Archive for the ‘Cool Tools’ Category
Sep
22
I found a cool tool, and that doesn’t even do it justice, I found a freakin’ awesome tool for monitoring whats going on with your servers and server logs. It’s called Splunk, and it’s been around a while (a couple years at least, maybe more), but I just recently got the chance to check it out.
Wow. Now, remember, I don’t do ANY paid reviews on this site. So this is not me promoting something because I got a check for it. This is me promoting something because of the principles of what I started this site for. I found something totally cool, useful, well worth the time and money to invest in it and I want to tell all my readers about it. That being said, just in case someone from Splunk is reading this right now and would like to send me a check, or a free license for the good promotion, I am all for it just drop me a line! 
Anyway, this software can run on Windows, Linux, UNIX, you name it. It accepts syslog input, flat file log parsing, interfaces with WMI and more. So far, it knows what to do with everything I throw at it. All that log data is chopped up and stored in a database so you can easily get meaningful information back out. Probably the best feature of this whole darn thing is the interface. Splunk has a CLI which rocks, but the web interface is one of the best I have ever seen. Very slick, very nice, very easy to navigate, very easy to sort and search, truly amazing. I have used other systems similar in theory (I won’t name names), and they didn’t do a half bad job at collecting the data, but it was getting anything useful out of it later that was the tough part. Plus their appliance was much, much more expensive.
Now, do you want to know the best part? Wait for it …. yep, it’s free! No, really, it’s true. They have a freely available and usable version of the software that 100% works. The catch is that some advanced features are not enabled, and you are limited to 500MB of log data per day. That’s great for most small shops, and to buy the Enterprise license for more features and data logging capacity, the pricing is not near as bad as the others I have seen. Top that off with this being a better product and it’s like win, win … win … win … or something.
Go check it out, you’ll thank me if you haven’t done so already. It’s free and installs in seconds, it’s so easy to setup you’ll laugh when you are done. Go … now … go! Enjoy!
Apr
27
In this post, I’d like to do two things. First off, I want to plug a really cool site called PortableApps.com that has some really cool software in the form of … well, portable apps. What these are, are common widely used applications that have been transformed in such a way that they can run right off of your thumb drive, no install necessary, hence the term portable. They have lots of cool stuff that you can download, absolutely free, and use right off your thumb drive, or hard drive, or anywhere really. It’s nice being able to have firefox and open office (and much more) with you, no matter where you go, even with all of your own settings and customizations. That’s hard to beat! Go check it out, you won’t be disappointed I am sure. Read the rest of this entry »
Feb
15
I don’t know about anyone else out there, but I am a big fan of tabbed interfaces. If you have used the Firefox web browser within the last few years or so, you no doubt have come to appreciate this as much as I have. If you haven’t seen this in any apps that you are using, you don’t know what you are missing. Even Microsoft jumped on the bandwagon when they released Internet Explorer 7 by adding tabbed browsing support, no doubt inspired by how popular that feature is with Firefox users.
Read the rest of this entry »
Jan
28
I am always thinking about ways that I can not only improve the site here, but also ways that I can provide something useful to visitors. Along those lines, I decided to put some network tools online fo visitors to use. You never know when you might need to ping or trace something from an outside source when troubleshooting a problem. There is also a Whois option, and even one to show the IP address that we see you coming from. That’s useful when trying to configure IP based access somewhere. I’ll be refining the tools and working to add more and improve the existing tools as time moves on. Let me know what you think, if you have any problems with them or suggestions, hit the contact link and drop me a line. Now, go check ‘em out!
Dec
3
I do! Or should I say, did. I am not a huge IM (Instant Message) junkie, but I do have friends and family that I communicate with that way. This means that I have several different IM accounts, because no one can seem to agree on just one. Many people reading this are nodding in agreement sharing my frustration right now. Until recently, I have used Trillian on Windows because it spoke all the different IM languages (AIM, YIM, MSN, ICQ, IRC, etc) so I was able to consolidate all of my separate clients into one. Lately though, I have been having some troubles with Trillian crashing a lot, so I went on the hunt for a new client to try out.
One thought that I had was about Linux, and the fact that on Linux I used GAIM, and IM client that was much like Trillian in that it talked to everyone. One thing I liked about GAIM (among many things), was that it was fast, lightweight, and powerful. It just ran really well. On a whim, I searched for GAIM for Windows and low and behold, I found that not only did the name change (it’s now called Pidgin), but it’s setup for many different operating systems with Linux and Windows being two of them.
I decided to give it a try and I haven’t looked back. It’s very much like the GAIM I am used to on Linux, and it’s very slick. It looks good, it runs good, and hasn’t crashed once! So far, I think I have found my IM client of choice and I highly recommend it to anyone that is looking for a robust cross platform and multi protocol client. Check it out here on Wikipedia, and download a copy from the Pidgin homepage to see for yourself!
Oct
7
When you thought of word processors years ago, everyone thought of WordPerfect. Now, everyone thinks of Microsoft Word. Spreadsheets are the same way, Quattro Pro in years past, Excel in the present. Well, I want to share with you an alternative to the current champion of the office software suite Microsoft Office. This alternative is free, robust and powerful, runs on many different operating systems and can even read and write lots of files, including Microsoft Office. You can even export your documents as a PDF file, now how cool is that. The software I am talking about is called OpenOffice and it’s put together by the community, with a lot of help from big names in the industry like Sun Microsystems. I have been using OpenOffice for years, and it has really come a long way, to the point that I prefer it over Microsoft Office. Also, consider the price if you are on a budget and it’s even better. There are some people out there who will argue my sentiment, and that’s fine, it’s a free country. I bet though, if you check it out you will find you like it. Enjoy!
