Random Findings

User:Matt/2.0 Plugin Compatibility « WordPress Codex

2005-12-20T08:59:00.000Z

Wordpress2 is coming out this week - over at fourth.org.uk

we use lots of plugins so the upgrade won't be a simple drop and upgrade - fourtunatly, the holidays are coming and I'll have time to make the upgrade carefully.

Dickens World: A Dickensian-themed attraction for the whole family.

2005-12-16T07:52:00.000Z

This place is very close to where I live - will be interesting to see what it's like when it finally opens. The attached cinema will open in October 2006. WooHoo!

Google Gmail Now Accessible via Mobile Phones

2005-12-16T07:28:00.000Z

Google have turned the drip feed of new features on Gmail into a bit of a flood recently. Contact Groups; Vacation Responder and now a good mobile client - what's next I wonder?

Using CruiseControl.NET with Ant - Confluence

2005-12-15T11:55:00.000Z

If you want to call ANT from crusisecontrol.net, this page is useful.

There's a bug on it though, when you modify ant.bat, you need to add 'exit /B %ERRORLEVEL' - if you leave out the /B, the build works but is reported as failing

Read more at confluence.public.thoug...

2005-06-17T07:44:00.000+01:00

The BBC has some incredible content. Thanks to the way it's funded, you can get lots of excellent content that other providers simple don;t have.

For Example, They have an archive of interviews with differnt people from Ansel Adams to Steven Speilberg and because they've been going for so long, they have interviews dating back many years.

Check out the list of interviews available at the link.
BBC - BBC Four - Features A-Z

2005-06-13T08:15:00.000+01:00

Oh Rats - when you rely on something, it really is a drag when it's down - when it comes back up i'm going to grab my opml file and seek oppourtunties elsewhere - but only as a backup.

When will google do bloglines for me - it's so unfair them making me visit other sites for good online RSS aggregation :)

I'm thinking of playing with the bloglines Web service through python. I want to be able to take feeds with me on my Treo650 but don't want them marked as read, unless I actually read them.

2005-06-13T08:04:00.000+01:00

Well, actually, why I'm bnot subscribing to the Financial Times.

First off, it's a great news paper. The articles are well written, and some of the guest authors are great. I've toyed with the idea of subscribing for a while and they emailed me to see if I'd like to subscribe free for 1 month.

So, after the month, here's what I found. I made the effort to go and get the paper almost every day - apart from when I was in Nottinghamshire for a weeks holiday - seems the folks around those parts don't read the FT!

For the rest of the time, I usually read the side bar on the way back to the office and then never looked at the paper again. The Weekend edition's magazine was good but only kept my attention for a few minutes. When the French voted against the EU constitution, there was a good article about how long the euro would last which I read.

So, at the end of the free trial month - I won't be subscribing but might but the paper when something interesting happens or at the weekend.

2005-05-04T18:38:00.000+01:00

Tiger, the latest version of Apple's Mac OS X operating system is out. There are lots af articles about it on the internet so I'm only going to cover a few of the things in there that make it stand out for me.

Core Data - if your a programmer for the mac - this changes everything! Core data lets you design relational data models and it manages the complexities of maintaining those relationships for you in the object model. It's very cool. Check out the Cocoa Dev Central tutorial for an idea of what it can do for you.
Quartz Composer this was a real suprise to me - Until I played around with it, I really couldn't see what all the fuss was about. The compositer lets create very complex graphical applications, screen savers or just stuff that looks cool, without having to be a graphics programming whiz. Check out http://www.quartzcomps.com/ for more details.
Spotlight - It just lets you find stuff. It's very quick, works flawlessly and you'll hate it when you have to live without it (on windows).

There's lots of other stuff in there. Check it out if you have the chance. Apple probably won't release another major version of OSX for a couple of years, so grab your copy now.

2005-04-25T08:07:00.000+01:00

Adam Bosworth's Weblog: Where have all the good databases gone
Adam article descibes how database companies started a few years ago to ignore customers needs and write stuff that they thought was needed. He doesn't say it, but vendors just began trying to match each others features with incompatible extensions.

