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Filed under: Productivity

Filed under: Productivity, Web services

A few days later, a better notifier: Ding, It's Up

by Jay Hathaway Dec 2nd 2008


It seems like only yesterday that I was writing about Notify Me When It's Up, a site that lets you know by email when a website comes back online. Actually, it was a few days ago, but someone has already built a fancier version of Notify Me. It's called Ding, It's Up, and it adds SMS and Twitter notification options, and tells you when a site goes either up or down. Despite my praise of Notify Me's minimal approach, I am forced to concede that Ding outdoes it.

I previously commented that it was nice that Notify Me keeps things simple, even though it could have added more features, or incorporated the functionality of Down For Everyone Just Me. I guess the creators of Ding, It's Up are basically sticking their tongues out at me, because they've done just that, and it's actually pretty neat. Just don't use it to sign up to receive updates by Twitter about when Twitter is down. You might want to use Is Twitter Down? for that.

Tags: alerts, ding-its-up, email, email notifier, EmailNotifier, notify, notify-me-when-its-up, sms

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Filed under: Internet, Productivity, Mozilla, Search, Browsers

URL Alias adds superpowers to the Firefox address bar

by Lee Mathews Dec 1st 2008


Good things really do come in small packages, as is the case with the URL Alias Firefox addon.
I originally installed it looking to make the address bar more launcher-like. For example, I wanted http://mail.google.com/mail/#inbox to open when I type mail or http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=SPORTS05 when I enter wings.

I prefer using words or abbreviations I can remember easily instead of hotkey combinations, and this experimental addon is the perfect tool for the job.

Since URL Alias also supports a variable (yep, just one), you can do a whole lot more with your aliases than just save keystrokes.

To manage aliases, type the following in your address bar: chrome://urlalias/content/urlalias.xul [enter]

Suppose you want to set up a Google search alias for results from downloadsquad.com.

dls http://www.google.com/search?q=%s%20site:downloadsquad.com

The %s is replaced by whatever text you enter after the keyword: dls firefox addons will return results for all matching DS posts. Change the alias text and url, and set up as many site-specific searches as you like.

Read more →

Tags: addon, addons, alias, firefox, keyboard

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Filed under: Text, Office, Productivity

Textflow parallel word processing app now in public beta

by Jay Hathaway Dec 1st 2008


Textflow is an Adobe AIR-based collaboration app that allows you to incorporate changes from several different people into one Word document. Sending your draft to everyone you're working with, and then manually combining all of their versions is a pain. With Textflow, you can just drop in each person's document and see a side-by-side view of the changes, and then put everything in order with a little bit of dragging. The app is now in public beta.

If you've used track changes in Word, Textflow's "choose or refuse" interface will be familiar to you. But textflow is like track changes on steroids, if you'll pardon a cliché. Besides the ability to handle several sets of changes from several separate Word files at once, it's also a lot easier to tell at a glance who's changed what, and decide which version to use. There's even a scrapboard to store ideas you're not sure about yet. The best part is that your collaborators don't even have to know what Textflow is for you to use it effectively.


[via Go2Web20 Blog]

Tags: collaboration, documents, text-editing, textflow, word

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Filed under: Developer, Text, Windows, Productivity, Commercial, Freeware

PhraseExpress is so much more than an autotext app

Windowsby Lee Mathews Nov 30th 2008

A good snippet manager or autotext tool can save just about anyone a little time and effort. For those who do a lot of typing, it can even help prevent repetitive stress injuries. If you're looking for an application like this, take a look at PhraseExpress.

Apart from point and click insertion of pre-defined text and auto-completion of recognized words and phrases, Phrase Express packs a clipboard monitor, macro support, and system-wide spell check.

Though the settings window presents only two buttons - new folder and new phrase - you're able to do a whole lot more than add commonly used text. PhraseExpress' included macros provide a wide array of powerful functions, including:
  • launching external applications
  • changing window focus
  • opening files, folders, and web pages
  • trimming, formatting, and replacing text
  • embedding autotext suggestions
  • time and date stamping
  • inserting Windows environment variables
Since hotkeys are also supported, you PhraseExpress makes a very capable launcher application as well. Unlike some other launcher/hotkey apps, you're able to utilize the Windows key. Despite its numerous features, resource usage is very light - about 10mb of memory on my Vista install.

PhraseExpress can be installed, or you can download the portable version and extract it to your USB flash drive. It's free for personal use and $49.95 to register for commercial use. There's also a network edition that allows groups to access a shared library that runs $44.95 (or less, based on volume) per seat.

