This might seem a bit “me too” but it would seem all the Ruby on Rails developers on Mac who use TextMate actually have a clue. This is a really good text editor. Good enough that I just paid €39 for it. The “project” fly-out is simple and brilliant, no meta project files or strange directory structure requirements; it just shows everything under the directory you specify. The bundles work well too providing shortcuts and intelligent text handling for a variety of tasks e.g. HTML, CSS and Ruby on Rails.
CrossOver Mac is an impressive and useful piece of software. It lets you run Windows applications on Mac OSX without the need for virtual machines (e.g. Parallels). The app runs in what looks like a native OSX window and even allows you to access your OSX files from within the Windows app.
I was most impressed with the installation process. CodeWeavers has a repository of applications on their server that you can select to install on your Mac. No need for your own CDs (obviously this doesn’t get around licensing, you still need to own these apps or they have to be free e.g. Internet Explorer.) The installation process is very slick and dead easy, I can see non-technical users using this without much hassle.
In the above image you can see Internet Explorer 6.0 runnin on my Mac OSX desktop. Brilliant for testing websites. I’ll give Visual Studio 2005 a try next, a challenge if there is one.
S3Fox is an extension for Firefox that gives you an FTP like view of your Amazon S3 account. You can upload and download files, view their URLs, create “directories” (S3 doesn’t technically support directories within buckets and so this has to be faked) and set the Access Control List on items.
We use Exodus as our “corporate IM” at the TSSG and while it does the job it can be a bit flaky, isn’t very pretty and overall needs some polish. Spark though, amazingly being a Java app, is clean, light, fast, feature rich and stable.
Quintura is an interesting search tool. You enter in a word or phrase and it then clusters related words around it. e.g. Enter in Ruby and you get Rails (as in Ruby on Rails) as well as ruby the precious gem. In this case I wanted Ruby on Rails so I clicked Rails and now my phrase is Ruby Rails and any related words to that phrase are then shown. You can then hover over these words and further relations are shown.
The bit that I really liked was that Quintura doesn’t reinvent the search engine. It works off of your favourite one, be it Google, Yahoo! or a host of others.
The UI is slick and easy to use. Results are returned quickly. Installation was a breeze and overall it feels like a professional application.
I’d like to see a web-based version of this, something that sits inside my browser which would make following result links easier.
I must say that after ten years of “Please register” wait screens and dodgy hacks it is nice being able to open a ZIP file with WinZip without any of that. It has taken me far too long to buy a license and give back a little that the great and venerable WinZip has given to me.
Don Dodge (via Jeff Clavier) reports on 7 features enterprise software needs. The interesting point is that they can just as easily apply to non-enterprise software. Isn’t this part of realising the independant and powerful nature of employees? Realising they aren’t cogs or resources? That we are demanding ownership of the tools we use in our companies.
The 7 features:
Instant Value to customers - solve a problem or create value with the first use
Viral adoption - Pull, not push. No direct sales force required
Minimum IT footprint, preferably none. Hosted SaaS is best.
Simple, intuitive user experience - no training required.
Personalized user experience - customizable
Easy configuration based on application or usage templates
Context aware - adjust to location, groups, preferences, devices, etc.
No more shall we use Lotus Notes because IT says we must.
Some screenshots from the Office 2007 beta. Overall I like what they have done though I am not happy they override my Windows XP theme choice (Windows Classic.)
