Software I use

Both as a computer technician and as a user of computers, I tend to use a lot of software. Some of the software I've tried works very well, and some of it...decidedly does not.

On this page, I'm going to set down a list of the software I use regularly, in a number of different usage categories. I'm also going to classify the software I use as one of the following:

Commercial Software you have to pay for. Buy it in a store, or online.
Shareware Software you can try for free, but you should pay for it if you continue to use it. Usually only available online
Freeware Similar to shareware, but you can try it for free, and continue to use it for free. No payment required.
Open Source Free to use, and if you're a programmer you can get the source code and modify it — or join the programming team and submit your modifications for everyone to use.

Categories
Operating Systems
 		Web Browser
 Anti-Virus
Office Applications
 Email
 Anti-Spyware
Graphics
 Instant Messaging Utilities
Audio
 FTP
 Disk Utilities
Software Development
 Web Design

Communications /
Terminal Emulation



Android Phone Applications

Operating Systems

Okay, this is a trick question. I only use Microsoft Windows. I've given several varieties of Linux a try, but Linux is simply too convoluted for me to figure out in the amount of time I have for it. The fact is that I've grown up with MS-DOS and Windows computers, and I have a great deal of knowledge amassed over the years on how those systems work. Trying to duplicate that with a different system in a short amount of time hasn't worked for me. Macs? Similar problem — they're easy to use, but learning what goes on under the hood is another matter entirely. Plus, the hardware tends to be more expensive, so I haven't bought one to familiarize myself.

So, of the varieties of Windows out there, what are my favorites?

  1. XP Professional
  2. Windows 7
  3. XP Home Edition
  4. Vista Home Premium
  5. Windows 98
I definitely prefer XP over Vista — the latter is much larger and slower than XP, and places high demands on system memory. Do not even consider getting a computer with Vista unless it has at least 2GB of RAM, and the more the better. As for XP Pro versus XP Home, that's more of a tossup. I rate XP Pro slightly ahead because of Home's limitation of 5 concurrent network connections at a time — in an office networking situation, this can be a big bottleneck, but for home use it'll be fine.

I don't have experience with any versions of Vista other than Home Premium (which came on the laptop I used for calling from 2007 to early 2010). My experience with that has been mixed — it works fine most of the time, but sometimes loses track of some of the computers on my home network, and occasionally can't figure out whether it's connected to the Internet or not. It can be frustrating trying to figure out where Microsoft has moved some of the configuration options between XP and Vista, but other than that I've had no performance issues since I added 2GB of RAM to the laptop.

There's another version of Windows XP that I haven't had much hands-on experience with: Media Center Edition. My understanding is that this is XP Pro with some additional software for video/DVD/TV viewing and recording.

Windows 98 is old, but on an old computer it can still do a decent job. Just don't try to run today's software on a 9-year-old computer — it may run, but it'll run very slowly. If you must use an old computer, use the software that was new when the computer was new.

I built a new computer to use with Windows 7 in October of 2009, and have been using it as my main computer since December of that year. My impressions so far are that Windows 7 is a definite improvement over Vista. There are differences between it and Windows XP, but overall I'm comfortable using it as my main system and recommending it for others. I would not recommend trying to upgrade a Windows XP computer to Windows 7 — first, because the Windows 7 Upgrade is only designed to upgrade a Vista machine, and second because most hardware contemporary with XP really isn't going to run Vista or Win7 well. (Win7 will do better than Vista, but it's still a larger operating system than XP.)

My main system is using the 64-bit version of Windows 7 Ultimate. I've noticed some problems with some of the older software I use (mainly Quattro Pro v8) which might be due to running them on a 64-bit OS rather than 32-bit, but nothing that renders it unusable. Most new computers are going to be coming with the 64-bit version installed, and modern software will be expected to run without problems in that configuration.

Update to that last paragraph: December, 2010. Experimentation shows that the problems I've had with Quattro Pro 8 on my main machine don't exist on a test machine with Windows 7 64-bit running on an Intel Core2 Duo processor. So, it may be that the problem is due to some interaction with the AMD Phenom II X4 processor on my main machine. In the past, I've had NO problems with AMD processors, but this may prompt me to use an Intel processor in my next main machine in a year or two...

