My development environment consists of a Dell PC (with dual flat panel displays) and my Macbook Pro. I’d LOVE to add a third monitor to the PC to be dedicated to the stack trace, diagnostic outputs, and console logs, but that’s another story.
On these machines I have IDEs, an SQL analyzer, and text editors to code in; VMs and browsers galore open to test in (generally 6 or 7). Add to that clients for IRC, IM, and Twitter. Then, of course, there’s an email client for both my personal (Thunderbird) and work (Outlook) email and calendars.
What I’m getting at is that I do A LOT of context switching. Leaving out all debate about whether it’s efficient for me to manage that many tasks/applications/views (it’s really not), I still needed a way to minimize the effort it took for me to switch to applications running on my MBP.
I found that solution in Synergy.
Synergy lets you easily share a single mouse and keyboard between multiple computers with different operating systems, each with its own display, without special hardware. It’s intended for users with multiple computers on their desk since each system uses its own monitor(s).
I recently helped a coworker’s wife set up a WordPress site for her new Austin-based business: Language Buddies, An Immersion Language Program for KIDS. I’ve witnessed very young children pick up a second or even third language just from their nanny, so I can attest to the power of this type of learning.
Right now it’s a just a very simple page-driven implementation, but the plan is to incorporate chronological posts, event info, and recommended resources at a later date. The design is meant to be fun and childlike, but I’m sure it too will morph as other features are added.
Anyway, I wanted to send out some link love to get the word out for their Pilot Summer 2008 Semester Prices.
Wondering why the local Austin paper doesn’t have a Twitter account so I can get updates like NYT. Ryan, thoughts?
Paul Menard via Twitter
Well, it’s true that you can find Twitter accounts for the New York Times, CNN, BBC, TechCrunch, et al. However, it’s not clear how many of those are actually official branding efforts by those media organizations. In fact, the open nature of the Twitter API and the fact that these companies offer their latest headlines as RSS feeds mean anyone can create a news “river”.
Regardless I had to take up the challenge after being called out directly. I quickly registered accounts from both Statesman.com and Austin360.com. A quick and dirty PHP script later set up as a cron job and voila! While these sites are among those of my employer, my Twitter accounts do not constitute an “official” use of this syndication method. The NYTimes twitter was set up in a similar vein by Jacob Harris
http://twitter.com/statesman
http://twitter.com/austin360
Update: I’ve turned off the cron job until some sort of contextual relevance can be offered to any potential users. Breaking news, weather, jury verdicts, traffic, ticket sales, event listings, A-List events are all options.
What are your thoughts? What kind of updates would you be interested in receiving?
Today we launched the first version of a project started in mid-January: StatesmanShopping
I might write more on this later…
Last week Statesman.com won the 2007 Digital Edge Award for Best Design and Site Architecture from the Newspaper Association of America. The Statesman.com was also a finalist in the Most Innovative Multimedia Storytelling category.
Each year the ‘Edgies‘, founded in 1996, recognize online publishers from newspapers of all sizes that engage online audiences with Web-enhanced news coverage and effectively deliver advertisers’ interactive marketing messages. NAA is a nonprofit organization representing the $59 billion newspaper industry and more than 2,000 newspapers in the U.S. and Canada. Most NAA members are daily newspapers, accounting for 87 percent of the U.S. daily circulation.
Those are some impressive stats.
While I am extremely honored to be one of the key individuals who work every day to make this website one of the best out there, much of the honor goes to my former co-worker, whose previous position I now hold, Leesa. She tirelessly worked to ensure that the site was the latest and greatest in terms of CSS and table-less design while living up to the actual design elements. No easy task, I assure you.
Local and online coverage here, here, and here.
