For a while now I’ve been using my own version of Get Things Done (GTD) and it seems to work for me so I thought I’d sahre my experiences and thoughts so far.

I got into GTD because lots was going on around me but I was loosing track of what I needed to do, or kept loosing any notes I’d made about important stuff.  While I thought I was an organised person, this wasn’t really the case.  So I done what most people do these days, I turned to the web for help.

There’s certainly plenty of websites out there to help you track ToDos with Remember The Milk (RTM) and Google Tasks being two of the popular ones I’ve tried.  And then there’s also loads of ways of keeping notes, such as a simple text document or wiki’s or Google Notepad or Evernote, all of which I’ve also tried.  And then there’s various GTD methodologies that I’ve dabbled in.  However the majority of these need time to plan in front of a computer so you can organise yourself, and then you need to commit to some ritual that you slavishly need to stick to (you can tell my thooughts on these ).  I’m trying to spend less time in front of the computer, not more! – although I have recently received my nice new Dell laptop, now with Win7 Ultimate on it!

A while back however I stumbled across Moleskin notebooks at one of my favourite sites Lifehacker.  From here I found various articles about how people have used Moleskin norebooks to help them organise themselves.  Going back to ‘analogue’ sounded interesting so I decided to try pen and paper!  I carry my personal Moleskin (large lined) most places with me, and I have one for work as well.

While I’ve had many notebooks in the past there’s something about the quality of Moleskins that make the experience different.  However what also helped was some organisation.  Now at the start of every notebook I have the following:

* Index

* To Do list

Each page is then numbered for easy reference.  The initial pages are marked with a couple of sticky labels to make it easier to find them.  And I’ve managed to attach a pen to my Moleskins with some Duct tape.  I keep opposite pages blank, this is in case I remember something later, or if I need to highlight something – or in my work one where I highlight my actions.

I find Moleskin brings a number of advantages over other notebooks:

* There’s a handy puch at the back for storing train tickets, business cards etc

* They’ve got an elestic band to help keep them closed when you stuff them with paper

* Better quality notebook – while a bit intangible it works for me

So now I jot down my notes in my Moleskin and index it at the front, with a simple ToDo list at the front as well, and that’s just about it!

It has proved really effective for me.  I don’t deny it would be a hassle if I lost one of my notebooks, there’s no ‘backup’, but maybe that just makes me more careful.

I do however ’still’ use eletronic notes.  I use the ToDo list on my mobile phone for when I need reminded to do something by a certain time/date (often!).  And I do still use Google Tasks on occassion.  I am also really trying to use Evernote as so many people rave about, I still though find it too onerous.  Maybe it’ll just click one day and I’ll live it, haven’t got there yet.

A final FYI, I wrote all this on my Moleskin while sitting on the train, with no internet (free) access.  For me a lot of the GTD theories seem to spend to much time planning and not doing!  Just like at school/Uni when I spent more time writing my study plan tha actually studying.  So I’ve nick-named my direct approach as Just Do It (JFDI)!  If you need to do something, write it down on your list, if you need to remember something, write it down and index it – SIMPLE!

Temas desta Postagem :
Google Notebook, um bloco de anotaçõe on-line
http://www.google.com/notebook/?hl=pt-BR
Site para você aprender outros idiomas
http://languageguide.org/

Ouça o podcast no Site Pod Office

Most people mark maps with places they’ve been. Why not have an online map that tracks everywhere you want to go? I like reading travel blogs because I find them inspiring. I like reading about where other people are going, usually on a shoestring budget, and it fuels my own desire to strike out and see new places as well. They give me new ideas of places to go and things to do, and they usually aren’t corporate-funded commercials like the travel magazines I’ve read. The good news is there is a wealth of this travel-oriented information on the web.  Actually, there is so much that I often forget about one as I read about another. Wouldn’t it be nice if there existed a set of tools that allowed me to save this information such that it was well preserved, easily accessible, and intuitive to use?  There is! Google Apps!

It occurred to me today that I could save links and snippets into a Google Notebook. This would give me a way to keep track of the really interesting tidbits I run across on the web. The information will be preserved and accessible to me whenever I want! But even with a well thought out document structure, it could easily become a looooong list of information that just is not intuitive to use. I still need an easily digested system for storing all this stuff.

Google Maps (lightbulb over head)! One map that records all my intended destinations. And each pin on the map will contain within it’s notes a link to a Google notebook with all the photos, articles, podcasts, etc. that I’ve saved over time!!!

Google Apps are free to use. You can either use your existing Google account or create a new one. Just follow either of the links below to get started with that.

Google Notebook
https://www.google.com/notebook

After giving organization some thought, I decided to create a notebook for each Country about which I want to save info. You can obviously use any system you want, but what’s important to note here is that each notebook can be shared individually. Under the shared options for each notebook there is a ‘Publish this notebook’ option that, when activated, generates a link to a static web page representation of all the notebook’s contents. Cool! We’ll use that later.

Now that the notebook for, say, Japan is created and shared, adding content is as easy as copying and pasting from any web page you want.

Google Maps
http://maps.google.com/

Next, open up Google Maps and search for the location of the notebook you just saved. Tokyo, Japan works and Google presents you with a pin on the map and a bubble containing interactive options.

Click on ‘Save to My Maps’. If it’s the first time, select ‘Create a New Map…’.

There are two parts to adding locations to your spiffy new Travel Map.

1. Name the map point and add the link to your notebook. So, for the example, change the title field to ‘Japan’. Then change the Description editor from Plain text to Rich text. Type notebook. Select notebook and click on the link icon in the Rich text editor. That’s where you can finally paste the link to the published Japan notebook. Click ok.
2. Then be sure to click save on the left panel as well to save all changes to your Travel Map!

