Last week I set up the hosting and domain registration for a guest house in Carrickalinga. It goes by the name of The Moorings and is situated just back from the beach at Carrickalinga. I’ve put a splash screen up while I work on the site and will be launched soon.

www.themoorings.net.au 

Thinking about the pro’s and con’s between buying products overseas vs locally. There are quite a few reasons we choose to buy products from overseas, and I’m thinking mainly in electronic consumer devices.

I was reading in the Overclockers.com.au forum about someone who was thinking of getting a Nintendo Wii from Japan. The pro I can see is that it may be cheaper for the unit, but the cons seem to far outweigh the pro side. If the Wii was bought from Japan it would be cheaper, not by much but definitely cheaper. But if it was bought from Japan, what happens when something goes wrong under warranty? It would have to be sent back to Japan to be repaired, it could be gone months while it is repaired, not only that but there can also be a communication problem between different languages.

I also see that there would be incompatibility issues with the games, the power plug would be different and require a converter so it can be plugged in. The software on the Wii would be in Japanese too.

If you bought something like a notebook from a local store and you had problems, you can take it back and have it repaired. While the time factor is still there, the face to face communication is a plus. But also that the support is local, you can pick up accessories in the shop and look at them. Feel them and see their quality. Not only that, but you’re supporting local business and keeping the economy alive. It may cost a little more but you do get more service with your dollar.

So next time you’re looking at buying something, have a think to yourself if it’s going to be an issue returning it if you have a problem.

I’m not intending on listing any portable applications to go on your usb drives, ipods, or memory sticks. But I’m going to list the places that have them, or I know will list them in the future.

PortableApps - This is the big daddy of portable application sites in my opinion, while it doesn’t have as many apps. It has the more used and practical ones like Firefox, Thunderbird and Open Office. Along with their own software packages.

Portable Freeware - While the site layout isn’t that great, there are a lot of apps on here that can be useful.

PenDriveApps - I’ve only come across this one in the last few months, not lots on there but the useful ones are.

LifeHacker - Lifehackers list of portable applications with short reviews.

GetUSB - I just found this in Google, looks interesting!

Xtort - Freeware files, including portable apps.

U3 - U3 are USB drive with their own preinstalled package. While the freeware portable apps do the job you may like something a little more standardised. But U3 does offer some free apps in their database so have a look what’s on offer.

Wikipedia - No applications on here, but a big list of the portable applications avilable to install on your USB drive.

Let’s face it, when you’re freelancing but not enough to make it a regular job you want to save as much money as possible and spend as little on them as you can. At least when it comes to applications that can manage your jobs. The last month or so I’d been looking at a way I could document all my clients details and track changes to make in each project I’m working on, or the progress for any upcoming projects. I’d tried a few applications, searched for web based type management but most of them are free trials with a limitation of 1 or 3 clients. Or it’s a full blown system you have to pay for. I was looking for an all in one solution that followed how I worked but nothing seemed to, every application out there seems to lack the feature of another.

I’ve been trying to find something that can do project management, time tracking and invoicing all in the one go that is either free or gives me more than 3 clients to manage with. I know I’m dreaming, but won’t someone think of the little guys out there?

I’ve found 2 applications in the last week which I am currently running off my USB drive, this is to work in conjunction with the hope that I can run all my web work of a USB HDD and make me a more mobile worker.

The 2 applications I found are TreePad and DevProject Manager. While they don’t match my whole needs, it’s one step futher to consolidating all my working needs into one place.

Treepad gives a basic tree structure with subfolders so that information can be categorised and entered into a text document. The set back I found was no way to Bold, Underline text or give it enhancements to differentiate it from other text. You have to get the paid version to get those perks!

DevProject Manager is more promising. I’ve only just installed it and it gives me project management with To-Do Lists, subfolders for categorisation, changelogs, versions, notes on the project. People can be added to manage projects but I can see this more as a base to put contact details in for your clients. The ‘code snippets’ section looks like a good place to store those bits of code you like to keep for each site. Be it notes for your website or some javascript someone may want. But it could also be used to store more details if need be of clients.

Unfortunately, neither of these come available for linux users. I find this odd because it’s for coders and a lot of them work in a Linux environment, and should there have been a linux version I would have passed it onto a few people who might find it useful.

Both of these apps can be run off a USB drive, but can easily be installed to your hard drive for use on the desktop. I’ve put my projects into folders Archive, Current, Future and Ongoing. Each has a subfolder for the project I’m working on.

I’ll update this post soon hopefully on how it goes managing details for my projects.