RokEdit Text Editor from Rokland.com

This is by no means groundbreaking, but we uploaded to our server today a simple program we created in-house to assist us with tasks related to photograph and spreadsheet editing. It is called RokEdit and it is a simple text editor that was designed with two purposes in mind. If you have ever tried to copy text from, say, a web site into a spreadsheet or photo editing program, you may notice that today's technology makes it so the text maintains the size, font, and color that it had on the web page. This can be convenient, but it can also make adding data to pre-existing text formats somewhat difficult. There are ways to change the text inside the destination applications, but this causes disruptions when you actually want to keep the formatting.

RokEdit was designed to allow the user to copy and paste text from any web site or program and have the formatting automatically removed so it is just plain text. While the Windows notepad acts similar, we beleive RokEdit is better because it also has automatic word wrapping, and includes an email button. With just one click, the text you have in your document will automatically be put into a new message in your email client- all you have to do is enter the destination email address and subject line and click send. RokEdit is a simple program, but a useful one.

RokEdit is completely free for personal and commercial use and will debuting on CNET's Download.com web site on April 10, 2007. But you can get your advanced copy by clicking here: http://www.rokland.com/programs/rokedit.zip

Net Neutrality

If you had the chance to listen to any of the broadcasts in our beta podcast project this past fall (http://rokland.com/store/podcast.php) you may remember having heard yours truly talk about something called Net Neutrality. For those of you not familiar with it, Net Neutrality is a bill that would basically outlaw ISPs from setting up what I call a "tiered Internet" whereby web sites with money would get precedence in bandwidth and availability vs. web sites that could not afford to pay the ISPs for this type of premium access. I discussed the basics of Net Neutrality but never went in depth on the problems it would create for consumers and businesses alike down the road. A great article in this week's eWeek magazine by Jim Rapoza provides some excellent analogies which demonstrate why this legislation is so important.

Click here to read Mr. Rapoza's article

Vista Compatibility Testing Update- Linksys WPC54G

We continue our Windows Vista compatibility testing project this week with the Home Basic version of Vista. We tested the Linksys WPC54G Wireless PCMCIA card for laptops, which can be found by clicking here.

We are happy to report that not only is this item Vista compatible, but the drivers are built into the operating system so it installs automatically. So you don't need the CD included in the retail box, which is great for future reinstalls since, if you're like me, you tend to lose install CDs after time.