In doing this, I had to consult our software stockpile to find the old CDs of Visual Studio 2002 (it was originally just called Visual Studio .NET). Since my new-format MSDN subscription doesn’t allow me to download the ISOs of this directly, I was tasked with create an image of each of the CDs so they could easily be mounted on the server (there’s no physical optical drive).

Creating an ISO should be something that Windows has native support for now, but it doesn’t. So I set about finding the best easy, quick and free solution I could.

I came up with ISO Recorder.

It’s quick to install, it’s free, it doesn’t require a reboot and it makes the process as easy as selecting the drive, right clicking and creating an ISO. It’s rare nowadays that we find such laser-beam focus in software without bloated options. But this did exactly what I needed to do and did it quickly. For that, it gets a mention on my blog.

After all, being my default browser isn’t an easy job. I demand things from my browser that most web surfers never even conceive of. When I click a link, I have to trust my default browser to jump into the task quickly, accurately and with impeccable stability. And I’m not talking about sometimes, I’m talking about ALL the time, every time.

For quite a while, Chrome has excelled at the task of being my default browser. I still use other browsers from time to time, but they just don’t seem to stack up to my needs like Chrome does.

Along came RockMelt.

For me, RockMelt evoked a stroke of genius by basing their browser on the Chromium platform (the same one that Chrome uses). I don’t know whether this was a matter of necessity, function or preference but it’s what ended up making my decision for me. It’s like Chrome++. If you’re like me and you like pinned tabs, Chrome Apps and dozens of other awesome Chrome features you don’t have to lose any of them to change browsers and get some cool new social functionality.

So what exactly is RockMelt? From their web site:

RockMelt is re-imagining your online experience by creating a new web browser that makes it easy to stay in touch with friends, search online, and get updates from your favorite websites.

What that means to you is that it’s a fast, stable browser that integrates directly with Facebook and Twitter.

The best way to see what I’m talking about is to watch the RockMelt promo video, I’ll catch you afterwards:

After a week of using RockMelt as my default browser, here’s some things I’m really digging:

• The sidebars allow me to have my social media items available, but not in the way
• The ability to add ANY RSS feed to the sidebar
• The ability to quickly and easily share whatever web page I’m looking at with my Twitter and Facebook networks
• The sidebars are easily hidden with simple keyboard shortcuts (CTRL+SHIFT+[ and CTRL+SHIFT+])
• It’s Chrome (which I love) just better

And some things I’m not so jazzed about:

• No apparent support for Twitter DM (really?)
• Twitter mentions are not noted on the icon, you have to open the feed, click the sidebar icon and then load mentions separately… Changing the color of the message notification if you had mentions would be a nice touch
• There doesn’t seem to be a way to share something with all networks at once

Want in on it? You either need to be invited or you need to get in on their beta program, which you can do over on their web site (by connecting with them on Facebook).

In addition to using every available chat medium to stay in touch with different groups of people, I use Twitter… a lot.  I have several accounts for several different reasons and they all have unique needs.  In the past these unique needs have made me do a lot of juggling to be able to manage everything.

No more, thanks to Trillian’s new release of Astra.  I mean, the client has all of the basics that you would expect, but in addition to those basics are the following reasons that Trillian Astra is now my favorite Windows based desktop Twitter client:

Multiple bit.ly Account Support

Sure, lots of clients allow you to manage multiple Twitter accounts.  I’ve been using TweetDeck with decent success on that front for some time.  Then there are some clients which actually allow you to integrate with your bit.ly account, so that when the Twitter client automatically shortens a link for you the link is added to your bit.ly account so you can track it like you would any other.  But what about clients that let you manage multiple Twitter accounts which are each attached to their own unique bit.ly accounts?  Is it really that mind-boggling that this would be something a power user would want?  Who knows, but Trillian Astra got it right.  Add your Twitter account then right click on the account in your contact list, click settings and WHAM-O you’re ready to enter your bit.ly API key and go to town.

Intelligent Character Limitation Counting

Something else that other clients should get on the ball with is knowing how many characters things like image uploads to TwitPic are going to take.  No more wondering, biting your nails and hoping that your image upload URL doesn’t throw your character count over by one character, ending your perfect digital planetary alignment.

Tweet Screenshots

This one is really nice for technical tweets / blogs / etc.  Basically, you can use any image in your tweet via TwitPic by dragging it into your message.  But if you right click in your message, you have the ability to actually trim out a screenshot to use.  Nifty!

