Allen Lew's Thoughts » Software

Site Changes for 2010

Allen Lew — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 16:43:30 +0000

My site

With the long 4th of July Weekend, I thought it was time for my yearly site refresh. After upgrading to WordPress 3.0 (which has a number of advanced features like Custom Post Types and Multiple Sites installations), I decided to make two major cosmetic changes to the site.

I decided to change the site’s theme to Thirty Ten, a three-column version of the new WordPress default theme, Twenty Ten. Like all of the times I change themes, the old theme is still pretty good, but I just felt the need to experiment with a new design. I especially like that asides have been given their own still and that it’s easy to place my own header images (which I hope to do in the coming weeks).
Since I recently joined up with an online advertising company, I wanted to understand more about the business. So I reactivated my Google Adsense account, and decided to place ads on my site and feed. I had resisted putting ads on my site since I first started it (which when I think about it seems odd, since I was making less money then I do now), but it felt right to try this out. We’ll see how this experiment goes.

So check feel free to check out my new web site at allen.alew.org.

Split First and Last Name into Seperate Columns in Excel.

Allen Lew — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 06:27:07 +0000

If you have a First Name and Last Name in one column in Excel, here’s a tutorial on splitting them into two separate columns (without VB macros) from LauraJ’s blog. It involves using the Data to Text feature. Very handy. … finish reading Split First and Last Name into Seperate Columns in Excel. Related posts:

How many countries can you name in five minutes?

Getting Flash to Work with Ubuntu 7.10

Allen Lew — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 06:00:08 +0000

If you haven’t been able to install Adobe Flash Player on your Ubuntu 7.10 install, Jayson Joseph Chacko wrote an excellent post with a set of terminal commands to get Adobe Flash installed. Thanks Jayson.

No related posts.

Check out GMU’s Center for History and New Media Web projects

Allen Lew — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 18:23:35 +0000

Center for History and New Media

George Mason University’s Center for History and New Media has been really putting out some great online academic tools. They’re the ones behind the Zotero research extension for Firefox. Now they are developing some software for web sites like Omeka, an open source content management system for museum collections and exhibits, and ScholarPress, plugins designed to make WordPress more usable for college classes.

ScholarPress has two plugins right now, Courseware, for adding syllabi and assignments, and WPBook, a way of converting your WordPress blog as a Facebook Application. The two developers, Jeremey Boggs and Dave Lester, also host a podcast called THAT podcast and have posted a tutorial on using the Scholarpress plugins along with an interview with Matt Mullenweg as the first episode. I certainly admire them for the impressive amount of work they have put in to all of these projects and look forward to trying their tools out in the future. (via Photo Matt)

Flopshow

Allen Lew — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 21:55:23 +0000

In case you have some old floppy disks around and can’t get the files out, try out FlopShow. It’s a free and simple floppy disk restore program. Related posts:Turning food wrappers into fuel Simple Contextual Advertising System Related posts:

Google Maps for Palm

Allen Lew — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 06:24:57 +0000

So I just got a Palm T|X from work at Los Angeles Urban League. One of the downsides of working in this part of LA is there isn’t a lot of free wi-fi points to make use of the Internet capabilities. Meanwhile, my current favorite app for the handheld so far is Google Maps for Palm. It’s application built on top of the web based maps, and works quite quickly. They also have a Pocket PC edition as well.

Startup Guides

Allen Lew — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 06:49:51 +0000

A few blog posts about some other software and Internet services that might be useful for starting up a company (or nonprofit).

Read and Write Web’s Software for Virtual Teams
Nick Denton’s (owner of Gawker and Lifehacker) Startup Kit
Evan Williams’s (founder of blogger.com) list of business web apps
Added: The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Web 2.0: Top 25 Apps to Grow your Business

In summary, you’ll need these applications the most:

Email- Gmail is the most popular.
Calendar to keep track of time- Google Calendar couples with Gmail, both can be used with your domain
Project Management to keep track of what needs to be done- Basecamp and FogBugz
VoIP for cheap Internet phone calls. Skype is the most recommended, though Jajah and Gizmo Project seem to be gaining.
A blog- They’ve recommended Typepad and Blogger, but I still recommend WordPress (there’s also a hosted version)

More thoughts on MacWorld

Allen Lew — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 21:03:07 +0000

Photoshop CS3 looks really cool. The perspective grid looks amazing. By far that was the best conference I attended.
Most of the conferences I wanted to go to were really full, which really sucks. Hope that means they’re good.
I’m tempted to buy the disk for the conferences I missed from Macworld Encore. At $99, it maybe a better value than the conference itself.

Semagic

Allen Lew — Fri, 12 May 2006 02:03:27 +0000

Semagic, the best Livejournal client for Windows, is now also a decent general blogging client. Works with MSN Spaces, Xanga, and others. I’d wish it fetched my WordPress categories automatically. Related posts:Thanks for the free copy of Blogging Tips, Lorelle … finish reading Semagic Related posts:

Great Mac Freeware Programs

Allen Lew — Sat, 18 Mar 2006 04:31:38 +0000

So as some of you know, I work as tech support for the College Writing Program at Berkeley. Our department is all Macintosh, so finding good software can sometimes be expense. Fortunately, there are a number of sites that list freeware Mac programs. One of the ones I like is FreeMacWare, a blog spotlighting free Mac Programs. They’re also having a contest where you write about five apps you’ve found on their site. I was able to find some good programs including:

Firefox- It’s not as good as it is on the PC, but it has the best web compatiblity with web sites and the extensions can’t be beat.
VLC- Quicktime can’t open every video file, so it’s up to VLC to do the job. And a heck of a job it does.
Witch- Command + tab and Expose are great, but I think Witch is better. I like being able to cycle through all of my windows, even the minimized ones, which is what Witch allows me to do (among other things).
Mactracker- I can look up the technical specs for any Mac model possible. Very useful.
Nvu- Why pay so much for Dreamweaver when I can get WYSIWIG and CSS editing for free? And it’s pretty good code too.

I like a variety of other programs too, but these have been the most useful for me so far.