I was reading an article on CenterNetworks the other day, and it got me thinking. The article was about Twitter using a service like TinyURL to shorten all links posted on Twitter. The point Allen made was that, by doing so, Twitter was completely at the mercy of TinyURL’s server, and, if the TinyURL site ever went down for any reason (or, God forbid disappeared entirely) Twitter would be up the creek without a paddle (paraphrasing there). He pointed out that Twitter really ought to develop a URL-shortening service of its own, rather than relying on TinyURL.

As I said, that got me thinking. Why hasn’t Twitter developed its own URL-shortening service? What’s so difficult about it?

(more…)

This post is a quick comparison between MySQL and Access databases. I will not spend my time reviewing either database management application (DBMA), nor will I really try to compare their “features” or “merits”. This is really just an informational post to point out some equivalencies and differences between the two.

I began delving into Access somewhat blindfolded. Here at work, we have a fairly bare-bones server, running VBScript—not VB.Net— with only Access databases—not MS SQL Server.

(more…)

Because none of these utilities are open-source, I’m not going to bother writing entire reviews of each proggie. However, I did want to offer up my stamp of approval for each one.

The applications I’m going to recommend in this post range from media applications to Web development apps to general miscellaneous utilities.

(more…)

I’ve decided to add another installment to my reviews/recommendations of free, open-source software. Quite honestly, I had forgot that TrueCrypt was an open-source utility, otherwise I’d have reviewed it earlier. I only use it at work currently, since I’ve no reason to encrypt my files at home, so I’d basically forgot about it altogether.

TrueCrypt is an absolutely amazing encryption utility that can be used on flash drives, partitions and entire hard disks. TrueCrypt essentially reformats your storage volume in an encrypted format that can only be decrypted using the appropriate password. Once the password is entered, the volume is mounted on your computer the same as any other disk or disk drive.

(more…)

I was reading the blog of an old college buddy a few weeks ago and happened across a pretty remarkable post. Jon figured out how to get Windows XP and Windows 2000 running side-by-side on his Mac OS. With XP and Win2K running on his Macintosh (note, they’re actually running through MacOS, not running through a dual-boot setup), he is able to simultaneously test his Web sites in all of the major Windows browsers as well as the MacOS browsers.

You can read his post here.

Now, if only we could get a Mac emulator running on Windows, I’d be all set.

As the final installment of my reviews/recommendations of open-sourced freeware, I will review the granddaddy of them all (with the exception, possibly, of the umbrella that contains all of the various builds of the Linux operating system): Mozilla Firefox.

Mozilla Firefox is a lightweight, standards-compliant (for the most part) Web browser developed by the Mozilla Corporation. The codebase/engine behind Firefox is the same engine used in the Mozilla/Seamonkey Web browser, Netscape Navigator and a host of other Web browsers.

Although Internet Explorer users still outnumber Firefox users nearly three-to-one, Mozilla is by far the most popular alternative browser on the market. It is not necessarily the best browser out there, but it is the most popular browser among technologically-savvy Internet users.

(more…)

OpenOffice.org (OOo) is an amazing suite of open-source, freeware applications. OOo is not quite ready to overtake Microsoft Office, but it is certainly nice to be able to use those types of tools on all operating systems without having to run complicated emulators and pay extravagant licensing fees.

(more…)

Bluefish Editor is one of my favorite pieces of open-sourced freeware out there. It is, by far, my absolute favorite code editor. It’s simple, lightweight and powerful. It has all of the features I want in an editor and none of the features I don’t want. It’s almost as though it was developed specifically for me.

Bluefish is a code editor for people that actually write their code. It is not a WYSIWYG editor, nor do I ever see it becoming one. It is a plain text editor with a lot of features for coders. The developers like to call it a “What You See Is What You Need” interface. Honestly, I couldn’t have said it better, myself.

Unfortunately, Bluefish is currently only available for POSIX-based platforms (which apparently includes basically everything except for Windows). The developers have been working on a Windows port of the editor for a few years now, but no release has been made as of yet.

(more…)

Filezilla is another extremely popular, full-featured application available in the open-sourced freeware market.

Filezilla is an amazing FTP client available for all three platforms. Having used many different programs on Linux and Windows to handle my FTP needs, I can honestly say that Filezilla offers almost everything those apps offer, and more. There is only one application I’ve ever used that offers more functionality than Filezilla. That application is GlobalScape’s CuteFTP. The only thing CuteFTP really does better than Filezilla is handle broken downloads and background processes (CuteFTP will continue processing the queue in the background even after you close the program).

None of the other applications I’ve used, including Internet Explorer, Konqueror, WSFTP and many more, offer the functionality and ease-of-use that Filezilla offers.

(more…)

This is part three in my series of open-sourced freeware reviews. This time, I will be reviewing one of the most well-known, popular open-source applications out there. The GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a fantastic program for those dabbling in image manipulation and photo editing.

The GIMP, like Audacity, is available for all three OS platforms. GIMP can be installed on Unix/Linux systems, Mac systems and Windows-based systems.

GIMP can be downloaded from the main GIMP Web site (among many other places), and comes packaged with most major builds of Linux.

(more…)