In Search of a Windows version of Quicksilver

I use Quicksilver on my Mac like any other Mac user that knows about this gem. Want to find a website, file, folder, application , etc. just fire it up, type the first couple of words and you have a slew of choices to pick from. I wanted this really bad for my PC at work but didn’t have it. Then I fired up my favorite search engine and did a search and voila! I got a few choices. The first software similar to Quicksilver was Approcket. I didn’t actually get to download this one (it cost $1 and I don’t want to pay for this feature as helpful as it is. The second software I found was Colibri this one I did download. I tested it out and and like the interface. Its a bit more like Quicksilver in that it has what you searched for including an icon for the program, folder, etc. Next up was Launchy which I downloaded and tried out. The first issue I had was that I clicked on it and it seemed to disappear. Then I read the instructions which says you have to press the ALT SPACE to get the bar to popup. Its skinnable and fit in with my desktop quite well. Anyway, after pressing ALT SPACE I typed in my favorite program and it popped right up icon and all. It is really fast and you get a nice list of other possibilities. You can configure it to search specific folders o your computer. I was very impressed with it actually and it reminded me more of Quicksilver a bit more than Colibri did. make sure to check out the Tips and tricks section for what you can index including all your bookmarks. Quicksilver automatically index all this stuff but its also nice to be able to have some control over what is being indexed. I have to say that I’m pretty happy with Launchy and I’ve already made good use of it. Colibri and Launchy are both free.

Office Wares for Mac OS X

I was just noticing that Neoffice 2.0 Beta 3 is out. For those of you who are unfamiliar with NeoOffice its basically OpenOffice ported to Mac OS X. Unlike OpenOffice it does not rely on X11 but uses the Java interface built into the Mac OS. I’ve downloaded this twice now and each time I find that the program is just really slow and bloated on my machine. I really just need a spreadsheet program to complete my Office needs and I like the spreadsheet program included but I get all these other programs that I don’t want. The best alternative that I’ve seen to MS Office on the Mac are ThinkFree Office and Mariner Software (Write & Calc). Thinkfree Office will run $50 while Write & Calc will cost you $50/each. I really prefer ThinkFree Office, its fast and easy to use and I haven’t had a problem opening a file. There is also and online version that you can sign up for. I rather the old fashioned version personally. There is also a port of KOffice for Mac OS X somewhere. I found a page that had libraries but could not figure out how to download and install this for the life of me. I think I’ll wait for some funds and get ThinkFree Office and once again Zap NeoOffice.

Mac software I wish I could use on my PC

I’m a Windows user by day and a Mac user by night. I’ve been using both Macs and PCs for over 17 years. Having had access to both formats while working as a computing specialist in the dorms during my undergrad years. Anyway, after undergrad, I bought my first computer that was a Packard Bell 486 machine running Windows 3.X. I was so excited and I remember typing many a papers on that machine hard to believe it only had 4MB RAM and about 512 MB hard drive. Gosh I have a USB key with that much space now. The Intel years came about shortly after that and through the years I traded in my old PC for another. The last one I had was a Dell P4 1.66 gHz , 512 MB RAM, 100 GB HD and 128 MB graphics card. It wasn’t a bad system but I had to reformat the hard drive more times than I was happy with mainly b/c of bloated registries, viruses and other things plus I was getting tired of Windows XP. I discovered visual styles, Objectdock and a few other customization packages to change the look of Win XP a few years ago and after having my PC look like a Mac for a while I decided to give the PC the boot at home and get a Mac. I did that almost a year ago now. One of the first things that I remember hearing some people say was that there aren’t lots of software for the Mac. That was interesting coz when I bought my Mac Mini it came with all sort of software on it including some programs that I was using on the PC (Office and Quicken to name a few). Plus I got all this other software some of which I haven’t played with yet (garageband namely). Anyway, I also discovered that there are quite a lot of software tools out there for the Mac and this post names a few of them that I wish was available on the PC. They are in order of my wish.

