Zamzar: online file conversion service and some thoughts about future

If anybody is interested in online file conversion, I suggest a great service/website zamzar.com. It lets you convert files between most of the common text, document, image, audio and video formats. Just upload, select target format and give it your mail address, it will mail you the result instantly.

Let’s share a scenario with you. I didn’t install any office package in my new OS installation, partly out of laziness, partly out of scarcity of hard drive space.
Yesterday I had to edit and mail an important document file in a hurry. I thought that I can try google docs, instead of installing MS Office or Open Office, to eidt it. As I was ready to uploaded it to google docs, found out that it’s in docx format (introduced in office 11). Goggle docs doesn’t support docx. Then I found zamzar.com after googling. I thought it’s another freeware or shareware, that I have to download and install. But no, it’s an online utility. I converted docx to doc with zamza. And then edited the file in google docs. I saved hard drive space and installation time. And hey, I started thinking, what software I cannot replace with an online service within next two years? Hmm, operating system…… games (real ones)…. web browser…. hmm i keep thinking…\.

Why this is important? Have you recently heard the term SAAS (Software As A Service). That is the future of software solutions. Within 2 years more or less we will be able to do most of our daily tasks without ever installing a software other than a web browser. Day by day web services like these will become powerful. And web browsers will become center of all tasks. Flock showed some creativity, opera pioneered some ideas. And as much as I know FireFox 3 will kill all other browsers. DOM will become even more powerful. Flex, Silverlight, JavaFX (hmm i am doubtful) and Apollo will create new standards. And most of them will be free. We will use on line file storage instead of “My Documents” or “home/”, just like we shifted towards web mail services over desktop clients. It’s true that there is probably a bubble forming somewhere in the Web 2.0 world, but at the same time Web 2.0 is changing our life forever. So lets get ready to embrace the change. And I will write about Web 3.0 some other day.

technorati tags:zamzar, file, conversion, saas, web20, software, utility, google, docs, office, document

Blogged with Flock

Pretty Chittagong

technorati tags:chittagong, bangladesh, photos

Blogged with Flock

Hack Day website

Take a look at the spooky London Hack Day website. Screenshots:

Trivia: Can you guess the chypher criteria used here? (Its very easy!)

About jobs, hiring and resumes

I just woke up and had to read something to have my brain going and feel that the world haven’t gone past me by the time I slept. Joel Spolsky wrote a great article back in September on sorting resumes. Joel stresses on programming ability, passion for programming, likeliness of being able to pick up new technology/tools, good English (not necessarily as a medium of communication, but as a sign of care for correctness) etc. He also doesn’t believe in looking for list of alphabet based technologies in a resume which a lot of companies in my vicinity do.

There was another great article in the same domain which I read last week. Adrian Howard wrote in use perl about how not to advertise for a job (he actually recalled an original article he wrote long ago in perlmonks).

And lastly, I read Joel’s The Guerrilla Guide to Interviewing. It’s about , well, interviewing to find the right candidates. It’s pretty much worth reading too. Has an interesting categorization of candidates:

In principle, it’s simple. You’re looking for people who are

1. Smart, and
2. Get things done

His elaborations on “People who are Smart but don’t Get Things Done“, “People who Get Things Done but are not Smart” are so true. IMO everyone looks for the “right kind of brain” for a programmer position (here programmer loosely stands for brain workers, who solves problems in any position of a team), above anything else. Joel points out the stellar techniques of managing that.

technorati tags:job, hiring, resume, software, industry

Blogged with Flock

Softwares I cannot leave without: Episode 1

I am someone who appreciates great softwares. Let it be a windows or Linux software, an web app or a tool for mobile, I try, judge them all and use the softwares I find best. I am a download junkie too. I download, in my honest opinion, more than anybody else in Bangladesh. I download via my download managers, bittorrent clients, Linux tools and finally my custom web crawlers written in Perl (that’s another story, which I will write in some other series of posts) 24/7. I find it my duty to remain cutting edge. If I do not use the best softwares, how can I create best ones, right? Enough prologue, here is the part of the post that may come of use to you. And I will keep the series going:

Wordweb (free edition): It’s a tiny dictionary that remains in your system tray. Select any text in any window/editor/software and hit ctrl+alt+w. The dictionary pops out with the definitions/synonyms. If find yourself caring for your English, don’t live without it. Cons: Does not find rare words, in free edition. But serves well for me ( I got 7.5 in IELTS ).