Office Applications

Spreadsheets Corel Quattro Pro 8 (Commercial)
Word Processing Microsoft Word 2000 (Commercial)
Honorable Mention OpenOffice.org 3.3 (Open-Source)
LibreOffice 3.3 (Open-Source, fork of OOo)
You'll notice that I"m using some pretty old applications here. I've been using them for a long time, and they do the job for me. I've never been one to upgrade just for the sake of upgrading, and there aren't really any must-have features in the new versions.

I've been using Quattro Pro since it was a Borland product in the days of MS-DOS. I have my accounting system set up in Quattro Pro spreadsheets, and converting to something else would be a time-intensive effort due to the differences between QPro's macro language and that used by either Excel or OpenOffice. I have a couple of newer versions of QPro as well, but v8 seems to work the best of any of them.

I've been using Word since it was a $395 DOS program that Microsoft sold for $50 at an academic discount in the UCDavis bookstore. I upgraded as far as the 2000 version, and stopped there — 2003 didn't offer enough new features to justify upgrading, and I haven't seen a need for 2007 yet. (Especially with the radical user interface change introduced with the 2007 version.)

I've looked at OpenOffice, and found it to be a very capable system. The word processor is nearly as good as Word 2000 — the only thing I've found lacking in it so far is the mail merge function. The spreadsheet is capable, but won't import Quattro Pro v8 spreadsheets (let alone macros). If I were starting out fresh, this would probably be all I'd need. In fact, I used it as my primary word processing program from the time I built my new main computer in October 2009 until early 2010, when I switched to its offshoot LibreOffice. Recommended.

Graphics

Vector graphics CorelDRAW! (Commercial)
Bitmap graphics The GIMP (Open Source)
What's the difference? Mainly, vector graphics are stored as a mathematical representation of the elements in the drawing — curves, boxes, text, lines — and can be resized and moved around without losing any detail. Bitmap graphics exist as dots on a canvas, and moving things around can get problematic; resizing generally means either loss of detail (when making things smaller) or loss of focus/blurriness/blockiness (when making things larger). Each type of program has its areas where it excels — I use CorelDraw for making fliers and anything where I have to lay out and resize text, while I use The GIMP for editing photos and creating/editing graphics on the web. Sometimes I use them together — for example, the logo in my navigation bar to your left was created in CorelDraw, exported to a bitmapped graphics file (PNG, or Portable Network Graphics), and then edited in The GIMP to add transparency and to shrink it down to the exact size I needed.

There is an open-source vector graphics program called Inkscape also available. I have it on my laptop and have used it for a few things.  It seems to work well, but its CorelDraw import feature doesn't bring in text.  Since I have a LOT of CorelDraw drawings, most of which include varying amounts of text, Corel remains my primary choice.

Anti-Virus

For home use Alwil Avast! (Commercial/Freeware)
Microsoft Security Essentials (Freeware)
Sunbelt Vipre (Commercial)
For business use Eset NOD32 (Commercial)
Sunbelt Vipre (Commercial)
The major players in the antivirus category, McAfee and Norton, are NOT recommended by me. They are large and slow and have a tremendous effect on the speed of any computer they're installed on; in the case of McAfee, the user interface tends to be complex and slow to respond as well. I'm told that the 2009 and later versions of Norton are better than it has been in years, almost on a par with 2003 when I used to recommend it. However, I've been so disappointed in Norton since 2004 that it'll take a few years of good reports before I would ever consider recommending it again.

If your computer is a home computer and is not used for any business purposes, there's no reason for you to pay for an antivirus program at all. There are several perfectly good ones out there that are free for home use. I recommended the free version of AVG for a number of years, but I'm currently giving Avast! the nod over AVG due to the latter's new version being bigger and slower. Registering Avast used to be a little complicated, as you had to go to a web page to fill out a form and then receive a key by email. Now, all of that is done within the program, so it's easy enough for anyone to do it.

