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Coffee lounge

Just found this great widget for learning Japanese. (Yes, the green background that´s my desktop. At home!)

Wow! And imagine - I nearly given up on those widgets. I use the Yahoo! widgets aka Konfabulator engine. It´s a fine application, but quite resource hungry. Also some of the 4.000 something widgets are quite similar - seperate widgets for traffic cams for several metropolitan areas, seperate rss feed widgets for pre-defined feeds and more.

For more on these and other widgets, check out this article comparing various widget platforms.

Instacalc

Instacalc lets you do simple calculations - even not so simply one with equations, too - right in your browser and add them to your webpage to share them with others. Here´s an easy example (a bit too easy, of course):

It seems to be easier to type calculations in almost real language that using Excel. I will try this out in the office. Sometimes it feels easier to use a calculator - and a real one, not the Windows calculator - than typing it in in MS Excel. Although: saving product calculations and business models on a third-party, unknown server and especially a public server is a big no-no. Well, simple calculations should - and probably - do only work inside the browser, with some javascript. Still, an interesting application.

Windows business cards

Microsoft has added a new service to it´s Windows Live offerings: barcode (do not open this link in Firefox). It transforms your contact information into a barcode image which you can print on your business cards - something that´s said to be very popular in Japan. (I haven´t seen that in Japan, but I didn´t get any business cards anyway). Hence, it´s easier to photograph that image and import the contact date into any mobile phone that typing it in manually.

Has anyone already seen those barcode images on any business cards?

Plugin mysteries

Firefox is such a clever browser, yet I cannot figure out how to disable plugins. I mean plugins, not extensions - plugins such as Adobe Acrobat or Quicktime and other software that gets installed by the user.
There´s probably a switch somewhere around about:config, but where? The only solution I can think of is to much the .dll file out of the plugins folder - now that´s not user friendly! In MS IE there´s an option to disable a plugin.

Any ideas?

Technorati Tags: Firefox, plugins

Just started

It´s crazy: my computer doesn´t want to help me. Everytime I want to search something in Outlook using the Lookout search tool, it says that right at this very moment, Lookout has just started creating a new index (and the old index is, of course, gone with the wind). Everytime!

It´s great to have to wait having the whole index rebuilt while only a few folders and emails within those folders have changed - and the stuff you´re looking for is in the other folders. Arrgghhh!

Recently in a spam

The world has yet to see what God will do with a man who is fully and wholly consecrated to the Holy Spirit.Good men must die, but death cannot kill their names.

Available for instant download

iTunes woes

I just re-installed iTunes 4.9 and the Quicktime 7 Preview for Windows ´cause iTunes has been freezing up frequently. Actually, iTunes continued to play the current track till the end, but the rest of the computer including all other applications was unresponsive. Sometimes, when hitting the "forward"-button, nothing happened. Even now, after re-install, when I hit that button, and nothing plays for 3 or 4 seconds I´m ready to hit the power button again.

Update 18/08/05: I guess, that´s been the problem. However, Quicktime stopped working in Firefox now. Maybe another install session?

--

Many people don´t know anything about this: Signature block (another helpful Wikipedia entry).

QuickTime 7

Just downloaded the QuickTime 7 for Windows Public Preview after messing around with the VLC media player trying to watch the CNBC interview with Steve Jobs (with H.264).

It claims that this preview should not be installed along with iTunes, which I did though, in an desperate attempt to get the latest software :-). After all, an image on Apple´s site claims that the preview "has been approved for all Windows XP and 2000 audiences". I then downloaded a H.264 video to test H.264 playback from the HD gallery; with the NASA movie (at 720p (1280x720)) getting even too much for my PC´s processor. But the FantasticFour trailer at 852x356 (480p) is great! Welcome to the future!

Low budget project

FreeMind might be quite useful, being a free mind mapping software, as Mind Manager Pro´s evaluation period has expired on my PC. Why is that software (€ 230) so expensive?

Konfabulator 2.0!

Get it!

Altered Identity

The User Agent Switcher Extension for Firefox let´s you switch the user agent of the browser. Easy, yet powerful (e.g. for software testing). (No, Windows Update won´t work this way.

Now that´s advertising!

Actually this great ad was not used due to concerns it might offen some people. Also available as a wallpaper (at mandalux, a great dual-screen wallpaper ressource), though different and thus not that good. (via news.com here and here)

Ruby/Instiki update

Not a while ago I wanted to install Instiki, a Wiki application running under the scripting language Ruby. Starting Instiki didn´t work. Thanks for all your comments and help, especially Chris Granger who gave the tip to try "ruby instiki". This worked, however, by tipping (in the DOS command box)

C:\ruby\bin\ruby.exe C:\ruby\instiki
C:\ruby\bin\ruby.exe C:\ruby\instiki\instiki

Then you´ll see that "Your WEBrick server is now running on http://localhost:2500".

