|
Tuesday
8/26/2008 5:06:05 PM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
Part of Microsoft's IE PowerToys offering is a gadget called "Quick Search". Quick Search ROCKS!!!! It basically gives you a command-line style interface to your most commonly used web resources.
I meant to blog about this YEARS ago and just never got around to it, and now it's bordering on obsolete, but it remains the most powerful thing out there so far.
The basic idea is this; you setup a series of Quick Search commands, which allow you to macro items in your IE address bar. So for example, you can type;
ex frogs
And QuickSearch will take the "ex" as an indicator to search Excite for the term "frogs".
All QuickSearch does is identify your command request (easy, since the URL doesn't begin with http: or another protocol), and then convert it into a URL, embedding your parameters.
Here's the key; you can add your own Quick Search commands. That means that any URL you find particularly useful, which has easily embedded parameters, you can turn into an instantly-accessed tool.
Consider;
b einstein (search Encyclopaedia Britannica for "Einstein")
usd 80.33 (convert 80.33 us dollars to major international currencies)
time tahiti (display the current time in tahiti)
map paris (google maps of paris)
g anything (search google...)
tv simpsons (show upcoming showtimes for the simpsons)
ebay japanese art (find me some stuff on eBay)
Note that while QuickSearch offers a sort of editing UI for creating your own URL's, it is poorly limited as to the URL length. Fortunately, that's just bad UI design, and not a limit of QuickSearch (or IE) itself.
You can define QuickSearch items with much longer URL's directly in the registry.
The possibilities are endless... see here for some .REG bits you can apply.
http://quicksearch.michaelwells.com
|
|
|
|
Tuesday
1/2/2007 8:35:03 AM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
World Wind lets you zoom from satellite altitude into any place on Earth. Leveraging Landsat satellite imagery and Shuttle Radar Topography Mission data, World Wind lets you experience Earth terrain in visually rich 3D, just as if you were really there.
Virtually visit any place in the world. Look across the Andes, into the Grand Canyon, over the Alps, or along the African Sahara.
And FREE, too.
Read more on Wikipedia.
|
|
|
|
Sunday
5/21/2006 9:02:58 PM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
Who can possibly deny the usefulness of duct tape? Certainly not this great website.
|
|
|
|
Wednesday
5/17/2006 11:17:44 PM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
The SpeakEasy Internet Speed Test is really quite handy and even fun to watch.
|
|
|
|
Friday
5/12/2006 3:32:42 PM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
Currently my favorite freeware screen capture app, MWSnap is a nice piece of work by Mirek Wójtowicz. It boasts full-screen capture, rectangle, fixed rectangle, and window capture, as well as a very handy color picker.
It's also designed to handle certain global hotkeys, which make invoking any of these operations a snap.
|
|
|
|
Saturday
4/29/2006 2:39:57 PM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
This has been on my development list for a long time. Then I decided to Google for it...
Basically this tool allows you to define hotkeys using the Windows key on your keyboard. This is extremely useful because hotkey combinations using the Windows key are essentially never used by applications. So you can define system-wide actions that will occur no matter what application is running, with zero interference.
|
|
|
|
Friday
4/28/2006 1:26:24 PM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
All of Advanced Intellect's products are outstanding. If you do anything at all with .NET and email, you need these products.
As a bonus, they have a freebie server control you can download that will protect your email addresses in your web pages.
|
|
|
|
Thursday
4/27/2006 8:04:09 PM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
Another useful tool. This one is an Explorer shell extension that lets you do wildcard selection within a folder.
|
|
|
|
Thursday
4/27/2006 3:45:15 PM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
An excellent little utility that makes generating and inserting GUIDs into your program a breeze. Far improved from Microsoft's GuidGen utility.
|
|
|
|
Thursday
4/27/2006 12:18:44 PM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
You know the drill; some !%@^*(Y little limitation of your programming environment has annoyed you for the last time, and you finally got irked enough to do something about it.
So you start building a tool to fix it, and make the world a better place, and then you discover... dang it, someone else already fixed this.
Special thanks to Nick Carruthers for writing this nifty shell extension that now lets me copy full filenames directly out of the Windows Explorer.
|
|
|
|
Sunday
1/8/2006 11:50:22 PM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
Microsoft's PowerToys includes TweakUI, which is an an invaluable tool for customizing the Windows user interface in important ways.
Among them, you can customize the 5 quick-access locations that appear in the File Open/Save dialogs, to places you actually want to access quickly.
