Informed Networker Blog

We’ve discussed in previous posts the cloud-based infrastructure of Informed Networker and some of the details of our system architecture. In this post we will focus on another aspect of Informed Networker’s infrastructure - the client side. We’ll look at the various applications that make up a regular portion of my day.

Microsoft Windows Vista SP1.

I’m running Windows Vista SP1 on both my desktop and laptop. As a Network Engineer I decided to switch to Vista nearly as soon as it was released. I knew eventually I would be responsible for migrating users to Vista and it seemed wise to dogfood Vista to myself first. The first few months were difficult - and until SP1 was released I couldn’t recommend Vista. But now I’m fairly happy with the OS and surprised at all the continued mumbling (perhaps sometime soon I’ll respond to some of this grumbling).

MP Software’s phpDesigner 2008.

I looked at a wide variety of PHP IDE’s before settling on MP Software’s phpDesigner. I chose MP Software for a number of reasons - featureset, price, and usability. phpDesigner is intuitive. My only complaint currently is the inability to collapse portions of code (something which the author acknowledges but at this time doesn’t intend to rectify).

TortoiseSVN.

A great little open source/free subversion client. It integrates into Windows Explorer and makes utilizing Subversion intuitive. For those who aren’t familiar with Subversion, it is for source control. It allows one to keep multiple versions of files, move back to old versions of files, leave notes on enhancements, merge code, etc. Another bonus with TortoiseSVN is that it integrates seamlessly with phpDesigner.

webYog’s SQLyog Enterprise.

A great application that handles a wide variety of SQL management tasks. Besides basic query management it includes the ability to create and schedule regular sql backups and the ability to synchronize data and schemas between databases (e.g. a development and live environment). Not free, but not too expensive either.

FileZilla.

An open source FTP client developed by Tim Kosse and faithfully maintained over a number of years. An FTP client allows one to upload/download files to/from a remote server.

Pidgin.

Pidgin is an open source (notice a theme?) instant messaging client. It allows one to talk on a number of different networks all at once - e.g. AOL, Yahoo, and Google. This makes it a must have when you are working in a distributed workforce environment.

PuTTY.

This little nifty application is only at version 0.60 but reflects the open source culture of conservative versioning. If it was a commercial application it would be in its second or third version. PuTTY includes several separate applications including an SSH/Telnet client (allowing one to remotely connect to a server as if at the command-line), a SCP/SFTP client, etc.

Mozilla Thunderbird.

While I once used Pegasus, I now use Mozilla Thunderbird - and have for several years. Thunderbird is the lesser-known sibling of Mozilla Firefox. Thunderbird is an email client - and once you install the Lightning add-on it also becomes a calendaring application. Yeah, I could use a web-based GUI, but I prefer the desktop client. I have thousands of emails categorized and sub-categorized with hundreds of new emails arriving every day (thanks master spammers for the steady flow of garbage…don’t worry, I pass all your great viagra ads and don’t i want to meet you in person ads immediately off to Knujon).

WinMerge.

Merging code is a constant task. One of the ways I keep updated on what the developers are doing is by merging the code they give me with my existing codebase (they also post it to the svn). This allows me to watch how the code changes. Its also useful when the underlying open source applications are upgraded and I have to merge the now somewhat differentiated code together. WinMerge is a great application that allows one to quickly see the differences between two files - or two directories.

OpenOffice.org and Google Docs.

I use the software application OpenOffice.org as an office suite instead of Microsoft Office. It includes a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, and database application - and can save in Microsoft’s formats. What else could I need? Docs is nice when doing light editing. I’d love to see some better synchronization tools between the two (there are some, just none I’ve been impressed by).

Well, thats a long enough list already - but for honorable mention I’ll just note Opera, Paint.NET, Safari, Jungle Disk, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Notepad++, RescueTime, Skype, TUGZip, FeedReader, and VMWare Server.

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