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10
Feb

Glide for Windows Phone. It’s Smoking Hot

Categories: Killer Apps
Tags: , ,
Comments: No

Glide for Windows Phone. That’s Right Folks…

With Glide for Windows Phone, they are a full blown cross-platform app. The app just went live on the Windows Store for you fellow Windows Phone users to download and enjoy here.
Allegedly the app runs in Windows Phone 8 & 10. I’ve tested it on Windows Phone 10 on and off over the last week and half.

This adds to their Android, iOS, Apple Watch and newly released Android Wear (smart watch) versions of the app.

What’s It All About?

Glide is an app, excuse me THE app for live video messaging. One to one or one to many from your smartphone. The UI is simple, elegantly designed and easy to use.

Once you have messaged one or many people your video, you can also  forward or share it. On Windows Phone the share is based on the available installed apps. Whilst Facebook is able to embed the video shared, Twitter simply posts a link (hopefully as Twitter video iterates we’ll see video embeds from apps like Glide).

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

In a nutshell Glide on Windows Phone makes it a snap to video message.

The Warptest POV

The app itself is a delight to use and clearly I’m going to have to testdrive it on Android or iOS to see if there are feature pars but Glide on Windows Phone delivers another incredibly popular killer app to Windows Phone users.

Glide as a company has a reputation for being one of those amazing places to work and an indication of their forward thinking can be seen on their YouTube channel. Great videos aside by Sarah Snow (Glide’s Community Manager), there are a number of videos done by her with ASL. Many would say, “Sign language in video.. obvious” but my hat is firmly tipped to a Startup that treats accessibility as a primary feature / part of building their community. I didn’t think this was obvious and other Startups pay heed and other Startups like ZCast are realizing the accessibility opportunities they can offer (in their case pod or Zcasting for sight impaired).

A couple of ideas / questions occurred during warptesting:

  1. You can video to yourself, there’s a cheat / workaround. See if you can figure it out (I got help with this one, you know who you are).
  2. If your blog is enabled for posting by email then you can share a video from Glide to that email address and presto! Webcasters pay heed.
After more than a week of previewing Glide for Windows Phone, I’m going to give it a strong Warptest recommendation.
Glide clearly sees the potential of adding Windows Phone and hopefully this will convince other Startups out there.
So fellow Windows Phone users, get thee to the Windows Store and install this app. Frankly, whatever platform you’re using get this app and let me know what you think.
Glide for Windows phone - Warptested
24
Jan

ZCast Is Not Just A Killer App.

Categories: Killer Apps
Tags: , , , , ,
Comments: No

ZCast Launched To Much Fanfare…

… and by fanfare I mean that ZCast rocketed to number 1 on Product Hunt within hours and was everywhere in the blogosphere. If ever there was a definition of going viral this was it.

To the uninformed, this seemed like an incredibly cool app with an idea reduced to elegant simplicity of design and implementation that just went stratospheric.

The truth is a crack team of incredibly talented people ploughed an amazing amount of effort, intellect and creativity into making this happen.

Disclosure: I’m friends with one or two people at ZCast.

What Is ZCast?

You can find the whole history of ZULA the startup right here. Back to this link later.

ZCast is an app that democratizes podcasting and allows your audience to interact thru Twitter. Podcasting some are asking, what’s that not in technobabble?

Podcasting is simply live broadcast, yes your voice shared with anyone who cares to “tune in”. In this case it’s done thru ZCast’s elegantly designed iOS or Web app.

So got a computer with a web browser? Got an iPhone? Either will do, you are ready to broadcast your thoughts, opinions and expertise.

The thing is, up until now podcasting just seemed like one of those things you needed technical know-how, a fancy microphone and setup to do. It wasn’t something open to everyone. Presto change, now it is.

ZCast - web app

Image from the ZCast web application (cropped)

ZCast - iOS app

Image courtesy of the ZCast iOS app store images

The strength of ZCast is you sign in with your Twitter account, click a button and you are talking to whoever will listen. How do you know whether anyone is listening? First, you get to see who is checked in and listening but also and here’s the kicker: you don’t need a switchboard or phones for people to call in, they can comment thru voice or chat. All you need to do is start talking.

