Net by Matt » M@’s Picks

TweetDeck

Matt Walsh — Mon, 18 May 2009 16:00:33 +0000

TweetDeck is a Twitter client that helps you keep track of everything on your timeline. It’s core feature is a multi-column view that lets you group your tweets together however you’d like. You can add friends to groups, so their tweets will always show up in a particular column. A column can also be configured for search, so you’ll see any tweets with your search term in them. I often use search when watching a prime-time TV show live, to see what other people are saying about it, or to see if anyone picks up on some subtlety that I may have missed. It can make TV watching a very interactive experience.

Handbrake

Matt Walsh — Sun, 17 May 2009 16:00:36 +0000

Handbrake is a video transcoding application. Most people use it to shrink videos down to a size that their iPod/Phone can handle. For transcoding software, it’s very easy to use, with presets for a lot of common formats and handheld devices. Select the file and what you’re going to use it on and you’re ready to go. The software also has all of the nitty-gritty options that you could possibly need to fine tune the video output you get from it. Finally, it’s multi-threaded, meaning that it will use all of the available processors on your system which gives it a huge performance increase.

Google Mobile Sync

Matt Walsh — Sun, 17 May 2009 01:46:23 +0000

A few months ago Google rolled out Google Mobile Sync. This syncs your Google calendar and contacts to your mobile phone. On Windows Mobile, you don’t even need any software for it. It runs right through the built in Active Sync interface in Windows. Syncing happens very quickly, and it is very smart about resolving conflicts when both the mobile and on-line calendars change. I was surprised to see that Sync also pulled the photos from my phone that are associated with contacts and put them into GMail contacts as well.

Bonus Tip: When you’re using Google calendar, or a widget, use natural language to enter your events. “Lunch with Jim 12:30 Tuesday at Quiznos” Google will figure out and fill in the date, time, event and location and set up the appointment automatically.

SCalc

Matt Walsh — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 17:00:28 +0000

The calculator included with Windows Mobile is rather limited. If you need trig, scientific functions, constants, and more check out SCalc. It’s a very simple command line-like interface, but also very powerful.

VLC

Matt Walsh — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 17:00:54 +0000

VideoLan Client (VLC) is a media player that works with many OS’s. Unlike Windows Media Player, and many others, VLC has all of the codecs that you might need built in. So if you’re having trouble playing a particular file, give it a try. Also, there are several advanced features of the software that allow you to do transcoding, live streaming, and video capture.

Bonus Tip: KeePass Password Safe

Matt Walsh — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 17:00:35 +0000

By putting the file KeePass generates inside a Jungle Disk, and then using Jungle Disk’s USB drive version you’ll be able to get to your passwords from anywhere. You can keep the KeePass software itself either on your USB drive, or on the Jungle Disk.

KeePass Password Safe

Matt Walsh — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 17:00:54 +0000

KeePass Password Safe is a password management program. Passwords are stored encrypted in a file, and are listed in a simple spreadsheet style interface within the program. In addition to user names and passwords, you can store additional notes and information about the service that they’re used for. It also has some nice features, such as creating strong a password for you automatically when you add a new password to your safe. KeePass will allow you to copy any password from the program to the clipboard, and it will then automatically clear the clipboard after 10 seconds, helping to keep your password secure.

User Agent Switcher

Matt Walsh — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 17:00:30 +0000

The Firefox plugin User Agent Switcher is a quick and dirty way to often get past login requirements on several news sites. By setting the plugin to report that you’re the GoogleBot, you can often view content on sites that would otherwise require a login. This works because sites will allow Google to browse their site freely so all of the content gets indexed for the search engine. However, when you show up, it realizes you’re not Google and forces you to log in or sign up to view the same content.

The plugin is also useful if you’re your checking out how your site handles requests from mobile phones. I set it to report the my browser was a Windows Mobile phone and then used the Mobile Press plugin for WordPress to reformat my blog for mobile phones. This way I could check out how everything was working without having to go back to my phone constantly.

Windows Mobile Mail Shortcuts

Matt Walsh — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 17:00:53 +0000

The mail application built into Windows Moblie includes several shortcuts to make managing email easier. To use them simply hold down the corresponding number for about 1 second.

0 – List Shortcuts
1 – Replay All
2 – Reply
3 – Mark Read/Unread
4 – Flag
5 – Move
6 – Forward
7 – Delete
8 – Download
9 – Send/Receive

You can also search the message list by typing your search right at the message list. It will update the message list immediately with messages that match your search and highlight the matching term in the message.

Tetris for your phone

Matt Walsh — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 17:00:44 +0000

Instead of paying your wireless carrier way too much per month to play Tetris on your Windows Mobile, get the free Kevtris. Nothing unusual here, it has all the normal playing modes and an online high score list if you want to participate in that as well.

