Moblog

Sikuli gets around this by using picture based computing. Instead of needing intimate knowledge of a particular API or language you simply use Sikuli script to take an action on an area of the screen it finds by you giving it a picture.

DownloadSquad: Sikuli uses screen shots to run scripts

Review Board is an open source tool developed by the VMware team to help with code reviews and pending code changes. Somewhat similar to an issue tracker, but worth a look.
From the same team: Parasite, a live debugger for GTK+ applications ("sort of like Firebug").

There are so many inventions these days, it's easy to miss one. I've seen Swype logos, but didn't bother to look closer at this gesture based keyboard input software. Watch this demo, it's impressive! Continue reading "Swype Gesture Keyboard Input for Mobile Devices"

SocketSniff is a nice little utility that lets you monitor network traffic of selected Windows processes. Continue reading "SocketSniff - Monitor Network Traffic of Specific Applications"

If you've ever used Linux, you probably stumbled over the great concept of package management. When Microsoft revised MSI (now called Windows Installer), they failed to include the simple mechanism for applications to register at a central update management. The crucial point is that while Linux repositories mostly contain GPL software that can be easily packaged by third parties, a Windows package manager needs support from each individual developer - which is not going to happen any time soon without Microsoft stepping in.
I am certain that the Windows world is ready for a "Web 2.0 solution". In times where all our knowledge is being collected for free, people might actually use install scripts supplied by a community, without direct support from the vendor. Continue reading "Package Manager for Windows"

Tools

I've noticed that IrfanView now includes a third-party "save to web" component called RIOT with preview and tweaking options similar to Photoshop. Don't forget to download the extended, more recent version of the plugin directly from their website.

TeamDrive NXT 2.0 looks promising. So does PowerFolder. While both transparently synchronize files on multiple PCs (see previous blog post), each has its own strengths. TeamDrive is server-centric, aiming towards supporting WebDAV and Amazon S3 as storage backends besides their own online storage (unfortunately, not in the current beta), teamwork on shared folders (and the resulting conflict management) and unlimited file revisions, whereas PowerFolder has the advantage of being Java (available for Mac, Win and Linux, TeamDrive: Win only), and the disadvantage of being Java (in my first limited tests, it seems to take a lot of resources to scan the files on every startup). Peer-to-peer oriented, there's no need for a central server - all clients are equal. Partner clients in the LAN are instantly discovered, and you can use different profiles for different folders (ranging from one-way manual download to automatic sync). It's a pity that they turned away from releasing the program under GPL, but I understand that after years of development, they finally want to earn some money.

Websites

"wePapers helps students and others share and expand their knowledge. You can find and download the papers and documents you need in a matter of seconds, discuss them with others, or just mess around."

Any germans, willing to sell their lecture notes? Or buy some? Try Unidog. On a related note: Another german student job platform, JobMensa, keeps track of all your side jobs.

RefSeek is a search engine that "aims to make academic information easily accessible to everyone".

(Among others,) GoGrid offers cloud hosting services similar to Amazon EC2. Finally, after grid computing has been promised in the last century, the world seems to be ready. If you're interested, also read the Windows Live announcements from September in case you've missed them.

Tarpipe offers workflows to publish to existing social media platforms easily. They are also supporting OAuth, an open protocol for desktop and web authorization that, in contrast to OpenID, is supposed to work transparently ("While OpenID is all about using a single identity to sign into many sites, OAuth is about giving access to your stuff without sharing your identity at all (or its secret parts).")

Dex wants to be the new "Web 2.0" social CRM that "keeps customer relationships vital and prosperous".

Seittest.de analyzes and ranks German websites using "human critera" like readability. Very basic; for example, they do not judge accessibility.

Software Development

I am currently working on a web project based on the Joomla CMS. Many components are being released under GPL, while the developers charge for the download of the sources itself. Provoking thought: If I modify the component, even slightly, and publish it somewhere else without charging for it, does this break the license? Isn't that the basic idea of GPL?



Håkon Wium Lie, CTO of Opera Software, gave a basic talk on Web technologies and emerging standards in HTML5 at the TU Dresden today.

Books: New editions of Artificial Intelligence and Windows Internals are expected for December/January.

IBM DeveloperWorks series: 30 game scripts you can write in PHP

Grails is growing up and looks stable now. 1.04 released.

Mark Russinovich, co-founder of Sysinternals and author of many excellent tools (and an excellent book on Windows internals), blogs about troubleshooting a Vista system using Process Explorer and Process Monitor.

Mark's Blog: The Case of the Slooooow System

Over the years, I've grown so accustomed to using many Windows related keyboard shortcuts that I intuitively use them without thinking. Looking at the list of keyboard shortcuts published by Microsoft for Windows XP, I know and use all of them. Lately, I've (re)discovered a few shortcuts that turn out to be really useful (for me), but I didn't know or even think about.