The Warptest POV

Simple, elegant and clever. Comparisons to Meerkat or Periscope aside, anyone feeling introverted will have a lot less hassle ZCasting than they will going on livestreaming video. Probably I should have just ZCast this post, but I’m holding on for a bit. What for? ZCast is undoubtedly working on the ability to record your podcasts and publish them. This is an app that I predict will become an ecosystem in its own right. They have stated that they will be releasing an Android version and I expect them, like many others to leap on the Windows10 Universal App bandwagon at some point.

Enough about that, back to the link above, Hillel Fuld ZCast’s CMO shared their journey and very honestly, some ups and downs on the way. After reading it, you’ll probably realize what I did.

This is THE case study for startups who want to build up to a successful product launch. This is a story of really hard work but it’s also a story of how to build your momentum to success. As you’ll have read in this blog several times, I respect anyone who views sharing as empowerment.

 My hat’s off to Hillel, Farhana, Raz and all the team. One thing is for sure, ZCast gets a gold clad Warptest recommendation.

ZCast - Warptested

Get out there and get ZCasting folks and let me know what you think.

26
Apr

Soluto May Be Why PC Sales Are Slowing

Categories: Killer Apps
Tags: , , ,
Comments: No
soluto logo

Soluto Could Be To Blame …

For all the frantic stories about a drastic slowdown in PC sales so far in 2013.

FUD slow pc sales

By providing a tool for maintaining a stable and more robust PC that can boot at optimal speed, Soluto has possibly extended the usable life of many PCs that otherwise frustrated owners might have replaced. However, the slowdown may only be until Windows XP reaches end of support next year.

All grown up …

The awesomely good App for managing your PC frustrations is all grown up and going into the workplace.

Soluto‘s CEO sent an email out to registered users and no doubt this accompanied a conventional and social media blitz.

The PC management and maintenance App that makes keeping your PC speedy and stable a doddle is to quote Soluto CEO, Tomer Dvir,

“…launched our new service for IT managers in small businesses and IT service providers.

The new service includes some awesome new features such as remote access, chat, asset management and extended reports, and can really help IT pros to become more productive and provide a better service.”

For The Uninitiated…

Soluto has been through a couple of major iterations. Originally Soluto was a client application, installed on your PC that allowed you to: –

  • Reduce boot time by pausing or delaying unnecessary items that run at Startup.
  • Receive real-time notification when an application crash occurs / recurs and offer information on the problem.
  • Manage browser add-ons and remove those slowing down your browser.
  • Add applications on your PC that Soluto does not recognize to its PC Genome (By adding this information Soluto applied a neat crowdsourcing solution to creating a comprehensive knowledge-base and thus the user who adds the app pays it forward to other users also using that software).

Next big iteration Soluto went to the web and it allowed management of those features on your or 4 other PCs via the web interface and all for free. In addition Soluto added the feature of (popular) 3rd Party Software update by remote.

The Warptest POV

I have been using Soluto since the earliest version came out. The move into the business market is eminently logical. It was either that or form a strategic alliance with OEMs to deliver Soluto pre-installed on PCs or branch out into the Smartphone/Tablet markets.

Soluto is not just incredibly functional and replaces a couple of other tools that IT professionals may be using but it comes in what may be the most eye-catching and user friendly UI you have ever seen. The free consumer product seems to be among one of the best tested I have seen in a long time and in all my time using Soluto I have only twice reported issues to their Support who responded promptly.

The pricing for Soluto for up to 10 users is incredible value for money and to my knowledge they were one of the first Windows 8 Apps released so they have you covered for all currently supported PC Operating Systems.

 soluto win 8 app

If you are an SMB and want to reduce antacid consumption, swearathons and the like in your IT department then I would be seriously considering making the jump to a more efficient way of managing your work PCs.

soluto mainpage smb

Finally, if you are interested in signing up for Soluto then click here

Disclosure: hitting this link will take you to Soluto’s site but is also part of a competition they are running. Soluto will award an iPad Mini for the user with the most sign ups. So you can help yourself and help me too.

