Categories
Software Technology

Web Based Collaboration Tools

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:

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.
Gliffy ROCKS

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

Categories
Software Technology

Free Alternatives to QuickTime

Screenshot 01-1

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.

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Categories
Entertainment etc.

Six Best Albums of 2006

Best Music Of 2006

For your listening enjoyment, the six albums that I enjoyed most from 2006. I’m not even going to try to put commentary on them since that’s just not my forté.

1. Love and Other Planets – Adem
2. La Revancha del Tango – Gotan Project. This is actually from 2003 but I didn’t discover it until last year. It’s definitely not in the same genre as the rest of the music on the list, but it’s good stuff.
3. World Waits – Jeremy Enigk
4. Veneer – José Gonzalez
5. Under the Iron Sea – Keane
6. Decended Like Vultures – Rogue Wave

[NEW]
You can listen to a Pandora station with a some of these artists (as well as a couple others) here. Finally, a 7th album for 2006 is The Format – Dog Problems.

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Categories
GTD Lifehacks Productivity Software

A Year of Shareware

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:

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?

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Categories
Design GTD Lifehacks Software Technology Web Services

SlimTimer – The Best Timer for GTD

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

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.

Screenshot 01

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:

Screenshot 02

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

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Categories
Software Technology

Before you Learn Rails

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.

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Categories
Entertainment Knowledge Lifehacks

How to Have Better Conversations

Some time back I noticed two things:

  • I enjoy good conversations
  • I want to have more good conversations

Nothing revolutionary, but because of those things, I started thinking more about conversation and how to improve it. Here’s what I came up with.

These are some reasons that people converse:

  • Conversation brings back memories from your own life.
  • It validates your experiences and opinions and makes you feel understood and accepted.
  • It gives you knowledge about a subject you’re interested in. For example, what it’s like to live in South Africa, how it feels to be a parent etc.
  • It sparks ideas in you for improving your life, business or hobbies.
  • It gets you something you want.
  • It gives you the satisfaction that comes from convincing (or trying to convince) someone to change their opinion on some subject.
  • The feeling of satisfaction you get from helping someone feel better.
  • The power you feel for making someone feel bad. This is obviously not a good motive for conversation, but it is a real one nonetheless.
  • Conversation is a way to sort out your thoughts and feelings. By talking to someone who cares enough to listen, you often get the time and perspective needed to better understand yourself.
  • It’s an escape from stress and monotony. A way to laugh and lighten things up.

While most of these are valid reasons to have conversation, they don’t directly indicate what makes a good conversation. Ideally at the end of a conversation both people should leave looking forward to the next conversation. Before going on to how to have a good conversation, here are a few things that make conversation unenjoyable.

  • You didn’t feel listened to. The other person either didn’t stop talking long enough for you to speak, or when you were talking they were too busy thinking about the next thing they were going to say to hear what you were saying.
  • You didn’t feel understood. Despite the fact that the other person was listening intently, you didn’t feel like he or she actually understood what you were saying.
  • You felt manipulated. The other person tried to get you to do or say something you didn’t want to do or say.
  • Gossip. While tempting, gossip generally does not lead to a good conversation. It destroys trust–how can you be sure the other person isn’t gossiping about you?
  • Intellectual inequality. It’s hard (but not impossible) to have a good conversation if one party perceives the other as less (or more) intelligent. While this can still lead to a valuable and interesting exchange, it often does not.
  • Lack of common views. This can go both ways. If both parties to the conversation respect each other’s intelligence, differences in politics, religion, culture etc. can make for very interesting conversation and debates. On the other hand, if there is a lack of respect or extreme differences, conversation can become uncomfortable.

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Knowing what makes conversation good and bad, we can draw some conclusions about what to do in order to have a good conversation. Here’s the good stuff.

