Best Tool For the Job

Tonight I wanted to collaborate with a few friends on a diagram–basically just an org chart. This being the age of online collaboration, we tried all the web-based tools we could find which were:

• Thinkature
• ConceptShare
• Imagination Cubed
• Vyew

We quickly discovered that they are all lame. This is why.

Thinkature – Once we got several shapes on there I was no longer able to move things around without things jumping all over the place. It was also very limited in that you can’t cut and paste or duplicate sheets. Really this was probably the best of the bunch for what we were trying to do, but not because it was good.

ConceptShare – This one looks really nice, but it’s not made for flowcharting so maybe I shouldn’t even include it in this list. I will say that they did a great job on the interface and I imagine that it serves its purpose (sharing designs) well. One thing I noticed, and the reason I’m including it is because I wanted to comment on this, was that the lowest priced for-pay plan is $19 a month… that’s $228 a year and you can’t even custom brand it at that price. At the $1188 a year plan you get that feature. I think I’ll stick to posting an image online and making a conference call to discuss it.

Imagination Cubed – This is a fun toy. There is no built in chat, no undo and just not enough features to make it feasible for our purposes despite the smooth interface.

Vyew – By far the most featured, you can share desktops, add maps, draw lines and shapes etc. but you can’t have a box with text in it… at least not without using one of the plugins which is frankly almost better than nothing at all in its current state. Vyew might have potential, but right now the tools are very awkward and it’s nowhere near as easy to use as OmniGraffle or Visio. TechCrunch called it ‘fantastic,’ I’d call it passable.

In the end what did we end up doing? Nothing really… we spent the time pondering the lameness of web based collaboration and we’ll probably just make it in some desktop application and email the file back and forth. I’d be happy to know if anyone else has found a better option.

[EDIT]
Ahh. I knew I’d given up too soon. Not to disappoint readers on a blog called “Best Tool for the Job,” I felt obligated to continue the search (thank me later ). I just re-found Gliffy.com and it works like a charm. The collaboration part isn’t real-time–it looks like you have to click a revision in the list on the right to get updates and there is no built in chat, but otherwise it works really nice.

It has (almost) every feature we need and even some fun ones we don’t. Nice.

If you’re still using QuickTime, which does not support full screen video playback unless you buy QuickTime Pro, check out the follo

wing free video players. They are listed in the order that I prefer them:
1. NicePlayer – simple, fast, full screen (or borderless at any size) video playback. It can play DVD’s, playlists and most any video file you throw at it. This is my default video player. Mac only.

2. VLC – If you’ve got something that won’t play in Niceplayer, try VLC (Vido Lan Client). VLC can play almost anything you throw at it, including many streaming videos. Recently the interface has improved quite a bit as well. Cross-platform, open source.

3. MPlayer and/or djoPlayer – They’re based on the same open source video engine, but with different takes on the interface. I usually only drop to MPlayer as a last resort, but for a last resort, it works really well. MPlayer is cross-platform, djoPlayer is Mac only. If you’re on an Intel Mac stick with djoPlayer.

Technorati Tags: software

I think before this year I’d probably purchased 4 or 5 shareware programs, this year it’s been a different story! I’m not sure if it’s that the quality of the available shareware has gotten that much better or if I’ve just started buying more of it, but in any case, here’s the list of Shareware apps I’ve been using:

• Ecto (ok, I’ve probably had this for more than a year, but I’m listing it here since I’m typing this blog entry in it and it’s great.)
• TextMate – There’s nothing I can say about TextMate that hasn’t already been said. I love it.
• MacGourmet – This one was for J, she loves it.
• PulpMotion – Wow. Aquafadas just raised the bar on photo/video slideshows. Great price too.
• CSSEdit – I can’t imagine editing CSS without this application anymore. Beautiful.
• Cha-ching and iBank (reviews forthcoming)
• Parallels – Wow. Parallels has completely eliminated the old Dell laptop I had hanging around.
• Disco – I hardly ever burn CD’s, but I’m a sucker for a good (and/or fun) UI.
• Delicious Library - This came with MacHeist. I was pretty skeptical about it since for my book cataloging needs, it’s almost useless (I use LibraryThing), but I’ve found it pretty fun to use nonetheless.
• DevonThink – Another MacHeist, I’d been using the trial for…well too long, great program.
• Enigmo2 – Macheist. The first Mac game I’ve ever bought and I admit, I love it.
• In addition, I got a few other apps from MacHeist that I doubt I’ll use much, but are kind of cool – ShapeShifter (I actually already own a license to this and really enjoyed it, but haven’t used it for a couple years), RapidWeaver looks nice, but I’m a Rails head… who knows, maybe I’ll use it, Newsfire is also nice, but I can’t give up Google Reader for a desktop client, FotoMagico and iClip – I haven’t used them yet, but who’s to say I won’t.
• Inbox – Review forthcoming