06
Feb

Killer App: Soluto

Categories: Killer Apps, Security
Tags: , , , , , , ,
Comments: No

Soluto – In the Beginning:

Soluto has done it again. No longer a simple client PC application it has evolved and iterated into a sophisticated Control Panel for system management of multiple PCs.

soluto - button

Uncle Monty’s Got No Internet:

Many of us who are used to the frantic calls to resolve PC issues for friends and family were overjoyed with this remote access solution; allowing you the Power User to solve these issues from the comfort of your own chair and computer.

You may have heard it here first:

I wrote on my old blog in July 2010 about how to use Soluto hand in hand with CCleaner and FileHippo; this was the best way at the time to ensure a smooth running, stable PC.

Awhile later I indulged in predicting via Twitter that @soluto should romance either CCleaner or FIlehippo as the results would be awesome.

Soluto-logoCcleaner-logo - Solutofilehippo-logo - Soluto

Will It Blend?

Last week the guys at Soluto did one better and announced on their blog that they are incorporating a Disk Cleaner and App Installer (beginning with Skype apparently with other apps to follow).

As a freemium user you get to invite 4 other users and be their Power User / Online Support:

Soluto - grab

So we have one killer app that basically will allow you to do away with: –

  • Maintaining a stable, optimized boot and running OS
  • 3rd Party Patch Management
  • Remote Access Tools for Support
  • The uncertainty of DIY 3rd Party App Maintenance

What Next?

That’s Soluto today as a Freemium version. It doesn’t take much to imagine the Web App / Soluto Client providing support for iOS or Linux (even Mobile platforms) but the kicker is going to be seeing your Sys-admin maintain your whole IT infrastructure via Soluto with an Enterprise version. (prediction)

In a nutshell for all you LOTR fans this will likely be the One Ring to Rule Them All.

 

13
Jan

If Goo.gl is my Jelly then shouldn’t Google Alerts be my Peanut Butter?

Categories: Business, Google, Killer Apps
Comments: No

Well I wrote this last night and decided to re-read it in the early AM. I wasn’t sure when I was going to get back to it so I set it to auto-post; a neat feature (thx Live Writer).

Some things are just meant to go together. Yes I’m stuck on this convergence  mindset right now. I keep seeing things that should meld together.

Awhile back I wrote this blog piece “Goo.gl is the peanuts, Google Bookmarks are the Chocolate” this is my follow on. No doubt, eventually I will have an epiphany and see a way of combining most if not all these services. (Perhaps Google will be so impressed with my vision that …)

Goo.gl is Google’s link shortener with a slew of useful features built in; including analytics and a QR Code generator for each shortened link.

googl_shortener

However, the one feature I would be adding to this to make a truly killer service is Google Alerts.

google-alerts

The moment you shorten a URL it is clearly of relevance to you to post it, track the analytics so why not have an alert created on the fly for whenever someone references the content of that URL. The alert could be auto-set to use either title tag(s) from the page or keywords or simply allow the link creator to define the alert themselves.

What do you think? Useful – more or less?

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25
Jul

Keeping your PC Updated – it’s really not that painful.

Categories: Killer Apps, Microsoft, Other
Comments: 3

Okay so your shiny PC / laptop is sitting there quietly humming away, doing its job and making you productive (or even more productive).

The problem is that to keep it shiny and in good working order requires a bit of work and a block of time. I should also mention to those of you who keep calling me over to your house to do this an updated PC tends to be more secure: a lot of these patches are because of newly discovered security bugs.

There are two issues here: –

  • Your Operating System – as we are referring to a PC we are talking Windows (whatever version) and Windows Update.
  • 3rd Party Applications – these fall into two categories: paid and free. The paid applications are usually quite good about updates but free apps range from the sublime to the ridiculous in terms of how they update, how often and what this does to your PC.