  • Don’t be selfish. It sounds harsh, but it’s not as obvious or easy as it seems. Conversation is give and take. There are times when you should listen and times to talk. Doing too much of either is not conducive to good conversation. Listen carefully to the other person then state your opinions after you understand theirs. Even if you are giving advice or teaching someone something, the listening/talking ratio should generally be around 50/50. In the end, the time you feel like you’re “giving up” to listen leads to better conversation. Everyone wins.
  • Prepare for good conversation. Read widely. If you know you’ll have a chance for a conversation, learn about the interests of the person you’ll be talking with. Keep up with the news. Broaden your knowledge. This not only will help you have interesting subjects to bring up, but it will help you understand the context of the conversation without interrupting it to ask for a definition. It’s is called cultural literacy.
  • Don’t manipulate, or in other words, be honest and up-front. For the most part, people will immediately recognize when they are being manipulated. You may get away with it, but the chances that the person will look forward to their next conversation with you are slim.
  • Reciprocate. If someone shares details about their life, it is natural for them to expect for you to do the same thing. It’s not good if after a conversation someone feels that they’ve laid their life bare before you and know nothing about you. The opposite is true as well.
  • Avoid gossip and complaining. Both of these things are extremely easy to do and both lead to negative, empty feelings afterwards.
  • Don’t be afraid to differ. Conversation is boring if everyone agrees. If you don’t agree, say you don’t and explain why.
  • Know and use your sense of humor in moderation. Figure out what’s natural for you and go with it.

I’ll finish by saying that I’m by no means an expert conversationalist so take my advice with a grain of salt, but hopefully you’ll find some of these tips useful. If you’ve got suggestions for having better conversations, by all means, comment!

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Knowledge Lifehacks Productivity Software Technology Web Services

11 Web Applications that are Ready for Primetime

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.
Categories
Knowledge Software

ListLearn – Lists to Make You Smarter

Listlearn

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.

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Categories
Family

Toddler Tips

A Toddler

It’s been awhile (years) since I’ve written about parenting here, but after a conversation with a friend last night, I decided to post a couple things that I’ve come across that seem to work.

Generally when raising a toddler, there are two times when wills collide, the first is when you want your toddler to do something that he doesn’t want to do and the second is when you want him to stop doing something that he wants to do. I’ve found a couple “tricks” that seem to work most of the time, plus a bonus tip to stop tantrums.

Give and take. If you want your toddler to do something such as get in the car, eat dinner, take a bath, stand next to you in the line at the post office, etc., there are two things you can do, the first is to repeat what you want them to do in an increasingly loud voice while inserting various threats such as “or else I’m going to…” and “I’m counting to three.” This does not work. What does work is giving them the choice: “If you don’t get in the car we’re going to put your <<insert toy name here>> away for the rest of the day.” Or, “If you don’t stand next to me in the post office there will be no fries with the happy meal.” The trick here is you have to really mean it and be ready to actually do it. It takes a few times but they learn quickly that you’re serious and this technique works a lot better than the aforementioned voice raising.

Distraction. If your toddler is doing something that’s driving you nuts such as talking loudly when he’s supposed to be quiet or squirming incessantly or slamming doors or unplugging the lamp or … whatever, there is only one way to peacefully resolve the issue. Distractions. Your job is to think of something they’d rather be doing as quickly as possible and present them with that alternative. Good distractions include drawing, play-doh, learning to whistle, jumping or doing other “cool tricks,” reading a book or anything else he enjoys doing.

Stopping a tantrum. I’m referring the less violent form of a tantrum. This is when you’re in a public place (an art museum, church, the library etc.) and your toddler decides to start crying really loudly because they’re bored and know the whining and crying will frustrate you and cause you to move onto more fun things (anything but the museum) quicker. I’ve found that the best way to stop this is to immediately carry the toddler off to a secluded spot, stand them up and bend down to look them in the face and tell them in no uncertain terms that the whining and crying needs to stop, explaining why and what will happen if it doesn’t. This gives the toddler some respect–you’re not yelling at them, and in my experience usually ends with something of a fragile truce between the two of you which will give you a few more minutes to finish what you’re doing and move on to a more toddler friendly place.

The nice thing about these techniques is that you hardly ever have to raise your voice (or blood pressure) and you and your toddler are still friends once the incident is over. While they don’t always work, in my experience, they have made being a dad even more fun and rewarding.

DISCLAIMER: I’ve only had experience with these on one toddler–mine, your mileage may vary.

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