Subsonic Review

Subsonic is a free web based music streamer. with it installed on your computer you can access your music anywhere that you have access to the Internet and on any device that has a Flash enabled browser (in addition the iPhone, Android, Windows, Linux, and Mac have specific applications for use with Subsonic).

Subsonic works with all stream able audio formats. Additionally, it can use on-the-fly conversion to convert any non stream able format and stream it to the web player.

As well as streaming the music to your browser it can also operate in Jukebox mode, allowing you to control what your host computer is playing.

Additionally, you can use it to upload any file to your computer.

These last two features work particularly well with the robust user account system. It is easy to set up any number of accounts for yourself or your friends and even includes a IM IRC style chatting system allowing you to collaboratively set up playlists or build a collection of music.

VirtualBox

VirtualBox is a virtualization software package, meaning that it allows you to run other operating systems inside of your current OS. This works by showing the OS is a window on your screen.

When I first heard about this I though, why would use this, it is bound be slow and error prone like other emulators. And besides I can just dual boot, all but the most ancient operating systems.

Having now tried VirtualBox I see the appeal. It was free, fast, and easy to install. It was fast and easy to setup the other operating systems, with the easy to follow setup wizard. and most of all it did not slow down my system at all when running them, even when more then one OS was open at the same time. And best of all, it just works.

The possibilities for testing code or running any app you want are endless. Have an application that you want to try that does not run on any of your currently installed operating systems, virtualization might be the answer for you. Want to test your code on machines that your users are likely to use, you can now do it without leaving your chair of even changing keyboards. Want to use a program without risk of compromising your computer, virtualization is the ultimate sandbox.

Notepad++

Notepad++ is the ultimate Windows Notepad replacement and a great replacement IDE for over 40 programming languages.

First off it is FOSS (Free and Open Source) and available for Windows.
Additionally, it is a very mature project, currently on version 5.6.8 (at the time of this writing), and therefore contains no major bugs or missing features.

It has far more features then I know about and far more then I want to write about. Additionally, it has a plug-in feature that allows anyone to make extensions to the program. So suffice it to to say, if you want a feature it most likely already has it.

Some of the more notable features are:

• Support and ability to convert between: Windows, Unix, and Mac files in many different encoding formats
• Intuitive and powerful find and replace functionality
• Support for (syntax highlighting, auto-completion, etc.) over 40 different programming languages
• Tabbed interface
• Macro creation and use
• Fast and reliable

One of my favourite and least expected features is the "Show all Characters" feature. Show all Characters turns all invisible characters (newline, space, tab, etc.) into something you can see. While It is not a feature that is all that useful most of the time I find it just plain fun and very useful when you want to do some precise editing.

Now all of these features are great, but they are just icing on the cake. What I want to stress the most is how easy to use Notepad++ is. While it can be used for some very advanced things, that does not make it any more complex to do the simple tasks.