For example, I often use CTRL-LEFT and CTRL-RIGHT to navigate wordwise (and, even more frequently, I use CTRL-HOME/END), but didn't know that you can actually use CTRL-BACKSPACE to delete the previous word!

In the section "rediscovered" (and somewhat awkward to type): CTRL-SHIFT-ESC opens the Task Manager. And: Turns out I lied when I said I use all of the listed Windows XP shortcuts: The one I keep forgetting about all of the time is WIN-BREAK to open the System Properties.

Completely new to me, and another timesaver keeping me from moving my hand too often: WIN-1/2/3/n executes the Quick Launch association at that position (counted from left to right).

What's your favorite "geek" keyboard shortcut that nobody knows about?

On a (somewhat) related sidenode: How did they manage to get Firefox shipped without having a shortcut to close all but the current tab? Opera has CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-W, which sounds worse than it is to type. To get that in Firefox also, I modified an extension - you can download it here.

On a (somewhat) related second sidenode: Switcher is a really nice replacement for the useless "Windows Flip 3D" introduced in Vista (WIN-TAB).

Envision the "perfect backup and synchronization tool".

• synchronize and/or backup selected file sets
• unlimited revisions (version history)
• support central servers and/or decentralized client exchange ("peer to peer")
• support to backup to external drives, including the full file history
• work offline and still have a version history
• local revision history is automatically distributed to all participating clients
• transparent
• automatically monitors/tracks changes and immediately sync in the background
• (alternatively, eg. for files that are constantly changing (email database), do scheduled or manual syncs)
• if network/other clients are available, sync with them (including file history)
• if connected to selected external drives, auto-sync to it
• safe encryption on all clients/servers (both storage and transfers)
• of course, only store and transmit incremental updates (deltas)
• "traveller mode":
• web interface to download individual files from any revision
• sync complete set of files from a specific date/revision without admin rights
• open source, FREE
• platform independent
• independently scalable to "unlimited" clients

To get the idea, compare with Dropbox and Syncplicity.

Sounds too good to be true? It does exist (well, sort of) ! See my wiki for details.

I've been looking all my life for an acceptable backup and synchronisation tool. Even with enough technical experise and an own server, I just cannot find the right software.
Recently, some new services popped up that transparently sync and backup your files on the net: Dropbox, Syncplicity, SugarSync and Microsoft Live Mesh.

Judging from the outside, all four look surpisingly similar. Yet, there are some differences that I'd like to discuss here. I haven't looked at all of them, so I will restrict my comparison to Dropbox and Syncplicity: Live Mesh accounts are not available publicly and it's Windows-only, SugarSync only offers a free trial, no limited long-term free accounts. Also, even though there are clients for other operating systems available, I have only tested the Windows versions. Continue reading "Evaluating Dropbox and Syncplicity: A First Comparison"

The first article in my series about tools I just have to install right after Windows installation and use daily in my life is about a mostly unknown open source software called CopyHandler. Ever since I moved to Windows from DOS and got used to "multi tasking", the standard Windows copy routine annoyed me. I guess we've all grown accustomed to its defects, because I don't ever hear people complaining about it.
Think again. Can you tell me why I have to live without a simple mechanism to pause/resume whenever I want (surviving shutdown and network loss), why it took Microsoft over 10 years to check if the destination has enough space before it starts the transfer, and show me a reliable progress bar including transfer speeds? (Yes, Vista actually has it) Is it so hard to have an option for notification on completion, or when it stopped for some reason? Why does the Vista copy routine take ages after I cancel it?

CopyHandler neatly integrates into Windows up to the point that it (optionally) intercepts your drag and drop transfers transparently and handles them, while you can still select the default copy/move from context menu. Let me give you a quick list of features and options:

• pause, resume, restart
• auto-resume on error, shutdown when done
• set priority
• detailed information about copy/move progess
• sounds on error/completion
• small or detailed status window, or none at all (tray icon)

By far the most important feature and the most annoying Windows defect (I actually started to write my own utility for that before I found this gem): You can configure a number of concurrent copy tasks and all subsequent copy actions will be queued. No more ugly disk seeking when you move a number of files with separate selections!

Unfortunately, the author doesn't seem to have much time to maintain the tool (last update was in October 2006). It works great, but has a few problems: After installation, make sure to select your language in the settings, or it will switch to some illegible character set next time. Also, don't forget to register the shell extension (there's a menu item for it), or it won't integrate. More importantly, it does not support Unicode characters in file names (German umlauts are okay), so you will have to copy those with the default Windows copy routine. And I haven't found a way to get it integrated into Vista 64bit yet because the shell extension is a 32bit DLL (other than that, it works on Vista too). The source is available, so maybe I'll try compiling it for 64 bit some day. Edit 25th March 2008: A new version of CopyHandler has been released today. It finally supports Unicode and Vista 64bit!

I have prepared a short (one minute!) screencast as an introduction to CopyHandler, don't miss it. Continue reading "Tools I Can't Live Without: CopyHandler"