Jake’s Life

I’ve been working on this for a few weeks now and it’s coming along quite nicely. It’s an application for field deployment in all of our patrol vehicles which allow officers to access and store information on subjects, vehicles, locations, special details, and monitor others’ activities in real time. It also integrates state court records and open county warrants. What’s great is that it’s not a generic public safety solution, instead it’s custom tailored to our specific needs right down to being able to chose themes based on where you are viewing it (for example, dark colors for use at night in the patrol vehicles and light colors for reading in the office).

[I will for the record state that it is in no way devised from reverse engineering my previous employer’s similar system, which is archaic in comparison. Instead it is built from the ground up so-to-speak (and ten times better I might add).]

Sveet, ja?

Cue inspiration, please…

I’ve had a 2GB media card for my phone for a while. I used it with my Dash, my Wing, and now it sits in my Blackberry Curve. The only thing is that besides storing ringtones and photos that I take with the camera (so that the onboard memory doesn’t get filled up) I haven’t done much with it. There’s plenty of space for video though, so I decided to start encoding some TV episodes and other video files for it.

Blackberry Desktop Manager comes with a modified version of Roxio Media Manager 9, but as is usual with bundled software, it’s bloated and not very flexible. It is pretty easy, grabbing your media files from your computer and dropping them on your media card, choosing to convert them for the device, and watching the bar slowly creep towards 100%. I prefer to use slimmer apps though, such as MediaCoder or SUPER.

Both programs are fairly straight forward, although SUPER is a bit more flexible, and the interface a bit more crowded. Both apps will let you save presets, which is great when you find just the right format to encode video files to. My issue was finding that format since so many forums and sites slightly vary based on the author’s experience, and this one will too. I converted a video using Roxio Media Manager which output a file as follows according to Media Player Classic:

Video: MPEG4 Video 320×240 [Elecard MP4 Video Handler (ehs)]
Audio: AAC 44100Hz stereo 96Kbps [Elecard MP4 Audio Handler (ehs)]

The audio bitrate varied from conversion to conversion so it’s probably set to not mess with it unless it’s too high. Given widespread issues of audio not being in sync with video I’m inclined to keep it where it is, but others have had success changing it.

In Media Coder I used a different format:

Video: MPEG4 Video 320×240, 300 Kbps, 20 fps
Audio: LAME MP3 44100Hz stereo 96Kbps

The file played great, and cut a 6MB file down to just under 1MB. (If you want to load my preset download it here.)

Let me preface this post by saying that both of these blog tools have served me well in the past. When I first began using Wordpress on my hosted server I found w. Bloggar to be the best tool available for me to use: It was fast as hell, advanced, and did a great job. Then came Windows Live Writer (which I have previously posted about) and I switched to this. Lately I have been going back and forth using both since w. Bloggar had an update last month, but it’s time to choose. Hopefully my fellow bloggers can learn a few things as to maybe which blog tool would serve them best.

I won’t be covering installation and setup as they are both equally simple. I’ll be covering options and tools which I use most often (and I see others using most often), such as general formatting of posts, editing of previous posts, drafts for later publishing, inserting media such as screenshots, images, videos, and photos, and using features such as categories, tagging, etc. I’ll also be covering some annoyances I find in blogging tools and how both of these apps stand up.

Layout

As said above, w. Bloggar is fast as hell. Its layout is simple (but then again I’m using Windows Vista, so anything can seem simple if it’s not transparent and shiny). It’s layout is also pretty advanced in terms of functionality, putting many options at your fingertips. Any text formatting (bold, italic, strike), inserting (links, photo links, uploads) and coding needs (Javascript, code commenting, HTML code insertion) is all immediately available for your mouse to click on it.

Windows Live Writer’s layout is very simple and direct, with everything you need right up front as well. The sidebar holds information on your blog (in my case Wordpress) and links to the Dashboard and main site. Underneath it are sections containing your drafts, previous posts, and commands to insert items into the post you’re working on. The user interface blends well with Vista (it matches the rest of the Live family), and you can even change the colors of the menu interface to match your specific desktop theme.

Composing a Post

Composing your post in w. Bloggar is fairly simple, but I will say that you have to know at least some basic HTML to be on top of what’s going on. Any formatting that is controlled by HTML on your blog shows its code in the main window of w. Bloggar. For example, a link in your post will not appear as linked text, it will show all of the code.

All commands are executed with a button on the menu bar (or you can enter the code yourself), but either way the code is displayed. This is not to say that you only have to look at your post littered with HTML code. There is also a Preview tab in the main window that you can use to view it as it looks without the code. It’s important to note that this is not true WYSIWYG due to not being able to edit in the preview tab.

Live Writer gives you a WYSIWYG editor, letting you compose and edit your post using a word processor approach. You don’t see your HTML code as you format your writing, and it even offers you the option of downloading your site’s template to view how it will look after you post it.

Inserting Media

Inserting media into your post is easy with w. Bloggar, although there are some extra steps involved for inserting images. To insert an image file into your post you can choose one of two ways: (1) insert the code for an image already on the web, or (2) upload the image from w. Bloggar and choosing to insert it into the current post. While uploading the file then inserting it may not seem like a huge deal, it can only be done one at a time.

To insert media like YouTube (or other) videos all you have to do in w. Bloggar is choose Insert HTML Code, then paste the code from the media’s web site.

Live Writer, in a lot of ways, was made for bloggers who use a lot of media in their posts. In fact, it has an entire Insert menu on the sidebar where you can choose to insert any number of things.

