April 18, 2008 by phillip.

As an agent of change I continually invite you to look at what you’re doing everyday and say, “Maybe there a better and cheaper way.” I continually look at my everyday processes and think that. Well, today I’m going to address my changes with concern to my addiction to instant messaging.

  When it comes to me sitting down doing mindless work I never want to be alone. Therefore, I sit down at a computer and fire up an instant messenger client. Here’s where I’m inconsistent. If I’m at a Linux machine I use Pidgin (it’s time to stop saying it but… “formerly called Gaim”). On a Windows machine I use Trillian. On a Mac I use Adium. Also, even though it’s known mostly for internet telephony I use Skype for those very few people that stay on Skype at work. Just for good measure I’ve added a new one to the flock. If I’m at a computer that isn’t mine I use Meebo.com to log into all my accounts.

I’ve been using Trillian for the longest and I’m finally going to have to end my many years with the program. It’s not that it did anything bad but it didn’t do anything really good. Pidgin however is open source and it’s great. It works on Windows and Linux/Unix/BSD (Amiga too reportedly). Since it is open source I’m looking forward to a OS X port soon but for now on that front I have to stick to Adium.

Here’s where the better comes in. Pidgin seems to be able to connect to every protocol imaginable. It does: AIM, Yahoo, MSN, Google Talk, Jabber, ICQ, Groupwise and believe it or not even Skype (with an easy to install plugin). Think that’s it? No. That’s only half the list that I know of. That’s the cool part of it.

Get addicted to Instant messaging again at home and in the office. Trust me, it’s a lot more productive than talking to people on the phone too. You can work and still keep in contact with all your friends. Let me warn you though, if you decide to use it from work you may decide to use the built in encryption or Off the record plugin (which also does make one for Trillian).

Posted in Mac, Windows, Linux, Software | 1 Comment »

April 15, 2008 by phillip.

In a post from a couple weeks ago I posted an article about the Photoshop replacement program Gimp. Well, I just saw this link about the new features of the Gimp. They fix a lot of the problems that I said may be small weaknesses. Check out the article here.

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April 6, 2008 by phillip.

One of the main areas of open source software that I haven’t tried much but kept my eye on in the last couple of years is “The Gimp.” It’s a staple of most Linux systems even though it is available on Windows and Mac OSX as well. This is the problem for me: I’m the son of a electrical engineer and an art teacher. If there’s one thing that I am somewhat destined to use are graphic applications. Adobe has served me very well in that regard.

The problem is, Adobe must have known they had me and started squeezing the clamps. The software has been getting more and more expensive exponentially. Buying Macromedia then made them the kings of all graphics and multimedia with no sympathy in site for the little guy. Read the rest of this entry »

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April 6, 2008 by phillip.

As an avid supporter of open source software I have found myself in a particular pickle. I really want to support open standards for everything I do however, there are a couple areas that open source hasn’t come up with a good replacement for commercial software. For the most part, Microsoft’s software has been the primary target for replacements. Oh, did I say replacements? I guess the politically correct terminology is “Alternatives.”

The human psychology however is something that has to slowly be changed or diverted. The old adage “You get what you pay for” is the prevalent way of thinking that keeps big companies big. As a consultant I have learned this first hand. I’ve offered a similar or better service as a competitor for a cheaper cost and not been taken seriously. The second I charged more I got more business. Open source software shouldn’t need to charge more to offer good value.

I’m not just shouting on my megaphone at you while walking down the street though. I’m putting my headphones on and listening to my own tune. I’m looking at some replacements for commercial software that I use and finding an alternative to pose to myself and my clients. Read the rest of this entry »

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February 1, 2008 by phillip.

As of late I guess I may seem quite opinionated but I have found that I never find bugs or have to many features I really want that don’t come soon or aren’t thought of and just not apparent. I never have to file bug reports. I finally put in some feature requests.

I was just online and looked a a program called GOM Player that looks good however, I love my VLC. Then I find out that it’s only on Windows. I went to their forums to request a feature and found that they are already in the process of a Linux version but no Mac version. Since I really love my VLC I went to them to request the only real feature I liked in GOM which is Flash playback. It’s already in one of the nightly builds just needs more tuning. Thanks VLC. Just for the sake of it I told GOM that all the way cross platform is a good idea since I like all my clients and family sticking to the same interface.

However, it had me thinking. How do other people search through the bug report lists for programs and find so many that they need to request. I think I’m not critcal enough.

Posted in Mac, Windows, Linux, Software | No Comments »

January 25, 2008 by phillip.

Yet another company has bought an open source company. Sun bought MySQL AB. Now if you’re up on your open source history you’ll also know that Sun started StarOffice that broke off into the open source OpenOffice. So, Sun’s no stranger to open source.

