nLite's WinOS Boot CD customizerHere's another "note from the field", a post about a tool tested and proven in a customer environment. Ok, so here's the technical backgrounder: Customer orders a Lenovo tower PC and of course it comes pre-loaded with Vista, but with XP downgrade rights. We're wanting to use this as a staging server for document images to be burned to Blu-Ray disks (hey, they hold 25GB of data) using CyberLink's InstantBurn application. We've also ordered a SATA Raid controller... Read Full Story

Tungle Calendar SyncIn a perfect world everyone would use the same e-calendaring system, but of course that is not (and never will be) the case. What would be the benefit of everyone having access to each other's calendar? So that when you want to schedule a meeting with one or more people you wouldn't have to endure dozens of emails trying to get everyone to agree on a date and time to meet. Enter Tungle, a web service that crosses over the proprietary calendaring boundaries so that you can... Read Full Story

Use CD-RW and DVD-RW like a removable diskCyberlink's InstantBurn-5 software turns your CD-RW, DVD-RW and rewritable BlueRay discs into a removable media drive. You can drag and drop files from folders, send unwanted files to the Recycle Bin for deletion, rename files, and change file property information. The verification function checks whether data has been written properly, ensuring the reliability of the data. InstantBurn supports UDF (Universal Disk Format) versions 1.02, 1.5, 2.0,... Read Full Story

For those WebEx and GoToMeeting users out there dreading your monthly bill, you might want to take a look at DimDim, an open source based web conferencing solution. DimDim has three versions, Free, Pro which is priced from $99 to $495 per year and Enterprise starting at $1995 per year. The pricing brackets are based on DimDim hosted software and concurrent users. Compare that to WebEx at a web published price of $69 per host per month, and you begin to see the savings. For 50 host users th... Read Full Story

Addonics NAS Adapter for USBIn my quest to provide some networked storage on my home network I stumbled upon the Addonics USB to NAS adapter. Priced at only $55.00, this adapter provides two much needed features in a very small form factor and inexpensive to boot. In a nutshell, you can take any USB hard disk, attach the Addonics adapter and turn that disk drive into a NAS storage device accessible via SMB or FTP. The real BONUS feature here is that this adapter can also serve as a network ... Read Full Story

I had the opportunity the other day to test out OpenProj, an open source project management tool. I was sent a MS Project (.MPP) file to review a project plan for a website development effort but did not have MS Project installed on my laptop. Unlike some other MS applications like Powerpoint, Microsoft does not have a viewer app available for MS Project files. Enter Serena's OpenProj software, a free open source alternative to MS Project. After downloading the OpenProj software and i... Read Full Story

eJabberd Open Source Instant Messaging ServerAnother "victim" in the ongoing saga of free open source software (FOSS) being hijacked by a commercial entity only to be later sent to the deadpool is Jabber, recently acquired by Cisco. A project begun in 1998 by Jeremy Miller (per wikipedia) and first released in 2000 as jabberd, Jabber quickly became the basis for the XMPP protocol standard. Probably the most well known adopter of XMPP is Google with the Google Chat software. Many... Read Full Story

xkoto Gridscale: A better way to cluster MS SQL?If you've ever tried to implement a MS SQL server cluster then you're familiar with the quorum drive concept and how it is used for clustering. Microsoft's NTFS is a single instance filesystem that does not have a clustering component. While there are replacements for NTFS like HP's Polyserve cluster filesystem product, I recently uncovered xkoto Gridscale. xkoto's Gridscale for MS SQL is a very different approach to clust... Read Full Story

Dabble DB Online Database is EASYSo yes, another Software-as-a-service rant, but well worth a look. Dabble DB is a web-based application that lets you upload your data and then build your own database applications. You can import existing data or start from scratch. Once you define your database fields you can then drag-and-drop the field elements into an online form, complete with data validation and rules. You can build multiple forms pages and tie them together with workflow. You can al... Read Full Story

October 20th Deadline Approachinghttp://www.project10tothe100.com/how_it_works.htmlHow it worksProject 10100 (pronounced "Project 10 to the 100th") is a call for ideas to change the world by helping as many people as possible. Here's how to join in.1. Send Google your idea by October 20th.Simply fill out the submission form giving Google the gist of your idea. You can supplement your proposal with a 30-second video.2. Voting on ideas begins on January 27th.Google will post a sel... Read Full Story