Category Archives: Software

Cheap proprietary software still costs too much.

April 2, 2008 by aaron
The following is part of an open letter I wrote to an university committee that was surveying students and faculty on the feasibility and desirability of providing discounts to students for popular and expensive software packages. This discount would have been provided by basically sharing the cost among all students by purchasing a large number of licenses and then reselling them at a lower price to interested students. Obviously, I thought there was a better alternative.
Read More ⟶

Free alternative to BrowserCam

April 7, 2007 by aaron
BrowserCam has long been the best tool for testing websites in a multitude of situations; however, it isn’t free, so its usefulness is limited for people who just want to test a new design quickly: enter BrowserShots. This free website has most of the features developers will need to test their sites; however, unlike BrowserCam, there seem to be waits of up to 20 minutes for some OS/Browser combinations, so it is better for casual testing to ensure compatibility rather than live tweaking—it does have a detail page to show how long your wait will be.
Read More ⟶

Songbird: Firefox-based Media Player

April 17, 2007 by aaron
Please note that this review is based on a much older version of Songbird than the current one. Features and glitches may no longer be applicable. The Songbird media player is a cross-platform media player that is based on the gecko browser engine. Songbird enables you to use add-ons and skins feathers just like you can in your Firefox web browser, and combines the the most useful parts of the browser into a fully-featured music player.
Read More ⟶

Tiddlywiki is both good and bad.

April 10, 2007 by aaron
If you haven’t heard of it, Tiddlywiki is a single file, off-line, single user “wiki” that you can use to store notes and information in an easy-to-retrieve format. I found it and decided I loved it…for about 6 hours. Now I’m looking at the source code and trying to understand it so I can rip out all the stuff I don’t like and replace it. Tiddlywiki doesn’t allow any sort of XHTML and requires all code to be done in textile.
Read More ⟶

Habari needs better developer documentation.

April 4, 2007 by aaron
The The just released version 0.2. I have been watching it for a while now, but even though it has some features that I really like, it still hasn’t reached a point that I would consider switching this website from WordPress (mostly because I would have to rewrite far too many need-to-have plugins). However, recently I started thinking about re-writing some of my plugins for it–especially what will eventually become INAP 3.0, but when I try to find reasonable plugin documentation, it just doesn’t exist–not even simple tutorials.
Read More ⟶

Cheap proprietary software still costs too much.

April 2, 2008 by aaron
The following is part of an open letter I wrote to an university committee that was surveying students and faculty on the feasibility and desirability of providing discounts to students for popular and expensive software packages. This discount would have been provided by basically sharing the cost among all students by purchasing a large number of licenses and then reselling them at a lower price to interested students. Obviously, I thought there was a better alternative.
Read More ⟶

Free alternative to BrowserCam

April 7, 2007 by aaron
BrowserCam has long been the best tool for testing websites in a multitude of situations; however, it isn’t free, so its usefulness is limited for people who just want to test a new design quickly: enter BrowserShots. This free website has most of the features developers will need to test their sites; however, unlike BrowserCam, there seem to be waits of up to 20 minutes for some OS/Browser combinations, so it is better for casual testing to ensure compatibility rather than live tweaking—it does have a detail page to show how long your wait will be.
Read More ⟶

Songbird: Firefox-based Media Player

April 17, 2007 by aaron
Please note that this review is based on a much older version of Songbird than the current one. Features and glitches may no longer be applicable. The Songbird media player is a cross-platform media player that is based on the gecko browser engine. Songbird enables you to use add-ons and skins feathers just like you can in your Firefox web browser, and combines the the most useful parts of the browser into a fully-featured music player.
Read More ⟶

Tiddlywiki is both good and bad.

April 10, 2007 by aaron
If you haven’t heard of it, Tiddlywiki is a single file, off-line, single user “wiki” that you can use to store notes and information in an easy-to-retrieve format. I found it and decided I loved it…for about 6 hours. Now I’m looking at the source code and trying to understand it so I can rip out all the stuff I don’t like and replace it. Tiddlywiki doesn’t allow any sort of XHTML and requires all code to be done in textile.
Read More ⟶

Habari needs better developer documentation.

April 4, 2007 by aaron
The The just released version 0.2. I have been watching it for a while now, but even though it has some features that I really like, it still hasn’t reached a point that I would consider switching this website from WordPress (mostly because I would have to rewrite far too many need-to-have plugins). However, recently I started thinking about re-writing some of my plugins for it–especially what will eventually become INAP 3.0, but when I try to find reasonable plugin documentation, it just doesn’t exist–not even simple tutorials.
Read More ⟶