Classic Menu for Visio 2010 lets you retain your old menus in the new version of Microsoft Visio. Instead of having to learn where everything is, you can now install it on your computer, and voila you’re back to the interface you know and love. This might also be interesting to you if you’re a new user. You now can learn how to use visio 2010 the old way!

It’s a great testament to the Internet that a company can find enough used to justify creating a product like this. It feels like a shortcoming to let people operating in the old way, but if that’s what you’re used to, that’s really what works best for you. So go ahead, give it a real try!

It’s a pretty simple application that shows you some of the sights around the Isle of Man, together with a small description of what you”re viewing. I’ll be adding more functionality to it in the future, but in the meantime you can see it on the Market view on AppBrain: Isle of Man Views

Next feature I’ll be working on is to show a map of the photo you’re looking at.

Here’s my list of favourites in descending order:

• Google Skymap: Here’s a cute little app. It’s essential if you’re into astronomy, but if, like me you have just a passing curiosity, it’s still a lot of fun. It shows you a map pointing out the brightest naked-eye stars, planets, sun and moon, constellation lines, horizon, cardinal points, and Messier Objects. The awesome part though, is that it uses the phone’s GPS, accelerometer and compass to figure out where you are, where you are pointing your phone and therefore which part of the sky you’re looking at. It therefore shows you the night sky you’re looking at and helps you identify all the different objects you’re looking at.
  

  Read more about Google SkyMap

• Twidroid: An awesome Twitter client that does everything you may want from a Twitter client and then some. It can use your phone’s GPS or other location-based services to automatically post your location and the phone’s camera to snap and upload photos right to yourTwitter account. It does all the great things the best Twitter clients do, lets you retweet things efficiently, reply to tweets and DM people really easily. If you’re a Twitter fiend, it’s very much recommended.
  

  Read more about Twidroid.

• Shazam: Ever seen an application that looks just like magic? Well Shazam is one of those. Let’s say you’re sitting in the car and a great song comes on the radio. Don’t you hate it when the song finishes and you never learn what it was? Well, with Shazam, all you do if fire up the app, let it listen to a few seconds on your song and bang, it comes back with the name of the song, the artist and all the information you could ever want to learn about it.
  

  Read more about Shazam.

• Shopsavvy: Here’s another interesting application. It lets you scan a barcode on a book and tells you what the book is, giving you quick access to reviews about it. Big deal you might say; but there’s also another aspect to it. It looks for the book online and tells you what the prices are from a number of different online retailers; so if you’re in a bookstore, you can immediately tell if you have a good deal or not. But wait, there’s another twist. Using location-based services it also does a check of other book retailers in the area and check what they’re selling the book at. So, if the shop you’re checking the price in is too expensive, you can just nip next door and get it from the cheaper place.
  

  Read more about Shopsavvy

• Wikitude: This is just the most awesome application ever. Imagine you’re driving along and see a building on the horizon. You have no idea what it is. Well, Wikitude checks where you are, pings Wikipedia pulling down landmarks in the area, and uses the compass and camera in your phone to superimpose the inforamtion on the image you’re looking at. It’s a type of technology called Augmented Reality and you have to see it to realise just how awesome it it.
  

  Read more about Wikitude

These are just five of the applications I have tried so far. There are others out there that I haven’t got to yet, one particular area I’m interested in is live video streaming services, but I just haven’t managed to find anything that works for me yet. I also have a number of games that are going into a similar post to this, that is .. when I get round to posting it. There’s some amazing stuff in there, so if you have an Android phone and haven’t seen one of the five above, just pop onto the Market and give them a try. They’re all free!

I wanted to list a couple of applications that made a difference for me in 2008. Some of these have changed the way I work on my computer, some of them have been instrumental to my knowledge and online experiences. I thought I’d share them here for others to learn about.

• Zemanta – Zemanta is a superb tool that has revolutionised my blogging experience. As you type your blog post it suggests images, hyperlinks, other posts and tags that are contextually relevant to what you’re posting about. A must-have for every blogger.
• Digsby – part of my desktop now. It lets you combine multiple IM clients into one (I use it for GoogleTalk and MSN) and also keep an eye on various social networks (I use it for FaceBook and LinkedIn), as well as a widget for your blog so people can talk to you directly.
• Twhirl – An awesome Twitter client that has also become part of my desktop selection. It makes Twitter a doodle to use, shows a stream of incoming Tweets and lets you retweet and interact with other Tweeters at the touch of a button. Couldn’t live without it.
• WPAuctions – WP Auctions is a WordPress plugin I wrote with Hyder that lets bloggers auction items off their blog without paying any fees to Ebay or any other auction house. It was instrumental in my getting my hands dirty with AJAX and I learnt lots of CSS/Javascript/PHP through building it. So it makes my special list too.
• OIO Publisher – Another WordPress plugin that has made things managing advertising content on my blogs a doddle. It lets you sell, manage and merchandise space on your blog any which way you like. A must for anyone who wants to monitise their blog.
• Firebug – Firebug is a Firefox extension that is absolutely essential for anyone involved in web development. It lets you edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page and I just couldn’t live without it.