Unfortunately TweakUI does this only for the Windows common dialogs, and not the Microsoft Office common dialogs, which store their settings differently. Office 2000, in particular, does not offer the ability to customize the places bar although Office 2003 does.
Enter TweakJS, a simple and useful counterpart assembled by Jason Sundram. TweakJS does only one thing, which is to customize those folders in the Open/Save dialogs.
I find this tool most useful for my TablePC, where every bit of single-click efficiency you can get is worth diamonds. Unfortunately, none of the above approaches seem to affect Mind Manager's configuration, which is the application I most frequently use.
|
|
|
|
Tuesday
6/28/2005 9:29:35 AM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
Need a PBX for your company? Go Linux...
http://www.asterisk.org/
|
|
|
|
Friday
4/8/2005 11:09:59 AM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
I've finally gotten around to publishing some of my thoughts on Mind Manager X5 Pro, everything from the minor inconsistencies (lots of little things but all quite minor) to my laundry list of desired improvements.
Fittingly, these notes are themselves in a Mind Map, so you'll either need Mind Manager X5 or the FREE X5 Viewer in order to see them.
|
|
|
|
Thursday
12/23/2004 11:15:38 AM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
I finally installed the 21-day trial version last night, and have been inking madly ever since. MindManager X5 is without a doubt the smoothest TabletPC application I have laid ink to. If you haven't seen it, and you own a Tablet, stop everything and download it now. I warn you; once you have it, you will consider your tablet useless without it.
|
|
|
|
Thursday
12/23/2004 10:41:33 AM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
|
|
|
|
Monday
5/10/2004 9:24:06 PM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
I've never used it, but it certainly looks promising. Basically, the virtual keyboard is a device that laser-projects a keyboard image on your tabletop so that you can type without the need to carry a physical keyboard around.
Responsiveness and accuracy would be crucial, but the press has given it good reviews; so again--promising.
This type of technology is especially interesting if it's bluetooth-capable, and can simply link to a PDA or laptop for quick key-entry. A numpad or gamepad would also be useful configurations for certain users, and of course, switching language profiles or QWERTY -> DVORAK would be quite simple. Adjustability for different hand sizes would also be of great convenience as would replacement for the mouse (not yet available afaik).
Of particular interest is that as the technology improves and miniturizes, it could be integrated directly into a PDA or a tablet PC. Simply set your computer on your desk, propped up by it's kickstand, and boom, you have a keyboard in front of you for entry.
|
|
|
|
Friday
4/9/2004 11:06:41 PM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
A handy tool for server operators... I got tired of all my server windows looking the same when I'm connected to a large number of systems at the same time.
To reduce confusion, I whipped up this handly little tool... it generates wallpaper with a webpage that also displays your server name in the corners. Simply choose the wallpaper, type in your server name, and generate it. Then right-click and set as wallpaper from the server you are decorating.
|
|
|
|
Wednesday
3/24/2004 8:29:02 AM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
When I first encountered it, I hated it. It drove me nuts. It had a rather steep learning curve, and a pretty convoluted user-interface that was already showing signs of age.
But with limited exceptions, Microsoft's proxy / firewall product has exceeded my expectations. I'm fairly impressed...
And although the user-interface could use a lot of rethinking, the principles behind it are actually pretty decently considered.
My latest triumph was getting a VPN running in my office, which ISA made astonishingly simple, once I finally read enough to figure out how it worked. If you need a firewall, and are used to Microsoft server products, give ISA a spin!
|
|
|
|
Monday
3/22/2004 1:22:55 PM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
Microsoft's proxy server, know known as the Internet Security & Acceleration server, is a good a flexible product. However it's configuration can take some learning. The best reference I've found to date is online, and free...
http://www.isaserver.org
|
|
|
|
Monday
3/22/2004 1:20:37 PM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
The undisputed champion of graphic arts, PhotoShop has a lot of capabilities you've never seen, through it's 3rd party "Filter" extensions. More interestingly, a lot of filters are available online, on the cheap or even for free!
http://www.freephotoshop.com
|
|
|
|
Monday
3/22/2004 1:18:44 PM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
A very useful resource for determine which applications certain files belong to, and for finding extensions that are not (or are not widely) in use.
http://filext.com/
|
|
|
|
Monday
10/27/2003 6:45:27 AM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
Came across this in a recent BUY.COM email, and it looked cool enough to mention.