1. Curio-there is nothing like this that I know of on the PC platform, sure there are project management software out there but how many of them let you organize a project like a visual notebook? You can add sketches, websites, diagrams… somebody port this to the PC so I can use this at work please, things are so bad I’m about to ask my Boss for an Intel Mac next year so I can use this (Work is an all PC shop)
2. Quicksilver- this is the ultimate app-launcher you can even find and launch bookmarks, mail, files, apps… it’s just amazing what you can do with this. I found myself frustrated that this wasn’t available on the PC after a day of using it at home
3. Keynote- This software is much better and much more customizable than Powerpoint
4. iWeb- one of the fastest way to put up a website hands down and a blog to boot…
5. Virtuedesktops- I spent a couple of weeks testing out desktop virtualization software for my PC and just couldn’t find a software that matched the ease of use as this one, Altdesk came the closest but it wasn’t free
6. Appzapper- This beats the pants of having to go to the Control panel, finding the app, and clicking uninstall, you just launch Appzapper, drag and drop the app and it finds all the associated files and zaps em

Strongest Dad in the World

As I’m siting here work on a flyer for CICF I’m not feeling all that great not having much sleep the past week or so and just a bit worn out from a cold. A friend of mine sent me the story below and this helped to encourage and cheer me up. Below is the story from Sports Illustrated by Rick Reilly. A video is posted here check it out. There are other videos there too of Rick & Dick.

Strongest Dad in the World

I try to be a good father. Give my kids mulligans. Work nights to pay for their text messaging. Take them to swimsuit shoots. But compared with Dick Hoyt, I suck. Eighty-five times he’s pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in marathons. Eight times he’s not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars–all in the same day. Dick’s also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his back mountain climbing and once hauled him across the U.S. on a bike. Makes taking your son bowling look a little lame, right?

And what has Rick done for his father? Not much–except save his life. This love story began in Winchester, Mass., 43 years ago, when Rick was strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him brain-damaged and unable to control his limbs. “He’ll be a vegetable the rest of his life;” Dick says doctors told him and his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old. “Put him in an institution.”

But the Hoyts weren’t buying it. They noticed the way Rick’s eyes followed them around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him to the engineering department at Tufts University and asked if there was anything to help the boy communicate. “No way,” Dick says he was told. “There’s nothing going on in his brain.” “Tell him a joke,” Dick countered. They did. Rick laughed. Turns out a lot was going on in his brain.

Rigged up with a computer that allowed him to control the cursor by touching a switch with the side of his head, Rick was finally able to communicate. First words? “Go Bruins!” And after a high school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the school organized a charity run for him, Rick pecked out, “Dad, I want to do that.” Yeah, right. How was Dick, a self-described “porker” who never ran more than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he tried. “Then it was me who was handicapped,” Dick says. “I was sore for two weeks.”

That day changed Rick’s life. “Dad,” he typed, “when we were running, it felt like I wasn’t disabled anymore!” And that sentence changed Dick’s life. He became obsessed with giving Rick that feeling as often as he could. He got into such hard-belly shape that he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston Marathon. “No way,” Dick was told by a race official. The Hoyts weren’t quite a single runner, and they weren’t quite a wheelchair competitor. For a few years Dick and Rick just joined the massive field and ran anyway, then they found a way to get into the race officially: In 1983 they ran another marathon so fast they made the qualifying time for Boston the following year. Then somebody said, “Hey, Dick, why not a triathlon?”

How’s a guy who never learned to swim and hadn’t ridden a bike since he was six going to haul his 110-pound kid through a triathlon? Still, Dick tried. Now they’ve done 212 triathlons, including four grueling 15-hour Ironmans in Hawaii. It must be a buzzkill to be a 25-year-old stud getting passed by an old guy towing a grown man in a dinghy, don’t you think?Hey, Dick, why not see how you’d do on your own? “No way,” he says. Dick does it purely for “the awesome feeling” he gets seeing Rick with a cantaloupe smile as they run, swim and ride together. This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th Boston Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters. Their best time’? Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992–only 35 minutes off the world record, which, in case you don’t keep track of these things, happens to be held by a guy who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at the time. “No question about it,” Rick types. “My dad is the Father of the Century.”

