Jonathan's Musings

I spend a great part of my day on the computer and need to access a number of different programs during this time. To speed things up, I have put all the icons for programs I use regularly on my desktop and have further arranged them in groups for quicker access.

This works very well, because I just need to hit "Show Desktop" and double-click on my desired icon to open the program I'm looking for. It's quick and efficient and works well...

That is... until Windows screws up and decides to rearrange all the icons on the desktop!

It happens every now and again when Windows changes resolutions. Being on a laptop and playing a game or two occasionally, the chances of this happening have become quite high and it's got me pulling my hair out having to rearrange my icons every 2^nd day!

Enter, Launchy.

I experimented with a few pieces of software which saved your desktop icons position so that it could be restored when Windows bombed out, but found Launchy while doing this and was intrigued, so decided to test it out.

Launchy is a keystroke launcher and is absolutely fantastic!

Pressing Alt+Space brings up Launchy and then you just start typing part of the name of the application you want to launch and as soon as it comes up (it searches as you type), press Enter and voila, it launches.

It takes a bit of getting used to, but once you are, it is much faster than any other method of launching programs! No menu foldout delays, no searching for the right icon, just pure efficiency.

It can be used for cataloguing and launching of a variety of different media as well, not just shortcuts! Checkout http://www.launchy.net for more.

PS I hardly use the Start Menu anymore and have removed all the icons off my desktop (so Windows can have its way with my Desktop to its digital heart's delight).

I have been trying to find a nice RSS over the last few months, but have for the most part, not found anything to my liking.

I would've liked to have my RSS feeds hooked into my browser in some way, but none of the extensions I have found have been very good and I'm not a fan of the Live Bookmarks feature in FireFox.

That leaves one with the choice of using a standalone desktop version and I did find a few that I liked in this realm including a simple one in FeedReader and a more complicated one in Omea Reader.

Using these though requires that I have another application open and that I actually remember to open it. The other downside is that if I am away from my regular PC then I don't get to check out the feeds I am subscribed to.

Enter Google Reader.

Google Reader is the project of Google labs and is basically an online RSS Reader.

I have a little bit of a reservation with it with regards to how it gets the feeds and the impact it has on my bandwidth use (coming from South Africa where bandwidth is an expensive commodity), but doubt it really has any significant impact.

It is a great boon to me in that it is lightweight, functional, I can tag the various articles, it is linked to my Google Account and I can get my feeds wherever I am in the world!

It is still a bit of a pain in that I have to remember to open it every now and again to check (which is kind of against the point of RSS), but I still have to do that with e desktop app anyway and since I'm in my browser most of the day, it's not really a problem.

nother cool feature, although I haven't tried this yet, is that you can actually use Google Reader offline! Yes, offline! As crazy as that sounds, apparently if you install the Google Gears extension for FireFox (and I presume there is an IE equivalent), then you can use Google Reader while not being connected to the net!

So if you're looking for a simple, functional and online RSS reader, give Google Reader a try!

There are so many great web services out there nowadays with the advent of such services as YouTube, Flickr and my new personal favourite, del.icio.us.

In case you're not aware of what del.icio.us is all about, head on over to its page on Wikipedia.

I have know about del.icio.us for some time, but haven't been actively using it. That changed a few days ago when I decided to get with it and give this blog a kick in the pants, register on Technorati and other such techi things.

I have since converted all my bookmarks in Firefox into del.icio.us bookmarks and will the help of a great Add On for Firefox in del.icio.us Bookmarks am loving my new found bookmarking heaven!

I hate it when software companies feel the need to take a good product which serves a need, and try to make it serve every (even loosely) related need and screw it up in the process!

ZoneLabs has a great firewall in ZoneAlarm. As a firewall it offers everything that a regular user could want with a clean interface and both network and application protection. I love if both for its ability to keep my PC protected from outside attacks and also (perhaps more so) to stop some of my programs doing unwanted or unnecessary Internet requests. And best of all... it's free!

I got a notice today however, that ZoneAlarm 7.0 was available for download.

Being the software freak I am, I always try to keep up to date with patches, new versions etc. so I dutifully downloaded the new version. I saw that it was 3 times bigger than my previous version (6.5) which gave me pause for thought, but I installed it nonetheless.

After installation and restarting, my first annoyance came with extra popups which I didn't want and hadn't expected. After giving those the bat, I opened the program to see if there where any significant differences. Nope. None that were apparent.

Then I was assaulted by another popup from Outlook and was surprised to find that ZoneAlarm had installed a mail filtering add-in to Outlook! I had not expected this, nor asked for it, nor being told about it anywhere!

I consulted the change logs and documentation and saw no mention of this. I also found no way to turn it off, which, seeing as I already use SpamBayes to fulfil my SPAM Filtering needs, was rather unacceptable!

I searched the Internet for clues to this predicament and found no end of complaints about this problem. I did find a solution for disabling the plugin but by that stage I had already decided to roll back to the previous version.

This whole process involed about 1 hour of my time what with downloading, restarting and installing, and now I am back at square one and have to "teach" ZoneAlarm all over again because it deleted all my settings in the rollback process.

My Conclusion:
ZoneAlarm 7.0 (free) seems to represent no significant improvement upon ZoneAlarm 6.5 (free) and is 3 times the size, indicating uncontrolled software bloat. It also includes this unnecessary mail filter component which requires more hassle to disable than what it's worth, and is not as functional or configurable as other mail filter packages out there.

My Advice:
Stick with ZoneAlarm 6.5 (free) for your firewall needs and use a separate software package for your mail filtering needs (I suggest SpamBayes for advanced users). When a new version of ZoneAlarm comes out, wait a few weeks and search for any forum postings about it. Only if there are no untoward issues reported during this time, then install it.