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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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 »
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 »
One of the things I miss on my Mac is the ability to lock my screen when I walk away from it. It’s not just that I am worried about some one playing a practical joke on me if they have unattended access to my computer. It’s all too easy for some one to accidently do something while I am away that could cause some of my work to get lost.
This is where MacLock comes in to play. MacLock activates the Fast User Switching in Mac OS X . When you click on MacLock it will appear that you have logged out. But the difference is that all the applications and documents you had open will still be there when you enter your password. It’s just like locking your PC when using Windows. Very useful if there are people around you don’t trust when you leave your Mac by it’s self.
If you’re like me I am sure there are times where you receive a lot of emails at once, like the first day back in the office after a break. All those emails can be a little over loading, you hunt through them deciding what order to attack them, which are urgent and need dealing with and then which can wait till later. Once you have decided that you then mark the ones that need dealing with later. This is great until you forget about the ones you marked for dealing with later. We’ve all done it, marked an email to be looked at and then forgotten about it until the client phones up asking where the reply is. This is where Hit Me Later comes in.
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 »
One of the hardest things about being a mobile worker is keeping in contact with people. If you are not at your own computer if can be hard to access your own emails and contacts list. As you may have noticed I am not a big fan of the idea of web based desktops. I like web based apps such as Google Calendar and Documents but I do not want to be running an extra layer of program on my normally computer all the time. I want to have access to my emails no matter where I am, I need to be able to see my sent and recieved emails not just the ones I haven’t downloaded yet.
I have a Gmail account, have had since Gmail was in beta release in fact (mind you most Google apps spend an age in beta release). It is a good send, the size limit on the account makes it ideal for users like myself who move between computers and need access to all their emails there. With the addition of an IMAP server rather than normal POP accounts Gmail made my life easier, I could pull all my emails in to one account and then have that account accessible on all of my computers, keeping my sent and received synchronised between them all.
That covers when I am working on my own computer. But what about when I am working on a machine that isn’t my own. I don’t want to be setting up my Gmail account to temporarily pull down my emails to a loaned machines do I? I could use the Gmail web interface, but to be honest while I like the size of the Gmail account and I like the IMAP facility the Gmail web interface sucks. Its messy to look at and it doesn’t always split conversions down the way I would like. The answer I have found for this problem is to add Portable Thunderbird to the applications I carry upon my USB data stick. Thunderbird is my email application of choice on both Mac and Windows (i don’t use email on Linux box) so having Thunderbird as my portable email app made sense
Portable Thunderbird installs on the stick very easily, simply follow the instructions in the download on the page I have linked to. The beauty of this version that I have is that it is compatible with both Windows and Mac OS meaning no matter what kind of machine I am loaned I can access it. Once its running it works just the same as it would when running natively on the machine. Everything is in the same place and all your emails are accessible, your own SMTP is used to send emails an not trace of your correspondence is left behind (privacy is key after all). This app could also be used by those working on a shared pc at home, allowing them to be absolutely certain that no one was accessing their emails by some less that honorable method keeping things private if they need them to be
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!)
For a while now I’ve been half watching two developing tools/add ons that should help advance the move towards using web based, cross platform compatible programs like Google Doc’s. I’ve began to use online suites more often lately, the Google Calendar is a very useful tool, especially for some one like me that travels and is always out of the office but needs to keep track of his diary as well as allow others to book in appointments. Continue reading »