Do you ever feel overwhelmed because of all the cool web apps that are out there that you might be missing out on? I might be a total geek, but I do. In this section I’ll review cool web apps I have found. If you have a web app you’d like to suggest for review, please email me at jesse@frogblade.com.

Online Code File Comparison with Google Documents

November 21, 2009 – 3:11 pm

Recently I needed to compare two very large code files (1200+ lines) in order to make a few small revisions. At work we use the Tortoise SVN Subversion app for revision control and it makes side-by-side file comparison very easy. However, since I was at home, I had to find another way to do it. I Googled “File Comparison” and got a huge list of different free and non-free apps that I could try. I hate downloading unknown apps especially when I won’t be using them much, because they often come with spy-ware and other garbage. I ended up trying something different and it worked pretty well.

I did my file comparison using Google Docs. I was happy to find another cool way to use Google Docs. Plus this keeps it in the cloud in case I needed to access the file from somewhere else. You can do a simple file comparison using the Revision History tool. Here’s how:

1. Create a new document and paste your old code into it. Save your document:
step1

2. Now delete all the code and paste your new code into the same doc. Save your document again.

3. Go to File >> See Revision History

step2

4. Select the current and the previous versions and click the “Compare Checked” button.

step3

5. Where ever changes have been made, the code from your old file will show up as crossed through and the code from your new file will show up as highlighted.

step4

Now the obvious advantage you have in a real file comparison program like Tortoise is that you can make the changes right in the actual code file. With Google I had to find the changes I was looking for, copy the old content and paste it into the file in the correct place.  Not the most efficient, but it got the job done quickly and kept me from having to download who knows how many free programs to find one that worked right.

Jesse Harding | Also posted in Design Tips, Random Rants |

The Birth of Twitter

February 13, 2009 – 3:55 pm

twitterYes I admit, I am a Twitter addict. In fact my Facebook friends who aren’t familiar with Twitter probably think I spend all day updating my FB status. That’s actually just coming over from Twitter. Does that make me any less of a geek? No, actually that’s probably arguably more geeky, but I just thought I’d point it out.

The way I describe Twitter is that it is an open group chat where you can type a question, comment, what you are doing etc. and have it seen by all of your twitter friends (and anyone on twitter who happens to look). They can reply to you if they have a comment or an answer. The great thing about this is it lets you put things you are thinking of or working on out into the internet cloud and wait for a return. It’s passive communication at its finest.

For example - the other day I was asking a friend on twitter a question about a new prototyping application called Balsamiq. The creator of Balsamiq was also on twitter and was receiving alerts on any twitter post related to Balsamiq. The result was that about 2 minutes after my post I received a personal answer from the creator himself. Talk about customer service. I was impressed.

Anyway - enough of the blabbering. I read this article about the birth and creation of twitter and really liked it. It was interesting to see how it started and read about the process that led it to what it is today.

Here is the artcle: http://www.140characters.com/2009/01/30/how-twitter-was-born/

If you aren’t on Twitter yet. What are you waiting for? Sign up today and hey - add me as a friend. My Twitter ID is jdawg.

Jesse Harding | Also posted in Random Rants |

To-Do Lists with Toodledo

September 29, 2008 – 1:01 pm

To-Do lists with Toodledo

Recently I started looking for an online to-do list app that I could use to manage my freelance work. Just days after I started looking, AppScout reviewed an app called Toodledo. Now I have to say, I almost didn’t take the time to check it out because the name is so lame. Maybe it’s another language or something. I like my app names descriptive and Toodledo makes no sense at all. HOWEVER, I quickly got over myself and checked it out.

I am so glad I did.

Toodledo is one of those apps that has completely changed the way I work. I have a full time job and also do a lot of freelance projects at night. It’s easy to get overwhelmed or forget when I owe a certain project to a client. Toodledo helps me keep an eye on all of that and schedule out my work in advance so that I don’t double book.

Toodledo is very simple to use and let’s me create a separate folder for each of my projects. I can then add tasks to the project with start dates, due dates and priority levels, etc. I can look at my entire list of tasks or see the tasks for just a particular project (folder).

Right now I am mainly using Toodledo’s to-do list, but they have a lot of other tools available like notebooks and goals plus the ability to share task lists and more. There is also a pay version that allows you to upload files, get more SMS reminders, store completed tasks for longer periods of time and more.

