justin's blog

In this post, I will discuss Google's new product, an online spreadsheet.

Google Spreadsheets appears to be the ultimate in stand-alone portable spreadsheets. It is still in development (it is listed in the Labs section of Google's site), but it is quite stable and works well on each machine I have tested it on (including a Linux one). You can upload spreadsheets in .xls and .csv formats and edit them easily . These stay on your Google Account storage after you open them, so once uploaded from one computer, you can access them from any computer when you log into your account. Once done editing, you can save it to your Google account and then download it to a location of your choice as .xls or .csv. It preserves all formulas and works well with them. It is miles ahead of the other fonline spreadsheet, AjaxSpread. I would reccommend use of this to anyone.

In this post, I will talk about a new campaign to destroy IE.

I'd like to start off by saying that I wholeheartedly agree with what these people are trying to do. IE is the bane of any internet user's existence and the malware you can get just by using it is tremendous. The premise behind the Explorer Destroyer campaign is to make money referring people to Firefox with Google Toolbar as per Google's bounty system. People can make one dollar for each they refer. Some of the plans that Explorer Destroyer has is as follows

Three settings: Gentle, Semi-serious, and Dead-serious

In this post, I will discuss a new search engine called Accoona.

Accoona is the the new kid on the block in the world of search engines dominated by Google. It has a nice simple interface like the one that won the hearts of so many for Google and made Yahoo's cluttered page look bad. A wise man once said: "Fools learn from their own mistakes, the wise learn from other people's mistakes". Anyway, you can search the web, for businesses, and the news. I would like to see an image search similar to Google's, and that is one of the only things I can find lacking. One thing I won't miss when searching with Accoona is the "Sponsored Links" at the top. Bottom Line: I highly reccommend this new search engine, and if you like Google you should give it a whirl.

In this post, I will discuss the newest AjaxLaunch app, AjaxXLS.

As you can probably tell from the title, this new web-based app opens and edits spreadsheet files. AjaxLaunch has released a version that is just a viewer, and a pre-release editor version that is in testing. They both support .xls, .ods, and .sxc. The editor is a little buggy and I would not recommend it for the general public until it is a full release. It does however, look quite promising. The viewer is very nice and will suit your needs perfectly if all you have to do is see a spreadsheet that someone else has created. Once the editor is completed, we will have our first standalone portable spreadsheet! Keep an eye on AjaxLaunch, great things are coming out of there I can tell

In this post, I will talk about Google's new web-based app, a calendar program.

Today, Google released a calendar app for its account-holders (If you aren't one, get an invite from a buddy who is, as Google is the future!). It is quite basic, but it can import calendars from all of the major apps (I'm not sure about Sunbird, but I think that Sunbird uses the same iCal format that Google already supports). The interface is as always easy to use and good-looking. It even has a feature to let you search for events in your calendar. In addition, you can set who has access to your calendar, so your family and friends can see your calendar and add their events too. Go check it out!

In this post, I will discuss a web-delivered IM application called Meebo.

Meebo is an AJAX app that allows logging in to AIM/ICQ, MSN, YAHOO!, and Jabber/GTalk. It is entirely web-based and can be run on any browser that has JavaScript enabled. I find it highly useful in places where I don't have my USB stick or where the computers have been locked down by gestapo IT folks. It has a nice interface that is easy to use even for people new to computers. The two things that I find lacking is the inability to have groupchats and the lack of IRC support (which I don't use too much anymore anyway). All things considered, it is extremely good, I highly recommend that you try it out.

In this post, I will talk about an AJAX-delivered application called AjaxWrite.

AJAX, which stands for Asynchronous JavaScript And XML is a platform used for many web-delivered programs. In this case, it is used to deliver a word processor on the web. It is quite simple, but it gets the job done for smaller projects. It has most of the features that I use daily for reports and such. I usually don't have tons of formatting in my documents anyway, so AjaxWrite works fine for me. It is still in beta, so they have some on and off problems, but it can save in .doc, .odt, and a host of other formats. You can also upload from your desktop (USB key). They also have a drawing program called AjaxSketch and promote a video editing suite online called Eyespot. They plan on releasing an app every week at 12:00 PST, which is quite ambitious. Apps you can expect soon (they are launched on http://www.ajaxlaunch.com) include a spreadsheet (YAY!! A portable one finally!!) and a presentation program like PowerPoint. I should mention here that IE is not supported, only Gecko-based browsers are (Firefox, Epiphany, Netscape, Moz Suite, etc). They do plan to incorporate IE and Opera support later. All in all, a great app.

In this post, I will talk about a minimalistic text editor called SavageEd.

SavageEd is basically a very small notepad replacement. It weighs in at only 25KB. To make it portable though, you have to go to Options>Save Configuration>Use Private Profile. This will make it use an INI file instead of the registry. All you need from the ZIP package is SavageEd.exe, so just grab that.

http://www.geocities.com/kahlinor/SavageEd.html

-Justin

This post will be about the Linux LiveCD called SLAX Popcorn Edition.

Some of you may have heard of the Slackware-based SLAX. It is a small but fully functional OS that exists primarily in LiveCD format. I prefer the version of this Os called SLAX Popcorn Edition. This is a minimalistic version, weighing in at only 111MB! It has 6 basic apps. Firefox 1.5, AbiWord, Terminal, Gaim, beep-XMMS, and MPlayer. It uses the XFCE Desktop and Fluxbox, so it should run quite well even on old hardware. All in all, it is a great minimal OS, one of the best that I've seen.

Get it here

Hey all! I'd just like to take this post to outline what I'll probably do here ever so often. Mostly, I'll review software and talk about new stuff like Web 2.0 stuff. I like to keep it simple, so don't expect pretty pictures and nice formatted text

-Justin