Programming Archive

  • This is a fairly short post, but it’s really to the point. The power of AutoHotKey continues to impress and be incredibly useful. If you know how to use AutoHotKey, you know exactly what I’m discussing. I use AutoHotKey in just about everything I do… and just about everything I write. I’m a person that has a fascination with words, alternate words and learning new words. So the other day I found myself jumping back-and-forth with Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com, Google Translate and just doing some standard Google searches. The epiphany was to write a quick set of code to help me out.. I just wanted to share this.

    AutoHotKey: MyLittleHelper – Making tech life easier

    Posted on January 16, 2012 | 1 Comment
    This is a fairly short post, but it’s really to the point. The power of AutoHotKey continues to impress and be incredibly useful. If you know how to use AutoHotKey, you know exactly what I’m discussing. I use AutoHotKey in just about everything I do… and just about everything I write. I’m a person that has a fascination with words, alternate words and learning new words. So the other day I found myself jumping back-and-forth with Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com, Google Translate and just doing some standard Google searches. The epiphany was to write a quick set of code to help me out.. I just wanted to share this.

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  • Dragon NaturallySpeaking is easily my favorite application for productivity. I speak, and it types; I use it for blogging and for work— and have been for the past six years or so. The latest release of Dragon NaturallySpeaking, version 11, worked extremely well, and I understand that the purpose of using Dragon NaturallySpeaking is to liberate some users from actually having to use the keyboard for large majority of the functions/activities, but I find that in some circumstances it’s really so much easier to add the word directly into the Dragon NaturallySpeaking library, or to train specific words so that they don’t become wrapped up in my conversations and create garbled paragraphs of information but to make any sense at all. Speech recognition is one of those technologies that it’s always evolving and getting better with each release, and it’s far from perfect, but for the most part, it does very well. But like I said, sometimes you just need to be able to put words into the speech library, or you need to train specific words so that they’re not confused with other ones. And this is where I start using AutoHotKey …

    Using AutoHotKey to Hack Dragon NaturallySpeaking v11

    Posted on September 16, 2011 | 1 Comment
    Dragon NaturallySpeaking is easily my favorite application for productivity. I speak, and it types; I use it for blogging and for work— and have been for the past six years or so. The latest release of Dragon NaturallySpeaking, version 11, worked extremely well, and I understand that the purpose of using Dragon NaturallySpeaking is to liberate some users from actually having to use the keyboard for large majority of the functions/activities, but I find that in some circumstances it’s really so much easier to add the word directly into the Dragon NaturallySpeaking library, or to train specific words so that they don’t become wrapped up in my conversations and create garbled paragraphs of information but to make any sense at all. Speech recognition is one of those technologies that it’s always evolving and getting better with each release, and it’s far from perfect, but for the most part, it does very well. But like I said, sometimes you just need to be able to put words into the speech library, or you need to train specific words so that they’re not confused with other ones. And this is where I start using AutoHotKey …

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  • One of my favorite plug-ins for Thunderbird; it’s actually the plug-in that saved Thunderbird from being replaced by something else [for me]. SocialMail is a plug-in that mimics the functions of Xobni. Xobni has openly said that they have no interest in creating a plug-in for Thunderbird, and doing for Thunderbird what is Xobni has done for Outlook. If you’re a user of Thunderbird, you can’t be without this plug-in. It changes the whole dynamic of the application, it makes Thunderbird little more fun to use and it makes it definitely more interesting. Using the plug-in you can quickly access, previous conversations, all attachments exchanged and any URL’s that have been used. Senders eMail addresses can be linked to an image; like on Facebook. It’s also compatible with Skype and Twitter.

    Mozilla Thunderbird Plug-in: SocialMail 0.6.2b

    Posted on September 13, 2011 | No Comments
    One of my favorite plug-ins for Thunderbird; it’s actually the plug-in that saved Thunderbird from being replaced by something else [for me]. SocialMail is a plug-in that mimics the functions of Xobni. Xobni has openly said that they have no interest in creating a plug-in for Thunderbird, and doing for Thunderbird what is Xobni has done for Outlook. If you’re a user of Thunderbird, you can’t be without this plug-in. It changes the whole dynamic of the application, it makes Thunderbird little more fun to use and it makes it definitely more interesting. Using the plug-in you can quickly access, previous conversations, all attachments exchanged and any URL’s that have been used. Senders eMail addresses can be linked to an image; like on Facebook. It’s also compatible with Skype and Twitter.