Microsoft has also made a foray into the realm of free antivirus products. Their Security Essentials offering is pretty good for newer computers, and can be used either by individuals at home or by organizations with 10 computers or fewer. (For older computers, I still recommend Avast, because it's smaller and faster, which is important on older hardware.)

For business use, I had been recommending (and personally using) AVG since 2004. After version 8 came out, though, I had to rethink that — it's not as bad as Norton, but it's still a lot bigger and slower than it used to be, and the LinkScanner and WebShield features in the new version can cause problems. (When I install AVG, either commercial or free, I always use a Custom Install and deselect those options.) Version 8.5 came out later that year and was a bit better, but not significantly so. Therefore, I started researching again, as I did when Norton AV 2004 became such a disappointment, and found NOD32. It's highly regarded, small, lean and fast.

I'm currently using an antivirus/antispyware program called Vipre, from Sunbelt Software (who have made a highly-regarded antispyware program called CounterSpy for a number of years). I've been evaluating Vipre since August 2009 and have overall been impressed by it, but have hesitated to recommend it because it had not received any prestigious certifications or review scores. However, it recently received the Virus Bulletin's VB100 certification on its first attempt. Between that and my positive experiences, I'm now going to begin recommending it. Additionally, for $49.95 you can get a license to use it on every computer in your household, no matter how many — very economical!

NOTE: I recommend getting JUST the antivirus program from any of these companies, and not the full-fledged "internet security suite." The antispyware and antispam components of the suites are generally not as good as standalone programs, and you can cause numerous problems on your computer with a software firewall if you don't know exactly what you're doing. I generally recommend sticking with the firewall built into Windows, and supplementing it with a home router if you have a DSL or cable internet connection — the router will act as a firewall and block any incoming probes unless you specifically configure it to allow certain ones through.

Anti-Spyware

Most of the most effective programs in this category are either free or free for home use. Currently, MalwareBytes seems to be the most effective at removing the toughest infestations, and SUPER AntiSpyware is pretty close behind.

Spybot and Ad-Aware are the venerable longstanding entries in the field, but they have been somewhat outdistanced by the others over the last year or so. And, there are some other tools available for removing things that even MalwareBytes and SUPER have trouble with, but they're generally things that only an expert should be using except under strict supervision.

The programs listed above are BOTH commercial and freeware. The free version is generally an on-demand scanner only — you have to tell it when to run, and tell it to remove what it finds when it scans. To get automatic protection, you have to pay for the commercial product.

Web Browser

Hands-down the best web browser I've used. I've tried most of the other ones out there — including, of course, Microsoft's Internet Explorer — but it all comes down to one thing: I can make Firefox work the way I want it to much more easily than the others. It can be modified by the use of small programs called extensions which change the way that Firefox works. The ones I use most often are
AdBlock Plus Removes most of the annoying multimedia/Flash ads that pop up on web pages
DownloadStatusbar Shows the status of any files I'm downloading on the browser's status bar, rather than in a separate pop-up window
FEBE A backup program for saving your Firefox bookmarks, configuration and extensions in case of disaster
FlashGot Makes selecting multiple download links at a time easier, and allows downloading and saving flash video files (i.e., YouTube)
IEView For the occasional page that won't work in Firefox — right-click it and choose "View in IE" to open it in Internet Explorer
Linky Does for regular links what FlashGot does for downloads — select a bunch of links, right-click, "Open in tabs" and bang — you've got each link opened in a new tab.
TabUtilities Lets you customize how Firefox reacts when you click or double-click on a tab, and how tabs are displayed.  (This replaces TabClickingOptions, which I used to use but was never updated for newer Firefox versions.)
XMarks Lets you synchronize your bookmarks among multiple computers.
I also have several other extensions that I use which are geared toward web page development. I won't list those here, just the ones of more general interest.

There are, of course, other browsers available. I've tried most of the ones that run on Windows — Opera, Safari, Google Chrome — but I keep coming back to Firefox. The only one that gives FF a run for its money is Chrome, because it starts up so fast. However, every time I use it, I keep running into little ways in which I like Firefox better.

