Software Features Discovered at MapQuest

I'm not to have my notebook at work, so I'm scrambling to distribute my normal uses of my notebook onto my work PC and to websites.

Google Reader seems to work pretty well in place of Liferea, and I've started using iTunes to suck down podcasts to my work machine. That may actually mostly work, since that's where I end up doing most my listening anyway. We'll see how it goes on weekends.

Pidgin is proving to be super-slick as well, since each account can have its own proxy settings. I have it configured to do my work AIM account normally, and my personal Jabber account passes through a SSH-tunneled SOCKS5 connection. The interface is very usable as well. I had been using Psi for the longest time.

Finally, I've discovered that MapQuest.com has some features I've been wanting from mapping sites for a while. One such feature is the "Places Nearby" link. I can just pop in a location, then have it just show me everything around me. That's especially useful when you're just looking for random things to do in a new area. You can further refine it by category or other search.

The "Places Nearby" feature isn't available through the normal WAP site right now, but I hope to see it in newer versions of the Java ME MapQuest client due out later this year.

I've also discovered that Adobe has a free Flex compiler for producing Flash applications from Actionscript and MXML markup -- I've created my own little Flash apps now.