It began in Windows 3.x – shortcuts on your desktop. By the time many users upgraded their PC’s to Windows XP, it was hopeless. Many desktops were nothing more than row after row of shortcuts. I saw it and lost my mind. It went against everything that was in me to be neat and organized. It’s also one of the major reasons why I like applications like Cecil. It’s a desktop organizer for Windows.

Cecil is a desktop organizer, a launcher and a task automation application. It keeps everything organized in a slim, yet powerful menu, and can automate repetitive operations on-the-fly BATCH scripting and via JavaScript, if you’re up on the language.

Cecil, or Command Centered Intelligent Launcher can be used to organize or automate anything you use your computer for, from checking mail, updating your status on Facebook, or just about anything else. The app adds logic to the way commands are taken care of.

Cecil is an ok application. I like the organization concept and its automation capabilities are nice, but unfortunately, the concept is somewhat out dated. While launchers are big on the Android Smartphone side of the world, they aren’t so hot on the desktop computer side of the fence. At $15, I wasn’t so hot for the app; and honestly, there are likely better apps out there at a better price point.

download Cecil 2.0.358

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An interesting development – Bill Gates admits that Microsoft’s mobile strategy is clearly a mistake

I’ve been saying it for years – since about 2004 actually – Microsoft has no idea what they want (at the time Windows Mobile, and now) Windows Phone to be when it grows up. They have no idea how tablet computing fits into the “mobile” picture. Apparently, according to an interview by CBS This This Morning/60 Minutes and article by Preston Gralla, Bill Gates agrees.

Honestly, it’s about time.

Microsoft has this ugly habit of wanting the [computing] world to conform to Windows, and it’s clear the world has moved on. If Microsoft wants to stay not only relevant, but profitable, it’s going to have to accept this and develop a mobile strategy that correctly and appropriately positions and empowers them. Right now, they don’t have a [mobile] clue.

In his article, Gralla says,

If Microsoft had done mobile right years ago, the iPhone never would have gone on to become such a success, and Apple would not be the dominant player in mobile. Microsoft would own mobile as well as the desktop.

I happen to agree. The world was thirsting for a smartphone or mobile device that converged the items they wanted in one place – PIM data, music, video, internet, etc. – into a single device. Microsoft had Exchange ActiveSync, WMP and an a couple different integrated content stores. It had an established application catalog in a number of different vendors, such as Handango. Had it understood how mobile should have worked, it could have gotten to the party first and taken everyone down the mobile path via their vision.

Unfortunately, Ballmer didn’t (and in my opinion, still doesn’t) understand the mobile computing market. He may be a brilliant marketing and businessman, but mobile is something that has escaped him from the get-go. What is needed from Microsoft at this point are big, bold moves powered by their branding and most importantly, their checkbook. Ballmer needs to find someone in the mobile market he trusts and then must let them define the vision and strategy

If Microsoft doesn’t get its mobile act together and define a clear mobile strategy that augments and is not encompassed by Windows, it may find itself permanently behind [the 8-ball], and eventually out of the game entirely.

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Dexpot is a Windows virtual desktop tool with advanced features that give you maximum flexibility over your screen space, and increases productivity by grouping different apps and functions on different screens.

A full screen preview gives you an at-a-glance look at all your desktops, while the desktop manager toolbar is used for quick switching, or for showing all active applications. There are plenty of customizations that allow you to work faster including shortcuts via the keyboard, mouse or hotkeys. Move windows to other desktops using drag and drop.

Each desktop can be customized with different wallpaper, applications, and event triggers, and plugins are also available for increased functionality, like the slideshow feature that automatically moves from one desktop to another.

Dexpot helps you clear your desktop of clutter and you can have different wallpapers, files and shortcuts on each desktop. Each desktop can be customized, and you can set it up with custom functions including starting a different set of applications when you visit each desktop for the first time.