This article lists three features that we do require but no one is delivering on. He suggests that Open Source Software could fill in the gap here.

2005-04-21T10:39:00.000+01:00

Firefox Tip of the Day

I've just discovered that in the latest version of firefox, you can set your home web page (the page that loads when you start up or hit the home button) to be multiple pages using a set of tabs.

Simply load the tabs you want to start each time you rune firefox (Mine are google/searchhistory, Gmail and Bloglines), go to Tools->Options and hit 'Use Current Pages'.

Cool

2005-04-20T13:33:00.000+01:00

We've got an election coming up in the UK. There are some great websites you can use to help you decide who to vote for.

Who Should You Vote For? - You answer some questions and it gives you a guide as to which party best matches your views in a pretty graph.
They work for you? - Gives you details about your old MP. How much he cost, what he did in parliament, etc.

2005-04-20T08:23:00.000+01:00

Google Maps UK

Yes folks, we now have local search and mapping in the UK. This is great - I never new where the nearest pizza firm was before now but now the people at google have cracked the technology, I'll never need to go more than 1 mile from my home.

2005-04-19T09:35:00.000+01:00

tecosystems: How to Get Into Blogs, 101

This is an article that explains the reasons for reading blogs - might be useful if you can't see what there good for.

2005-04-19T08:13:00.000+01:00

The Original Moore's Law Article

Wired News: It Was the '60s, Man

This wired article describes the original article that formed the basis of Moore's Law. Apparently, Intel, who Moore later founded, didn't have a copy of the article and had launched a search to see if they could find a copy.

2005-04-13T09:41:00.000+01:00

Introduction to derivatives products

This is a paper giving a brief overview of derivative products.

It's not in depth but if you want a brief description of products it might be a good place to start.

2005-04-06T08:34:00.000+01:00

westciv :: css editor

At last, a WYSIWG CSS editor that looks like it might work as expected. Runs on Windows and Mac (no mention of linux but you can't have everything).

I'm going to try this out. Hopefully it will make it easier to do good css.

2005-04-04T08:45:00.000+01:00

Sometimes, teams don't work

This article gives a view that whislt it may be difficult for managers, you erally do want individuals on a team and not a group of people who all think the same thing.

2005-04-04T08:42:00.000+01:00

What a Great.Net Developer ought to Know - Interview Questions.

So being able to answer any of the questions in this article won't tell you if you've got a good developer sitting in front of you. But it will give you some tools to help find the answer to that question.

2005-03-30T11:08:00.000+01:00

DrunkenBlog: Behind the Red Shed, with Jonathan 'The Wolf' Rentzsch

This guy seems to have been around the mac development community forever. Well worth a read if your interested in Development on the Mac.

2005-03-24T08:30:00.000Z

girtby.net ? HOWTO: Set up a Local Mirror of your Wordpress Blog on MacOS X

A nice tutorial. I must say whenever I've tried to do thi, I always end up hacking the wp_config.php file. Adding an alias to the local machine is pure genius - and simplicity itself

2005-03-22T11:06:00.000Z

Invalidating cached result sets using SQL Server Query Notification

This stuff is needed in a lot of applicaitons - nice to see it coming in the mainstream.

2005-03-21T12:34:00.000Z

Jim Gray - A talk with THE SQL Guru and Architect

Your going to need a bigger db. Jim talks about designing DB's with Millions of nodes in a cluster.

He's Mr SQL at Microsoft so when he talks about DB's he does know what he's talking about. Interesting talk.

2005-03-19T21:21:00.000Z

Came across this site http://www.letterjames.de

It allows you to add text to a picture that looks very nice. You can get free pictures to usee on your website (or anywhere else you want) and they charge for postcards and posters, etc.

It's very cool - check it out.

2005-02-25T07:49:00.000Z

Management Hack #4: Just say no to counter-offers

This makes some sense - I'm interested in this sort of thing. Time and again you see good people leave because they're being given work of no interest. I guess once they'ev decided to leave, that should be it.

2005-02-24T08:54:00.000Z

The User-mode Linux Kernel Home Page
I run a couple of websites and have been using the fantastic WordPress and it is really great.

