As mentioned before, since I’m now using Ubuntu, my focus would be tools that should runs on Linux. But keeping in mind that many non-technical users are on Windows and I also uses MacOSX, the perfect backup solution is indeed one that runs on the 3 major platforms – Linux, Mac and Windows.

As with most solution search these day, the first stop is to visit the seach engine and generate a few alternatives as the starting point.

With the increasing popularity of using the “cloud”, the other alternative is to backup to one of those online backup services. A few that I had tried come to mind – Mozy, Carbonite, Wuala and here is a list with comparison.

So far none had led me to sustained use.

Now that Google is providing space to upload any file, perhaps someone will soon come up with a way backup files to Google. The price for additional space is pretty attractive too.

Do you have any other recommendation?

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Having tried many tools – from standalone applications to hosted applications, none of them lasted a month. I’m using some tools of course but I’m not settled down with them (like the way I switched to Open Office and never look back).

My requirements are really simple

• Open Source or Free would be perfect
• Would also consider hosted application and pay a small fee
• Integrated, for example
  • a date (like birthday) in the contact list would appear in the calendar and could also be a todo (send birthday card)
  • a schedule like “Meet with XYZ” will link to XYZ contact information
  • similarly a todo like “Call XYZ” will link to XYZ mobile number
• Able to import and export to some standard formats
• Must support Chinese character input

So help me. If you know THAT tool, leave a comment.

And if you still have time, read on for a chronicle of tools I had tried.

The one application that I enjoyed using was Palm Desktop, 7 years ago. Since then I lost my Palm, changed PC, reinstalled OS while Palm Desktop became a bloat. I never went back, not sure how it fare now.

MSD Organizer has a freeware version that has an excellent set of features. It wasn’t very stable with Vista and I didn’t install it again when I reinstall Vista. Nevertheless it is worth looking at if you are looking for an integrated suite.

When I got an O2 Stealth a few months ago, I defected briefly to Outlook since there was no easy way to sync between the Windows Mobile smart phone and the desktop. But it was not to last when I lost the phone weeks after. Certainly it would be a while before I get another smartphone.

For a long time I was really looking forward to Sunbird. But Sunbird wasn’t developed as fast as Firefox and I moved from Thunderbird to GMail. As of this writing, Sunbird is still not ready for prime time.

So for now, GMail just takes care my email contact list and that it. Someone at Google should really look at improving the usability of the GMail contact list. I still have plenty of data stuck at Yahoo Mail’s contact list, which by the way, is much more usable than GMail’s. Maybe I’ll go back to Yahoo.

More dates and schedules are starting to get into Google Calendar but it just doesn’t encourage me to use it often. It takes a lot of effort just to remember, open it, enter the details. Part of the problem is also because I have a few GMail accounts for personal, work and others, so it gets messy to switch between user and or to use one as default.

My latest Todo tool is Todoist. Todoist is clean and easy to use and I like the simplicity of it all. But it is not as integrated as I hope a ToDo list would be. I should mention that there is a GMail integration though and it is a very handy feature.

The Web2.0 era introduced many interesting tools, among which Zoho looks like a serious contender to Google Apps.

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• Using Portable Applications for easy OS reinstall

The idea behind portable applications is simple – store applications on your removable storage devices and run them anywhere by just plugging-in the storage device.

A number of portable applications suites had popped up as a result. The most widely known is PortableApps, but there are also others like

• LiberKey
• PortableSoftware.US
• Asuite
• PortableFreewares
• WinPenPack
• A list of portable applications from wikipedia

I was attracted to the idea of portable application during the recently re-installation of my notebook with Vista. Through numerous reinstall of operation system over the years, I took note of the necessary steps to backup and restore data for my favourite applications. However the process is still a major hassle – backup data, reinstall applications and restore data.

Portable application side-stepped that hassle because applications are not installed but just copied to folder on a drive. So during a reinstall, I just copied the folder – application and data – to a new drive. Viola! Everything continues to work as before!

After this reinstall exercise, I’m certainly going to convert most of my applications to a portable version. Luckily most of the open source/free applications I had introduced here are available in portable version.

