What Happened  to the Quick Launch Toolbar?

Many Windows users may be accustomed to using and customizing the Quick Launch toolbar, a useful means of always having an always visible icon to your most commonly used programs. In my experience it is not uncommon to find users that add icons to almost all of their applications on this useful toolbar. To these users it may be especially disappointing to find that the Quick Launch toolbar has been removed from the Windows 7 Taskbar.

The Quick Launch bar has now been replaced with the concept of “Pinning” an icon to the taskbar. By dragging an icon to the taskbar in Windows 7 you will be presented with a menu item to “Pin to” taskbar.

Pinning an icon to to the taskbar will basically replicate the Quick Launch bar with some minor differences. First of which is that a pinned icon is not a static icon that allows you to click and open as many instances of the application as you like (useful in the case of your browser or file explorer window), rather once clicking on the icon it will expand to represent the opened window in the taskbar.. This can create confusion as your other icons may get shifted further to the right from where your eye traditionally expects to find it. Clicking again on this icon will either just minimize the application or select the window if in the background.

More Menu Options

The taskbar has become more useful, by right clicking the taskbar you are presented with a new menu of options from which you can quickly arrange your windows or start the Task Manager.

This quick reference allows you to quickly and easily arrange all of your open windows or to find your desktop.

Window Preview with Command Buttons

The Windows 7 Taskbar buttons, similar to Windows Vista, make it quick and easy to see a preview of the application window it represents. Hovering your mouse over the taskbar button you will be presented with a miniature preview of the window and not only. Windows 7 also will display command buttons on some relative applications allowing to perform simple tasks without opening the full window (useful for Windows Media Player as there is no longer the Windows Media Player Toolbar, this almost replicates the functionality from within the preview window). Computers that are not able to support the Aero graphical themes will not have the window preview, but will still have a pop-up menu item with a description and with the option to directly close the window.

Move your mouse over the preview window and the window will appear in full size and all other windows will become invisible until you move your mouse again away from the preview window. So far I find it to be a useful way to find the right window when you have a lot of applications open.

Better Button Grouping

I have never been fond of the button grouping for multiple instances of the same application, but it is useful when the taskbar gets completely full. Apparently Microsoft realized that and has now made this an option under the taskbar properties.

Additionally, the grouping experience has been improved. The grouped button icon has changed, illustrating that the button has multiple instances. Hovering your mouse over the button will provide the “Aero Peek” preview of each of the windows allowing you to quickly open the one you seek.

New Show Desktop Button

Afraid that with the lose of the Quick Launch bar you will no longer have the Show Desktop icon? Fortunately it hasn’t been removed, rather it just changed position. You will now find it hiding in the right hand bottom corner.

Want a quick peek at the desktop without having to close all your windows? Just hover your mouse over this button and all other windows will be invisible until you move your move away from the button.

Enhanced Graphical Effects

A new Windows release would not be the same without an onslaught of newly enhanced graphical effects; not overlooked were the taskbar buttons! Watch the color glow that follows the mouse as you move over each button. Notice that the color reflects the primary color of the icon of the button. Some of the graphical effects are also useful, such as the rolling color across the button to indicate that the specific application is still processing.

On May 19th and 20th there will be held the Web 3.0 Conference in New York City. The conference focuses on the semantic web (the thus far key component of Web 3.0), mashups, text and data analytics, and how they add real-world value to end users and businesses.

The last phase of the web, which has been referred to as Web 2.0, was more about AJAX-driven interactivity and social media. The Web 3.0 conference focuses on technologies that make the Web and data management substantially smarter. RWW

It will be interesting to see Web 3.0 begin to take shape and it’s various flavors of implementation.

Once again voting is underway for the 2009 CNet Webware 100 awards. This annual program is a great way to discover and help select the best web apps on the net. All the winners will be announced on May 19 so hurry to get your vote in while you can.

See the previous years’ winners: 2008 | 2007

The value of the site is significantly extended for iPhone users through their mobile applications:

EveryTrail
With this geotracking application, you can record your movements, take geotagged photos and immediately upload it all to EveryTrail, the leading online community for travel storytelling.

Trails
Trails allows you to record and to save your tracks to EveryTrail. In addition you can import any track from EveryTrail easily and view the route on the map directly on your iPhone.

The Bike Computer
The EveryTrail Bike Computer has a large screen that gives you key stats while riding your bike, and best of all, you can upload your ride directly from your phone to EveryTrail.

 Happy Trails!

The progression of web based applications continue to push the barrier between traditional software applications , those you purchase and install on your computer, and online applications or webware, those you can run from your browser. This progression continues to bring us ever closer to the web OS, allowing to run simple thin client devices with a web browser interface from which we can run all of our traditional software applications.

I have always considered the  Web OS theory to be limited to basic productivity applications,  but once again this is being challenged as we see image and photo editing web apps now becoming available with very sophisticated tools. Here are a couple web applications that I recently came across for this purpose:

• Aviary – Suite of tools including image editing and vector editing. From their website:

Aviary is a suite of powerful creative applications that you can use right in your web browser. We’re on a mission to make creation accessible to artists of all genres, from graphic design to audio editing. Use your account to create, share, and collaborate with our community of artists.

• Picnik – Simple and easy image editing tool. From their website:

Picnik is photo editing awesomeness, online, in your browser. It’s the easiest way on the Web to fix underexposed photos, remove red-eye, or apply effects to your photos. 

I still have yet to use either solution, but its exciting to see the creation of web based image editing applications. Please let me know if you have used these or other web based image editing apps and what you think of them.

A common feature on many blogs is a Tag/Word Cloud, visualization of word frequency in a given text as a weighted list (frequency determines word size). This can be a helpful tool to quickly see the most common topics in a given text and a creative source of word art. 

