HootSuite offers a professional and consolidated collection of Twitter-related tools. It is a website that you log into from your web browser from anywhere, not a program that you have to download and install.

You can set up HootSuite to manage one or several different Twitter accounts. From its slick interface, you can easily create and customize multiple tabs of tweets, and each tab can have one or more columns inside that further organize tweets. Each column represents some grouping of tweets, such as your home feed, mentions of your company or Twitter account, direct messages to you, pending tweets (that you haven’t sent yet), sent tweets, and various keyword searches for things you’d like to monitor. You can easily control column width, as well as drag and drop columns and tabs to change their order and position.

As mentioned, each column features a list of tweets matching the criteria you selected. Each tweet is accompanied by the photo/avatar of the tweeps (Twitter users like you and me), the time, date, and source of the tweet, and a group of buttons that easily let you Favorite/Unfavorite, Direct Message, Reply, or Re-Tweet. You may also click on the tweep’s name to view their Twitter profile.

Above the conglomeration of tabs and columns is a collapsible box from which you can tweet directly (from any of the Twitter accounts you set up in HootSuite). You can type your tweet, select one or more Twitter accounts to issue the Tweet, choose what day and time you’d like the tweet to go out, and even use its URL shortener (like the formerly mentioned bit.ly – http://bit.ly) to shorten long web addresses. So, HootSuite can be used to queue up multiple tweets in advance—for several different Twitter accounts.

For the more intensively-inclined Twitter user, HootSuite offers the ability for multiple users to log into your HootSuite account and manage it with various restrictions that you control. Further, it graphically tracks statistics about your Twitter usage, lets you monitor your company brand, and embed your custom HootSuite columns in other websites.

HootSuite is an excellent Twitter tool that we’ve been using for a couple weeks now with great success. I keep it open in my browser all day, and check it from time to time to keep tabs on my Twitter life. Take a look at it and let us know what you think!

Craig Samson

Just about everyone who reads tech blogs has run into a title like “Essential Apps for Your New PC” or “These Apps Will Save Your Life”. The purpose of a netbook is to run light applications and use the web for most productivity. However, there are other offline uses like: ebook reader, journal,sketch book, media player, etc, etc. What I wasn’t able to find, when actually looking, however, was a list of lightweight, practical, free (preferably open source) and “cloudless” applications for a netbook running Windows XP. As far as I know, these apps will also run on Vista and Windows 7, the  exceptions being the XP-specific programs at the bottom.

Here is my list and some notes.

• Abiword, Gnumeric, XMind, Foxit Reader, and NoteTab Light

These are all you need for basic office applications. They are free, lightweight and highly customizable. They are  a word processor, a spread sheet application, a mind mapping software, a PDF reader and a Notepad replacement. Downloaded, they’re less than 50 MB—very impressive when compared to just about any office suite.

• MPlayer for Windows and MagicDisc

For media! MPlayer will handle anything you throw at it and has plenty of plugins to boot. MagicDisc allows you to mount any .ISO file as though you have a CD/DVD player on your netbook. Many netbooks don’t actually have an optical drive, so it’s very helpful.

• Avast! Antivirus Home Edition and 7-Zip

Play safe online and use a free antivirus application that doesn’t bog down your machine. Of course, only use Home Edition for personal use. 7-Zip is an all-around useful archiving tool that makes opening archives of any type a snap. I originally mentioned universal uninstaller, but I think 7-zip is more reliable and is a more active project.

• Firefox, Thunderbird, IE7Pro and Pidgin

When you do go online, use these apps to make your life easier. Firefox and Thunderbird have a ton of addons to customize browsing and email just as you like it. If you use IE, though, IE7Pro is a great tool to customize it and block ads. Pidgin is your one stop shop for instant messaging. It can handle AIM, ICQ, Google Talk, Jabber/XMPP, MSN Messenger, Yahoo! and more out of the box. It can also do Facebook chat and others with the aid of plugins.

• Paint.Net and Gadwin PrintScreen

Need to do some image editing without large, bulky software? Paint.net is a really robust application with a small footprint. Gadwin PrintScreen adds just enough extra to Windows’ builtin printscreen command to make it worth your while—without getting in the way or using extra resources.

• Belarc Advisor and TinyResMeter

What if something goes wrong on your netbook, or things are running slowly? Belarc Advisor and TinyResMeter are great trouble shooting tools. Only install Belarc for personal use.

And tools that should have been included in XP by default but were not:

• Sync Toy – a simple folder synchronization tool for easy backups (will work on Vista/7)
• Alt-Tab Replacement – a clearer way to switch between application windows
• QuickMonth Calendar – mouse over your task bar date and see the whole month

I hope these suggestions help someone outfit their netbook and keep it running trim!

More and more I find companies turning to a DLC environment instead of using physical media. This raises the very important question of what is a DLC, and why are more and more places using them?

While there are too many different acronyms to count for what a DLC is, I use these two simple ones: Download Center and Down-loadable Content. With that out of the way, it still doesn’t explain what a DLC is and why people love them so much. As an example, lets look at Apple iTunes. A simple piece of software that can store your music, organize it, make playlists, and numerous other great features. As many people know, you can also purchase music from iTunes and directly load it into your computer. This is a DLC, a “shopping Center” for electronic goods.

Microsoft took this concept and applied it to the wildly popular gaming console, Xbox 360. You can purchase a game and play through it’s entirety, or you can purchase special add-ons from the “Xbox Live marketplace” and play through those modes or levels as well.You can also purchase full games through the marketplace, as well as movies and TV shows.