DUMeter: Bandwidth monitor software for windows. It shows exactly what is happening with my Internet connection. If you have an Internet connection faster that you will ever need, you don’t need it. But I am someone who will, in my humble opinion, prove even few MBps connection slow. But anyway, in Bangladesh we don’t get fast enough Internet connections. And I feel blind if I do not get a measure of incoming and outgoing traffic of my PC.

That’s all for this episode. I would appreciate if anyone suggests any better alternatives or relevant info.

technorati tags:software, favourites, tips, review, dumeter, wordwed, dictionary, bandwidth, meter, download

Blogged with Flock

Flickr, Peninsula Hotel, Chittagong, Sumon, Auvi, Memories, Fun

Front-Elevation on Flickr – Photo Sharing!

technorati tags:Bangladesh, Chittagong, Peninsula, Hotel, Memories, Fun, Auvi

Blogged with Flock

Interesting picture from Flickr

IMG_0708 on Flickr – Photo Sharing!

What would you call it? Humanity?

technorati tags:Flickr, Photo, life

Blogged with Flock

Software Review: HeidiSQL, you can get rid of phpMyAdmin now

I found HeidiSQL today which blows away all other products in the category. It is a third party GUI management tool for MySQL, 100% free, 1.5MB download size for windows and takes only 2.4MB on hard drive, when installed.

I found HeidiSQL on www.osalt.com. Somebody commented that, “Better functionality than phpmyadmin”. I wasn’t too optimistic before I used it. And now I agree with him big time. I was looking for something like this for months. I use phpMyAdmin, wanted to switch to a faster alternative, but could not find a good one.

• I tried MySQL Control Center (mysqlcc), which I feel has freaky MDI.
• Tried trial version of MySQLyog, which was kind of OK, but not free.
• Tried MySQL Toad. Many people I know uses that, But I found it cumbersome to use.
• Tried MySQL Administrator, which is not a product in the same domain. It helps you manage the server rather than managing tables and data on it quick and fast.

So I had to fall back to phpMyAdmin which is complete but slow because of web interface and can never beat a native windows software. But now HeidiSQL proves itself as good in usability, simplicity and feature set. And As a bonus think of how light it is. I ready to use a 5 to 10 times heavier application as smart as this. I tested first of all it’s large SQL file import ability. It imports 20MB SQL without any problem. Has csv, html and xml export feature. On the spot editing in tables, like MS Access. Can import files as blob directly. And the help file is another excellent feature quoth smart SQL references with examples. It will make you refer to it for most day to day MySQL activities. Features quick filters which is great to use.Only feature I can ask for is, ability to remove some columns from the views, which mysqlcc has.

Feature list from their site:

* generate nice SQL-exports
* synchronize tables between two databases
* manage user-privileges
* import text-files
* export table-data as CSV, HTML and XML
* browse and edit table-data using a comfortable grid
* batch-insert ascii or binary files into tables
* write queries with syntax-highlighting (next version will have also code-completion)
* monitor and kill client-processes
* and much more

I am looking forward to see more intuitive improvements in the future versions. Lets wrap up with some screen shots.

Please feel free to drop your suggestions to help me improve my reviews.

technorati tags:MySQL, Software, Review, HeidiSQL, review, article, download, recommendation, free, phpMyadmin, mysqlcc, mysqlyog, mysql-toad

Blogged with Flock

That’s Al Gore in his office!

He uses huge monitors, 3 of them. And look at his messy desk!

technorati tags:office, life

Blogged with Flock

Good news from Gmail

Good news from Gmail. Still fresh:

Gmail Doubles Maximum Attachment Size to 20 MB

Gmail upgraded
the maximum attachment size from 10 MB to 20 MB. Gmail was quite
forgiving and you could send more than 10 MB in some cases, but now
it’s possible to send at least 20 MB in one message.

Of course,
few mail providers will accept a such a big message, so it’s safe to
send messages bigger than 10 MB to other Gmail accounts, to Yahoo Mail
Plus or to other premium accounts.

It would be nice if Gmail
showed a progress bar for the upload and if uploading files to Gmail
was faster and more reliable. But maybe we’re asking too much.

About upload progressbar: I use Opera when I upload bigger files to any site. The opera statusbar is smarter than anyother. It shows exactly what is hapenning, in Kilo Bytes. It’s the alternate solution for now.

technorati tags:gmail, email, feature, news

Blogged with Flock