    Continue Reading...

  • The creation of the Microsoft application store is something that I’ve been talking about for years, but sadly, Microsoft hasn’t come around this idea until after everyone else has. Apple and Google have already established themselves with application stores for their operating systems, mainly the smartphones, but now that Microsoft has a new inspiration, with the impending release of Windows 8, they’re trying to jump on the bandwagon and right the wrongs. Even Linux has had a storage of applications with their operating system for many years; it was in place before Apple or Google even decided to do an application market. Matter of fact, I think Linux may have been an inspiration to both Apple and Google for the application stores. The potential to make a lot of money with the application markets is obviously there. Charging developers to post their applications, and charging customers to purchase applications from the application market. Microsoft‘s new vision for Windows 8, in my opinion, seems a little bit bold and mixed with a bit of desperation. I think a perfect world it would have been better for Microsoft to try to deploy a application market in the later years of Windows XP...

    Microsoft Confirms Windows 8 App Store

    Posted on August 18, 2011 | 1 Comment
    The creation of the Microsoft application store is something that I’ve been talking about for years, but sadly, Microsoft hasn’t come around this idea until after everyone else has. Apple and Google have already established themselves with application stores for their operating systems, mainly the smartphones, but now that Microsoft has a new inspiration, with the impending release of Windows 8, they’re trying to jump on the bandwagon and right the wrongs. Even Linux has had a storage of applications with their operating system for many years; it was in place before Apple or Google even decided to do an application market. Matter of fact, I think Linux may have been an inspiration to both Apple and Google for the application stores. The potential to make a lot of money with the application markets is obviously there. Charging developers to post their applications, and charging customers to purchase applications from the application market. Microsoft‘s new vision for Windows 8, in my opinion, seems a little bit bold and mixed with a bit of desperation. I think a perfect world it would have been better for Microsoft to try to deploy a application market in the later years of Windows XP...

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  • Over the past couple of months in watching the behavior of Google, it’s curious as to what Google considers morally correct behavior. Google has decided to punish the android users who have chosen to reboot their android devices. Just recently they decided to deny access for pay-per-view videos for those users who have modified their android devices; basically saying, if you have rooted your android device, you will not be able to watch pay-per-view videos from YouTube. But the android market is littered with applications that are specifically for android devices that are rooted. Google seems to making decisions based upon the severity, or the level of a security risk these applications can offer. Acting as a climatologist on Google, it’s hard to observe a company be so finicky about what is morally correct and what isn’t. The android operating system is supposed to be an open platform, but recently Google decided to tighten the noose on when and how the android operating system is released to the public. While Google is still offering the source code to developers, they are now deciding on the timeline and how the source code is provided.

    Android Market: What Google Considers Right And Wrong

    Posted on June 2, 2011 | No Comments
    Over the past couple of months in watching the behavior of Google, it’s curious as to what Google considers morally correct behavior. Google has decided to punish the android users who have chosen to reboot their android devices. Just recently they decided to deny access for pay-per-view videos for those users who have modified their android devices; basically saying, if you have rooted your android device, you will not be able to watch pay-per-view videos from YouTube. But the android market is littered with applications that are specifically for android devices that are rooted. Google seems to making decisions based upon the severity, or the level of a security risk these applications can offer. Acting as a climatologist on Google, it’s hard to observe a company be so finicky about what is morally correct and what isn’t. The android operating system is supposed to be an open platform, but recently Google decided to tighten the noose on when and how the android operating system is released to the public. While Google is still offering the source code to developers, they are now deciding on the timeline and how the source code is provided.