Today I was introduced to a fun web applet by Wordle that allows you to input text or an rss feed from which is generated a word cloud. The image above is a word cloud from this blog.

To give it a try I also made a word cloud from the text of the U.S. Constitution seen here below.

So why do people typically not have a reliable backup of their content? It could be that they mistakenly believe that the dreaded risk of a hard drive crash will never catch-up with them or they may just be procrastinating the day that they will do the backup. While this may be the case for many I think the majority of people are just lacking an adequate technical solution.

Take me for example, if my laptop hard disk crashed today or if my laptop was stolen I would be devastated by the loss of so many projects, many of which currently in progress, my wife would have me beheaded for losing our digital pictures and videos and in addition I would be bewildered by the uncertainty what other critical information will be unrecoverable from this event. Sure I have done several attempts over the years at backing up some portions of my hard disk contents, but I can’t be sure of which versions were saved, where exactly they were saved and, if saved to CD or DVD, if they are still legible.

If you are like most people you may be unaware that good back-up solutions are now available. Lets take a look at just a few options that I would recommend:

• Mozy Remote Backup *
  Simple client application lets you set what you want to back-up and works in the back-ground to back-up your files to their remote servers without noticeably slowing down your PC. A virtual disk is listed under your System Resources from which you can navigate your backed-up files and through simple selection you can easily restore individual files or entire directories. Available for both Windows and Mac
  Mozy offers 2GB of free storage or unlimited space for only $4.95/month. Simple monthly payment allows you to even try it out first to see if works for you.

• Elephant Drive *
  Elephant Drive also offers 2GB of free storage or unlimited space for only $4.95/month(with 2 months free). Easily store, share and automatically keep your data backed up on remote servers.
  I still have not tried it out yet, but I am anxious to do so to compare how easy it is to automatically keep your data backed-up and to see how easy it is to restore your files.

• Dropbox
  Beyond having just a remote back-up you would also like to synchronize your files between 2 or more PCs then try out Dropbox. Local client application creates a Dropbox folder the contents of which will then be stored on a remote server and will also be synchronized with other associated computers. Modification of this file from any source will then have the newer version distributed and updated on all other computers. Available for Windows, Mac and Linux
  Get 2 GB for free otherwise upgrade to 50 GB for $9.99/month or $99/year

• Jungle Disk
  Powered by Amazon S3, through the local client you add Jungle Disk just like another hard drive in your computer. Drag and drop, copy and delete, use it just like your existing hard drive. Supports Windows, Mac and Linux. Add as many computers as you like without additional charges.
  Unlimited storage for 15 cents per GB. Best part is that you only pay for what you use!

Fortunately I have not yet had to live through the experience of losing my hard disk contents and now, I am happy to say, that I don’t expect I will ever have to. Thanks to online backup services backing up your system could not be easier, all you have to do is simply set it and forget it. Decide what you want to keep backed up and it will do the rest, keeping your back-up up to date with the latest versions of your files. If you are still procrastinating using a backup solution follow one of the links above and try it out before its too late.

Want a place where you can log your travels, map your trips, post your trip pictures and gain access to a wealth of useful information such as trip planning guides and packing lists? Okay, maybe you weren’t looking for all of that, but you can find it anyway at TRAVELLERSPOINT.

This is a nice “Web 2.0″ site that has put together some useful information together with a nice list of tools and resources all free of charge. True to form of most Web 2.0 sites, they have also added a flavor of social networking, allowing you to add friends, share information and create a free travel blog. In addition, they have a Facebook app that allows you to post your travel map on your Facebook page (image above is my travel map)

I have never been a fan of using FTP sites for sharing individual files. Fortunately there some great Web 2.0 alternatives that I recommend the next time you run into this issue:

• drop.io – It doesn’t get any easier than this. You don’t even have to sign-up, just go to the site and drop your item. It even gets better, you don’t even have to go to the site, you can also add items by email, fax, phone or a widget from another site. This seems to be the easiest and best solution for files up to 100 MB, for larger files you are going to need to upgrade your account.
• File Dropper – Need to share larger files? Then head over to File Dropper where you can upload files up to 5 GB for FREE! You can even keep the files up there as long they continue to be downloaded.

What other solutions would you recommend?

My picks for the Security and Utility category are:

OpenDNS – Not sure what what to enter in your DNS network settings? Here is a great solution! OpenDNS is a free DNS server service and much more. Additional you get the option for these features:

• Content Filtering
• Phishing Protection
• Domain Blocking
• Adult Site Blocking
• Web Proxy Blocking
• Domain Whitelisting
• Typo Correction
• Traffic statistics

I have been using it on all networks I manage and have loved having the added security at the DNS level rather just on the router.

Spiceworks – This software is too good to be true, but fortunately it is. This is a wonderful FREE tool to help IT manage a network. Spiceworks will automatically detect and categorize all network attached devices, giving you a powerful tool to not only manage your IT assets, but to also manage licensing, detect server outages or other alerts such as low printer toner or disk space, track recently installed hardware or software and much, much more. It also has a ticketing system to manage IT support requests and gives IT a ton of information about the computer or network to troubleshoot and remotely resolve the issue. There are many similar, less power solutions out there that cost a ton of money. I still can’t believe the power of this tool and yet it is FREE.

OpenID – Finally a potential authentication system that is getting widely adopted across the web to eliminate the need to create site specific user name and passwords. This not only is a wonderful solution for users, that struggle to remember the username and password combination for the hundreds of sites they are registered on, but also for developers who get tired of having to build in a unique authentication system in all of their web applications. There have been many attempts at finding a solution and this seems to be the one offering the most potential. I hope it succeeds.

What are your picks for this category?