That is it! You have started building your own interactive world map linked to all kinds of interesting, inspiring, and geo-tagged info.

And my 5th attempt at drawing a perfect circle

The following is an edited version of a wishlist I had been keeping on the side. The main idea is to define what would be, in my mind, the “ultimate social bookmarking system.” Which, obviously, goes way beyond social bookmarking. In a way, I even conceive of it as the ultimate tool for sharing online content. Yes, it’s that ambitious. Will it ever exist? Probably not. Should it exist? I personally think so. But I may be alone in this. Surely, you’ll tell me that I am indeed alone, which is fine. As long as you share your own wishlist items.

The trigger for my posting this is that someone contacted me, asking for what I’d like in a social bookmarking system. I find this person’s move quite remarkable, as a thoughtful strategy. Not only because this person contacted me directly (almost flattering), but because such a request reveals an approach to listening and responding to people’s needs that I find lacking in some software development circles.

This person’s message served as a prompt for my blogging this, but I’ve been meaning to blog this for a while. In fact, my guess is that I created a first version of this wishlist in 2007 after having it on my mind for a while before that. As such, it represents a type of “diachronic” or “longitudinal” view of social bookmarking and the way it works in the broader scheme of social media.

Which also means that I wrote this before I heard about Google Wave. In fact, I’m still unclear about Google Wave and I’ll need to blog about that. Not that I expect Wave to fulfill all the needs I set up for a sharing tool, but I get the impression that Google is finally putting some cards on the table.

The main part of this post is in outline form. I often think through outlines, especially with such a type of notes. I fully realize that it may not be that clear, as a structure, for other people to understand. Some of these bullet points cover a much broader issue than what they look like. But the overall idea might be fairly obvious to grasp, even if it may sound crazy to other people.

I’m posting this to the benefit of anyone who may wish to build the killer app for social media. Of course, it’s just one man’s opinion. But it’s my entitled opinion.

Concepts

What do we share online?

• “Link”
• “Page”
• Identified content
• Text
  • Narrative
  • Contact information
  • Event description
• Contact information
• Event invitation
• Image
• Recording
• Structured content
• Snippet
• Access to semi-private content
• Site’s entry point

Selective sharing

Private

• Archiving
• Cloud access

Individually shared

• “Check this out”
• Access to address book
• Password protection
• Specialization/expertise
• Friendship

Group shared

• Shared interests (SIG)
• Collaboration (task-based)

Shared through network

• Define identity in network
• Semi-public

Public

• Publishing
• Processed
• Reading lists

Notetaking

• Active reading
• Anchoring text
• Ad hoc list of bookmarks
• “Empty URL”
  • Create container/page
  • Personal notes

Todos

• To read
• To blog
• To share
• To update
• Projects
  • GTD
  • Contexts
• Add to calendar (recognized as event)

Outlining/Mindmapping

• Manage lists of links
• Prioritize
• Easily group

Social aspects of sharing

• Gift economy
• Personal interaction
• Trust
• Hype
• Value
• Customized

Cloud computing

• Webware
• “Online disk”
• Without download
• Touch devices
• Edit online

Personal streaming

• Activities through pages
• Logging
• Flesh out personal profile

Tagging

• “Folksonomy”
• Enables non-hierarchical structure
• Semantic fields
• Related tags
• Can include hierarchy
• Tagclouds define concept map

Required Features

Crossplatform, crossbrowser

• Browser-specific tools
• Bookmarklets
• Complete access through cloud

Keyboard shortcuts

• Quick add (to account)
• Vote
• Bookmark all tabs (à la Flock)
• Quick tags

Related pages

Recommended

• Based on social graph
• Based on tags
• Based on content
• Based on popularity
• Pointing to this page

Quickly enter links

• Add in place (while editing)
• Similar to “spell as you type”
• Incremental search
• Add full link (title, URL, text, metadata)

Archiving

• Prevent linkrot
• Prepare for post-processing (offline reading, blogging…)
• Enable bulk processing
• Maintain version history
• Internet Archive

Automatic processing

• Tags
• Summary
• Wordcount
• Reading time
• Language(s)
• Page structure analysis
• Geotagging
• Vote

Thread following

• Blog comments
• Forum comments
• Trackbacks
• Pings

Exporting

All

• Archiving
• Prepare for import
• Maintain hierarchy

Selected

• Tag
• Category
• Recently used
• Shared
• Site homepage
• Blogroll
• Blogs

Formats

• Other services
• HTML
• RSS
• OPML
• Widget

Features

• Comments
• Tags
• Statistics
• Content

Offline processing

• Browser-based
• Device based
• Offline archiving
• Include content
• Synchronization

Microblogging support

• Laconi.ca/Identi.ca
• Twitter
• Ping.fm
• Jaiku

Fixed/Static URL

• Prevent linkrot
• Maintain list for same page
• Short URLs
• Automatically generated
• Expansion on mouseover
• Statistics

Authentication

• Use of resources
• Identify
• Privacy
• Unnecessary for basic processing
• Sticks (no need to login frequently)
• Access to contacts and social graph
• Multiple accounts
  • Personal/professional
  • Contexts
  • Group accounts

• Premium accounts

  • Server space
  • Usage statistics
  • Promotion

• Support

  • OpenID
    • As group login
  • Google Accounts
  • Facebook Connect
  • OAuth

Integration

• Web history
• Notebook
• Blogging platform
• Blog editor
• Microblogging platform
• Logbook
• General purpose content editor
• Toolbar
• URL shortening
• Address book
• Social graph
• Personal profile
• Browser
  • Bookmarks
  • History
  • Autocomplete
• Analytics
• Email
• Search
  • Online
  • Offline

Related Tools

• Diigo
• WebCitation
• Ping.fm
• BackType
• Facebook share
• Blog This
• Link This
• Share this
• Digg
• Plum
• Spurl
• CoComments
• MyBlogLog
• TwtVite
• Twistory
• Windows Live Writer
• Magnolia
• Stumble Upon
• Delicious
• Google Reader
• Yahoo Pipes
• Google Notebook
• Zoho Notebook
• Google Browser Sync
• YouTube
• Flock
• Zotero

Relevant Blogposts

• iPhone Wishlist
• Flock as Blog Editor
• Blogging Tools
• TIU: Spurl
• How Can Google Beat Facebook?

