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November 28, 2007

The Wrong Side of the Road

Filed under: Rants/Musings — cangione @ 5:23 pm

Salt Lake City Airport  is in the middle of a large project to reorganize the airport parking situation. Instead of two lots they have consolidated long term parking into a single large lot with new shelters while you are waiting for the bus. The new shelters are beautiful in comparison to the old airy steel ones they used to have. The only problem is that they are situated on the wrong side of the road! So when the bus comes you have to walk across the road in front of the bus to board.

Rumor has it that the reason the shelters are on the wrong side of the road is because the company designing the new parking lot didn't bother to consult with the bus drivers and planned to have the bus start from the far side of the lot.....So before dropping off a single passenger in the lot, the bus had to drive 1/4 of a mile to enter the lot...... In practice the route didn't exactly work out very well. I don't think it even made a week. So now the buses enter the lot from the "wrong end"  but start dropping off and picking up passengers very quickly at the various stops.

Am I the only one that thinks some studies and modeling could have been done to have avoided this situation?  So as I stand at the nice new bus shelters on my way to a consulting engagement and before crossing the road to catch the bus, I always remind myself to make sure that I talk with the various end users of a system I'm designing! I hope this approach will ensure that none of my creations end up on the wrong side of the road!

Testing another Blog Client for Firefox Called Deepest Sender

Filed under: Software — cangione @ 3:38 pm

This is a test of a new Blogging Client for WordPress called Deepest Sender. To see how well it works.

November 19, 2007

Not your typical Windows Quick Launch Toolbar

Filed under: Rants/Musings,Software,Uncategorized — cangione @ 7:50 pm

Windows Vista took a step backward when it comes to the Quick Launch toolbar. You used to be able to undock the Quick Launch toolbar in XP and dock it to say the left side of your computer screen. No more. In Vista it is glued to the Taskbar with superglue! Not accepting defeat, I started looking for an alternative paradigm for my frequently used programs that would work with Vista. I found two programs that are based on the Mac concept of a taskbar.

The two programs that I reviewed:

RK Launcher:

RK Launcher is a free application that will allow the user to have a visually pleasing bar at the side of the screen that is used to quickly launch shortcuts. With support for themes, PNG's and ICO's and with smooth animations, it is a good Quick Launch replacement.
RK Launcher

RocketDock:

RocketDock is a smoothly animated, application launcher. It provides a nice clean interface to drop shortcuts on for easy access and organization. With each item completely customizable there is no end to what you can add and launch from the dock. Minimized windows can appear as icons on the dock.

RocketDock

In the end, I went with RocketDock. It seemed to supply slightly better customization support and seemed to work better with Vista. I would however recommend either for an XP based machine.

-Charles Angione

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