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10月20日 Quick Logger PlusI'm working with a Business Consultant at the moment with a view to growing the business and improving my own productivity. One of the areas to be addressed that has cropped up is quantifying how my time is spent when I'm in the office. I've found it difficult to keep a running diary of all the little jobs that I do repetitively, as well handling interruptions, small tasks, etc. A small VBScipt may be my saviour. QuickLoggerPlus allows you to assign a Keyboard Shortcut (in my case, Ctrl-T) which once pressed pops up a small box allowing you to enter the Task you are working on. This text is then time stamped and appended to a plain text file for each day. Want to know where your time went? Quickly review that file at the end of the day/week to see. Simple - but effective. I'll report back in the near future to pass on how effective it has been in practical use. 10月19日 Internet Explorer v7I installed Microsoft Internet Explorer v7 this evening which was released after a lengthy Beta testing by Microsoft recently.
I've been a Mozilla Firefox user for quite some time now, and so IE7 does feel like a "catch up" attempt from Microsoft.
As someone who considers himself fairly net savvy, it's unlikely I'll ever see the benefit in the new Security features built into this browser. I hope I've seen enough phishing scams to know when to steer clear. I can see the benefit to "regular" users though - so it's a thumbs up from that point of view.
There are still some sites that insist on using IE (UK Government Sites, Microsoft Sites, etc.) so the ability to use IE in a tabbed mode will be of benefit also when I'm forced to use IE in the office or on a client site.
I've yet to try the new site printing feature - but any improvements over the bloody awful way IE 6 used to print sites is to be applauded! Only today I was with a customer using IE 6 who was trying to print a page only to find the web-site content frustratingly got cut off the edge of the paper.
The ability to use RSS feeds is also welcome. Again, I've been using RSS feeds through Firefox for ages now - but plenty of people I've spoken to (including some IT staff) still don't see the "point" of them. I can only assume this is because they don't stray far from the "safety" of MS products. Perhaps when it's coming in a Microsoft product, they'll now open their eyes to RSS.
But all in all... none too exciting I'm afraid! Roll on Firefox 2.0! 10月17日 Hamachi VPNI've been aware of Hamachi (recently acquired by LogMeIn) for some time. It is a software solution, and free, that allows you to connect multiple computers together in a Virtual Private Network like structure. I've not tested Hamachi before now simply because here at Netlink Towers we run our own dedicated VPN server, and the majority of my customers also have some sort of Remote Access facilities, so there was no need for it's features. But I was recently on a client site for the day, wanting access to the e-mail server back at the office, but faced the problem of a flaky Internet connection. The VPN was dropping during Outlook Send/Receives, forcing me to close Outlook, re-connect the VPN, re-open Outlook and so on. So it was Hamachi to the rescue. The original VPN connection held up long enough for me to install the Hamachi client on our File/Print Server - then on my laptop. 10 minutes later, I had a working VPN connection via Hamachi - and it seemed much more resilient to the flaky Internet connection than my "traditional" VPN client. As for Security - well if it's good enough for Steve Gibson, it's good enough for me. The always excellent LifeHacker has a good intro to Hamachi. Worth checking out. 10月16日 ShozuI've been playing around with Shozu today. Shozu is a small application that you can download to your Mobile Phone to allow you to share Pictures and Videos taken with your Cameraphone, by sending them to sites such as Flickr or YouTube. In my case, I wanted to send pics from my phone directly to my Flickr account. I'm using a Sony Ericsson k700i, and after downloading the Java Applet, and checking my GPRS settings (all of which the Shozu instructions guide you through) I was able to name, tag and upload pics from my phone directly to my Flickr space! Even outside of a 3G area with a slow GPRS connection, the application uploaded pics in the background letting you get on with other things. Flickr have always given the option to upload pics via e-mail, but the Shozu application really makes editing them simple. A thumbs up! 10月15日 Click TV ShowIt often gets overlooked, because here in the UK it is broadcast on BBC News 24 at some very odd times, and in the rest of the world it goes out through, well, BBC World Service... but BBCs "Click" (formerly "Click Online") show is available through the BBC web-site and is excellent viewing covering Technology news, articles and web-site reviews. This weeks show covers the slow-down in computer game sales and the reasons, the next generation of interactive computer games, as well as the usual spots. You can watch it again here. 10月11日 Talking about Science is FUN!To celebrate Googles' purchase of YouTube, TexasMatt has spotted a video on YouTube that isn't slapstick comedy or ripped off Copyrighted material. Enjoy! Quote Science is FUN! Remote Control HellI caught the tail end of today's Jeremy Vine show on BBC Radio 2 which had a 'phone in about Remote Control devices, and how many remotes people owned to use their home entertainment systems. Our TV "stack" (as Jeremy dubbed it) consists of a Toshiba 28" CRT Television, a DVD/VCR 5.1 Surround Sound Home Cinema Combo, a Topfield TF5800 Freeview PVR, a rarely used Pace SKY+ unit (the fabulous Topfield and Freeview are Chez Tubb's TV viewing method of choice now - and cheaper to boot!), a Microsoft Xbox (used as a Media Centre connected to the LAN) and a Sony Playstation 2. That's a total of 6 devices, all controlled by a One-for-All Kameleon Remote unit. Or as most visitors call it "Ooooh - a glowing remote control!" Personally, I have no problem with this setup, and once I'd given her the 6-day intensive training course, the GG copes admirably with it too.  