Net Gains

Workflowy

jimdew — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 11:28:27 +0000

Image via Wikipedia

I think I’ve tried every “todo list” manager on the Web, but I’ve found them all wanting. I’ve ended up tracking my own lists with a combination of text documents and spreadsheets. But now I’ve discovered workflowy. It’s perfect (well, almost perfect) for my needs. It’s easy to use and easy to learn. Best of all, it does a great job of using keyboard shortcuts. Google it! Try it!

WorkFlowy Is a One List to Rule Them All Organization Tool (e1evation.com)
Turn Your Entire Life Into A List With Workflowy (techcrunch.com)
WorkFlowy – Make Lists. Not War. (workflowy.com)

Bloglines to Be Discontinued

jimdew — Sat, 11 Sep 2010 20:00:16 +0000

Image via CrunchBase

Bloglines, one of the most popular web-based feed readers, will no longer be available after September 30th.

via Bloglines to Be Discontinued.

Apparently, the folks at IAC see little future for RSS feeds. Naturally, since I have just decided that my Web presence would have a much greater reliance on my Shared Google Reader page. I think the IAC folks are misinterpreting the data: while the “social networking” crowd may rely more on Twitter and Facebook, that is pretty thin gruel indeed. If you are looking for high quality information delivered directly to you, then RSS Feeds still look like the best solution. It’s the old problem of quality versus quantity.

Printing on a Mac from Windows 7

jimdew — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 13:38:57 +0000

If you find yourself needing to print remotely on a Mac from a Windows 7 system, you need to read this article. It worked for me. But you may note that the technique does not work for Windows 7 Starter, which is what comes on most netbooks. Now what?

Here’s my clumsy workaround. It requires two pieces of software: doPDF, which lets you map your print to a PDF file on your Windows system, and Dropbox, which allows you to easily move information between shared systems over the Internet. Install Dropbox on both systems (and register a free Dropbox account) and create a folder named “Mac Print” in the Dropbox folder. It will show up on both the Windows PC and the Mac. Then, when “printing” on Windows 7, print into a PDF in the Mac Print folder. Now you have to use the Mac to print from the Mac Print folder.

It’s clumsy, but it gets the job done.

Opera Abandoned

jimdew — Sun, 02 May 2010 17:13:59 +0000

Well, my infatuation with the Opera browser was short lived. I have to admit that I was becoming a fan – it was fast fast fast and it’s unique approach to the user interface suited me perfectly. I was very happy – until it started crashing. Even the crashes were elegant, with a very neat reporting and recovering mechanism. It usually worked – until it didn’t. In it’s final hour, it went into a crash and recover loop. I stopped it, restarted, rebooted – even did a clean download and re-install – all to no avail. I have greater than average tolerance for misbehaving software, and I might have tolerated some of this, but now I can’t get it to run at all.

So as Opera lies in a smoking ruin, I’ve turned back to the old workhorse Firefox. I took a brief spin with Chrome and Internet Explorer and quickly reminded myself why I didn’t care for them.

It’s a shame about Opera – it had such great potential!

Wi-Fi @ 30,000 Feet

jimdew — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 10:06:50 +0000

I tried Wi-Fi on a plane for the first time. It was on Delta and it worked just like I hoped it would! I experienced no glitches of any kind and it was speedy!

Opera Fan

jimdew — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 22:11:52 +0000

Now that Opera has released 10.51 (at least for the PC), I thought I’d take it for a spin. Bottom line: I’m a fan!

There are three aspects of the Opera browser that delight me.

The first is speed. Opera’s claim to be the world’s fastest browser may be justified based on it’s observable rendering speed, but there’s a second factor that impacts speed: me! Opera’s unusual approach to keyword navigation plus feature like Speed Dialing and Keyword Nicknames just make it fact to use. Yes, I know that other browsers have similar features, but Opera’s approach seems more integrated and really works for me. It does, however, require some adapting on my part, mostly unlearning the way other browsers approach the same problems.

The second factor is their support for multiple computers. Everyone supports synchronizing bookmarks, but Opera does more. Perhaps more important for the future, Opera provides synchronization with cell phones. Cool!