And Dick got something else out of all this too. Two years ago he had a mild heart attack during a race. Doctors found that one of his arteries was 95% clogged. “If you hadn’t been in such great shape,” one doctor told him, “you probably would’ve died 15 years ago.” So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other’s life.

Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care) and works in Boston, and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland, Mass., always find ways to be together. They give speeches around the country and compete in some backbreaking race every > weekend, including this Father’s Day. That night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he really wants to give him is a gift he can never buy.

“The thing I’d most like,” Rick types, “is that my dad would sit in the chair and I would push him once.”

Laptop Tech Support Showdown

Most of the time your computer works just fine whether its a laptop or not but what happens during those times when something goes wrong. You search for the manufacturer’s number (these days you can google them and find what you need). Anyway, you call tech support in hopes of solving your problem quickly. Most of the time when you call you get put on hold… Hmmph. the lounge music is playing in your ear… In the market for a new machine? Might want to consider how much of a hold time to expect. How does the various manufacturer’s (Apple, Acer, Dell, Toshiba, HP, etc.) compare when it comes to laptop tech support? I came across an article today from laptopmag.com that should shed some light on the subject. Essentially, to assess just how good or bad the tech support of the major laptop vendors is, laptopmag went undercover to see how well and swiftly each was able to solve two problems (restoring Wi-Fi connection that had been shut off “accidentally’, and removing some memory resident apps that were causing the OS to boot “abnormally slow.”) First they used the non phone support method via each company’s website (I usually use this first as well) and then they called tech support directly during business hours. The results? Apple and Lenovo earned solid A’s while Toshiba earned a D-.

Gosh what a week…

I have to say that this was one of those odd weeks. I started off Monday doing my usual thing, dragging myself out of bed and off to work in a hurry so I’m not late. My boss doesn’t like the late-coming bit. Anyway, Monday was pretty uneventful the highlight of which was the WWDC 2006 Keynote speech that I had my mind on all day. I even left my computer at work on all night rushing out of the office to get home. Tuesday came and also went and my phone at work was ringing off the hook. I went for a nice 4.5 mile hike on Tuesday and was looking forward to Wednesday coz I had the day off. Wednesday came and I had a great time getting some sun and catching up with a friend who had just gotten back from Greece. She said that she woke up in the wrong country on Monday morning. I woke up Thursday morning or should I say my alarm clock woke me up and I was honestly wondering why my alarm was going off. You see I thought that it was the weekend already. Guess that’’s what happens when you take a day off mid-week. Anyway, I got more than a few things done at work on Thursday and came home and did my regular routine which usually start off with dinner. I did manage to spend some time on the phone gabbing on and on with relatives… Got to talk to my neice… Here I am Friday evening and I decide to fire up the computer before I take off to spend some time with friends. I guess all-in-all it was a good week, I just wish I had a bit more sleep though…