Great. Now I just have to figure out how to use Instiki (and whether I really need it at all :-)).

Instikti

I just read on Mena´s blog which application she uses on a day-by-day basis:

Entourage, Photoshop CS, NetNewsWire 2.0 (beta), Firefox & Safari, iChat, Instiki, SubEthaEdit and Acrobat.

I´m always interested what applications other people are using. Ok, so she uses a Mac. I know Entourage, that´s the Outlook aquivalent. NetNewsWire is for RSS, I use FeedDemon on Windows insteat. But what´s Instiki? A short look at Google let to the conclusion (over at Ralf´s Weblog and via Matthew Haughey) that it´s a Wiki.

Installing Instiki on a Windows PC seems more difficult than on MacOS X, you´ll need Ruby (which is a - quote -  interpreted scripting language for quick and easy object-oriented programming).

What for? Matthew said (back in August):

Last week I got into the habit of launching it and using it instead of having a BBEdit todo.txt file on my desktop. As a private scratchpad, it's absolutely fantastic. Over the past few days I've built out my ToDos into a pile of organized, hyperlinked pages that are useful to have around.

Mena says:

I have recently found that I enjoy using Instiki to keep notes. [ ... ] .., I've been able to use Instiki for collaboration with the person I know best -- myself.

Actually, here´s the end of the orderly blog post: I´ve installed Ruby and downloaded Instiki - but now? Installed Ruby into C:\ruby. How do I start it - with the Interactive Ruby Shell,  the RubyGems Package Manager or the RubyGems RDoc Server? How does it know in what directory Instiki resides? Typing "instiki.rb" in that shell results in a error "undefined local variable or method ínstiki´for main:Object from (irb):number". I´m lost! Should I delete everything?

 

TV´s other future

This probably is really stupid, but lawyers will love this: Cybersky - a P2P file-sharing network allowing broadband users to share TV shows in near real-time. It claims it´s not breaching any copyrights, because according to inventor Guido Ciburski P2P isn´t technically distribution. Then again it claims that IP addresses are completely hidden: What t.f. is CyberSky-TV?

Konfabulator 1.8.1. out

Konfabulator is out. Among the new features (for Windows):

Reduced our memory footprint in Task Manager. Upgraded the URL object to support POSTing, outputting to a file and returning the HTTP response code (see the Release Notes). Made the Below window level stick to the desktop when choosing Show Desktop from the Task Bar.

World zoom

From the series "How to Kill Fill your broadband connection": Nasa World Wind is a neat little big application that allows you to access NASA/UGSG satelite images from all over the world. Fascinating!

Actually the download is big - 259 MB including the .NET runtime and DirectX - and will download additional image data as needed while zooming in at various earth locations.

The first picture is Europe from space, the second is Chicago from 4000 m high with UGSG data. Unfortunately there´s not so good - yet quite good - data available for Europe.

Here´s more information on good visible cities (in the US), some data - as the white house - is pixelated though.

The software requires Windows 2000, XP Home or XP Professional with Pentium 3 at 1 GHz or up, at least 256 MB RAM, a 3D 64MB or more graphic card, 2 GB free disk space and a broadband connection. Some times the servers may be very slow, such as when the service go /. (slashdotted). To speed up things, cache files are available for download, and there´s also an update that´s essential for international users. The total data set is about 20 Terabytes, so it´s not for download. Further information on the software can be found in the FAQ. (via Martin Röll)

Not iTunes

Worth reading: Cabel Sasser telling the True Story of Audion.

Waiting, waiting, waiting for widgets

A few years ago it was the rule to have to wait for Windows software to be ported over to Apple´s OS. Now there´s at least one software - if not rather more - worth waiting for the Windows port.

Konfabulator, a scripting engine that lets you run small desktop widgets, originally only available for Mac OS X, was bound for a Windows release in August. Now it certainly won´t be out before November, at least there´s a screenshot to look at in between. I will certainly install that. It looks great, should be a worthy desktop add-on - plus I´m always interesting in desktop enhancements such as the RSS Newsticker.

While waiting for Konfabulator 4 Windows, I might try out Kapsular, which has high software requirements though. From the screenshots, I looks equally promising. But it´s still beta software - version 0.9.4.5. Somehow my position towards beta software has changed: I won´t run unknown beta software on my system. (via Vowe´s flying circus)