Mozilla Prism, previously known as WebRunner, is a great application that splits the web applications from the browser and lets you run them from your desktop. Although in it’s infancy, Prism is already very useful for me and I use it for a variety of web applications that I need open throughout the day.

If you are new to Prism, you could read my brief Prism review. Here are a few links that can help you get started with Prism:

• What is Mozilla Prism? - a short review
  (with instructions to run from behind a proxy)
• Google Gadget for Mac/Linux with Prism

Prism probably won’t be all things to all people, but if your browsing style mimics remotely to my style you are probably already nodding your head. Prism lets me keep my usual web applications open or atleast be available on my desktop when I need to get to them. I don’t have to worry about signing back into every one of them when I have to restart my Firefox browser multiple times a day.

I have found in the past that when I share my ideas or the way I do things, most often, I usually receive better ones from you. In the same spirit, I am going to share the list of web applications I have started using on my Desktop. I am hoping to spur a discussion in the comments to find what other web applications would be best suited.

Top Prism Applications

• Google Reader - Although I miss the Greasemonkey scripts that add functionality, it is very convenient to open and close Google Reader like a desktop application.
• Remember the Milk - I use the Remember the Milk for Google Gadget url with Prism to get a desktop app that’s very functional and easy to access. Use this url to access Remember the Milk to get the Google gadget version. http://www.rememberthemilk.com/services/modules/googleig/ . You could even try the mobile version or the regular website interface of that’s your thing.
• Google Talk Gadget - I prefer the Google Talk gadget over the GChat option available within Gmail. If you have a preferred IM like Digsby, then you won’t need this. But, if you are stuck on a linux machine like me with the usual IM client’s proxy setting not working, then you’ll love this option.
• Evernote/Google Notebook - Evernote is one of my recent addition to Prism web apps. I like to have this running in a separate window so I can just copy and paste any notes into it. If you haven’t seen it yet, I have written a short Evernote review last week. If you are a Google Notebook user, you could use that in Prism too.
• Passpack: Passpack is an excellent online password manager and is a great candidate for me to run on Prism. I do miss the use of the PassPack bookmarklet when I run it in Prism but the convenience of having atleast the passwords anytime I need it is heavenly.
• Google Calendar: If you are a Google Calendar user, you can run the full version of it in Prism. Or, you could use the url from the Mini Google Calendar that you may be running in your sidebar.
• Mint: Mint is a personal finance application that can aggregate transactions from all your bank accounts and credit card accounts and show you in an easy to digest format. I find it another great tool to have it in my desktop check at various times of the day.
• Any Google app: Google has a suite of useful web applications available and you can create a Prism application for any of them and access them as if they were a desktop application.

As you can see depending on what web applications you use, you can create Prism application for it. The sky is the limit.

Prism, built on our favorite Firefox technology, doesn’t support installing extensions at the moment even though it is coming soon. I have found blog posts indicating that some folks have successfully installed some Firefox extensions in Prism but I haven’t been able to yet.

Why is Gmail missing in the list?

The moment you can add Firefox extensions like Greasemonkey to Prism, the range of web applications I can see myself using is increasing two-fold. That is exactly why you’ll find Gmail missing in this list. I have gotten too addicted with the Stylish script Gmail redesigned, that I have decided to keep it in my browser for now.

I am looking forward to suggestions and ideas for web applications best suited for Prism from you and very interested to hear what you run on Prism.

Hello newcomer, did I say welcome to ShanKri-la yet? Before you move on, just wanted to thank you for visiting and we hope you come back and see us again!

I come across friends & family who are forking out big bucks for everyday software like anti-virus, Office, spyware, photo editing, etc. They do so, not because they like to spend the money but because they have no idea that there are excellent, free, open source alternatives available. Today. Right now.

I have nothing against paying for excellent software or services that provide value. But, if there is a quality free alternative for your everyday needs why not save that money you would have spent for a better product/equipment that you wouldn’t have been able to afford before?

In fact, one of the most popular (all time number 3 .. if you looked at the footer) posts here has been about Free Software for your Computer. I should update that post soon with my new finds.

I recently wrote in a guest post at Techie-Buzz about a very cool project called WinLibre. WinLibre was a project where they put together some of the best in breed open source software available for free into one downloadable package.

A reader (thanks MechMike) quickly pointed out that WinLibre hasn’t been updated in a while and told me about the OpenDisk project. Here is an excerpt from their About page which summarizes this cool project!

OpenDisc is a high quality collection of open source software (OSS) for the Microsoft Windows operating system.