In recent weeks I’ve been reading some stuff about Google and how its’ reach continues to grow. In the past it used to Microsoft who was the baddie, is Google taking over??? I’ve been thinking about this and it’s surprising (worrying?) how much Google knows about me…

• I’ve a Gmail account
• I use Google Calendar
• Unsurprisingly I use the Google Search engine
• Google save my search history
• I’ve used Google Checkout
• I read my RSS withGoogle Reader
• Google Docs has proven to be quite useful
• I’ve flirted with Google Notebook
• I’ve tried Google Bookmarks
• I’m on Google FriendsConnect
• Got a Google Talk account
• Tried out Google Latitude
• Obviously I’ve got an iGoogle page
• Done some stuff on Google Page Creator/Sites
• Got a blog with Google
• Saved my pictures to Google Picasa
• Signed up to Google Analytics
• Used the Google Webmaster tools

So what do you think???  Does Google have too much on me?

I think yes, so I’ve started to do something about it.  Now Google does offer some useful products, some that I might never get rid off, but there’s alternatives to a lot of these.  Here’s what I’ve done so far…

• I’ve deleted my search history and now use Yahoo for searching (without being logged into my Yahoo account)
• I’ve deleted my Google Checkout details
• I now use NewsFox in Firefox for RSS – not as convenient as Reader though
• I’ve moved to Zoho for my documents (and deleted my ThinkFree account)
• Got rid of Google Notebooks & Bookmarks (Firefox extension Xmarks is great)
• I’m no longer on Latitude
• I no longer use iGoogle
• I’ve deleted all my Sites/Page Creator pages (not that there was much there anyway)

There’s some way to go but I’m getting there!

What it does also make me think about is how much other stuff have I signed up for and never use.  I find the web tools useful/interesting but I’m leaving tracks all over the web.  Call me paranoid but I’d like to control better what’s out there, and to do that I need to refine my presence on the web.  It’s going to take some time, and it might not be worth the effort but Big Brother is watching you (and so is his evil twin!).

Jorge Rubio 2.^oB

http://thumbtack.livelabs.com/

Microsoft Live Labs Thumbtacks propone a sus usuarios recopilar datos de diferentes webs de manera sencilla, cómoda y rápida. Es muy similar a Google Notebook, pero desarrollada por Microsoft Live Labs.

La información seleccionada se introducen en entradas (ítems); estas pueden pegarse de dos maneras:

1- Mediante el ya clásico “cortar+pegar”: se ha de hacer doble clic en “new”, copiar el texto y hacer doble clic en “paste”.² y después se hace clic en el botón de “publish” para que pase a ser un ítem.⁵ Otra manera posible es la de utilizar la combinación de teclas para cortar y pegar un fragmento de texto, que es distinta según cada sistema operativo.

2- Mediante un “browser bookmarklet” (buscador de favoritos).⁰ Funciona a la perfección con los buscadores Internet Explorer 7 y Mozilla Firefox 3.0, mientras que con otros como el Safari dará seguramente alguna complicación. Este atajo se añade a la barra de herramientas del buscador de internet, y al pasar el cursor sobre un extracto de texto, simplemente se hace clic en “Collect with Thumbtack”, se selecciona una colección, se añaden etiquetas o tags y pasa a ser una entrada.

Estas entradas se almacenan a modo de carpeta en colecciones, se crean haciendo clic en el botón “MY COLLECTIONS +”.⁸ Las puede hacer para su propio uso privado o para invitar a otros usuarios para que puedan verla e incluso ampliarla, mediante el botón que aparece en la barra superior de la página.⁴ Además se pueden publicar vía RSS o simplemente pegarlas en blogs o páginas web.

Para organizar los elementos/ítems, no hay más que arrastrarlos de una colección a otra. Se pueden ver tanto en lista como de manera más cuadrículada.¹ Si ampliamos un ítem haciendo clic en la ventanita que se encuentra a su derecha para ampliarla y poder editar la entrada, veremos cómo debajo hay tres pestañas que se desdoblan al hacerlas clic, que se corresponden con “Tags” (para etiquetar palabras claves), “Comments” (con el fin de aclarar ciertas cosas para uno mismo o como explicación para aquellos con los que se tiene en común cierta colección) y “Send” (para hacer partícipe a alguien de la colección creada). Para eliminarlos, se hace un clic en algo parecido a la papelera reciclaje, “Deleted Items”.⁹ Si un usuario tiene muchos y desea encontrar uno puede mirar en las “AUTO COLLECTIONS” que son distintas clasificaciones fijadas para llegar a ese ítem: todos los elementos, aquellos que se han importado recientemente y aquellos que se han consultado últimamente.⁷ Para encontrar un ítem por su nombre, existe una barra de búsqueda en la esquina derecha superior.⁶

Los gadgets son, digamos, utilidades que ayudan al usuario a facilitar el uso de esta herramienta que es Thumbtacks, además de interactuar con los objetos de la colección.³ Hay varios gadgets que puedes utilizar según tus necesidades y prioridades:

1- Gadget de direcciones (Address gadget): consigue directamente las direcciones que aparezcan y te las localiza en un mapa del lugar.

