Apps I can’t Live without
Apps I can’t Live without
Every now and then there are a few applications that I just can’t live without. Right now I’ll tell you about a few of my favorite ones for windows xp.
Launchy (micro utility)
http://launchy.net/#introduction
Launchy is a micro utility that launches when you type ‘alt+space’ ( I set mine to ctrl+space), and then you just start typing the name of the app or web address you want to launch. The app makes it possible to use a lot more of Windows XP without using a mouse. A few of the mondern operating systems have something simular, but if you are still on Windows XP, you will love launchy as much as you love your keyboard. 
jEdit (text editor)
Since being a developer these days means writing scripting languages on linux, windows, and mac os you will need a great text editor that works in all three. jEdit is great because it runs in java, and thus works on windows, linux (ubuntu), and mac osx. It’s lighter weight than using eclipse and supports 30+ languages with syntax highligting. jEdit also has an easy to use plugin interface kinda like Firefox, that manages plugin installs, and plugin updates. When I set up jEdit, I usually set the tab ( buffer )controls up to be the same as they are in Firefox.
Firefox 3.5 (development browser)
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/firefox.html
Firefox 3.5 is a huge speed improvement over 3.0, and it now supports all of your favorite dev plugins. One of these days, I will have to see if I can configure different FF Profiles to load different plugin sets. Maybe I would have one profile for speed, one for dev, and maybe one for demos.
Google Chrome (performance browser)
Google Chrome is the fastest web browser, not just because the browser renders javascript at blazing speeds, but because the browser has several other optimizations in the user interface to make it light, powerful and fast. You can even use chrome with a choice of themes now, and change the default search engine to something other than Google’s, but who would want to use that? I use chrome whenever I don’t need all of the dev plugins loaded in FF.
Steam ( game app store )
http://store.steampowered.com/
I know a lot of you like the Apple app store, but for those of us that game, Steam is the best place to buy, download, and manage the updates for all of your video game needs. Steam, produced by Valve Software, allows you to buy a game through there small desktop client and then it will download it on your idle bandwidth, and update your games in the background. You basically never have to worrry about keeping your games or drivers uptodate again. I now hate it when I have to buy a game any other way. Oh, yeah the best part, no more annoying CD checks for games that you paid for. I love this service so much, I have rebought games just so I don’t have to manage them or deal with CD cracks any more. You can even gift games to your friends.
Startupweekend Micropost
At LA startupweekend I built with one other team member http://loc.is
a geolinking service that computes a geohash for gps coordinates or a
street address. The resulting geolink will provide a map, and some
other interesting information when a user clicks the link.
It's kinda a little cobbled together, but by dec.3rd it should be working well.
What would you want on the landing page?
Federated Twitter bots
Just a quick thought.
I wonder if all of the the twitter bots are a result of people trying to gain free api access to twitter. Normal rules allow a certain number of requests per minute or or something. However if yo were to have 1,000 accounts, you could perform 1,000x that number of requests and searches per hour.
I bet if twitter looked for accounts that were performing high volumes of API requests, they would find accounts that were most likely linked to bots.
I am not yet sure if it is worth it for twitter to remove these accounts or if they are oddly good for the ecosystem.