Finally, Opera has a lot of advanced features. I’m not interested in most of them, but I do like Opera Notes, especially since it synchs across multiple systems. You may have different tastes and be more interested in some of their many expanded capabilities.

So I’m a fan. You might not be, but I think it’s definitely worth your time to take a peek and decide for yourself.

New Paradigms for Windows 7

jimdew — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 19:11:20 +0000

When technology changes, it’s tempting to keep on doing things the way you’re accustomed to (assuming it still works). There are advantages and disadvantages to doing that. The advantages are obvious, but the disadvantages are subtle. New technologies often allow new ways of doing things which can be much better. Yet too often it’s easy to stay in the same old rut and miss out.

A case in point: the Windows 7 search entry in the Start menu (or whatever the proper name is). Basic search capability has been around for a long while, but the Windows 7 search is far more powerful and useful. It’s the fastest way to open documents and applications. Now I’m using it to open URLs in new Windows under Firefox. I’ve always been a fan of tabbed browsing, but now I’m re-thinking that as well. It seems faster and less confusing to use search for everything and close everything the same way, never taking your hands from the keyboard.

I’ll probably post something here promoting mouse free computing, but my point in this post is that in order to take advantage of new capabilities, you have to use them a while and forsake the comfort of the tried and true. At least for a while!

Windows 7

jimdew — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 22:27:24 +0000

I’ve always been a Mac guy – since the first one came out in 1984! Along the way, I’ve used my share of PCs, both before Windows and with Windows. I’ve stayed with Macs because Windows was just so clunky and buggy with an interface from Hell. Macs were more expensive, but they were solid and smooth to use. I figured the extra cost of a Mac was well worth the savinsg in aggravation.

So people are shocked that I’ve bought a Windows laptop (Toshiba) and am using it as my main computer.

What gives? Well, Windows 7 is a huge improvement for Microsoft. It still lacks the finesse of OS X on a Mac, but it doesn’t miss by much. Microsoft has even done a few things better than Apple! And, beneath it all, you get a lot more powerful and capable computer for the same money.

What sold me were some of the new interfaces in Windows 7. Yes, the old ways still work, but some of the new ways are better. And that’s the moral to this story: when upgrading software, our usual concern is whether it works the way it worked before. But it pays to look at the new ideas and sometimes bite the bullet and change your habits. That’s what I’ve done and I believe it will pay handsome dividends for a very long time.

Clever Gmail Usage

jimdew — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 13:55:55 +0000

As a GMail user, I love the labels system, and cringe when I think about other older e-mail systems where you had to put messages in folders. The one major disadvantage I’ve found with labels, though, is the lack of sub-labels.

To remedy this, we can take advantage of the fact that GMail sorts labels alphabetically by adding a symbol to the beginning of labels. This creates makeshift categories. As you can see in the image here, I’ve added an asterisk to all of my work labels and colored them green, added a double slash to personal diary-like labels and colored them blue, and added a plus sign to my friend & enemy correspondence labels and colored them red.

GMail sorts them alphabetically beneath the symbol, thus keeping related labels together. I hope this helps out some fellow GMail users!

From

Use Symbols to Create Pseudo-Folders in Gmail

Browser Wars

jimdew — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 14:10:16 +0000

My ability to check out Opera 10.50 is limited by the absence of a Mac release. I rather like the PC version, but it’s hard to get serious without a Mac version. I found and tried the Opera 10.50 beta release for Mac, but it misbehaved in several important ways: crashing (very serious) and spinning my hard drive relentlessly. I’ll have to wait on the final Mac release before I can do much more, so Opera goes on hold for now.

One difference between Firefox, Chrome, and Opera is the type ahead find feature. Firefox gets it right. Google has an extension to make it work, but the extension doesn’t leave the tab positioned after the find, so it’s not terribly helpful. Opera has no such capability, but it does have super fast tab browsing using the shift-arrow keys. That’s an odd choice. In the other browsers, shift-arrow is used for selecting text via the keyboard, a facility I use a lot. My goal is to avoid using the mouse as much as possible and it’s not yet clear to me which is the better approach.