A Short Review 3 of the 7 Apps on Leopard’s Hit List

After viewing the apple keynote last night I was intrigued with quite a few of the new features. Mainly time machine, core animation and spaces. I knew that the ideas of these apps aren’t entirely new but think that Apple’s integration of them in the OS is quite slick. Anyway, today I came across this article entitled 7 Apps on Leopard’s Hit List by Phil Ryu. He basically pointed out 7 apps that are available via open source and shareware that Leopard will render useless once its released. Much like the Konfabulator vs. Dashboard argument from a while back before Konfabulator became Yahoo widgets. Anyway, being the sort that is willing to try some third party apps now and again as long as they are free, I decided to download three of the apps and test them out.
First off, I downloaded SuperDuper the backup program that is supposed to feel the pain of Time machine. After firing it up I can see why. First thing I noticed was that automatic scheduling and smart update required me to pay $27.95. Not that bad but consider the fact that essentially a backup system will be part of Leopard at no extra cost and you can understand from a user point of view how Time machine would give this some pain. The major thing for me is that I’m a visual person and SuperDuper looks like any other backup programs I’ve seen… its text and option boxes. It looks boring and don’t make me want to use it. Time machine takes the cake for GUI and ease of use I think. Its kinda like 2 different cars with different features, aesthetics, and a different driving experience. I’m also not sure how one would restore a-la-carte as you’ll be able to do in TM (gosh I’ve abbreviated it already.
The second program that I tested out was Coverflow. I’ve been looking for something like this for a while. Its really neat and I’ll be keeping this one until I upgrade. Coverflow does some cool stuff really but things aren’t as 3 dimensional as they are on Core animation and the transitions don’t seem as smooth. Granted I’m running Coverflow on my Mac Mini and I haven’t tested any Core animation on this machine yet. The other thing is that core animation is one program. It seems to me that core animation can be used in any program within Leopard. Seems to me that time machine is already using this and I’m sure some of those top secret stuff Apple didn’t release will be using it as well. My bet is that iTunes will use it and maybe that new finder that they didn’t show us. So essentially you have 1 application vs. a whole underlying core app that’s built into the OS.
Last on my list of download for the night was VirtueDesktops. There were a few other apps but I really liked this one. I’m using it right now actually. I honestly, like this program as far as Virtual desktops go and it hasn’t crashed on me not once. The feature that seems to be missing that Spaces has other than the fact that spaces is built into the OS is that I can see all my spaces at once and drag stuff from one space to the next. Not sure if I can do this or not. Right now I move from one desktop to the other via my keyboard keys, which is causing a bit of a headache coz its the same key I use to move text with, Its also not intuitive how to rename my desktops. Guess I have to have a look at the read me guide huh! Seemed that spaces is implemented in a way that’s more intuitive and easier to manage. I do like this program though and am looking for one like it for the PC environment.

I do feel a twinge of sadness for the developers of these apps. Its a nasty business when you have worked hard on something only to have a big company come and do you “one better.” On the other hand from a customer point of view its nice to be able to have new features built into the OS that helps you to manage your work better, save you time, and save you headaches at no additional cost. I suppose that’s what make Apple a bit different.

There is tons of complaints out there about all the photocopying going on these days. Microsoft is copying Apple (that one is pretty blatant) and Apple ripping off these small developers. It makes me wonder if folks don’t seem to understand that human beings rip each other off all the time. Why should the software industry be any different. If you ask me none of these ideas are all that original. Backups are backups, virtual desktops are virtual desktops, 3D is 3D so how far do you go with complaining about photocopying. I use software that has been doing some of the stuff I see in core animation for years now did Apple rip off that software company? We would have to go all the way back to who invented 3D graphics and work our way up to the present. That little arrow in TM and the way it works reminds me of VRML walk through softwares back in the day so did Apple rip this off? Don’t get me started. The fact is folks we are all connected and we mimic what each other more often than we realize. We take what someone else has done and make it look prettier, hopefully more useful, we copy, repackage, re-present but its essentially the same core set of ideas. That said, I’m waiting for Vista 1 to be released and although I know it will look a bit like how OS X used to look, since I have to use it at work I’ll be using it anyway and hopefully getting my usual too much work done on a daily basis. When Leopard comes out I’ll be playing around with all the goodies they put in there and having as much fun as I do now.