But the final caller to the Jeremy Vine show did take the biscuit. He has a Remote Control unit... for his shower. You can listen to the show again - should you want to enjoy the callers pitiful attempts to justify this most ridiculous of remote controls! WindsaveI've been considering getting a Windsave Turbine for my home for a while now. Windsave is a small wind turbine that is attached to your house to produce electricity. It doesn't use a battery, but plugs directly into the mains. I've done some calculations based on the average wind speed in Birmingham, and the device would be able to generate enough electricity to pay for itself within a few years - or at worse, cover it's costs. Now that even B&Q have started selling the device directly to the public, I'm considering buying one even more seriously. It would certainly go some way towards providing environmentally friendly electricity for the squillions of electronic devices and computers I have switched on 24/7! My only real concern now is - how much noise does the unit make, and will it make enough noise to prompt my neighbours to throw bricks at it (or worse, me). An e-mail to the nice people at Windsave asking if there were any nearby locations I could obserb a unit installed in revealed that Daventry Country Park has a unit attached to it's visitors centre. This is still a 50 minute drive from me here in South-West Birmingham - so has anyone else seen one of these units working, or better still, had one installed themselves? 10月9日 Carbon OffsettingI'm off to support the GG at her run in the Dublin Marathon later this month. We're travelling from Birmingham International Airport to Dublin via aeroplane - a flight booked many months ago. Very cheap, and convenient for us too. When the recent (seemingly ludicrous) issues over take-on baggage in response to terrorist activity happened recently, it made me re-evaluate just how convenient flying actually is. From one perspective, I'm really against the seemingly knee-jerk reactions that affect our daily lives that come about as a a result of the "War on Terror". But that's a debate for another time. The other issue with flying that really bothers me is it's impact on the environment. Flying is probably the single worse thing you can do to damage the environment. A single short flight will pump as much CO2 into the air as a year of using your car. There's plenty of debate over whether flying for a "good cause" (e.g. to fly to a conference on stopping global warming) is justifiable. My own take is, we can't stop people flying - so we should be looking at ways of reducing it's impact. In my own case, the next trip I make to Dublin will be by Ferry. To be honest, if the flight wasn't already booked (and a heavy surcharge for cancelling it) after looking into Ferry crossings I would have loved to have gone with this option anyway! It's been many years since I've been on a boat! But if you have to fly - what can be done to reduce the impact? Well - until an environmentally friendly (or friendlier than the current system) aviation fuel becomes available - the answer is probably very little. So the tons of CO2 that are spewed out as a result of your flight. Can you do anything to mitigate it's damage? Possibly. Leo Hickman discusses "Carbon offsets" in his Guardian column (and you can find Leo's excellent book in my book recommendations to your right). In a nutshell, many companies have sprung up that offer to offset the carbon you produce as a result of your daily activities (in this case, flying) by funding schemes such as planting trees (which soak up CO2) and Solar projects with a donation you've made after working out exactly how much CO2 you've caused to be released into the environment. Is this the answer? Should we all accept that we are damaging the environment with flying, but can assuage our guilt by paying for that damage? Well - no. Ideally we shouldn't fly at all. But that is never going to happen, so I'm in favour of being environmentally responsible and funding projects elsewhere that can actually help. So, I've made the decision to go across to www.climatecare.org and use its calculator to tot up every single flight I've ever made. 30 minutes later, and a grand total of 10.9 tons of CO2 (including flights to Australia, New York, Houston, Singapore...) and I've paid £81.73 to help offset my lifetime flight Carbon emissions. I know it's not the ideal solution - but I can't help but think that if a "Carbon Tax" (which in my case, I'm just voluntarily paying) were enforced on every flight then we'd be going a long way towards funding and perhaps solving some of the environmental issues we all face. 10月7日 Turning ThirtyI turned the big 3-0 last week with my birthday. Scary stuff!  Took a couple of days off work to spend with the GG and family, enjoyed a great night out with mates (you can see the photos at my Flickr account), and had a load of superb pressies. Thanks to all who contributed to helping me celebrate!  10月3日 Desktop Standard Corp is acquired by MicrosoftDesktop Standard Corporation sent a Press Release out yesterday to inform they were being acquired by Microsoft. I've been using Desktop Standard products for a few years, from Profile Maker through to Policy Maker and others. If you've never come across DTS products before, and you work in an environment with Active Directory, Microsoft Outlook, or where you have to manage a large user base, then products such as Policy Maker can make your life so much easier. If I had one complaint about Desktop Standard since they've grown in size over the past few years, it's that the aspects of their Technical Support such as their previously excellent Usenet newsgroups (now all gone and replaced with web forums) and web-site content such as their Support Knowledgebase haven't been upto scratch for quite a while, leaving you in a position where you have to contact their Support Department (who admittedly, are excellent) about every small query - rather than being able to help yourself first. The fact that DTS are based in New Hampshire in the USA means that there can be a time difference when working with their Support Department too. Hopefully this purchase of DTS by Microsoft will see this area of their business, as well as many others, grow and become more successful. Fingers crossed! |
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