Thursday, July 24, 2008

Why I like to replace desktop apps with web apps

Thanks to the wonderful web apps that we're seeing today. And some of them are really useful and giving me enough reason to replace some of the desktop apps that I using. This might not be applicable to all of you as it really depends on your needs and situation.

Here are the reason why I like and prefer to use them

  • Preserve hard disk space

    I know hard disk are cheap nowadays but this might not be true to anyone like me. I am using a laptop with 40GB hard disk and I have both Windows XP and Ubuntu on it leaving me a small free disk space for other installations and for my download activity everyday which I later transfer to my external hard disk.

  • Maintain my system to be as clean, fast and light as possible.

    Every time we get to use a newly install windows system, we feel the system is fast to boot, response, and shutdown but as soon as you begin to install something on it, it becomes slow.

  • Portable

    I can access my documents, listen to my music playlist and watch my favorite music from home and work or any computer that has internet connection

Web apps that replaces my desktop apps
Web App Remarks
Buxfer Finding a free personal finance desktop application is hard, but on the web there's a lot of it which are really good and my perosonal favorite is buxfer.
CrunchyRoll, YouTube These really saves me a lot of disk space and time. I no longer need to download and keep music videos and animes in my hard disk
Delicious Way much better than the bookmarking features that the browers has to offer today.
Gmail, Yahoo Mail No more email client software on my system. No need to delete emails, and to do backups( and I believe they do it better than me)
Google Docs I am just a casual word processing and spreadsheet user, so Google Docs is more than enough to me and offers online storage for me which makes my data portable and makes sharing your files easy. And this is where it saves me a lot of disk space, as we know both Microsoft Office and Open Office requires a lot of disk space.
Imeem With this I can easily access and organize my music playlist from home and from work place, and also saves me a lot of disk space. It really change my way of collecting, listening, and organizing music. I love this app!
Jjot It lets you easily compose, organize, and search for your notes. Veryful useful and productive!
Meebo Saves me from installing gTalk and Yahoo Messenger. And the best thing I really like is that Yahoo Messenger currently doesn't do online achieving of my chat logs and meebo has this feature.
Picasa Web Helps me share my photos with friends and keeps a collection of wallpapers, interesting images that I don't want to takes my disk space.

Did I miss any web apps that could possibly replace the desktop apps I am using? Thanks.

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Notepad++ has reach version 5

Notepad++ has been my favorite all around editor, it's fast and light which support all the languages I am working with (CSS, HTML, Javascript, Python) and might as well for you.

I guess there's no new major feature in version 5, but here are the fixed bugs and added features from the previous version (4.9.2)

  • Improve Notepad++ performance - on startup and on exit.
  • Add Calltip capacity.
  • Add HTML/XML tag match highlighting.
  • All the menu commands can be added in context menu, including plugins' commands, macros and user defined commands.
  • Add bookmarked lines operations : delete all marked lines, copy all marked lines into clipboard, cut all marked lines into clipboard, paste from clipboard to replace all marked lines content.
  • Add rename and delete current document features.
  • Fix crash bug : Open files with date pre-1970.
  • Fix clone mode bug : now the actions done in one view will be synchronized in the cloned view.
  • Add tooltips in document tab to display the full file name path.
  • Change hide lines behaviour : Hide lines now saved during switches.
  • Change file history list behaviour : Most recent closed file is on the top. Add number on list.
  • Caret width and blink rate are customizable.
  • Add asterisk in title bar if file is dirty.
  • The bookmarks' look & feel are improved.
  • Add "Select all" and "copy" context menu items in Find in files results window.
  • Fix goto line with command line bug.
  • Improve smart highlight / mark all / incremental search highlight all visibility.
  • Tabbar's coulours is configurable via Stylers Configurator(Active tab Text, Inactive tab text, Inactive tab background, Active tab focused indicator and Active tab unfocused indicator).
  • Add the smart highlight file size limit - 1.5 MB in order to improve the performance.
  • Add exception handling (dumping filedata).
  • Fix go to line command line bug.
  • Enhance Find in files and Find in all opened files features' performance.
  • Fix dialog off screen problem under multi-monitor environment.
  • Add 2 plugin message for v5 : NPPM_GETFULLPATHFROMBUFFERID and NPPM_GETPOSFROMBUFFERID.

If you want to see the previous improvement click here.

The author might not yet release this version, but you can already download it here.

Saturday, July 19, 2008

Firefox 3: Zoom page feature

During the days of version 2, I use the text size adjust feature to adjust the font size of a web page for some cases where I need to see it big, but sometimes this makes the page ugly, or destroy its layout. Now that I am using version 3 and I was surprise that this time it adjust the page viewing size smartly, and I really like it! I haven't seen this feature mention before.

To use the page zoom feature press Ctrl++ or Ctrl+-, Ctrl+0 to restore back to the original. You can also use it with mouse by press Ctrl+Scroll up or Ctrl+Scroll down

If you're not using firefox 3 download it now.

Friday, July 18, 2008

Free Anti-Virus comparision

For my newly install windows xp, I decided to make a comparison of free anti-virus to choose from. And here's what I got.

Comparison table
Avira Avast AVG ClamWin Comodo PC Tools
Anti Rookit Yes Yes No ? No ?
Anti Spyware No Yes Yes Yes Yes ?
Auto Update Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Download size 21MB 23MB 46MB 21MB 35MB 20MB
Firewall No No No No No No
IM Protection Yes Yes No ? ? ?
Outlook Support ? Yes ? Yes ? ?
POP3 & SMTP No Yes Yes ? Yes ?
Scheduling Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes ?
System Requirement Not mention Pentium Class
128 MB
50MB disk space
Pentium 300
256 MB
30 MB disk space
Not mention Pentium 300
128 MB
50 MB disk space
Not mention
Remarks has ads Comodo has other free security products like anti-malware, anti-spam, and firewall. PC Tools has free firewall.

And I choose Comodo Anti-virus, tell me yours.

Saturday, July 12, 2008

Software used

I am in bad luck today and had to reformat my system and while I re-installing all the software I use, I'll take this opportunity to share and recommend the list of software I used. Basically my preference are small and light to the system and free!

Editors Internet Media Productivity Utilities

Any suggestions?

Welcome

Welcome to my blog, as my first post here's a little about me.

Who am I What I do

Enjoy this blog and a bowl of beef ramen!