Station Master's Journal

BumpTop is a working prototype from the mind of Anand Agarawala, former computer science grad at University of Toronto.

The concept really excites me! Though I'm not sure yet how much I'd want my entire filesystem organized this way, I would love to be able to organize my desktop in this fashion.

Anand Agarawala presents BumpTop, a fresh user interface that takes the usual desktop metaphor to a glorious, 3D extreme. In this physics-driven universe, important files finally get the weight they deserve via an oddly satisfying resizing feature, and the drudgery of file organization becomes a freewheeling playground full of crumpled documents and clipping-covered “walls.”

 

 Podcast Video [6:26m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Well it’s an exciting time of the year, and we’ve been very busy working for a large non-profit organization down here in Boston. Both Nathan and Graeme are working steadily from Victoria, and I’m now on site.

I should also take this moment to point out that all inquiries and maintenance requests should be going to Graeme Sheeley (graeme@simplestation.com). He will be more than happy to handle any requests you may have.

Boston is actually considerably warmer than I had really anticipated, and I think I'm just so used to life on the west coast that it’s taking me some time to adjust to the humidity here. All that being said — I am most definitely enjoying the warm weather and the good work.

Just finished reading a great article from the New York Times on putting energy hogs in the home on a strict low power diet!

Why should you care? Well for a start you'll save money on your electricity bill, and secondly you will help reduce C0₂ emissions.

I used a Kill A Watt EZ energy meter (available online for about $25) and began measuring. My PC was continuously drawing 134 watts all night.

The more devices I checked, the worse it got. My TiVo digital video recorder was sucking down about 30 watts when it was not playing or recording a show. A Comcast digital cable set-top box made by Motorola that I tested was drawing about 40 watts. My DVD player was drawing 26 watts while idle, and my audio system — which I rarely turned off — was using 47 watts. This was in addition to the numerous power adapters and chargers, each drawing 1 or 2 watts, not to mention several other devices sipping energy to keep clocks running or to be ready to turn on at the push of a button.

… Tweaking can pay off. Annually, my desktop PC is now using 73 percent less energy — saving me $119 a year and depriving the earth of 1,405 more pounds of CO2.

Source: New York Times

The writer recommends downloading an awesome little tool called C0₂ Saver that is a lightweight program that manages your computer’s power usage when it’s idle, saving energy and decreasing the demand on your power utility.

We plan on using it on our PC’s within our office environment. What a great tool!

This week we’ve decided to review Coda, a fully furbished text editor built by Panic Software. Our office has recently started using Coda and since Panic offers a free trial we thought we’d download it and try it for 2 weeks. Having been long-time Transmit FTP owners we’ve really appreciated the quality of software that Panic has produced in the past we were certain that this would amount to a killer of a text editor.

What caught our eye initially about Coda was it’s feature set. Here are just a few of the features that Coda boasts their product offers:

• Advanced Site Management
• Top-Notch Text Editing
• Visual CSS Editor
• Live Web Preview
• Built-in SSH Terminal
• Comprehensive Reference Material
• Real-time Collaborative Editing

(more...)