2- Gadget de características (Properties gadget): te permite añadir cualquier característica y valor, como por ejemplo el precio, a cada ítem.  Es simplemente una lista para comparar datos a primera vista.

3- Gadget de estadísticas (Plot gadget): mediante los valores y propiedades de los elementos de tus colecciones, te permite elaborar gráficas de barras o histogramas. Cada elemento de estas gráficas tiene además un link que lo une a los ítems de la colección.

4- Gadget de interfaz (Layout gadget): útil para organizar cada entrada, ya sea amontonándolos en el tablero o disponiéndolos en cuadrícula.

Podría verse esta aplicación como algo similar a una red social en la que compartir las distintas cosas interesantes que un individuo haya encontrado en la red.  Personalmente, lo veo más útil sobre todo para compartir noticias, para recopilar información de un viaje en grupo, para ayudar a alguien encontrado trabajo o piso, etcétera. Es una plataforma que aún debe crecer ya que es su primera versión, se tienen que crear más gadgets, nuevas interfaces para que sea más atractivo para los usuarios y versiones en más idiomas (actualmente sólo existe su versión inglesa). Todo el sistema es parecido a un tablero sobre el que pinchar notas.

เมื่อพูดถึง การค้นหาข้อมูล เราคงนึกถึง Google แต่ปัจจุบัน Google เข้ามามีอิทธิพลในชีวิตประจำวันมากขึ้น โดยที่บางคนอาจยังไม่รู้ตัว เรามาดูกันว่า Google เข้ามาในชีวิตประจำวันของเราอย่างไรบ้าง

Google Calendar (http://www.google.com/calendar)
- จัดการตารางเวลา การนัดหมายต่างๆ สามารถแชร์ตารางเวลากับเพื่อนๆ ได้
- สามารถกำหนดให้โปรแกรมคอยเตือน เมื่อถึงเวลาที่ต้องการ
- ประยุกต์ใช้เป็นนาฬิกาสำหรับคอยเตือนเหตุการณ์ต่างๆใช้เป็นนาฬิกาปลุก
- สามารถกำหนดการเตือนผ่าน SMS

iGoogle (http://www.igoogle.com)
- รวบรวมบริการต่างๆ ของ Google มาไว้ในหน้าเดียวกัน เสมือนเป็นโฮมเพจส้วนตัว
- ใช้ค้นหาข้อมูลต่างๆ
- ตรวจสอบพยากรณ์อากาศ
- อ่านข่าวที่สนใจ
- บันทึกโน้ตต่างๆ

GoogleDocs (http://docs.google.com)
- สร้างเอกสารที่จำเป็นต่างๆ สามารถเก็บไว้ในอินเทอร์เน็ต ที่เข้าถึงได้ทุกที่ ไม่ต้องกลัวหาย
- สามารถพรีเซนต์งานต่างๆ โดยไม่จำเป็นต้องใช้โน้ตบุ๊กส่วนตัว
-ใช้เก็บเอกสารต่างๆ รวมไปถึงแชร์เอกสารต่างๆ กับเพื่อนๆ

Google Notebook (http://www.google.com/notebook)
- บันทึกโน้ตต่างๆ ที่ต้องการ

Gmail (http://mail.google.com)
- รับ ส่งอีเมลต่างๆ
- ใช้เป็นไดรฟ์เก็บข้อมูลในอินเทอร์เน็ต

Google Maps (http://maps.google.com)
- ใช้ค้นหาสถานที่ต่างๆ ที่เราต้องการ และตรวจสอบเส้นทางว่า จะไปที่นั้นๆ อย่างไร
- สามารถวิวดูแบบแผนที่ หรือภาพถ่ายดาวเทียมได้
- ถ้าหาสถานที่ในไทย ให้ไปที่ http://maps.google.co.th

Google Earth (http://earth.google.com)
- โปรแกรมที่จะพาคุณไปยังสถานที่ต่างๆ ทั่วโลก ทั้งภาพที่ได้เป็นภาพถ่ายจากดาวเทียม ที่ถ่ายเอาไว้ในอดีต แผนที่ ภูมิประเทศ อาคาร 3 มิติ สถานที่สำคัญๆ ต่างๆ
- สำรวจพื้นผิวในมหาสมุทร จากผู้เชี่ยวชาญทางน้ำ
- สำรวจดาวอังคาร

Google Reader (http://www.google.com/reader)
- อ่านบริการข่าว RSS อย่างรวดเร็ว ไม่ต้องเสียเวลา เข้าไปในเว็บหลายๆ เว็บ

YouTube (http://www.youtube.com)
- ดูคลิปวิดีโอสารพัดต่างๆ ไม่ว่าจะเป็น แอนิเมชันที่ไม่ได้ดู มิวสิกวิดีโอ เทรนนิ่งต่างๆ ฯลฯ

Picasa (http://picasaweb.google.com)
- โปรแกรมจัดการภาพ รูปต่างๆ ที่ดาวน์โหลดได้ฟรี สามารถอัปโหลดเพื่อแชร์ให้เพื่อนๆ ผ่านอินเทอร์เน็ตได้

Blogger (http://www.blogger.com)
- ใช้สำหรับสร้างบล็อกส่วนตัว ที่ง่าย และรวดเร็ว

Orkut (http://www.orkut.com)
- เว็บไซต์ Social Networking แบบ Hi5 หรือ Facebook

Mobile Google
- ใช้งาน Google ผ่านทางโทรศัพท์มือถือ (http://m.google.com)

Since Google announced that it was dropping support for it’s Notebook, I’ve been on the lookout for something new to take it’s place. My wants are simple: I want to be able to save and share websites. That’s it. I want one that will keep my attention longer than ten minutes, too.

