Software I Swear By (and, sometimes, AT)

InstallWatch Pro from EpsilonSquared.

AvantBrowser — a good, free tabbed browser (followed closely by MyIE2).

MediaCenter V9 from J. River to keep track of and play my CDs and other music.

The Pine text-based email client from the University of Washington.

Cygwin to handle my Unix habit without requiring me to dual-boot any of my machines. I have curl, wget, SSH and X11 running on WinXP Pro.

CoolMon to keep me informed about what’s happening on my machine.

NetPerSec from PC Magazine/Ziff-Davis.

IrfanView, probably one of the greatest free image browsers around.

Software I Swear By (and, sometimes, AT) Read More »

Microsoft Action Pack

Microsoft has a great deal for partners: you get over 15 pieces of software including licenses for Exchange 2000, Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition, Windows 2000 Advanced Server, SQL Server 2000, 10 licenses for Windows XP Professional, 10 Office XP Professional, 10 Outlook 2002, 10 FrontPage 2002, 10 Visio 2002 SR1 Professional and 10 Project 2002. All of this is NFD (Not For Distribution) software but you ARE allowed to run it in production (“internal business use” as Microsoft calls it). The “catch” (if you can call it that) is that it’s a subscription which means you are only licensed for the software for a year. At the end of the year, you can
1) resubscribe or
2) buy licenses outright or
3) deinstall the software.

The Standard Action Pack normally sells for $299 but Microsoft has a special promotion going on right now: $99 for a year (code MHQ062). Now, you have to be a Microsoft Partner but it’s not difficult to become one. If your business provides Microsoft software or solutions to 3rd party customers then all you have to do is fill out a form to become a Registered Partner. Go to http://www.microsoft.com/partner for details on becoming a partner and http://www.microsoft.com/partner/actionpack for details on the action pack or to purchase a subscription.

Oh, one more thing: they ship quarterly updates. OK, $99 for all that PLUS you get updates every 3 months. Are you convinced yet? I can’t figure out why anyone wouldn’t do this.

Microsoft Action Pack Read More »

W3C’s WSYIWYG HTML editor

The WorldWide Web Consortium has its own WYSIWYG HTML editor called Amaya. Its described at http://www.w3.org/Amaya/. It’s different from the other editors in that you can really work a lot more closely with the HTML. It’s got a structure view so you can see how your document is laid out as well as the more classic source view and, of course, the formatted view. Once you get used to its different way of working, it’s really a pretty nice editor! It doesn’t give you all of the whippy, gee-whiz features that the other editors have but it supports XHTML 1.1, XHTML 1.0, SVG, MathML and CSS. And since it comes from W3C itself, it generates code according to the standards.

W3C’s WSYIWYG HTML editor Read More »

$29.99 SMC 802.11b router and $29.99 Belkin 802.11b PC card at CompUSA

I think this may be a one day-only deal but the router normally costs $79.99 [Update: 6/16/2003, 09:05 AM: Well, it turns out this deal is still available. Check the CompUSA web site]. There’s a $20 Internet purchase instant rebate and a $30 mail-in that brings the cost way down. Now, it’s 802.11b, not the newer 802.11g but it’s cheap enough that you could make a case for throwing it away when the price of 802.11g hardware comes down. Go to http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?product_code=295202&pfp=hpfod#checkstore for details on the router.

The Belkin card is, I think, a card that I tested out in a prior life and found it to be almost as good as the Orinoco card I use. The price is $59.99 with a $30 mail-in rebate. See http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?product_code=287284&pfp=BROWSE for the card.

$29.99 SMC 802.11b router and $29.99 Belkin 802.11b PC card at CompUSA Read More »

Be notified when a web page changes

I’ve been using WebCQ for a year or so now and, while the change detection and/or notification engines somtimes get “stuck”, it’s generally a pretty reliable and accurate service. It’s an academic project at Georgia Tech.

Another site that I’ve begun using just recently is http://www.watchthatpage.com. I’ve got a couple of pages that are being monitored daily and they haven’t missed a notification yet.

Be notified when a web page changes Read More »

Software downloads and updates sites

http://www.betanews.com lists updates and beta software by date along with news about software and software vendors.

http://www.fileforum.com is frequently referenced by BetaNews as a download location. It is, itself, a good site for Windows and Unix updates and downloads. Files are categorized and date-sorted.

http://www.majorgeeks.com seems to be a little more technical. Information is recorded chronologically.

http://www.versiontracker.com has sections for Windows, Palm, Mac OS and Mac OS X and has a Pro (paid) version

http://www.webattack.com is another useful software site. Paid version is at http://www.mywebattack.com

Software downloads and updates sites Read More »