tried the basics, full screen video looks good. Now the TV setup - ahh, problem the TV tuner card is not recognized, not really that surprizing. So off to the Sony eSupport site to se if there are any drivers, hopefully the Vista drivers will work - here they are - no they don't. Next to try a trick I saw posted on another blog, manualy update the driver and select the old windows XP installation folder as the location to search for drivers. I have my Windows XP partition mounted as drive X: so I pointed the driver search to X:\WINDOWS and bingo - the TV tuner card in recognized.

Well that's it for now, initial impressions of Windows 7 are very positive. My perception of the performance and responsiveness would put it on par with XP on the same machine, if not slightly better. I really hope Microsoft don't screw things up between now and the final release.

Getting started with the Acer Aspire One

2008-10-26T07:19:00.000-07:00

I just picked up a Acer Aspire One Linux edition with the 8Gb SSD. It a great little portable netbook. I chose the Linux version over the XP edition for a number of reasons. Mainly the price; I picked mine up for just $299, plus because I got display model they through in the 2 year extended warranty for free. Secondly I have enough XP and Vista computers and laptop the deal with already, and I didn't want the hassle of installing firewalls and virus scanners and spyware detectors, plus I'd inevitably end up installing many many other apps which over time begin to bog down the windows registry and general slow windows to a crawl. In general I just want my netbook to be as hassle free as possible.

The Linux Linpus OS on the Aspire One has "almost" everything I need out of the box to use as light weight cloud computing platform. Browsing around the net there are a number of "hacks" and enhancements for the AA1. Here's my recommended list the optimize the AA1 usability

Run a complete system update. Get all of the latest OS patches using the Live Update under the Settings section. It took a few attempts for me to get all of the updates installed.
Update the BIOS. At the time of writing the latest BIOS version is v3.305. Details on how to update the bios are here. You will need a spare USB thumb drive to perform the update.
Expand the memory. The AA1 has a very easy way to expand storeage beyond the 8Gb internal SSD. Just insert a SD card in the storeage expansion slot and the AA1 will automatically use the new disk space as an extension to the built in drive. I added a 8Gb SD card I picked up at the local store for just $20.
Enabled the desktop right click menu. You can access morelinux apps from a right click on the on the desktop, but you hae to turn it one. See the following steps
Update the installed apps to the latest versions. The AA1 comes with OpenOffice 2, Firefox 2, Flash 9, Java 1.5. these are all great, but the Live Update does not update them the the latest release. the following links provide details on updating the the latest releases:

Update Firefox to version 3.01, or even the latest Firefox 3.1 Beta. I've installed 3.1 and enabled the tracemonkey javascript compiler for improved performance.
Update Flash to version 10. I had to run sudo yum remove flash-plugin prior to running the Flash 10 installer to get it to work.
Update OpenOffice to version 3.0
Update Java to 1.6 update 10. Note: the post details installing update 6. I recommend getting the latest update which has some major improvments to applet performance. Just go to java.com and download the latest JRE for Linux

Install Extra Applicaitons. Acer make available a few extra applications that can be downloaded and installed on the AA1. The list of apps and how to install them can be found here. My goal is to keep the number of installed applications to a minimum so I just installed Skype, FileZilla and VideoLAN.
Apply the noisy fan fix. Follow the details in the following post to reduce the fan noise. The original wiki page appears to be down referened in the post appears to be down. If you wish to change the default settings I found a description of the autofand.conf file here
Tweak Linux for SSD usage. See the following post

Many thanks to the macles* blog for all of the informative posts, as well as all the other sites and posts linked above.

Avira Antivir Presonal Free Antivirus Software

2008-09-01T05:59:00.000-07:00

After many years of using AVG anti virus I've recently switched a couple of my computers to Avira Antivir and so far I've been impressed. My reason for switching was because AVG 8.0 stopped working on my Vista machine, plus I've been getting frustrated with having to manually run the updates since upgrading from AVG 7.5 to AVG 8.0. So I went hunting for an alternative in order to keep protected. I've tried Avast in the past and although it gets good reviews I've always found the usability and user interface to be limiting.