Toodledo has done a good job of integrating with some of the other apps out there. They have a very handy FireFox add-on and also allow you to add tasks via twitter. You can integrate your tasks into Google Calendar, your iPhone or a host of other apps.

For me Toodledo was a life saver and I highly recommend it.

Jesse Harding |

Scrum project management with Scrumy.com

September 29, 2008 – 12:22 pm

Scrumy is a very simple web app that enables you to easily track projects using the Scrum development model. For those new to Scrum development, Scrum basically consists of creating “stories” which are a simple sentence or two about the project. An example of a story might be “Make a way for a user to search by first name.” Tasks are then assigned to the story which detail the actual work that will need to be done to accomplish the story. Each task is assigned to a member of your dev team. Scrum also utilizes (usually daily) standup meetings where the status of stories and tasks is reviewed.

There are many tracking tools out there that development teams use to track their Scrum. The company I work for uses JIRA. I was excited to check out Scrumy to see what the “web 2.0″ field had to offer in Scrum tracking.

Innovative

The first thing you’ll notice about scrumy is their innovative form-less approach to account creation. Creating an account is as easy as typing your project name into the address bar. I’ll talk later about a couple problems with this, but overall I really liked this technique. I haven’t seen anyone use this method of account creation and appreciate the new idea.

If you aren’t feeling creative you can click “I’m feeling scrumy” which will create a project for you with a random name. You can also click “generate random project name” which will show you various random project names on the home page before actually creating one.

Tutorial

Once you create a new project, Scrumy gives you a very detailed walk through tutorial of how it works. I loved this part of the app. It only takes a minute or 2 to get a good grasp of how the app works.

Simplicity

Scrumy is extremely intuitive and simple to use. You create stories, add tasks to those stories, and simply drag those tasks into the different status boxes as the they progress. It’s timeline based with tasks progressing to the right towards completion. This makes it very easy to see where a task is in the development process.

The whole Srumy layout is very clean and easy to read which makes it perfect for looking over during Scrum meetings or reviewing quickly before meeting with a client.

Color-coding

One very cool feature of scrumy is task color-coding. As you assign tasks to a member of your team, Scrumy color codes that task. Any other tasks assigned to the same team member automatically receive the same color coding. This makes it very easy to see all your personal tasks at a glance.

Password Protection

This is the only downside to the simple account creation model that Scrumy has created and really the only downside to the app in general that I can see. Password protection is not included in the free version of Scrumy. Thus if you create an account , and someone else tries to create an account with the same name they will instead be directed to your account where they are free to make changes or wreak havoc. The chances of this could be somewhat lessened by creating a less common account name (i.e. adding some numbers to the end etc.). You can also shell out some cash for a “Pro” account that comes with password protection.

Upgrading

Upgrading to Scrumy Pro costs $7 per month or $60 per year and adds password protection, project history, future projects, sprint goal charts, and ability to change the name of your project.

Conclusion

All in all I was very impressed with Scrumy.com and may start to use it for some of my side projects. I was a little disappointed that password protection only came in the pay version of the product since there are other project management apps online (basecamp etc.) which include that in their free version. I can’t fault Scrumy for trying to make some cash off their product though and they have definitely created a top grade simple-to-use app that will make managing your scrum (or any) team projects easier.

Jesse Harding |

Google Image Labeler

July 23, 2008 – 1:28 pm

Google Image LabelerRecently while doing an image search for pictures of french toast I noticed a link in the top corner that said New! Google Image Labeler. I thought this sounded interesting so I gave it a click.

I was surprised for two reasons:

  1. Google had apparently acquired this fun image labeling game I had once played 2 or 3 years ago.
  2. I had just mentioned this game to my brother 2 days ago when he was talking about a collective consciousness experiment. Talk about collective consciousness!

The game goes like this:

First you are paired up with an online partner who also wants to play. Next you are shown an image and asked to label it. There is a list of off-limits labels that you are not allowed to use. The goal here is to type the same label as your partner so that you can move on to the next image. In the process you end up typing many different labels per image in hopes of typing a match. You are also able to pass on hard to label images.

You have a 2 minute time limit and score points each time you and your partner match labels. The points earn you nothing but bragging rights, and perhaps a spot in the top scorers area.

At the end of the game you are able to see a list of the words your partner used to describe each of the images. It’s very interesting to see how differently someone can see the same image.

Every once in a while you’ll get paired with someone who amazingly seems to think the exact same way you do, and that’s when it really gets fun.