Side Docking

I don’t check news sites any more.  I don’t check my favorite band sites any more.  I don’t have to, because I have a constant stream of updates that interest me flowing through Twitter.  Now, thanks to Trillian’s function of docking to the side of your monitor (reserving space so that maximized windows don’t overlap it), something they’ve had for a long time, that stream is constantly available at a literal glance to my left.

There are, of course, still a few issues that exist (when you open a retweet you have to type / delete a character for the character counter to register) and some functionality I’d love to see added, but nothing that overrides how awesome the new Trillian is at managing my fairly advanced Twitter needs.

Notification Placement

This isn’t a Twitter specific update, nor is it unique to Trillian.  But the ability to place your notification popups where you want them, even with multiple monitor support, means they don’t get in the way of something else that you were trying to do.  It’s a really nice touch that makes a big difference to me.

Nice job guys!  Now, about that post I made on your forums asking for the ability to have a transparent background with fully visible text…

As someone who has spent the last 13 years writing web applications I’ve seen first hand the path modern browsers have taken to get to where they are.  Knowing what I know about this path, I can also say that the journey has been a long one full of good intentions and without much concern for developers (or standards).  That’s why I’m so impressed with what Google is doing here.

Apparently Google “accidentally” sent a notification about their browser intentions a day early, resulting in a frenzy around their creative and informative announcement “comic.”

Then, today, they officially released the browser that was the source of all of the discussion.  With their claims of speed, performance and standards compliance I was skeptical.  After all, like I said I’ve been fed the “we made it faster” line a thousand times over the past 13 years and I’ve almost never been impressed.  Sure, you can benchmark browsers and prove a 3% increase in speed but what does that buy me in the real world?

When we’re talking about Chrome, however, we’re talking about insanely fast.  Let me be clear, I’ve developed a LOT of applications for intranet usage (internal company networks) and I can say that the “slowness” often felt while using web pages is not a result of bandwidth limitations or slow downloading.  Instead, it is a latency experienced while the inefficient browser engines parse through the code needed to create a web page.  This is even more obvious when the page has complex (read:  useful) JavaScript in place.  All that is to say, Chrome is so fast it does away with the expectations you have about using web pages.

I’ve read where some folks had problems with pages, but I’ve looked at all of the ones I am responsible for and found no issues whatsoever.  This is probably because I test them in Safari, which uses the same engine for rendering as Chrome.

So for now, those are my thoughts.  I’ll post more here if things go insanely awry, but I plan to use Chrome as my primary browser at home for a while to see what I run into.  Oh… and I posted this using Chrome on WordPress, so we know that works!

More Chrome Information:  http://tools.google.com/chrome/intl/en/features.html

Download Chrome:  http://tools.google.com/chrome/

Replaces: Outlook (and the associated old-school mail servers)

As you read through this series of articles you will find that I depend on Google for a lot of functionality. The primary reason I chose Google springs from the great approach to online e-mail that they pioneered, Gmail. With virtually unlimited storage and the recommendation that you archive instead of delete messages you have only yourself to blame if an important e-mail goes missing. If you are careful you will find that you can find anything you need very, very quickly using their approach to categorizing and filing messages. Of course, all of this and more has been said before about Gmail, so I’ll stop the fan-boy praise and get to the nitty gritty.

I use Google’s Apps for your Domain for all of my e-mail needs. The great thing is that all of my sites and e-mail addresses can play together nicely because of Google’s “share and share alike” approach to their services. So using Google Apps is equivalent to having a Google account (which anyone can get for free). For most of these services, their web based interface is way up the list of good web-based applications and while their e-mail interface is definitely no exception.

While it would be easy for me to assume that people reading this story, owning and iPhone and wanting to live an Online Life would be able to set up e-mail without assistance, we all know what happens when we assume. So here’s how I roll in regards to e-mail:

1. Get a Gmail account
2. Register your Gmail account on your iPhone
3. Learn to deal with the envy of your peers

So just use the IMAP client on the iPhone to connect to your Gmail account. The two synchronize beautifully (much better than with my Windows Mobile phone) and working between them is really transparent.

If you want to label and archive something via your iPhone, just drag it to one of your “folders” and presto chango Gmail will handle the rest for you. When you set up your account your iPhone automatically added a special set of folders which have a [Gmail] folder as their parent. These folders allow you to do all of the special things Gmail’s web interface allows you to do. For example, if you want to “star” an item, simply place it in the [Gmail] > Starred folder. All of the special folders work the same and with them you have all the tools you need to keep your inbox in order quickly and easily. If you’re like me, with time you’ll find yourself using your iPhone for all of your e-mail related tasks even when you’re sitting right in front of a computer!

