Notes and more everywhere

I download lots of iOS apps, mainly out of curiosity. Some I grow to use others just disappear. One which I use more and more and has got better and better is Evernote. With the tagline "Remember Everything" you use Evernote via the web, iOS, Android, BlackBerry etc. You can do simple notes, todo lists, upload files or images. I started to use it for making notes at conferences. The Evernote ecosystem has grown and a great feature is the web clipper. This add-in for your favorite browser clips all or part of a web site and saves it as an evernote note. Once in evernote it is easy to search through it via tags; my google searches even checks my evernote account now (with permission). Skitch is a recent acquisition but makes annotating images dead easy on your desktop, iPad or Android device (and then saves the results to Evernote).

It works on a freemium model. You get everything with some restrictions (60MB upload a month, no offline data on mobile devices). They get you hooked then you can pay for unlimited access, which I'm giving serious consideration to. Why not give it a try at your next conference? I hear CUP XIII should be good fun.

'via Blog this'

Operating systems which are current for now

After switching employer I'm no longer tied to Windows Vista & Red Hat. Truth be told I'm quite happy on Red Hat, Vista less so. Anyway, my new setup is Mac OS X Lion & Ubuntu. I use Lion on my personal computer so that is no problem. Although from a developer perspective OS X isn't Linux like Red Hat, but once you learn the tweaks it does play ball.

As for my new Linux workstation I was encouraged to use Ubuntu. I tried Ubuntu briefly at University and didn't really see what the fuss was about. If anything I found it really annoying as everything I wanted (developer/sysadmin tools) were not installed. However, a new job means an open mind and I've landed with Ubuntu 11.10. I had heard about Unity and indeed it is an impressive desktop, which has been a pleasure to use. Ubuntu 12.04 is out in a matter of weeks and will feature HUD, which again is very nice, but is nothing new over one of my favorite Mac apps: Alfred (Like QuickSilver).

Mountain Lion has just been announced as well. So there will be plenty of activity for my operating systems this year, just after I've got them both setup the way I want them!

All change

After three years at a AstraZeneca I decided it was time for a change. So instead of Manchester I opted for Santa Fe, New Mexico. I've been here for nearly two weeks now and in terms of culture, food and weather it couldn't be more different to Manchester. Thankfully, I'm loving every minute of it. In no small part that is thanks to my new employer - OpenEye. I've had a week at work so far and am immersing myself in the startup like culture that OpenEye has.

I'm speaking at CUP XIII next month on some of my work from AstraZeneca entitled, "Keepalive with OEChem 24x7x365". Given I work for a software company now I expect (though I won't promise) to actually post more to this blog.