Email

Pegasus Mail (Freeware)
Mozilla Thunderbird (Open-Source)
An email "client" is what you generally think of as an "email program" — it downloads your mail from the server for you and displays it. Optionally, it might do some spam checking and weed out messages that it thinks are spam. An email "checker," on the other hand, is a program which lives in your computer's system tray and notifies you when your server has mail waiting for you to download — you can then either preview it in the checker (and delete the ones you don't want coming in to your computer) or fire up your email client and download the mail.

I've been using Pegasus Mail almost since I first got an Internet account. It's a free program from New Zealand, and it was among the first programs to have the ability to filter incoming mail into different folders based on the source or content of the mail — very useful when you subscribe to Internet email lists. It has a very good trainable spam filter — meaning that you show it what messages you think are spam and what you think aren't, and it uses that to learn to classify incoming messages to your preference.

The downside to Pegasus is that setting it up tends to be a bit complicated, so I don't recommend it for casual users. Most people will be very happy with Thunderbird — it has many of the features of Pegasus (including a trainable spam filter), but is easier to configure.

An email checker is a convenience, not a necessity. I used to use MailWasher and then PopTray for this purpose.  Over the last couple of years, though, I've stopped using a separate checker entirely.  Instead, I've set up Pegasus Mail to access my email accounts through the IMAP protocol (which leaves the mail on the server until I specifically move it to my computer) and leave it running minimized in the background.  It checks for new mail every 10 minutes and will notify me when there is any waiting to be read -- just like the separate email checkers I used to use.  I do the same thing with the email client on my cell phone, an Android-based LG Phoenix.

Instant Messaging

Pidgin (formerly GAIM) is an open-source IM program that will connect to multiple messaging networks. I use it with AIM, ICQ and Yahoo, but it'll connect to a bunch of others as well. Much better than having 3-4 different IM programs running at once!

FTP

FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is one of the major ways of moving files between your computer and servers on the Internet — for example, I use it to transfer the files representing my web pages from my computer (where I create them) to my ISP's web server (www.pacificsites.com). While there are other FTP clients available, FileZilla is solid, functional, easy to use — and free.

Communications / Terminal Emulation

This is the type of program you'd use to log into a shell account on one of your ISP's servers, either by Telnet or SSH. If you don't know what that means, then you probably don't need it! For those who do, PuTTY doesn't have a lot of bells and whistles, but it has all the major features, including support for creating SSH tunnels. And, it's free.

Audio

Editing Audacity (Open-Source)
LAME (Open-Source)
CD Ripping
 fre:ac (Open-Source)
Playback WinAmp (Freeware)
PaceMaker (Shareware)
VLC Media Player (Open-Source)
Girder (Commercial/Shareware)
As a square dance caller, I work with audio files a lot. I use Audacity to convert tape or phonographic music sources to sound files on my computer, and to clean up those sound files (reduce background noise, eliminate pops and clicks) and change the pitch and tempo. The LAME encoder is a plug-in used by Audacity and other programs in order to save files in the MP3 compressed format.

Traditionally, square dance music has come on 45RPM records; to get that music onto a computer, you have to connect a turntable to the computer, play the record, and record the audio to a computer file (using Audacity, in my case). In recent years, however, a lot of producers have been releasing music on CD, and CD looks like it will eventually become the "hard" distribution medium of choice due to the low cost of producing a CD relative to the cost of pressing a vinyl record. CDs are easier to bring into a computer as a MP3 file, too — all you need is a "ripping" program. There are many available, including many free ones. I've settled on fre:ac (formerly called BonkEnc), partly because of its ability to fill in the song titles automatically when the CD is in an Internet database (not the case with square dance CDs), and partly because of its ability to use several different encoding formats. Now, if I could just get it to automatically insert 3 seconds of silence at the front of every MP3...

When playing back those music files at a square dance, I use the free WinAmp player. (Well, actually, I use a program that I wrote, which then controls WinAmp for playing the music, but Winamp still gets used.) Pacemaker is a plugin for Winamp that allows the user to control pitch and tempo while the music is playing.