Search and replace across files

Matt Walsh — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 17:00:25 +0000

I still do a lot of my coding by hand, so every now and then I need to do a global search and replace across several files. Notepad++ (see this post) has this feature built in. Simply open all the files needing the search and replace in Notepad++ (drag and drop works nicely for this) then press Ctrl+H to bring up the replace dialog. Fill in the find and replace text boxes and then click replace all in open documents. There’s a similar function on the find tab in the same dialog box that will find every instance of whatever you’d like in all of your open files. Then it will list them all with the surrounding text in the same dialog box. Just click on any one of them to jump right to it.
While you’ve got Notepad++ open. Press Ctrl+G to bring up the go to dialog box. You can jump directly to any line number from here. This is nice when debugging code and you get an error on line xyz. Make sure to read the dialog carefully, the guys who made Notepad++ seem to have a sense of humor.

AllSnap

Matt Walsh — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 17:00:34 +0000

Working with multiple monitors and can’t get your windows to line up with the edges of them very well? I use AllSnap to do this for me. It makes the edges of all windows and monitors sticky so as you drag the border of a window to resize it, when you get close to another window or screen edge, it will stick to it, making easy to line things up. This also works very nicely when Window’s default tiling of windows doesn’t leave you with an arrangement you like, just do it yourself and leave a narrow sliver for one window, and make the other take up the whole screen.

Taskbar Shuffle

Matt Walsh — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 17:00:40 +0000

Windows won’t allow you to rearrange the buttons on your taskbar. If your dependent on having something in a particular location, probably because you’re running it all the time and it’s always on the left side… until it crashes, then Taskbar Shuffle is for you. It allows you to drag and drop buttons on your task bar to any location. It also lets you drag and drop the icons in your system tray in the same way. Better yet, it can hide it’s own icon from the system tray so it’s not taking up any valuable screen space.

TruCrypt

Matt Walsh — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 17:00:03 +0000

You can encrypt just a few files or your entire hard drive with the open source TruCrypt. In the file mode, TruCrypt works by creating a single file that, when unlocked with your pass phrase, mounts itself as a drive on your system. Anything going into this drive is then automatically encrypted. You can then dismount the drive at any time. You can also use it on a flash drive with their own built in utility so you can keep an encrypted file on the flash drive and open it with any computer. I use this in combination with Portable Firefox on a flash drive that I keep on my work computer. I then use it when I’m traveling and need to visit a secure site, such as my bank or credit card. This keeps all of my passwords, account info and all of that sensitive data encrypted and off of my work computer while still leaving me very safe access to it.

Unlocker

Matt Walsh — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 17:00:55 +0000

Don’t you hate it when Windows says it can’t delete a file because it’s in use. This usually happens after an app crashes, but there are some other times I’ve seen it as well. The free utility Unlocker adds an item to your right-click menu to Unlock the file, or a group of files if you have several selected. It’s as simple clicking unlock and then going back and deleting the file.

TwitterFox

Matt Walsh — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 17:00:43 +0000

I’m using TwitterFox within Firefox to keep track of everything on Twitter. The add-on sits in the status bar and pops up a window similar to the update available window with any new tweets. The timeline is nicely color coded so you can quickly tell apart you normal messages, @ replies and direct messages. It also handles more than one Twitter account with ease.

Skype

Matt Walsh — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 17:00:54 +0000

Skype is a communications application. You can do instant messaging, video conferencing and voice chat with it all for free. In addition you can use their Skype In and Skype Out services to make calls to and from land line phones to your computer. The rates are quite competitive too, especially internationally. I’ve used it numerous times when I travel to Canada. Pair it up with a Bluetooth headset and I was able to call home for only $0.021 a minute. Much cheaper than my cell phone would have been.

Google Traffic

Matt Walsh — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 17:00:09 +0000

Google Traffic isn’t the official name for it, but I think it should be. Head over to Google Maps find a major city and then click the traffic button in the upper right corner. All of the major routes through the city will be color coded according to how quickly traffic is moving. You also have the option of looking at how traffic will be at a different time of the day. Click on “change” next to “Live Traffic” and adjust the slider to the time of day that you’ll be traveling. Traffic is also figured into driving directions. You’ll now see an estimated time for your directions, and a new up to … in traffic estimate. From what I can tell the real-time data seems to be rather accurate. Except that by the time your on the road for 15 minutes, everything could have changed.

Filezilla

Matt Walsh — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 17:00:19 +0000

Filezilla is a powerful open source FTP client. It has plenty of built in features to appease any power user, but a simple file transfer is still very straight-forward. I’m particular fond of the nag-once-per-session options when determining which files to overwrite and how. This means when I’m updating WordPress or Gallery that I can tell it to overwrite everything and it will continue to do that until the next time I fire it up.

Sudoku Mobile

Matt Walsh — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 17:00:56 +0000

Instead of paying for one of the many Sudoku mobile apps offered by my wireless carrier, I downloaded Sudoku Mobile. The game also includes a solver, so you can, uh, check your answers to the one in a newspaper without having to wait until the next day.