Accounting for Vendor Lock-in

"When you pick:

A closed solution
A non-open standard

In those cases you are risking vendor lock-in. And by doing so you are committing your company to either a perpetuity of lock-in, or to a future expensive remediation to restore your options to the point where you can make alternative choices. The smart way of doing this is to consider, in terms of analysis to aid decision making, the cost of lock-in up-front, as a deferred expense, a liability. When this is done you can more accurately make comparisons among available solutions, closed and open, knowing that you are fairly accounting for the true economic costs of each choice."

http://www.robweir.com/blog/2012/07/accounting-for-vendor-lock-in.html

Chartle - free simple and interactive charts online

"Chartle is a free site that allows you to quickly and easily create charts, including interactive charts. It runs using JAVA in your browser and is very easy to use. You can create pie charts, bar charts, scatter diagrams, Venn diagrams, maps and more. Charts are embedable into other sites also. You can also browse their gallery and use one of the examples as a starting point."

http://educationaltechnologyguy.blogspot.com/2012/03/chartle-free-simple-and-interactive.html

http://www.chartle.net/

Jhead - Exif Jpeg header manipulation tool

"The files coming out of a pretty much all Digital cameras are in the Exif flavour of Jpeg files. Exif files are for the most part Jpeg files, but start with a different header block, and contain additional data sections with camera settings, as well as a preview thumbnail picture as part of the Exif header. Many image browsers today make use of this integral thumbnail when browsing, while other browsers make their own thumbnails based on the image as a whole.

Because I am interested in photography, I am always curious just exactly what settings my fully automatic digital camera actually did end up using. Back in 1999, when I originally wrote jhead, I couldn't find a program that would consistently display the settings, nor one that could be compiled into a simple executable. I have since added many more features to jhead, many of them the result of suggestions or code contributions.

Though there are many programs out there now that can manipulate Exif headers today, for many tasks, jhead remains the simplest and most effective tool for the job, especially if used for automated or scripted tasks. "

http://www.sentex.net/~mwandel/jhead/

Jhead for the image above gives:

File name    : 2011-11-17_083532_pb176893.jpg
File size    : 1323053 bytes
File date    : 2011:11:17 20:56:41
Camera make  : OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. 
Camera model : uT8000,ST8000  
Date/Time    : 2011:11:17 08:35:32
Resolution   : 2976 x 3968
Flash used   : No (auto)
Focal length : 13.2mm  (35mm equivalent: 73mm)
Exposure time: 0.0031 s  (1/320)
Aperture     : f/7.1
ISO equiv.   : 64
Whitebalance : Auto
Metering Mode: matrix
Exposure     : program (auto)

Textfixer

"This website features text and html making, changing, converting, generating tools designed to save you time making web pages or preparing text for web publication or other uses."

http://www.textfixer.com/

Free Online Barcode Generator

The world's most sophisticated free web-based online barcode generator

http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/generator/

AsciiFlow

ASCII Flowchart Creator

http://www.asciiflow.com/

See also blog at http://blog.asciiflow.com/

Scraperwiki

"A community of programmers sifting information to give you the edge."


http://scraperwiki.com/

"To get at data, programmers write bits of code called ‘screen scrapers’, which extract the useful bits so they can be reused in other apps, or rummaged through by journalists and researchers. But these bits of code tend to break, get thrown away or forgotten once they have been used, and so the data is lost again. Which is bad.

ScraperWiki is an online tool to make that process simpler and more collaborative. Anyone can write a screen scraper using the online editor. In the free version, the code and data are shared with the world. Because it's a wiki, other programmers can contribute to and improve the code."

Screenr - Create and share screencasts

Create and share screencasts

http://www.screenr.com/

Script that prepares photos for Facebook

"Copying images to your computer, or rotating them, may ruin the files’ time (of last modification). If your album contains images from several cameras, the file names can’t be used to sort the images either. The following command renames the files to the second they were taken"

http://drop.by/preparing-photos-for-facebook

"This is a follow-up of an earlier post. The topic remains the same; merging photo albums from different cameras while preserving chronological order, and removing potentially private metadata.

Like many others, I have noticed that Facebook increased its photo size from 604 to 720 pixels. At the same time, I noticed that the commands in my last post weren’t perfect. I have tried to write an improved script"

http://drop.by/photo-script

SLOODLE

"SLOODLE (Simulation Linked Object Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment) is an Open Source project which integrates the multi-user virtual environment of Second Life® with the Moodle® learning-management system.

Sloodle provides a range of tools for supporting learning and teaching to the immersive virtual world; tools which are fully integrated with a tried and tested web-based learning management system used by hundreds of thousands of educators and students worldwide."

http://www.sloodle.org/moodle/

Prezi - Presentation editor

"At Prezi, we're all about helping people understand each other better. Presentations have not evolved much in the 50 years since the slide was invented, but Prezi is changing that. Prezi lets you bring your ideas into one space and see how they relate, helping you and your audience connect. Zoom out to see the big picture and zoom in to see details — a bit like web-based maps that have changed how we navigate through map books. "

http://prezi.com/

The unofficial Web Applications list

"This site is dedicated to the growing volume of web applications out there. As I come across new web applications, I will keep adding them to the site. Meanwhile, do share with us your favorite web applications if you have any! "

http://www.webapplist.com/

Tom's Planner - easy to use project planning software

"Programs like MS Project or Primavera too complex? Do you find yourself still trying to plan your projects in Excel? Tom's Planner is the answer to your needs. It makes project planning easy, fast and even enjoyable. "

http://www.tomsplanner.com/

Shape Collage

"Shape Collage was started by Vincent Cheung in 2007 because he had thousands of photos and didn't know what to do with them. He thought about making a photo collage with his photos, but didn't like the existing collage making programs. They required too much work to make a collage, they didn't look nice, and they didn't give you enough control. He begin tinkering around and invented a new algorithm for automatically arranging photos in a collage. Vincent then realized that his algorithm wasn't restricted to just boring rectangular collages like everyone else, and so, Shape Collage was born!"

http://www.shapecollage.com/

Teambox

Teambox online collaboration software from Pablo Villalba on Vimeo.

"We are the pioneer in joining social collaboration tools with online project management. Our mission is to change the way people work by making it easier and more fun to get things done. The company was founded by a team who felt that other project management and online collaboration tools were too complicated for every day users. With simplicity as the core focus, the team set forth to create an offering that was easy and fun to use."

http://teambox.com/

Schooltool - Free administrative software for schools.

"Customizable student and teacher demographics and other personal data; Contact management for teachers, students and their guardians; Teacher gradebooks; Schoolwide assessment data collection and report card generation; Class attendance; Calendars for the school, groups, and individuals; Resource booking; Tracking and management of student interventions."

http://schooltool.org/

OpenHeatMap

Turn your spreadsheet into a map

http://www.openheatmap.com/

Mozilla Prism : Bringing web applications to your Desktop

"Prism is designed to create a better environment for running your favorite web-based applications. Much of what we used to accomplish using an application running locally on our computers is moving into the web browser. Thanks to advances in web technology, these apps are increasingly powerful and usable. As a result, applications like Gmail, Facebook and Google Docs are soaring in popularity. "

http://prism.mozillalabs.com

Repper

"Repper is a pattern creator that turns your images into eye-catching designs. It is easy, fun and available for Windows, Mac & Linux."

http://repperpatterns.com/

Scribblar - Simple, effective online collaboration

"Real-time multi-user whiteboard / Image upload and download / Text chat with userlist / Crystal-clear live audio / No user or session limits"

http://www.scribblar.com