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  • I believe everyone is aware of the Google Tasks option, to keep your everyday things on track, but for the longest time [it seems] for what ever reason Google didn’t offer an API to that service, making it difficult to believe to incorporate that information with any other application… A lot of users wanted to have this for Thunderbird, but this is just one application; incorporating this in to other applications is going to come swiftly. Google announced today  [may, 11th 2011] that the API is available.

    Google Rewards Users/Developers of Google Tasks with an API

    Posted on May 11, 2011 | 1 Comment
    I believe everyone is aware of the Google Tasks option, to keep your everyday things on track, but for the longest time [it seems] for what ever reason Google didn’t offer an API to that service, making it difficult to believe to incorporate that information with any other application… A lot of users wanted to have this for Thunderbird, but this is just one application; incorporating this in to other applications is going to come swiftly. Google announced today  [may, 11th 2011] that the API is available.

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  • Adobe Flash video has been a hassle for years. First with having to even install the Adobe Flash player and then to endure the lack of timely updates and security problems that Adobe has had with the plug-in. And up until recently, Adobe had not released a player for Adobe Flash or the 64-bit systems; holding back developers yet again. And while Adobe has released a 64-bit version of their player the performance of the player is still an overall bad design and the position that Google is taking is the right one. On Google’s YouTube site, they’ve indicated that they’re now encoding all uploaded videos to WebM.

    YouTube Encoding videos to WebM is the right choice

    Posted on April 26, 2011 | No Comments
    Adobe Flash video has been a hassle for years. First with having to even install the Adobe Flash player and then to endure the lack of timely updates and security problems that Adobe has had with the plug-in. And up until recently, Adobe had not released a player for Adobe Flash or the 64-bit systems; holding back developers yet again. And while Adobe has released a 64-bit version of their player the performance of the player is still an overall bad design and the position that Google is taking is the right one. On Google’s YouTube site, they’ve indicated that they’re now encoding all uploaded videos to WebM.

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  • This is really nothing, but it may help some people. While Windows Live Writer is a great application for blogging a lot of users are complaining that they’re losing their blogs with Windows Live Writer just outright crashing on them and taking their super log blogs with them. Obviously, this would be frustrating… and Microsoft has not answered the call on why it’s happening or how to resolve it, so people just go on working with the problem. A solution the Windows Live Writer support forum offers, or says to do, is to save a draft manually. Yeah, manually. That means as you type you need to mentally remember to save your blog. I believe that’s obtuse. I may have a better answer for you…

    Windows Live Writer 2011 – AutoSaver

    Posted on April 6, 2011 | No Comments
    This is really nothing, but it may help some people. While Windows Live Writer is a great application for blogging a lot of users are complaining that they’re losing their blogs with Windows Live Writer just outright crashing on them and taking their super log blogs with them. Obviously, this would be frustrating… and Microsoft has not answered the call on why it’s happening or how to resolve it, so people just go on working with the problem. A solution the Windows Live Writer support forum offers, or says to do, is to save a draft manually. Yeah, manually. That means as you type you need to mentally remember to save your blog. I believe that’s obtuse. I may have a better answer for you…

    Continue Reading...

  • In the world of operating systems and usability, and in the realm of voice recognition for the general population, Microsoft, Google and Nuance are the only ones that are competing. Microsoft is the worst of the bunch, while Microsoft does have a good record of voice recognition with their operating system, the GUI is so bad… it’s realistically unusable. Google has voice recognition as well, and two years ago, I would’ve said it wasn’t very good— but the fact is that its gotten a lot better. And lastly, the best voice recognition engine is from Nuance. Their target is the PC/MAC market, but they do offer options for the Smartphones; and their performance in these areas are stellar. Nuance’s flagship offering is Dragon NaturallySpeaking,but they have their hands in all kinds of other voice recognition projects; they’ve had years of R&D to play with [and it shows in their results].