However, I'm feeling a bit limited with my current hosting provider easyspace They%27re not particularly cheap although you can use php and mysql you only get one db.

Since I set up one of my sites, I've come across User mode linux and see that there are a number of hosting providers that give you effectivly your own linux box with root access to play around in - cool. I'm currently using TekTonic with debian but that was only because it was the only provider I could find and I thought it would be as easy to use as Ubuntu. Unfourtunatly, I'm still trying to get apache to serve up php pages properly. Now I've found another provider, Linode.com that provide a similar deal but have Ubuntu as one of their OS's - might try that over the weekend.

Anyway, if you want to host a website and have got even a little understanding of linux, I'd recomend one of these plans.

2005-02-22T11:20:00.000Z

10x10 / 100 Words and Pictures that Define the Time / by Jonathan J. Harris
This is a really nice website that shows scans news services and gives you a snapshot of whats happening in words and pictures.

Check it out.

2005-02-14T07:36:00.000Z

iFolder - It's all about Sharing

Nice cross platform folder sharing/synchronisation tool. It's built using Mono - I have this problem at the moment that despite having machines all on a nice fast network and all supposedly understanding SMB, I find it difficult to get one to copy files to another without using FTP. To be honest, when it works - I never bother to find out why and when I change something so it breaks, I never stop and try and identify the problem - it should be easy.

Anyway - I'm going to give this a go and I'll let you know what it's like.

2005-02-10T13:12:00.000Z

as simple as possible, but no simpler: Mapping Google

This article gives an overview of how Google Maps works. It's interesting on it's own but I'm currently working on some webpages that use the hidden IFRAME containing results to enable interactive applicaitons on the web so I'm interested to see what they're doing.

2005-02-08T07:35:00.000Z

Google Maps
Google does it again with Yet another Beta. It's limited to the US but it's very cool - type in the name of a company and it will draw you a map and put a little flag in the location.

So, when will it be available for the UK?

2005-02-04T13:16:00.000Z

A Temporary Internet Lounge Revisited | Linux Journal

I've run these on occasion but never used Linux - this sounds like a nice solution though cos usually the machines have a derivative of windows on them and it's difficult to get them all working.

2005-02-03T09:24:00.000Z

LinuxDevCenter.com: Freevo: Freedom For Your TV

An overview of and interview with the developers of Freevo, Yet another linux based PVR. Looks good though.

2005-02-03T07:43:00.000Z

O'Reilly: Build Your Own PVR (for free) with HackTV

Nice article on using a free utility from Apple to view TV on your Mac. You need a way to convert your video stream to Firewire, but once you've got that - your good to go.

2005-02-02T13:20:00.000Z

Skype for Mac OS X and Linux v1.0

So the release version of skype is now available for Linux and Mac.

This is great - I've been pushing friends and collegues to use skype and although the beta versions have been good, having the conference calling stuff available makes it even better.

2005-01-28T07:53:00.000Z

The Mike Matas Blog: How to make a Life Poster
Want to Make a cool poster with iPhoto wiht a photo montage type thing - this article describes how to do it. I'm guessing there must be someway to do something similar in Picasa as well.

2005-01-28T07:49:00.000Z

Jeff Sandquist - Microsoft Evangelist - How I get things done / Kicking some butt on your email inbox - Part 1: "n the time"

This is yet another way of orgainising your inbox and time. It looks pretty good - I'm installing the plugin now. It mentions in the post the excellent Lookout Search add in which is Just Another Search Tool (TM) which I cannot be without at work.

2005-01-25T09:28:00.000Z

Google Video Search

Want to find out which episode of your faviourite programme had something in it - check out google video.

2005-01-17T07:30:00.000Z

GadgetPimp.com: Buffalo Terabyte Network Storage

Hmm, a Mac mini and some firewire drives or one of these? I still think the mac mini - I can increase my storage space as I need too.

2005-01-16T14:34:00.000Z

The Essential Selection: Firefox Extensions

I use quite a few machines and I like to feel comfortable on each one. This usually involves setting up firefox so I can get my email notifications; Get the bookmarks I need and get the extensions I want.