When I'm calling, I usually use a Snapstream Firefly remote control device to control my music playback. Girder allows me to assign various commands to keys on the remote, so that I can kick the pitch or tempo up/down, skip to the next song, pause the music, or change the volume by 1% or 10% increments. It's a commercial product with a 30-day trial version (although it was shareware when I first started using it), but it does a great job and is pretty simple to configure.

With Winamp, I don't really need the VLC media player — except that it tends to do a better job playing Flash videos (downloaded from YouTube) than Winamp does. It will also play the RealAudio clips which are given for records listed on the Hanhurst Music & Tape Service website; not many players other than RealPlayer will do that.

Disk Utilities

Backup

"Has your data been SAVED???" — $aint $ilicon

It's VITALLY important that you have current backups of all of your data. If you don't already have one, run out and get a USB external hard disk at least as large as your computer's internal HD.

There are two types of backups (for different purposes), and two types of backup programs:

Image Backups Creates an exact bit-by-bit copy of your entire hard disk, which can then be used to get your computer up and running again with a new hard disk if the old one fails completely. Seagate Disk Wizard (free, but only works with a Seagate hard disk in the system) and Acronis TrueImage (same program, without the Seagate limitation, but not free) do this.
File Backups Creates copies of each file on your hard disk, which can then be copied back to your hard disk if the original becomes lost or corrupted. This type of backup generally CANNOT be restored directly to a new hard disk to get a working system, as important files held open by the operating system while it is running can't be backed up reliably. However, it is very good for making backup copies of your documents and data between image backups. Cobian Backup is this type of backup program — very reliable and completely free, but it lacks the capability of backing up directly to a CD or DVD drive. (Works great with an external hard disk, though.)

Partitioning


Hard disks can be divided up into partitions — basically areas on the hard disk which get assigned their own drive letter as if they were separate disks. Sometimes when a system is partitioned in this way, we run into a situation where one partition gets filled up while another is nearly empty — and something else absolutely HAS to go into the first partition. Wouldn't it be great if we could adjust the sizes and make the first partition bigger and the second smaller? That's just what these programs do.

I used to use a program called Partition Magic for this — it was the program that created the entire category of on-the-fly partition editors. Then Norton/Symantec bought the company out, and because of my disenchantment with Norton I never tried it again. Acronis' Disk Director Suite has been a good substitute, and I've been happy with it. I've also tried the two open-source packages listed above; they did a good job, but I'm just a bit more comfortable with the Acronis program.

Error Detection and Repair

There's nothing else like it. If you have any disk problems, you need this program. It will read every sector on the disk in sequence, optionally rewriting the data to refresh the magnetic signature. If it has problems reading a sector, it will read it repeatedly and perform statistical analyses to reconstruct the data that was once there, write it to a known good sector, and then either repair the bad sector (if possible) or mark it to prevent future use. It'll give a problem disk new life, and can recover data off of a failing disk.

