I just bought a new computer, and have installed windows 7 (having to write ASP and ASP.net code). So I’m in the process of putting all the software on, that I need to use for my daily work. As a result I thought I’d keep track of the software I have to use on a daily basis to do my job as a web designer / web developer.

Dropbox
I have to say, I absolutely love it. I can’t wait until cloud storage is so cheap that we can store everything there. Until then, we have Dropbox.

Chrome
Because it’s fast and it translates French websites into English for me automatically.

Firefox
To developer Javascript and CSS, I’m not one of those who have dropped FF for Chrome yet

Smart FTP
To connect to servers and give and get things.

Eclipse
For PHP, Java, Javascript.

Visual Studio
For ASP, ASP.net

Photoshop
For photos / buttons, visual drafts / prototyping etc.

Notepad ++ (notepad on steroids)
For code, keeping notes and reading files.

As a wise man once said:

During a gold rush you should be selling shovels.

A few days ago a friend of mine left me a voice mail saying that the French government is down playing the risks of radiation on our health.

Apparently this information comes from criirad.

I’m still not quite sure what to make of reports like this but I’m sure that washing with bottled water would be inconvenient at least.

I think that this plus the fact that my french isn’t strong enough to understand all the material has meant that I’ve chosen to ignore

My logic is that people would be reporting dangerous Geiger detector readings, especially in places much closer to Japan.

Anyway, it occured to me that it might pose a couple of opportunities (not sure if this is the bad kind of opportunistic, please let me know what you think).

So I toddled over to Google trends to check out some stats:

As you can see people are suddenly searching for the phrase Geiger Detector nearly 400 times more than a couple weeks ago.

After some research I realised that the phrase ‘geiger detector‘ is searched for ?33,000 times a month. So I decided as an experiment on online marketing, to buy the domain name geigerdetector.com and set up a blog on it, and keep track of some of the latest nuclear news.

I’ll let you know the results.

I came across this website the other day while looking for design inspiration.

I really love the photography, the feel and the emotion behind this design. It’s really worth checking out Keren Ann’s website.

Oh and her music is pretty cool too: