HandyTools

May be Apple decided it was indeed time to put Palm out of misery!

2007-09-10T02:01:00.000-07:00

I am impressed. Really, really impressed with Apples new breed of OS X products line up.

In my personal perspective I LOVE this! If you think of Palm or Treo I had been fallen in love with years back, I think this was something Palm originally had done way back in they released Treo 650.

They had the OS, the user base, the touch screen, the apps base that's none exist for Apple until today. Palm got it all missed not by chance but to their total ignorance, So it's no surprise Apple decided it was indeed time to put Palm out of misery!

Soon all loyal Treo users like me will make the switch unless Palm put out something solid within, which is very unlikely since they ain't got settled into a Palm OS successor as yet.

Anyway I am happy to ride on the new Apple iPhone waves as soon as it gets worldwide.

Apple's new calling - iPhone

2007-01-10T23:59:00.000-08:00

Until yesterday, as Jonathan says in his post. I'm getting that nagging feeling again! I would too say that I was fully satisfied with my newly brought Treo 680, and in fact that it still holds true in many ways. It does just about everything I throw at it. and I love it. That said, even after 7 years of being a loyal Palm OS user, I find myself wondering in this morning, shaking more and more about something that doesn’t run Palm OS or Windows which are essentially a part of my life. Palm, Microsoft releases every darn kind of products all over the year but I have never been so overwhelmed by any other hi-tech product release. Not even with the original Treo, not even with the iPod.

The display is awesome

Listen Palm. I’m already sold. Though I’m loyal to Palm, but in many occasions I have felt that Palm isn’t treating me right as Apple does with iPod experiences. I have lived the iPod generation for two years now I am yet to get a trouble either in my iPod or in iTunes which it syncs with. In contrast since the initial Treo 650 release with problems all over, whining Palm TX which my girl has, buggy slow LifeDrive my brother brought, and my early Sony CLIE with problems that I don’t recall now.

The Interface is the Industry Best

The point is, you get a Treo expecting bliss, instead you get a hiss in your earpiece. You're thinking Palm should fix it soon.''Not the case here. Palm take ages even to acknowledge that there’s a problem at all and washes it's hands of responsibility and tells you to deal with your own ROM updates and third party developers (like VolumeCare) which figures out by some geek while Palm lies in it’s laurels. Palm never learns, even with new Treo 680 there’s a network time sync issue which circular around public forums but Palm hasn’t even acknowledge that yet. I lived it all and still I never really thought anything else as impressive as the Palm device I’m holding, until now.

Desktop scale browser in your fingertips

So suddenly, for me iPhone kills many birds in one shot. Being in Asia I’m away from holding this beauty in my hand anytime soon, not a happy feeling though good that I can save some money for the big day. Got a number of months to follow this up and close, let Apple fix whatever the shortcomings with it. No offend Dear Mr. Ed Colligan. I guess here you are wrong this time around. I work for a software company and do consider as a promoter and power user of Treo. In the next January my money surely will go to Steve Job & Co. if unless you release a 320X480/ Wifi Treo by then. If Treonauts can figure out how to make officially unsupported FAT32, SDHD, WIFI supported on their beloved Treo 650s. The iPodians will make theirs what they want in no time. The iPhone accessory market will be in prime time with all sort of QWERTY, BT keyboards, devices for what iPhone isn’t. Don’t forget Steve hinted that this beauty can handled the native Mac OS beast apps as well. I can assure it seeing the fluid motion the iPhone works, this will change the mobile industry. Smartphone segment in no time.

The flid motion is intuitive and really realistic

The business case for it, the TIME Magazine here outlines pretty well. Good reading.

Any destop widgets at your disposal

As TIME says, either it’s Nokia basic or Palm Treo 680 our phones are broken and Steve Jobs & Co. seems to fix it. “When our tools don't work, we tend to blame ourselves, for being too stupid or not reading the manual or having too-fat fingers. "I think there's almost a belligerence—people are frustrated with their manufactured environment," says Ive. "We tend to assume the problem is with us, and not with the products we're trying to use." In other words, when our tools are broken, we feel broken. And when somebody fixes one, we feel a tiny bit more whole.” Exactly!

Flying colours - Treo 680 is comming...

2006-11-22T20:14:00.000-08:00

Finishing the long wait Palm has now decided to sell the new version of GSM Treos finally, Treo 680.

I really don’t know whether I should or shouldn’t upgrade. Well in fact it can’t say as a real UPGRADE to my Treo 650 since the new one doesn’t leap forward from the latter in any of my interested aspects.

I just like the antenna-lessness to be owned though it will be tough sell people like me. Rightly this time Palm has targeted a different kind a audience this time it seems. Will see how this goes

Wow..! Leave your iPods in the dust - mPod for Treo

2006-04-20T00:34:00.000-07:00

This is absolutely been worth all of waiting after I got addicted to the beloved iPod. This is exactly what I've been wanting my Treo to become after consumed by the iPod experience. An iPod like UI for the Treo Music Library.

Carrying my Treo with PocketTunes music library did never make me as happy as I am dangling my iPod around my neck. Simply because iPod’s far superior music playing interface and the Apple iTunes connectivity.

First things first, I don't want this tiny software developer die soon when mammoth Apple finds out this and will file a case on them for iPod interface infringement if Apple has patented (?) it already. So you better keep your lawyers ready.

For the moment I am the happiest dude on the planet :-) Wow! It’s just like playing with the iPod.

Though still in beta, more or less mPod is feature complete. Few additions I would like to ask form the developer are:

1. A some sort of EQ menu as on iPods
2. A port (desktop conduit) so USB connected SD cards will behave like iPods to my iTunes library.
2. It's nice if we can adjust the height of the menu and font sizes/ types, taller for fat fingers and smaller for more of a song list.
3. Can we make the menus click-able by the styles and use the click wheel at the same moment?
4. Why tips open up from the browser, make it open like the notes on the iPods.
6. Of cos the playability of other music formats than MP3

And a thousand kudos for the star developer, MotionApps for this wonderful piece of work!

Updated: Well, with the first public release they have change the name to mOcean insted of mPod and added the iTunes sync support as I have asked it for, cool.

The Best Part of the Treo Keyboard - CoLauncher

2006-03-17T01:13:00.000-08:00

As the best part of the industrial design of Palm’s Treo 650 it has the best full function keyboard for a mobile. SMS is a snap. No more T9. So I have been totally addicted to this keyboard’s easy of use.

I’ve got more over hundred Palm apps on my Treo and it made me to find an easy way to launch say the app X with the minimum effort. I new if I can assign apps for various keys on the keyboard this can easily be achieved. After few days of search I guess I found the the best companion to the Treo Keyboard. CoLauncher. It can be found here.

This is by far the best Key Launcher for Treo. Works likes a charm. Forget about the Favourite button assignments on Treo which only can be activated while you are on the Phone application. The best part of the fun comes when you can configure Colauncher to use Treo’s Option+(any key) and Shift+(Any Key) combinations apart from the A-Z keys. This makes CoLancher can launch (or other function assigned) separate apps for Capitol (A) simple (a) and 1–9 number combinations.

THIS IS SO COOL!

The Jewel of the crown.

2006-02-02T22:24:00.000-08:00

FORTUNE magazine says Treo is still by far the best converged mobile on the earth even after a year and half elapsed since its debut.

I know it best since I carry one in my hand.

It's a PDA, Phone, MP3 Player, Browser, Podcast streamer, GamePad, Alarm Clock and (TV tuner If you are in the US) plus a software power house that can do pretty much the same things I normally get done on my Windows desktop.

And now welcome the same embedded Treo 700w with true Windows Mobile® OS and soon the upcoming Treo 800p with Palm OS. I am sure with these additions Treo will still be the best trend setter technology for years to come.

Call it the Golden Age of Convergence. No wonder I am so happy to be a Treonaut at this very minute.

Be wowed! Treo, Bluetooth/ TCP-IP and Sailing Clicker Connection

2006-01-09T04:49:00.000-08:00

I always seem to be get impressed by the capabilities of the Treo Smartphone.

This time it is a when I see the possibility of using it as a bluetooth remote controller for my desktop PC. The set up is simply flawless. Make the bluetooth connection, install the Sailing Clicker Desktop and the Treo clients and you are well set to go.

See how this full blown iTunes desktop interface can be brought into Treo screen, Controlling iTunes remotely within the radius of the bluetooth connection.

Controlling media players like iTunes, Winamp or Windows Media Player is a snap with the ready made scripts that comes with the software. Browsing my iTunes library with nearly 3000 songs, select, play, pause songs and control volume all can be done through the easy iPod like interface which runs on your Treo when connected. It’s more or less sort of a Remote Desktop experience.

Or you can control the mouse pointer taking the full control of your desktop PC form a comfortable sofa to run a movie, or in a office environment a PowerPoint presentation.

Wow! I can’t keep from imagining what’s next to come, surely the desktop interface can be brought on to Treo screen in the next incarnation. Wonderful thing is the Treo and the PC can be paired either through bluetooth or TCP/IP over GPRS or EDGE connection which I didn’t try though.

Application Availability - Palm OS Platform

2005-08-09T01:54:00.000-07:00

It's been nearly four years since I got use to the Palm® OS. And to my knowledge there are nearly 16,000 applications made available to Palm OS to date.

So in this vast pool of software you'll virtually find everything you want in your day to day use. I have gathered the following list upto date. Unfortunately there were few that I had to leave being since I upgraded to Treo 650 from my good old SONY CLIE which do not support the new Palm OS 5 and particularly my Treo since it's being a smartphone.

What’s on my Treo 650

Nonetheless the list is still awesome. Check out whether you have found your favourites there?

Dreaded but a must - Treo Custom ROM Tool

2005-08-05T03:53:00.000-07:00

Only if you do speak the language, then the Custom ROM may sounds familiar. Technically speaking, one of the most powerful but the dreaded feature of the Palm OS.

It used to be a thing in the past. Tools like JackFlash might have gone to extinction. Because none of the recent SONY CLIE or PalmOne devices had the ROM update capability for a casual user. Things did changed when they released my lovely Treo 650 and it’s updates.

A smart guy comes as Shadowmite figured how they do it in the Treo factory and shared the knowledge. So we can all do it in house. The story is a long one. He even created this Custom ROM Tool so everyone can easily add/ remove programs to/ from their beloved Treo and build their own ROMs just as the factory fitted way.

Last week I myself took the plunge with his Custom ROM Tool and made my own ROM and updated my newly brought Treo. Whoa! Now it still runs Palm OS plus my favourite applications without installing any, even after a hard reset! Still better all the apps like VesaMail, RealPlayer which I do not use are gone without residing in the device just eating up the memory.

You know, the closest thing to this is, it may sound like your are installing Windows® OS to your PC without MSN garbage but with all your favourite applications in one pass. But the thing is, no matter how controllable we are with our PC installations, you can’t do that. You install Windows and then only configure the way you need it. Still a virus can play havoc with your system and you are still back in square one. With the help of Shadowmite’s Custom ROM Tool, you just have to press that pin in the back, hard reset, sync, all two mins, bingo! you are back on track with all your configuration being intact.

The best thing is forget the PC, can you even imaging doing this to a new generation of NOKIA or any other mobile phone and have them customised the way you want it without just living with what the manufacturer throws at you!

I guess this is one of the best things after the sliced bread and really a turning point in modern mobile technology and gadgets.

The term Custom ROM derives from the ability to include whatever the software applications you want on your device, remove whatever you don’t use and build your own device. Just as the factory fitted way. Cool but the process ain’t for the faint hearted. You shouldn’t remove anything that is hardware bound. Should something go wrong, your most precious tool will render just being a paper weight. Hugh!

Here is the link for Shadowmite’s resources.

Digital Nirvana - Treo 650

2005-06-20T22:40:00.000-07:00

With merely just over two days of use I realized my lovely new Treo is more than what I bargained for. Cool!

With the exuberant exotic number of software titles from basic memo to barcode reader utilities available for Palm OS, such a compact device which is combined more processor power than my early old Celeron 300MHz Windows PC. It is truly an engineering feat.

Here's that best extracted from my Treo experience!

SMS has come to age! Email too!

SMS Chat Just like Yahoo! Chat.

MP3s,WMA and OGG playback is a whisk just like in Winamp.

Or if you prefer iTunes flavour instead.

Full length movies MPEG4, AVI or 3GP and H.263(HDTV) at your disposal.

(OK I agree it’s a shame to play DVDs in this tiny screen)
Still I can hype and wow my friends regardless. The screen’s physical size (4.5X4.5cm) is roughly the size of these images appear in a Windows 96DPI monitor but has double the resolution (320X320) where as these images are 160X160. So it is one of the crispiest, if not the best, LCD screens you can find these days.