Dexpot is an excellent tool for clearing up your workspace and creating customised work areas. Different desktops can be used for different categories, for example set up one desktop for work, another for media, and another for personal use. Each desktop will be ready with all the applications and settings you need to get started right away.

download Dexpot GbR

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More than one monitor to a single working station can be a tricky fact for someone that uses the Windows operating system. In order to manage multiple monitors you need a useful application that can offer enough flexibility and simplicity. MultiMonitorTool is the one for this type of job, an utility that allows you to do some actions related to working with multiple monitors.

Like all other NirSoft products MultiMonitorTool is a tiny piece of software that can disable/enable monitors, set the primary monitor, save and load the configuration of all monitors, and move windows from one monitor to another. All these actions can be performed from the user interface or from the command-line. For a better visualization, MultiMonitorTool also provides a preview window, which allows you to watch a preview of every monitor on your system. It might be useful if non-primary monitors are turned off and you want to view the windows displayed in the other monitors.

The user interface of MultiMonitorTool contains 2 panes: an upper one that displays the list of all monitors detected on your system, and a lower one that displays the details of all visible windows on the selected monitor. In this way you can easily save the current configuration of all monitors on your system, including the screen resolution, colors depth, and monitor position of every monitor. This is useful when you make changes and you are not satisfied with the settings of you monitors because you can restore back the saved monitors configuration.

This utility works on any version of Windows for both 32-bit and x64 systems without requiring any type of installation or additional dll files. Just run the executable file, and the utility will start instantly.

download MultiMonitorTool

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There’s a lot of iOS based improvement going into Apple’s newest Operating System, OS X 10.8, code named, Mountain Lion. Let’s take a look at how it and iOS are converging.

There’s been a lot going on in Cupertino since February of this year. Apple has been hard at work pulling together the latest version of its new desktop operating system, OS X 10.8, code named Mountain Lion. Apple is, at least in some sense, converging their two most successful platforms – iOS, which it uses to power all of its mobile devices; and OS X, which powers all of its desktops and laptops. With the iPad parked squarely between the two platforms (but powered by iOS), Apple is trying to build synergy between the two platforms so that users can easily use both without a experiencing any jarring transitions.

The effort is commendable. There are a great many Apple customers who own not only an iPod Touch or iPhone, but an iPad as well as a desktop/laptop Mac. Bringing the two together was something that Steve wanted to do. Let’s take a look at where the two converge and the value they provide, if any.

Messages Beta
Byte covered Messages Beta, and the features it brings to the desktop, in an extensive deep dive. Messages Beta is available for download on Mac’s running Lion, and will be usable until the new OS is officially available for purchase in the App Store. At that point, Messages will stop functioning in Lion, and those users who wish to keep using it will need to upgrade to Mountain Lion.

Notifications
Applications like Growl have been providing system notifications in OS X for quite some time. Apple has finally brought the same kind of functionality as you see in Growl, to Mountain Lion by integrating system wide notification into the operating system. The actual implementation takes its queues directly from iOS. They share a similar tray background, look and feel.

When system or app events occur on your Mac, those notifications will appear in the upper right corner of your screen, in a self-hiding event tray that slides out on the right side, as opposed to coming down from the center of the screen as it does on your iPad or iPhone. System event notifications disappear after a few moments have passed. Other notification types need to be dismissed by the user.

How, if at all, this will work or conflict with notification apps like Growl is yet to be known or understood. Growl is a long standing, value added application that many have used for YEARS simply because OS X didn’t support this type of functionality. It’s quite possible that Growl may be out of a job…

Reminders
Combining Reminders with Siri on the iPhone 4S is pretty awesome. All you have to do to set one on your iPhone is to ask Siri to, “remind [you] to do ‘X’ [at] ‘Y’, ” with X being the thing you want the reminder to remind you to do, and Y being when you want the reminder to go off. In Mountain Lion, Apple brings the Reminders app to the desktop, but without Siri. You get everything you’ve got on the iPhone (again, minus Siri) as well as a couple other cool additions.

On the desktop, Reminders allows you to create a task or to-do list, set the date and time you want the reminders to go off and the ability to push them to all of your iDevices. Having this on your Mac also means you get the ability to search through your reminders and view them on your calendar.