In addition, there are a few shareware app’s I’ve got my eyes on:

• Audio Hijack Pro
• Tangerine – I almost want to pay 25 bucks just for the Icon.
• AppZapper
• OmniFocus (is it ready yet?
• Voice Candy (what can I say, it looks fun

Hopefully you’ve found some good ones in this list, if you like the program, why not support the developers buy purchasing it? What Mac Shareware did you buy this year?

Technorati Tags: lifehacks, macheist, OS X, shareware, software

I’ve looked at several options for making sure I “use my time wisely” while I’m on the computer including:

• Onlife (Mac only)
• The Printable CEO
• Timers that capture screenshots such as TimeSnapper or block programs such as Temptation Blocker (Windows only)
• Project timers such as On The Job and Billings2 and Billable (all Mac Only)
• Various non-free online timers… maybe I’m cheap but 5 to 9 dollars a month is 60 to 108 dollars a year and that’s a lot of cash to fork out for a timer (at least for personal use). These include Harvest, 14dayz, Time59 and Tick.
• Firefox Extensions that track time such as TimeTracker.

None of them fit my criteria of being easy to use, easy to see where my time went (some type of reporting) and inexpensive. Then I went back to SlimTimer. The concept is simple. You open up a little window that sits on your desk all day (I open mine in Safari so tabs don’t accidentally pop up there from my default browser, Firefox) and click the name of the activity you’re doing at the time. That’s it. Here’s my window right now.

When you’re done you close the window, click another task or toggle the task you’re on. Then the cool part is the reports that are available on the main SlimTimer website. You can see where your time went specifically for the day, week month, per task, tag etc. Here’s a screen capture of a report:

SlimTimer is simple, powerful, quick and free. Can’t beat that.

Technorati Tags: gtd, lifehacks, timetracking, software, technology, web2.0, webservices

Since I started learning Rails I’ve often been asked “is Rails hard to learn?” A lot of times this is by people who don’t know any other programming language or even HTML. The answer to that question is a little more complicated than a simple yes or no. Rails isn’t necessarily hard to learn, but a lot of other stuff comes along with it. Here’s the list I came up with of the things you’ll have to learn to write web applications in Rails:

• The programming language Ruby
• Obviously Rails itself which involves learning the Model View Controller (MVC) design pattern (or collection of patterns) and the way these are implemented in Rails, the file structure of Rails and the syntax and domain specific functions Rails adds to Ruby including how to write templates using RHTML. Rails is composed of several frameworks, ActiveRecord, ActionPack (which includes Action Controller, Views, Mailer and Web Services), each of which have to be learned.
• How to use Rails plugins, components, Engines Ruby gems etc. This includes how to get them installed along with learning enough to know when (or if) and how to use them.
• AJAX, Prototype, JavaScript and RJS. You may not have to learn JavaScript (which itself is a full featured programming language) but you’ll definitely have to be comfortable with using it to some degree.
• What web services are and how they work.
• How to create and use relational databases.
• Basic SQL, at least enough to know what is happening behind the scenes with ActiveRecord. There almost certain to be times when some SQL will have to be written out for reports, optimization etc., so knowing at least some SQL is important.
• Having enough of a knowledge of FastCGI, Mongrel and WebBrick to make a decision about which (or which combination) to use to deploy the application.
• Apache, specifically how to configure it to work with either FastCGI or Mongrel. Alternatively Lighttpd or another web server.
• Rake, Generators and Capistrano and remote deployment.
• Database migrations.
• Testing web applications (which admittedly I haven’t done much yet).
• A basic knowledge of web application security.
• How to set up and use SVN repositories. If you’re new to source code versioning this can take awhile to get used to.
• It may be necessary to learn a new IDE (RadRails) and/or a new text editor (TextMate).
• As with any new programming language, you’ll have to learn to get Rails installed. In my case this meant figuring out how to do it on my personal computer (a Mac), my work machine (Windows XP) and the servers (Linux). None were too difficult but they all had their idiosyncrasies that had to be dealt with.
• If you don’t already know it, you’ll need to learn XHTML and CSS