I’ve been playing with Diigo today to see if we’re compatable. I’ve tried Evernote, Zoho Notebook, and even Ubernote, but none of them have clung onto me. Diigo seemed different than the others, in that it had more bells and whistles. Initially, I was turned off by Diigo for feature overload — it looked really good, but was it user friendly? After a full day’s worth of playing around, I can answer that question honestly: yes it is!

(Incidentally, I’m not picking a web app based on anything other than this list from Mashable.)

So far, Diigo’s been pretty good for me. It comes with a toolbar that has the options of bookmarking the site (just like other social bookmarking tools out there), highlighting text, or adding comments to share with other Diigo users. The greatest feature would have to be the floating sticky notes, which are your own personal notes about the page. These are all beneficial tools for me — I don’t need a notebook for school or business notes, just for personal browsing.

Diigo List feature is a lot like Delicious‘ bundled bookmarks, though its a bit more expansive than that. Where Diigo differs from other social bookmarking sites is the Group feature — get together with other Diigo members and share your bookmarks in a Group — much like a Ning social network. Group members can add bookmarks, comments, and even “vote up” links Digg-style.

I don’t intend to leave Delicious for Diigo, because I see the advantages of both. But Diigo is more than just a social bookmarking tool, it’s a social network as well!

If you want to add me as a friend on Diigo, find me here.

(Also — another good note-taking site for students is Notely — its a very simple but expansive school planner and notebook for all students. On the business end, I’d recommend Springnote, which has a snazzy iPhone App.)

I’ve been keeping various notes on my Sageclaw project using Google Notebook. Google Notebook is exactly that: a space that Google provides for taking and organizing notes.

Well, I published that Sageclaw notebook right here. Anyone can now follow along with my day to day progress.

I’ll also provide a link somewhere on the side bar over there. —>

Mit Notizen gibt es irgendwie immer nur Probleme. Entweder man hat eine heillose Zettelsammlung, ein undurchschaubares und mit obsoleten Einträgen kontaminiertes Büchlein oder eine digitale Lösung.

Und gerade bei den digitalen Lösungen gibt es noch mehr Möglichkeiten, als einfach nur mit Papier und Stift:
Meine ersten Kontakte zu online Notizverwaltungen ist das mittlerweile eingestellte Google-Notebook gewesen. Doch alleine, weil ich schon mal etwas privatere Notizen anlege, will ich nicht unbedingt meine Daten bei Google wissen. Es reicht, dass ich meinen Kalender und meinen Feedreader bei der Datenkrake habe.

Andere Leute schwören auf Evernote, das neben dem Webinterface auch Anwendungen für Windows, OSX und das iPhone bietet. Doch gerade diese Elefanten-Applikation ist mir etwas zu schwerfällig, da sie ebenfalls Bilder, Links, Formatierungen etc. pp mitzuspeichern scheint. Außerdem stört mich der mangelnde Linux-Client (:

Heute erfahre ich über Golem von Piconote, das recht minimalistisch das anlegen und Verwalten von Notizen erlaubt. Die Einträge werden absteigend chronologisch Angezeigt, unterstützen Notiz-Titel und den Inhalt selber und wandeln URLs automatisch in Links um. Zum Anmelden reicht Benutzername und Passwort, die eMail kann man optional später eintragen. Neben der Mobil-Unterstützung für Telefone bietet Piconote eine Integration an Twitter, sodass man über den Microblogging-Dienst notizen an Piconote verschicken kann.
Noch ist das Programm recht jung und zeigt sich an einigen Stellen noch im Entwicklungsstadium (englische und polnische Texte vermischen in der GUI), doch wirkt schon mal sehr überzeugend durch seine sehr einfache Ausrichtung! Aber auch hier fehlt mir der Linux-Client, lediglich eine Windows-Exe wird dem Benutzer hier angeboten.

Meine aktuell aber immer noch präferierte Lösung ist so simpel, dass sie wieder genial UND praktikabel ist: Eine simple Text-Datei in meinem Dropbox-Verzeichnis, die ich überall über das Webinterface einsehen kann und simpel mit jedem Text-Editor (vornehmlich vim) bearbeiten kann.

Bei kurzfristigen Notizen wie Links, kleine To-Dos oder sonstiges, was noch Zeitnah verarbeitet werden muss oder soll, verwende ich das Panel-Applet Tomboy. Lediglich für mittelfristige To-Do-Listen (Aufgaben für die nächsten 1-2 Tage) habe ich noch Papier und Stift.

Wie schaut das bei euch? Wie organisiert ihr eure Notizen?

A crackling fire, hot soup, Lord of the Rings, and you.

First, a Comic-con coming to Chicago in 2010? That ought to make up for the all the fun with Blago and Burris. Makes it being worth two hours away. Now if we can just bring Worldcon to Chicago, life would be ducky.

Bummer. Google Notebook is no longer in development, which means that if you’ve been thinking about using it, but haven’t gotten around to the site, it won’t let you, since they aren’t taking on new users. Luckily, those who do use it, like me, will still be able to use the service. We won’t just get new updates or anything. Sad.

Hey, Inanimate Alice fans! The British Council is looking into using the game as a vehicle for teaching English. To help boost this on, they’re asking people to play the game and rate how good it is. The more high ratings they get, the likelier the chance that we get new episodes. Go vote!

Writer’s Digest has a good article: "10 Disciplines for Fiction Writers". I found a good motivational tool these past couple of weeks.

