Software

About a couple months ago, I switched text editors from Textpad to E – TextEditor. Despite E – TextEditor’s lame name, I was shocked to find out how superior it was to my previous editor. Although E has some stability issues, I still think that it is one of the best text editors for Windows. However, considering that E was released only 3 months ago, I think it is remarkably stable. Also, because of E’s rapid development and its large community, I would expect that these issues will be quickly resolved. If you are looking for a new text editor for Windows, I would strongly encourage you to try the 30-day trial.

I just learned something cool from Joel on Software. All the “serious” bloggers might think I’m crazy for not already knowing this. There is a site called Bloglines which finds all links to your blog or blog entry. You can take a look at all the people who are linking to me.. Wow, only one person! You can tell that I don’t have many subscribers to my blog. Don’t worry, it doesn’t phase me in the least bit. It just means less people see my grammar mistakes. However, if you decide to link to me, I won’t mind .

Last week I got an interesting proposition to build a Facebook app for a Toronto based magazine called Trend Hunter. The application is based on a Facebook RSS Reader I made for jkwiens.com. Trend Hunter (or at least someone associated with it) wanted a similar thing for their magazine. The application connects to different RSS Feeds that the magazine creates and publishes it on a Facebook User’s profile. While creating this app, I created a more generic Facebook application called myBlog which will publish any RSS Feed to a Facebook User’s profile. If you have a blog, you should check it out. It could probably use some more testing, but I will iron them out. Anyways, I learned a lot about the Facebook API by doing this project. There is a lot of little problems I came across. I will write about them in a future posting, so you can learn from my mistakes.

Apple just released Safari for windows a couple days ago. Why would Apple do something like this? It makes NO SENSE! What possible market do they see on the Windows Environment? Even if Safari is better than Internet Explorer, which it probably is, no one is going to switch to it. IE users have had alternatives for a long time already. Apparently the security flaws and mockery Microsoft has made to the W3C standard don’t bother them. The only other market left are Firefox users and they DEFINATELY won’t switch to Safari (except for kicks and giggles). Safari is by far an inferior product compared to Firefox. The only reason anyone uses IE or Safari is because it comes with the operating system. And unless Safari is shipped with Windows, which is a joke, I don’t see a significant percentage of Window’s users moving to Safari. I am even more convinced of this after reading Joel on Software’s article on Safari’s Font Rendering. After saying all that, I don’t think Steve Jobs is an idiot. Apple does have a bigger plan for Safari. It will be interesting to see what happens next. My guess is that it will be connected with iTunes. I guess, we will just have to wait and see.