If you reinstall OS often or is just looking for an easily way to move your favourite programs and data around, give a serious look at portable applications. I’m surprised I took so long to get it.

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Instead of a providing a simple PDF reader to view PDF documents, Adobe want you to download a nearly 30Mb package just to read a PDF document. Do I really need the associated applications installed to provide update and photo album?

For my new notebook, I decided not to download Adobe Acrobat Reader. I knew there were many alternatives around so I went looking.

Given my inclination to run a purely opensource desktop, I started out looking for an open source pdf. It is interesting that there is an opensource PDF creator but there isn’t any open source PDF reader, at least not for the Windows platform.* (Wikipedia has a list of PDF softwares)

From reviews online, it seem like Foxit Reader 2.0 for Windows won many accolades so I went for it directly. The free version allows reading of PDF files, just what I needed to replace Adobe reader.

(*UPDATE: found 2 opensource PDF reader but not tested, Sumatra PDF and Apparition. Look like they are in the early stage of development but certainly worth looking out for.)

First Impression

The first thing you will notice when downloading Foxit Reader is the size, 1.56Mb. No need for a download manager to download a pdf reader here.

Installing is straightforward and simple.

Starting up and opening PDF document is noticeably faster although I don’t have an exact benchmark to back this.

If you just use Acrobat Reader to open PDF file, Foxit Reader pretty much provides the same function. The only thing that you may find absent is the ability to open pdf file within the browser. I don’t think you will miss this function since this function in Acrobat Reader commonly hangs the browser.

When you click on a pdf file link, just select Open with and the file will open up very quickly in a Foxit Reader window.

I had been using Foxit for 3 months now and I’m pretty happy with it. This is another great free software for your business.

Chinese support

Installing Chinese support for the Foxit user interface (UI) is very simple. Just select the language (in this case Simplified Chinese) from the Language menu. A prompt will alert you to download and instal the UI package. In a few second this is done (see below).

A restart of the reader shows that the UI languages had been changed. Simple.

Open in Chinese document is also not a problem. It seems to work even when I did not download the Eastern Asian Language Support addon.

Where to get it?

• Foxit PDF Reader is at http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php
• Current version: 2.0
• Function: PDF file reader

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So far it had been nothing fancy and I had no trouble doing day to day document processing, spreadsheets, drawing, presentation slides etc. Document exchange with Microsoft Office files is also pretty straightforward. There are some glitches in handling duo languages in English and Chinese in the sample document but but not something that cannot be overcome.

My ongoing objective is to extend the use of OpenOffice to other areas and to introduce the Chinese version of this software to my co-workers.

Today, while checking for update, I found OpenOffice.org Solutions on the OpenOffice.org wiki. The wiki itself is a source of excellent information on using OpenOffice.

There is a Chinese wiki as well. From what I can see, much marketing is still needed to get this tool into the hands of the vast Chinese users. Nevertheless a great start!

Have you started using OpenOffice? If not why not?

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Mind mapping is a concept that uses linked diagrams to represents the relationship between ideas. This technique is a useful way to help generate, visualize, structure and classify ideas. (What to find out? Here are some mind mapping books.)

FreeMind is an open source application to help you to create mind map diagrams.

For the simplest creation of mind mapping diagram, you could have just use an application like OpenOffice Draw to put it together. Using FreeMind however, simplified the tedious work. Freemind also allows larger and more elaborate diagrams to be created.

If you had seen mind mapping diagram before, the diagrams generated by FreeMind are very plain in comparison. Many of the flashy mind mapping diagrams are created as memory aids.

Mind mapping researchers suggest that colors, graphics and unique style helps the brain to remember and recall. Although FreeMind does not shine in this area, it is still a very useful tool to create digital mind maps.

As mentioned in the introduction, mind map is very useful in planning and visualizing. Here is a mind map of my interests/goals. I’m using it to brainstorm how I can synergise what interests me and in relation to my business.

What I like about FreeMind

• Simplify Mind Mapping
• Able to expand and collapse nodes

What can be improved

• More intuitive interface
• More frequently update (Is development still active?)