And for fun:

I didn’t know that Mur Lafferty was a They Might Be Giants fan. She’s taken to writing flash stories for each of the tidbits in the "Fingertips" song from the TMBG album "Apollo 18". Right now, I’m banging my head, thinking, "Why didn’t I think of that." Of course, the last time I wrote a story based on a song, it became much longer than a flash…

And what’s Garfield minus Garfield? Actually, pretty hilarious, and slightly disturbing. Check it out!

A list of installed Firefox Add-ons

One of the great things about Firefox and its community of developers is the sheer number of additional applications you can add which extend Firefox’s features (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox). You can also pick and choose those which suit your needs best. So to give you an idea, here’s the current round up of the Add-ons I use and think are either cool and/or useful or essential, as well as one or two worth a mention but I don’t use. I’m also assuming that you are using the most recent version of Firefox (3.0.6 at time of writing)

Abduction

This rather cool tool allows you to take a snapshot image of webpages, or parts of a web page using its cropping feature, and save these as a JPEG or PNG image. I often find this useful for saving things such as maps.

British English Dictionary

If you have not already found it, Firefox gives you the option to spell check anything you type or write within the Firefox web browser, underlining any words its does not know with a dotted red line which you can then right click to see spelling options (Tools>Options>Advanced>Browsing: “Check my spelling as I type”). When you installed Firefox it probably installed by default with the English US language pack. This add-on is the British English Language pack for Firefox.

ColorfulTabs

ColorfulTabs is one of those cool add-ons which are more obvious and helps with the browsing experience, particularly if you keep lots of tabs open at the same time. Quite simply it colours each tab you open differently, making it just that little bit easier to find. You can also customise ColorfulTabs to use the colour schemes that you prefer and if you want change the background colour of tab bar itself.

Viewing images using Cooliris

Cooliris

This was formly known as Piclens, but its the same application by the same company, and to my mind its one of the best applications you can add to Firefox. Browsing images just becme much quicker and cooler. Quite simply if you browse lots of images or an album (eg Youtube, Flickr, Facebook, etc) or want to search for images, Cooliris puts these onto an immersive 3D wall for you which you can scroll and take a virtual walk down.

Diigo Bookmarks and Web Annotation

Have you ever come across web pages and wanted to highlight a few words or sections or add a sticky note to the page to remind you about something on it? Or share web pages with others? Well you can with Diigo. You’ll need open a Diigo account – http://www.diigo.com (its free!), but this then opens up a whole new world of being able to share web resources with others (if you want to), finding similar pages or even using as a research tool which you can collaborate with others over. Eg. in a recent project I was working on we would bookmark relevant articles/pages using Diigo and be able to add notes so that when other members of the team found them, they also had our notes. We were using this for an academic project so think what you can do if it was encouraged for use in school work.

Ebay Sidebar for Firefox

If you’re an Ebay user then you’ll probably like this one. It’s developed by Ebay and uses a secure connection with your account to open up a side bar, on your browser, which shows you the current status of all the items you are watching and/or bidding on, without having to open up Ebay in a new browser window.

Foxmarks Bookmark Synchroniser

This is a very useful add-on if you work from several different machines or even if you are likely to go away and want to access your favourite bookmarks from aanother machine, be it at friends or internet cafe. This nifty add-on allows you upload your bookmark list to a central server and then access this from anywhere you like. You’ll need a Foxmarks account (http://www.foxmarks.com/), but your account is private and password protected so only you can see or access your bookmarks. What’s more Foxmarks keeps your bookmarks synchronised with any machine you have the add-on installed. So if you are working from several machines (eg work and home) any bookmarks you add on say your machine at work, will also be available to you at home.

Foxmarks also offers to sychronise your saved password list (if you use this on Firefox), but you can switch this off and I must admit I’m very reluctant to use any such service. Any security can be breached and while my bookmarks are no big secret, somebody else having access to my passwords could be disaster.

Google Gears

For many this is not an essential bit of kit, and for me this is a recent install I am trialling as it offers potentially more powerful web applications by (and I’m cribbing the Google Gears site here)… letting web applications interact naturally with your desktop, allowing web applications to store data on your machine in a fully-searchable database and run JavaScript in the background to improve performance.

In this instance I’ve installed Google Gears to allow a web based task management system “Remember the Milk” (RTM) to be able to work offline.

Google Notebook

Very useful extension that lets you copy and paste any snippits or images from web pages (notes) and automatically records the URL of the web page you took it from so you can easily return to the page later. Very simple and very useful.

IE Tab

Almost an essential unforutnately, but not every website renders or works in Firefox. IE Tab allows you view any web page you want as though its in Internet Explorer without having to open up IE itself.

PDF Download

PDF Download is a neat add-on that allows you to choose how you view and download any PDF files on the web, letting you view them in an HTML window or downloading them and opening them with your default PDF file viewer.

Web of Trust

Web of Trust (WOT) installs and provides a new icon in your tool bar alerting you to the security of the web site you are visiting, rated by others in the WOT community on Trustworthiness, Vendor Reliability, Privacy and Child Friendliness. You’ll also get an interim warning page which alerts you to when you are about to visit any pages pregarded as being particularly untrustworthy.

Zotero

Zotero allows you to create your own reference library, built up from the web and files on your own machine. It is one of those brilliant tools for when you are carrying out any sort of research using the net or just collating information for later use. But Zotero does not make the information shareable, so if you prefer workign with others and sharing information you’ll probably prefer Diigo, but Zotero does allow you add normal word documents and pdf files to your Zotero reference library.