This post lists the extensions I end up installing every time I use a new machine. In no particular order

Gmail Notifier - Let's me know when I've got gmail to read. Also allows me to open a gmail page in another tab without switching from the page I'm reading.
Bloglines Notifier - Lets you see when the blogs/news feeds you subscribe too have changed - I used to use sage for this and although I haven't completley moved to bloglines I'm recomending it in place of sage because I found the problem with sage was remembering to save your feed list somewhere you could reload it from on a differnt machine.
del.icio.us - OK, so it's not an extension but it does give you mobile bookmarks. If you avent tried live bookmarks in firefox - look for the little orange transmitter button in the bottom right of the window - they allow you to subscribe to an RSS feed and show you the latest links just like a bookmark list. del.icio.us lets you store your bookmarks online and the rss feed for your bookmarks mean your always up to date, wherever you go.
Tabbed Browser Extension - Allows you to open everything in tabs rather having lots of windows.

That's it - got any more I should be using? Let me know.

2005-01-16T13:47:00.000Z

An evening with Googles Marissa Mayer (alan.blog-city.com)

Nice review of a non technical speech about google by their product manager. Gives an overview of what google do on the technical side to get things right.

2005-01-13T13:06:00.000Z

Teaching Technology
NESTA Futurelab - creating a new learning landscape
These people research the use of technology in schools - check out the showcase and see the Savanagh demo where kids get to act out being Lions - cool.

2005-01-13T11:41:00.000Z

X-WinCommander: file manager for Linux
This looks like a nice filemanager to use on linux. I'll have to install it on my Ubuntu box. I'm still looking for the VNC server that lets you connect with a web browser and downloads the java client by the way.

2005-01-12T08:05:00.000Z

Apple - Mac mini

So apple have released the rumoured headless mac - it looks like a nice machine. I'll probably get one to run as a server - it would be a shame not to at that price. But a word of caution for any mac nexbiews looking to get one - whatever you do, upgrade the RAM - If you want to play with a large photo collection (and lets face it, if you've got yourself a nice new camera, your going to eventually have lots of Photo's.

I noticed at the apple store on regent street recently that they had 768MB in all their machines and they were working very nicely so perhaps that's the sweetspot.

2004-12-20T15:40:00.000Z

Unofficial Ubuntu 4.10 Starter Guide
Very useful page that tell's you how to do lot's of things under ubuntu linux. Will be of use to other linux distro's, especially debian based one's.

2004-12-20T15:38:00.000Z

Ubuntu Linux - Welcome to Ubuntu Linux
In my continuing search for a linux distro that meets my needs, I've turned to Ubuntu. It looks really good so far. My webcam works, Skype runs and so far, so good. It's quite sparse - it fit's on one CD and installed very cleanly - and the GUI (which is GNOME based) seems very fast and snappy.

Also I found a great web page that answers lot's of my questions - I'll post a link.

I originally had a problem with getting the audio to work. I spent an afternoon learning about ALSA and trying to get my sound cards (I have one but it treats the mike on the webcam as a sound source) loaded in the correct order. Eventually I found the solution by editing the alsa-base file in the modutils area.

I'll let you know more as I get stuff working but first impressions are good.

2004-12-06T07:27:00.000Z

Sysinternals Freeware - Utilities for Windows NT and Windows 2000 - Process Explorer
If you need a bit more info than Task Manager gives you - this is the tool for you. It's a windows task manager replacement. Heres a very small list of the bit's I use all the time:

Ability to see which processes have a file open
Ability to see what files/dll's/registry keys a program has open.
Lot's of .Net info

Oh, and it's free.

2004-12-06T07:25:00.000Z

listen to a movie
This is way cool. I like listnening to the audio tracks from movies when I'm working so being able to stream them from somewhere is great - saves haing to have the disk with me.

The player is also quite nice - great interface.

2004-12-01T07:47:00.000Z

MSN Web Messenger

The official way to access MSN Messenger when you can't use the MSN client for some reason. For example, your logged into a public machine where you don't want to install the client or your behind a firewall.

Waiting for someone to come online to test it out.

2004-12-01T07:38:00.000Z

Witterings of White - Project management

This made me laugh.

