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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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 »
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 »
Those nice people over at MacHeist are giving away a free copy of DEVONthink the powerful Mac research tool. DEVONthink allows users to add documents, web pages, pictures, links and plain text to its database. It’s powerful grouping and searching capabilities then make it an easy way to review the info.
To get it for free all you have to do is follow MacHeist on Tweeter and post a direct reply to them (there is even a special button on their page to do this. If you’re interested, follow this link
The UK Government today announced that it would accelerate the use of Open Source software in public services(Story here). According to the article there will be a level playing field between Open Source and proprietary software like Windows. If the Open Source solution offers the best value for money then it would be used. Continue reading »
For the past week or so I’ve been using a new email client. I’ve been a big fan of Thunderbird for a while, I like it’s simplistic style and it’s easy of use. I also like that it’s not made by Microsoft! The biggest draw back I’ve found with Thunderbird is it’s search routines. I find it to not always be reliable for looking for things that I know are in my inbox somewhere. I stumbled across Postbox and thought I would give it a try. Continue reading »
Software support is one the major aspects of my work. Out side of installing new systems I spend a lot of time dealing with customer queries over the phone and via email. I am sure it is the same for most people who deal with software support. One thing that is noticable after a short while spent dealing with support is how important a role the help documentation for the software can drastically reduce the amount of support calls. If you are supporting a software with very little documentation for end users you will find that the majority of the calls you deal with are related to the basic operation of your software and a lot of them may even be repeat calls from the same customer asking the same question over and over again. No matter how good the software trainers are (if you have them) there will always be things that people do not take in.
Good documentation will not only make it easier for your clients to use the software, it will also free up the time of your support team. Allowing them more time to concentrate on the more important support problems that come in that really require the attention of a trained support person. There are a few things that is useful to keep in mind when creating help documentation:
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One of the points I stressed when I talked about how to be good at IT support was being able to access the computer of the person you are trying to support. The hardest part about supporting some one is getting an understanding of what is actually happening on screen. Human beings make very bad eye witnesses, they have a tendency to put their own interpretation on to what they see. Sometimes adding information, sometimes missing out things they don’t see as being relevant. Plus the person you are supporting will have a tendancy to try to hide anything they might have done that caused the error (and as any support person knows 90% of all errors are user related). Continue reading »
Moving between multiple computers can be making having upto date copies of files with you rather hard and there are times you just need to be able to access a program on your own computer. Previously I have touched on tools such as Dropbox that allow you to keep files synchronised between computers quite easily.
One problem I have with Dropbox is that any file that you are synchronising has a copy on their servers as well as your own computers, for most people this isn’t a worry but when dealing with sensitive information it might be a little off putting to know that in theory your data is open to reading from some faceless employee at this company you don’t really know. If this is a concern for you then you might be interested in Gbridge. Gbridge is an app developed as an add on to Google’s Gtalk infrastructure although it isn’t affiliated or endoursed by Google. Gbridge allows you to create a Virtual Private Network (VPN between two computers with very little in the way of end user configuration.
Normally if you wanted to run a VPN between multiple machines you it would require setting up a VPN server and probably some port forwarding on your router. For some one with a reasonable amount of technically knowledge this isn’t a hard task but it can be a chore. Gbrdige gets around this however, it uses your Google account to create a zero configuration VPN between your machines. Simple install Gbrdige on each machine and log in with your google credentials. Gbridge deals with configuring the link between machines for you.
Once the VPN is created you can set up shared folders similar to how you would in Windows, these shared folders can then be accessed from the other computers in your VPN. Alternatively you can can set up tasks to sync and backup your folders and files for you. These backups don’t depend upon an intermmediate server however you do need to have both machines switched on for it to work. Gbridge also allows you to share out access to your files to your Gtalk friends with out any additional configuration, effectively allowing you to share large files without the use of tools such as MailBigFile which again depend on using thrid party servers.
One advantage Gbridge offers over Dropbox and the others is the ability to not only share files but also share control of a computer. Gbridge runs a built in version of Ultra VNC to allow you to remotely connect to and control your machines from each other. This can also be shared out to your GTalk friends just as files can. There is also the facility to set it up to use Windows Remote Desktop. This could be very useful for accessing machines behind a firewall as once again there would be no need to put in place any port forwarding.
In theory you should even be able to play multiplayer lan games across the network, good for when you want to run a private game of something like Comand & Conqure Red Alert (yes I know I am showing my age there!)