The one feature that Reminders doesn’t do on your Mac is “remind [you] to do ‘X’ when you get to ‘Z’,” with X again being the thing you want to do, and Z being the location where you want to do it. For example, again on your iPhone, “Siri, remind me to call home when I leave the office.” Location services aren’t built into Mountain Lion, so reminders on the desktop aren’t location aware.

iCloud Integration
Mountain Lion is the first edition of OS X that includes built in iCloud integration from its initial release. Yes, Lion has it; but it’s an update introduced add-on. With Mountain Lion, Apple gives you access to cloud-based sync services for Notes, Reminders and Messages/iMessage between your Mac and your iDevice.

Documents and changes to those documents stored there will also sync back and forth between your Mac and iDevice. An additional feature coming for documents in the cloud is Document Library. Aside from giving you access to the latest revision of any document created with an iCloud supported app, Document Library also gives you the ability to create folders by dragging one document on top of another, as you do with shortcuts on an iDevice home page, today. Document Library will also support file sharing, making it easy for you to share stuff with those you know via Mail, Messages and AirDrop.

Continue reading…

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With WWDC just days away, there’s no shortage of Apple rumors…

I’ve been in the computing biz for a long time.  I began my freelance writing career back in 1996 CMPnet’s File Mine.  The site has long since disappeared, and CMPnet’s resources are now owned by UBM, which owns Information Week and BYTE (where I also appear regularly.)   Funny how some things go full circle.

Anyway, I’ve grown from a freelance review writer into a technology journalist over the years and if there’s one thing that anyone in this capacity will tell you, it’s that trying to figure out what Apple is going to do is hard…if not nearly impossible.

However, it does seem to be the national Geekdom pastime.  Everyone and their brother seems to be trying to figure out exactly what Apple has cooking and when it’s going to be released to the general public. During my time as a freelancer and technology journalist, I’ve learned one very important thing when it comes to prognosticating the Cupertino-way – Don’t bother.

Apple’s culture of extreme secrecy has in the past led to nearly every major site on the internet, both friend and foe to Apple, either supporting or discounting the latest rumor about iPad. While this perpetual rumor mill certainly helps generate hype and excitement, it often results in nothing substantial, except perhaps, the level of hype and excitement around a particular Apple product release or update.

For Apple, this is great. They get gobs of free advertising and lines of people outside their stores waiting for their chance to buy the latest product to come out of Jony Ivy’s design studio. It’s also a big problem for them, because they have people camped out in bars waiting for employees to misplace iPhone prototypes and such.

For consumers, it doesn’t do much of anything other than drive the hype. It can also lead to some big let-downs when a highly desirable feature for iPad isn’t implemented or isn’t implemented the way it was rumored, or to a user’s liking.  However, there is one last issue with Apple rumors…

The people starting them or spreading them are more often than not, wrong.

For someone trying to get a handle on the next best thing coming from Apple whether its iPhone, iPad, Macs or any other bright, shiny new toy (like their rumored, HDTV, for example), the best thing to do is just wait it out.  Don’t count on the information you’re getting being at all accurate. It likely won’t be.

Sure..! It’s fun to speculate.  The articles are fun and interesting to read and can be quite thought provoking at times.  It may give you something to talk about at work during a break, or at your friend’s desk. But understand it for what it is…noise.

Even industry analysts…the guys who do all the research and provide investors with predictions on what’s going to be hot or not… haven’t been able to get it consistently right when it comes to Apple; and those guys are REALLY smart and have deep, inside contacts at this, that or the other “trusted partner’s” installation.

Cracking the Apple nut isn’t easy. Its hit or miss at best. Those that have any success, in my estimation, are lucky; or… weighing in on what currently out there and playing the odds on what seems most likely to happen.
So what’s the problem with Apple’s secrecy?  Nothing much… Despite all the rumor mills, there aren’t a lot of people out there that seem to be getting through their “cone of silence.”

