Personal Finance Manager

So I've been looking for a number of years for a software package to take care of my personal finances.  My personal fiances are very simple, and a spread sheet has done the job for a number of years, though I found I had a hard time keeping up with the spread sheet.

I found something called "Ace Money" (Link above) and I was able to download QIX files from my bank, and import them into this program in a matter of minutes.  I then spent 1/2 hour this evening setting all the categories I use and modifying a years worth of entrees / balancing them etc.  (Yes you read that right, a YEARS worth in 1/2 an hour!!!!)

This program is great!  I registered it for only $30, and the $20 Pocket PC version for my HTC Touch (They both use the same file format  as well!!!!).   Cheaper then Quicken, easier to use, the reports it generates are much better looking then the NOTHING I got from a spread-sheet.  

I only run Windows on my "Server" at the house,  but because I can do all my entry on my smartphone, and just sync the file to the "server" I don't even miss not having a native mac application. 

Something else I recently started doing, was scanning receipts.  Now I scan them and add them as "Attachments" into ace money and I can always cross reference items.

If you need something to manage your personal finances I recommend this one HIGHLY.

HTC Touch

Yeah yeah yeah I know.

The Treo755p is now sitting on my desk.  I picked up a HTC touch on ebay and after playing with it for about 10 mins, paid telus the $10 rip off charge to "upgrade" my handset on their website.

(That charge is another story)

I know I hated windows the last two times I tried it, but this time it seems different... I don't know if it's the 6.1 version, or the fact that the hardware is much better then the last junk box I had.

Installed Agendus Pro again, and it's almost good enough to use.   The email application SPANKS versamail!!  Pushing all happens in the cloud, evernote, etc etc etc.  Software is much fresher and quite pretty.

I'll post more on this after I've had the device for about a week!

Safari and Bookmark syncing.

Having been a mac user for about two years now, I have come to really love Safari as my web browser, unfortunialy it has a missing feature. In Firefox there was an add on called “Foxmarks” that totally rocks if you use multiple computers as often as I do and need to keep your bookmarks up to date.

My friend Brad-x and I were bitching about this and Brad came up with an idea about using symbolic links and dropbox.

Guess what? It works!

On the First computer (The one with your bookmarks)

1) Backup your settings. (tar cvf ~/Desktop/Safari.tar ~/Library/Safari)
2) Move the settings to dropbox (mv ~/Library/Safari ~/Dropbox/Safari)
3) Create the link (ln –s ~/Dropbox/Safari ~/Library/Safari)

On the Second (and third etc Computers)

1) Backup (mv ~/Library/Safari ~/Library/Safari-backup)
2) Link (ln –s ~/Dropbox/Safari ~/Library/Safari)

This is all there is to it! One thing I have noticed is if you update a bookmark on computer 1 while computer 2 has safari open it won’t show the new bookmark until you restart safari.


Be sure to check out www.brad-x.com!

Funny...

Funny how we now live in a time when cellphones are more reliable then our home phones isn't it?  All my services at home are provided by Rogers cable.  My Internet, TWO phone lines, and television.  

They are all down.

I called and begged them to manually forward my work like to my cell, and thankfully they were able to do that, but now with no services except for my Telus cellphone.... (Which is providing internet access as well)....  

Maybe the whole concept of bundling really doesn't make sense.  If Bell had my phone lines, at least I'd still have those... Maybe it's time to un-bundle and go back to paying four different bills.

New old laptop.

So I got my new (old) laptop. I decided since I was going to have to spend at least $500 I might as well get something I wanted. So I popped down to the fancy authorized apple dealer downtown and found a nice 12" iBook waiting for me.

This is my first non intel computer (Since the Commodore days) and while I am used to the operating system as my main machien is an Intel iMac there were no surprises for me. Everything works as I would expect it too. All software works, printing, etc etc. No more squinting at 3 lines of text in the work software.

Job this weekend is update the RAM from 512 to 1.5Gb! I installed Leopard yesterday and it needs the new ram as Tiger was very snappy on this box, but I really missed the quicklook preview. ;)

Dropbox

A while back I watched the video for dropbox on their website and totally wanted in. ;)  It took a number of months and I finally got invited to join.   Since that time I have had a friend of mine give me a webdav account which I've been using, here are my thoughts on the two:

WD - Unlimited space

DB -  Couple gigs.

WD - Manually syncing / copying of files.

DB - Syncs automagicaly to all computers or the web interface.

WD - No web interface, so if I don't have access to the add network places I'm boned.

DB - Web interface.

WD - Fast as hell.

DB - Fast as hell.

Basically at this time (Keeping in mind it's not been long) the winner is Dropbox for the simple fact that I am able to work on the documents on my local hard drive and not have to worry about anything else, they just magically appear on the other computers.  

eeePC again.

You can read my glowing review for the eeePC from a while back.  Unfortunately the whole netbook idea just bit me in the butt.  Over the last little while I've been getting everything configured over here so I can compute in the cloud for pretty much everything, (Online storage, webmail, push mail to the treo etc. etc. etc.)  Everything works PERFECTLY!

So what's the problem?

The package I use for work used to be windows based, around June they changed to a web based package which worked great, (again in the cloud) until the most recent update.  The recent update splits your browser into 4 frames.  the last frame is the one to enter your clients information etc.  It is 3 lines long on the eeepc's screen.  Yes 3 lines.  The info screen is 16.

My netbook is no longer useful to me.  I enjoyed the fact I could work anywhere, and now I'm heading to Dell's website for a loaded up Inspiron.  (Or I'll bite the bullet and get a Macbook, as I love my mac!) ;)

 IT was a nice couple of months carrying something so small around.