2004-11-24T08:16:00.000Z

GnomeFiles - GNOME/GTK Software Repository
So I've installed Fedora Core 3 on my linux box - it's had a number of distros installed and as FC2 was the closest to what I wanted, I decided to give FC3 a go.

So far so good - got more of the desktop stuff I wanted working than before. Realplayer, Mplayer with a nice GUI. I've also found the answer to a Gnome question that's has really been bugging me:

How do you add/remove programs to the start menu in gnome?

(Now to put this in context, I've used Mac's, windows, other unices, OS/2 and not had a problem working this out.)

The answer is you open the start menu then Double click on the applications menu and it's supposed to open in a explorer/finder (whatever it's called in gnome) folder and you can drag stuff in and out.

Everyone who knows anything about gui design knows that double click is not a discoverable way of doing things - and doing it on a menu seems really weird - but hey, now I know.

Anyway, the link above links to lot's of apps you can install under gnome. Goody.

2004-11-24T07:24:00.000Z

Best Software Essays of 2004
This site was linked to from the MSDN Blog. Had a quick skim over a few of the articles and they look quite good. Nice holiday reading perhaps.

2004-11-22T13:25:00.000Z

del.icio.us
As well as having a cool name, del.icio.us is a great tool for managing your bookmarks if you use Safari or Firefox.
You create an account; drag a link to your bookmark bar and then when you want to bookmark a page, click the link. This adds it to your del.icio.us account so you can access it from anywhere.
The really cool bit is that there is an rss feed for your links and with firefox and safari supporting live bookmarks, subscribe to the feed and voila, mobile bookmarks. You can checkout my bookmarks at the del.icio.us/cb160.

del.icio.us

2004-11-18T15:29:00.000Z

UX50 Webcam Software
One of my toys is a Sony Clie UX50. It's the first palmtop I've had since the Apple Newton that I've used daily (I've had others but never found them compelling enough to carry around).

Unfourtunatly , sony have stopped developing the line so if you haven't got one, you should get one real quick before they run out.

This entry is for some web cam software I found for it. Check it out. It needs a PC :( but nothings perfect.
[AiboHack] CLIE SpyStillCam (2.1)

2004-11-18T07:29:00.000Z

Drupal - Another Content Management System

Here's another content management system - runs under apache using PHP and any pear supported database. Wen site looks nice. Might have a play if I can't get wordpress to do what I want.

drupal.org | Community plumbing

2004-11-16T14:28:00.000Z

Comparison of PHP RSS parsers
Also has links to some nice wordpress powered sites.

2004-11-15T17:21:00.000Z

Cool Mac Home Media Solution Site
This site is cool - the guy seems to be plugging his book but has got a nice setup where he's using an old powerbook to power his home media solution. I've got one of these (although mine does have a screen - i'm thinking of removing it to do something like this).

Nice Idea - may need to borrow it.

Jim Heid's Mac iLife 04 Site: iTunes, iPod, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, GarageBand

2004-11-15T11:24:00.000Z

Another XSLT Resource
This page contains a FAQ for XSLT. It's got a questions section that seems to be quite extensive. I've using XSLT's for about a year now but seem to have only scratched the surface with what's possible with them.

XSL Frequently Asked Questions

2004-11-12T10:52:00.000Z

WiFi Toys Book and Website
Slashdot has a book review of
Wi-Fi Toys.

There's a web site as well - looks good - it may make my amazon wish list once I've had a chance to check it out.

2004-11-11T07:49:00.000Z

NAS Network Attached Storage
I've been lokking for a nice solution to NAS at home for a while and hopefully, this might be it.

The idea is to have a central (but massive) store on the network that all devices can access quickly. Although this Terastation from Bufallo doesn't explicity say it's hackable, another device from the same manufacturer, the Kuro Box (Reviewed At TomsNetworking) is a fully open linux device to be played with.