Famous Palm PIM applications and a thousand add-ons.

Palm OS applications glore!

(With of cause additional Treo only utilities for a mobile.)

See the things that I can do with that tiny little blinking LED!

Basic but always ready digital still/ video camera, audio recorder and imaging apps.

Upto 2GB(yet) tiny-winy SD storage cards.

Tiny but very usable full function keyboard.

With full keyboard 70 combinations. QuickLaunch an application or number is snap.

Hot swappable battery just like any other mobile phone. But to your knowledge until this day Palm OS needed continuous flow of power to retain its memory, even on general computers as you know it, unless you save and shutdown after what you do. Palm users know a Palm OS is just like your ordinary TV set that you never have to wait until it boots-up or save anything. You always can pick up from where you left off. Plus, if you may, now you don't even have to HOTSYNC it. Its called some geek NVFS (None-Volatile File System) which retains wahtever you do even the power goes off. I am sure Windows will be made this way someday.

GPRS/EDGE enabled quad band global GSM phone plus a PDA. No more carrying two devices and their chargers and connectors along with you. Single beautiful solid unit. More over you can switch the GSM Radio ON/OFF regardless the PDA so it can easily be used in flights or near sensitive electronics.

So I am having fun with may new Handspring PalmOne Treo 650
Wow! Just as its long name Treo looks like the ultimate digital Nirvana I've been waiting for.

Excited? Want to have one? Yeah, I was once too :-)

Converged Digital Age - Windows XP

2005-06-15T02:41:00.000-07:00

There was a time that everybody seems to hate Bill Gates and blame Windows for every darn problem with PCs. But I thinks it is his and his company's success that everyone was envy at.

Being somewhat in the software trade I know how difficult it is to make programs work perfect. A product has various life cycles in real world before its coming to age. So was Windows. Nobody can blame it.

Specially a computer operating system like Windows which is supposed to support all the universal peripherals, you always got something to fix one over the another. Then the Internet came in and with the wonderful wired world it made this task a rather daunting one.

I was once upon a time a Mac fan though now a complete Windows junkie obviously due to the vast pool of software titles available to the Windows world. I grew up and learned my my way of living out of self assembled cheap Wintel machines where my first company couldn't afford any Machinations or its pricey software titles even though our company was a design company.

We had had enough problems with Windows in from good old days. From 95 to 98. But main thing was for whatever the task at we found a particular piece of software to get the job done. It was more than what we bargained for as a start-up company.

So my company and I myself adopted Windows with its inherited fiasco.

Therefore when Microsoft released Windows 2000 it was the heaven we have been waiting for. Regular crashes, devices and connectivity problems suddenly seems to be a thing in the past. Windows 2000 had universal hardware support, better memory management, easier connectivity and a cleaner look than any of the previous Windows versions and it ran all the software titles written for the 9X and NOT world.

Then the Windows XP came in with ClearType Font Rendering Technology being its by far best feature for design oriented guy like me and to the on-line reading generation.

So now for me it looks like the end of the line. This is the heaven I expected to have when I first touched the Mac Classic and then the Windows 3.1 back in 80s. Now my iPod from Apple, Treo 6 50 from PalmOne with Windows my e-XP-erience complete now.

Wow! it feels wonderful to be in this converged digital age!

Modern Browser Wars - From Opera to Firefox

2005-05-24T22:47:00.000-07:00

From the begining of my Internet experience I had tried many varieties of browsers. From good old Netscape to all the variants IE, NetCaptor (Original tabbed browser I guess), AvantBrowser to pre Opera 7 versions were installed in my machine from time to time while IE was alongside.

Later with growing concerns of computer security, lack of standards, viruses, spam, scams (even my credit card was exposed one time), popups, exploits, crashes and the sheer slowness of Internet Explorer made me to look for a permanent alternative. After trying everything else on earth I finally settled with Opera which was the only viable alternative I could find at that time.

I don't know exactly when but probably it must have been in somewhere year 2001 I started using Opera, which was one of the pioneers to introduce the wonderful tabbed browsing experience to the masses.

Four years went by. Opera was a good browser. I was hooked with tabbed browsing. Its small single folder installation, fast page retrieval, popup blocking, not prone to browser hijacking were the features I liked. It was years ahead of IE which made me to use it and promote it to couple of other people too. But Opera wasn't without glitches. The default installation was daunting for a newbie. It has rendering issues with secure sites. None of the banking sites I use works well with Opera. So occasionally I had to switch back and forth to IE. Anyway my computer was happier without malware so I was also happy until recently.

And then came all the wonderful gMail and blogger.com like Internet rich applications from Google Inc. which I got virtually addicted overnight. Then problem again, NONE worked well with Opera so back to square one finding a better browser for my everyday use. IE was out of the question.

Surprisingly at the same time Mozilla Foundation released there infant beta version of Firebird (Now called famous Firefox) So I decided to give it a try. It had almost all the features of Opera and probably a better page rendering style. Honestly I liked it except the Firefox tabs behavior. Anyway using gMail and blogger.com was a snap. All my banking sites work fine with Firefox. So from last November I was again switching back and forth to Firefox and Opera instead of IE.

Suddenly I realised I no longer need multiple browsers. Firefox works fine with all the pages I throws at it as yet while Opera does not. It has proved me it's better than Opera in page rendering. So I was wondering why the hell I keep using the both which forces me to maintain two set of bookmarks.

May be I was sad to let go Opera. It is like letting go someone you closely knew. Anyway now if it's the time, so be it. From now onward I am gonna stick with Firefox. See the screenshot. It can easily be skinned like Opera (Originally Safari) so I can pretent I am using Opera if I want.

The browser wars now back on track again. IE too will come armed with tabbed browsing in version 7 soon. Netscape V8 is also already out though it is out for good.
Whoa! It's Wonderful Wild Web all over again!

Read more here:
Modern Browser Wars
A new Internet Explorer version is coming

The two cleaner duos - Registry and Crap Cleaner

2005-04-07T04:44:00.000-07:00

These are real gems. I never realized how much garbage a computer could gather even with a careful use.
Specially if you use IE for browsing and do a lot of unmonitored installs and uninstalls you'll obviously end up with so many unnecessary files and start up entries stacking up in your system.

These thousand of unnecessarily file includes of Temp Files, Log Files, Cached Files and History Files left by poorly written software which forget to clean them when they quit. Computers ever slower and slower is the bounty of this.

Solutions ?

Well, I found two. Meet the two Cleaner duos

CCleaner - (C stands for Crap Files)
It cleans up and cleanses almost all the unwanted physical files in your system which includes temp, cache, log and history files. For your knowledge it freed up nearly per60MB from my C drive when I first run it.

CCleaner

RegCleaner - (Reg stands for the Registry)

Deleted file paths, Application left overs by poor uninstallers everything leaves unnecessary entries and traces in the Windows Registry. Manual alteration of the registry is deadly. So fire up this beauty make it removed them all. It will mark all your unnecessary entries safer for deletion.
You can even define what registry entries should run at start up or in the New Files context menu.

Unfortunately the free version which I use is no longer available in the author’s site. You may still find it elsewhere if you do a Google search for “RegCleaner by Jouni Vuorio” which is only 541 Kb in size.

RegCleaner

Just clean code - Dreamwever

2005-03-21T20:10:00.000-08:00

I don't know how I started liking it. As for as I know it never had any killer features out of the box. It was a plain vanila HTML editor as I knew it since the version 2. Still worse that the initial learning curve was cumbersome when I first got introduced myself to Dreamweaver.

I start developing web pages with NetObjects Fusion which was much like a DTP publishing tool and easier to learn. Easy placing of elements gives more control to a designer than a untidy table structure or so I thought. In that opinion Dreamweaver was there, nothing fancy, no obsession to go for. But very soon I realised Dreamweaver was producing a much more cleaner HTML code than anything else in the market. It was the best code generator around at that time, may be even today.

I guess that itself provided me enough reasons to use it, It was painful to make pages with it at first. Anyway I managed that period and finally stick with it. Even today I haven't mastered it as such but I use it in every day basis. I make most of my living out of it.

Slowly it has become an indispensable partner for my work flow though I have literally taken it for granted from the beginning.

So I say it, It was a love hate affair though now I have made peace with Dreamweaver for my layouting tool.

Aldus Freehand - It truly was...

