Tools – Page 8 – Tech.It.2.Me

Microsoft did right with Windows Live Writer (Beta)

My blog/site has been running for 17 days and it’s been quite a ride so far. And throughout my writing and posting, I’ve been using Microsoft’s beta version of Windows Live Writer.

I must say, it’s very easy to use and has a plugin feature like Firefox and WordPress. Here’s a screenshot:

There are, of course, some quirks that I find annoying such as when trying to change fonts: You have to click on Format > Font > Type or scroll through to pick your font. Sometimes, it doesn’t pick up the font I want when typing it; for example: “ver” for Verdana. The HTML will try to use “ver” as the font face.

On the other side of the coin, I really like how it detects, connects, and uploads your post and images to your blog platform without any intervention, other than the initial setup. The images, like above, is automatically created; a thumbnail and full view when clicked on. There are times, however, where I didn’t want it that way.

In any case, I believe Microsoft made the right decision with this desktop application. They’re headed the right direction within the context of the blogging world. Too bad it isn’t available on other OS platforms, but hey, it’s Microsoft. What do you expect?

Pros: Easily detects and integrates with numerous blog platforms, automatically saves as drafts, easy to use, has different “views” like HTML Code and Web Layout, automatically creates and uploads to your blog platform, supports plugins (i.e., Paste from Visual Studio plugin)

Cons: To access certain features like changing fonts is cumbersome, images uploaded do not include alt info thereby failing verification tools, not available on other OS platforms, still in Beta, might not be free later on(?)

I find it more user-friendly than w.bloggar or Deepest Sender (haven’t tried ecto yet which is OS X and Windows compatible), so I’ll continue to use it and write about it in the near future.

Take care. =0)

SideStep.com: What technology used?

My sister’s been shopping around for airline tickets to go to Asia without any luck. So, the geekness in me felt the need to help her out.

Scanning through some blogs I read regularly, I came across SideStep.com. It is one of the “newer” travel websites that search a lot of other websites’ flight information, which got me curious as to what technology they use.

Watching what other people/companies are doing and using helps me stay up-to-date with all these technologies.

I initally wasn’t able to figure out what technologies drive their website until I:

Used Steve Gibson’s excellent ID Serve tool to find out what web server they were using
Looked for file extensions and came across the .do extension on one of their links.
Checked out the HTML code and scanned for methods that buttons and other input controls were calling.

So, for the web server, it’s none other than Apache (yeah!):

HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2007 21:32:05 GMT
Server: Apache
Location: http://www.sidestep.com/
Content-Length: 294
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1

For the back-end, it’s Java, most likely an Apache Struts implementation:

And of course, a ton of JavaScript code for client-side functionality.

From this brief investigation, I also learned that SideStep.com, though, a new comer is giving Orbitz and Expedia a run for their money. Cool! Better for us consumers.

To summarize: Try to regularly observe what other people and companies are doing, so as to keep yourself up-to-date. And along with that, try the techniques I mentioned above for your investigation, as you might learn a thing or two. =0)

Disclaimer: There are a lot of other techniques and tools that you can use, but the steps above, though, may be incomplete served the purpose of this post.

GTD anyone?

I read an article about GTD (Getting Things Done by David Allen) a few months ago but shoved it aside; however, with so many projects demanding my time recently, I started looking into it again (read: need better time management).

I have just barely started using Allen’s system, but have found it to be SO helpful (and quite easy to learn) that I’ve decided to spend more time incorporating it into my everyday life – see the GTD tab above? Sorry, it’s password-protected as it’s for my own use.

So, what is GTD anyway, you might ask? Well, let’s check out what Wikipedia says…

GTD is an action management method and it rests on the principle that a person needs to move tasks out of the mind by recording them somewhere. That way, the mind is freed from the job of remembering everything that needs to be done, and can concentrate on actually performing those tasks.

The premise of GTD, as I understand it, is do the tasks you’ve noted down (in the GTD way) based on the context you’re currently in (i.e., “In front of computer,” “In the car,” “At the office”). Of course, it’s not as simple as that, but it’s not very hard to understand and apply either.

Check out the diagram below to get a better understanding of this system.

Fig. 1.1 – GTD Flow Diagram (view top to bottom)

If you have access to a LAMP server, I recommend installing gtd-php and jump right in – this was the fastest and only way I actually understood it.

To end, I recommend setting up some time to read up on it and give it a try. There’s nothing to lose and maybe a lot to gain… =0)

Too much in your mind, mind map it!

With the coming of the information age, comes information overload. If you’re like me who reads constantly to keep up with technology, your mind can get overloaded with so much – acronyms, concepts, theories, how-tos – you name it.

So the question is: what do you do with all that information stored in your mind (read: brain)? The answer is mind map it.

I’ve been fond of using mind map software because it helps me orgranize my thoughts and note them down. This gives me a lot of benefits, but the best one is it makes me see things clearer because I’m able to visualize it; it also affords me a knowledge-base of sorts, which I can later read again.

According to Wikipedia, a mind map is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks or other items linked to and arranged radially around a central key word or idea. It is used to generate, visualize, structure and classify ideas, and as an aid in study, organization, problem solving, and decision making.

There are quite a few mind mapping software packages available (google it), but I use an open-source app called FreeMind.

Fig. 1.1 – FreeMind App

Fig 1.2 – Sample mind map

Check it out and start mind mapping and brain dumping all the stuff in your brain!

Yumex to the rescue!

Yumex is a yum extender that provides a GUI for package management.

So why am I writing about it, well, read on…

I had written recently about my upgrading from Fedora Core 1 to Fedora Core 6, and one major, annoying issue I encountered was with the yum updates.

I encountered approximately 5 conflicts and about 2 dependency errors. I believe it was with php-do and php and some elib libraries. I know, I know. You’re thinking, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” right? Well, unfortunately, I can only take so much of that.

So, with the mission at hand, I started googling for fixes and finally found a thread about yumex. I yum installed it, went into init 5 (I run init 3 by default), vnc‘ed into my box and run it.

After having used it, I strongly recommend you give it a try, especially if you have problems updating via a terminal window.

What yumex gives you is the freedom to update only certain packages via a click-and-process method; for example to fix my problem, I updated 15-20 packages at a time, continuously went through the list until I came across the offending package. I then took care of problematic ones one-by-one.

Pretty cool, ey…All you need to complete this process is patience and a book. =0)