I’m going to mostly gloss over Windows Update because if you are smart you have this setup to do all the work for you; at the minimum to download the updates and inform you they need installing.

illuminated

Windows Update will often force a restart at the end or at least keep flashing the annoying dialog box to restart. It is important that the user not think the update is complete until they restart but if you have a slightly older, slower computer and don’t need another coffee then you start to ask yourself if this whole restart thing isn’t just a big pain in the %$^$^.

What’s missing though?  You have just downloaded from Windows Update website, installed new or updated software and made significant changes to your registry. Microsoft has the marvellous One Care Live site which  has a Cleanup tool. I’m suggesting this should be the final, optional stage of any Microsoft Update.

1careLive

3rd Party Applications:

I once suggested that it is in fact possible to have a PC  running with only Microsoft software on. The fact is that this is possible but not realistic. Simply to browse the internet and have a rich, immersive experience you need 3rd Party plugins like Flash or Shockwave. More than occasionally you are going to receive a PDF (Adobe Acrobat) and most of us have a 3rd Party alternative to Microsoft Security Essentials to cope with Malware, Viruses etc.

Some of this software is great as seamlessly updating: you ensure the settings are to check for new updates and automatically install them (assuming that you feel that new versions are always robust and to be trusted) most 3rd Party applications however require varying degrees of manual intervention: –

  • Automatic download and installation: an example of this is the Firefox browser but a good Twitter friend reminded me that frequently this may not be a good idea as some updates can be buggy and cause subsequent browser / OS problems. Cheers @Taltalk

tweets-ff

  • Download updates automatically but require the user to click on the installer to run it and at several stages approve the process: Adobe Acrobat takes this one step further and installs an updater that downloads only when your internet connection is free. Other examples of software with updaters like this are Div-X and Java Runtime.
  • The other extreme is if you didn’t go and check the 3rd Party Application’s check for updates feature then you have no idea how many versions behind you are.
  • Lest we forget, there are applications which still refuse to play nicely and insist on placing icons on your desktop and adding themselves to your Startup causing unnecessary bloat and slowing down your boot routine. You can ignore the icons until Windows asks if you want to delete unused Desktop Icons or manually delete them. Startup bloat is dealt with nicely by the fantastic Israeli Startup Soluto . I’m going to offer an alternative for those of you who like to keep control of these things in your own hands (see later). Icon offenders include Adobe Acrobat and Div-X (come on guys 4 shortcuts on my desktop?!??) but Startup bloat offenders include: Real Player, Quicktime, Adobe Acrobat, Java Runtime and others. Suggestion: if you are going to do this then offer it as an option and explain why I really want your application running as part of my boot routine otherwise just cut it out.

My personal favorite method for dealing with 3rd Party Application management is partially automated but still requires some manual intervention: –

filehippologo

  • Go to http://www.filehippo.com and install their Update Checker. This tiny app will see what you have installed that matches it’s database and offer a webpage with links to new versions via their site with an additional section of Beta updates.

Filehippo has a categorized list of 3rd Party software and not just for Windows and you will probably find yourself installing something from there that you didn’t have but decide you need. You simply click on each link to download the installer for each update and if you don’t want the latest version then each application’s webpage on Filehippo has a list in the right column of previous versions.

  • Once you have completed your installations and pay heed that some installers will ask you to close open browser windows (this includes the other downloads) e.g. Java Runtime; you will probably have to restart. Knowing which one’s these are in advance I tend to run all the other downloads first, install them one after the other and then run the installer(s) that require the other browser windows be closed last.
  • Following my restart I run the One Care Live site which  has a Cleanup tool (N.B. this will clean your cache too).

  • If you are using the aforementioned Soluto then now would be a good time to run it to see if the updates added bloat and what to do about it.

This next step is not for the uninitiated or faint of heart .. tread carefully with your OS settings 🙂

  • Otherwise you can go to the Start – Run in Windows and type MSConfig and go to the Startup tab

image

  • The startup items are listed with a checkbox next to each item; disable those you know you don’t want and this will prevent them from running at Startup.