Chinese support

FreeMind has Chinese interface built-in and support Chinese characters text.

To switch switch to Chinese,

• go to Tools > Preferences … > Language and change to Zh CN
• restart

Where to get it?

• FreeMind is at http://freemind.sourceforge.net/
• Current version: 0.8.0
• Function: Mind mapping application

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Take the example of the dictionary. I don’t even own a physical dictionary now. On Firefox, I just use the Dictionary Search (at the top right corner) or use the shortcut to look up unknown words.

The only time when all these fail is when the Internet connection is down or when I’m offline.

So this is where WordWeb comes in handy.

WordWeb is free English dictionary and thesaurus, a useful tool to have on the desktop. Use it to quickly lookup words without even going online.

Frankly I hardly use WordWeb because Google and online dictionary are pretty fast. But once in a while the Internet slows to a crawl and WordWeb comes to mind.

Besides lookup words and finding synonyms, WordWed is useful for browsing and exploring words. This is useful when brainstorming for words.

WordWeb is nice app to have sitting on the desktop for the occassional word look up. Over the years it had added quite a few other functions but I never got around to use them.

What I like about WordWeb

• Able to lookup meaning even when offline
• Fast response compared to online dictionaries
• Does its job

Chinese support

Do you need Chinese support for a English dictionary? I’m not sure. There are some other very useful translation and dictionaries for Chinese users as alternatives.

Where to get it?

• WordWeb Free is at http://wordweb.info/free/
• Current version: 4.5a
• Function: Dictionary and Thesaurus

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Open Office had been installed on my desktop for close to a year now, begnning with the 1.9 beta version.

From my experience, Open Office is more than capable to handle all the day to day requirement of document processing of a small business owner.

Take a look at Writer, Calc and Impress, they can do all of what you have been doing with Word, Excel and Powerpoint.

Writer, Word replacement.

Calc, Excel replacement.

Impress, PowerPoint replacement.

I have Microsoft’s licensing and activation policy to thank for stiffening my resolve to turn to Open Office.

It was a long story, but it is suffice to say that I have a hard time trying to activate my original Office on a new harddisk. The end result? I gave up, decided to try Open Office and never turn back since. When push comes to shove, resistance to change became strength for change. Looking back I’m glad I made the switch.

The next time you think of buying or upgrading Microsoft Office, give Open Office a try.

What I like about it?

• Create PDF document natively
• Excellent support for Word and Excel format
• Effectively replaced MS Office

What can be improved

• Support for PowerPoint format on Impress
• Support for Access database on Base
• Provide Keystoke binding for Calc that maches Excel
  I learned so many Excel keystokes, it is ashame to have to relearn again

Chinese support

Simplified Chinese version of Open Office is available from http://zh.openoffice.org/index_gb.html

When visiting Openoffice.org using a Chinese system, the chinese page is automatically served and the respective download selected.

Where to get it?

• OpenOffice is at http://www.openoffice.org/
• Current version: 2.0.3
• Function: Office Productivity Suite

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However many businesses are still under the impression that they require expensive software to generate PDF documents.

Each time I send a friend a document in PDF format, they will ask if I have a copy of Adobe Acrobat and they can use it to convert a few documents to PDF.

What they do not know is I actually use an open source program called PDFCreator to create it (print to be exact, read on to see how).

To begin, simply download the program from sourceforge. (Choose the AFPLGhostscript version *)

Run the installer program. This will create a virtual printer on your computer to print a PDF file.

To create a PDF file from any document,

1. select Print… from the File menu;
2. choose PDFCreator from the list of printers;
3. click OK to print;
4. follow a simple dialog ;
5. click Save to save the PDF file to your folder.

That it! Open the document in Acrobat reader and look at the result. Easy right?

Chinese support

Translation for Simplified Chinese available from the translation download.

PDFCreator is able to create Chinese text from the program just as if it is printed to a physical printer.

Where to get it?

• PDFCreator is at http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/
• Current version: 0.9.2
• Function: PDF file creator

* Difference between AFPL Ghostscript and GNU Ghostscript

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