Some of the things in that list are quick and easy to learn, others will take time and practice (I’m still working on a lot of them). If you’re thinking about learning Rails, this list isn’t meant to discourage you, just help to make you aware of what you’re up for.

Technorati Tags: programming, rails, ruby on rails

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I’m looking forward to the day I can use any computer with a web connection to be as productive as I am on my own computer. Most websites that try to replace desktop applications fall far short off their counterparts. In the meantime, here’s what’s ready and what’s not:

Ready to Use:

1. Gmail – this one is obvious and nothing new. With well over 2gb of space I’ve completely stopped using a desktop mail client. I have about 6 email accounts and all go through Gmail. It’s nice getting it all in one place.
2. Google Talk – while Google Talk isn’t as full featured as other IM clients, it has one great feature–logs are saved to Gmail and searchable right within Gmail. This is the case whether you use Google Talk from the web interface in Gmail or from a desktop client.
3. Meebo – IM in the browser with meebo feels almost as natural as IM in a desktop client. Meebo is great for friends who don’t use Google Talk since it supports AIM, Yahoo, Jabber and others. It also saves chat logs, though they aren’t searchable yet. I’m not sure how meebo makes money since there are no ads, but I’m sure that will come.
4. Google Spreadsheets – I’ve seen complaints that it’s not as full featured as it could be, but for the type of spreadsheets I make, it’s perfect. I love being able to collaborate in realtime on spreadsheets and even chat with people in the same browser window as the spreadsheet. I am a pretty basic spreadsheet user, but for me it’s already replaced Excel.
5. NetVibes – I recently switched from Google’s custom homepage to Netvibes. I went kicking and screaming, but the tabbed pages, more compact interface and a few other things made their customizable homepage better for getting the news and reading blogs than Google’s. I guess this really isn’t a desktop app replacement, but it’s great to be able to log into it anywhere get a quick news fix.
6. Google Calendar – this has completely replaced my desktop calendar application. It is full featured and integrates nicely with Gmail. Inviting others to events and sharing calendars is simple. Overall a very well done web application.
7. Bloglines – there are a million blog aggregators out there. Bloglines was one of the first and is still the best. Some of the more interesting desktop aggregators let you sync your feeds so you can read them within the browser or within the desktop application but they still seem like more of a hassle than they’re worth. Why not just do it all from the browser?
8. Remember the Milk – I defy anyone to find a faster, more featured to-do manager than Remember the Milk. It it excellent. Complete with keyboard shortcuts it makes managing to-do lists simple and much more pleasant than any desktop to-do list I’ve tried.
9. Basecamp – This one is fairly specific to web development type projects, but Basecamp has been perfect for managing projects. I can’t even imagine going to MS Project after using it. The simplicity and effectiveness of Basecamp is excellent. Basecamp is the only one that I don’t pay for out of the list.
10. Google Notebook – I use this for storing bits of information on random things. It’s been a hard switch from Notational Velocity (which is much better overall) but the convenience of having it all online has made it worth it.
11. Del.icio.us – It’s been more than a year since I bookmarked anything in a browser. Del.icio.us has completely replaced browser bookmarks making them available wherever I am. Google Search History is also useful and falls in this category.

Almost there:

1. Writely – I’ve tried using Writely for online word processing a la Microsoft Word, but they still just aren’t quite there. Imported documents don’t maintain all their formatting which is of utmost importance when using a Word Processor (otherwise I’d just make a text file). I’m sure that at some point Google will get Writely up to par, but for now I haven’t made the switch entirely.
2. Flickr – I love Flickr for managing photos and hesitate to put it in the “almost there” category, but I still don’t feel comfortable enough keeping my photos ONLY on Flickr to say that it has replaced iPhoto or Picasa. Fluxiom looks like it might be featured enough to fully replace Flickr, but none of the plans fit my budget–even the one that costs 89 euros a month only lets you store 3gb of stuff.

