software

You can now fit a full collection of open source productivity software onto a regular thumbdrive for easily transferring your work environment from comptuer to computer. Download a full suite or each portable-ready app individually at johnhaller.com.

Even though Microsoft is finally getting around to releasing a version seven of their Internet Explorer browser, most of the recent innovation has been taking place with the freely downloadable Firefox browser. The main feature Firefox brought to the mainstream and that IE7 will be offering is tabbed browsing. With a tabbed browser, you can open new browser "windows" in the same window but with the page title appearing in a tab instead of the window title bar. This makes it really practical to switch between multiple web pages simultaneously without spending all your time finding the right window on your task bar.

Beyond tabbed browsing, Firefox has captured a significant share of the browser market by offering programmers the ability to extend its functionality through add-ins they call Extensions.

Here are some of my favorite Firefox Extensions and why:

Ruby on Rails sounds like a promising web development framework, though I know nothing more than the

Windows XP works quite well with tons of hardware and software. But even the programmers at Microsoft have thought of a bunch of ways to make it better. Enter the PowerToys for Windows XP, a group of freely available extensions to the Windows XP operating system that you can install and use to make your life easier. I especially like the Image Resizer, Command Prompt Here, and Tweak UI which lets you adjust things like menu speed, desktop icon size and spacing.

I also like the "Send to X" powertoy from Windows 95 which lets you copy groups of filenames to the clipboard, send a filename to a command line, or send files to any folder, all with a right-click.

I've been watching the Open Office project for quite a while, even back when it was known as the free version of StarOffice from Sun. Over the past few years, several clunky and annoying issues have been obliterated, allowing this free program to emerge as a viable replacement for the spendy Microsoft Office in nearly every way. Some folks are saying that only Powerpoint and a few types of highly complex documents may still require the features of MS Office. Other folks are pointing out that OpenOffice is a memory hog and loads slowly.

For people who aren't ready for serious web design work but need a flexible and useful place to edit web pages without knowing HTML, the NVU (prnounced n-view) web editor is the ticket. You can't go wrong with this free tool, and you can run it on Windows, Mac, and Linux. Read what some others say, then start to use it yourself!

What a great summary of my life in programming. Adam Bosworth describes the new model of application development:

• Run like mad

• Try things out, watch, learn
• Iterate
• Learn form the customers in real-time
• Real applications, APIs to follow
  

Zimbra represents several steps forward: an open source collaboration server that will certainly give Microsoft's Exchange a run for its money, and a great example of AJAXi technology that promises to make deploying great tools easier and easier over time. Maybe my home network will sport one of these someday!

Ubuntu is a Linux operating system with a philosophy centered around making technology accessible and useful for ordinary people. Whereas many technology projects seem to focus on making techies' jobs easier or making money, this one is different. That gives me hope it will end up being one of the more usable "free" operating system configurations.

ZDNet article tells the Ubuntu story

If you suspect something fishy has made its way onto your system and your virus and spyware programs aren't picking it up, download HijackThis , unzip the program to a new location, run the program and produce a log file, then copy and paste its contents into the space provided on this web page: this HijackThis log analyzer.

This process will tell you what experienced people believe about the programs running on your system. If you have any BAD items, search the list of spyware removal strategies found on the same website.