Category Archives: Website

Software Review for Year 2005

Last year I wrote about a handful of applications I discovered and used during the year. I’m keeping that tradition this year, along with some commentary about 2004’s list.

  • Opera, Safari, Firefox - I’m currently using Safari as my browser, the version bundled with Tiger this year is just as snappy as Camino on last years list. I also use Firefox once-in-a-while, mostly when I need the Web Developer Extension. On a side note, I used Opera for a few months and absolutely loved it. I’ve never seen pages render so fast, I need to revisit it and find out why I neglect it so much.
  • SynergyKM - I use 2 laptops and a desktop system now, with one mouse and keyboard across three monitors. Synergy makes this possible and SynergyKM makes this elegant to use in OS X.
  • menushade - Forgot how I stumbled on this nifty app, it decreases the brightness of the menubar in OS X and makes it not so distracting.
  • Google Earth - Not released for mac yet, but it gets a nod because I peaked at a leaked release and think it’s fantastic. It’s probably equally as fantastic in Windows.
  • iTunes - With the addition of podcast/vidcast support, iTunes is now always running in my dock.
  • HTTPWatch - Similar to the livehttpheaders firefox extension, this displays details of a http session from cookies and post variables to http headers and the content stream.
  • AppRocket - I previously mentioned AppRocket, It’s QuickSilver for windows.
  • Mozilla Venkman - Although not mastered yet, Venkman has helped me more than a few times when debugging javascript.
  • WinMerge - Creates a pretty diff.
  • Ethereal - I’d like a native OS X version, and no I don’t want to run fink, dports, X11, etc.
  • Flickr - ‘Nuff said.

Adium, iWork (now iBiz), NetNewsWire, wordpress, and DVArchive were all on my list last year. I use them daily still, so they get props for lasting 2 years. Wonder if they’ll make 3?

Wordpress as a cms

Alex King has just launched his company website using wordpress as a CMS. Really interesting, can’t wait to see what he has to say about it.

I have at least two projects right now that will be using wordpress as a backend.

Wordpress and flickr

In addition to implementing del.icio.us I’ve enabled my flickr galleries. I will begin to import my galleries from the old system into flickr. You can see the most recently added photos on the right.

You can view the photo albums by visiting photos from the title, and you can also subscribe to the photos rss feed.

Wordpress and del.icio.us

I’ve integrated my del.icio.us bookmarks into this website as the “Links” section to the right. del.icio.us is in essence a public repository of my bookmarks, much like you have in your web-browser.

You can view my bookmarks via the del.icio.us website:
http://del.icio.us/jstownsley

Or subscribe (rss) to this url:
http://del.icio.us/rss/jstownsley

kubrick in wordpress cvs

Upgraded to the latest wordpress nightly (now 1.5). Didn’t realize this until now but kubrick is in cvs.

Now someone should probably fix the archives in cvs so that they display images and hyperlinks. It’s more of a bug than a feature anyway. (See last question, bottom of the page: kubrick FAQ).