The brilliant thing about the Google Image Labeler is that Google has created a quite fun game, that is actually getting work done on the back end. You see, Google uses the matched labels as possible labels for those particular images in their image search. Thus they are actually creating a more accurate human labeled image search under the guise of a “game”.

To me this falls along the same line of genius as the self checkout lines at grocery stores. People complaining about checkers being too slow? Let’s let them do it themselves and at the same time, be able to hire less checkers. Win Win! (Lose for people wanting checker jobs)

I expect we’ll see more innovations like this in the coming years. Perhaps a “flip the burger” game at McDonalds or a “help Mr. Drain chug the old oil” game at Jiffy Lube. If these games are fun like the Google Image Labeler, you’ll soon be dry cleaning your own clothes without even realizing it!

Jesse Harding | Also posted in Random Rants |

Free Rickroll by phone

July 1, 2008 – 1:16 pm

I guess this is *kind of* a web app so I’ll put it in the Web App Review section.

I just discovered a site that lets you Rickroll someone by phone. Joy!

Here’s the link

I was soo tempted to Rickroll that link but you my faithful readers mean more to me than a simple joke.

Basically you enter in your friend or enemy’s phone number and go. The calls I have done usually take around 15 minutes to go through. If you want priority processing you can buy a token (45 cents on paypal) that will push your call in front of the free calls. There is also a monthly membership that makes the call look like it is coming from your number (rather than unlisted)

For the free calls you are limited to one call per half hour. Still that is a lot of freakin’ Rickrolls man!!!!

They also have Chocolate Rain and Numa Numa so you can officially make the friends you still have hate you like everyone else does.

Jesse Harding | Also posted in Random Rants |

Common Craft and Twitter

June 20, 2008 – 11:37 am

If you haven’t seen the video “Twitter in Plain English” yet check it out:

http://www.commoncraft.com/Twitter

common craftWhat I really want to post here though is how cool I think Common Craft is. This is one of those “why didn’t I think of that?” sites for me. First of all it’s a two person husband and wife team which is super neat. Second of all it’s a totally unique and straight-forward substitute to boring manuals or documentation. You can scream “RTFM” at the top of your lungs but the fact is no one reads. No one even reads good books these days so how can you expect them to read about your boring site or app documentation? However watching a 2 minute video on how to use your site or app is much easier, more fun and gets the job done better imo.

Obviously these videos are simple explanations and wouldn’t work as well for something like say… Photoshop or another complicated program. However I’m pretty impressed with Common Craft’s work. My favorite is when they use fishing line to animate things like emails being sent. Classic low tech goodness!

Oh and this is just genius:

http://www.commoncraft.com/zombies

Jesse Harding | Also posted in Random Rants |

Senduit.com Review

June 9, 2008 – 5:08 pm

This is my review of Senduit.com. Robert Hoekman Jr. talked about it in his TODCon keynote and I thought I’d check it out. It’s such a simple app that this review will be short.

Senduit is tinyurl for file attachments. It lets you upload a large file (100 mb or less) set an expiration when the online file will be deleted (30 minutes to 1 week) and then gives you a url that you can email to people that gives them access to download the file.

In the past when I had a large file to email someone, I would ftp it up to my server and then send the link via email. I figure I can use Senduit in at least half the time it would take me to do it my old way.

Plus it’s simple enough that anyone can understand it. I just had a client who needed to get a 25MB video file to me for a project. I just had him use senduit and email me the url. Worked like a champ!

Senduit gets 2 thumbs up from me. Great service with about the simplest interface you have ever seen.

www.senduit.com

Jesse Harding |

Evernote Text Formatting - adding bullets, bold etc.

June 7, 2008 – 9:29 am

You may have read my “I heart Evernote” post a week or so ago. I’ve had a few people ask about how to do text formatting (i.e. bullets, bold, italic etc.) using the Evernote desktop app. It is possible, just very hidden.

If you double click on the title bar for your note (light blue bar at the top of a note with the title in it), the note pops up in its own Wordpad-esque window that has… you guessed it, a text formatting toolbar.

Now, I’m not quite sure why they didn’t add that in to the main interface. Seems like a logical thing to do. Until that change is made, the feature just a double click away.

Now I still heart Evernote. I mean seriously Evernote and I have taken our relationship to the next level and I can overlook its little flaws like this or the way Evernote makes a choking sound when spitting out its toothpaste or leaves its shoes all over the house. I love it too much to let the little stuff get in the way.