Honourable mentions:-

Fission

More what one would call ‘eye candy’ for Firefox but Fission marries together in Firefox the download progress bar with the address bar, so that the address bar from then on shows the download progress of the web page as well as the URL of the page.  Although I found this a neat feature I also found that some internet pages I regularly use, namely Google Calendar, lost some of their functionality. With Google Calendar for instance I found I was no longer able to create a new appointement by simply clicking into the day I wanted it. So unfortunately Fission got uninstalled, but if I remember, I’ll check it out again at a later point to see if it I can use it without it affecting my more essential web applications.

… …………… Gentle Readers, Gentils Lecteurs … ……………

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As you already know, I’m not an addict of any kind of drugs or other psychotrops with the notable exception of the coffee. Drinking couple of liters of this divine beverage is an habit for years and I share this with poeple like Voltaire and Honoré de Balzac (This is almost the only thing I share with these gentlemen).

By the way, I would like to make a remarks about the coffee, the United States of America and the reforms that I modestly propose to Mr. Barack Hussein Obama, the POTUS.

1. The liquid called “coffee” in U.S.A. is an undrinkable fluid and naming it “coffee” is near to a bogus and fake representation of the facts. I expect the new President will finally go ahead and introduce to his fellow compatriots in a better cooking habits starting by coffee. (Somemes it’s even impossible to get one cup of this so-called coffee in a “Café” !)
2. The second reform I pretend to introduce is the reform of the Weights & Measurements from the archaic system still in use ONLY in U.S.A. to the International System, a.k.a Metric System (invented in France as the first example of Common Creative Licence in the history). Want to show us you’re open to the others and the era of unilateralism is over? Go ahead with this reform. BTW: in Kg, the big fat will appear less fat since the number is lower… (Don’t send me flowers for this: I’m only driven by philanthropy…). Also, in California, is it possible to show the road exit with a number equal to the Km not by a name?
3. And finally, the last but not the least, the abolition of the dead penalty. I would like to say loud and clear that in a Nation pretending to be a “Christian Republic” , the usage of the dead penalty show only that Nation is bunch of bigots and tartuffes since the Gospel is against the Law of Talion. “Go and learn what it means:” It is mercy that I want, not sacrifice. “  Matthiew 9, 9-13

Subject & Themes / Sujet & Thèmes
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We learned the last January the 14th 2009, the shutdown of some Google products and services including the Google Notebook…

Stopping development on Google Notebook

Notebook: pétition et groupe facebook

Cloud Computing ou attrape-nigauds? le cas Google Notebook

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I proudly announce that I’m either an emulator of Humphrey Bogart, The Greatest Reporter in The Whole World, either one of the most raven lunatic of the World Wide Web! (almost).

THAT'S THE POWER OF THE WEB BABY!

I just found the Google Notebook resurrected in the “My Favorite” option of the Google Toolbar. Launching this option (because it’s the 14 Feb, I’m alone and a bit idle…)

I found the Notebook in the Favorite’s management window. Here the screen captures:
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My valuable Readers, I would like to know from you, if you have the same feature (Toolbar favorite & Notebook) or it’s a bug affecting my Google account , my brain or both. Comments are free and, as far as I know, cannot broke your computer, your brain or this blog. Feel free to speak up.

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Your Comment… / Votre Commentaire…

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[qeFr] [geFr] [χeFr]

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[{p ٧ ¬p}W{p ۸ ¬p}] ٧ significare aut crepare ٧ σημασία ἤ θόρυβος …

Someone asked me today if used Firefox. “Yes, I said”. After a pause they said “What are all those icons where the site address goes”. I thought for a moment and replied “waypoints”. After a slight nod of acceptance came “what do they do?”.

My waypoints – Delicious, Diigo, Zotero (still scares me), zemanta (awesome tool), Cooliris, Google Notebook – are all things I use to recognise where I’ve been, what I’ve seen and learned. They do add to productivity – but I am so used to using them that I almost forget they are there and just how damn useful my browser is. Add ons come and go, but these have been with me for a while now. They make the whole process of telecommuting, working anywhere so easy that I wonder how people who have IE, Word and Email cope with the ebb and flow of communication that passes by them daily. It all starts and ends with meta data. The ability to leverage poweful tools, from simple icons, and create a set of way points that help me navigate the stuff that I’m interested in makes Firefox a weapon of mass construction (sic). Not only do I explore the metaverse, but the tools make it easy to drop pixel pins all over it.

Do I prefer to use online tools? No. I just want to use powerful tools. I can’t do any of this in Word and Outlook, so don’t – unless I have to. A decade ago, I had Outlook open all day, now I have to remember to check Groupwise. All this comes with me as I wander around with my iPhone (which as a phone is not that great). I no longer carry my laptop around with me. I’ve also noticed that students on campus also don’t. I half expected that students would all have laptops or netbooks – given the free wifi. But no, they prefer their phone and then drop into a ‘lab’ when they need to use a PC. I think at times, these things creep up on us. We don’t make big jumps at all, but there is a constant upgrade at work. It is impossible to keep up, to know all that is there, or all that is possible anymore – and I am not sure we need to. Powering your browser allows you to do more. Talking Web2.0 to someone on stock IE6 is difficult. Developing learning systems using browser power-ups is something I am beginning to think is like an exoskeleton. In the brief conversation today, it was impossible to put this into a simple answer other than “they make things better”.