There you go, some applications that made 2008 great for me. Do you use any of them? What would you add to the list? What should I try for 2009?

Comments from around the blogosphere echo my feeling that this is the best browser available at the moment, and really grows on anyone using it. It does take up quite a bit of memory on my box, but when you look at all the functionality I have plugged into it, well, I’m not too surprised. I’m sure more can be improved on the memory handling, but, as long as it does the job and I have enough spare memory, I don’t have any problems with it.

As you might know, FireFox is going to try and go for a download record on the day it is released. You can pledge to download and will be notified as soon as it’s available. (You can find badges there to promote the release day, so move your speaker mounts next to the window, pump up the volume and tell the whole world to download it)

So what is application virtualisation you may ask? It’s a process by which applications are encapsulated and segregated away from the operating system they are running on. The main advantage of doing this is that it keeps applications and their OS requirements totally seperate and allows you to run applications that may previously have conflicted with one another, or the underlying OS. It also helps an enterprise desktop strategy in that applications are more mobile and a standard desktop is now a possibility. This, coupled with the fact that operating systems are now protected from the applications that run on them, is a pretty compelling story for anyone responsible for more than just a few machines.

Anyway, back to Adam’s post, he raises some great questions that this strategy needs answering to guarantee the success of the implementation. I’m going to quote them here:

Can the applications be virtualised. Some things just do not virtualise well. The answer to this will vary dependent on the solution. Softgrid bubbles cannot talk to each other directly, only through the OS. So multiple applications may need to be in the same bubble, which may well defeat the purpose of the Virtualisation in the first place.
Where do the applications need to run from. On the LAN? Over the Internet? Running under Terminal Services? (Softgrid is as close as I have seen to being a silver bullet for applications under Terminal Services)
What investment does the customer have in their application packaging and deployment solutions. What is the migration path and cost.

Some great thoughts there Adam, keep ‘em coming!

1. Know where it runs: If you’re using a toolkit like the Google Web Toolkit, part of your Java will be compiled to Javascript and executed on the client. Presumably the same happens if you ASP.Net AJAX Toolkit. Make sure you understand which parts of the code are exposed to the user and can therefore be maniuplated and ALWAYS validate/authenticate any responses you get on the server.
2. Keep data seperate from code: The client and server portion of your application will be exchanging data, and potentially code (thanks to the “magic” that? our rich DOM-based paradigms offer today). Make sure the data you exchange never gets executed or used before it is validated. This protects you from injection-type attacks, regardless on the data transport technology you are using. Always assume your data is carrying a dangerous payload and needs to be cleaned. This will protect your code in the long run.
3. Beware encoding: If your data is encoded, then this makes it harder for you to see what’s being sent back and forth. Encoding can be broken relatively easily in this case as the client code is visible to anyone who wants to crack your application. If you do use encoding, make sure you are explicit at both ends as to what you are using and make the handshake between your applications “firm”.

I learnt quite a bit about how dangerous AJAX can be while building WP Auctions, but it’s good to see the risks articulated by someone else. Unfortunately, AJAX application are easier to break than? discount furniture, so full awareness of the risks you are exposing yourself and your clients to is of paramount importance. The good news is that if you understand what you’re doing, AJAX gives you the ability to provide a rich experience in a technology-agnostic way to potentially millions of users.

• No Registration
• No Initialisation
• No Download
• All your friends in one IM

Sounds too good to be true? Well, further digging indicated that this isn’t really something that Facebook was producing, but rather an application that lives under FaceBook (yeah, another one). So what the blurb doesn’t mention is that you need to Activate this plugin, Pester everyone you know to use it and still be only limited to those of your friends who choose to activate this plugin amongst the plethora of application available on Facebook.

The discussion around this subject focuses around the fact that there are already a number of different ways to communicate with your friends on Facebook, so no USP here.? Also, MySpace tried this in the past, but with limited success. It’s also been noted that this is further proof that Facebook is a platform rather than a medium. Personally, I’m sceptical as to how much traction this application will achieve, but I’ll try it out and keep you posted.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, there’s already a number of IM applications for Facebook, but they all revolve around external IM networks, rather than one built specifically for Facebook.

If you think about the potential of this tool, it moves Google into a whole new arena. Take Google Apps for example. The biggest downside with online apps (as opposed to Microsoft Office for example) is that they are only available online. If you have a flaky connection, or if you’re on the road, there’s no way to access your applications/data until you find a decent internet connection. Should be interesting to watch the market react to this one!

It seems like PKWare have now made their presence felt in the data security field with a new product called SecureZIP. It uses the same compression process that ZIP does, but has the added benefit that your archive is encrypted and cannot be opened without your passphrase or the correct digital certificate. It will complement any PKI infrastructure you’re part of and supports X.509 RSA v3 certificates issued from recognized certificate authorities such as VeriSign®, Entrust®, and Microsoft®

It’s interesting to see PKWare branching out into this field. It’s a natural extension for them and a compelling reason to buy their product, now that more OSes include the ability to create ZIP files natively. I might just download it to give it a spin, especially as it’s not a time-limited version. You can get your free copy here