Jesse Harding | Also posted in Design Tips, Random Rants |

I heart Evernote

May 28, 2008 – 2:25 pm

I was looking through old blog posts and realized something horrible. Something completely sickening. Something all but irreparable.

I had never blogged Evernote.

EVERNOTE

I thought for sure I was mistaken, but no it is true. I have never blogged Evernote. My favorite new app in the whole world.

Now in my defense, it is in beta and you have to request an account and wait for them to respond. That said, they responded within a day or two for me. Also I still have spare invites so email me at jesse AT frogblade.com if you want an invite.

There, I have rambled on for 3+ paragraphs without telling you what Evernote even is.

Basically it’s a web, mobile and desktop RIA that lets you keep notes that are then stored online and accessible anywhere. Sounds simple right? It is. Yet so powerful. For example. Your working on some code at home. Didn’t you just figure this out at work? Yes - but dang - it’s at work. Ahhhh you saved it as a note in Evernote. Problem solved!

You’re working on a report, project, novel, conference session, love letter, resignation notice etc. and you have an idea about it while at the library. Evernote it and you can access it later at home when you are finalizing the content.

You get the idea.

Evernote is searchable and can even accept html so you can paste content right from a web site without losing the formatting.

One of the wow factors Evernote boasts is the ability to read text off of image files. In other words, you could take photos of business cards on your phone, chuck the card and upload the photo to Evernote. Then you can run a search for “Lyle” and Evernote actually includes the image text in its search! There’s Lyle’s business card! The accuracy is pretty impressive as long as the text is clear and somewhat legible.

There. I blogged Evernote.

Want to watch a cool video?
http://www.evernote.com/about/what_is_en/tour/

Jesse Harding | Also posted in Random Rants |

Adobe AIR , iframes and cookies

May 28, 2008 – 10:49 am

Adobe AIRUntil yesterday most of my Adobe AIR experimentation had been with Flash and a tiny bit with Flex.

Yesterday I started working with the AIR SDK and playing around with some html AIR apps.

I was happy to find that both iframes and cookies work in AIR. Apparently since AIR uses the Safari WebKit for its browsing engine, anything that would work in WebKit will work in AIR. I even found a couple Adobe posts referencing the use of iframes and cookies so I’ve decided it’s not poor practice.

It seemed almost too easy though. I mean with an iframe you could pull almost anything (cf, php, asp) into your AIR app. Add cookies to the mix (NPI) and you could store data from your app online for later use. It can’t be that simple can it?

Adobe has always touted the benefit of AIR as being able to “use your existing web development skills to create desktop apps”. But for some reason I just thought there would be a catch. I figured you’d have to know some Flex or have some mad JS skills to make anything really cool. But with this new discovery, my mind is racing as to all the cool things that could be done. I don’t even need to learn MXML or figure out how to work with the MySQL lite db that can run inside an AIR app. Sure picking up those skills won’t hurt, but I can actually use my EXISTING skills to build an app!

And that, my friends, is why AIR rocks like nothing else out there. Stay tuned for some Harding AIR apps.

Jesse Harding | Also posted in Design Tips, Random Rants |

ColdFusion 8 wins a 2008 Codie Award!

May 21, 2008 – 2:24 pm

The Software & Information Industry Association has announced the 2008 Codie Awards. Cold Fusion 8 was the winner of the “Best Web Services Solution” category.

It’s great to see ColdFusion get the recognition it deserves as a powerful programming language and web services creator/integrator. As a designer, I’ve always been impressed with how robust cf can be while still remaining simple enough for a “non-programmer” to pick up and run with rather quickly.

Read more here

…and here

Jesse Harding | Also posted in Design Tips, Random Rants |

Tracing bmp, jpg, gif and png images using Vector Magic

April 10, 2008 – 11:13 am

I just found a very cool web app that I wanted to share. In fact, it’s so cool that it is not only going in the “Web App Review” section of my site, but ALSO the “Design Tips” section. It’s just that cool.

One major issue I’ve run into when building a website for a smaller local company is what I like to call “logo blues”. Logo blues come in many varieties. Here are a few you may have heard in no particular order:

  • “Here is our logo” (hands over a business card)
  • “Here is our logo” (hands over logo xeroxed on a sheet of paper)
  • “Here is our logo” (emails Word doc with low-res logo file pasted into it)
  • “Here is our logo” (emails low res version of logo)

These items quickly jump from logo blues to logo nightmares when the client mentions that this is the only format they have their logo in. What usually follows is a long messy journey through Photoshop using lots of sharpen filter, contrast and other such nonsense. It’s even worse if you need a vector image because in that case you often need to retrace the whole image using the pen tool.

