A couple of apps
I’ve found a couple of apps in the last week which have in different ways changed the way I use my computer (these are Windows only, sorry others!):
Maxivista
I have three computers on my desk when I’m at home, my laptop and two desktops (one recent aquisition which I’m not entirely sure what to do with at the moment). I’m writing this on the screen connected to the second desktop, however the mouse and keyboard are connected to the first desktop. If I want to control the laptop or the other desktop I just move the mouse over from one screen to the other. Maxivista does two things, it either allows you to turn any spare PC into a second monitor for the first or to remote control the second computer by simply moving the mouse to that screen as I am at the moment.
Its easily the coolest program I’ve found this year and has changed the way I use the computers, no more messing around with KVM’s, Maxivista only needs the network connection, wireless or wired it working fine for me over both. I found this via Stefan Didak’s website, a guy who has a comupter setup which rivals anything I’ve seen anywhere else and is well worth a look at.
There is also an open source version of this called Synergy2 which will work across platforms, I discovered this after finding and purchasing Maxivista, however after both myself and Tom used it we both found it to be a bit buggy but it might work for you.
Novell Netdrive
Not as interesting as the above one but non the less very useful. Novell Netdrive can connect to HTTP and FTP servers, Webdav and iFolder’s and add these as drives in My Computer. Fairly simple in many ways but very useful for website editing etc when having multple files open simultaneously and live on the website can be useful. This is unfortunatly something which isn’t available on the Novell website for copyright reasons, but a look around on Google will find you a download site. And no, this is not the same as mapping a drive in Windows XP as was mentioned when engadget covered this a couple of years ago (yup its not a new app by any means), the functionality it offers especially for doing backups is much improved on what Windows can do on its own.
On another note I’ve removed Lifehacker from my bloglist, it got rather boring to read their ‘inside tips’ etc which I read a few hours earlier off the actual authors blog whether it be Google’s, TechCrunch or any of the many others, also incredibly annoying to find a blog which doesn’t allow people to comment unless they’re a member.