WWDC 2006- Reaction to the Keynote

I’m watching the Apple WWDC 2006 keynote as I type. First off I got a kick out of Bertrand making fun of the folks in Redmond. The photocopying joke had me in stitches. After that, the major thing I was waiting for was the preview of Leopard. The coolest features that I liked of the 10 new features (minus the top secret ones they won’t show coz they don’t want the folks in Redmond firing up the copiers ) was time machine, spaces, and core animation. I can see Apple building some core animation features into the release of iTunes that ships with Leopard. The text to speech feature is pretty true to life. Steve compared text to speech of Tiger, Vista and what will be shipping in Leopard. The Leopard version is most definitely the best of the pack, even when they sped things up. I’m also sweat on what they have done with mail. (Wow stationary, notes, and to-dos) How cool, you gotta check out the keynote for more details about that. Another cool feature, gosh did I just use the word cool again? is web clips (why not widget clip)- Basically you can build a widget by simply firing up dashboard, going to a web page by clicking on the page, laying out what you are interested in and hit done. You get a live widget of that part of the web-page and you can even apply a theme . You can even turn a webcam into a widget the same way. Now maybe I will actually start using dashboard for more than just checking the weather once in a while. All I can say is that those Apple Engineers have been having way too much fun and we’ll get to have some too next Spring. I’m still really drooling over the Time machine feature. Gosh how did they do that? There are some neat stuff that they’ve done with iChat as well. You can play videos in iChat, show a presentation, do cool stuff with backdrops both still and video backdrops… and a bunch more cool stuff. There I just said cool again. Finally, there is also a new Mac on the scene called the Mac Pro. This 64 bit goodness is shipping today for $2499 standard.

Skye 1.5 beta for Mac

Skype 1.5 beta is available for Mac OS X so I decided to give this skype thing a try. Some of my friends have been gabbing on and on about it and one friend even called from abroad on it once so I decided to give it a try. I downloaded the client and picked up a headset from the store. Specifically, I picked up the Logitech Stereo USB Headset 250. Anyway, I came in, plugged it into my computer popped on the headset, kicked up my feet and began to call some of my friends. I had some trouble locating them since they weren’t home so left a few messages. The friends that were home came across loud and clear and they didn’t have any problems hearing me on the other end either. Only problem was one person was on the cell phone in the grocery store and I had lots of background noise with a tub being put in downstairs and the fans going. Its was still pretty clear with all the background noises. Only thing I have the volume turned way up on my Mac Mini. If you want to try skype and is looking for a headset and have a PowerPC Mac Mini don’t get the Logitech Premium Stereo Headset. It requires a Mic in and the PowerPc Mini does not have a Mic in option without getting an adapter. Just get the USB Stereo Headset 250 or a similar USB powered headset since you don’t need to have a Mic in the Mini for that. Well, I’ll be doing some more calling tomorrow but for now I need to relax and eventually get some sleep. There is a video version for the Mac two but since I don’t have an iSight I can’t test that out. Is there a cheaper alternative? I can’t seem to find a Logitech camera that works with the Mac.

Curio for Free

I’m a very visual thinker so when I came across a program called Curio I was naturally drawn to it. What is Curio? From the virtual tour that you get with the download, “Curio is like a single notebook for a project that holds everything: the goals of the project, various web sites you should check out, rough sketches, text notes, and list outlines. You place these items either helter-skelter on a page or along a nicely aligned grid; whatever fit your mood. Now take that notebook and make it so each page can be humongous, you can have an unlimited number of them, and they can be grouped into as many levels as you want and color coded for quick lookup. Then toss in the ability to drag in files from your desktop — where the file can be remembered as an alias that can be tracked as it moves around your system or actually embedded within the project. Make it so images and multimedia can play live on the page. Then finish it off with sophisticated searching, archiving, and sharing. Add in a dossier feature which gives you the questions to ask yourself or your client as you begin each project to accurately define the project’s goals. And a sleuth feature which handles the drudgery of searching web sites for research and inspiration.” That’s it in a nutshell.

Sounded great to me last week but, the only thing was that the basic version costs $39 and my personal software budget for this year is depleted so I was thinking that was a nice idea but can’t afford it. Today I noticed that Curio basic is being offered for free. Actually you fill out some information and they send you a license via email so in a way you are trading your info for the software. I signed up coz I’m curious to see how it work and with all the time wasting I have to do I knew that the initial 15-day license wasn’t going to work for me. The offer ends on August 7th so if you are interested hop on over there and fill out the form. Anyway Curio is a Universal Binary for native compatibility on Intel Macs, while still maintaining perfect compatibility with PowerPC Macs running 10.3.9 or above. From my brief exploration of the software, I wish they had a version for Windows so I can use this for work. Unfortunately my work environment is strictly PC based.