web-ology.com

I stumbled on this gem tonight: “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).” Synergy Home Page

Long story short, I use three monitors at home and my main machine has a dual monitor setup. My third monitor is shared on a KVM switch and I run half a dozen various Windows XP, FreeBSD, and a Linux box on it. Quite a few times I’m testing an application and going from my primary machine to my secondary machines, I hate having to switch to another keyboard / mouse in order to use that machine. Synergy let’s me move my mouse from one machine to another and type away as if I were running triple head, but I get all the advantages to running two machines with the comforts of one keyboard and mouse. This is espectially nice for running games on both machines and going back in forth.

I stumbled on PearPC, which could be a gem for all of my Mac and Mac-wanna-be friends. PearPC is a power-pc emulator for x86 platforms. This program allows you to run OS-X inside of Windows or *nix operating sytems. While I’m no Mac fan, it could be very useful to some.

Yet another utility post for the night. I stumbled on this PDF Creator about a year ago when I despirately needed to create a PDF but I just couldn’t justify paying $300+ for Adobe’s Distiller. If you’ve been looking for a way to create PDF’s then look on further.

This program installs as a Windows printer driver on your computer. The beauty of the application is that it allows you to create a PDF in MS Office, Open Office, or any Windows application that supports printing. Upon printing to the “virtual printer,” your prompted to save the PDF to disk or email a copy to the destination of your choice.

I’ve been playing around with another utility tonight called aMSN. Basically this is an open source MS(N) Messenger clone written in Python. The cool thing is, not only is this program open source, but it also runs on Linux and on Mac. The program weighs in at under 4M which isn’t bad at all considering it’s scripted in Python.

I’m a firm beleiver that if you spend most of your professional time working on a computer that the more displays / desktops that you have, the more productive you can be. While I use a dual displays at work, I use three displays on my home system. While catching up on some of my favorite blogs, I stumbed on MaxiVista. MaxiVista is an innovative program that allows you to turn a spair PC, laptop, or tablet pc into a second monitor. The program is similiar to Terminal Services or VNC but it allows your spare machine to seemless act like an additional monitor.

I’ve tested MaxiVista on both my work computer and my home pc effectively using my laptop as both a 3rd and a 4th monitor. To my suprise the utility worked flawlessly on all three machines. Even changing from my work machine to my home machine didn’t confuse MaxiVista in the least bit. If you have a few machines and you’d like to use the extra monitor space then I’d recommend trying this utility out.

For any Linux jukies who desire a good multi desktop manager for windows, but have never been successful at finding one, take a look at: Virtual Dimension. Not only does it handle multiple desktops, but it works well with multi-monitors. Sometimes the best products are free.