Matt’s Cuppa

• Downloads: Dad’s Around Hides Your Goofing Off

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  • In addition to quickly minimizing every window on your desktop—one of the most standard boss-key functions around—Dad’s Around has an extremely useful option to kill the foreground process. By unchecking the more tell-tale Minimize all windows feature and ticking the Kill foreground process box, you can turn Dad’s Around into a hot key activated application-terminator.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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Did you know that website giveawayoftheday.com gives away one piece of commercial software a day? (And it’s completely legal!)

Through licensing agreements, they offer a different piece of moderately priced software for free. The catch? You must download and install the software within their 24 hour period or the license expires.

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I ran across this post while scanning Techmeme headlines. I’ve been exploring Microsoft Sharepoint more lately, even though I’m not a Microsoft fan-boy, and I’m favorably impressed with its included social media tools. I can see this being a major step in bringing social media to the enterprise.

The reason this story caught my attention is the podcasting tool that is available. For one thing, doing an internal podcast for your company can serve so many needs and provide so many benefits. Aside from this, the podcasting tool is built on open source software. Its not often you hear “Microsoft” and “open source” in the same sentence, much less in the same application environment. Could this be a sign of the impact that open source development is having on the Microsoft monolith?

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Here’s a very cool article about a project using open source software. Startup, Boxee, aims to turn your TV into a social media center. How would it change the way you watch TV if you could interact with people watching the same program through your television set? What makes Boxee stand out is that it is built on open source software. This means that developers are able to add features and functionaliy. I imagine that this would be similar to user-developed Facebook applications. Or perhaps we’ll see iGoogle-like widgets on our TV sets. Despite my excitement, Boxee is a long way from providing us a set top box, and they are certainly not the only player looking to capture your television.

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Do you think men and women write code differently?

The WSJ thinks so.

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I’ve been writing about free software for a long time now. Over the years I’ve learned that if you’ve purchased a piece of commercial software, chances are pretty good that there is a free piece of software out there that accomplishes the same thing. Something else that I’ve learned is that ‘free’ does not have to mean ‘cheap’ when it comes to quality. I know of many free applications that are more robust than their commercial counterparts.

One of the things that I love to do is to scour the web for useful or interesting free software. And I love to share what I find. One of the most satisfying things I do is match someone’s need with a free application that meets their need.

Coming up in the next few weeks I will be putting together a series of posts about the basics of free software. I’ll be looking at the definition of free software, where to begin looking for free software, and how to determine if it’s a credible application. My goal is to put all of this together in plain, easy to understand language so that I can introduce as many people as I can to the world of free software.

There are a lot of people out there who are passionate about free software, and discussion is one of the most important parts of the development process. . I’m looking forward to active conversation and discovery over the next few weeks.

Posted from my Palm Centro using Plogit.

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Some of you have noticed that my blog theme has been changed every, oh, thirty seconds or so this morning. I’ve posted a lot on the great lessons and relationships I took away from SOBCon08. Over the next few days (or however long it takes) I’ll be working to incorporate those lessons into the blog here at Matt’s Cuppa. But it’s not just my blog, it’s your community as well. So, please, provide feedback as I do this. And, thank you for your patience as I make Matt’s Cuppa a better blog.

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Dear SOBCon’rs,

I wish I could have said good-bye to each of you in person. It was an amazing, inspiring weekend and I feel so fortunate to have shared with you. If I start thanking individuals I’m sure to miss someone important, but I have to say thanks to Liz and Terry, of course. And Chritine Kane for showing us that song writing is blogging out loud.

Of the many many things I will take away from SOBCon08 perhaps the most powerful is the sense that I am part of a community. It’s not a community of elitists as we see too often. It’s a community that is open and encouraging and welcoming. It didn’t matter that I walked in the door with a small obscure blog, SOBCon’rs still went out of their way to make me a part of what was happening.

One of the big themes I picked up from the event is the importance of community. I used to think it was conversation that was important, but there’s a difference between the two. Trust developes among a community. This is where your “social proof” comes from. And this is where Chris Brogan’s pirates come from.

I’ve come away today with so many ideas and resourses for both Matt’s Cuppa and my company, Ecogeekified. I can’t wait to explore these things. The best part is that I won’t be exploring them alone. I’ve always felt pride in being a blogger, but now I’m proud to be part of a COMMUNITY of bloggers.

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Err… Due to problems with sockets and stuff I lost my Wendy post failed to post. Stay tuned for more after I rest my fingers…

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On writing compelling offers.

Are they traffic, readers, or customers? Head, heart, meaning = frosted mini wheats. The frosting is what makes people buy.

Liz makes a HUGE point about meaning. Meaning turns people into customers. In sales its called the WIIFM- what’s in it for me (them). If the answer is nothing then you sell nothing.

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