The two main goals of the project are:

• To provide a free alternative to costly software, with equal or often better quality equivalents to proprietary, shareware or freeware software for Microsoft Windows.
• To educate users of Linux as an operating system for home, business and educational use.

OpenDisc project gathers some of the best free & open source software out there into one easily downloadable CD image. They also list the programs in the cd image with description and link to the individual software home page if you’d like to get them A la carte.

Here are the list of programs that are included in the OpenDesc project categorized by its function:

Design

• Blender - a 3D graphics modeling program
• Dia - a Visio like drawing program
• The Gimp - Adobe Photoshop alternative
• InkScape - Adobe Illustrator alternative
• Nvu - WYSIWIG Web page editor
• Srcibus - A professional desktop publishing program
• Tux Paint - Free drawing program for young children

Games

• The Battle of Wesnoth - Turn-based strategy game
• Enigma - A puzzle game
• Neverball - A fun game where you tilt the floor to get the ball in a puzzle
• Sokoban YASC - Yet Another Sokoban Clone

Internet

• Azureus - A cool bit-torrent client
• Filezilla - FTP client
• Firefox - An excellent Internet Explorer alternative
• Httrack - Offline web browser utility
• Pidgin - Multi-protocol IM client
• RSSOWL - A Feed reader client
• Seamonkey - Web browser, IRC client, newsgroup client and HTML editor in one
• Thunderbird - A modern email client
• TightVNC - A remote control software
• WinSCP - Full featured SFTP client

Multimedia

• Audacity - Sound editing program
• Celestia - Simulation of entire universe
• Really Slick Screensavers - Collection of some cool screensavers
• Stellarium - Planetarium in your computer
• Sumatra PDF - Lightweight alternative for Adobe Reader
• VLC Player - Media player supporting numerous audio & video formats

Productivity

• GnuCash - QuickBooks alternative
• MoinMoin Wiki Engine - A wiki building software
• NotePad2 - Windows Notepad alternative - with syntax highlighting and other features
• OpenOffice - Full featured alternative for Microsoft Office
• PDFCreator - Generate PDF documents from any Windows program with the Print button

Utilities

• 7-zip - Packing & unpacking archives tool with support for a lot of formats
• Abakt - A backup tool
• ClamWin - Powerful anti-virus program (misses an on-access scanner - so it can’t replace a full time scanner yet)
• GTK+ - Toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces
• HealthMonitor - System monitoring tool
• TrueCrypt - Powerful encryption software to protect your private data
• WorkRave - Protect yourself from Repetitive Strain Injury

Whew.. isn’t that an excellent collection of free software? There are a few in here like InkScape & WorkRave I haven’t tried yet.

Download OpenDisc iso image | bit-torrent

OpenDisc uses a K-Meleon interface in the cd image so far and is experimenting with a Kiwix interface that’s supposed to be leaner and better for the next release.

Also, OpenDisc has a pretty active forum if you have questions about any of these or if you’d like to see something included to this list. I have downloaded OpenDisc and I am going to make copies and give it to friends who have an open mind about trying new things. I am sure some of them are going to chase me away but hey it’s worth a try, isn’t it?

If you feel like I am preaching to the choir, I would love to hear about a (more the merrier) open source software that’s not on this list but that you feel should be.

That’s right. Move over Meebo. Move over Yahoo Messenger, GTalk.

Digsby on the covers will look like one of the dozen multi-protocol Instant Messenger clients out there. But, this is by far the best integration I have seen among them. I am not just going to say that but actually tell you why. Garry Conn asked me on Twitter why I liked it so much and here you go, Garry!

Digsby integrates not just your IM accounts but also your email accounts and your social network accounts like Twitter, Facebook and MySpace.

Digsby Features

Instant messenger Features

• Support for multiple IM networks. Nothing new here. It supports Google, Yahoo, MSN, AIM, ICQ and Jabber.
• Tabbed conversations. You can chat with multiple buddies with just one window.
• If your buddy is on multiple IMs, you can merge their accounts into one in Digsby.
• Your buddy has a weird number in his/her name? Give him an alias.
• This is the best part. You can have Digsby minimized but new messages will popup and you can reply from within the popup and get back to what you were doing!
• Setup various alerts for individual buddies like a sound and/or a popup when a friend logs in or logs out.
• Video/Audio chat using TokBox

(picture credit: digsby.com) 

Email Features

• Supports Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, AOL/AIM Mail, IMAP and POP accounts
• On login, a InfoBox popup shows you new email messages and you can scroll within the popup to see all messages.
• A taskbar icon for the email account showing unread messages.
• Clicking on the icon, popups a box with latest message and you can Mark as read, delete, archive messages without ever opening up the browser. You could also go to the Inbox or the Compose screen right from here.
• You can send email directly from your Digsby Contact List from the IM window.

