I’m a fan of portable applications. One of my professors used portable Firefox in class once, and now I’m hooked. It’s so handy to have every program I need right at my fingertips on any (windows) machine I use. So what apps are on my 1Gb disk’s right now?

PStart Menu

PStart
This little system-tray launcher is the backbone of any good USB apps setup. Easy to configure and handy to have around.

Eclipse and JDK 1.5
Thats right, I’ve got a Java compiler wherever I go. I haven’t had any problems with this yet, and since it’s got the JRE in there too, Eclipse can run anywhere. This was a little more trouble to install than most, but really not all that bad. Instructions.

Firefox
Nothing better than having all your extensions with you, and all you cache and history to yourself. Thats really all there is to say. If there is one app that I use the most on USB, it’s Firefox

PuTTY Config

PuTTY
This is the terminal application to use on Windows. It’s easy to use, small, portable, and reliable. I use it almost every day to get onto Vulcan or my home machines.

WinSCP
This falls into the same category as PuTTY. It’s a great all-around file transfer client with secure protocols built in. Great application.

Notepad++
For a long time I was looking for a simple text editor that had syntax highlighting, but was light and easy. I tried cream for a time then I found Notepad++. It works quite well.

RealVNC Viewer
For those times when you can’t get something done over SSH in the terminal, I use RealVNC to get to my desktop and take care of it.

Xlight FTPD
Take an FTP server with you wherever you go. Not useful very often, but when it is, it’s great.

KisKis Entry

KisKis
Keep It Simple, Keep It Safe. This is a good java password manager. It’s java, thus cross-platform, which is key for a password safe.

Photoshop CS
This one is a bit shady. I bet you didn’t know that Adobe made a portable Photoshop CS. They don’t.

Gaim
Gaim is an instant message client, you can do AIM, MSN, Jabber, even IRC.

RSSOwl
The best RSS reader I’ve ever found. Plus it’s java, so with some tweaked scripts this can run on linux and windows, all of the USB stick.

Foxit PDF Reader
I hate Acrobat Reader with a passion. Foxit is light and free.

Explore_USB.bat
In addition to my standard programs I have a few simple batch files I made to ease the use of my USB apps. These are simple one-liners, but they are handy to have around. First among them is my Explore_USB.bat. I got tired of all the effort involved in opening an explorer window on my drive. Since I have a my portable apps separated from the rest of the drive I used .. to jump to my drive root. This one comes into use most of all the batch files.

@start explorer ..

cmd.bat
This one is another obvious one, launch a “dos” command window without getting the start panel involved. Like I said, these are really simple shortcut files.

@start cmd

DSLinux
This is a nice, full distribution that uses Knoppix to pack a ton of apps into a 50 meg disc. I use the “embedded” version which comes with qemu binaries for windows and linux. No matter where I am I have a linux machine. As long as its not on a mac I guess. This has it’s own 1 gig stick, lots of /home space.

I know, I know, it’s been done to death. Every tech blog on earth has a post with their favourite Firefox plugins. But I want to stick these out here, just so I feel like I’m part of the cool kids. So here are the best plugins I use, in no real order.

Web Developer Toolbar
If you do anything with web development this is the bar to have. It is an unstopable juggernaut of features. You honestly just have to install it and go through every menu playing with what it can do. Amazing.

Fission
It’s not often I say I’m jealous of something on a macintosh, but this time I think I’ll do it. The Safari browser has a really cool feature in that it’s address bar is also it’s progress bar. A big honkin progress bar. Fission is a nice copy of that functionality and one of my fave items, even though it breaks a few themes.

Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer
Can you say awesome? Because you’ll need that word to describe the coolness it feels with having the same, current bookmarks at home, work and on any machine you want. I even have it on my portable firefox so that I can take my bookmarks with me anywhere. Despite the mild security issue, it’s still a great extension.

Adblock
Industrial stength ad-removal for free. You have to love it and I do. If you get one extension on your install, get this one. It makes the internet less annoying.

Adblock Filterset G. Updater
This is the perfect complement to Adblock, it arms and reloads Adblock with a great set of filters for smacking down ads.

Viamatic Foxpose
This isn’t one you hear about usually, but it can be handy for tab junkies. I like having lots of tabs and this provides an easy way to get to the right one quickly. It creates little screenshots of each tab and lets you click on the one you want to go to. Very cool.

FireFTP
This is really a great extension. It lets you have a cross-platform fully functional FTP client with the same look and feel on any machine. Extremely useable, it’s replaced gFTP and FileZilla in my life. I still use WinSCP for SSH connections though.

FoxyTunes
This is a great plugin that adds a control bar for lots of players. I use it with Amarok and foobar2k. Very handy plugin, no more popping open another window just to change songs.

Aardvark
While this extension takes some getting used to, I find it really handy. You can widen, thin, clear, remove and more any element you want with a keypress. Very hip.

ColorZilla
This color picker used to be one of my top tools, then it stopped working in Linux. I’ve tried the directions on the extension homepage, but to no avail. Still use this at work on my Windows machine though.

DownThemAll!
DownThemAll! is a great multi-part file downloader/accelerator that can scrape entire pages. Very intelligent and easy to use.

Google Notebook
Google Notebook is one of Google Labs beta services. A handy notebook for saving interesting tidbits you find across the net, this plugin lets you note faster and easier.

New Tab Homepage
New Tab Homepage does exactly what it claims. When you open a new tab, it is set to your homepage, as opposed to the default empty page. Handy for those who keep a homepage of commonly used links.

Gmail Manager
This little extension will constantly check your gmail account(s) and keep you up to date on their status. Very handy.

Thats all I’ve got for now, though I’ll add to this list as I discover great new extensions.

Newsflash! Foxmarks bookmark synchronizer transmits your username and password in cleartext.

I had LiveHTTP Headers open while trying to figure out a post error to a server at work when foxmarks went ahead and sync’d up. I noticed the extra header info and was mildly surprised to find that it had sent my username and password in cleartext over an insecure connection, like so,
http://username:password@sync.foxcloud.com/home/username/foxmarks.xml
So whats this mean for us? Well, anyone sniffing your traffic (can you say “insecure wireless network”?) will get instant access to your account. There are no real solutions but you can do a few things to limit the damage.

• Don’t use that password on any other site or service.
• Don’t auto synchronize on a wireless connection, wait for a hardline if you can.
• Don’t put sensitive links or information into foxmarks