Sunday, December 31, 2006

ToDoList - a free to do list manager (windows desktop)

ToDoList, from AbstractSpoon software, is self-defined as "A simple but effective way to keep on top of your tasks".

I like this app a lot, and I'm using it (following the continuous new releases) from a year or so, and I'm happy with it.

You can read about it both on the Abstract Spoon site and on the codeproject page.

The app is free, under a creative commons license, and you can also download the source code, also hosted on codeproject.

MyLife Organized - desktop and mobile app

I found this Time Management software, and I'm interested mainly because it features both a desktop and a Pocket PC version.

For Desktop exists also offer a completely free release, but it's not "feature complete" (I think it's an older release of the product).

Here's the link: http://mylifeorganized.net/

And here are some mobile screenshots:






The feature list is impressive, and the whole thing is based on the GTD - Getting Things Done "technology" (see here on wikipedia).

The app is capable to sync with Outlook/Exchange, and the Pocket Pc can sync with the (Professional) desktop edition thru Active Sync.

But the cost of the software is high... and even if I'm interested, I know that I will not spend $77.95 fot it (in this price both versions of the program - pocket pc and desktop - are comprised).

Anyhow, if you're looking for a good time management software, give a look to MyLifeOrganized.

Thursday, December 28, 2006

geoGreetings!!!

Have fun with this creative use of google maps and of letter-shaped buildings around the world... :-)

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Google Notebook

I just discovered Google Notebook, and it looks promising.
To use it you need a (for IE) 170kb browser addon, and if you want to give a look to a tutorial, you can go here.
The main use of Google notebook is to collect information ("web clips") from differente sources, mainly web pages. Then you can access what you collected, and organize them as you like.
The main thing to observe here is that this useful feature is... google-based!!! I mean that every single byte you insert into your notebooks is stored on Google computers - I do not mean that it can be considered "public", but I will not send my credit card number out there... ;-)

Let me know if you decide to use it, and your opinion!

Saturday, December 23, 2006

.Net vs J2EE

Interesting read from David Chappell's blog.

just a quote from this post:
"(...) His firm, like all the big software houses, is happy to build the solution using either .NET or J2EE--it's up to the customer. But if the customer chooses .NET, the price is 28% less than if the customer chooses to build the same solution on J2EE."

Friday, December 22, 2006

kdice

kdice is an online multiplayer game, similar to Risiko!

be careful, it's quite addictive...

have fun!

Free screen capture from Ilium Software

Here you can find a simple (yet useful) screen capture program, From Ilium Software.

Here's a sample of a catptured screen from my device:





 

The use of this app is really straightforward; you can choose which key will be used to take screenshot, and the number of seconds before the screenshot will be taken.

Then the program remains in the background. When you're done, you can find your the screenshots in the device's file system root, in .bmp format.

Thursday, December 21, 2006

blogger - no more in beta!

well, maybe you already know this - but blogger.com has completed the switch to the new release, after some months of beta testing.

so... this blog is no more in beta! :-)

Zoho.com

I found only today zoho.com, and it's a pity.

I used docs.google.com for a while for sharing some ideas (written in a document) with some friends of mine, and it looked cool - but now that I discovered zoho I really think that all my sharing will happen there!

Zoho has a unique (as far as I know) range of (free!!!) services: a word processing (capable to publish on main blogging system, like blogger), a wonderful wiki, a spreadsheet, planner, a chat, a presentation tool... probably I miss something.

I think that quality of all this is far superior to google's - but how many of you did hear anything on zoho in the past months? Ehehe, it's a strange world...

I like zoho - you will too! Try it!!!

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

gamejump.com

On http://www.gamejump.com you can have access to tons of free ad-supported games for your mobile platform.
They have games ported to hundreds (I read somewhere 8 hundreds) of different phones.

happy (free) playing!

Monday, December 18, 2006

smaato - windows mobile apps

On http://www.smaato.com/ you can find a couple of really good - and free - Windows Mobile apps.

Smaato Cost is a mobile cost tracking software, with tons of features, fully configurable, even with csv export of traffic data... really well done, please go and test it, you won't be disappointed.

Smaato News is a mobile RSS reader, and it works; it has a good and well designed user interface, I like it.

Sunday, December 17, 2006

Microsoft releases ASP.NET Ajax 1.0 RC

Microsoft released a few days ago the RC for ASP.NET Ajax 1.0.

Here's the link: http://ajax.asp.net/default.aspx?tabid=47

And if you do not know this, this is the link to a very interesting ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit sample website: http://ajax.asp.net/ajaxtoolkit/

Apollo (from Adobe Labs)

Hey, I didn't know about this (I admit)

But this Apollo thing... I don't understand yet if it will be a hit or not.