If you're already using PhraseExpress, share your experience. If you don't, what apps do you use (if anything) to handle these tasks?

Tags: autotext, clipboard, launcher, macro, portable, snippet

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Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Productivity, Freeware

Cubic Explorer is a highly customizable portable file manager

Windowsby Lee Mathews Nov 28th 2008


There are plenty of Windows Explorer replacements out there, and most of you probably have a favorite. While I'm normally content to use what Windows gives me, I'm always looking for a good portable replacement to help ease file management tasks on customer computers.

Cubic Explorer has a number of options that have earned it the job. While it's packed with functionality and can be customized any number of ways, the interface remains mostly uncomplicated. It's a given that when you add tabs, breadcrumbs, bookmarks, previewing, folder trees, and everything else normally found in an Explorer replacement that the interface will become cluttered, but Cubic keeps things under control.

I've added all the folders I normally need to access during a repair to the favorites, like c:\windows, control panel, network connections, and my network app shares. After launching Cubic, hitting the bookmarks menu and open all in tabs quickly displays everything. It's much quicker than using start -> run every time I need to open a folder.

Cubic also supports sessions, allowing you to have several customized sets of tabs, bookmarks, and layouts. It's a handy feature for moving between customer systems, our office machines, and my home computers. Several themes are included, and your choice is saved with the session.

Cubic Explorer is freeware for Windows only, and both an installer and portable version are available.

Tags: explorer, file-management, file-manager, portable

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Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Productivity, Freeware

Automate your drive re-organizing with Download Mover

Windowsby Lee Mathews Nov 28th 2008

I've been writing about plenty of manual ways to keep your hard drive neat and clean recently. That's a nice start, but what about some automated help along the lines of Auto-Delete?

While Download Mover is no longer actively developed, it's still good at what it does. Download and extract the zip file and launch the executable, and DM will ask you where and what you want to monitor. Specify the interval for checks and set your notification options, and you're done.

You can specify multiple folders to watch and specify different targets for each file type you add. I often forget to change my Firefox download preferences to save things in my d:\downloads folder. Setting Download Mover to scrape .exe and .zip files into the proper directory keeps my desktop nice and tidy with no interference.

If you've got another automated tool for handling chores like this, please share it! I'm always on the lookout for another app that can tackle tedious tasks like directory cleanup.

Tags: automate, automation, files, folders, hard-drive, move, organization

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Filed under: Utilities, Productivity, Web services, Education

Frengly does translation, but does it beat Babelfish?

by Jay Hathaway Nov 27th 2008


The biggest players in the online translation game are Yahoo! Babelfish and Google Translate. They both have their unique charms, but a site called Frengly might offer a little competition. Its selection of languages isn't quite as extensive as Google's -- you won't find Hindi, Latvian or Catalan, for example -- but it does offer more languages and more combinations than Babelfish. Frengly's killer feature is auto-detection, though.

Frengly's language detection is even cooler than Google's, for a couple of reasons. First, you don't have to select auto-detection from a language list, like you do in Google Translate. If it's automatic, why should it take an extra step?
Second, you don't have to select a target language from a menu. You can just click it, and the original text remains on screen. If you want another language, just click again.

Frengly doesn't do webpages, and doesn't have a bookmarklet. If that's the bulk of what you want to do, stick with Google for now. On the other hand, it does save a list of your translations. If you're looking for a translator to help you do homework or understand a few words in a book you're reading, look no further.

Tags: babelfish, Frengly, google-translate, languages, translation, translator

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Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Productivity, Freeware

Use Folder2Iso to declutter your hard drive

Windowsby Lee Mathews Nov 26th 2008

When I first came across Folder2Iso I wasn't convinced of its usefulness. The author proposes using it in combination with DVD Decrypter and ImgBurn to copy DVDs and CDs, but I'm guessing most of you have a more streamlined system for doing that.

Recently one of our readers wrote in looking for help in tidying up a disorganized hard drive. I thought back to that post, and figured I might be able to use this app to further my organizational efforts.

Instead of leaving multiple folders of installers that I may only require once in a blue moon on my drive, I can use Folder2Iso to quickly convert the whole lot into individual ISO files. If I need and app in a particular category later, I just mount it with Daemon Tools and share it.

My tools folder is quite a bit more streamlined now. Everything I need on a daily basis is in a common folder, and anything else has been dumped to a single ISO file and labeled appropriately.

It's a nice bonus that I can also quickly burn an entire set of tools to give to a friend if I need to using ImgBurn. Folder2Iso is freeware for Windows only.

