Uriview

Gili Avissar – Artist to watch

Uri Avissar — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 21:20:36 +0000

Yes, he is my cousin. Yes, this is partially because I know him and we are related. So what? His work is amazing and he has been recognized by entities much more informed then me as having huge potential. I’m not “fluent” in writing about art, so I will leave his web site to do the work.

Gili Avissar

Paydirt’s free invoice creator

Uri Avissar — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 21:31:21 +0000

I work with several freelancers hence I get a lot of different invoices. One of the freelancers I work with (a web designer…how did you guess?) showed me this web site where you can easily create invoices, with various line items, on the fly, in PDF format. Can’t really beat something this simple. I remember trying to find Excel templates for this…

Simple, free and fast. If this service is any indication to what Paydirt does, I should really try them soon.

Free Invoice Creator

Google Drive – Cloud drive for personal and business use

Uri Avissar — Sun, 07 Oct 2012 21:55:56 +0000

Yes, Google was not the first- Dropbox was there before. And yes, Dropbox’s interface was and to a degree still is, much better. But its hard to beat a company that can easily offer access and perks to both Google docs and Picasa from the same account, while offering practically endless room for growth (up to 16TB per user) of file space for both.

Uploading files is relatively easy. Setting up folders and access permissions is easy as well, but in my opinion the interface to managing users (and who has access to what) could be improved on. Also, notice the “Shared with me” section. This one really confused me (as I was used to working with Dropbox). I’m positive at Google will come up with a better way to combine both the files in “My Drive” and the files that are “Share with me” into one, comprehensive list. Lastly, the desktop client is really easy to work with. Tip- remember to configure which folders you want to synch, else your local HD will fill up quickly.

Bottom line is I love it. I’m in the midst of the process of moving one of my businesses to work only off Google Drive. So far its been great. Service is always available and with Google backing it up, it won’t go away anytime soon.

Google Drive

www.colorhexa.com – More than a “Color Encyclopedia”

Uri Avissar — Fri, 04 May 2012 12:32:12 +0000

Though Colorhexa has this phrase in its title, it is much more then that. Yes, it has a very effective way to present all the relevant information about a color, be it in RGB, CMYK, HSL, HSV and other formats. But what I like the most is having the ability to blend different colors and view different gradients of colors. At that early stage of building a web site, when you play around with different color schemes, this type of site and service are a must.

Colorhexa

Colorcop – Another color picker, but better

Uri Avissar — Tue, 01 May 2012 22:03:17 +0000

Yes, there are a lot of color pickers out there. They are a must tool for any web development project. Color Pad is a similar app I reviewed in the past, but Color cop is my new favorite. What I like about Color Cop is the eye dropper feature. In combination with the magnifying glass, it allows you to zoom in on any part of the screen, choose exactly the area you want to investigate and find the color you want, its RGB code and its HTML code. There are other nice features as well, such as various output formats and automatic similar color suggestions. It is free to download and obviously, highly recommended.

Color Cop

Bugzilla – Managing Software Development Made Simple

Uri Avissar — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 11:22:41 +0000

Maybe I got used to it because it always there. Maybe its there because I got used to it. Whatever the reason may be, Bugzilla is the software I use to manage the various software projects I’m involved with. The installation process is simple and straight forward. The GUI, though very basic, gets the job done. If all the basic stuff is not enough, one can always install various addons, which cover all the various aspects one may want to enhance. The endless list of addons make Bugzilla fit almost any development project and group. Of course, as one can guess from its name, it is open source and licensed under CC.

Bugzilla

Folding@Home- Put your CPU/GPU cycles to work on something useful

Uri Avissar — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 20:12:00 +0000

There are lots of distributed computing projects out there. I’ve tried SETI for a while, installed it on all my computers at home and at the office…spent several hours looking at the nice screen saver. Then I found out about Folding@Home and immediately I moved over. My reasoning is simple: although some may say that aliens will cure the world of its diseases, I think that helping human scientists fight against earthbound aliments has a much greater impact.

The client application takes seconds to install and is available to almost any OS. You can join groups to “fold” together and monitor your progress on a shared stats page (join my group!!111!! # 216400) . There are clients that use your computer’s GPU and these perform much better. EVGA has a group that if you join it you can earn $$, which you can then use to buy an EVGA card

Bottom line- this is a good thing to do and it doesn’t really require much….so just do it.

Folding@Home

Notepad++ – The “perfect” text editor

Uri Avissar — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 22:08:00 +0000

Yes, haven’t been around for a while, but I hope to get back into full swing….so here it goes

Notepad++ has been out for a while. I even mentioned it in an TextPad – General Purpose Text Editor" target="_blank">earlier post. Yes, though I do still like TextPad, I’ve really started to like N++ and have been using it almost exclusively. The main reason is the simple fact its got the best interface and views, right out of the box, no tweaks necessary. It does not have any “plugins”, as it comes with everything installed: Spell Checker, FTP and more. You can actually write your own plugins if you are into that kind of thing. Its really small as well, only 5.5MB. Lastly, as usual, the price point of zero is unbeatable and its being maintained regularly with the last version, as of writing this, released on 10.4.2012. Highly recommended.

Notepad++

RedMine – Project Management Framework

Uri Avissar — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 12:22:17 +0000

Redmine is an open-source web application for project management. Easy to use and configure, I find it to be very effective for managing development projects. Its not without its kinks (for example- could use better update mechanism for tasks and comments), but its overall set of features, ease of use and the out of the box integration options with popular SCMs more than make up for its shortcomings. Oh- lets not forget it is open-source, so the improvements to it will just keep on coming.

RedMine

SoapUI – Test Your Web Services With Ease

Uri Avissar — Wed, 25 May 2011 07:11:04 +0000

Another great tool to help with web development and testing – SoapUI . Self titled “The swiss army knife of testing”, it is a pretty accurate description. Pretty self explanatory, this tool gives you endless options to test the various aspects of your web development project. It encompasses many different testing options- SOAP, REST, JDBC and much more. Simple UI interface and great support / documentation. Highly recommended for any web project. Of course- it is Open source with a Pro option.

SoapUI