Utilities

A grab-bag of smaller programs that generally do one thing and do it well

Foxit Reader
(Freeware) 		A small, free program for viewing PDF (Adobe Acrobat) files. Faster and smaller than Acrobat Reader
CPU-Z
(Freeware) 		Gives information about the computer's processor chip, motherboard, and memory. Useful if you aren't sure what speed memory to buy — PC-2700? PC-3200? PC2-5300? This will tell you.
Autoruns
(Freeware) 		Lets you view all the tasks that start automatically when your computer starts, and selectively turn some of them off.
Process Explorer
(Freeware) 		Shows all the processes running on the computer, and gives information about each, plus system memory usage. Like Task Manager, but LOTS more (and more useful) info.
Dimension 4
(Freeware)
 Clock synchronization software. Windows XP has it built in, but this is more flexible and has more time servers preconfigured. (I sync with the Naval Observatory, tick.usno.navy.mil, once a day.)
7-Zip
(Open-Source) 		File compression and decompression utility that handles many different formats — not limited to just ZIP
CCleaner
(Freeware) 		Utility that deletes unneeded temporary files and browser cache files from your hard disk, and searches the registry for deadwood.
Recuva
(Freeware) 		Aids in recovering deleted files that have passed out of the recycle bin.
Eraser
(Freeware) 		If you're worried about someone recovering sensitive files you've deleted, Eraser will either do a military-level scrub on a file before deleting it, or do that same military-level scrub on all the empty areas of the hard disk.
PDF Creator
(Open-Source) 		Installs as a printer in Windows, and allows you to create PDF files by printing to it instead of your printer.
PSpad
(Freeware) 		Very good text editor, with features for programmers and web designers.
SIW
(Freeware / Shareware) 		SysInfo for Windows — gives all sorts of information about Windows, your installed programs, and your computer.
SyncBack
(Freeware / Shareware) 		Good program for synchronizing files and subfolders in two folders. Basic version is free, more elaborate version is paid.
TreeSizeFree
(Freeware / Shareware) 		Analyzes how much space is being taken up by each folder's contents. Basic free version; more elaborate version is paid.
MyDefrag
(Freeware) 		Does a better job than the defragger that comes with Windows. Under Vista and Windows 7, it automatically sets up tasks to run a quick defrag every night and a thorough one once a month.
Stefan's Tools
(Open-Source) 		Some good Windows Explorer add-ons and standalone utilities from one of the principal authors of TortoiseSVN. I use GrepWin, CommitMonitor, StExBar, and SKTimeStamp.

Web Design

I used Microsoft's FrontPage 2000 for quite a few years. It's gotten long in the tooth, though, and in 2008 I started looking for something else to take its place. Dreamweaver was too expensive for the amount of use I expected to get from it, and Microsoft's new offering, Expressions Web, just didn't seem right. I'd tried a little program called Nvu a few years back, which seemed promising but never went anywhere. I later found out that the original developer had abandoned it, but a new one picked up the project, changed the name and was working on fixing the outstanding bugs. It's still an ongoing process, but even the interim result is quite usable and does an excellent job. The current released version is 0.7.10, but I'm actually working right now with an beta-level release of the next version (0.8b3) — it has some rough edges, but nothing that is currently getting in my way too much.

As you can see from the footer at the bottom of this page, all the pages on my website are created in KompoZer, or using a combination of KompoZer and PSPad (the latter for hand-editing the HTML code directly).

Development on KompoZer has slowed to a crawl in the last year, as its author has moved to a new job that occupies most of his attention.  I've looked at some other similar products, such as BlueGriffon (written by the author of NVu, on which KompoZer was based), but I still keep coming back to KompoZer.

Software Development

I used to do a lot more programming and development than I do now — I was heavily into Turbo Pascal and JPI Modula-2 back when MS-DOS was still king, and did x86 assembly language programming as well. When I began working at Computer Scene in Ukiah (and began calling about the same time) I had less time for programming; plus, Windows came on the scene, making programming more complicated. So, I got away from it, and only started getting back into it around 2003 (after my divorce).

So, I'm not what you would call a heavy user of programming tools. Still, there are a number of things that I use on a regular basis and that I would unabashedly recommend.
This is the development environment I use. Think of it as Visual Basic, except that it uses Turbo Pascal instead of Basic. (Well, Object Pascal, not Turbo Pascal, but it's an outgrowth of TP.) As a language, it's nearly as powerful as C++, but not nearly as difficult to learn. I had the original version 1 of Delphi (for Windows 3.1) and put it aside, then got version 6 in 2002 and started getting back into programming. I'm currently working mainly in Delphi 2007 (but still using Delphi 6 for some things) and starting to get into the later, Unicode-enabled versions.
These are the main component libraries that I use with Delphi, in addition to the components that come built-in. The JCL and JVCL are large libraries that have just about everything I could think of (so far, at least!). ICS is a set of Internet communication components — I've used them mainly for building utilities for monitoring wireless access points for Pacific Internet.
These are add-ins for the Delphi IDE which add features and generally make it more convenient to use.

This is a program (actually, it very nearly qualifies as a programming language in its own right) for creating setup programs to install software. Written in Delphi, of course.