Of course over time this list will grow and MSConfig doesn’t allow the user to actually delete items from here even once disabled. These remain disabled but in the Registry. There are various tools for dealing with this and checking or even deleting Startup items: two of my favorites have been mentioned in past blog pieces: NCleaner and CCleaner each of which does a great job. NCleaner slightly beats CCleaner in this feature with the right-click menu "Google" feature which saves you the trouble of searching for that one Startup item you don’t recognize.

ncleaner-startup CCleaner-startup

In summary, of all the tools to help the average user here Filehippo and Soluto are definitely the most intuitive and user-friendly but if you are like me and enjoy the drill-down into how Windows does all this stuff then the alternatives can be fun too.

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18
Jan

Microsoft Pinpoint – Killer App and Great GUI too.

Categories: Killer Apps, Microsoft, Other, Testing
Comments: No

Last week in my daily roaming online I discovered an extremely practical, well thought out application of Search and Location Based Services by Microsoft.

Pinpoint is a niche search engine / application online for the business user to find:

  • Companies
  • Applications
  • Services

It comes with all the bells and whistles you would expect but someone running this really did their homework on look and feel, GUI and functionality.

Results for Businesses (real world entities) are displayed in an embedded Bing Map with all the features that Bing Maps brings with it.

Pinpoint allows the user to login with their Live ID to configure Dashboard settings. Firstly you can request your company be added to the listings. Sign Up looks like a piece of cake (easy for those of you not familiar with British-English slang)

The dashboard allows you to:

  • Edit Company Profile information
  • My Dashboard
  • Analytics

The thing is though that this isn’t just an incredibly user friendly application or convergence/ mash-up of several great Microsoft technologies; whoever defined this concept has created a killer app that leverages these technologies with practicality, simplicity and elegance.

One other point worth noticing is that the GUI, layout and workflow are beyond simple eye-candy. It becomes rapidly obvious that a lot of thought has gone into this aspect of the application and if this was my area of endeavour I would be looking at Pinpoint as a case study in how to do things right.

image image

Am I gushing yet? Truthfully I am impressed and with a background in QA that includes usability, GUI and functional testing it is not often I like something this much.

My only criticism right now is that the four countries where this is running are UK, US, Netherlands and India. However, don’t let this deter you. The sign up section is not restricted to users from only these countries.

Now personally I just use IE8 for all my browsing in Windows XP however with a nod again to my QA and testing background I ran a search result for Pinpoint through Adobe Browserlabs (Browserlabs will have to be the subject of another post. Adobe has created an invaluable tool for viewing how a website will look in specific browsers).

The URL included a Bing Map in the results in 2D and all data displayed according to the test for:

  • Internet Explorer 7 and 8 for Windows XP
  • Firefox 3.5 for Windows XP and OS X
  • Chrome for Windows XP
  • Safari for OS X

Finally I decided to follow @mspinpoint on Twitter and I asked them if this was going to be an as is  service or if there was going to be an API that users could customize for their data/ web-site. Below is a screen capture of this dialog:

imageI for one am looking forward to “around summer time..”

My recommendation is that if you haven’t visited this site yet, then you should drop by and think how you are going to use this great technology.

Technorati Tags: ,,,,Killer Apps,
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07
Dec

TV is not borderless or democratic .. so what?

Categories: Browsers, Killer Apps, Social Media, TV
Comments: 3
I have limited experience in the field of Television and its monetization but as I understand it there are two things that keep the money rolling; ratings and advertising.

Now if I get the basic business model primetime TV is the shows that attract the highest ratings and also are in the optimal timeslots for the specific days of the week which means more people see these shows and thus the advertising during commercial breaks and or implicit product placement in this show.

Okay. So what? Yesterday at Jeff Pulver’s excellent #140conf TLV I discussed this with some new friends (you know who you are tweeps) and I explained my view of this.

If you are a follower of a particular TV show here in Israel or generally outside the US or UK then you tend to lag behind on hit shows like Alias, Lost, Heroes, Chuck, 24 etc. and your friends and family can be easily 1 or 2 seasons ahead; if you even have that show here on Satellite or Cable TV.