The first feeling of disgust that will probably first hit your gut is that, “Hey it’s free software. Sun is going to take it and try to monetize it.” Well, I’m sure you’ve probably calmed down by now and realized that it really is a company and they’re not a non-profit (The story here is a link to a blog post on how much is an open source company worth).

So, aside from all that… Here’s my thought. In a constant effort to best Microsoft I see a real opportunity that the corporate world can use from open source. The one thing: Microsoft Access and SQL Server now can be done with OpenOffice Base and MySQL server.

Access was one of the killer apps that make it difficult to leave the windows world totally. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a Microsoft hater but I do want to go to a pure Linux desktop especially in the enterprise. Say what you like but Access is a great low end database platform. It also keeps people tied into .Net, ADO, and Visual Basic. It seems that nobody even notices this primary organ in the commercial platform body.

Here’s what I think Sun should go for. Tightly integrate Base and MySQL then roll in a report writing software or just acquire a company doing that. Don’t worry, I’ve done the work for them. They should also buy or ally themselves with Jaspersoft or Datavision. The reason being, Crystal Reports. The unknown key to the empire.

If you’ve never heard of Crystal Reports then you don’t really work in a corporate setting. The majority of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Contact management software for the enterprise are printed through a seperate licensed product called Crystal Reports. Some times you could be offered the ability to buy it yourself and integrate it into the product through pre-configured links that replace the products’ bare-bones reporting software. Business Objects owns Crystal Reports and has developed a Linux server version of the software that develops reports with a watered down web based interface. SAP is the leader in ERP software and they bought Business Objects in order to own Crystal Reports which is a similar chess move. This way they stave off Oracle. In turn Oracle bought Seibel and Sleepycat software to threaten SAP and MySQL respectively.

Sun’s challenge is as follows: Make Base and MySQL drop in replacements of Access and SQL Server. Throw in reporting software and you’ve given yourself the ability to sneak into corporate environments everywhere. Digging into Microsoft and Oracle’s pockets and padding their own.

This is where Sun makes it’s money. Nobody’s buying Sun servers or Solaris (Let’s be real with ourselves). So, they sell companies on the workstations with Java on them (seeing as how both report writers run on Java as well as Windows, Linux, and Mac). Bingo! You have hardware sold, you get your foot in the server room door, and you have a drop in replacement giving companies open source with a commercial aftertaste.

Sun I don’t mind getting a little server for this grand idea and you can say it was your idea.

Posted in Linux, Software | 1 Comment »

November 28, 2007 by phillip.

Being a computer guy I’m often asked by people to look at their computer and tell them what’s wrong or can I help them figure something out. For that reason, I’m doing this post on some real tech tricks to make you look like a star. All that from a USB drive.

The first thing you have to realize is that being prepared for anything is always your goal. I’m never unarmed. There are a couple things that are always on my person like most men: wallet, keys, watch, cell phone, and most times my PDA (an HP IPAQ) . Turning any of these items into multipurpose tools makes you ready for anything. Women can of course get more mileage out of this because they carry a purse. Now, for the really techy, I will continue with a blog post on the ultimate home support system because there are a lot of times I connect to my systems at home from a client’s site. I put a USB stick on my keyring that has a ton of goodies as well as my IPAQ. Today we’ll focus on the USB stick.

For the quick and easy route I’d suggest a simple USB stick (doesn’t have to be U3) but you want it to 1 gig or bigger. This will work on a drive as small as 128mb but I always like to keep extra space on the drive in case I need to copy a lot of files over to it for backup purposes. The last thing you want to do with a machine that is on it’s last leg is turn it off and hope it comes back on.

For a long time now I’d been downloading applications individually and copying them to the drive. You’re still going to install some extra ones to the drive but first download this handy set of tools: PCRepairsystem.zip . It’s a fabulous set of tools from the site Daily Cup of Tech. It’s a zip file that you just download and extract to your USB drive. Pull out your drive and stick it back in and you’re done! Well, almost done. When you put it in it puts a little coffee bean next to your computer’s clock on the task bar. Right clicking on that clock brings up a list of programs that do everything from drive repair to rootkit revealers to CD burning. These will serve you well. Get to know what each program does and you have most everything you need.

Next make a visit to www.portableapps.com. This site is full of applications that you may already be using all the time except these are made to run straight from a USB drive. Believe me, having access to a computer and not having administrative rights can totally shut you down because you can’t just download and install the applications you wanted until this.

Take a look around and get what you like. These are some of the ones that I put on my stick and the reasons why.

