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.
Classes and Dojo are very cool
Tue, Aug 31st 2010 1:10p Bob Balfe Tonight I am looking for a way to make different presentation styles in the attachment viewer. I figure I would look into making the different presentations with JavaScript classes and with a little bit of inheritance to boot. Unfortunately JavaScript does not support classes very well and there are a thousand ways to accomplish this, just Google it and you will see. I of course chose Dojo to get this done because it was dead simple!
I want to have three presentation styles to start R [read] Keywords: dojo
facebook
google
javascript
CouchDB scales, it’s not a slogan, its science!
Mon, Aug 30th 2010 12:40p Bob Balfe Check out this impressive write-up about CouchDb. Remember Dr. Cox at Lotusphere 2010 and the CERN project?
Metson says the learning curve for CouchDB is quite shallow. In fact, DMWM had a summer intern with some programming experience, but no experience in CouchDB, who was able to build a simple data quality evaluation application using the database. The only drawback, Metson says, is that you may need to do a lot of unlearning if you’re well versed in SQL. “The more you know Or [read] Keywords: lotus
lotusphere
application
database
enterprise
oracle
sql
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The Cloud, is it a platform or just more of the same?
Fri, Aug 27th 2010 12:10p Bob Balfe I have been digging into the various “cloud” offerings on the net and trying to see if there is a common ground in this space and as usual it appears the usual players are making bets on their “cloud” offerings. When you start seeing sites like SalesForce.com, LinkedIn, Facebook, or API’s like Microsofts Azure, all using different technologies to provide applications within “their cloud” it quickly shows people are off in their own camps. I have been [read] Keywords: collaboration
application
applications
community
facebook
google
integration
linkedin
server
40
The Inventor’s Guide to Trademarks and Patents
Fri, Aug 27th 2010 8:11a Bob Balfe If you want to learn how to get money for your intellectual property or patent something in the software world then you should check out this book. I was just re-arranging my books and found this little gem. It has a lot of great ideas and pointers for where to get started. [read] Keywords:
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What is your web site worth?
Thu, Aug 26th 2010 12:10p Bob Balfe Just playing around tonight I noticed a section of a site I hit that showed the “value” of their site. This intrigued me because I wondered how they could possibly know that? So I scoured the net and looked for as many services as I could to see my sites value and it clearly looks like this is not a scientific approach by no means. My highest value is $46,000 and my lowest is $98, that’s useful…
$34,800.98
How Much is Your Site Worth?
My site is worth $17,367. [read] Keywords: javascript
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Poll: Do you or your customers develop or use applications on salesforce.com?
Thu, Aug 26th 2010 8:40a Bob Balfe I have been checking out developer.force.com this week and it is a pretty extensive cloud based solution for developing, deploying, and using applications in the cloud. I checked out their Eclipse based development videos and the development environment looks pretty comprehensive. I would like to hear if anyone who reads this blog has any real experiences they would like to share about it. I am also interested to hear how many of my readers have real exposure to SalesForce.com.
If you use [read] Keywords: domino
lotus
notes
xpages application
applications
development
eclipse
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New Attachment viewer with ODF thumbnails and JAR file support
Tue, Aug 24th 2010 8:10a Bob Balfe As promised in the last post, here is a new updated widget for the attachment viewer. You can download the latest source files from the OpenNTF project. If you want to learn how to install this into Notes 8.5.1 and above check out the video I posted to show how to do that.
Here is a summary of the support and you can also watch a video here or below:
- ODF thumbnail support added, .odp, .odt, .docx, .dotx, .docm, .dotm, .xlsx, .xlsm, .xltx, .xltm, .pptx, .pptm, .potx
- Modified Zip file to li [read] Keywords: notes
odf
application
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properties
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Why BrowserFunction is so cool
Mon, Aug 23rd 2010 10:10a Bob Balfe If you are familiar with the embedded browser in the Lotus products you may or may not have heard of BrowserFunction, most likely not! The problem is this class is not very well documented and was part of E4 and is scheduled for Eclipse 3.6. Notes 8.5.2 does however support this SWT class so you can begin to play with it once 8.5.2 is available.
Why is this so important? Well, just imagine, now you can completely communicate between Java and JavaScript using this. You can use the SWT Bro [read] Keywords: lotus
notes
notes client
application
css
eclipse
integration
java
javascript
openntf
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I think I hate GMail email threads and the reply history
Fri, Aug 20th 2010 12:10p Bob Balfe I am not sure if I am on this island alone but when there are a lot of responses in an email thread the GMail UI gets unbearable! I quickly get lost on where a reply is, to what section of the thread, etc. And navigating down the thread is just cumbersome. Unfortunately I have been using GMail for a couple of years and this has not gotten any better. Is there a way to not thread messages in this way? I did not see a setting. [read] Keywords: email
