Well it has been almost 2 months since my switch from OSX to Vista for my day job.  Overall, I’m liking Vista more than I thought - although I still get confused between the ctrl and command keys.  One little built in gem that I came across last week was a built in screenshot capture tool called Snipping Tool.  Essentially it is a little application that lets you drag your mouse across your screen to determine what area to take a screenshot of.  To get to the application you can click on the Start menu, choose All Programs, then choose Accessories, and finally click on Snipping Tools.

An alternate way is to use the Windows key on your keyboard (yes their is actually a use for it in Vista).  Pressing the Windows key now opens the start menu and place the cursor focus into a search field that work amazingly fast.  So to open this app, press the Windows key and start typing “snipp”.  The snipping application will be filtered in the list.  Press return to launch it.  Using the Windows key and the search filter, you can also search for files, emails, etc.

The World Wide Telescope is a project from Microsoft Research that made Robert Scoble cry, is now being featured on the latest round of TED Talks. This product looks truly amazing and will probably change the way we see our little spot in the universe. I can’t wait to give this a try with my 5 year old son when it is released this spring!

Egadget.com has a video that show the Optimus Maximus OLED Keyboard being installed, setup, Configurated, and used!   A couple of years ago, Art Lebedev Studio showed a prototype of their Optimus Maximus keyboard with OLED keys that can display any image you want.  Of course the default is numbers and letter, but the keys can also be customized with icons of your choice or predefined ones for your favorite applications.

So I’ve started a new job today (will blog about that later) and my new employer has just sent me a brand new Windows laptop.  It’s been about 2 years since I last developed using a Windows machine, so am wondering what essential software I should be downloading to install?  What handy utilities and applications do you use in your day-to-day work?

I just came across a Project Maestro video on YouTube where the clever people at Cynergy Systems have created a Minority Report style user interface and pointing device.  Written using Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and a finger tracking, Wii Remote hack the demo is truly remarkable.  It would be really cool to hear from the Cynergy people to see how hard this would be to do in Flex?

Open Source Living is a great place to find some of the web’s best open source software.  There is a lot of really high quality open source (aka free) software on the web these days.  If there is a software package you’ve been thinking of purchasing, I’m sure you will find a great free replacement at this site.

Alright - forget my terminal hack for removing the glass dock!  Apple has apparently made the Dock completely skinnable!  Pimp My Dock is a freeware application that will let you create your own dock style by importing graphical elements that you create in your favorite image editing application.

If you are graphically challenged,  you might want to check out LeopardDocks.com where you can download and share custom Leopard Docks.

reflexutil is an open source project that provides a Firebug like DOM inspector to your Flex apps.  At any point during the execution of your Flex application, you can right mouse-click and access the ReflexUtil property inspector.  With the inspector, you can look at any UI component, it’s hierarchy in your application and edit pretty much any property live!  It is pretty easy to configure and use and could be a huge time saver.

Living Digitally - Christian Cantrell’s personal blog - has a fantastic Review of the Amazon Kindle from the point of view of a person who has been waiting years for a good e-book reader.  Even though Christian had only used the Kindle device for a few hours, the review is full of highlights and lowlights of this new consumer device from Amazon.  I can’t wait for this product to be available in Canada!

Before I rid myself of my Windows based PC’s, FileZilla was my Win32 choice for FTP clients.  It was open source and worked reliably and well with FTP and SFTP sites.  Now FileZilla is available for Mac OSX and Linux too!  It’s not a sexy Mac application though - it looks very much like its Windows version, but it does work well!