Social Network

• Get Facebook/MySpace news feed and updates on Digsby
• Best Twitter integration I have experienced so far - Timeline view, replies, direct messages. Plus, every contact looks just like the twitter web interface with the Favorite star, a reply icon, etc.
• Update your status easily and new Tweets popup (configurable) in a nice little window.
• Support for more networks coming soon.

Digsby has many more features to list here. And did I say it looks gorgeous with capital G in Vista?

Sometimes, applications gets overloaded with features and casual users will get lost. Not with Digsby. Every feature has been implemented very naturally and probably better than the app maker themselves in certain instances. Personalization options are another option you have to see it to appreciate it. Just the whole look and feel is very user friendly.

Download Digsby

With this software in beta, I haven’t had it crash even once in the last 2 days of full use. I installed it for my wife and she is in love with it too. I know I am writing this with rose-colored glasses but I haven’t found a single thing to complain about. But, again I have used it only for a couple of days and this is more like my first impressions and I have been known in the past to change my allegiance.

Nevertheless, this is a great piece of software that’s availabel for free. If you are a Mac/Linux user though, you’ll have to wait a little longer but they promise to have one for us nerds soon.

We had a nice relaxing weekend this week and I am just sitting down to sharing some good finds I bookmarked this week.

• 7 Interesting and Useful Things to do with your USB Pen Drive - Shankar Ganesh of Killer Tech Tips
  Have a usb flash drive in your keychain? Check out this post from Shankar for more ideas on how to use it.
• How US tax system works - ProBargainHunter
  A very funny way of looking at US tax system.
• Reformatting WordPress - Weblog Tools Collection
  If you have a self-hosted WordPress blog and considered the possibility of reformatting WordPress, check out this post for the pros and cons.
  
• Easy Ways to Improve Your Vision - Readers Digest
  I wear glasses and spending 10+ hours in front of a computer everyday, this was very useful tome. [via Lifehacker]
• How to Herd Organic Search Traffic to Your Blog - ProBlogger
  I am recently seeing a little surge in search engine traffic lately but this post has given me a lot more ideas to try and improve it.
• 3 Free & Easy To Use Screencast Recording Tools - My post at Techie-Buzz
  If you’ve tried troubleshooting or try explaining a computer task over the phone, you’ll be really grateful for screencasts.

Hope you enjoyed this week’s round up and will see you soon with more fun posts.

I recently reviewed Enso Launcher - a free program launcher at TechieBuzz and have started using it in my laptop religiously and I am amazed at the productivity it brings with it. Enso caught my attention when it was made free recently and it was $40 before then. It is often compared to Mac’s QuickSilver application although it has its major differences.

As I am using Enso Launcher more, I like to have a quick list of commands that I use regularly at least in the first few weeks. After a few weeks, I should remember most of them without looking just like I use shortcut keyboard commands for a lot of my regulars like Gmail, Google Reader, Firefox, etc.

Enso Launcher Commands

Enso Laucher commands are run by holding down the ‘Caps Lock’, typing one the following commands and releasing the ‘Caps Lock’ to run the command. Enso auto-fills as you type so you are always just typing a few letters before it knows what you are after saving you a lot of keystrokes.

• open - to open anything in your Windows Start Menu
  Example: open notepad
• open with - to open any selected text (file or url) in any application
  Example: select a tect like ‘http://www.shankrila.com’ and type ‘open with explorer’ to open in a browser
• go - to switch to a tab in your browser (I still prefer the Ctrl-Tab shortcut in Firefox)
• learn as open - to add your own custom shortcuts to file or website
• unlearn open - to delete a shortcut you created or a default Enso command
• maximize - to maximize a window without going for the mouse
• undo maximize - to shrink a maximized window to original size
• minimize - to minimize a window
• command list - to get to the list of commands quickly - memorize this and the rest will be at your fingertips.

If you prefer using your mouse or touchpad to do things in your computer, Enso Launcher is probably not for you. For a person like me who hates to use the touchpad in a laptop, Enso just makes it so much easier and intuitive to get to various things in the computer with a few simple commands.

As intended, it helps me from getting distracted by simple things like finding an application from my Start Menu but retain my concentration in the task at hand.

I believe I will squeeze the most benefit out of it after probably a month with practice but I am already liking not to have to go to my touchpad to navigate but just use the keyboard shortcuts and commands.

I have my greatest respect to those who are diligent in writing posts everyday for their blogs. I have so far stuck to a schedule that works for me which 4-5 posts a week and sometimes more. I absolutely love blogging but I do that in spare time after work and in weekends.