Hopefully something like this will do the job - although one othose mini-itx boards and 4 disks would do the job just as well I guess.
Buffalo Technology 1TB TeraStation - Engadget - www.engadget.com

2004-11-09T07:40:00.000Z

Wordpress Resource
So I'm moving one of my websites to use WordPress

It's very cool and easy to hack around with if you know a bit of php. I found this site that seems to have a list of nice plugins.
Blogging Pro - Blog News, Tools and Hacks

2004-11-08T12:41:00.000Z

Tivo Tools

So it's been a while since I've looked around for tivo hacks. My Tivo has got two 120GB disks and a netowrk card which means I can store lots of stuff on it. While I can extract stuff I've never got to the Nirvana of extract, compress, burn/download that I want.

There has been movement though and I'm going to be trying out some of the following this week (time permitting)

EtiVo - By Shahar Prish Seems to do the Extract/Compress/Download thing - yay!
AccTivoA cool looking frontend for the eTivo software
TyShowThe Windows Media Player plugin magic that let's TY streams play on windows
TivoWebPlus An updated version of tivo web with an optional click and play feature - I think it uses TyShow.

This stuff looks great, I'll let you know how I get on.

2004-11-05T07:45:00.000Z

Oh dear, I think I'm going to be spending a lot of money at this place - once I've decided what to build. Check out some of the prooject pages - I've looked at the BMW project which is an in car PC.

Mini ITX is a set of standards for small computer components.

This is quite a nice site as it contains reviews, example projects and a store to buy the parts in the UK.
mini-itx.com - news

2004-11-01T13:41:00.000Z

iPod Photo

Yeah, I was a bit off here - I didn't think they would release one but apple have released a version of the iPod with photo integration - ie, it works with iPhoto and some lamo app on the PC.

Apple - iPod Photo

Would have been nice if it worked with picasa but hey, ho - you can't have everything.

I don't think the photo pod is the next bit thing but I'm certain it leads the way to the apple PVR - once people have got the idea of plugging an ipod into a TV for photo's (and lets face it, that's where people will look at them most of the time) they'll jump at the chance to do the same with video. Nice, just not yet.

Also, I'd like to see how the slideshow stuff works - a nice way of storing powerpoint/keynote presentations would be cool.

2004-10-25T12:27:00.000+01:00

The Move to Linux
I've dabled with linux off and on for sometime now but recently decided it's time to make the jump. However, I publish a website an dneed to use Frontpage because I haven't been able to find a satisfactory alternative to Mircosofts Frontpage for the easy creation and management of pages plus the creation of photo gallerys. I know there are lots of tools around that do this but Frontpage makes it very easy.
I'm looking into alternatives. I've looked at

wordpress

blogger

picasa

Some of those I've mentioned before but now they're in context. I tried Fedora CORE 2 for a while but found that some things (wordpress) just didnt work for me. I mainly use a mac - the windows machine was stricctly for stuff I couldn't get done on the mac - but I still expect things to work.

I think my requirements are simple. I want:

A linux distro that installs easily - and without problems.
Lets me run VMWare (for frontpage)
Get my mail server running easily
Runs MySQL
Runs apache with PHP
Runs wordpress

That's it - I'll let you know how I get on.

2004-10-22T08:13:00.000+01:00

Nice CSS Site
Stumbled upon this site about CSS. It's got some nice examples - might use on my web sites.

CSS Vault ? The Web's CSS Site

2004-10-20T15:48:00.000+01:00

Froogle comes to UK

Froogle is an online price checker from google. They've now launched a uk version of the site.

If your going to buy something , want to find out who's selling it and where it's cheapest (and your in the UK or course :) give it a try.

Froogle U.K.

2004-10-20T11:44:00.000+01:00

Another Test - I've moved the host from blogspot to fourth.org.uk so I wonder if this still works

2004-10-20T11:32:00.000+01:00

WRT54G
So I'm really interested in getting a Linksys WRT54G wireless router.

It seems like a great piece of kit with lots of hacks available. There is the somewhat ubiquitous SveaSoft firmware that let's do lots of cool things including packet shaping which is very cool.

The reason for the post is I found this link which shows yet another hack - this time running kismet to see what's happening in your area with other wifi hosts.

Will post more when I get mine.

