{"id":467,"date":"2010-02-25T22:16:59","date_gmt":"2010-02-25T11:16:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mingersoft.com\/blog\/?p=467"},"modified":"2010-02-25T22:24:33","modified_gmt":"2010-02-25T11:24:33","slug":"portable-applications-a-convenient-necessity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mingersoft.com\/blog\/2010\/02\/portable-applications-a-convenient-necessity\/","title":{"rendered":"Portable Applications &#8211; A Convenient Necessity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Have you found yourself using a computer that doesn&#8217;t have the applications you need or is locked down to the point where you can&#8217;t install anything?<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve come across this a few times and more often than not they have an Internet connection that is rather slow making application downloads agonising.<\/p>\n<p>For a while now, I&#8217;ve loaded up my trusty <a title=\"Patriot Memory - Patriot Flash Memory Cards\" href=\"http:\/\/www.patriotmem.com\/products\/groupdetailp.jsp?prodgroupid=64&amp;prodline=4&amp;group=USB+-+Extreme+Performance+Flash+Drives&amp;catid=8\" target=\"_blank\">Patriot Xporter XT<\/a> 16GB USB stick with a suite of application from <a title=\"PortableApps.com\" href=\"http:\/\/portableapps.com\" target=\"_blank\">PortableApps<\/a>. I figured that since I had oodles of space that I would set aside some space for application that I might need to use every so often.<\/p>\n<p>So that got me thinking about what apps I would need to install.<\/p>\n<p>Given that I do quite a bit of coding at work (<a title=\"Extensible Hypertext Markup Language | Wikipedia\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Xhtml\" target=\"_blank\">XHTML<\/a>, <a title=\"Cascading Style Sheets | Wikipedia\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/CSS\" target=\"_blank\">CSS<\/a>, <a title=\"Extensible Markup Language | Wikipedia\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Xml\" target=\"_blank\">XML<\/a> and <a title=\"Structured Query Language | Wikipedia\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Sql\" target=\"_blank\">SQL<\/a>), <a title=\"Notepad++ Portable | PortableApps.com\" href=\"http:\/\/portableapps.com\/apps\/development\/notepadpp_portable\" target=\"_blank\">Notepad++ Portable<\/a> is very handy for its automatic colour coding and tabbed interface to make navigation between files much easier. It&#8217;s also far quicker than the Windows notepad application\u00a0 awhen working with larger files.<\/p>\n<p>Then I realised that at work, we&#8217;re still stuck on Internet Explorer 6 (not to mention Windows XP which makes me want to cry). My browser of choice is <a title=\"Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition | PortableApps.com\" href=\"http:\/\/portableapps.com\/apps\/internet\/firefox_portable\" target=\"_blank\">Firefox<\/a> and I really appreciate the tabbed browsing plus the various add-ons you can install such as <a title=\"NoScript\" href=\"http:\/\/noscript.net\/\" target=\"_blank\">NoScript<\/a> (great for blocking unwanted <a title=\"Adobe Flash | Wikipedia\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Adobe_Flash\" target=\"_blank\">Flash<\/a> and <a title=\"JavaScript | Wikipedia\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Javascript\" target=\"_blank\">JavaScript<\/a> elements) and <a title=\"AdBlock Plus\" href=\"http:\/\/adblockplus.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">AdBlock Plus<\/a> (ads begone!). I also use another add-on called <a title=\"Xmarks | Bookmark Sync and Search\" href=\"http:\/\/www.xmarks.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Xmarks<\/a> which syncs my bookmarks and stored usernames and passwords across all of my Firefox installations.<\/p>\n<p>I also face the dilemma of having to keep track of so many personal and corporate username and password combinations. To help manage this problem, I use <a title=\"KeePass Password Safe Portable | PortableApps.com\" href=\"http:\/\/portableapps.com\/apps\/utilities\/keepass_portable\" target=\"_blank\">KeePass Password Safe Portable<\/a>. It is highly configurable and allows you to define shortcut keys, generate random passwords whilst encrypting its database using a range of encryption algorithms (including <a title=\"Advanced Encryption Standard | Wikipedia\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Advanced_Encryption_Standard\" target=\"_blank\">AES<\/a> and <a title=\"Twofish | Wikipedia\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Twofish\" target=\"_blank\">Twofish<\/a>) to keep this sensitive information safe.<\/p>\n<p>Also, as a &#8220;just in case&#8221; I have also installed the OpenOffice.org Portable application suite if I ever end up on a computer without Microsoft Office on it.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s just the tip of the iceberg but you can browse all of the applications <a title=\"Applications | PortableApps.com\" href=\"http:\/\/portableapps.com\/apps\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a> of which some might take your fancy. I like to think of portable applications like an American Express card &#8211; don&#8217;t leave home without them!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Have you found yourself using a computer that doesn&#8217;t have the applications you need or is locked down to the point where you can&#8217;t install anything? I&#8217;ve come across this a few times and more often than not they have an Internet connection that is rather slow making application downloads agonising. For a while now, &hellip; <\/p>\n<p><a class=\"more-link btn\" href=\"https:\/\/mingersoft.com\/blog\/2010\/02\/portable-applications-a-convenient-necessity\/\">Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[109,110,196,112,152,151,92,18,153],"tags":[203,2289,2288,202,197,200,204,171,198,201],"class_list":["post-467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-browsers","category-firefox-browsers-technology","category-flash","category-internet-explorer","category-microsoft-operating-systems-technology","category-operating-systems","category-storage","category-technology","category-windows-xp","tag-aes","tag-css","tag-flash","tag-javascript","tag-portable-applications","tag-sql","tag-twofish","tag-usb","tag-xhtml","tag-xml","item-wrap"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mingersoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mingersoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mingersoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mingersoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mingersoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mingersoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mingersoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mingersoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mingersoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}