2005-03-20T22:15:00.000-08:00

Eons ago I started my career as a Sinhala Copy Writer and happened to be in one of Colombo's leading advertising firms. That's where I found most of the things which helped me to get the shape of my life everafter.

Aldus Freehand is one of the things I am still in love with, still using since. This is a nice wrap up of the program’s history which now owns by Macromedia Inc.

The Freehand Version 4 application icon

There were idle Macintoshes so I could play with Freehand. The version was 4 and then called Aldus Freehand. I watched our Graphics Designer was laying out his layouts and there were a plenty of time for me to do the catching up and do things on my own. My learning curve was quick. In two, three weeks I mastered it to a point where I could get our all work done. The actual preview of layouts is still not as cryspy as Adobe Illustrator but the learning curve may be easier for anyone who is intersted about DTP publishing.

I did a free learning. So I guess it gives a double meaning to Freehand. Later it was brought by Macromedia and still shines bright to this day.

Living with a slow DialUp - FlashGet

2005-03-10T19:15:00.000-08:00

There is a strange connection between all the software I am listing here. Which is at one point they have all being downloaded by FlashGet.

I have lived my best part of online life with slow dialups. The modems were saying 56Kbps but I have never saw a dial up actually reach anything more than 8kbps. Since this speed is slow and goes up and down, lines/downloads tend to drop frequently. You need a good download manager. Imagine you download a good part of a big file and if broken, you have to go and get it again. You can't remember the URL. It's complete waste of time and money. So I tested a series of download managers from those days (1997) but never came up with anything else as good as FlashGet. Some had come with spyware, some couldn't resume broken downloads, some takes up all your bandwidth but still slow and the rest had lousy interfaces.

From FlashGet version 0.96a or something it hasn't change much. When other companys' release patches for their software every other day, FlashGet was practically a solid product which I never had a problem with even if you use that early version right now.

Things I liked about FlashGet was
1. The sheer speed
2. Split downloading and resume
3. Retrieval of past downloaded URLs
4. Hung up or Shutdown when done
5. Checks if the file has been update
6. Clutter free interface
7. Tight integration with browser(IE)
8. Opera and now Firefox integration
9. Never had a corrupted file
10. That lovely blue, red and grey dotted resemblance of the file being downloading.

Pictures at Ease - FastStone Image Viewer

2005-03-03T18:54:00.000-08:00

What is the most used application in your computer. Most will say the browser. Yeah! Being a graphics person and a photo lover my second most used application is also happened to be a browser, an image browser.

I thought I've tried everything on earth but finally like most of the folks settled with ACDsee. It is nice but as I have mentioned here I hate blotted programs. ACDSee version 6 was a mess. Completely a crappy code took ages to load. V7 is good but they are heading the way of Adobe Photoshop. :-( So I was again in the look out for a bare bone Imave Viewer.

Then I found this beauty.

Welcome to FastStone Image Viewer

It is FREE. Only 2.5 MB in size.(Compressed) Supports all major graphics formats. It is easy to use for everyone from beginner to professional level, powerful and flexible enough just as ACDSee, even your collection grows by thousands daily. Other features include a full-screen image viewer with top thumbnail strip. And a lesser memory foot print which I adore.

Only thing which bugs me that I can't tell it where to store its Thumbnail Data Base and can’t run in multiple instances. You know I ain't like my Program Files folder being scattered with a ever growing huge image DB. I like the total control.

Anyway for an average user this is no brainer. Go, use it and give you PC a little more breathing boom.

http://www.faststone.org

Size Matters - Foxit PDF Reader

2005-02-22T00:22:00.000-08:00

Continued...

As I said in the last post I hate blotted big programs.

Adobe is famous for this kind of memory hogging applications. Adobe Acrobat 6 was another sheer winner of slowness. How long does yours take to load?

May be this is because of their Plugin Architecture just like in Photoshop. Sure, plugins are handy. But how many do you need just to read a PDF document?

I wonder why Adobe had to keep all its programs so big. Why all the plugins are enabled by default? Why at least Acrobat Reader can’t be small and fast? Version 6 was a pain and the new Adobe Reader 7 is still 19 MB in size. So, like Photoshop I gave up that too.

Insted I use a small program called Foxit PDF Reader. Highly recommended piece of work.