Tags: iso, organization, virtual-cd

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Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Productivity, Freeware

Newzie RSS reader will monitor pages without RSS feeds

Windowsby Brad Linder Nov 25th 2008

Newzie
It's been a few years since we last checked in on RSS reader Newzie. And it turns out the developers weren't sitting on their behinds for the past three years. Because the latest version of this free RSS reader for Windows is even cooler.

First up, Newzie has all the same basic features we loved, including color coded indicators that let you know at a glance how new an item is. But it also has one awesome new feature: the ability to monitor pages without RSS feeds. Just click the add button, select webpage, and then decide what kind of changes you want to monitor. You can get alerts when a certain keyword pops up on a page, when new images are uploaded, or when anything at all changes.

You can also create several different types of custom channels. For example, if you subscribe to several similar RSS feeds that don't publish posts very often, you can combine them into a single "bulk" feed. Or you can create a "word watchdog" feed that monitors all of your feeds for certain keywords and creates a single feed displaying articles from any other feeds that mention that keyword.

[via gHacks]

Tags: feed-reader, newzie, rss, rss-reader

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Filed under: Macintosh, E-mail, Productivity

Mailplane 2.0: desktop Gmail client now supports Gmail video chat

Macby Jay Hathaway Nov 24th 2008

If you use Gmail on a Mac, you should definitely know about Mailplane. It's basically a really fancy site-specific browser for Gmail, getting Gmail out of your browser tab and adding a lot of features you'd demand in a desktop email client. You can drag and drop attachments and sign in multiple accounts at once, just to name a couple. Plus, a release candidate for Mailplane 2.0 just came out, and it adds 37 new features.

You can do anything in Mailplane that you can do in Gmail, including the new video chat feature. The new gmail themes are also supported, and you can add your own custom stylesheet. It feels strange to use Gmail in a browser again after playing with Mailplane. Customizable keyboard shortcuts, dragging and dropping, and iPhoto integration are just a few of the handy features that make Mailplane a joy to use. It also supports one of my personal favorite things, Growl notifications

Tags: gmail, gmail-2.0, mailplane, video-chat

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Filed under: Productivity, Web

BubbleTimer: track the time you spend on your goals

by Jay Hathaway Nov 22nd 2008

The basic idea behind the new time-tracking service BubbleTimer is that it's not productive to track how you're spending your time down to the minute. It makes more sense to bubble in your activities in 15 minute increments, and BubbleTimer lets you do that with one click. Once you've added some goals and gathered some data, BubbleTimer becomes a playground for info nerds.

You can export your data to programs like Excel and Apple Numbers, or you can create attractive tables and graphs from within BubbleTimer. BubbleTimer is all web-based, so you can update it from anywhere. It's free to try, but if you get really addicted, you can buy a subscription for $20/year.

Tags: BubbleTimer, GTD, time-tracker, timer

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Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Productivity, Freeware, Ask DLS, Search

Help! How do I tidy up a disorganized hard drive?

Windowsby Lee Mathews Nov 21st 2008


DS Reader Jamie wrote recently looking for some assistance, saying:

I'm not the most disorganized of individuals: my music is in my music folder, etc. etc., but i have a fatal flaw. I put random stuff on my desktop, then it gets cluttered. My solution has been, in a word, poor. I put all the random stuff into a folder that usually goes by the name of misc or sort this out later. I was wondering what kind of advice you'd give for someone in this situation other than, "Get off your ass and go through it all!!"

For starters, Jamie, you hit the nail on the head - but don't fret, chum, you're not alone. Though I've planned ahead far enough to partition my drives on the laptop I'm using to post this article, the D: drive is a nightmarish mess of downloads, old backups, ISO images, and other files.

Let's get started by downloading your choice of duplicate file finders, like Easy Duplicate Finder or CloneSpy. Both work well, and will save time by getting rid of unnecessary files before we start organizing. For the rest of the work, we're going manual - we created our messes that way, so that's how we're cleaning them up!

Read more →

Tags: file-management, file-manager, organization

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Filed under: Text, Office, Productivity, Web

EtherPad: worth giving up Google Docs for?

by Jay Hathaway Nov 20th 2008


Hosting documents online is nothing new, and neither is sharing them for collaboration. Right off the bat, you're probably thinking of Google Docs. I was too, until I found EtherPad. It doesn't beat Google Docs at everything, but it does have advantages, like editing in real time, and using highlighting to distinguish who wrote which text. EtherPad is also faster to set up, since it doesn't require an account to use.