Again, so what? First, once again this lag inhibits hardcore fans of these shows from full social interaction of their favorite shows. The networks who own these shows either want the lag, or are charging for said hit, new show more than the local providers can or want to pay.

Cause and effect time folks… 1. Oh look there’s this crazy peer 2 peer technology let’s stuff it back in the box … yes that worked so well for the music industry didn’t it? 2. Oh darn we released it in DVD and they went and ordered it via one of those crazy sites like Amazon. We made some money on that didn’t we (network exec)? 3. (Local fan) I know I’ll have my folks in the States video it or copy their DVD and when they visit … you see they were totally right to try to make it illegal to record music to tape and TV to video. Case closed.

Sarcasm aside about these recurring patterns every time a new media technology pops up. The idea is simple: people want to be entertained and then have the ability to discuss it in real time. They want to be up to the same place as their friends and not a year behind and either feel left out or have the big plotline spoilt for them.

Consumers will always find a way to keep up and technology will be the great equalizer whether it be Tape to tape Cassette Decks, VCR’s, Bit Torrent or other tech. Instead of resisting and forcing these things to be illicit in some way perhaps something similar to iTunes for TV could be adopted.

Is this going to disfranchise the local content providers not if we look at the money model again… ratings and advertising. Right now if you try to watch TV shows from Network websites or 3rd party providers they detect your non-US IP address and block you. I know I would pay per show a reasonable amount to watch. The real zinger is that yes detect my IP address and then ensure you have purchased local ads to suit my location and screen those ads in the commercial break to me. The network will include in the price I pay the cost of buying those ads from the local network.

Is this perfect and the solution to world peace as well? No but I’m not a rocket scientist and I could figure this out, why can’t they?
The author of this blog is not encouraging anyone to act in an illegal or unethical manner vis a vis the intellectual property of others. This post is simply an article defining a view of how things could be. (Network exec… ok call off the ninjas guys.)
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25
Aug

Cellular Hack *81

Categories: Killer Apps, MacGyver, Productivity, Smartphones
Comments: No
Yesterday I saw I had a message on my Windows Mobile phone and half paying attention dialed *80 to access my voicemail.
Actually I had dialled *81 and I hung up after several seconds and redialled to discover that by dialling *81 I had activated voicemail recording from my phone.
So the next time you want to have a spy moment or you are in a meeting/ interview you want to keep a discreet record of, try dialing *81 and for the cost of the call you can record the proceedings to your voicemail box.
Now to test other * codes on the phone and see what they do.
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13
Jul

Where is Virtualization Going?

Categories: Killer Apps, Microsoft, Other, Virtualization, Windows
Comments: No

Virtualization is the happening place in technology at the moment. The idea of running one or many virtual machines each utilizing a portion of CPU, RAM, Hard Disk and Bandwidth on a hi-end computer has been an appealing idea since the early 2000’s when VMWare appeared on the scene offering users the ability to run many Operating Systems within a VM (Virtual Machine) regardless of the real OS running.

For the world of System Admin, Software Testing and of course Start Up CFO’s plagued by increasingly expensive server costs this was a definitive change. Instead of running a massive server room filled with tens of PC’s or servers, many VM’s could be run off the same server simultaneously replicating the CPU and RAM allocated to the VM.

Of course the images on which the VM is based are massive and such a server requires large Hard Disks to provide optimum support for this system but the best alternative to Virtual Machines, Norton Ghost also creates images of immense size.

Ghost works in a different manner, it simply saves an image of the OS after being created to a separate partition or location which once the user has installed and “dirtied” the OS with trial ware etc can be rolled back to the clean image as if nothing happened. Also, the bigger the image .. the longer to perform the rollback. (Ghost is so much more than just this and remains the king of QA Lab tools).

VMWare provides a parallel function built-in called snapshots. The user boots up the VM, installs what they want on it and if this state is something they might wish to roll-back to at a later date then they take the snapshot. Again each of these takes up their fair share of disk space but for a user wishing to run tests (for example) on a particular OS configuration and then roll-back this is ideal.