Enter Vector Magic…

Vector Magic is an Adobe Flex app that lets you upload an image (jpg, bmp, tiff, png, gif, even psd) and convert it to a clean vector image. The service is free if you are ok outputting a png with a Vector Magic trademark on it. EPS files cost 1 credit which translates out to $2.95 (or $2.20 if you order before 4/12/08). The quality is pretty amazing especially for solid color logos. The time this tool could save you, especially if you need a vector version of the logo or image, is awesome.

I tested out Vector Magic, first using their own logo. Here is a sample of the quality. The image on the left is the original and the right is the clean vector version:

Vector Magic

Next I tried Google’s logo. The gradients gave VM a little bit of trouble, but still pretty good job for how easy and quick the tool is to use:

Vector Magic

Lastly, I tried a photo. Again for how simple this app is to use, I think this is pretty impressive:

Vector Magic

I should add that there are some editing features that appear to give you quite a lot of power to clean up the image. I didn’t use editing for any of my samples so these are just raw right through the VM engine.

All-in-all Vector Magic looks like a very cool tool and I am excited to use it on a real project in the future.

Visit VectorMagic.com

Jesse Harding | Also posted in Design Tips |

Adobe Photoshop Express Beta

March 27, 2008 – 10:27 am

Today, Adobe announced Photoshop Express, which as far as I can tell is like Flickr on steroids. It’s an online photo sharing RIA (rich internet application) and allows you to not only upload photos and create galleries, but also to do some minor photoshop-ish editing to those photos. The gallery on the home page looks really interactive so that could be cool.

I signed up, but still haven’t received my confirmation email. When I do, I’ll play around some more and give a more detailed review in my web app review section.

Read Adobe’s Press Release here.

Jesse Harding | Also posted in Design Tips, Random Rants |

PicLens - Review

March 11, 2008 – 3:40 pm

I checked out the PicLens, Firefox plug-in last week and WOW! It’s waaaaay cool! Basically it turns Google Images, Flickr, Photobucket or a few other photo sites into really cool, full-screen interactive galleries. Here is my review:

Pros:

  • The resolution/quality is amazing. They must have some sort of filter that sharpens the images because even small images look quite crisp blown up.
  • You can quickly scan through hundreds of photos just by dragging along the scroll bar
  • Very cool eye candy

Cons:

  • It’s just eye candy. I was very surprised to find that once you are in PicLens, there is no way to link straight to a given photo on the site it appears on. Or at least if there is, I haven’t been able to find it in 1 week of using it quite frequently.

    For example, I was sketching a moose for an illustration and used piclens to browse Google images for moose pictures. Once I found one I liked I wanted to jump to that actual site to see if they had any others. No can do! I’ve sent this suggestion to PicLens so hopefully it is something they can add in a later version. Until then this is cool eye candy with no real use.

3-27-08 - Update: So I did end up finding out how to jump straight to the images you are browsing in PicLens. Ike Yospe reminded me that I hadn’t updated my blog about that so here goes… There is a tiny arrow up at the top left (next to the logo for the site you are browsing) that when clicked will take you to the page the image is on. BOOOOOO PicLens! This was obviously an afterthought and just thrown in without much care of whether anyone ever finds it. It’s quite disappointing considering how amazingly intuitive the rest of the app is. How about a simple text link that says “view this image online” or something to that effect. Heck put it in the same spot as the arrow, I don’t care. But make it noticeable. Otherwise PicLens remains in my opinion eye-candy and nothing else…

Jesse Harding | Also posted in Random Rants |

Google Alerts

February 26, 2008 – 5:35 pm

Google Alerts can be a pretty cool tool especially if you are looking to track the popularity of a client, product, topic, yourself, or pretty much anything.

http://www.google.com/alerts?hl=en

You simply enter in a topic, your email address and a few simple settings and you’ll receive email telling you when Google indexes a site that talks about that topic. You can specify how often you want to receive emails (daily, weekly or as it happen) and what type of sites you want Google to alert you about (all, blogs, news, etc.)

I’ve used this for my Tornadostream project to find out when people are blogging about it. It’s a pretty nifty little tool!

Jesse Harding | Also posted in Design Tips, Random Rants |