Total installation is below 1MB mark. It loads furiously fast and got all the features an average user ever need do with a PDF file. what are the things I missed when I am not using Adobe Reader. Nice graphics? functionality ? I recall none. It's only the Adobe name if I missed anything. Go figure here

I love Adobe and respect what they have brought to the industry as PDF.

But again I don’t use Acrobat.

Features galore but... - Adobe Photoshop

2005-02-21T22:47:00.000-08:00

As long as I can remember I was very particular about the size of the software I use. The bare bone size of the installation, the application and the heap exe allocation when it runs make all that matter to me to favour one app over the other.

I know we’ve got Ferrari speed breaking machines nowadys but I still get bugged if an application exe grows bigger than 2 MB limit. Remember the notion “Small is Beautiful” It sure is. For this argument some further reading can be found here

Welcome to Adobe Photoshop.

It’s truely a marvelous piece of work. It may be the Industry Standard. I respect and I have a fair for what its capabilities are. But its application exe size was 15MB when I last saw it. Installation is some 165MB. Oops!

So I don't use it.

I can give you hundreds of good examples that how can an application be developed in small, streamlined and effective manner. I did a search in my local machine and found nearly 120 odd various utilities smaller than 100 KB. Not bad. Assembly Language is one hech of a way to write these blistering applications.

I love and want to use Photoshop but still don’t because of this. It's too BIG, too SLOW to work on, features full but a simple selection is cumbersome. As a result I get all my graphics needs done elsewhere. No pain.

Words Breeze - IntelliComplete Pro

2005-02-18T03:00:00.000-08:00

Wow! This is a total surprise! I am thrilled!

I’ve been using CIC WordComplete in my Palm PDA for faster typing for years. Since I do these most of blog typing with my CLIE SJ33 I missed this WordComplete feature whenever I do my typing in the PC. Those days are over.

Look at the demo here.

Today by surprise when I was looking for something else I found this exact replica of WordComplete as IntelliComplete for PCs. Done by a company called FlashPeak. Thank you guys, from today onward don’t ask me that how I ever lived without this.

From DTP to Web Design - NetObjects Fusion 1998

2005-02-18T00:55:00.000-08:00

I was into web design in 1998.

All the design tools I've known were Aldus Freehand & Adobe Photoshop by then. They were purely for Desktop Publishing and offered nothing else. So designing for web? I was wondering where to start from. Even the term “Web Design” was not heard of. Graphics king Photoshop didn't know how to ''Save for Web'' in either JPEG or GIF standards properly. I've used to the Freehand's freedom and the precision for layouts. So HTML layouting was a daunting task. WYSIWYG editors were none or hard to come by. I call it the Dark Age. I could have almost given up my future career unless this sheer beauty came along.

Welcome to NetObjects Fusion. It has secured me a future and a way of life which I once dreamed. Bingo!

Though later I was switched to Dreamweaver for my design work, NetObjects Fusion was really a good tool for any new kid into the web design.

Purify your noisy images - PureImage

2005-02-16T04:05:00.000-08:00

Consumed and obsessed with Digital Cameras, then you’d probably need this. Specially if you take many shots in low light conditions, or else that your camera has a taste for noise and heavy image compression algorithms. It is messy that how noisy our images can get sometimes.

Well, meet PureImage. I’ve been looking for this baby for years and Mediachance has just released what I’ve been looking for in a light package. Just as the name says it will make your images much more purified, enhance colours and saves some disk space for you. Go give it a shot. Let the images speak for themselves.

Ones and zeros, bits and pieces of my digital lifestyle

2005-02-14T02:30:00.000-08:00

Years have elapsed since I started my love affair with computers, or I would rather say with the software which reside in those. I have grown up with these weird combinations of bits and pieces, ones and zeros that eventually forms a world of possibilities.

From Justin Frankel’s WinAmp to industry mammoth Adobe Photoshop have paved my way to a passion which I never figured that how far this rabbit hole would go.

Well, I ain’t complaining. Since it was a nice journey and I am still continuing. So this is gonna be a lovely appreciation for all those code writers, software makers who have made possible my life unimaginably joyous ride.

I have spent years, searching, finding, installing and learning those. So I may comment, give links, post reviews of those software which I found irresistible hoping that it would be helpful to someone, someway.

Enjoy!