mynoteIT: Online notetaking for students
Submitted on May 11th, 2007 by admin
Filed under Productivity and Software
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I just finished up my next to last semester in undergrad, and in my time at college I’ve tried a lot of different ways to keep notes including a few computer based. One was to use MS Word, which was pretty lacking, another was MS OneNote, which is great, and another was to type stuff in GDocs so I could access my notes from any computer. The problem with GDocs is how limited it is for formatting. I found a pretty good solution in mynoteIT. It keeps your notes online like GDocs, but has more features. You can share your notes so other students on the site can look at them and you can search for their notes to see if they help you. I still find myself shifting between this, grid paper, and MS OneNote, but it might be perfect for some people.
Windows Mobile 6.0 Office for Windows Mobile 5
Submitted on May 10th, 2007 by admin
Filed under Portables and Software and Windows and Hardware
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I recently picked up the “Cingular 2125″ Windows Phone. As a previous user of a Pocket PC, I thought it would have similar MS Office file capabilities built in. But I was wrong.
With the new version of Windows Mobile that is now available, they have finally added Office capabilities to the smartphone software, but this hasn’t done much good for those still stuck with Windows Mobile 5. Now someone has pulled the apps from a Windows Mobile 6 and ported them over for 5. I haven’t personally tried this yet, and it is certainly out of the range of what Microsoft would probably reccomend, but it seems like a potentially useful fix. I plan to try it soon, and if any readers have, comment on the success of it.
Web based “Writer” to help you focus
Submitted on May 10th, 2007 by admin
Filed under Productivity and Browsers and Blogging and Software
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First off, I have to say its nice to post again after a long time away. I hope Martin and I can get this going again because I really enjoyed the site. In the time that we have been away I have become very interested in “lifehacking.” I’m into David Allen’s Getting Things Done, and other ways to live smarter. I hope to post quite a bit about that. In that vein is what I’m going to mention here. It is called “Writer” and it is a neat Web 2.0 app. Basically a while back there was a program that someone made for OSX called Darkroom, and this is a web based (and therefore cross-platform) clone.
The program gives you a very simple interface to write. In the default mode there is a black background with green text. It lets you save things and edit them later, but thats about it for features. The feature is the lack of distraction. When I was doing some stuff for school this past semester I found it very useful, because I have a terrible tendency to get involved in something else. Check it out: Writer
Ubuntu expanding to the mobile world
Submitted on May 8th, 2007 by admin
Filed under Portables and Software and Linux
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I’m a huge Linux fan. In fact, I’ve been running it as my main operating system for close to five years now, so I was really excited to hear that the good folks over at Ubuntu are developing a version of the extremely popular distro for mobile devices. While Linux on mobile phones and PDAs isn’t anything new, the huge popularity and ease of use of Ubuntu could help the market expand drammatically. The mobile version of Ubuntu is expected to be released in October of this year along with the next release of the desktop version, Ubuntu 7.10.
[Via TechWorld; more at the Ubuntu Mailing List]
Get Firefox to speed dial webpages
Submitted on May 8th, 2007 by admin
Filed under Productivity and Browsers and Software
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Firefox is an extremely popular browser, and while the download itself comes with no extra features, one of my favorite things about the browser is how many extensions are available which can add all sorts of functionality to do almost anything you want. Extension creators sometimes copy functionality available in the Opera (see BitTorrent, built-in RSS feeds, widgets, etc.) browser and add it to Firefox. One of the newest additions is the Firefox Speed Dial extension which displays screenshots of nine different webpages providing quick and easy access to any of them. While you can’t rearrange the pages’ order, it could be a worthwhile addition to those of you who do a heavy amount of web browsing.
[Via Download Squad]
Sync notes, photos, and more w/ Conduit
Submitted on May 7th, 2007 by admin
Filed under Storage and Productivity and Software and Linux
No. of comments (1)
Backing up your data is extremely important, because quite frankly, you never know when your data will become corrupted. The problem with backing up data, is that it can sometimes be a little tedious. Enter Conduit, a small Linux application which makes the process very simple.
At the moment, I’ve only tried backing up my TomBoy notes to BackPack, but it’s also possible to save photos from F-Spot to Flickr, the ability to sync folders, settings files, e-mails to GMail, and more. It’s still an early release and a bit buggy, but is an excellent tool which will prove extremely helpful. Conduit is free and available only for GNU/Linux.
Microsoft releases Defender
Submitted on October 29th, 2006 by admin
Filed under Software and Windows and Security
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I wrote about Microsoft AntiSpyware back in May of last year, while the product was still in early beta stages. Since then, Microsoft has changed the name of the application from AntiSpyware to Defender, and after many, many months in closed beta, has finally released it to the public.
Microsoft Defender is a fantastic application and actually works quite well, maybe due in part to the fact that it wasn’t developed entirely in-house, as Defender is the result of Microsoft buying out antispyware company GIANT. Regardless, Defender is quite polished, and for the months that I used the product, I never had to worry about any kind of spyware invading my system. Thanks to its integration with Windows, Defender also blocks popups and keeps you informed of security updates, all for free.
Manage Firefox tabs with Showcase
Submitted on October 29th, 2006 by admin
Filed under Productivity and Browsers and Software
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Showcase is one of those Firefox extensions which aren’t essential, but which add a little bit of eye candy and make the browser just a little bit more useful. If you have browsing habits like mine, then chances are that you keep at least 5, sometimes 10-20+, tabs open at once. Managing such a large number of tabs can be a little daunting, but not with Showcase.
Showcase shows you thumbnail images of all open tabs. If you want to switch to a particular tab, just click on its thumbnail and you’re taken there, or you can select multiple tabs by holding CTRL on your keyboard and selecting those tabs. Showcase can show tabs in a tab, a new window, or in the Firefox sidebar. The extension is free and open-source and should work all Firefox version up to 2.0.
Carry NYC subway lines on your iPod w/ ZSubway
Submitted on October 29th, 2006 by admin
Filed under Productivity and Resources and Portables and Software
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I lived in New York City for about twelve years, and still have family there so I head up there once in a while. While we don’t have subways where I live, they are an essential part of getting around New York, as anyone who has lived there can attest. If you’re a local, you may know the subway system by heart, but tourists have an extremely tough time finding their way around the tunnels sometimes. If you’ve ever been in that situation, then maybe you should download ZSubway, and load it onto your iPod.
ZSubway is basically a set of images which you can view with an iPod (and a few select other players like the Creative Zen). The images pertain to the various subway lines and show at what times a line will stop at a particular stop and when the lines will run express. ZSubway is completely free.
uTorrent WebUI extension for Firefox
Submitted on October 28th, 2006 by admin
Filed under Browsers and Networking and Software and Windows
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About a month ago, the uTorrent team released the long awaited uTorrent WebUI which allows uTorrent users to check the status of their torrent downloads from any computer. Now, we have the Firefox extension for uTorrent WebUI which lets you sign on to the application via Firefox, and lets you monitor your downloads right from the sidebar. Pretty cool, unfortunately, it seems to be Windows only.
