Archive for the 'tools' Category

tumblr: The Blue and Brown Crumpled Balls of Papers

You may or may not know of The Blue and Brown Crumpled Balls of Papers, an aggregate of junk from RSS feeds, and/or any other item of interest one might find at random. I only suggest this out of hope that you might find it somewhat stimulating in your quest to ward ‘the boredom’ off.

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this is powered entirely by ‘tumblr‘, one of the easiest and (just recently updated) slick-looking tumble-log interfaces I’ve come across. Not only will it import any feeds from your Twitter, or blog, it also works seamlessly with Google Reader’s Shared Items (see the post on Google Reader if you missed it).

This is an easy way to keep track of items of interest, and share them in a larger space. It’s also a great ‘lazy blogger’ tool. Do you have friends (or family) who send you endless ‘FWD:’ emails? Random pictures or embedded youtube clips on your myspace? Instead of putting them in your ‘almost spam’ folder, try recommending a tumble-log instead. I’m fairly sure tumblr is a perfect tool for them, free, easy, and it makes your junk look half-presentable.

Browsers, and the Firefox ‘Quick Search’

If you are still using Internet Explorer, please stop.

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Download Firefox or please check out a number of alternative browsers, a second favourite of mine is Opera.

There are pros and cons to any browser. Firefox is infinitely customizable as there are always new developments for its third-party plugins. Unfortunately, this is also its downfall. In order to get the best experience from Firefox, every new install of it needs countless downloads to get to that specific functionality that you are used to. For a work computer, my mom’s computer or any other that is not used (almost) exclusively by me, I would recommend Opera instead, as it has some advanced functionality pre-installed.

However, for Firefox in particular, let’s talk about a little-known, and entirely built-in function called “Quick Search”.

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Quicksilver Introduction

The more I read and learn about this application the more and more I fall madly in love with it.

If you are a Mac user, and find the built in Spotlight functionality useful, you might want to consider the similar, yet infinitely more powerful application Quicksilver. Not only is it able to find, move and get deep inside items and applications by proxy (without ever having opening that item or application) it also looks a lot prettier!

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Quicksilver is not for the light at heart. Your grandmother or mother is not going to be using this in its advanced forms. The concept of this app is that it makes it possible to do away with the ‘folder’ hierarchy of data management. Think of it as Google’ing your entire life (at first).

Continue reading ‘Quicksilver Introduction’