Pascal Van Hecke – Daily Links

"iPhoneBrowser is a Windows based file browser for your iPhone. It features drag and drop uploading to your phone, automatic and manual backups of files on your phone, previews of text and picture files and very cool icons. "

Just like PortableApps.com, this site offers a suite of no-install Windows apps for your USB key or on a locked-down PC.
"Collection of free portable apps organized into software suites and packs for download to specific-sized USB devices. View content in Italian (default) or English "
For a comparison with PortableApps, see http://www.downloadsquad.com/2009/06/22/4-portable-app-suites-to-power-up-your-usb-flash-drive/

Webbased Project management tool (online version of MS project).
Remarkable: you can use Google Docs as backend.

Excellent way to learn Ruby syntax.
You are guided through code samples where you have to fill out expected solutions.
You run a test set repeatedly, that will point you to wrong answers or unsolved questions.

TimeTracker that has been around for 4 years now.
Good reviews because of simplicity.
Has web, desktop and phone interfaces.

What you need to know to get started

EFF's comments on Facebook places:
- "If you want to have complete control over whether you are listed at a location, you have to permanently disallow check-ins by your friends by disabling "Friends can check me in to Places" on the customize privacy settings page. This is the most privacy protective option, since you will only be listed at a location if you affirmatively choose to check in."
- "You can opt out of the Here Now feature by unchecking the "Include me in 'People Here Now' after I check in" privacy control. However, Facebook does not offer the ability to limit Here Now visibility to subsets of your friends."
- "While you can have a friend check you in anywhere they are, or spoof your geolocation if you have sufficient technical chops, Facebook should allow arbitrary locations."

This is as huge as the hype wants you to believe it.
Many people/services have played with geo-annotation, but Facebook has the user base to really get it going. Unfortunately in a closed system, and most people will geo-annotate under the naive assumption that it's "only for their friends". Even if everything goes well privacy-wise, Facebook sits on a huge pile of geo metadata to exploit….

I use this tool to emulate left mouse and right mouse key clicks so I can use a trackball with my left hand and just left-mouse click and right-mouse click with the keyboard (RSI issues when using right hand to move a mouse)

"XHTML2PDF is a converter for HTML/XHTML and CSS to PDF and a Python package.
* Translates HTML and CSS input into PDF files
* Is written pure Python and therefore platform independent
* Supports document specifics like columns, headers, footers, page numbers, custom Postscript and TrueType fonts, etc.
* Best support for frameworks like Django, Turbogears, CherryPy, Pylons, WSGI
* Simple integration into Python programms
* Also available as stand alone command line tool for Windows, MacOS X and Linux"

"A Pure-Python library built as a PDF toolkit. It is capable of:

* extracting document information (title, author, …),
* splitting documents page by page,
* merging documents page by page,
* cropping pages,
* merging multiple pages into a single page,
* encrypting and decrypting PDF files.

By being Pure-Python, it should run on any Python platform without any dependencies on external libraries"

script/generate nifty_scaffold
Collection of useful Rails generator scripts for scaffolding, layout files, authentication, and more. Has support for HAML

Firefox add-on that lets you manage Sqlite databases.

A port of TortoiseSVN to GIT