What the E!

Very interesting tool for possible recovery of laptops that are stolen with almost no cost.

I will have to install and test it out, but it looks pretty interesting.

Adeona: A Free, Open Source System for Helping Track and Recover Lost and Stolen Laptops

If you have lots of applications on your computer and dont have enough room for all of them on your quick launch bar this is the application for you.  With a quick alt + spacebar you can simply type the name your application and you are ready to go.  No more hunting through a huge list of programs two, three, or four columns long trying to remember the name of the software development company.

Check it out: Launchy: The Open Source Keystroke Launcher

Last night my brother in law called asking some questions about Palms, calendars, and trying to keep schedules coordinated when he and his wife work in separate counties.

They have an older palm and were looking at the options for coordinating calendars.  I recommended Google calendars due to the ease in which you can share calendars between different people.

So i did some quick research and found a couple of good articles/blogs on how to sync your palm with gcal.  

How to sync Google calendar and Palm « Not Nurse Ratched

A Google Calendar Palm Pilot Solution

Syn Google Calendar with Palm

End result, if you are trying to sync via the cradle seems to be go with  CompainLink for Google (free trial available) or if you can access the internet with your phone/palm directly use www.goosync.com.

When the California Supreme Court ruled that non competes were not legal (see here) in California it made me start thinking.

If California home to Silicon Valley, the big boy of technology innovation can get by without non competes do we really need them in other places?

I understand the laws that prevent theft of property, patents, secret company plans, customer and similar items. In the end how enforceable are the non competes anyways. In Indiana were I live the courts have generally required the company enforcing the noncompete agreement to provide an equivalent salary to the person until the non compete expires.

I regulary read Coding Horror a blog about programming and related business topics.  On the most recent blog entry On Our Project, We’re Always 90% Done  a number of great ideas about project management, software books, etc were mentioned.

However, a very interesting article on team compensation was mentioned written by Mary Poppendieck, it can be found here.

Not sure exactly how this applies to my current job immdeatly, but learning to be a manager compensation is always an item for discussion.