    Using Voice Recognition In The Cloud

    Posted on March 20, 2011 | 3 Comments
    In the world of operating systems and usability, and in the realm of voice recognition for the general population, Microsoft, Google and Nuance are the only ones that are competing. Microsoft is the worst of the bunch, while Microsoft does have a good record of voice recognition with their operating system, the GUI is so bad… it’s realistically unusable. Google has voice recognition as well, and two years ago, I would’ve said it wasn’t very good— but the fact is that its gotten a lot better. And lastly, the best voice recognition engine is from Nuance. Their target is the PC/MAC market, but they do offer options for the Smartphones; and their performance in these areas are stellar. Nuance’s flagship offering is Dragon NaturallySpeaking,but they have their hands in all kinds of other voice recognition projects; they’ve had years of R&D to play with [and it shows in their results].

    Continue Reading...

  • I use Dragon NaturallySpeaking a lot and I find that there’s a lot of Internet words that Dragon NaturallySpeaking doesn’t know and while the application is supposed to smartly add those new words to Dragon NaturallySpeaking I find that majority of the time, it doesn’t and knowing that Dragon NaturallySpeaking isn’t going to know some words, I would rather select those words, and just push add them to the vocabulary in Dragon NaturallySpeaking; but that process isn’t as easy as I’d like it to be. I know Dragon NaturallySpeaking has functions in place to examine your emails, scan your documents and even import word listings, but the problem I was running in to was the one’sy/two’sy type situations, and having to stop for things like that, just breaks the rhythm of working. So, I created a program that’d make it a little easier and faster.

    Fast Add – For Dragon NaturallySpeaking [FREE]

    Posted on February 19, 2011 | 2 Comments
    I use Dragon NaturallySpeaking a lot and I find that there’s a lot of Internet words that Dragon NaturallySpeaking doesn’t know and while the application is supposed to smartly add those new words to Dragon NaturallySpeaking I find that majority of the time, it doesn’t and knowing that Dragon NaturallySpeaking isn’t going to know some words, I would rather select those words, and just push add them to the vocabulary in Dragon NaturallySpeaking; but that process isn’t as easy as I’d like it to be. I know Dragon NaturallySpeaking has functions in place to examine your emails, scan your documents and even import word listings, but the problem I was running in to was the one’sy/two’sy type situations, and having to stop for things like that, just breaks the rhythm of working. So, I created a program that’d make it a little easier and faster.

    Continue Reading...

  • Anyone who knows me, knows that I’m a tech freak and that AutoHotKey is my passion for getting stuff done. There’s nothing that AutoHotKey hasn’t been able to do at this point. I have found more ways to get stuff done, better and faster than anyone could imagine. I like to sit back and smile at the fact others are doing things on a manual level while things that can be automated are completely scripted out. You can refer to them as scripts or macros; or what ever you want to call them, but they’re smart and they’re very productive. And using these type of tools isn’t so much about being lazy, but recognizing that what you’re doing, the repetitive parts; the parts that make you want to pull your hair out on how monotonous it can be, can be scripted to run almost automatically.

    Text Replacement/Expanders are Awesome

    Posted on February 17, 2011 | 6 Comments
    Anyone who knows me, knows that I’m a tech freak and that AutoHotKey is my passion for getting stuff done. There’s nothing that AutoHotKey hasn’t been able to do at this point. I have found more ways to get stuff done, better and faster than anyone could imagine. I like to sit back and smile at the fact others are doing things on a manual level while things that can be automated are completely scripted out. You can refer to them as scripts or macros; or what ever you want to call them, but they’re smart and they’re very productive. And using these type of tools isn’t so much about being lazy, but recognizing that what you’re doing, the repetitive parts; the parts that make you want to pull your hair out on how monotonous it can be, can be scripted to run almost automatically.

    Continue Reading...

  • As with a lot of people who have been awaiting a version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking for Android; it’s here! It’s just not called Dragon NaturallySpeaking. The comparison between Android voice recognition and Nuance voice recognition seems to be an ongoing battle. The only companies really battling it out right now for voice recognition dominance is Nuance and Google; Microsoft has decided they can’t seem to compete in anything. Sorry, that was incorrect to clarify; but true… moving on.

