
Programmer’s Notepad, simply powerful text editor
Programmer’s Notepad is for people who don’t prefer to code in either large IDE’s or just windows Notepad. Programmer’s Notepad is handy tool and good replacement for Notepad users. Programmer’s Notepad comes with lot of enriched features and is highly customizable.
I have to agree that I’m one among the people who extensively use Windows Notepad either to take notes or little debugging / code editing etc. Windows Notepad can’t be much efficient choice when it comes to coding / debugging. Notepad does lack features that will increase the productivity of programmer / debugger.
Consider a case where you’re trying to fix an error in multi-nested loop. Notepad does fail here and it would consume few extra time than the time intended if we use good productivity tool. One among such tool is Programmer’s Notepad. It would increase your productivity by reducing the time taken.
PNotepad’s Code Folding feature comes in handy here. Code Folding is a feature that allows user to selectively display and hide section of currently edited file. The section can be either a fragment of code or function etc. This feature is available in most powerful text editor and IDE’s
See the screen shot below with code folding done for function second_page(). Also have a look at Text Clips in notepad area.
Programmer’s Notepad offers syntax highlighting for wide range of programming and markup language. Also it has Text-clips option to insert the predefined code-snippets for various languages. Programmer’s Notepad also has a simple project management interface to manage the files related to the projects.
Key Features –
- Code Folding
- Code / Syntax Highlighting
- Project Management / Grouping
- Regular expression search
- Code Snippets
- Tabbed multi-file support
- Bookmarking
- Export feature
- Addon Support
- and lot more…
Programmer’s Notepad is an open source project that is featured in SourceForce Programmer’s Notepad is a free to distribute under GPL license. Thanks to Simon Steele for Programmer’s Notepad
Bottom line, Programmer’s Notepad can’t be a replacement in high-end IDE’s but it can be a good replacement for Windows Notepad.
What is your choice?
Vayama, international air travel ticket search 2.0
Vayama is a new air travel ticket search service. Vayama has few strong plus points when compared with other players. First, it focuses mainly on international travel unlike other domestic players. Second, it is build based on Web 2.0; the UI is amazing and is socially powered with travel tips.
Are you planning to travel overseas for business or personal reason? A new startup Vayama is here to offer you the best solution. Vayama is unique of it kind, which offers Americans to travel overseas with anease. International travelers always find it hard to find and book their air ticket. Vayama offer them help with robust international travel ticket search feature.
Vayama is backed by one of the largest travel organization in the world, BCD Holding. Vayama comes into industry with lot of experience and resource. Vayama also acts as travel agent to find good deals.
The first thing you notice about Vayama is the user interface. It has bought rich user experience with much friendly interface. Microsoft Virtual Earth powers the maps with touch and go feature. The touch and go feature makes the entry of airports much easier. You can click on the map and locate the airport. Alternatively for regular users, they can enter the three digit Airport code or start entering the first thee digits and select the applicable one from the list box.
Once you enter the departure / arrival airport and their corresponding dates, click on search to locate your travel itinerary. Vayama will search for thousands of public and private fare and finds the best deal for you. It will show you the route map for the currently available best deal. You can filter you results based on the stops, trip time, price, connection point, and airline.
Based on the selection it will give you the itinerary for the travel with brief price information. Once you’re ready to reserve the ticket it pops you out with a 3D interface for seat selection. You have provision to book hotel and car also.
Apart from this Vayama has cool interface for getting around particular place. This feature would really help the new travelers. In that section you will find most basic information about the city, transportation, attractions and finally it does socialize with the blog on about those cities. Overall it will act as a good live travel guide!
Bottom line, Vayama helps American overseas travelers to an extent but it is yet to support ticketing for other nations, which I would say is the major drawback considering international audience. Vayama has the potential to take its crowd international along with international search it offers now

CodeIDE, a online code complier and IDE
CodeIDE is a web application that allow users to write and compile their code using their online interface. CodeIDE isn’t cool but I would it is a good idea worth a try. CodeIDE provides basic IDE functionality with option to save executable file. CodeIDE also did try well to socialize by providing a public chat.
I stumbled upon CodeIDE.com recently. CodeIDE is a browser based IDE that allows you to write and compile few programming language. Currently CodeIDE supports BASIC, Pascal, ANSI C, Perl, JavaScript, HTML, LISP, MATH, etc., CodeIDE is still in development stage and they are adding bunch of features lately. Now they have their own blogs, wikis, forum etc to share and learn idea between the users.
CodeIDE added compiler feature recently which allows you to compile your code remotely. They have support for Linux and Window executable now. They will be adding support for Mac pretty soon which would be more fun. But they have not yet released information on what kind of compilers, processors they use for compiling. They support compiling C code, it has it own positives and negatives. I will not be able to comment much on that since they haven’t provided the internal details.
CodeIDE offers a command line function, which was very similar to the command line provided by YouOS. The command line interface was clean and allows user to do basic file operations. Over the sidebar, codeIDE also has a File browser which resembled to DOS file browser tools. It didn’t come with much user friendly but handy though. The sidebar also has a Result window that displays the output of your code.
CodeIDE also comes with a simple text editor that allows you to import the code, export, search / replace and other basic things. Registered users can save their files and share their files to other user as well. The basic IDE functionality of creating a project and grouping the code base is also supported.
The most interesting part is they have public chats enable that allow user to socialize and interact with other programmers. They also have concentrated much on the social networking by having personal blogs, etc. They need to build upon this in their upcoming release as well. They have a user edited wiki documentation now. They have live support also to fix your issues online. Moreover forums are there for expert guidance.
CodeIDE has option to run the code interactively using their Run option. It will compile the code and display the result in output window. You have option to save the executable as EXE file or publish the project as required.
Improvements-
IMO, following would be reasonable enhancement /addon to their application.
- an advanced full functional editor
- support for syntax highlight this makes programming much easier
- support for programming language like PHP, Python, Ruby etc.,
- improved and well arranged UI currently all the components are placed clumsy in the homepage
- better documentation and support
- online help library
- advancd complier features support
Bottom line, CodeIDE creates a new environment for beginners who can learn programming language without much pain of installing Compilers and IDE’s. CodeIDE will not be a programmers choice until they have support to most of the advanced / must have functions that are currently been supported by off-line IDE’s. But CodeIDE is a unique idea that need to be appreciated.