Microsoft competes nicely with VMWare in this arena with their Virtual PC/ Virtual Server. Many users will be familiar with the built-into XP System Restore; a utility that on owning any PC I automatically shut down for taking up resources running in the background (that and I have never once had a successful restore thru it). Microsoft recently released an extremely useful free utility called Steady State, the idea behind which is that any PC with it installed (e.g. one PC for the family or an internet cafe) can be restored to it’s steady state once the PC Admin finds that a roll-back is needed. I have not yet tested this but I do have high hopes for this based on everything I have read.

So, all of this aside where is this all going? Well, VMWare released from beta in the last month the VMWare Thin Install, a so-called Thin Client – if I had to guess this will allow the user to create a VM, install their application or environment on it and deploy a zero footprint executable onto other user’s PC’s … no changes to their registry … defined to only allow the user access to the application not the whole OS … no administrative privileges need to install.

In a nutshell, welcome to the big leagues VMware; look out Citrix and Windows Terminal Services. The only downside I can see is that the underlying OS in the VM albeit unexposed to the user will still require a license fee and the pricetag for using this beyond evaluation is not cheap but then neither are Citrix licenses or Terminal Services CAL’s.

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09
Jun

My Office 2003 Upgrade

Categories: Killer Apps, Microsoft, Office, Other, Practical Technologies, Productivity
Comments: No

Several weeks ago I made the leap and made the update to Office 2003. The update was seamless but as a prior user of Office 2003 there was one feature I was determined to keep. Microsoft Photo Editor.

Every other application in the Office suite is markedly improved yet Photo Editor which allows multiple images to be opened and is child’s play to use as a basic editor is replaced with the Office Picture Manager.

Picture Manager is divided into three primary panes: –

    • Left pane: this is a classic explorer tree with view of folder structure.
    • Center pane: the user may see single images, a thumbnail of each image in the selected folder or single picture view.
    • Right pane: this is the Office 2003 goodness – the drop down menu containing primary functionality

The crop feature is undeniably nice in Picture Manager but the lack of paned view or a standard Microsoft -> Window drop down menu was a little exasperating.

I used Photo Editor as my external editor in IrfanView (probably the best free image editor available) and opening multiple images from IrfanView in this manner would open one instance of Photo Editor with multiple images inside.

Picture Manager however opens a new instance of itself each time IrfanView sends an image to it as the external editor – irritating and an excessive use of screen real estate on the system bar.

So I decided no matter what, Photo Editor was going to stay. I searched for the PhotoEditor.EXE and copied it and its sub-folders to a new location prior to the upgrade to Office 2003. Unsurprisingly (Microsoft makes robust applications after all) it ran and is now co-existing nicely with Office 2003 on my PC. Of course, I am sure that if Picture Manager had feelings they would be hurt by all this – this is why when you offer an improved version you don’t drop major features.

Technorati Tags: ,Killer Apps,,,,,Practical Technologies,

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27
Apr

Did you know about that really useful feature in Google Calendar?

Categories: Google, Killer Apps, Smartphones
Comments: No

Frequent readers know that in addition to my love of Microsoft applications I am an avid Google Applications user; particularly GMail and GCal. Frequent readers also know my paradigm for keeping me, my family and our mobile devices in sync.

The other day I received an invitation thru GMail to a meeting from an associate. I replied and it was added to my GCal. I was checking my GCal settings as my wife had complained of suddenly being unable to see my calendar and in the settings I noticed the far-right link/tab called  Mobile Setup.

A little cynically (it was one of those days) I looked at the drop-down list to see if Israel was listed thinking “not a chance …”; Google has an R&D center in Tel Aviv but I was more doubtful about the Israeli cellular providers approving this sort of thing. Happily I found Israel in the list and further found my cellular provider. I validated the settings and lo …. my cellular phone received an SMS test reminder from my GCal.

I setup to receive day before reminders via SMS to my cellular phone from GCal and I was just reminded about this meeting. I explained to my wife how to do this; of course if your whole life is listed in your GCal or for example times of Jewish festivals etc then your cellular phone is going to be a little busy.

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