John Hesch

activeCollab is an easy to use, web based, open source collaboration and project management tool. Set up an environment where you, your team and your clients can collaborate on active projects using a set of simple, functional tools. 100% free.

I’ve been using activeCollab for a month or so and it is the most adaptable, easy-to-use project management application I’ve ever used. Unfortunately the developer is closing up the source as of v1.0, but 0.71 is still open source and hopefully some developers will take that code and begin a new branch of activeCollab.

There is a close-knit active community that is hacking the 0.71 code to add functionality but it hasn’t taken off like I’d hoped.

Html Validator for Firefox

HTML Validator is an Mozilla extension that adds HTML validation to Firefox and Mozilla. The number of errors of a HTML page is seen on the form of an icon in the status bar when browsing. The details of the errors are seen when looking the HTML source of the page.

The extension is based on Tidy. This program, Tidy, was originally developed by the Web Consortium W3C. And now extended and improved by a lot of persons.

Tidy is a helpful program that tries to help people to correct their HTML errors. It finds HTML errors and classifies them in 2 categories:

* warnings: HTML errors that Tidy can fix automatically
* errors: HTML errors that Tidy cannot fix or understand.

If you have only Warnings, press on the “Clean up” button and Tidy will do his best to propose you a cleaned version of your page.

Every once in awhile I find a really handy program that makes my life easier. Clipomatic is one of those. I spend so much of my online time using the copy and paste functions of Windows, but one of the inconveniences of copy and paste is it only remembers the last item I copied.

Clipomatic is a clipboard cache program - it remembers what was copied to the clipboard even after new data is copied, and allows you to retrieve the old data. While there are many programs that do the same, none are quite so convenient, simple to use, or efficient as Clipomatic.

Now when I want to paste in something I copied earlier I hit ctrl-alt-v and a small dialog box opens with a list of recent items I copied. I then can select the item I need and press enter.

I also use Mike Lin’s Startup Control Panel which is a nifty control panel applet that allows me to easily configure which programs run when my computer starts. I use Windows 2000 which lacks this feature.

Another useful utility of Mike Lin’s is StartupMonitor which is a small utility that runs transparently and notifies me when any program registers itself to run at system startup.

Yahoo has entered the desktop search race which also includes Google and Microsoft.

Flexbeta tests the three major anti-spyware applications and concluded that Microsoft’s newly released Antispyware application detected more infected files and was easier to use.

As I mentioned earlier, Microsoft is releasing a beta copy of their new spyware detector today. If you’re interested in giving it a try here is the download link.

Windows AntiSpyware (Beta) is a security technology that helps protect Windows users from spyware and other potentially unwanted software. Known spyware on your PC can be detected and removed. This helps reduce negative effects caused by spyware including slow PC performance, annoying pop-up ads, unwanted changes to Internet settings, and unauthorized use of your private information. Continuous protection improves Internet browsing safety by guarding over 50 ways spyware can enter your PC.

The worldwide SpyNetâ„¢ community plays a key role in determining which suspicious programs are classified as spyware. Microsoft researchers quickly develop methods to counteract these threats, which are automatically downloaded to your PC, so you stay up-to-date.

I was writing my monthly recap post on KZION and was into it about three paragraphs when I accidentally closed the browser tab I was on. If you’re familiar with WordPress you know that once you close the Write Post page your done! This has happened one too many times and so I began thinking of an alternative way to post entries without using a browser.

I checked into blog by email which makes a lot of sense. It’s easy because I always have Thunderbird open and can fire off an email pretty quick and the draft feature would make it convenient to save partially completed posts for later. The problem is that there is limited text formatting features in Thunderbird and my outgoing emails are scanned by Avast to check for viruses. A message is added to the email body indicating the email is free from a virus before the email leaves my PC. I obviously don’t want that text in my entries. I could remove that feature from Thunderbird and Avast but I don’t think I want to do that.

I then remembered a program I used when I first began blogging a couple years ago called w.Blogger. I downloaded a copy, which is free by the way, and can’t figure out why I stopped using it. It has advanced text formatting features, supports multiple blogs, has a nice preview feature with built in spell check, and tons of other great features.

I won’t be losing anymore partially completed blog entries.

Now you can track your UPS shipments via RSS with this tool. Looks like down the road there will be one for FEDEX, DHL and the good old US Postal Service.

I’ve noticed that my copy of Trillian 2 has been crashing a lot lately. I headed over to the Trillian website to see what was up and learned that Trillian 3.0 has been released. I downloaded 3.0 and installed it. I was pretty impressed with the new look of the GUI. But 3.0 seems really slow in both maximizing and creating a new chat window although this could be due to my Avast Scanner. Avast has an option to check all IM connections for virus’s.

I’m a registered user of Trillian and I was under the impression that once you register all future upgrades are free but when I tried upgrading to Trillian 3.0 Pro I was told I needed to re-register. Is this the case or am I missing something? Looking through the features of Basic 3.0 and Pro 3.0 the only difference I can see is video chat and support for Jabber, Novell GroupWise Messenger, and Rendezvous. If that’s the case I see no need to upgrade to the pro version.

It appears that all my plugins still operate as normal. I just took a closer look and under preferences it says that Plugins are a function of the Pro version?? That’s just wonderful.