2004-10-19T16:15:00.000+01:00

Categories On Blogger

A Hack to do categories on Blogger - coming soon to a blog near you...
Blogger Categories for everyone, by Oldcola

2004-10-19T14:49:00.000+01:00

Sunrise News

Sunrise is a great app for scrapping web pages and RSS news feeds for viewing on your pocket device (OK, your palm device).

Currently the output works with plucker - will add link later. It's a work in progress - it uses lots of memory and regularly crashes my W2K Box. But, it's really good at what it does.

Sunrise News

2004-10-19T14:47:00.000+01:00

XSLT Standard Library
This project is working on a set of standard functions like the stl for XSLT.

Looks quite good: String, Date, Math and Diff functions among others.

You can view the sourceforge project here

2004-10-15T21:32:00.000+01:00

Using Hello to post pictures

So the picture above was captured and posted to the blog using Hello, anoterh free tool for Windows from the makers of Picasa. They even put a nice little link in for you to click on to find out more about hello.

Hello integrates with picassa and makes it easy to post images and photo galleries to a blog and share pictures with other people - although I haven't tried that yet.

2004-10-15T09:34:00.000+01:00

Picasa
This free softward from Google is yet another program to orgainise your photos on your PC. This one is really good though - seems to be almost as good as iPhoto on the mac for orgainising photos. I've only tried it with a small set of photos so will have to put GB's of pics on before I make my final decision. If you haven't got a Mac though it's well worth a try.

Picasa: Automated Digital Photo Organizers, Picture Software, Instant Photo Albums, Sharing, Printing

2004-10-14T16:47:00.000+01:00

Google Desktop
Google's desktop search is now available in beta form. Still in beta but try it out - searching your machine is as easy as searching the web.

Google Desktop Search Download

Apple do a similar thing in Max OSX Tiger and call it spotlight
So if your a mac user you'll have something similar (nicer intergration with the finder) real soon now.

2004-10-14T07:30:00.000+01:00

Firefox Extensions
If your not using Firefox, you really should be.

If you are, there are some great search engine plugins for the little search box to the right of the address bar near the top of the screen.

If you click on the down arrow in the box, you get the installed engines but at the bottom there's a link to this ...
mozdev.org - mycroft: download
There are some great engines - try typing map into the install search plugins section of the page; install an engine and get Postcode (ZipCode) searching from the comfort of your own search box.

2004-10-11T18:04:00.000+01:00

TheOpenCD.org
This site contains a great collection of free (Open source) software.
You can download an iso and burn a CD that works on windows and has some great tools like

Abiword
OpenOffice
FileZilla
Mozilla
PDFCreator - a nice free alternative to Adobe Acrobat Distiller

Some of the versions are a bit out of date so you might like to go to the main sites for each piece of softwarer once you've tried it out.

TheOpenCD

2004-10-11T16:47:00.000+01:00

XML Schema Patterns

Ever wanted to know what the patterns constraints in XMLSchema defintions mean. Well, if you do, check out this link.

The XML Schema Companion - WebReference.com -

2004-10-11T10:21:00.000+01:00

What's in a name?

So I did google search and have found that "Random Findings" returns 266 results and obviously being new, this site is not in them

How long to get in?

How long to get to Numer 1?

2004-10-11T10:15:00.000+01:00

GMail

I've been using Gmail for a while and it is really cool.

The community of developers that are extending gmail make something that's great even better. Check out the following:

WAP Phone
http://sourceforge.net/projects/gmail-mobile/

A Firefox extention to let you know you've got mail
https://update.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=173&vid=504

The API - and how the GMAIL client works
http://johnvey.com/features/gmailapi/

2004-10-11T09:59:00.000+01:00

Filezilla

Filezilla is a great, free (Mozilla License) FTP Program for windows. Does everything I want. Get it from https://sourceforge.net/projects/filezilla

2004-10-11T09:29:00.000+01:00

Hello, Good Evening and Welcome.

So I've decided to start a blog. For no other reason than I often stumble upon things that may be of interest to others and can't think of a good way of letting them know other than by email.

I don't like to send emails about random things as

If people aren;t expecting them, they may regard them as spam
The timing of the mail will be wrong - people want info when they want it, not when I want them to have it.

So here's the blog. More will follow. Blog it and they will come. We'll see.