Category Archives: Software - Page 6

GPS Maps

Posted by on February 26, 2006 Comments Off on GPS Maps

I’ve had a bluetooth GPS for a few months now and have really enjoyed it. One of the more fun things I like to do is create virtual tracks of where I’ve been. One website that can help you do just that is GPS Visualizer.

GPS Visualizer allows you to upload NMEA GPS logs to their site and export maps in a variety of formats. One of the most compatible formats uses a Google Maps overlay. They also support the Google Earth overlay and KML formats and several static formats such as SVG and JPEG/PNG using a variety of map sources.

A Slimmer Real Player

Posted by on February 24, 2006 Comments Off on A Slimmer Real Player

Those of us who have been on the ‘net for a while can remember the heyday of Real Player. One of the first ways to squeeze passable audio and video down narrow dialup connections Real Player was a boon to the then emerging streaming media market. Somewhere along the way Real Media lost this focus and tried to enter the media library/management/player category with the RealOne product. Ever since then it seems the amount of advertising and junk that comes with the player has discouraged many from installing it. There have been some alternatives available (RealAlternative comes to mind) but these enjoy limited success as they don’t support the latest features and are rejected by some sites. For several years I ran an old copy of Real Player G2 which was about the last unbloated version of the software but that no longer works at many sites. It has even become hard to find the free version of the standard Real Player and it still comes with bloatware and advertising.

One alternaitve that I’ve been using for a while and seems to work well is the “Real Player Enterprise” edition of the software. Designed for companies who revolted against installing Real Player becasue of all these problems, this client is ad-free and you can turn off all of the annoying features. It also is based on the current version of Real Player so it should be accepted anywhere with Real Media files. Good luck trying to find a link to this from the homepage though!

You can learn more about this program on the Real Player Enterprise website and download a free copy from the download page. Stream on.

Speedy Reader

Posted by on February 22, 2006 Comments Off on Speedy Reader

By now most netizens are familiar with the ubiquitous Portable Document Format (PDF) file. Commonly used to distribute printed material online PDF files have been traditionally opened with Adobe’s Acrobat Reader (now just Adobe Reader) but that has become quite a slow and bloated program over the years. I don’t know about you but I would rather it not take two minutes just for a program to load so I can read a simple one page document. While it may not have all the bells and whistles associated with the Adobe Reader I’ve found that the free Foxit Reader is a great Microsoft Windows compatible alternative viewer for PDF files. Taking just a second to load and coming in at less than 1 MB this is a splendid example of putting bloatware on a diet. You may want to keep a copy of Adobe Reader handy for filling out PDF forms or in case you have a particularly complex file to open but for the average PDF Foxit Reader certainly is a speedy alternative.

Deploying Windows XP

Posted by on February 20, 2006 Comments Off on Deploying Windows XP

Backin August, 2004 I mentioned the XPCREATE utility which can be used to slipstream service packs and hotfixes into Windows XP installation CDs. With Windows XP continuing to age and hotfixes still accumulating there are even better tools availible to ease the installation process. The most widely recognized tool today is nLite. This program has a clean and easy to use interface that allows you to create deployment CDs for Windows XP that include all of the latest hostfixes plus craft an unattended installation disc or one with custom default settings. Previously creating discs such as these was only possible with a deep understanding of how Microsoft install CDs worked and writing a lot of INF files by hand. Even for simply getting patches onto your install CD nLite is a great option.

Calendar Server

Posted by on February 14, 2006 Comments Off on Calendar Server

WebCalendar is a highly configurable PHP/database based calendar package. You can set it up for use by either a single user or a group of users. It also operates a calendar server than can be viewed by any iCal-compliant application such as Mozilla Sunbird, Apple iCal, GNOME Evolution or RSS enabled applications such as Firefox, Thunderbird, RSSOwl or FeedDemon. Another one of the features I enjoy is tha ability to set email reminders. One of the surest ways of reminding me about something is via an email so this is a fantastic feature for me. If you’re looking for a calendar solution be sure to check out WebCalendar.

VPN solutions for a mixed client environment

Posted by on November 22, 2005 Comments Off on VPN solutions for a mixed client environment

I’ve been thinking it’s time to update my VPN solution so I’ve been poking around looking at current solutions that will work for me. I was excited by the OpenVPN SSL VPN server but I need to support PocketPC clients which they do not and it would be nice if I could avoid installing a client on Windows 2000/XP/2003 machines. Another SSL VPN solution is SSL Explorer.

Jacco has a great page demystifying the setup of Openswan IPSEC VPN servers for use with a variety of clients including PocketPC. Unless something changes or it becomes especially difficult to implement that’s probably the route I’ll go. Nate Carlson has another page about configuring openswan to work with IPSec and L2TP.

Serving DNS with a different twist

Posted by on November 22, 2005 Comments Off on Serving DNS with a different twist

I was bouncing around the web tonight and discovered MyDNS which is a DNS server that serves records out of a MySQL or PostgreSQL database instead of with zone files like the common BIND server uses. Interesting idea, I wonder if it scales as well.

PowerDNS is another DNS server application that can read from a SQL database, amongst other formats.

The popular djbdns can be fed with a SQL database via an intermediary application called sql2tinydns this one also has a web interface for management which could be a handy thing.

If you’re looking for a free DNS service, maybe one that provides dynamic DNS or a secondary nameserver, you might want to take a look at FreeDNS by afraid.org. One twist with this service is they encourage sharing subdomains and hostnames on your domain with other users.

Checking out the latest b2evolution

Posted by on November 19, 2005 Comments Off on Checking out the latest b2evolution

A few weeks ago I mentioned that b2evolution is working on a new version to address some of the competition from the single user blogging engines. If you want to take a sneak peak at the new version and have shell access to a linux system you can create a directory for b2evo and then issue the following command from inside that directory to get the latest development copy.
cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/evocms co -P b2evolution

One thing leads to another

Posted by on November 14, 2005 Comments Off on One thing leads to another

Just to demonstrate how I can end up spending a lot of time on a fairly simple web inquiry, while I was researching that last blurb about Google Games I ended up on some sites with open source versions of more familiar games.

FreeCiv is one that I’ve seen before. It’s obviously a F/OSS implementation of “Sid Meir’s Civilization” game.

In a similar thread, Stratagus is a F/OSS clone of WarCraft, it was formally called FreeCraft.

The board game Risk has been recreated in software several times over the years but two F/OSS projects attempting this are Jrisk and JavaRisk.

Google Games

Posted by on November 14, 2005 Comments Off on Google Games

There are a lot of interesting games people have come up with for Google. Early on people were entering keywords to try and come up with the shortest string that would return only one result. Later people started posting lists of keywords and you would have to guess what site would come up. Now with the advent of Google Maps and the associated API people have re-created a “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego” type spy-hunt geography-learning game called Brewster Jennings Protects America. Others have re-created the board game Risk. These are popping up so quickly that someone has already created a Wiki page for Google Maps games.