Essential Software Developer Tools

1. Notepad++ is a free (as in "free speech" and also as in "free beer") source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages. 


2. WinMerge is an Open Source differencing and merging tool for Windows. 


3. 7-Zip is a file archiver with a high compression ratio. 


4. Visual Studio Community. A fully-featured, extensible, free IDE for creating modern applications for Android, iOS, Windows, as well as web applications and cloud services. 


5. Visual Studio Code is a lightweight but powerful source code editor which runs on your desktop and is available for Windows, OS X and Linux.

Free Windows 10 Upgrade

As I guessed in my post last year, the next version of Windows is a free upgrade to consumer of Windows 7, 8, and 8.1. I love it.

OPEN OFFICE DOCUMENTS ON ANDROID SMARTPHONES AND TABLETS

To open office documents on Android smartphones and tablet, I would like to use the QuickOffice. It’s a free application from Google lets you create and edit Microsoft® Office documents, spreadsheets and presentations.

It also open the Adobe PDF files. So why we need another app to open PDF only?

Type Vietnamese on Mobile Devices

I like iOS one thing: I can type Vietnamese in iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad quickly without install additional app. Android is not.

For Android version before 4.0, you must install a third party app to type Vietnamese. It's scary. Some apps ask for unnecessary permissions like reading your contact, your account info, your SMS message,... When I installed some trusted apps to type Vietnamese, as a precaution Android warning me for possible security breach like keys log. So I uninstalled them and used the built in Google Keyboard. Since it do not support any popular input method used by Vietnamese like Telex, VNI or VIQR, it's hard to use and slow. For example: To type letter 'ê', I can type ee (Telex type) as in iOS but for Android Google Keyboard, I must hold a letter e to see it displays other characters, select and drag letter 'ê' to an input text box.

I hope Google should catch up with Apple in support Vietnamese input. There are a lot of Vietnamese in the world using Android-based phones and tablets.

Should Microsoft Windows Free?

Few days ago, I read this article "Microsoft should get used to giving Windows away for free" written by  Tony Bradley on TechRepublic. I like that idea. If Microsoft can not make Windows free as Ubuntu Linux, at least it should be free upgrade or low cost like Mac OS/X 10.7

MAC – Easy to Use?

Refresh:

• Windows: F5
• Ubuntu: Ctrl-R
• Mac: ?

Create a new text file.

• Windows: Right click
• Ubuntu: Right click
• Mac: ?

Recent Activity

It’s fun to check my email account recent activity. Here is the fun.

Someone attempted to log in to my account from other countries. It is good to check activity log in your Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, Facebook, and other accounts frequently.