Someone make this please:

1. Online Budgeting – I subscribed to Mvelopes for a month or two but couldn’t get used to the strange Envelope budgeting mentality. I just want something decent with double entry accounting online. The one thing Mvelopes did do extremely well was pull data from all my financial institutions. From Paypal to my bank to my credit card companies, they connected to everything perfectly. They also offer bill pay to companies that don’t accept online bill pay. Mvelopes would be excellent if it weren’t for the whole non-traditional envelope paradigm.
2. Online CRM – I’ve tried Sugar CRM and looked at Salesforce.com for long enough to know that they are too tedious for me to ever want to use them. I’m looking forward to Sunrise from 37Signals.
3. Online Outline- I love Omnigraffle, but don’t get to use it as often as I’d like since I’m always going back and forth between Mac and PC. I would really like to see an online outliner that had similar functionality. I’ve tried Sproutliner and some of it’s offshoots but found them to be pretty lacking.

Might never happen:

1. Photo Editing – I use Photoshop and Illustrator quite a bit for work and play. While there are basic image editing programs online, nothing comes even close to these.
2. Video Editing – Again, there are basic video editing programs online, but I don’t foresee being able to connect my video camera and edit video in a browser like i would in iMovie or Final Cut.
3. Text Editing – (programmers only) – TextMate is my choice of text editor. I still see text editing as the domain of desktop applications. Maybe later I’ll go into more details here. When TextMate isn’t available, I’m comfortable using Vim, but to use that I still have to have an SSH client.
4. Music – Things like Pandora and Last.fm are really nice, but I can’t see anything completely replacing desktop music applications in the near future. It’d be nice if something came along and surprised me though.

I like lists! Really, who doesn’t? If I look back over the archives of this blog there are a significant number of lists–everything from finding domain names to finding success to my most recent post with 3 ways to deal with toddler tendencies.

I like lists.

A list is a concise way to obtain and share knowledge, a great way to start conversations and pique interest in new subjects. Lists are fun for trivial facts and are great ways to help remember things.

So, I decided to start an new blog dedicated to lists–ListLearn.com – A blog that helps you get smarter through lists. I’m really excited about it–it’s a way to touch on a lot of different subjects in a format that works well online–lists. Check it out! Let me know what you think and feel free to submit an idea for a list or let me know if you post one on your own website. (marcus at vorwaller .dot. net)

A final note, if you haven’t looked at CMSFactor.com lately there’s a bunch of fresh content there as well.

Technorati Tags: blogs, learning, lists, knowledge

Wow. Quicksilver never ceases to amaze! You can now create mouse gestures to do anything Quicksilver can do using a plugin called Abracadabra.

To use it, first, go to your Quicksilver preferences, in plugins, choose “other plugins” to find plugins that aren’t installed and check the box next to Abracadabra.

Click the plus sign by Abracadabra (you probably have to have “Enable advanced features” set to Beta in the Application settings.

You’ll now have a new menu item called Abracadabra. Select it and add the sounds you want to hear when you do a gesture that is recognized or when you make a mistake and do an unknown gesture. You’ll also want to pick a key to use with Abracadabra.

Now click the “Triggers” category in preferences and create a new trigger by choosing the plus sign at the bottom then doing something you might normally do in Quicksilver such as committing something to SVN (or opening a folder or whatever you do with your Mac).

Now change the Trigger type to Gesture, and in the drawer that slides out, draw the gesture you’d like to make in order to perform the action.

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You’re done! Try it out by holding down option (or whatever key you chose) and performing the gesture. If you did it right, you’ll get cool green stars, otherwise they’ll turn red.

A few things have happened lately. One is that the Daily Press is running an article on bloggers and apparently I’m going to be featured. I had a phone interview and the photographer came over and took pictures of me standing by my computer .