Firefox: Always want a fully capable web browser.
Clamwin: To be able to walk up and scan a computer for virus’ is absolutely essential.
WinSCP: If you have access to another machine with a secure connection you can FTP or SSH to and from it. Openoffice: A full Microsoft Office competitor on a USB stick? You can’t beat that.
VLC: Will view any video or play any audio.
Gimp: A Photoshop like program. You may need to resize or edit photos or something for someone.

Now with all of these you have to save the file to your desktop then install them and give your USB drive letter in the install path. For example, where it says “Install path: \openoffice” put H: (or whatever your drive’s letter is) in front to make it H:\openoffice.

In closing, I’d suggest you open every program you put on your USB drive before leaving home. The last thing you want to do is be surprised while you’re on location. A good example of this is that the first time you run Clamwin it wants to download the virus database. Assuming you’re at a site with dialup or no internet on the machine you’ve just wasted a ton of time or won’t even be able to fix the problem.

Also, the program SIW on the PCRepairkit should be your first stop when looking at a system. It will tell you everything about the machine. Save this to your USB stick. Should anything happen to the computer you know what it had before.

That’s it! Go out there and make the world a better place with safe computing.

Oh, and just for your convenience, keep some music, podcasts, or things to read on your USB stick. You might get stuck somewhere for a long time. No need to be bored while a virus scan or drive repair runs.  I also put my resume on the drive.  As a consultant you have this time as a window of opportunity if someone really likes you and may have a big project coming up.

Posted in Windows, Only for the techy people, Software | 1 Comment »

November 11, 2007 by phillip.

www.ted.comI watched a fascinating lecture on the Internet today (www.ted.com) The speaker gave a talk on the misconceptions of: choice and happiness. I found this extremely interesting and relative to how open source works. In a capitalistic choice driven society like the United States (my home) it feels almost sacrilegious to say. It is however, true. Let’s delve further into it.

What software can you say people are truly happen with in open source? Without a doubt I would say: Firefox, MySQL, and Apache. Let’s look at why. Of the top of your head, what are your choices? Not many. I’m sure you’re probably thinking “What’s that browser’s name?” for a second referring to Opera or “I heard I can run a lighter webserver” referring to Lighttpd. Fact of the matter is more often than not it’s either Firefox (or a perversion of it like Swiftfox packaged with some Linux distros) or you Operating system default such as Internet Explorer or Safari. PostgresQL is a choice to MySQL but who offers anything else? There are tons more but as long as you don’t think about those you’re happy in your MySQL world.

“Why is this good?” you may ask. My answer is simple but don’t stop reading after I answer, there’s more. It keeps programmers focused in the right directions.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Software, Life Lessons | 1 Comment »

September 24, 2007 by phillip.

I’ve never smoked cigarettes but for a couple years now I’ve totally understood that addiction. I’ll tell you what mine has been: Microsoft Office. I’d do anything to get a hold of it in my past. I worked a deal a while back to buy some licenses from a vendor that I bought a lot of products through so I still use it. However, that was quite a few years ago and right now I’m seeing no compelling reason to upgrade to Office 2007. FYI, my wife’s new Macbook came with Office 2007 so I may play with it more there.

I’ve blogged a long time ago about my dependence on Microsoft Outlook and Access. I’ve been trying to find a way around them to little avail. Well, that’s what it would seem like but I actually have found solutions but I still have that Office monkey on my back. At home and for my consulting I work in Linux, Windows, and Mac and one of the major themes of this blog is working well in all three or whatever you’re given. Well, with my laptop I primarily boot into Linux, my desktop I primarily use Windows and and my wife is on a Mac. The rest of my systems are a mixture of the three except I run all Linux servers. So, for consistency at home and for offices I really want to run the same software throughout.

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Posted in Mac, Windows, Linux, Software | 1 Comment »

September 11, 2007 by phillip.

Ok, ok I’ll admit it. I preached the words I didn’t heed. My name is Phillip and I used to be insecure.

These would be the words I’d utter if there was an insecurity annonymous meeting. Without that facility to purge my transgresssions I will say them here. At work and for clients security was job one but at home… I was that guy with all the open routers. I was that guy with easy passwords. I’m not proud of my past I can only move on to help others.

In all seriousness, though, I was like many people. Insecure because we were too lazy to take the extra steps. Security always adds extra things to think about and that’s extra work. There are many good reasons for it though. First, I’ll give you the top 5 reasons people are insecure and then easy steps that remedy these problems.

1) “I don’t have anything anybody really wants.”

Know it or not there is so much information about you that can be known from a simple scan of your computer that can be used to get access to using your identity.

2) “I don’t leave my laptop laying around so anyone can touch it.”

Most security breaches aren’t from the intruder physically touching your machine. It’s from internet access to it. Especially when they know it’s idle.

3) “I use WEP encryption on my wireless. That’s good enough.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Something to know, Software, Tips | 1 Comment »