I have tried to schedule posts but that just doesn’t work for my style. I like to post things that are on my mind that day as I think that lets me have a conversation about it not just in the post but in the comments as well with you.

It has its obvious disadvantages too with the blog getting neglected when ‘daily life’ interferes. In a blog where ‘technology meets daily life’ (ShanKri-la’ ), I’m sure you’d understand that as a reader.

We had some of our good friends over past weekend and my wife and I were busy playing hosts. Here are some of the posts that caught my attention in the past few weeeks and I wanted to share them with you in this week’s roundup:

• The Hardest Thing I’ve Ever Done - RT of Untwisted Vortex
  I have been reading RT’s blog ever since I saw his comments in my buddy Matt’s blog ejabs.com. He has a very personal blog and that is one of the reasons he has a great community around it.
  RT wrote a post on a personal difficulty he was facing with his wife’s illness and he was completely taken by a storm of genuine goodwil from the blogosphere. You can read all about it in this post and also check out various bloggers who helped spread the word. I wish I was able to post this in time to help spread the word myself. RT, in an attempt to pay back, writes about how the road to success is paved with stones of failure.
• How to Show Bidvertiser Feed Ads to Current Subscribers - Step-By-Step Guide - IngaOz of NiggyBuzz
  Bidvertiser is a popular alternative to Google Adsense and they have now started offering advertisements for your RSS feed. IngaOz shos you how you can add Bidvertiser ads to your RSS feed in simple steps.
• A Few Good Domains For Sale - Kyle of SlickMania
  My good friend Kyle of Kyle’s Cove has rebranded his site to SlickMania.com (RSS). Make sure you get his new RSS feed and check out his redesign effort as well.
  Kyle is one of the most friendly and helpful bloggers out there. He has opened up his domain portfolio for those interested in getting some good domain names that are for sale.
• New Gmail for the iPhone - Official Gmail Blog
  iPhone users with Gmail accounts just got a sweet treat from the Gmail team. Gmail on iPhone now sports a new interface with 2 slick features added. New mail pre-fetching is going to make getting to new emails faster. Also, when you want to get to a contact, now auto-complete works making it easier to get to the contacts with a few letters.
• Make Your DVDs View on Demand and Save Space, Too! - Tim of Daily Cup of Tech
  Tim of DCOT shows how you can use some cheap hardware and free software to build a on demand movie library from your DVD collection.
• Enso - A Humane Program Launcher - My post at TechieBuzz
  I have been using Launchy so far and I liked it. When I came across Enso Launcher, I almost wrote this post with a title ‘Is Enso Launcher a Launchy Killer?’. Then I realized that Launchy is popular because it is simple to use by everybody and Enso Launcher will become the tool of choice for those unafraid of doing things differently and learning new things. If you start using Enso Launcher, be warned of the mind-boggling productivity at your (Windows) computer you are going to start reaping from using it.

I hope you enjoyed this week’s roundup of some great posts from the blogs I read.

Newsgator is the company behind the popular RSS feed readers FeedDemon for Windows & NetNewsWire for Mac. With freeware being so popular these days, Newsgator was successful in selling paid versions of FeedDemon and NetNewsWire so far.

Now, they have announced these 2 excellent feed readers FREE for all to download and use. In fact, these 2 programs have just gotten some major feature enhancements.

Newsgator products come with sync facility with their internet-based servers. This means that your FeedDemon in your laptop and NetNewsWire in your iMac will be in sync all the time. Plus, the free web based version Newsgator Online will be in sync as well.

FeedDemon Quick Facts

• Newspaper format in neat tabs & News bins for future reference
• Synchronization with all RSS suite products
• Find what’s popular with other Newsgator users as well as who is linking to the news items you read
• Watch embedded video in the newspaper view
• Panic button - mark everything as read when you come back after a break
• Watches - Watch for keywords as they are downloaded
• Search outside of your subscriptions and create a dynamic channel with the results
• Download podcasts automatically and copy them to your iPod or other media player.
• iPhone support at http://m.newsgator.com

I used my portable GreatNews desktop reader for the longest time before getting addicted to the online Google Reader. And my main reason was that I missed having the ability to read feeds when I didn’t have my USB drive with me in a browser.

I have decided to give FeedDemon a whirl just like I give everything else a try. Importing my Google reader XMl file was painless. I haven’t tried their online counterpart yet but I doubt if it will come close to Google Reader, my current favorite RSS reader of choice. I might eat my own words after I try it, but you will know if I do.

What is your feed reader of choice? With the ability to have your desktop and online RSS reader in sync, would you give a desktop reader a chance?

Download FeedDemon 2.6 for Windows