There is nothing worse than trying to hammer nails with the butt end of a screwdriver or jam the corner of the standard screwdriver bit into the Phillips screw slot. Having the right tool makes working on something so much more enjoyable.
Technology is all about using tools, but it’s also about creating the tools to use to make an idea reality. What technology is not about is knowing what the right tool for the idea is, knowing you don’t have it, and then trying to sneak around that fact. Making do, doesn’t. Sure, you might actually get the task accomplished, but it will be crap and you will be burdened with the knowledge that you should have done it with the right tool. Plus it takes longer and you might curse, a lot.
So, in the time honored tradition of waiting around hoping someone will build the tools for me, I found two great new tools that I think will make my ideas easier to become. The first is Inkscape, it’s an SVG editor. Of course, as with all graphics editors, the user must possess artistic talent, but Inkscape will make sure that the fruits of your labor are well formed XML SVG.
The other tool is XML/SWF Charts which creates slick and sexy charts in Flash from XML data. I dig this because it looks simpler than making charts using RRDTool or SVG, and the charts can be interactive, with dynamic values onMouseover inside the charts. Very slick.