Archive | July, 2006

Fav Windows Apps

by evbart on July 25, 2006 in review, Software

Yesterday, a good friend called and asked me what “must have freeware apps” should he know about for his brand new work laptop. After a good 4 or 5 years of full blown Windows power using dorkdom, I figured what better time to round up some of the apps that had a positive impact on my life. Many of these are covered in countless dig posts, and freeware lists around the web, but why not add to the confusion?

Images:



Picasa / IrfanView / XnView – all three are good for different things, but all have helped me in some way or another. Picasa is good for managing large collections and doing simple editing.

Graphics:



Paint.NET – great for simple graphics editing and drawing. Used this to create the wireframes for some websites too.

Video:



VLC Player – the only way to go. It plays anything, plays it fast, and doesn’t bring your machine to a crawl.

.PDF:



Foxit PDF Reader/PrimoPDF – Foxit was great for viewing, and Primo is a decent .pdf generator, not great, but ok and FREE.

Networking:

Bonjour – Zero-configuration networking software, from the Mac crew.

Backup:



Folder Sync – a very simple way to sync the contents of folders across multiple computers that have an internet connection. OSX too! Great for keeping backup copies of important files.

Compression/Archiving:



Izarc – hardly knew it was there, that’s a good thing.

Disk Storage:



WinDirStat – great visual way to see that your hard drive is completely over run with bad music and large video files you’ll never get around to watching.

Desktop Search:



Copernic – I tried a few desktop searching engines, most sucked. Copernic didn’t suck bad, and it found what I needed it to find a good 80% of the time. Its no spotlight or quicksilver on the mac.

Misc:



Synergy and Launchy – i reviewed them here.

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Gmail: apartment search CRM

by evbart on July 17, 2006 in apartment, CRM, Software, workflow

After using Diigo for a split second to track apartments that I might be interested in, I realized that I need something a bit more sophisticated. At just about the same time, I started sending out lots of e-mails about these apartments, and I decided to just try copying all my useful information into e-mails and storing them in an nycAPT tag within gmail. It worked like a charm.

1) Copy the link of the apartment listing that is in question into the body of the e-mail, and populate the subject with any distinguishing information you have about the apartment. I also tried to get the brokers name and number somewhere in the e-mail. E-mail this information to yourself.

Initial entry screenshot

2) I typically setup some filters in my gmail account to automatically label all my emails with “nycAPT” in the subject with the same label, so that I could just click on that label to access all of the properties that I was currently researching.

3) Any follow up information you learn during subsequent calls or e-mails, you can just hit reply to your first message, add the notes to the body, and gmail threads the messages together for you.

Follow up Notes

4) Anytime you wanted to share this information with your roommates, or collaborate with them on obtaining information about properties from the broker, you could just add their e-mail to the list, and remember to hit “Reply All” on all subsequent emails and notes. Now they are fully “integrated” into your CRM.

Collaboration Features

5) The best part of this whole process, is its not portable, and you can access it from anywhere through gmail mobile. With the ability to add data and retrieve data from anywhere, you end up with a system flexible and rugged enough to make it through the NYC apartment search.

On the go!

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Diigo: discussions for your bookmarks

by evbart on July 17, 2006 in apartment, bookmarking, Software, workflow

http://www.diigo.com

In my previous post about BLAGs, I had thought the best way to collaboratively discuss links and articles would be through taking all your bookmarks and feeding the into a blog, where you could post comments.

Diigo took one of many attempts at the social bookmarking phenomenon and succeeds at creating an intuitive interface for facilitating conversations through social bookmarks. The commenting engine is quite fun, and unlike Shadows (a seemingly more sophisticated and complicated site), where I couldn’t figure out how to find my friends, I was able to connect to them quite quickly for fun multiperson dialogues. I had previously taken a quick look at Shadows for its “shadow pages” and commenting, but it really left something to be desired. Diigo then came in and hit the spot, though all of these services are blurring together.

I also stumbled across a very useful application for this software. I’ve been in the midst of a very difficult apartment search, and I realized that Diigo could provide a way for me to take notes (and share these notes with my roommates) across multiple listing platforms (Craigslist, Citicribs, or directly on the landlord’s site). I could envision empowering all the apartment searchers across the city to provide feedback, share tips, and fight back against the brokers that have a monopoly on all of the information.

See pictures here.

I didn’t stress test this apartment search information tracking application too much because I stumbled across a more elegant solution soon there after. In the meantime I will continue to poke around with Diigo, and maybe I can finally get away from Del.icio.us, which has been driving me crazy with its extremely slow searching.

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Playing with Gliffy

by evbart on July 17, 2006 in web apps, web design

Guest Author: Nate W

In my search for a wireframing tool to kick-start a new web project I'm working on, Life in List's Evan B. forwarded me the link for Gliffy , a relatively new web app for making flow charts, networking diagrams, user interface pages, and floorplans. The first thing that I like about the tool is that it's free (for now, says the site pricing page). Free is good, especially when you're broke and just getting started… as long as it works.

The second thing that I like about it is that it works. I performed two tasks on Gliffy that made my life easier. First, I sketched out a wireframe for the home-page of a project I'm working on. Not being a certified geek, and not wanting to use up loads of RAM running Dreamweaver, HTML wireframing isn't time well spent for me. I need to sketch out the UI, create the page layout of my site, and be able to share it with the guys that will be writing my code. Gliffy allowed me to do this quickly, easily, and without cost. Though multipule users cannot edit a page at the same time, Gliffy can create an active JPG rendering of your site, allowing you to give limited access to your work to whomever you please, getting your developer on the "right page."

The second task I used the site for was to create a floorplan of the apartment I'm moving into at the end of the month. This was a great use of my time: I drew the outline, put in the walls, doors and windows, and then started dragging dropping the furniture objects provided by the site. I was able to quickly visualize and plan how the apartment will look before moving in; but, as CNET writes, "the library of objects… is limited." Limited it is — but also relatively intuative to use, quick to set-up, easy to share, and free.

Bravo, Gliffy. Now please don't charge me. :-)

P.S. for a more real-time collaborative experience, check out Vyew

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Update: Why I blog too

by evbart on July 13, 2006 in blogging

To update my previous post on "Why I blog too "

I stumbled across a post at the Venture Creators Network called Why do I blog. Seems like a pretty interesting site, and I'll be looking forward to seeing what kind of stuff they get into.

Nice little idea about blogs eventually becoming resumes. Hopefully they won't be restricted to one page.

I'll keep posting these as I find them.

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NYC Apartment Search: Dealing with Brokers

by evbart on July 12, 2006 in apartment, nyc, workflow

I'm in the thick of the apartment search, thus the major lack of time for posting, and I am going completely insane from dealing with apartment brokers. Apparently I'm not the only one:

Metro NYC: Getting off Craig's list

Watch out when you're looking for an apartment to rent on craigslist.  Brokers, not normally a very technically savvy crowd, are starting to figure out how to game the system. Though the methods aren't very sohpisticated and in the long run it probably won't do them much good, the "bait and switch" can be a royal waste of time. Give it a look, and share your experiences! Mine are soon to come.

Here are some more articles about the topic:

- Craigslist starts charging for real estate postings

- The value? of an apartment broker

- Craig himself on charging for real estate postings

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