Joost – a free on demand internet TV
Joost is a new way of watching TV online. Joost is Web TV that combines both Television and Internet moreover it is a Free TV. Joost shows more than 150 channels and more programs in full screen quality. Joost also has the complete control of the internet; you can watch whenever you want. To add to this points Joost powers social networking too.
Joost is still in their beta stage and expecting commercial release very soon. Joost is available now through Invite and has release the Friends Edition. I have been looking for an invite to try out Joost; Thanks for Marsie from RotorBlog.com who invited me to Joost beta.
I was really amazed by Joost, the quality of the video was superb. Joost works on seamless Peer to Peer (P2P) networking. Joost provides selectable programs on over 150 channels, ranging from cartoons, movies, music, sports and documentary using peer-to-peer TV (P2PTV) technology. The original content is stored on main server owned by Joost and then distributed by users to other users watching the same program.
Joost is signing up deals with major video content providers which would help them to gain more programs and viewer ship. Latest in the list was CNN and Sony; Viacom was already in the list. Joost is also building up a social network around their viewer. Joost has channel chats, where users watching the same programs can interact. This is just a base for their social networking model.
Joost Screenshot
This service remains free since it is been paid by advertising which are shown intermittently. The Joost interface is fairly simple and easy to use. The viewing experience is also great as it suffers not much of streaming problems. To add to the value, Joost is the venture of founders of Skype and Kaaza which were most successful. You need to aware of this; since Joost runs on P2PTV technology it will consume lot of your bandwidth for both uploading and downloading.
If you are looking for a Joost invite and didn’t have one till now; drop me a comment. I have Joost invites left out; you must try this service for sure.

IrfanView – the best lightweight image editor / viewer
22IrfanView is a fast and compact image editor cum viewer of all time. It is best for use of beginners to professionals. IrfanView supports almost every image format available; moreover plugins are available to enhance the support. IrfanView is well suited for single image editing tool to multi batch image processing.
If you’re working with images and computers for sometime you must have explored about this tool long back before. It is the cool tool for image editing for all ages right from Windows 9x to VISTA. Now we have a great news as well; latest version of IrfanView 4.-0 has been released. You can download the installation file right here. This release is little bulkier than all its previous release I believe. The size of the IrfanView installer is 1.10 MB (first time reaching Megabytes). This may be because of the improved Vista compatibility in the new release.
IrfanView is written by Irfan Skiljan, a graduate student of Vienna University of Technology. This compact software is completely free for non-commercial use. The development is supported by donation; feel free to donate towards this. IrfanView is especially useful when working with digital photos and their retouching. My top use of IrfanView is to watermark and resize my entire digital collection; so it is ready for Web.
Features Glimpse
- Many supported file formats ( almost every image format)
- Multi-language support
- Thumbnail / Preview option
- Slideshow (Save as EXE / SCR)
- Fast directory browsing
- Batch conversion / editing
- Multipage editing
- File search
- Email Option
- Multimedia Playe (plays popular video)
- Change color depth
- Scan Support
- Cut/Crop
- IPTC editing
- Capturing
- Lossless JPG operations
- Effects (sharpen, blur, Adobe Photoshop filters)
- Extracts icons from EXE/DLL
- Lot of shortcut keys for ease of use
- Command line options for experts
- Customized plugins
Edward de Leau lists the 10 ways of using IrfanView. He writes clearly about how IrfanView can help in day to day image processing needs. Here is the quick summary on how IrfanView can be used,
- To take Screenshots
- To preview, sort, rotate albums
- To resize image
- To create thumbnails for online photo album
- To scan image
- To watermark my photographs
- To preform batch processing
- To apply effects / filters
- To set Windows wallpaper
- To do lot more with the image
Update:- Pallab has written a Ten Things you can do with Irfanview with more explanation.
IrfanView has been around for many years and keeps getting better. It might still require lot of improvement towards the UI. Hope it gets better too.
IrfanView is my favorite when it comes to basic image editing / viewing. If you never tried it before give a try today. Visit their homepage.