Chris Johnston

I usually don’t put hype closed software here, but this is one that I really like. I received a digital camera last christmas and have been taking pictures with it ever since. Part of the problem with these kinds of camera is finding a way to manage all the photos. Here is a solution: Adone Photoshop Album.

This is probably the best piece of software that I have found for managing large amounts of photos from a digital camera (however, I have not tried iPhoto for the Mac yet). The nice thing is that they provide a free started edition for people to download and play with. Give it a try and see what you think.

Software link

There are many other people who have written about this, but I now have to agree with them. Governments, to be fiscally responsible, should have to use, unless otherwise impossible, open source software in place of proprietory software. At the very least, they should have to evaluate open source possibilities before looking at closed source applications.

Why am I saying this? Because, currently, I work for a government office and I see where my tax money is going and it is going to Microsoft.

Apparently, in the Ontario government, each department has an IT department that backs it up. These IT departments are responsible for providing the software applications that power their respective departments and/or ministries. These software apps may be used internally or externally by the general public. The thing is that, in my department at least, a fair number of these applications have all been created using Microsoft technology, namely ASP3.0.

Now granted, ASP is free. Or at least that is what Microsoft would have you believe. In order to get ASP you must first own a server OS — Windows NT, Windows 2000 Server, or Windows 2003 Server. Once you acquire the OS you have free access to ASP. Now logically this means that there are a whole bunch of government applications that are running on top of Microsoft operating system. Operating Systems that have, time and time again, proven themselves to be insecure and prone to security attacks of one sort or another. Should government websites not be amongst some of the most secure servers around? And yet they are running Microsoft.

Beyond the security issue there is also the issue of money. It is my tax money that pays for all this proprietory technology. If a department wants to upgrade all 2000 workstations to Windows XP, it is my tax money that has to pay for that. So with windows XP you pay about $200 and all you get is an OS. With Red Hat Desktop, for about $70USD, I get a full OS plus support plus a full boat load of applications. Basically, I get a fully working development environment for all of $70. From a financial stand point, which makes more sense to you? Oh, in addition, if any of that software just doesn’t quite fit in, I can always go in a modify the code cause I have full access to the source. Whereas, with closed source, if I need to change anything I am out of luck. And, the manufacturer could hide a backdoor in that closed source OS and I would never know about it. Now that is security!!!

The only question that remains is how to properly influence governments to adopt open source software? This I do not have an answer to. But it is a question that we need to address. Can you image if, during the next election campaign, one of the major issues that decided who got elected was a politician’s willingness to adopt open source software? That would be progress. If the goal of today’s governments is for increased transparency, should that not also extend to the software they use to power that government? I think so.

Sean Corfield, on his blog An Architect’s View has a list of the tools that he uses everyday as a developer. In addition, he also links to another website with a similar list where I was able to pick up a new app to play with.

This is what makes these lists really nice. It can be really hard to find high quality development tools to use. Lists like this allow people to see those tried and true tools that other developers use everyday and can’t live without. The tool that I picked up was DBVisualizer — a free (well, slightly stripped down) database management tool similar to Auqa Data Studio.

In order to continue this little trend, here is my list of tools that I use everyday:

• jEdit – probably the best text editor that I have ever used. Entirely written in Java and available for Windows, Linux and OS X. The really cool thing that sets jEdit apart from other text editors like TextPad is the plug-in architecture, if you need it to do something, chances are there is a plug-in that can handle it (open source)
• Dreamweaver – there is a lot of criticism leveled at dreamweaver, but I really like it. However, I tend not to use the wysiwyg tools, but it is still a great IDE for creating web sites.
• DBDesigner4 – visual database design/layout tool for MySQL. Basically, this allows you to diagram your databse and set up all the relationships in a similar manner to Visio. (open source)
• Aqua Data Studio – database management tool. I have not used DBvisualizer enough to put it on this list, but if you need to connect to a DBMS across a network or on your local machine, this is the tool for you. Makes working with MySQL a breeze. (free)
• FileZilla – simply one of the best ftp clients out there, and its free. (open source)
• iTunes – it’s ain’t a developement tool, but without music I don’t think I could develop. I have tried winamp, musicmatch, real jukebox and iTunes simply beats them all. Plus, it works nicely with my iPod. (free)
• Firefox/Thunderbird – excellent web browser email combination. (open source)
• Apache – enough said (open source)
• ColdFusion – excellent RAD web development tool that Macromedia simply does not market aggresively enough.
• Netbeans – java IDE. I have tried Eclipse and have never been able to get it to work for me. One of the nicest things about netbeans is the fact that you can edit files without creating a project. (free)
• MySQL – excellent little RDBMS that just keeps getting better. (free)

This is just a short list of the apps that I use everyday and can not live without. In fact, my new co-op position this summer, a lot of the applications listed above were amongst the first programs installed onto my new workstation.

No updates, and no time to post any updates cause I am super busy right now. Not only am I working a full time job, but I am also doing some web design on the side. Look for some updates next week or this weekend.