I had not come across Avira before, but it's ranked #2 at download.com (behind AVG). Installation is easy, the user interface is simple and straightforward. I have been so please with the install on my desktop PC that I've just switched my laptop from AVG to Avria as well. The only minor annoyance is the advertising window that appears with updatin the virus definitions, however I feel this is a fair trade for a free product

Greasemonkey Script to Remove Windows Live Banner Ads

2008-07-15T14:22:00.000-07:00

The most annoying thing with the Windows Live sites (Live Mail, Live Spaces, Live Gallery, Live SkyDrive etc) is the huge banner ads at the top of the screen, which on devices with smaller screens like my laptop, take up a whole load of useful screen real estate.

I'm generally okay with advertising on web pages, particularly to support free web services (please feel free to click through on any of the Adsense sponsors on the blog), but large banner ads on the Windows Lives sites make the services unusable for me.

The solution: I wrote a quick greasemonkey script the remove the realestate hogs. this works well for me, your mileage may vary.

http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/30087

Keep your PC safe, clean and healthy - for free

2007-11-11T08:52:00.000-08:00

Most new computers come pre-installed with trial or subscription versions of software to keep you home computing and internet experience safe and clean from hackers, viruses, spyware and other malicious attacks. The problem is these applications are either very limited in functionality - tempting you to purchase the "Pro" version, expire after a limited trial period, or force you into an ongoing subscription to keep the software up to date.

None of these options are necessary, there are plenty of alternative tools available that free for home and personal use, and are often (in my opinion) superior to their costly competitor. So save your $$$, uninstall that beast of a "Security Suite" that came with your computer and try out the applications listed below. In addition I've also listed a number of additional utilities and system tool replacements to keep your computer running safe, clean and health state.

Anti Virus
Grisoft AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition
I've been using AVG for many years now as a free alternative to Norton or Symantec AntiVirus. Every time I've got a new computer this is the the first thing to go on. I leave the main protection to the resident shield. I very rarely run a full virus scan.

Anti Spyware
SpyBot Search and Destroy
Spybot S&D has been another long standing favorite of mine. Spybot has three main functions, a spyware scanner which will detect and remove any malicious software, an Immunize function that pro-actively blocks against know spyware, and the latest version now includes a resident shield called Tea Timer which will provides real-time protection.
One downside, there is no auto-update so you have to remember to update and re-Immunize on a regular basis. I usually do this about once every month or two.

Disk and Registry Cleaner
CCleaner
CCleaner is a tool I use to keep Windows running smoothly by removing unnecessary temporary files from the hard disk and cleaning up garbage from the Windows Registry. CCleaner could be viewed as a replacement for Windows XP "Disk Cleanup", the advantage is that CCleaner is aware of the temporary files used by a number of common applications, and in addition the registry cleaning function clears out unused entries in the Windows Registry. The windows registry grows as applications use it to store information, and in many cases when an application is uninstalled these registry entries are left behind. As the registry grows, Windows can begin to slow down. I run CCleaner on a regular basis, every one to two weeks. When using the registry cleaner, repeat the scan multiple times until no new issues are found.

Disk and Registry Defragmentation
AusLogic Disk Defrag and Registry Defrag
Two similar applications here. Defragmenting the disk and registry help keep Windows performing a little better. I find the AusLogic disk defrag tool faster than the standard Windows XP Defragmentation Tool. The Registry Defrag can really help boost system performance, particularly after running CCleaner. I run these Defrag tools about once a month.

Process Management
Sysinternals Process Explorer and AutoRuns
Knowing what processes and applications are running can be very useful to maintaining a healthy PC. A lot of applications install background applications and services that automatically startup when you login. Some of these are useful and some just waste startup time and system resources. Process Explorer provides an alternative to Window Task Manager that makes it easy to identify running processing. AutoRuns will scan all known startup locations and enable you to turn off any utilities and services that you don't need.