"Your life on the road just got a lot easier. With the first and only WiFi detector on the market today, you no longer need to cross your fingers as you wait for your notebook to boot up. Just press a button and the Kensington WiFi Finder lets you know if your location is "hot"...instantly. No software or computer needed. What could be easier?"
http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=10348441&loc=101&adid=17070&dcaid=17070
|
|
|
|
Monday
10/13/2003 8:53:14 AM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
Not only for games, GameDrive allows you to mirror any CD (or DVD!) to your hard drive, and then play it without having the actual CD present.
This is particularly useful for laptop users, who don't want to lug external drives and discs around with them, or chew the extra battery power that a CD drive requires.
|
|
|
|
Wednesday
9/24/2003 2:54:50 PM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
"Sniffing the glue that holds the Internet together..."
http://www.ethereal.com/
|
|
|
|
Sunday
9/7/2003 1:29:39 AM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
It's late, and I'm feeling GREAT. After a bottle of merlot, what programming problem can possibly escape my finely-tuned mental state?
On my favorite list of powertools, a newcomer... a champion... a heavyweight... the almighty fermented grape...
(Wheeeeee....)
|
|
|
|
Tuesday
9/2/2003 9:01:20 PM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
Your taxes paid for it; you might as well know something about these cool mapping datasets you helped fund. Unfortunately, they're not all free, but many datasets still are...
http://mapping.usgs.gov/partners/viewonline.html
|
|
|
|
Friday
8/15/2003 3:32:10 PM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
|
|
|
|
Monday
8/4/2003 9:13:21 PM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
ASUS, a well-known manufacturer of high-quality motherbourds, has added some pretty nifty servers to its product lineup. Of particular interest are their 1U (really thin) rackmount servers, such as the AP1400R-T.
|
|
|
|
Sunday
8/3/2003 2:51:59 AM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
Microsoft has also forayed into the mapping product arena with its MapPoint .NET service. The service can be easily integrated into applications through it's 100% web services interface.
|
|
|
|
Sunday
8/3/2003 2:44:07 AM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
If you develop Windows software, this is a product that you must have in your arsenal. MSDN Universal offers access to a vast array of applications, development tools, and operating systems, in every language.
|
|
|
|
Friday
8/1/2003 11:43:56 AM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
There when you need them...
http://www.bootdisk.com
|
|
|
|
Saturday
7/26/2003 9:41:13 AM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
For your Internet programming needs, IANA maintains a decent reference of known MIME types.
http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/
|
|
|
|
Saturday
7/26/2003 12:38:07 AM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
Funny name, cumbersome website, GREAT service. MelissaData is a geocoding and address-processing service that you can integrate into your company's systems to scrub your address data. It provides a lot of services, including...
|
|
|
|
Saturday
7/5/2003 12:38:41 PM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
One of the niftiest devices to hit the streets in recent history, the hiptop from Danger is surprisingly usable, with an astonishing pricetag...
|
|
|
|
Saturday
7/5/2003 11:38:50 AM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
If you find yourself constantly in a research mode, one of your best friends is likely to be Google's toolbar for Internet Explorer. Not only does it offer quick access to the most powerful search engine on the 'net, but it offers some other nifty features as well...
|
|
|
|
Monday
6/30/2003 9:01:00 PM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
Even with Google's uncanny accuracy, it can be tiring to weed through results. Help maybe on the way...
vivisimo.com
|
|
|
|
Thursday
5/29/2003 4:41:06 PM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
|
|
|
|
Thursday
5/29/2003 4:24:04 PM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
If you are a systems architect, no doubt you use Unified Modeling Language (UML) to model your projects. High-end tools like Rational Rose are very expensive, and still tend to be poorly made... but there are alternatives.
Ony of my current favorites is a free set of Microsoft Visio Stencils, created and offered by Pavel Hruby (Microsoft Business Solutions, Copenhagen, Denmark). The stencils and templates he has developed are highly flexible, easy to use, and look great. Enjoy!
|
|
|
|
Wednesday
5/28/2003 10:15:31 AM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
Mark Russinovich is one of those really smart guys, who, really, really understands what goes on deep down in the dark and squishy places of the Windows operating system. As an applications guy, I generally don't need to (or want to) spend my time in the steam tunnels... but Mark's efforts have saved me many hours of work... more than once.
|
|
|
|
Monday
5/26/2003 12:43:03 PM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
For anyone who is comfortable setting up and configuring computers, and needs different computer configurations to do their job, VMware is a must-have product.
|
|
|
|
Monday
5/26/2003 10:55:55 AM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
Toss your dictionary and let your reference books collect dust... you won't be needing them. One of my all-time favorite tools is GuruNet--a small, unobtrusive tool that runs in the Windows tray, just waiting for you to give it a command.
|