For an obligatory comparison, this approach replaces Outlook for me. While I don’t have many complaints about Outlook at all, it really is very nice to be able to have all of my messages stored on the web instead of in an archive file on my hard drive. Now that I’m using this approach I can’t count the number of times I have been out and wanted to pull up an e-mail. If I were still tethered to Outlook (without a mobile device) that wouldn’t be possible and even with a mobile device (Outlook works pretty well with any Windows Mobile device as well as the iPhone) if I hadn’t synced lately I would be out of luck.

Something else to remember that I will definitely be mentioning more later is that almost all web-based applications support some sort of interaction via e-mail. Because the SMTP (e-mail) standard is so widely accepted, having a good e-mail client is paramount to achieving any goal as an Online Lifer (woot, I just made up that term, I Googled it to be sure).

So on the e-mail front I would say that not only have I been happy with my new approach, it has been better than I realized it could be which in the end is what we should all hope for when we try something new.

Why, indeed? At the time I simply didn’t see how I could accomplish everything I wanted or needed to get done using only web based applications. After all, most web-based applications required you to be at a computer to use and if I was going to be at a computer anyway why wouldn’t I just use desktop software? And if I was at a computer using desktop software, why not depend on my trusty old notebook and pen which would inevitably be available.

Then I met the iPhone. It was a chance meeting, I had fully intended to just upgrade my Windows Mobile device (I had been using them for over three years) and continue on with the way I had been going. But after toying with an iPhone for a while I decided to buy one.

There’s really something to be said for what Apple has done with the iPhone. And I don’t mean sales success or over-hyped marketing and fan-boy addictions, I mean what they have actually done with the thing. When they released it there was no SDK and a requirement that you purchase a data plan. The obvious intention was that if you wanted to do something, do it using the web browser or one of the few built-in tools which supported internet protocols other than http (such as the e-mail client).

Because Apple did this and because I bought the iPhone I am now revisiting my previous idea of moving more and more of what I do every day into web applications.

Now with an initiative like this there are always risks. People I’ve talked to along the way have warned me of the impending attack of our information hording overlords and how keeping personal (but not necessarily private) information online would only seal my fate as one of their minions. As someone who has spent my adult life giving the government personal information and handing my credit card to the random shady figure waiting my table I figure it’s a risk I’m either willing to take or a risk I’ve already been taking all along.

I required that my new approach meet the following requirements:

• Convenient – Be easy and non-intrusive to my daily life
• Collaborative – If others are involved, let me involve others
• Available – I need my information when I need it, not later
• Portable – It needs to work equally as well whether I’m at a computer or not
• Complete – This is an all or nothing deal
• Cost Effective – I’m an Open Source fan, don’t make me pay too much

My progress has been surprisingly good and now I’m ready to begin sharing my experiences in this adventure with the world and that’s where this series of articles comes in. I will be writing these articles as I have time to outline how I have accomplished keeping myself organized using just my iPhone and the internet.

For a long, long time I have accused console games and the overlords who control them of ruining everything that was once sacred in video games. In a rush to make more money the big console companies would blitz right past all of the important things in games: fun, originality, playability, FUN; and instead focus on the quick fix items such as graphics and speed of play.

While graphics and speed of play are a necessary component to any great game, losing the fundamentals of what a game is, by definition, loses the purpose to have a game in the first place.

Then Nintendo decided to change everything. More after the flip…

I love originality. I especially love originality in video games. In my opinion, if you can’t explore new, unexplored and original content and concepts in a video game then where can you explore it?

Nintendo has decided that enough is enough with the console graphics races. Instead of releasing a new console to upgrade graphics they decided to release a new console to upgrade the way people think about playing video games.

This past weekend I finally got the opportunity to play a Wii. As it turns out, my sister’s fiance stood in line for 10 hours and got one of a few arriving at a local retailer. Even though he later passed out in the recliner as we enjoyed the fruits of his labor his contribution to an enjoyable weekend had been made. Because… I’ve got to be honest here… The Wii is so good it runs the risk of restoring my faith in consoles.

So there I was, standing in front of a television in the middle of a room swinging an innocent looking piece of plastic as if it were a bowling ball… a baseball bat… a boxing glove… and I didn’t care how crazy I looked. The games were fun… insanely fun… and the unique controller adds more to the game experience than I can express (believe me, I typed at least 50 different sentences to try and none did it justice).

So we’ve established that the games… and playing the games… is a better experience on the Wii than other consoles. But how easy was it to learn to use from a “new to games” perspective?