Read the Apollo FAQ - the main description tells us that:
"Apollo is the code name for a cross-operating system runtime being developed by Adobe that allows developers to leverage their existing web development skills (Flash, Flex, HTML, JavaScript, Ajax) to build and deploy Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) to the desktop"

So what? Give to web client developers the chance to develop for the pc - even if they don't know anything of windows applications, c#, .net, or c++ ?

Let's see what comes out. I suspend my judgement ;-) 

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Pitagora Suicchi (Pitagora's Switch)

Have some fun looking at these video - some Rube Goldberg's Contraptions, but from Japan!!!

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=pitagora+suicchi&search=Search

For an explanation... see Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PythagoraSwitch

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

The Anti-Google FAQ

This is funny. Answers to questions like "I have a hard time spending all my AdSense income... what to do?"

Link: http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2006-12-11-n75.html

Windows Live Writer - a desktop app for your blog

Recently I started using Windows Live Writer (Beta) to create the post you're reading.

It's a desktop application for Windows, and the main characteristics are:

- works with windows live spaces, but also with Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, WordPress, and others

- wysiwyg editor

- you can post images and "live local" maps

It works, I have all my blogs fed with this app, and i'm happy with it. You can have a "web preview", or modify html directly.

Yesterday I switched my blogs to beta.blogger.com, and Live Witer didn't manage to write anything on them... so I checked  http://windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com/ and actually they posted a new release that works with the new api spec from beta.blogger.com.

Thanks... :-)

Sunday, December 10, 2006

bluedot.us

Another interesting site (thanks kfra for inviting); the idea is to have a single web links repository, searchable (every link is taggable). And you can share your links (or parts of them) with other users of the site.


You can also have a button on IE toolbar to "Dot This" - in other words you can post any link to bluedot as you visit a site.


I'm going to use it for a while, and I'll invite other friends... At present it looks useful and interesting, let's see...


on BlueDot I'm here: http://bluedot.us/users/oipaz  

Swivel, another graph

Here we go again...

1169745

Saturday, December 09, 2006

My first Swivel graph!!!

Here it is...

1169069

But I'll make others!!! It's really fun !!!

Thursday, December 07, 2006

Adobe Flash Lite 2.1.1 for Mobile Devices

On this page: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/devices/ you can find the latest releases of the Flash Lite 2.1 player for various mobile platforms, including Windows Mobile 5.0 (bot smartphone and PocketPc) and Symbian.

Swivel - it's online!

Yes, I really like this site.

Go to http://www.swivel.com and see how some temperature data in Fresno correlate to profits in electric utilities!!!

In these first days it looks like the server's site have some problems... and I hope that there will be some way to select useful data from useless uploads - but the idea is really good!!!

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

This is quite difficult... but!!!

The title is "How Google Finds Your Needle in the Web's Haystack" - and it's about the Google Pagerank algorithm. hard to understand for me, but it's interesting.

Here is it: http://www.ams.org/featurecolumn/archive/pagerank.html

from Francesco Balena's blog

A wonderful regular expression tester!!!

http://www.dotnet2themax.com/blogs/fbalena/PermaLi...

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Windows Live Search Beta for Mobile

This is cool. I installed it and it work perfectly; it's a pity that traffic coverage is not present on the area I live in... that's Milan, Italy.

But if you have a Windows Mobile phone or a Java J2ME enabled one, go and get it!!!

Let me know... :)

Snap.com - mouseover href preview

You'll have noticed that if you pass your mouse over the links in this page, a little site preview shows up; it's a (free) functionality offered by http://www.snap.com/.

I think it's really nice. Don't you?

The service is described here.

Swivel.com - keep an eye on this, look promising and interesting :-)

http://www.swivel.com/ is going to have an important place in my links collection.
The "YouTube for Data" is a good claim, but read here - TechCrunch says it all.

Friday, December 01, 2006

Survival: sql, update a table with values from another table

Often I have to update a table column with values taken from another table.

Since everytime I write this from scratch, and I'm lazy, I write it down here!

UPDATE table_one
SET column_one = ( SELECT table_two.column_two
 FROM table_two
 WHERE table_one.id = table_two.id)
WHERE EXISTS
  ( SELECT table_two.id
    FROM table_two
    WHERE table_two.id = table_one.id);

Survival: c#, calculate Age given a Birthdate

Need a c# function to calculate an "age" (number of full years) given a Birthdate?
Since I find it really useful... here it is:

public static int GetAge(DateTime BirthDate)
{
    // get the difference in years
    int years = DateTime.Now.Year - BirthDate.Year;
    // subtract another year if we're before the birth day in the current year
    if (DateTime.Now.Month < BirthDate.Month || (DateTime.Now.Month == BirthDate.Month && DateTime.Now.Day < BirthDate.Day))
        years--;

    return years;
}