Pinglist :: Command Line Tool

Ah the command line, wonderfully powerful and often so cryptic it bends your mind like a pretzel…

But we geeks love to use it none the less.

Pinglist is a little handy tool I whipped up a few days ago.

One of the hard things to do on the command line which should dead simple is to ping a list of machines and return if they are up or down.

Well with Pinglist you can!

Its really an extension of the traditional Windows “ping” command that is used by every single tech across the globe.

What it does is looks in the specified directory for a nominated text file name and outputs a CSV sheet with the discovered results.

Pinglist syntax looks like this:

To break it down further:

pinglist is of course the name of the tool

input is the name of the .txt file you want to query without .txt  - this file should list of machines (one machine name per line)

output is the name of the .csv you wish to output

When you are running the tool its output will look as below:

And the CSV Output looks like:

Raw CSV:

CSV in Excel:

So if you like what you see, grab a copy here…

Click here to Download Pinglist 0.25b

(File Size: 188kb)

Best RSS Reader for Netbooks

As we all know, Netbooks lack the screen real estate that larger PC’s have. Sure you can plugin an external monitor to help out, but when you are mobile you don’t have that luxury.

I’ve sampled a lot of RSS Readers in my time, most fit for the basics of RSS subscription and aggregation but only a few really stand out of the crowd. Add in the needs of the mobile blogger / tech writer and you have an even harder task on hand, if you are a blogger constantly on the go then having a robust RSS Reader is essential.

So lets delve into the world of RSS Readers for Netbooks.

Google Reader

This is an excellent RSS reader for on the go for most laptop and cross-platform but is good for netbooks? Lets take a look.

On the plus side Google Reader does indeed fit the bill for portability, not requiring installation other than a current version browser and the much needed internet connection.

You can also use this offline with an installation of Google Gears and of course if you use Google Chrome then you can install the Google Reader Notifier Extension to know when new items are available.

Reading articles on the small screen with Google Reader is pretty good, especially if your browser has an excellent full screen mode.

To be accurate, Google Reader is a web app pretending to be a traditional desktop reader, it contains features that usually only desktop readers would have.

On the netbook it is as nimble as your current internet connection is, so waiting for content to load isn’t a problem, there are some UI elements which could be smaller such as the subscriptions sidebar width, it would also be nice to be able to minimize or remove the items listed in the sidebar that you don’t always need.

Pros: Google reader is fast, clean and built for usability.

Cons: A few UI flaws that need to be updated.

RSS Owl

RSS Owl has been around for a long time, longer even than Google’s offerings in fact.

First released in 2004, it has a lifetime of development to make it a strong RSS reader. Where it differs from Google Reader is this is a desktop solution, software that has been written exclusively in Java.

Although being a desktop application it is available for Windows, Mac OS X and a variety of Linux flavors.

RSS Owl is a great desktop reader, its interface is clean and uncluttered, plenty of options for the avid RSS reader and being written in Java its nice and snappy when downloading new feed content.

However on a netbook the only useful feed viewer setting is the newspaper view. Best of all though is that it comes in a portable flavor, meaning you can throw it on a USB drive and off you go.

Syncing is amazing with RSS Owl, the developers really have made it easy to sync from a wide range of sources, Google Reader, OPML and a plethora of others.

The wide and vertical views are not good on the small screen as you cannot read the post titles.

The one great saving viewing feature however is the tabbed views your open feeds is a great way to switch between each feed.

Pros: Quick, clean and useful and syncs to a wide range of sources including Google Reader. Portable version available.

Cons: Limited options for small screen space.

FeedDemon

FeedDemon is an enormously popular RSS reader, its also a reader that has been with us for a long time.

Originally being developed for Newsgator as paid software with online subscription features from Newsgator.com, fast forward a few years and it became freeware with feed syncing  to Google Reader.

FeedDemon looks great on the small screen, lots of space for your feeds to occupy, minimizing subscription pane, tiny header pane makes this all a joy to use.