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Keeping a handle on your files and data can be a chore, especially if you’ve got data going to multiple places.  Its not as easy as it sounds. This is one of the biggest reasons why I like PowerDesk Pro. It’s a file management tool for Windows.

PowerDesk Professional is an easy, fast and smart way to organize and manage your files – digital photos, MP3s, web images, etc. on your PC. PowerDesk Pro gives you more features and functions than the standard Windows file manager with tools to search, edit, delete, copy, move, sort, zip, label, view, and convert your files and data.  In just a few clicks, you can use PowerDesk Pro to completely customize your PC.

PowerDesk 8 Professional completely replaces Windows Explorer with a wide array of File and File Management tools that let you perform many of the functions found on digital cameras or MP3 music players as well as your PC. You can use PowerDesk FTP to view and manage FTP sites as though they were ordinary folders on a local or networked drive. Once you’ve set up your favorite FTP sites, you can connect with them in a single click; and PowerDesk now supports Secure FTP.

Keeping files synchronized between shares is also easier with PowerDesk’s Sync Manager.  You can compare and synchronize the contents of any two folders. This is especially useful for work on files that are shared between two computers, it’s also useful for backing up and making archived versions of your files.

You can use its Size Manager to show you where and how the space on each of your drives is being used. PowerDesk also enhances the standard Windows Open and Save dialog boxes by adding a selection list for previously opened files and folders. It also provides a file viewer pane that supports over 150 file formats.  Its Archive Manager easily compresses and expands files from over 30 popular compression formats. You can use it to view archive contents and extract selected files with a simple drag and drop operation. Its File Finder quickly locates forgotten files. You can search by keyword, file type, size, or date range and see the results displayed in a single-line reference.

read full review | download PowerDesk Pro

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Both Apple and Microsoft are bringing their desktop and mobile computing experiences closer together. Is this a good idea, or a recipe for disaster?

Current rumor has Apple releasing Mountain Lion next month.  Windows is due to hit the streets outside of Redmond, likely in October 2012.  While considered polar opposites, these two new versions of OS X and Windows have one key ingredient in common – they are both trying to bring their desktop and mobile computing experiences closer together.

Microsoft Windows 8
You can see Soft32′s Windows 8 deep dive, here.  In Windows 8, Microsoft is designing an operating system that can be used on either a desktop or laptop as well as a tablet.  Windows 8′s new user interface, Metro, is heavily touch based. It has the user physically interacting with the hardware and the computing objects on it via touch.  If the hardware being used doesn’t have a touch layer, then the user can use both keyboard and mouse to simulate touch.

As I pointed out in my review (URL), this doesn’t always lend itself to the best computing experience. Using the mouse to simulate a touch and swipe to scroll through a screen isn’t as intuitive as it sounds, and is really rather clumsy. I think I’ve established, with Windows 8, that having one OS for either hardware types or categories doesn’t create a good user experience. However, in my opinion, this is clearly in response to only Google’s Android (to an extent), but to Apple’s Lion and Mountain Lion releases of OS X.  Microsoft sees the movement towards a unified computing experience and has taken a unified approach in developing a single operating system to cover all computing hardware types.

Last time, we looked at Microsoft and Windows 8. Let’s take a quick look at how Apple has decided to converge iOS and OS X.  Mountain Lion continues Apple’s desire to blur the lines between the two…

Apple OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion
Apple’s approach is much different.  Instead of putting OS X on your iPhone or iPad or iOS on your Mac, Apple is bringing specific iOS features to the desktop.  These mobile device features are adapted to the desktop or laptop for, what Apple feels is a better experience on the non (or not as) mobile hardware.

The difference here is approach and design.  Apple is taking specific features from iOS – Messages, Notifications, Reminders, iCloud Integration, etc., those that make sense to have on the desktop and are finding a way to implement those. The features are similar, but not identical, given the differences in the hardware.  Their addition is subtle, even elegant in some cases, as in the implementation of Notifications.  The point is though, that while both platforms have similar features, while they may share a similar look and/or feel, they are implemented and presented differently, taking advantage of the benefits of each platform.

continue reading

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