Firewall
Personally I don't bother with a separate firewall application. My home network router provides the main network firewall protection, and I'm quite happy with Windows Firewall for desktop protection. However if your PC is directly connected to the internet I strongly recommend you Google search for "free firewall" to view your options.

iPod Video Conversion with ATI Avivo

2007-04-07T08:48:00.000-07:00

I have a new favorite video conversion tool for getting Media Center recordings onto my iPod. ATI Avivo Video Converter is supposedly available for the ATI X1000 series video cards, however I have an ATI X300 and the video converter works fine, and it seems around 4 times faster than Videora. I'm not sure if it works with non ATI cards.

To convert files is very simple. Just launch the ATI Catalyst Control Center in Wizard mode and select the Avivo Video Converter option. Select the source file and set the Output Video Format to iPod Video (and I suggest setting the Output Quality to High).

A bonus for me is that Avivo handles the Media Center .dvr-ms files directly, so I no longer need to pre-convert the recordings with DVRMSToolBox.

Video Conversion: DVD to iPod

2007-04-07T08:28:00.000-07:00

There are so many websites and tools available for getting DVD's onto the iPod it's difficult to know where to start. I've been using Videora for converting files to toi play on the iPod, but the Videora does no not handle DVD's directly. After much trial and error I've settled on the following process for ripping my DVD movie collection.

Step 1: RIP the DVD
There are lots of tools available to copy (backup) your DVD library to your PC. My personal choice is RipIt4Me. I skip the step to re-burn a copy to a black DVD, I just store the raw DVD Rip on my External USB Hard Drive.

Step 2: Convert RIP'ed DVD to iPod
Again there is a wide choice of tools available. The best free application I've found for this is Handbrake. Originally for the Mac, the latest version is now available for Windows. As with all of the video conversion tools I've tried you have to set the various conversion options which can be a bit daunting. I've settled on two different profiles, depending on the type of DVD I'm converting. A Basic profile for cartoons and TV shows and a High Quality profile for movies.

Basic Profile
Encoder: H.264 (iPod)
Width/Height: 320 x 240
Cropping: Auto Crop
Video BitRate: 768
Advanced Output Settings: none
Audio BitRate: 128

High Quality Profile
Encoder: H.264 (iPod)
Width/Height: 640 x 480
Cropping: Auto Crop
Video BitRate: 1500
Advanced Output Settings: 2-Pass encoding
Audio BitRate: 160

Remember to give the output filename an .mp4 extension. And ensure you've selected the H.264 (iPod) encoder not just the H.264

Step 3: Copy video to iPod
In iTunes you can select Add File to Library... to add the movie file to the Movies section. Then Sync your iPod. Done.

Video Conversion: Samsung D807

2007-03-14T21:31:00.000-07:00

It seems that almost every new electronic device is capable of playing movies these days. In addition to my recent iPod purchase which I've been filling up with movies and tv shows, I have a new Samsung D807 phone which can play video files, so I experimented a little with getting some of these videos onto the Samsung D807.

The D807 comes with all the required software, but the process is not obvious, and the default settings don't work with this phone, the media converter defaults to using AAC audio encoding, however the D807 requires the AMR option to be selected. Here's the steps that work for me.

1. Add source video to Media Player
2. Select Convert
3. Select QCIF (QVGA doesn't work, SubQCIF is too small)
4. Convert to PC (doesn't give option to upload to card)
5. Use File Transfer to copy to Video folder on Card

Video Conversion: Windows Media Center (MCE) DVR-MS to iPod Video

2007-02-04T21:28:00.000-08:00

I treated myself to an iPod Video a couple of weeks ago, and after loading up my music collection I decided to try and move some recorded TV shows from my Media Center PC onto the iPod.

The iPod won't play the Media Center recording directly, so they need to be converted to the appropriate video format, which is typically H.264 encoded video and AAC encoded audio in an .mp4 container.