    Android Finally gets Dragon NaturallySpeaking as the ‘FlexT9’ application

    Posted on February 8, 2011 | 11 Comments
    As with a lot of people who have been awaiting a version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking for Android; it’s here! It’s just not called Dragon NaturallySpeaking. The comparison between Android voice recognition and Nuance voice recognition seems to be an ongoing battle. The only companies really battling it out right now for voice recognition dominance is Nuance and Google; Microsoft has decided they can’t seem to compete in anything. Sorry, that was incorrect to clarify; but true… moving on.

    Continue Reading...

  • Microsoft has a problem, and they’ve to be on their back heels by now with the requests to put out some sales figures, and start discussing the success of the Windows Mobile 7, or the lack of their latest gift to the world. It fair to say that Microsoft was late to dinner on this one. iOS and Android rule the roost when it comes to the Smartphone market. Microsoft completely missed the boat; they tried to come back with a small offering— the Kin [what a flop]. And then they waited a few months and now they’ve the Windows Mobile 7 that they’re attempting to shine on everyone. To be truthful, I believe their commercials about the phones are better than the phones themselves. Who and resist those fluffy little animal thingies?

    Is Windows Mobile 7 going to have to admit that Android WINS?!

    Posted on January 28, 2011 | No Comments
    Microsoft has a problem, and they’ve to be on their back heels by now with the requests to put out some sales figures, and start discussing the success of the Windows Mobile 7, or the lack of their latest gift to the world. It fair to say that Microsoft was late to dinner on this one. iOS and Android rule the roost when it comes to the Smartphone market. Microsoft completely missed the boat; they tried to come back with a small offering— the Kin [what a flop]. And then they waited a few months and now they’ve the Windows Mobile 7 that they’re attempting to shine on everyone. To be truthful, I believe their commercials about the phones are better than the phones themselves. Who and resist those fluffy little animal thingies?

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  • PaperPort is a consumer standard for organizing and keeping images and documents in one place, but the landscape of what’s kept has changed and the next version from Nuance needs to be better; more with the times. Applications like Google Picasa and Windows Live Photo Gallery are doing a good job of attempting to handle that area fairly well. But I believe it’s clear that Nuance’s PaperPort seems to be standing it self apart, by being the document manager; not operating system much the photo manager. PaperPort is document imaging helper and what service applications like Google Picasa are doing is focusing directly on the the photos.

    For Nuance’s PaperPort 13: Evolution is Required

    Posted on January 14, 2011 | 7 Comments
    PaperPort is a consumer standard for organizing and keeping images and documents in one place, but the landscape of what’s kept has changed and the next version from Nuance needs to be better; more with the times. Applications like Google Picasa and Windows Live Photo Gallery are doing a good job of attempting to handle that area fairly well. But I believe it’s clear that Nuance’s PaperPort seems to be standing it self apart, by being the document manager; not operating system much the photo manager. PaperPort is document imaging helper and what service applications like Google Picasa are doing is focusing directly on the the photos.

    Continue Reading...

  • In a surprising move that would be more reminiscent of something that Microsoft or Apple would do, Google has decided to remove the support for the h.264 video format. h.264 has been the Internet standard for video for the past couple of years; a large majority of newer digital cameras record directly to this format. it’s surprising because when you’ve got a standard like h.264, something majority established itself as the video standard for the Internet, to simply come along and yank the rug right out from under it, without due reasoning or argument, it’s a big surprise. Surprising to everyone. But even more surprising is that Google is dropping the video format h.264 in favor of a video format that Google considers ‘open’ and should be the new Internet standard.; WebM Codec.

    Can Google’s influence kill h.264?

    Posted on January 14, 2011 | No Comments
    In a surprising move that would be more reminiscent of something that Microsoft or Apple would do, Google has decided to remove the support for the h.264 video format. h.264 has been the Internet standard for video for the past couple of years; a large majority of newer digital cameras record directly to this format. it’s surprising because when you’ve got a standard like h.264, something majority established itself as the video standard for the Internet, to simply come along and yank the rug right out from under it, without due reasoning or argument, it’s a big surprise. Surprising to everyone. But even more surprising is that Google is dropping the video format h.264 in favor of a video format that Google considers ‘open’ and should be the new Internet standard.; WebM Codec.

    Continue Reading...

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