Eli the Computer Guy

Archive for the ‘Applications’ Category

Recently my wife and I were debating buying a new house.  We live in a wonderful little row home  in a great part of town, but sadly little is the operative word.  Apparently when our community was being built they had a bit of left over space that the other row homes couldn’t fit in and so they built 2 that would. Out of the couple hundred decent sized row homes in our area, we picked one of the four in the area that have the same square footage of our last two bedroom apartment.

After finding a house we loved we sadly had to take a look at the market and finances.  After debating what to offer we came to a figure that was well below asking price, but after a sleepless night I realized I wasn’t comfortable even with that.  After a lot of talking and thinking we came to the realization that we have no idea where the real estate market is going, and really have no interest buying a property that may be worth significantly less a year from now.  Sadly I called the real estate agent, said the normal pleasantries, and told her we were no longer interested.

After this our wife and I looked at each other with a sad smile and said, “We still got to do something.”  Our house is small, and we need some more room.  We then started the standard task of looking for things we don’t need anymore, cleaning up some messes that we haven’t gotten to, and generally trying to get rid of “crap”.

One of the things that we were able to get rid of that I hadn’t really thought of before were our books.  My wife and I bought Amazon Kindles (eBook Readers) when they first came out a couple of years ago.  We both read quite a bit and the Kindle allows us to read books, but then not have to deal with what to do with a book when we are done.  As we were doing the normal cleaning I looked up at my book shelves and thought, “Why the hell do we have all these books?”  We had piles of books that just sitting collecting dust.  They were great books.  They were books I loved, but I hadn’t opened any of them in years.  They had simply been read, put on a shelf, and then boxed and unboxed as I moved place to place.  As someone who reads a good bit this turns out to not an insubstantial amount of physical material taking up space.

After steeling myself for the work, and boxing up our books to be donated to the library it was amazing to find how much room we freed up.  Even after using a Kindle for 2 years we still had enough books and the shelving for them to take up half a room!  Literally half of a room was taken up with book storage, and this is after using digital books for years, and the other library purges I have done in the past (I once had 4 3 ft by 6 ft bookshelves filled)!

Think about what the space savings could be for some people!  Think about paying the rent, heating and cooling for all the space taken up by physical books!  Amazon should talk about that when they talk about the cost comparison between buying a Kindle and buy paper books.  They should say, “Buy a Kindle and save $100 per month on rent!”

As we divest ourselves of physical books in favor of the digital versions I wonder what the ripple effect for this could be across society.  Like I say you don’t realize how many resources books take up simply by existing.  Maybe we can do our little part for the climate crisis by simply not air conditioning huge mountains of paper.

Digsby is a phenomenal little application that I have been hoping someone would develop for awhile now.  It is a desktop based application that connects to your web email accounts, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and much more.  From this one little app you can keep track of everything from IM’s to email to Tweets.

Whenever I get a new email/ update/ tweet a little window pops up to show me.  I can just click on the link in the Digsby bar and see all of the Tweets from people I’m following.  I can even update my Facebook status straight from the application.

You just download the application, run the setup wizard and start adding accounts.  All in all I have no complaints.  What I like best about the application is that since you actually install it on your computer you do not have to worry about random problems with Digsby servers.  Many of the other apps that I have tested for social networking are web based and depending on the time of day, or the mood of Bill Gates they can either run well, or not at all.

Check them out at http://www.digsby.com/

This is really a great tool!

The Amazon Kindle iPhone app works very well.  It’s easy to install, easy to use and you can download any materials you have purchased in the blink of an eye.  Sadly I find that this high quality software fails due to the hardware that is running it.

As a Kindle lover I have read 40 plus digital books on my Kindle.  I feel about the Kindle the way most people feel about their iPods.  It’s a near perfect device in everyway, and I am happy to know that I will no longer have to clutter up my house with shelf upon shelf of discarded books.

But when you take the software that runs the Kindle and put it on a device with the screen size of a pack of cards, and then you have to stare into the bright white backlit page for any amount of time it loses all appeal for me.  I just hate it…

I find that the Digital Ink technology that the real Kindle incorporates is what really makes the device so easy to use.  Reading a book on a Digital Ink screen is near blissful.  Reading a book on an iPod screen is painful.

If you already own a Kindle I can see using the app if you are in a pinch and need to reference something.  If you have never used a Kindle please… PLEASE… do not base your opinion of digital books on this app.

One of the good points for software consumers in the modern world is that when large software companies  start fighting they go all out not just to teach the other side a lesson, but to inflict major harm to the other’s profit centers.

A long time ago Sun Micro Systems and Microsoft became embroiled in a fight over a piece of technology called Java that Sun owned.  During this fight Sun decided Microsoft was too powerful and that they should do something about that.  Seeing that the Office suite was one of Microsoft’s major sources of income they decided to try to destroy it by the best way they could find.  They created a compatible Office Suite for themselves (They actually bought another company) and then started giving away the software.

So now instead of spending $150-$500 for Microsoft Office you can download Open Office for free.

Just go to www.OpenOffice.org, download the file and install it on your computer. The software is 99% compatible with Microsoft Office.  You get a version or Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Access, Publisher and an interesting math program. Additionally you can create PDF’s directly from any of the Open Office applications.

If you need the ability to type reports, view spreadsheets or create presentations and PDF files Open Office is all you need.