After much searching around and trying a variety of video conversion tools I settled on the following fairly straightforward approach using a couple of freely available applications. The first tool is used to convert the media center files to a non-proprietary format, and then the second step is to re-encode the video in a format suitable for the iPod.

Step 1 - Convert the Windows Media Center DVR-MS recording to MPEG-2 video format

Download and install the latest 1.1.0.x version of DVRMSToolbox (the 1.2.0.x versions are for Windows Vista only).

Launch the DVRMStoMPEGGUI tool
Start > All Programs > DVRMSToolbox > DVRMStoMPEGGUI

Set the Input File to the Media Center recording you wish to convert.
Set the Output File to the location to save the mpeg verison too.
Set the Profile, for simple conversion select Convert DVR-MS file to MPEG. DVRMSToolbox can also be set up to strip commercials from the recorded program using the Cut out commercials convert to mpeg option. For full configuration and usage details see the DVRMSToolbox User Guide.
Click the Run button.

The conversion shouldn't take too long. Once complete you will have a .mpg version of the recorded TV show in the selected output directory .

Step 2 - Convert MPEG-2 video to H264/AAC

Download and install the latest version of Videora iPod Converter

Launch the Videora iPod Converter tool
Start > Run > All Programs > Videora iPod Converter > Videora iPod Converter

First go to the Setup section and set the Output Videos to option to an appropriate location
Next go to the Convert section
Click on the Transcode New Video button and select the .mpg video file created in the previous step.
Set the Quality Profile, Videora provides a number of default profiles to choose from for the video conversion. The H264/320x240/256kps Stereo/96kbps should be adequate for recorded TV shows.
Click the Start button

The H264 encoding can take a while, actual time will vary depending on the length of the show and the performance of you computer.

Step 3 - Add the video file to you iTunes library and sync the video to your iPod

The final step is to get the video onto your iPod.

Launch iTunes and select File > Add File to Library... from the menu.
Select the .mp4 video file created in the previous step.
Now sync your iPod with iTunes and enjoy the show.

Greasemonkey script to add IMDb links to Rogers Video Direct

2007-01-20T21:23:00.000-08:00

Here is my first attempt at writing a Greasemonkey script. I signed up for the Rogers Video Direct service about a week ago, a service similar to Netflix for the folks here in Canada. I figured it would be neat to link through from the movie description page to the Movie information on IMDb.

A quick search turned up a simular script for Netflix, so using that as a starting point I crafted a script to insert a “Find on IMDb” link just above the RENT button on the movie details pages.

Download IMDb links in Rogers Video Direct from userscripts.org

VirtualDub - Video File Processing

2005-08-28T05:27:00.000-07:00

VirtualDub is an excellent free video processing application that can be used to convert video file formats and apply various processing options such as adjusting the frame size, reducing frame rates and changing the audio encoding.

" VirtualDub is a video capture/processing utility for 32-bit Windows platforms (95/98/ME/NT4/2000/XP), licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). It lacks the editing power of a general-purpose editor such as Adobe Premiere, but is streamlined for fast linear operations over video. It has batch-processing capabilities for processing large numbers of files and can be extended with third-party video filters. VirtualDub is mainly geared toward processing AVI files, although it can read (not write) MPEG-1 and also handle sets of BMP images."

I've been using VirtualDub to convert mpeg and avi files to a format I ca n use on my Palm Tungsten PDA so I can watch videos on the go. I've event come up with a way to of converting Windows Media Center recordings play on my Palm.

DENIM - Web Site Design Sketching Tool

2005-05-25T16:45:00.000-07:00

DENIM is a really innovative and very different type of application for web site design. This tool from from University of Washinton enable quick scetching of page layout and interactions to rapidly build out a functional prototype of a website.

"DENIM is a system that helps web site designers in the early stages of design. DENIM supports sketching input, allows design at different refinement levels, and unifies the levels through zooming."

DENIM is best used suited to pen based input using a tablet PC or an external graphics table. Trying to sketch deisgns with a mouse can be a bit challenging.