We decided to change the name of the Community of Success (mentioned below) to Enrichr – Pursuing Success. The main reason for the change is that we (there are three of us running the site) decided that Community of Success sounds, for lack of a better word, nerdy. Enrichr is a play on Flickr (obviously) and is a pretty good representation of the purpose of the site–to enrich people’s lives through providing knowledge and motivation.

I’ve also started documenting my efforts to find an investment property on that website.

I’ll take this chance to write about some good software I’ve found lately too:

1. MediaCentral – a program similar to Front Row but in my opinion better. It uses Spotlight to find media anywhere on your hard drive.

2. MP3 Trimmer – fully featured shareware with nag screens to merge mp3′s (or spilt them). I sometimes end up with audiobooks I’ve ripped from CD that are in a million files. This program rejoins them nicely. I also recently discovered you can join them in iTunes before importing them by going to Advanced > Join CD Tracks if you have them all selected.

3. Colibri – The real Quicksilver for Windows? Doubtful, but at least it looks similar. Free.

4. Loudblog – Very cool PHP software for podcasting. With Loudbot it can also be integrated with other blog software.

5. MODx – An interesting looking CMS that is “Web 2.0 buzzword compliant.” One of the few CMS’s that has looked interesting to me lately.

Technorati Tags: business, CMS, mac, macintosh, newwport news, real estate, realestate, software, technology, virginia

A couple months ago I wrote about how to find a great domain name. Since then, I’ve found several other tricks, related articles and sites… here they are:

1. Instant Domain Search – This is the site I’ve been using most. Start typing a domain name and as you type it shows you if it’s available or not. No submit button, no waiting, just good quick results. Can’t beat that. There is a similar site called Ajax Whois that’s not quite as fast (it requires verification), but adds the functionality of seeing whois results.

2. Domainers – Turns out there are people making a bit of money off buying and selling domains, or buying domains hoping people will land on them and click a link. By a bit of money, I mean millions of dollars a year. Business 2.0 has a great article on the subject.

3. Sedo.com – If the domainers article piqued your interest, check out Sedo–a quick place to park your domains to make money off ads or put them up for sale. I’ve parked a few there myself until I have time to develop them. If Sedo doesn’t meet your fancy, check out Afternic, DomainHop or DomainSponsor.

4. Looking for a different way to sell your hot new domain? Check out DomainState or DNForum. The former appears to be less trafficked and free while the latter is not free but is always buzzing.

5. All existing domains – This one is a gem sent from Beau (the guy who made Instant Domain Search). Fax in your address get access to a list (available over FTP) of all active .com and .net domain names. Very cool.

6. 2.99 domains – From Yahoo, sign up for them all at once because the offer is good for new customers only, after you’re signed up the price goes up to $9.95. I was able to get 5 domains for 3 bucks a pop. After that offer expires, I’d recommend checking out Namecheap. Their domains are 8.88 each and the tools to manage them are outstanding.

7. A ton of other name finding tools. My last post generated some good ideas in the comments. Here are tools that people recommended:

• WordConstructor – This one is awesome. It comes up with short, catchy names with greater ease than any of the other tools I’ve found.
• OneLook – Dictionary that supports wildcards. Could be useful. There’s also a reverse dictionary.
• RhymeZone – This one also comes up with some surprisingly good made-up word.
• Whois Source – A smarter-than-average tool for domain name spinning.
• Nameboy – Enter two words and get suggestions. This one wasn’t as useful as some of the others, but I figured I’d add it here anyway

8. DomainsBot – I mentioned this one in the previous article, but since then they’ve pulled a few more tricks out of their sleeves. They now have a Lab where there are a few really cool tools.

• WordTrends – Plugin a couple words and see how often they are used in domain names.
• DomainStats – A couple interesting research papers on domain names. No charge to read them.
• SearchCloud – I found this one to be the most useful, type in some words and get a list of related words and available domains.
• SplitIt – Make sure your domain name will be interpreted how you hope it will be.
• Shadow – I didn’t try this one, but it’s a piece of software you download to crunch data to find good domains… let me know how it goes if you decide to test it.

So.. there you go, more tools for finding domains than you can shake a stick at. Enjoy.

Technorati Tags: domains, hacks, software, technology, webservices