The Hindu : Business : Portable software directory

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Feb 28, 2005

Business

Business

Portable software directory

THIS WEEK NetSpeak introduces a few portable programs along with an on-line search service that helps you easily locate such programs.

As a normal, installable Windows program requires many system dependent files for its successful operation, we cannot make it work on another system just by copying it. For instance, the browser used in one's home machine cannot be transported to her office machine mechanically. However, as many of us need to use more than one machine in our daily life, it will certainly be useful if we can carry around some of our favourite programs like e-mail client with us anywhere we go. That is, we need some programs that can work on multiple systems without making any changes in the set-up or other program parameters.

A program that can work on multiple computers without any modifications is called portable software. Generally, a portable program can be extracted to a directory of any storage media and run independently. Here, we will have a look at some of the products that can be taken to any system of your choice.

A portable web server

A web server helps you host web pages and lets you share files with others. If the web server is a portable one, which can be housed on a floppy or flash drive, you can have a mobile web site and share your resources from any machine, anytime.

The portable web server, MyWeb (http://www.xuebrothers. net/myweb/myweb.htm) is a good example of a product of this kind. The program allows you to host a web site within a couple of minutes. It can also be used to share files from your desktop.

After downloading the software, load it by just clicking on the file and configure it using the option `Server Property.' Now, if you want to share a file with others, right-click on the option `Dynamic files' and enter the path of the file to be shared. Also, if you keep the program on your flash drive, you can run the web server from any Windows computer anywhere on the Net.

Apart from the web server software mentioned above, many portable programs are in place. The browser, PortableFirefox (mentioned in an earlier column) and the portable version of the e-mail client Thunderbird (http://portable thunder bird.mozdev.org/) are good examples.

In this regard, you may visit the portal `Portable Freeware Collection' (http://www.portablefreeware.com/) that provides a wide array of free portable programs. Here, you will find many portable programs stored under different categories that include Audio, Education, Internet, Operating system and Programming.

The small browser, OffByOne (http://www.offbyone.com/), is a good software discovered by this author with the help of this portal. The portal also features a `news feed' for helping you keep abreast with latest products easily with your news aggregator.

Net2FTP

It is likely that many of you are familiar with the FTP method of data transfer, used to transfer large files to remote servers. Normally, to transfer files from/to our local machine to/from an FTP server, we use an FTP client. But, if you want to transfer files from different machines, you need the client program to be installed on all of them.

This may not be always feasible. Obviously, a web-based solution can solve the issue easily. The on-line FTP service, Net2ftp (http://net2ftp. com/) is one such solution worth a test. When you access the site, it provides an interface, where you can enter the details of your FTP account.

Once the FTP account information is entered properly, click on the `login' button and access your FTP server with the net2ftp service. The service supports features for doing tasks such as uploading/downloading/copying/deleting files/folders and compressing/editing files. As per its site, you can either use the on-line service provided by net2ftp or start a service on your own server with the free PHP software available on it.

Company Blogs

Blogs have become a major force to reckon with in cyberspace. With tens of hundreds of serious bloggers, who regularly comment on the latest developments in their respective spheres of expertise/interest, blogs have become one of the major information dissemination channels. The fact that it is being embraced by the business community, especially the tech ones, further underlines its value/importance.

So, if you want to monitor the latest developments that take place on a particular business segment or service industry, a better option will be to closely monitor the blogs being written by employees/officials of companies from that segment. For instance, if you want to track the latest developments on the search services arena, reading the blogs of popular search services will fetch you rich dividends.

Most popular search engines have blogs either by its employees or by the people who have been entrusted with the task of running one.

Here is a list of blogs from popular search companies:

Google: http://www.google. com/googleblog/.

MSN Search: http://blogs.msdn.com/msnsearch/

Yahoo: http://www.ysearchblog.com/.

Ask Jeeves: http://blog.ask.com/

On-line to-do list service

Noting down the list of things to do in our family, business and professional life will certainly help us make life less troublesome. Also, if we keep these lists on-line, we can look at them anytime from anywhere.

For such requirements, take a look at the free on-line `to-do' list creation service, `Ta-da List' (http://tadalist.com/). The service allows you to create any number of to-do lists and hosts them on its server. It provides you a hostname of the form http:// your-login-name. tadalist.com, for accessing your lists from the Web. These days no on-line service, which has changing data, comes without a news feed and `Ta-da' list is also no exception.

Idioms on-line

If you come across an unfamiliar phrase/idiom, most probably you will find an answer at this `English Idioms' site: http://home.t-online.de/home/ toni.goeller/idiom_wm/.

J. Murali

Email the author at:jmurali@gmail.com

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