FeedDemon has an amazing array of features that will keep even the most addicted RSS junkie happy.

On the downside, feed syncing is fairly slow, even with just a few feeds on a fast connection, so a large number of feeds would slow the process down considerably.

Another downside is that without hacks you can’t use the official build of FeedDemon as a portable app (mind you I’m sure the more industrious of you would find a portable version somewhere).

Finally and understandably it is ad supported. Going from paid software to freeware is a hard task, the ads are unobtrusive but still niggle at the senses while reading your favorite feed.

Pros: Probably the best reading experience from a downloadable client

Cons: Slow feed syncing, no portable version, it is ad supported.

FeedReader

FeedReader may appear to be one of the weaker of the RSS readers available for desktop use.

Its basic, really basic, but that might not be too bad.

FeedReader is really a bare bones reader, it has simple and functional features without providing a full on RSS reading experience like something like FeedDemon provides. No options to gather data from external online readers like Google Reader, it does have an import feature for OPML files so you can at least export your feeds from another source or sync from FTP / OPML hosted remotely.

The biggest drawback is that you need to add each feed manually to the reader, FeedReader does have auto-discovery which works for the most part but fails sometimes with websites that offer multiple feeds.

It comes in both installable and portable flavors to keep both worlds happy.

Pros: Terribly lightweight, great reading pane size.

Cons: Manual feed input, no syncing to online readers.

The Verdict

Really its up to you in the end, these 4 options are by no means the only on offer, feed tickers and other methods to get your RSS fix are available in droves.

If you have another reader you love to use on your netbook or have other alternatives for RSS reading, hit the comments to let me know!

Focus Writer – Distraction Free Writing Bliss

There are plenty of distraction free writing applications, and I’ve used a swath of them, none capturing exactly what I wanted.

I realized pretty quickly that what I wanted was a distraction free writing environment that had a host of smart features hidden away but totally at fingertip.

Now as some of you may know I use both Mac and Windows platforms, and of course its difficult at best to find a developer that writes cross-platform software at the best of times.

I tried WriteRoom for Mac, which although does what it says on the box, but of course I have a Windows laptop so it wasn’t suitable for on the go writing.

Next was DarkRoom, a direct clone of WriteRoom. While this is written for Windows, its heavily dependent on .Net, and although this is fine for my laptop its not good for portability if I wanted to use it off a USB Key (not all machines have .Net unfortunately).

PyRoom was a good compromise but lacked features, so I was still looking for a perfect solution. Q10 was also a winner, but as it had lacked active development for a while and wasn’t cross platform.

Then through a complete stroke of luck I was checking out some freeware products and stumbled upon Focus Writer from Gottcode.org.

• Is it cross-platform? Yep
• Does it have better features than the competition? Yep
• Dependant on a required framework? Nope

Focus Writer is the masterpiece of distraction free writing, lightweight, cross-platform, feature rich glorious writing application that packs a punch.

Its flexibly customizable, meaning you can make it look and feel exactly how you want, green/orange on black terminal style? want an image in the background? specific font or text widths?

Just whip up a theme and you can have the look and feel you want.

But most distraction free writers can do this, where Focus Writer shines is in the details, extremely well integrated spell checking, daily goals and totals that are easy to set up and track, live stats-as-you-type about your current document and a tabbed document interface.

Opening documents side-by-side in a tabbed environment is paramount to successful writing. You can have your main document you are writing open along with a notes document, this is glorious to keep track of where your writing is going.

Some other writers of this type provide you with a keyboard full of shortcuts to control the application (I’m looking squarely at you Q10) but Focus Writer tucks them nicely into the top and bottom of the screen, just a mouse over away, this means less chance you’ll hit some weird key combination by accident and ruin the document you are on currently.

Long story short (no pun intended… no really… REALLY) Focus Writer is a godsend, its an amazingly flexible writing application that I can’t praise enough.

Give it a try now:

Download Focus Writer Here