Zoho Notebook doesn’t just address boredom, its app is actually more “inspired.” Click for yourself. Now, only three steps to migrate those notes from Google Notebook to Zoho Notebook:

1. Install the new Zoho Notebook plugin and restart your browser
2. Login to Zoho and Google Notebook
3. Go to this URL, chrome://zoho-notebook/content/g2z.html, and click on Start

• A Plane Crashed into the Hudson River (Link)
• Google Shut Down a Bunch of Services. (Link)
• Season 4 of Battlestar Galactica Aired on Sky 1 (Link)
• Top Windows 7 Tips and Tricks (Link)
• “Senator Obama” Officially Became “President Obama” (Link)
• Twitter Overtakes Digg in Marketshare (Link)
• Sony has Huge Financial Problems (Link)

Since Google Notebook went out of development earlier this year I’ve made the migration over to EverNote. It has many cool features one of the coolest being the ability to upload images and have EverNote run OCR to index the content of the image.  The mobile phone EverNote applications allow a phone’s camera to be used to take a snapshot image and to upload it to EverNote over a 3G connection.  Unfortunately the Windows desktop application has no functionality for capturing images in the same way through a web camera and with the proliferation of netbooks I feel that this is a feature that is sadly missing – well for me anyway.   So after a bit of research I embarked on a quick weekend VB.Net project to put together a little application that could do this – and so I created SnapIT.

SnapIT Main Screen

SnapIT allows you to take a photo with an attached or built in camera (by pressing the “Capture Image” button) and save it (by pressing the “Store Image” button) to a specified folder as a JPEG with a file name based on the time at which it was taken.  It also allows you to send the image off to an EverNote database with options to specify which notebook it gets sent to (it will of course default to the default notebook), a title and tags (separated by commas).  Where the image ends up is determined by the checkbox options that have been selected (next to the “Store Image” button).

Settings window

It’s a standalone executable and stores a few settings in an INI file it creates in the same folder.  When you first use it (assuming you want to save images or send them to EverNote) you will need to set a few file/folder paths.  This can be done from File > Settings.  You need to set a folder to store images in, the location of ENScript.exe (used to send the image to the database) and the location of the EverNote database file to which images should be sent.

This is just something I threw together for my own use and given that I wrote it in just a day or so it really hasn’t gone through much testing, so please keep that in mind when using it.  That being said if you find a bug then add a comment to this blog post and if I can reproduce it I may just find the time to fix it and post a new version.

• Download SnapIT.

Nu cred ca este cineva care sa nu-si smulga parul din cap pentru ca nu a facut backup, pana chiar si la o mica chestie. Ca multi altii si eu am pierdut multe, dintr-o simpla formatare facuta in graba sau intr-un exces de entuziasm cauzat de vreun nou sistem de operare furnizat de microshit. Dupa ce in urma cu cateva luni am pierdut cam 2 ani de munca (recuperati din fericire in cele din urma… dar nu in totalitate, ci cam 70%) si cateva mii de poze, m-am gandit serios la alternative de backup.

Am facut niste cautari serioase si am gasit cateva chestii interesante chiar la Google. In primul rand:

Google Notebook – aparent e o banalitate… dar unde alt undeva poti stoca fisiere text, retete, bancuri, liste cu filme vazute, mini todo-uri ale proiectelor samd, daca nu chiar aici si chiar cu contul tau de gmail?

Google Calendar – pentru cei care folosesc TODO’s dar si pentru cei care nu au folosit in viata lor, dar si-au impus o organizare mai buna in viata lor dezorganizata. Cel mai important aspect este ca primesti SMS-uri de la Google cu ce trebuie sa faci la ora cutare! Acum poti primi SMS inainte cu 1h sa pleci la munca/facultate/liceu/etc. Si cum romanul e al dracului de inventiv, de ce sa nu faci share la calendarul tau cu anumiti prieteni, si sa trimiti SMS-uri gratis, sub forma de task-uri?:D

GSpace – oficial, cei care au facut acest add-on pentru Mozilla Firefox nu au nicio treaba cu cei de la Google. Ca sa fiu succint: prin intermediul acestui add-on te poti folosi de cei +7GB pe care ti-i ofera Gmail pentru a-ti stoca muzica, pozele, etc. Un alt avantaj este ca poti downloada fisierele uploadate prin intermediul Gspace, chiar din contul de Gmail pentru ca aceste fisiere sunt trimise ca email-uri. Singura problema pe care am intampinat-o a fost viteza de upload, cu care sper sa nu aveti prea mari probleme… dar chiar si asa, cine iti mai da GRATIS pe net acum +7GB ?!

P.S. in mod clar am renuntat la Gspace dat fiind uploadul si mi-am cumparat aceasta jucarie in varianta de 250GB 160RON si face toti banii (si ca sa fiu sigur ca microshit nu’si bate joc de mine si imi sterge ceva chiar si de pe hardul asta pe care il folosesc ca backup, ii scot alimentarea cat timp nu am nevoie de el)

Oggi è uscito il nuovo Firefox versione 3.5, il più veloce,  almeno secondo quanto scrivono nel sito, con il supporto all’HTML 5 che utilizza come codec audio e video i liberi Ogg Vorbis e Ogg Theora.

L’installazione però disabilità la comodissima estensione Google Notebook (in italiano Blocco Note). Questo perché (sembra) che non sia più sviluppata da Google e non è stato aggiornato il file di configurazione.

Il modo per risolvere questo problema in Windows, come descritto qui, consta in questi semplici passi (per Linux aggiornerò il post in seguito):

• Salvare l’esensione: tasto destro e salva con nome;
• Scaricate 7-zip ed installatelo;
• Tasto destro sull’estensione scaricata e apritela con 7-zip;
• Aprite, sempre con il tasto destro, il file install.rdf;
• Cercate la stringa “3.0.x” e sostituitela con “3.5.x”
• Salvare;
• Trascinare l’estensione su Firefox e verrà installata;
• Usare il Blocco Note.