Steam is a program for the computer that allows you to purchase and play games through a simple interface. One of the selling points of steam is that your account is permanently linked to any game you buy on Steam, so if you get a new computer, just log into your account and the download is waiting for you. It is a full electronic copy of whatever you purchase, right at your fingertips 24/7. I personally use Steam and have fallen in love with it. No longer do I need to keep track of all the CDs and DVDs and the keys that went with them.

We can all see how great a DLC is, but why are so many people switching to it? The concept is simple really, you have a product you want to sell, it may be a music CD, or a game, or even a book. Years ago the only way to sell this was to have the end user come to your store or location and purchase it from you. Then the internet came along and changed everyone’s way of life. Why get into your car, drive for some period of time, find what you are looking for, wait in line with a bunch of strangers, pay for it, drive home, and then enjoy what it is that you bought? The process took forever. Now it’s as simple as turning on your computer, going to a site, purchasing instantly, and enjoying the effort. It’s instant gratification for the end user, while companies save money on not having to store the item or pay for bricks and mortar or employees.

In the end, the real question is how much longer are stores that sell the products that you can find on a DLC going to last? Are we at the end of an era or the beginning of something more? I myself look foward to the future and how everything is going to play out.

Chuck Lindblom

I am a little obsessed about maps, and it’s all my Dad’s fault.  One of my earliest memories is how he turned my least favorite meals into a geography game.  He would cut my food into the shapes of different states, and would then ask me if I could eat, for example, the whole state of Connecticut.  After stuffing that piece of food into my mouth, I’d laugh hysterically at the thought of eating an entire state, forgetting that I’d just eaten the food I hated most. 

Luckily for me, this obsession has helped me professionally, since  I’ve ended up working with Geographic Information Systems (GIS).  This technology can be a powerful tool for helping people visualize large amounts of data by presenting the data as a map.  The technology can improve the quality of spatial data, and can help determine where things should be located to accomplish real-world objectives.

GIS provides ”topology rules” to ensure that the location of something makes sense in relation to other things.  A house can’t be located within an ocean.   Each salesperson for a particular company should have an exclusive sales territory.  Driveways connect to streets.  And so on.

Microsoft provides a suite of tools for enforcing topology rules using SQL Server Spatial, which has been available since SQL Server 2008.  Much to my surprise, this technology provides even more power and flexibility in defining topology rules than ESRI’s ArcSDE 9.3 product.  And using ESRI’s Data Interoperability extension, ESRI products can read and write directly from SQL Server Spatial.

Using SQL Server Spatial and its topology rules, I was able to solve a challenging problem involving the placement of vessel moorings to eliminate vessel collisions.  Vessels move around their moorings due to tides and winds, and the pattern of movement depends on factors including the length of chains and the length of the vessel, as well as whether the vessel is attached to one or two moorings. 

The first step to solve this problem was to calculate the potential swing areas for each vessel based on the current information in the database.  For the geeks out there, I did this using a user-defined function that returns a geography data type.

The second step to solve this problem was to create topology rules that identify and prevent potential collisions between vessels.  A small overlap in vessel swing areas is not a problem, because similar boats will swing in similar directions at the same time – if there are winds from the North, for example, all the vessels will typically be found at the southern end of their swing areas.   But significant overlaps in swing areas are definitely a problem.  Using SQL Server’s spatial functions, we can determine the percentage overlap between each set of swing areas, and can create a topology rule that the moorings cannot be placed if the overlap percentage is too high.  This ability to implement a topology rule based on a quantifiable measurement is very powerful.  For comparison, ESRI’s SDE topology rules allow you to prevent overlaps or require overlaps, but they don’t allow you to allow a certain degree of overlap.

Using SQL Server Spatial, you also have significant flexibility in handling data that violate your topology rules.  On the stricter end of the spectrum, you can prevent bad data from being stored in the database at all.  On the looser end of the spectrum, you can allow storage of the “bad” data and create a query that identifies topology violations.  In the middle of the spectrum, you could warn about topology violations during the update process but allow overrides. 

In summary, SQL Server Spatial has a powerful arsenal of tools to help validate and optimize the location of objects.  It is definitely worth exploring to see if it might meet your needs.

P.S.  Now that I’m a father myself, I tried cutting my daughter’s least favorite foods into the shape of various states.  It hasn’t worked at all.  She must be a lot smarter than I was at her age.

Brad Hurley

In this brief entry, I’m going to share with you something I’ve learned through hard lessons in the IT industry. There are certain rules to live by in life, like the Golden Rule, the 80/20 Rule, and, of course, Wexelblat’s Scheduling Algorithm (it’s a rule, but programmers love algorithms). It goes something like this:

Pick any two: Good, Fast, Cheap.

It turns out that you can’t eat your cake and have it too (actually, this expression is truly supposed to be written that way around). Let me put it in starker terms:

Pick your favorite: Lousy, Slow, Expensive.

Judging by my own finances, I apparently like Expensive, which buys me a good and fast result. Maybe patience is your thing, so you will achieve a good and cheap result—not too shabby. Lastly, if you’re willing to accept schlock, you can get it both fast and cheap. If you refuse to accept this proverb altogether and try to achieve all three points, you’re likely to end up with none (we’ve all seen projects like that, yes?).

The key to success, I think, is to choose the sacrificial quality uniquely for each project and to work to mitigate that affect throughout the project’s lifecycle. Here at Fandotech, we rarely sacrifice the Good, considering the quality of our work to be paramount. As a result, we’re not always the fastest or cheapest solution, but we’re always the best solution.

I’ve been called a cynic. Indeed, if a cynic is a realist with experience.

Craig Samson