All I can say towards that is after a brief… and by brief I mean 10 seconds… explanation on where to stand and how the controller works both my mother and my wife (not gamers) were bowling strikes. The great thing is, even those of us who had been playing all day were only a small bit better than them at the games. So while they were able to pick up the game in a few minutes and understand how it works, we had spent hours playing and hadn’t outpaced them to the point to where they wouldn’t have fun playing. The “quick to learn, hard to master” ability of the new Wii is through the roof… and that is a significant element in making games fun to play with friends.

The fact is that Nintendo did a really, really good job making their new console accessible to more than just “serious” gamers. That’s something that you would think someone would have figured out since Nintendo revolutionized consoles last time (in the 1980′s). But everyone else has simply followed suit until Nintendo has again changed the playing field.

If you’re in the market for a console you should definitely consider the Wii. These things are great.

Now I have another reason to love open source software. It forces proprietary software to evolve… even against the will of the author of that software.

I have long contended that in the future when we speak of Firefox in a historical sense the only benefit we will remember will be that it made IE better. I just didn’t expect it this soon.

About 10 minutes after my first test drive with IE7 I spent some time staring blankly at the Firefox icon on my desktop. I hated to admit it, but Microsoft had out Firefox’d Firefox.

Read on for why I think that…

Firefox taught IE: Tabs

Sure, Firefox has tabs and they’re really useful. Firefox didn’t invent the idea, but they were probably the most widespread example of a tabbed browser. The tabs are functional and being able to open a folder of bookmarks into a series of tabs is exceedingly useful for me. Being able to right click on a tab and close all of the other tabs adds to this usefulness and is one of the commands I use most often.

Now Internet Explorer has tabs as well. The tabs are almost identical in functionality to the Firefox implementation. Double click on the tab bar for a new tab, press CTRL+T or even click the convenient New Tab button. Opening a group of favorites is also possible, again, almost the exact same functionality as Firefox. But then, there’s the Quick Tabs functionality. Click on the button on the left of the tab bar or press CTRL+Q and voila, you have a thumbnail of every single tab you have open. It goes away when you move the window… but that’s only a minor irritation. Just don’t move the window, instead click on the page you want to look at.

Firefox taught IE: Sidebar

Something a lot… and I mean a lot… of people talk about is sidebar approaches to presentation of separate but relative information. Vista is going to have one built into the desktop. Firefox took this to a slightly higher level with their support for RSS feeds directly in the sidebar (even further with Extensions that use the sidebar for various activities).

Internet Explorer has long had the ability to snap your favorites to the side of the browser. Now, however, there’s the familiar favorites star on the far left of the tab bar. This star displays your favorites in a fold-out, auto-hiding sidebar. So for those of us tired of giving up screen real estate to a sidebar but addicted to the functionality a sidebar provides there is now a solution! I’ve grown extremely addicted to this new functionality in a very short period. Definitely a win on this one for Microsoft.

Firefox taught IE: RSS

RSS is something just now beginning to catch momentum in a mainstream market. It is still someone obscure to general users, but the savvy folks out there love it. I’m one of those folks.

Firefox allows you to subscribe to RSS feeds which may then be loaded into the aforementioned sidebar. A feed acts a lot like a bookmark folder and displays the headlines for the feed as bookmarks. The functionality is nice, but it isn’t above some of the functionality I’ve seen from some open source applications dedicated to RSS feeds.

Microsoft decided to include RSS feeds in IE7. You can see where they looked at Firefox for ideas and then again put their own skew on them. Internet Explorer allows you to subscribe to a feed and display it in the sidebar. The way IE formats them is similar to Firefox, but the headlines are never displayed in the sidebar. Instead, the name of the feed is displayed and clicking on it opens the feed in a standardized, attractive format in the main window of the browser. Personally, I don’t find this as useful as the Firefox implementation as I would rather not have to scroll through what I consider irrelevant headline introductions just to read the headlines further down the list. In the case of most feeds, I would have been just as well off to have created a favorite to the site section hosting the news and just gone to it.

So while I like RSS support in both browsers somewhat, I don’t think either has it fully figured out yet.

Final Thoughts

I never intended for this to be a comprehensive review of Internet Explorer 7, but I did intend for it to be a quick look at what web developers may find immediately useful when moving from Firefox to IE.

I didn’t go into how Internet Explorer was faster in every way. I didn’t go into how Internet Explorer and Firefox still don’t agree on how cretain block level elements should be displayed. I didn’t go into how much it pains me to admit I would recommend a Microsoft product over an open source one. Or did I?

Either way, Internet Explorer is an awesome upgrade if you currently use an older version of it. If you use Opera and like it, stick there. If you use Firefox, give the new IE a shot. If you’re like me you won’t regret it.