Writely.com

I'm posting this using Writely.com as my editor. I signed up for an account at Writely months ago, but didn't really explore much. After seeing that Google bought Writely , I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. My conclusion, Writely rocks. My only problem was trusting my data to a little startup, but Google had fixed that. Writely has all sorts of neat features like being able to save in Word, OpenOffice, HTML, or PDF format; plus it has the ability to publish directly to several of the more popular blogs. One note: now that Google owns them, they really should add "Google" to their spellchecker dictionary.

Rojo sans Slashdot?

I love Rojo (a cool, relatively new feed aggregator), but I'm about to dump it because Slashdot banned it for polling its feed too often. What's the point of an aggregator without the mother of all feeds?

Goodbye bookmarks, hello Spurl.net

I haven't bookmarked any websites in weeks. I have Spurled lots of stuff though. Spurl is the solution to my bookmark management problems. I use upwards of 4 or 5 computers a week, and my bookmarks never seem to be on the machine I am using. ("Where's that link? Oh yeah, I bookmarked that on my Linux box.")

Spurl keeps your bookmarks on their servers, so you can access them on any computer you happen to be using. You can organize them, search them, export them to del.icio.us, you name it. You access your links through sidebars. It works well in IE or Mozilla Firefox, and probably others. For Firefox, there is a nice sidebar extension. Truly portable bookmarks.

Google Toolbar

I love the Google Toolbar. If I have to use IE, which I do at work, the Google toolbar makes life bearable. Pop-up blocking, quicker access to searching, convenience buttons (like the Blogger button), and now spell checking! The new spell checking tool is the coolest thing I've ever seen. It works on any site, it is fast, and (so far) seems to be really good at suggesting the word you meant. The funniest thing is that if you use Blogger's spell checker, which is owned by Google, it flags both "Google" and "Blogger" as misspelled words, but the Google Toolbar gets them right.

Firefox Extensions

I work on five different computers regularly, and others occasionally. Between all of those it seems like I am installing, upgrading, or otherwise configuring Firefox on nearly a weekly basis. I'm tired of remembering which extensions I like, so once and for all I am going to record them here for future reference.

• Adblock
• Download Manager Tweak
• Spurl Sidebar
• Gmail Notifier
• Translate
• Image-Show-Hide
• WebmailCompose
• BlogThis
• AutoCopy
• Fetch Text Url
• Duplicate Tab
• QuickTabPrefToggle

Blogging Software Test

Just for kicks, I'm trying out Zoundary Blog Writer and w.bloggar to post, edit, and repost this, um, post. Both software packages seem relatively easy to use, but their best feature is the ability to edit past posts. Very cool. I'm leaning towards w.bloggar right now. I think the interface is a little cleaner and the formatting options more readily available.

EncFS for Ubuntu

It just took me two (late) nights to get EncFS working with Ubuntu. It wasn't the package's fault. I'm still getting used to Ubuntu. It turns out I just need to apt-get libfuse-dev and openssl-dev and a few other simple things before compiling EncFS from source. I know. It sounds easy enough.

The worst part is that I don't even need encrypted filesystems. I don't exacly have any national secrets to keep. I just have a disorder compelling me to compile, install, and configure software.

Ubuntu Rocks!

So I just installed Ubuntu Linux on my old PC, and I am totally blown away. In the past six years, this PC has run Red Hat, SuSE, Mandrake, Storm Linux, Rock, VectorLinux, and (most recently) Debian. (I think I may have missed one or two. Oh, and I didn't count live distros like DemoLinux and Knoppix.) I thought I had finally settled on Debian about a year ago, but then Ubuntu upped the ante. Ubuntu has all of the latest software I want (Python 2.4.1, Firefox 1.02+, etc.), and the whole thing just looks slick. All of the benefits of Debian (apt-get, Synaptic), but none of the drawbacks, i.e. OLD packages.

Calculator.NET

I have finally found a functional, free, and (dare I say) attractive RPN calculator for Windows. Do all RPN implementations HAVE to look ugly? I guess I get that impression because too many Tcl/Tk programmers with more time than aesthetic sense seem to get the urge to write their own RPN calc. Anyway, my new favorite is called Calculator.NET . For straight functionality, I would run one of the HP 48/49 emulators, but I have never liked the feel of programs emulating calculators. Emulating an interface designed for dedicated (and size limited) hardware is always a bad idea. You can easily come up with something better suited for the mouse/keyboard interface.

TrueCrypt

One of my new favorite programs is TrueCrypt. It does on-the-fly encryption of disks or psuedo-disks. The interface is slick and easy to use, and it offers several respectably robust crypto algorithms. I have been looking for a good, open-source, on-the-fly encryption program ever since I started carrying a USB flash drive with me everywhere. The thought of losing my drive (with notes, passwords, etc.) on it makes me more than a little nervous. Not anymore. TrueCrypt also runs in "traveler mode", so it doesn't need to be installed on a computer to use it. From what I've seen, this is the best program in its class.