When you insert photos into a post you choose them from your local hard drive and when you publish the post it automatically uploads them for you. With its video insertion menu you can type the URL of YouTube videos and it will post them, as well as other video providers. If you have a Soapbox account you can insert those videos. The Insert Website Image feature allows you to input a URL and Live Writer will grab a screenshot of it in your browser.

Other Features

Windows Live Writer allows you to postpone your posts depending on whether your blogging platform supports it, which makes it easy to keep a steady flow of posts on your blog by composing posts when you get those bursts of inspiration. w. Bloggar doesn’t support this.

Live Writer also allows you to post entries into multiple categories much easier than w. Bloggar, which allows you to post in one from the main window (to post to multiple categories you must open a menu and check the boxes for the categories you would like the post in).

Live Writer allows you to tag your posts for several social bookmarking platforms by default, and lets you add others to use in the future. In w. Bloggar you must use the standard insert HTML code feature. Live Writer also shows your previous posts in the sidebar, waiting to be edited when you realize you’ve messed up a link, fellow blogger’s name, or were just way too drunk to blog. Live Writer presents them visually in a WYSIWYG manner, whereas w. Bloggar shows them in robotic code view.

Windows Live Writer is also extensible, allowing you to install plugins which provide additional functionality. You can check out the entire gallery of plugins to see what kind of tools are open to you when you use Live Writer.

Conclusion

Both of these tools have their pros and cons, strengths and limitations. They both support a huge variety of blogging platforms such as Wordpress, Typepad, Blogger, Mambo, Drupal, and Live Spaces. They both provide most of the functionality a blogger would need from their go-to application, but one of them provides this functionality in a more straight forward and simpler fashion: Windows Live Writer. In my opinion, it doesn’t matter if you run XP or Vista, or what blogging platform you use (as long as it is a widely used one of course), Windows Live Writer would serve you well as your main blogging app.

What app do you use to post to your blog? Windows Live Writer? w. Bloggar? Ecto? Word? *shudder* Your blog’s administration interface? I’d like to know!

[Windows Live Writer] [w. Bloggar]

I have longed for a solid, convenient, and mobile way of tracking my finances for a long time. When it comes to finances, right now I keep receipts, check my online banking daily, and keep track of things in my head. While I haven’t overdrafted my account in a long time I still feel as though my finances are scattered and need to be more tightly tracked.

I need a solution that I can track on my computer, on my Pocket PC, quickly and easily. I need to keep track of my account balance, bills, and pending transactions. With these needs a Web 2.0 solution makes sense but I have yet to find one that has everything I need. Mint accesses your bank account information for you and displays your bills, spending, and balances all in one spot but has no mobile version. Moneytrackin’ has a great service which allows you to track your account balances and provides a mobile version, but won’t let you track bills (it does let you enter transactions to be made periodically, for example a bill which is set up to auto-withdrawal, but the service enters it into your account on the day you specify instead of reminding you about it ahead of time).

One desktop financial app I like is MS Money Essentials, but it cannot export files (to be transferred to a mobile device for instance). I have tried MS Money Plus and it’s too involved, way more than I need. Quicken is nice, but the GUI is nasty looking and some tasks are way more complicated than they need to be.

How do you track your money?

Comcast recently admitted that while they aren’t blocking bittorrent traffic they are using shaping techniques to limit your upload speed (which in turn effs up your download speeds. I hate it, so…

How to bypass Comcast bittorrent throttling

There. Now you!

If you are crazy for tags then check out Litepost. From the Litepost web site:

Instead of burying the user in features they’ll never use, the Litepost webmail experience is simple and straightforward. Nothing in the interface is out of place, nor is any detail too small. Using webmail is suddenly a quick and intuitive workflow, rather than a chore. Browse, sort, read, manage, and send with ease.

Thanks to Jay and Ste–and their online gay agenda–I have been a Google Reader convert for the past week now. I started using RSS Bandit but found it to be bloated, then moved to Snarfer where I was happy. My only gripe was that I read feeds from my home and from my T-Mobile Wing. I would read feeds when I am bored at work, then come home and have the same ones to sort through again from my laptop. I decided to try out Google Reader and found the mobile version to be awesome: It loads fast, since it’s Google you can tag anything, and it helps keep things fresh.

I opened a Box.net account months ago but never really used it. I always have my web hosting server to store files on so never really thought I needed a typical web storage service. I also have a 350 GB external firewire drive so that was even less of a reason for me. Well, with this recent failing of the hard drive fiasco I have learned my lesson. What’s nice is that Box.net has a great customizable widget for posting on your web site to share certain files as well as a great mobile version. Also a great way to transfer files between devices if you do not have the proper cables or Bluetooth connections.

I wouldn’t say that I’m a “die hard” RPG fan, but I do enjoy a good game that I can engross myself in for a bit. Often those are RPG’s because they actually take some thought. Since I do a lot on Windows Mobile now I looked for one for a while. When I had my T-Mobile Dash, it was nearly impossibly to find one. They just don’t seem to make solid RPG’s for Windows Mobile Standard, but Professional edition has a few goodies. Undercroft is the best I’ve found so far. It has good graphics, gameplay, leveling system (although a bit slow, especially for Priests and Assassins), and plenty of areas to explore. There are only five major areas of the game, but each area has quite a lot of space in it to perform the multiple quests you’re given if you activate them.

UNDERCROFT

Great looking program for Windows Mobile devices.

SketchArtist — Vito Technology