This is a comparison program — it looks at two files and shows you the lines in them that are different. It'll do the same thing with two folders — show the files that don't match. I used to use an open-source program called WinMerge for this, but I've switched to Beyond Compare. The main reason for this is that Beyond Compare has a feature that lets you compare a local folder on your computer with a remote folder on a FTP server — very handy for updating my website. WinMerge lacks this feature, and the primary author indicated that it probably would never be added. Besides, BC is written in Delphi. :-)
This is a special type of graphics editor. It will import a graphic file (or let you create one in its editor, but I generally import an externally created one), and will generate from that a set of Windows icons in varying standard sizes and color depths appropriate for the different versions of Windows. It makes generating program icons pretty easy, and even allowed me to very simply generate the favicon.ico file for this website. (That's why you see my "LJ" logo in your address bar next to the page address, instead of a blank square.)
Subversion (or SVN) is a "Version Control System" or "Source Control System." When used by a single developer (as I use it), it's basically a system that stores the history of changes to your programming source code, so that if you make a change that doesn't work, you can easily go back to the way that it was before. When used by multiple developers, it allows them to coordinate their changes to the same source code files.

I use SVN both to manage my programming projects and to manage my web work. Every change I make to one or the other gets committed to the SVN repository for the project in question, so that I: (1) have a history of what I've done; (2) can easily revert back to an older version; (3) can create two different versions and switch between them [not that I do that very often!]; and (4) have a secondary copy that could function as a backup in an emergency.

TortoiseSVN is a Subversion client that integrates into Windows Explorer (the interface for managing files on your computer, not the web browser — that's Internet Explorer). It allows you to do all of the standard source control operations on files by right-clicking them and choosing options from the pop-up menus. It can operate either with or without a server; until 2009, I'd been operating without a server with the repository stored in a separate location on the same computer I was working on. However, that's now changed.

Visual SVN Server is freely available and built mostly from open-source parts (the Subversion server software and the Apache web server), but contains some parts that are not open-source. However, it is free, and it is extremely simple to set up and start using. I decided to install it on a whim in 2009 so that I could put my website files under version control (I work on my website on a different computer from the one I do my programming on), and it literally took me less than ten minutes to install it, import all my old repositories, and create a new one for the website. Another 5 minutes to install the TortoiseSVN client on my main machine and import the website into the repository, and I was done!

Android Phone Applications

At the end of May, 2011, I traded my Blackberry Pearl for a LG Phoenix running Android v2.3.  Overall, I've been very pleased with my choice.  The phone performs well as a phone (not always the case with some phones!), has a good balance between screen size and physical size (just a bit bigger than my Pearl), synchronizes easily with my Google Calendars and address book, and does email well (my biggest criterion). It also has a pretty decent camera.  (But no flash.)

Since switching over, my Internet data usage has gone up quite a bit, from an average of 20-30MB per month to about 120MB.  Still well below my account limit, but I'm obviously using it more because it works better than the Blackberry -- and it gets more information over the Internet than the Blackberry did.

Of course, it also runs applications, or apps.  I don't load my phone down with a lot of these, but there are a few that I've found to be very useful.

Included with the phone

The web browser works much better than the one in my Blackberry.  It displays web pages just as they would show on a desktop, and lets you zoom in or out using a pinching motion with two features.  The bookmark feature is a little clunky, but I don't need nearly as many bookmarks for moble as I do on a desktop.  (And, no, I don't use Firefox or Opera on my phone -- the included browser works well enough, and I don't need to take up any extra space in the phone's built-in storage.)

The calendar is pretty good.  It'll display month, week, or day views.  You can link it to multiple Google calendars on your Google account(s), and it'll synchronize automatically -- but only up to a year in advance.  One thing to watch out for, though, is that Google Calendar stores its appointment times as UTC, or Greenwich time, and adjusts the displayed time according to the time zone you're in.  I took the trouble of entering all of my calling slots at the 2011 National Convention in my Google calendar at home, and when I got to Detroit I found that they were all off by three hours!  (Solution:  Enter or edit the entries using the full Google Calendar on your computer's web browser, rather than the phone, and you'll have the opportunity to specify a time zone for the appointment.  Set the time zone to the proper zone for where the appointment is taking place.  Then, it'll look like it's wrong when you're in your home time zone, but it'll all be correct when you get to your destination!)

