It seems this list gets more interesting each year and this year I made a pretty big change in my “favorites”. The reason I love this list is because anyone, even kids, can start to learn programming or software for free. This includes business programming, graphics, office automation, game programming, web development, etc. I wish I had these kinds of tools 20 years ago.
Eclipse and Java
At the top of the list has to be Eclipse, I solely use it for 99% of my development - even looking at and editing native code for Notes and Domino. It is by far my most useful tool for all kinds of software editing. Granted I use it mostly for Java development but with the many projects you can install into it you can pretty much do any kind of development. Eclipse is also the base platform under many commercial products like Lotus Notes, Lotus Expdeditor, Lotus Symphony, and Lotus Sametime.
Firefox
This web browser should arguably be at the top of the list. I use it every single day on all of my computers. I think its the best browser out there and of course it is free! It has a ton of plugin support and is a very fast and reliable web browser. I could probably write an post about my favorite plugins just for this great piece of software.
Lotus Symphony and Open Office
At the start of 2009 I started using Lotus Symphony solely for all of my work at IBM instead of Microsoft Office. I still use Open Office at home on my machine and for my kids. They use it for all homework and other little projects. In short, both of these are great tools and in my mind a must have for all people and businesses. They can do more than the 80% of what most people need in an office suite, I would say it is well above 90% at this point. So if you are paying for an office suite like Microsoft Office then you are most likely wasting your money.
Graphics editing - GIMP
By far the most popular graphics editing tool on the open market is GIMP. It is arguably “better” than PhotoShop and for the price it is unparalleled. I use to use Paint Shop Pro and Microsofts Image Composer for the longest time but some time last year I started using GIMP exclusively for graphics and screen mockups. I still have Image Composer installed and have used it a few times but I think I will be uninstalling it shortly.
Remote Desktop - TightVNC
I do use the built in Microsoft Remote Desktop software a lot but many times I use TightVNC to share between developers or take control of a customers machine. This is by far the best open source remote desktop software.
The play list:
Other tools on my list but I don’t necessarily use daily. I play around a lot and learn from many of these. Either way, these are great things to share and pass on to people who have interest in software development.
MySQL - 100% free and open source database. I actually use this on balfes.net for a few things but that is about it. You can obviously use it for any relational task.
ImageMagick - great tool where you can convert images between formats using scripts or your language of choice. If you want to write graphics applications this library will be key for you.
Audacity - this is an awesome tool for editing audio files. I actually used this to create ring tones for my old windows mobile phone. This application also has a lot of plugins available to extend its capabilities.
Blender - want to write computer games or become a graphics artist for games and movies? Start with Blender, its an awesome application that will teach you all of the basics.
Unreal Development Kit - I just started playing with this again this past year. This is arguably one of the best game engines on the market. Many 3D based games use this engine. It comes with a world editor, a script language, and libraries to bind with. You can pretty much create amazing games and animations with this free kit.
If you are really interested in free software you can check out “Best Open Source Software” page, it has a lot of software categorized for easy browsing.
Online webinars from Lotus Education
Mon, Mar 15th 2010 2:50p Bob Balfe Read Ed’s post about the up and coming Lotus Education webinars and the agenda’s look great. I saw the XPages and Composite Applications sessions at Lotusphere and I am sure the webinar’s will be more than worth the cost of these sessions. Interestingly, Hunters course outline looks very similar to the labs I am giving at Germany later this week. I think showing how to integrate Java, SWT, XPages and container components into a single application will be some good educa [read] Keywords: domino
ibm
lotus
lotusphere
notes
sametime
xpages application
applications
eclipse
java
172
Do you want XPage components in the side bar?
Fri, Mar 12th 2010 8:00a Bob Balfe Looks like I lost two posts when they moved my blog between servers! I am going to post these back here. For this specific one, if you answered prior that you would like this can you please do it again. There was a request for what customers would want such a thing.
One of the biggest wins for Lotus Notes at Lotusphere was the fact that XPages can run in the 8.5.1 client. You can, in that release, also have XPages as components in composite applications. This also means you can have [read] Keywords: lotus
lotusphere
notes
xpages applications
community
eclipse
integration
widget
widgets
Lotus Traveler is the killer app for the iPhone
Wed, Mar 10th 2010 6:00p Bob Balfe And its not even an app!
So I have had the iPhone for about 6 months now and I have to say it is an amazing device. Everyone I show the iPhone to is amazed with the different things it can do and the applications it can run. The biggest surprises I get are when I explain, and sometimes show them, how my calendar, email, and contacts all sync with the iPhone and that its not really even software its just another account. I have also updated my Notes contacts many times and it reaches the de [read] Keywords: lotus
notes
traveler
applications
email
iphone
133
Book Review: Learning Dojo
Wed, Mar 10th 2010 12:10a Bob Balfe Learning Dojo
by Peter Svensson
Review:
I really enjoyed this book. It hit on a lot of topics that kind of surprised me. I starting reading many sections in the book and thought “wow, what a great idea for a technical book”. It could have been something small like the depth of the introduction chapters or something larger like the chapter on AOL and Googls Content Delivery Network (CDN). I guess my point is, this book was an excellent tool and resource to learn Dojo - it cove [read] Keywords: dojo
javascript
network
265
Cheaper moving from Exchange to Domino…
Mon, Mar 8th 2010 2:10p Bob Balfe After reading the article Greg posted I saw the comments at the bottom and wanted to pass them on from Karen. I am not sure who Karen is but this is a pretty nice comment about their choice and the comments about Microsofts service consultants.
Article link is here.
from Karen:
I wanted to share that we are in the middle of a migration from Exchange to Lotus Domino. I am amazed of the difference in cost. The Lotus product licenses are so much easier to understand and are significantly cheaper. [read] Keywords: domino
lotus
exchange
exchange
planetlotus
planetlotus.org
Messing around with Dojo and reading a new book!
Tue, Feb 23rd 2010 11:30p Bob Balfe After attending Dojo.connect() conference I decided to review a couple of more books for Packt Publishing. The first one I am reviewing is Learning Dojo by Peter Svensson. I am only 6 chapters in and I am finding the book to be extremely helpful. It goes at what I consider a slow and in-depth pace - which is exactly what I look for when I am learning something new. I figured I would start to put some of the stuff to practice so I created a videos section on my balfes.net site. I st [read] Keywords: css
dojo
javascript
86
Google Translate and whether it is really needed?
Fri, Feb 19th 2010 7:11p Bob Balfe So I added Google Translate to my site. Most of my hits are from the United States, many European countries, China, and India. It would be interesting to hear whether or not this is needed on my site. It would be nice if I could figure out whether or not it would be used. Does anyone have any idea how I could track that?
technorati tags: blog, Google, translate [read] Keywords: google
143
Why SWT/Qt when you have the Lotus platform?
Thu, Feb 18th 2010 8:30p Bob Balfe I just read this interesting post about a project for an SWT version based on Qt. The project argues it is for styling purposes. What is interesting is the Lotus platform (Lotus Expeditor) which is what Lotus Notes 8.x is based on has had SWidgets since day one. We even tried to get SWidgets put back into the Eclipse platform but with no success. You can play with the Lotus Expeditor platform and the toolkit for free.
If you are not familiar with Lotus Notes or Lotus Expeditor you can [read] Keywords: expeditor
ibm
ldd
lotus
notes
eclipse
email
google
widgets
