Skunkworks

At the company that I work for I have a domain with 25 computers and SBS Server 2000. From the SBS I am using ISA and Exchange. No need for SQL. Also we are using SourceSafe. Because most of the users in the domain are smart and know how they can defend themselves against the some time self destroying users, they are Administrators on their own computers, so no need for tight policies.
The only policy in place is the one which forces them to change the password every 60 days.

The original plan was that during the previous weekend to finalize the migration but not always everything goes as planned. Details below
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I downloaded recently some PDF templates for creating a paper organizer from www.diyplanner.com
There are nice things there but, I do not want to print page by page only what I am interested in, so I start looking on the net for a tool which will allow me to select only the pages I am interested in and then assembly the pages into a document that I can print all at once.
I found an open source, java based software called PDF split and Merge which does the job very well.

Thought I let you know.

On my computer at home I am still using Windows XP. I do have a lot of files and sometime last year I realised how difficult is to actually find in a timely manner the file that you are looking for. You know, I am not the best organized person in the world.

I start looking for pieces of software that will improve my file management skills and this is the freeware that I found:

1. Folder View is an addon for Windows Explore which adds tab browsing for file management. If tab browsing is cool for the web, it sure must be cool for your own computer. You can define the shortcuts to the folders that you are using most frequently and have those folders in tabs in the Explorer.

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I have in my personal library around 5000 books, most of which I read. These books were taking away 2 walls from the house I used to live in. Is nice to actually read a book printed on paper and feeling the book, but….

Sometime around 2001 I discovered Project Gutenberg, then peer to peer networks, then IPAQ and Microsoft and Adobe Reader (which btw Adobe PDF reader on PDAs is a big no go), and then DRM.
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For more than a year now we are living in a web 2.0 marketing hype. No matter the product, now everybody is adding the web 2.0 at the product’s name or description.

I was thinking what makes a product to be considered part of the web 2.0 trend and what comes to my mind most of the time is collaboration between people. This is the main feature of web 2.0 . Then automatically the next question that needs an answer would be: what is the smallest number of people needed, for the product to start creating value. You know I was watching Brainiacs on Discovery a while ago and they had an experiment regarding how many people are needed, and how they need to be placed around a stadium to be able to start a mexican wave. I think you got the ideea what I am talking about here.
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I am using a mobile phone for around 8 years now. And I wonder lately what can we do to force the mobile phones companies and GSM telcos to come up with a product that is wanted by the people and not by the companies. Below I put together in no particular order some features of an ideal phone for me: continue reading…