It’s annoying when you need to open a file that’s been sent to you only to find that you need some expensive piece of software to access it. You know how it is, someone sends you a psd file but you don’t own photoshop. What do you do? It’s happened to us all. But there are places out there that can help: Continue reading »
The number of people capable of building a web site is growing daily (I said capable, I didn’t say good 
. Something else that is also growing along side this is the number of web based applications being built. More and more developers/people with some know how are devoting time to producing some kind of application that uses a web based language like ASP or PHP. The hard part about building something that uses a server side script like PHP is that it is impossible to test your application with out access to a web server. I suppose you could just upload it to an active web site and test it live on the internet so to speak. Would you be honestly comfortable releasing something that hadn’t been tested? It would be all too easy for some one to find an exploit to use that causes serious problems. I’d say it’s much easier to have some way of testing this on your local network, that way if you have no internet access for some reason at least you can keep working
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A lot of people would say the only thing Internet Explorer is good for is downloading something else to surf the web with. Truth be told, I’d tend to agree. My current browser of choice is Firefox and it has been for a long time now. That’s not just because I spend most of time using a Mac either. Even when I use a Windows machine I still look for the the FF icon to do my web browsing. I only use IE when I have no other option, like if I am using an ASP based app which does seem to need IE to run properly. Judging from the ever growing market share of other browsers against IE. Its a fair assumption that more and more people I coming to realise that they don’t have to be stuck with what comes installed on their machine. Continue reading »
Everyone likes to make pretty effects on their photos but not everyone can afford Photoshop (and lets face it not everyone has the skill to use it properly). But fear not there are plenty of tools out there that give you the ability to add some pretty neat effects to your photos with out needing to have PS. We thought we would bring you a few of our favourites. Continue reading »
Anyone who knows me will tell you that I’m not a fan of Microsoft. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t dislike them for some of their shoddy software, I don’t dislike them because I am a Mac fanboy even though I own two Mac’s I have Windows too!
The reason I dislike Microsoft is for the way they seem to not give care about their user’s rights. In a time where people are growing more and more conscious of what is getting installed on their computer, of being security aware Microsoft have gone an done it once again.
The big G comes forth once more with some new tech. The blogsphere has been alive with talk for while over just what Google Wave will actually do. Well if you’ve got just short of 90 minutes to kill this vidoe will walk you through some of the features of Google’s new baby Continue reading »
Remote support utilities are one of the things I find very useful in my normal working life. I’ve spoken before about Teamviewer and Logmein Rescue. It’s so much easier to support a client when you can see what they are seeing on their screen. The biggest problem with both Teamviewer and Logmein Rescue is their cost. There not particularly expensive, but if your a small IT company with a few distributed clients it might be too much of a stretch to your budget to afford them. Ammy Admin is a free utility that provides much of the functionality of the paid for apps, but at no cost. Continue reading »
I’ve spoken before about portable applications that I like to carry with me on a usb drive just to make my life easier. Well as it’s been a while since I covered them, the utilities on my stick have changed some what. Some have fallen out of favour, others have taken their place. With that in mind I thought I would put together a more upto date list of what I find it useful to carry around with me.
Cloud Computing is the new buzz word. It’s all over the place as people believe that in the future desktop apps will be replaced by web apps. Instead of having Word and Excel installed on your local system, you will use something like Google Docs to create and edit your files. Instead of using Oulook you will keep all your emails in a web based email solution like Gmail.
For mobile workers like me this is ideal. No matter where I am working I would be able to access the apps I usually use and the data I need to work with. But putting my other hat on, that of IT admin and data security ‘expert’ it’s a bad thing. With cloud computing you lose control of your data and your what your users are actually doing with it because the apps and the data are no longer on your server. You cant track who is doing what and you cant effectively back up your data because it is stored on somebody else’s server. Continue reading »
Picture the situation, your waiting for that all import file sending through by email. It’s got something inside it that you urgently need. Maybe it’s an image for your project at university, maybe it’s important information for that quote your putting together. Finally the file comes through, you save it to your desktop and then extract it from the zip file. Then you you go to open it only to find it’s in a format that your computer doesn’t have a program to open it. What do you do? Continue reading »