I use email a LOT, and the email client has done well for me.  The regular email client checks my Pacific Internet account via IMAP every 15 minutes -- it'll do POP3 as well, but I'm using IMAP.  The Gmail client supposedly gets its mail "pushed" out from Google rather than polling; I use that for my loj@loj.name email address.

A year ago, I never would have thought I'd be on Facebook, but I am now.  The Android app lets me "check in" at places I visit, and it posts that status to my Facebook wall.  It also lets me take a photo and upload it directly to Facebook.  Also, it still displays the news feed in chronological order, dispensing with the "top posts" so-called feature of the new web interface update.

Why use a Google Search app when you can just do it through the built-in browser?  Specifically because I can talk to it.  It'll use the Android's speech recognition software to allow you to speak a phrase, and then do a Google search for that.  Very handy in places where you don't want to use your hands -- such as stopped at a traffic light.

Lattitude is actually part of Google Maps.  It allows you to share your location (obtained through the built-in GPS and/or the cell tower you're connected to) with a specific list of friends.  Their locations will also be displayed on your phone, if they share with you -- it's completely on an opt-in basis.  My friend Scot Byars and I keep track of each other this way -- we wanted to use it to meet up at the National Convention, but it wasn't quite fine-grained enough to work within a building.  Works great at the street level, though.

Google Maps and Google Navigation work just as you'd expect.  Navigation is equivalent to a car's GPS navigator, and will speak directions to you -- including through your Bluetooth headset, if it supports being used as a media earphone as well as a phone headset.  You can also speak your destination to it, like the Google Search app.

News and Weather will use your phone's location to show you the current temperature and conditions, plus a 6-day forecast from the Weather Channel.  It also shows you top news headlines (from Google News) in several different categories.

Downloaded from the Android Market

One of my main uses of the phone is as a backup music source for calling, in case my laptop dies.  The default built-in music player in Android doesn't use the Genre ID3 tag in classifying music, and that's how I had my square dance music arranged on the Blackberry. Winamp for Android lets me do it that way again.  It also will play Internet radio and music from Winamp's Shoutcast network.

SoundHound is a program that will listen to music through the phone's microphone, and attempt to determine the title.  Works well, even with me humming a tune.  There are both free and paid versions; I use the free one.  (Thanks to Joe Saltel for the suggestion!)

Wifi Analyzer is a handly little program that tells you what wifi networks are in the area, what channels they're using, and how strong they are.  Handy when setting up a new wireless network, although it's not a spectrum analyzer -- it won't show you interference sources that AREN'T wifi networks.

Cool Reader and Kindle are two ebook readers.  Kindle, obviously, is the program from Amazon; it'll sync with your Amazon Kindle account and give you access to whatever books you've purchased from them.  Cool Reader reads just about everything else -- specifically, I use it to read ebooks in the MobiPocket format from Baen Publishing's promotional CDs bound into some of their books (and available, legally, for free from Joe Buckley's website.)

AndroidVNC is a client for the VNC remote-control spec.  I can use it to access my home computer -- or, I will be able to when it supports UltraVNC's encryption scheme.  Hopefully, that'll be in the works, because I don't want to run my VNC server completely open.

Battery Notifier corrects one of Android's shortcomings -- it shows the remaining battery charge as a percent on the status bar, rather than just a segmented green battery thermometer (with only 3 segments).

GasBuddy is the app that goes with the gasbuddy.com website.  Start it up, and it will query gasbuddy.com for the gas stations closest to your location and show them either by distance from you or by the price (as reported by GasBuddy users).  VERY handy!

Lookout is a security and antivirus program.  Recommended to me by Scot Byars.  So far, I've never had it flag anything.


Page last updated: Get Firefox! Thursday 2011-10-13 14:06 PDT

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