By admin January 8th, 2010, under BootFX
We have posted a new version of BootFX DBGet at http://www.bootfx.com. DBGet is a simple business continuity tool – it periodically downloads backups of SQL Server databases from production environments and restores them onto a server in a secure location.
The changes are a collection of bug fixes, but we have also added SQL Server 2008 support (about time!) and have deprecated the requirement to use a commercial WinZip license. Historically this product was an internal use product and WinZip was not a problem. Now you have the choice of using WinZip or the open source PeaZip.
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By admin January 5th, 2010, under Random
I have to travel to Bury St Edmund’s tomorrow. It’s snowing in Bedfordshire, and I figured if I searched for “Bury St Edmund’s” if it was snowing there someone would be saying as such.
Quick search for Twitter pointed me to @dianadupree, and she pointed me (and everyone else) at http://uksnow.benmarsh.co.uk/. It’s a app that searches Twitter for #uksnow tags and renders them on a Google Maps map.
Makes you wonder how we coped in the 70s… or even the late 90s. Scary…
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By admin January 5th, 2010, under Random
Back in the day of primarily using Windows XP, I used to use the Microsoft Power Tools utility for mounting ISOs. This doesn’t work in Windows 7 – my recommendation is now the freeware Virtual CloneDrive. Enjoy!
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By admin December 30th, 2009, under BootFX
I’ve posted a new article on the excellent CodeProject site that acts as an introduction to building and working with the basic database functionality in BootFX, our open source .NET application framework.
You can find the article here.
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By admin November 30th, 2009, under Uncategorized
SEOmoz is a *fabulous* resource for those interested in search engine marketing.
This article refers to a utility called Xenu Link Sleuth. Turns out that this is an excellent broken links checker – plus the SEOmoz article takes you through some other neat things that you can do with it.
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By admin November 26th, 2009, under Uncategorized
I’m not fully understanding the idea behind Google’s Chromium OS, but as we know the market does love to have a googasm everytime they release everything out into the market.
It’s a given that in the long term, everything is going to be in the cloud and the idea of holding data locally will – for most types of organisation – seem a little crazy. And in a 30 year timeframe, some of the businesses that we know today will still be around and doing that. (I presume Google will, although on that sort of timeframe they almost certainly would have been overtaken by someone else and will be looking like today’s Microsoft.)
What I’m not understanding about Chrome OS is… why? There are already two players in this space – Windows and Linux. Linux has been trying to beat up Windows in the alternative OS space for, what, 15 years plus? Is it getting anywhere – well, for me, until I can replace my wife’s PC with a Linux box then no. I can only do that if the Office apps in the cloud, which will happen, then all I have to do is give her something that runs Firefox. (We recently updated her PC, and it was a breeze because so much that she does is in the cloud now.)
It’s a “so what” test thing for me. What is Chrome giving me that Firefox on Ubuntu is not. Firefox isn’t going away – my recent thoughts on this is that those guys are kicking the living daylights out of Microsoft in terms of bringing features to market and controlling the environment (recent press about Firefox’s desire to implement hardware accelerated rendering in the first, and the fact that Microsoft has to support IE6 and 7 forever and cannot push out new versions as easily as Firefox in the second). Ubuntu isn’t going away – and frankly that OS is *awesome*.
Google seems to be looking to replicate Microsoft’s proprietary lock-in approach with Chrome OS… I presume to keep dominant. Nothing about this glorified advertising company’s strategy on anything has been like this. So why now? Much as I don’t want to say this just to be proven wrong in five years time (damn Way Back Machine), but Chrome OS feels like a flash in the pan to me.
If I’m going to buy any new kit to play with in the next six months, it wouldn’t be a Google Chrome OS netbook, it’d be a Microsoft Courier.
(Those who like the etymology of their idioms may like this: http://etymonline.com/index.php?term=pan)
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By admin November 26th, 2009, under Uncategorized
Topaz Filer, our unique-in-the-market email filing tool has been growing great guns, and we’ve recently decided to restructure our operations. The new name for the makers of Topaz Filer is Invocation Software Ltd. The Topaz Filer Web site remains the same, but there is a new one at http://www.invocationsoftware.com/.
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By admin September 16th, 2009, under Uncategorized
By admin September 4th, 2009, under Uncategorized
Here’s a neat site for creating colourways for Web pages if, like me, you’re not so good with the aesthetic side of development.
The idea is pretty cool, give it a base colour and it will come up with a bunch of matching complementary colours: www.colorsontheweb.com.
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By admin September 4th, 2009, under Uncategorized