Teknovis

A very nice interactive infographic: The Billion Dollar Startup Club

I often get orphaned temporary files in Windows. Typically they are associated with an Office file that I have, and they normally have the same name, except that it is prefixed with a tilde.

I find them very annoying!

I never knew how to search for them until recently. It is actually very simple – just use the following command in the search box in Windows Explorer!

name:~"*~*"

It works great!

Lately I have been on a mission to find an instant messaging app for my mobile phone. The initial plan is to use it for personal purposes with immediate family members, and I am in the position of being able to move them all to a new app. I am less concerned about less immediate family and friends.

If there is a suitable app, then I want to be able to use it for work purposes also.

The obvious choice is WhatsApp, but I detest it in principle for a few reasons:

• It is owned by Facebook, which I do not use – nor do I want to use it!
• It is tied to a specific device, and it uses the phone number as an identifier. This is such an outdated approach!
• I am very sceptical of its security model (i.e., there is none), and I dislike allowing an entity in the middle of my communications to have access to them!

In fairness to WhatsApp, the user interface is very polished and easy to use!

So my main mandatory requirements are:

• Easy to use
• Uses well established cryptography
• Uses end-to-end encryption
• Not dependent upon a mobile phone number (and hence capable of running on devices without SIMs)
• Capable of sending and receiving photos
• Supports group chats (less than 10 people)
• Available for both Android and iOS
• Trustworthy (whatever that means!)

Nice to have features include:

• Available for Windows desktops
• General verification features

Aspects that do not concern me:

• Having to pay (a reasonable) once-off fee for it
• Voice call features
• Corporate features
• Recalling messages
• Remotely deleting messages
• Establishing secure communications with people that I do not meet in person

I will create a new post in the near future describing what apps I eliminated, and what app(s) I decided to use!

Tags: Facebook, WhatsApp

Sometimes I wonder if my colleagues are building Rube Goldberg machines!

I had to read about the “Evil” bit in Request for Comments: 3514 this afternoon!

I wonder why it never caught-on!

I came across this nice infographic today (click to see larger version):

LensVid Exclusive: What Happened to the Photography Industry in 2014? (Copyright LensVid)

The original inforgraphic and accompanying article can be found in LensVid Exclusive: What Happened to the Photography Industry in 2014?.

Wow – it has been a long time since I blogged!!!

I updated my favourite text editor recently – Notepad++. I was very impressed when the following message appeared slowly on my screen as if somebody was typing it:

Notepad++ Message

And just because I too believe in free speech (and equally the right not to agree with the speech being expressed):

Charlie Hebdo Covers

#JeSuisCharlie

Tags: Censorship, Notepad++

I came across two very professional looking infographics from colleagues this week. The colleagues are not designers, so I was very impressed with their work!

It turns out that they both used Venngage.

I must give it a try the next time that I think that I need an infographic!

Tags: Venngage

A friend recently sent this humorous guide to programming languages to me – A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages.

Actually, this guide makes me feel that I want to learn a weird and wonderful new programming language!

I was browsing the Amazon site recently, and I came across the following advertisement:

Kindle Fire HDX Advertisement

I am extremely sceptical about the claim that it is “Lighter than Air“! Is this false advertising?

However, if it is true then I think it must be very inconvenient!

Tags: Amazon