Just pass the URL to your collaborators, and everyone is set to start editing. There are stylistic limitations, with no fancy fonts and formatting, but edits happen in real time. There's also a handy chat box in the sidebar, in case you need to discuss your changes. Where you might want to use Google Docs instead is if you're writing something long that needs to be exported to Word or another file format. EtherPad does saving -- and infinite undos for all users, which is quite handy -- but it doesn't do exporting. You'll have to plug your document's URL in to pick up where you left off.

Complaints? Not many. The aforementioned exporting would be nice, and although it's great that you can quick-start with no accounts, they should at least be an option for privacy. And, speaking of privacy, users can see each other's IP addresses in the sidebar. I'm not sure what that adds. A built-in spellchecker would also be a perk, but it's not necessary. What EtherPad has so far is quite impressive, and I hope it continues to improve, while staying fast and easy to use.

Tags: collaboration, etherpad, google-docs, text

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Filed under: Design, Text, Productivity

Lorem2: for the discerning lorem ipsum aficionado

by Jay Hathaway Nov 18th 2008

Designers know the words "lorem ipsum" all too well. If you've mocked up a layout for anything with chunks of text in it, you've probably run across the infamous Latin paragraphs that commonly show up as filler. Where do you get your lorem ipsum, though, and how do you make sure it's the right fit for your design? Lorem2 is one great way to do it.

Lorem2 is a nicely laid-out collection of lorem ipsum paragraphs and bullet points, both short and long. If you're the kind of person who keeps a text file full of this stuff, you might be better off filling it up with the whole contents of Lorem2. You'll never have to give a second thought to avoiding repeated text that detracts from your layouts, because the solution will be close at hand.

Tags: design, layout, lorem-ipsum, lorem2, text, type, typography

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Filed under: Windows, Productivity, Microsoft, Freeware, How-Tos

How to log on to Windows XP automatically

Windowsby Jason Clarke Nov 18th 2008

Auto Login Windows XPWhile in in many cases it would be a security risk, having your Windows XP computer log in automatically can be useful. For example, I have my Windows XP instance running under a virtual machine on my Mac. The easiest way to do this would be to use the Administrator account and simply leave the password blank. However, this has two distinct disadvantages: you can't log onto a domain with a machine that is not using a password, and you cannot have a machine configured this way accept Remote Desktop connections.

I have no need to use Remote Desktop to access my virtual machine, but since my XP instance needs to access a Windows network, I do need a password set. In the past, the easiest way to configure your machine to automatically log on was to use TweakUI powertoy for XP, where there is a setting under Logon for configuring automatic logons.

But there's an even faster way do do this.

On the machine that you want to configure to auto-login, click Start, Run, then type "control userpasswords2" (without the quotation marks) and press enter. In the window that pops up, click on the user account that you would like to automatically log in, then uncheck the "Users must enter a username and password to use this computer" checkbox. You will now be asked for the password for this account. Set it, click OK and OK, and you're done.

Tags: auto-login, automatically-login, how-to, login, powertoys, tweak-ui, windows-xp, xp

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Featured Time Waster

Forumwarz - a potentially offensive time waster

I pwn UAfter spending the better part of an hour on Forumwarz I still can't decide if it's just sick or if it's kind of fun. It's a bit like a car wreck on the highway. I know I shouldn't be looking but I can't quite turn away.

It's sick, it's twisted, it's the internet on it's worst level and darn it, it's kind of fun. At least for a little while.

Forumwarz is a parody role-playing game that takes place on the internet - or at least the Forumwarz version of it. Your goal is to complete missions that are given to you through a mock up of GoogleTalk called Sentrillion.

Your first "friend" is ShallowEsophagus who begins giving you missions to pwn various forums by being a troll. Depending on the character type you are assigned at start up, you have tools like drooling on the keyboard or bashing your head on the keyboard that you can use to destroy forum threads and eventually, pwn a forum.

Future missions involve buying illegal software from the Russians, pwning more difficult forums and other internet oddness.

Completing missions gives you cash, called Flezz in game, and items that you can pawn or use in other missions. The game is NOT for those easily offended. It's crass, coarse and there are frequent f-bombs in the fake chat sessions.

This is also a game for a more mature audience as it requires you to shop at the Drugs R Fun store to get various concoctions to improve your playing, engage in certain cyber activities to get more Flezz and just generally use a more adult perspective.

If you can get past that, here are the more enjoyable and time-wasting aspects.

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