E-Musings Mon Immorata

Are Software Clones Good or Evil? It's time to begin taking sides in the good versus evil debate insofar as software clones are concerned. Actually, to be honest, I'm kind of winging it this week. I haven't really had a chance to check out any new software. Been busy evaluating bug reporting and tracking scripts to see which one best fit my company's needs. As well as looking at what the perfect shop needed in its user interface design. I'm sure you're thinking goes on the lines of super dude with a web server at his command. Actually, yes and no. I do have a full-featured Apache Web Server with a MySQL database server at my disposal. But it's running on my PC. So there! Actually it's quite easy to setup one of these configurations. You begin by downloading a packaged build that contains Apache, MySQL, Perl, and some additional utilities all pre-configured to run from a single folder. The two mostly commonly available versions are PHP Dev and Apache Friends. Both are available as a single compressed archive (between 25-35 MB) that you download and explode. The Apache Friends version also includes batch files to install Apache and MySQL as Windows 2000/XP services. I thoroughly checked out JExplorer; another Windows Explorer replacement. Actually, this freeware is more a Norton Commander mixed with a bit of Total Commander clone. And merges file management with FTP and viewing compressed files. I wasn't all that impressed with the tool. It's free but takes about as long as Windows Explorer to copy, move or rename files. And you can't move these processes into the background as you can with Total Commander. So after exactly 3 days of trying to use JExplorer, I zapped it from disk and download backup. More interesting, but still in early days, is the next generation of Nikos Boznis' 2x Explorer; another Explorer replacement. However, this one is still a bit feature strapped. You can't view the contents of compressed (archive) files. Nor combine multiple files into a single archive either. But if you are very comfortable with the default Explorer, do check out 2x. It's pretty good and way faster than the default Explorer. In other news, there's an open-source Exchange-style mail server. The Open Groupware project is run by many of the same developers contributing to Open Office.org. I did check out what's available but had to return disappointed. Right now there are only Linux-compatible builds. And before I go a clarification about Green Browser (featured last week; see below). When compared head to head with MyIE2, Green lacks lots of features. And its superior resource management is because the browser doesn't sport skins, plug-ins or the other conveniences MyIE2 offers. Click to Mail Me Now!