A Note - Desktop Notes

2005-05-25T16:24:00.000-07:00

The latest useful utility I came across is "A Note". I've tried out many Post-it note style applications in the past but this is one of the best free ones I've come across.

"A Note is a program that lets you create post-it like notes on your Microsoft Windows desktop.
The program sits in the system tray and with either one click or a double click a new note appears and you can write the message directly."

Freemind

2005-04-30T08:26:00.000-07:00

Freemind is a great open source mind mapping application that can be used orgainize your thoughts and ideas. I use Freemind both at home and at work to help orgainse thoughts and ideas.

Freemind has a number of export options and the latest 0.8.0 release adds the ability to use XSLT transformations to perform custom exports.

UPDATE: I've created some of my own custom transformations to various formats including Text, RTF and Open Workbench

Notepad++

2005-04-15T17:51:00.000-07:00

I often have the need to edit text files in various formats and more often than note Windows Notepad just doesn't cut it. Notepad++ is an opensource project goes where Windows Notepad fears to tread. Notepad++ supports a wide variety of text files types and includes customizable syntax highlighting and multiple file support with tabbed windows.

Nvu - Web Site Editor

2005-04-07T16:38:00.000-07:00

I've been hunting around for a good free web authoring package for a few weeks and I finally came across Nvu, an open source HTML editor web site manager along simular lines to Frontpage and Dreamweaver

"Nvu is the new Web editing environment based on the Mozilla platform and its Gecko layout engine. Primarily made for Linspire and other Linux flavors, its cross-platform architecture makes it available on a wide variety of other platforms."

Picasa

2005-04-02T14:12:00.000-08:00

Picasa is a great piece of software for orginizing photos and images, and is available as a free download from Google. This application has to be one of the most user friendly applications I've come across recently, and performance is amazing, even on my aging 500Mhz PIII system.

Desktop Sidebar

2005-03-22T18:42:00.000-08:00

Desktop Sidebar is a cool desktop accessory that provides a collection of dockable information panels supporting a wide variety of data feeds including weather, news, email, stock quotes, etc.

Desktop Sidebar comes with a number of useful panels, plus additional extensions available for download. My favorite panel extensions are the RSS new reader and the Virtual Desktop panel. The 'Newsroom' RSS reader panel was my initial reason for trying Desktop Sidebar in the first place and for me this is the way RSS should be, a frequently updating panel of headlines on the side of the screen (or wherever you want to place it).

The Virtual Desktop Panel is an added bonus, I've tried a number of alternative free virtual desktop tools and this is the one I've stuck with using for the longest time.

Gaim Instant Messaging (IM) Client

2005-03-22T17:40:00.000-08:00

Gaim is an excellent open source IM client that supports the main messaging platforms (MSN, Yahoo!, AIM, ICQ etc). Gaim does not support all of the fancy new features available in the main IM clients, but when it comes to plain and simple messaging Gaim is a winner for me. I largly use Gaim as my messaging client at work where I don't care for audio and video features and animated emoticons.

There are also a number of Gaim plugin extenstions available. My personal favorite is the Guifications plugin in conjuction with the MSN Guifications theme which provides MSN messenger style popup notifications in the corner of the screen.

The GIMP and Inkscape

2005-03-21T17:09:00.000-08:00

My favorite image editing application is The GIMP:

"The GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It works on many operating systems, in many languages."

One limitation of GIMP is the lack of shape drawing tools, so I'm just taking a look at another promising drawing application called Inkscape:

"Inkscape is an open source drawing tool with capabilities similar to Illustrator, Freehand, and CorelDraw that uses the W3C standard scalable vector graphics format (SVG). Some supported SVG features include basic shapes, paths, text, markers, clones, alpha blending, transforms, gradients, and grouping. In addition, Inkscape supports Creative Commons meta-data, node-editing, layers, complex path operations, text-on-path, and SVG XML editing. It also imports several formats like EPS, Postscript, JPEG, PNG, BMP, and TIFF and exports PNG as well as multiple vector-based formats."