Stepcase Lifehack » Technology

Searching for a Shared Virtual Workspace?

Clemens Rettich — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 13:00:57 +0000

In my coaching practice, I am increasingly looking for ways to work with my clients on shared documents and projects online. Pretty simple right? You’d think so. I went to the first two places that I knew offered some or all of these services: Google & Microsoft. Big disappointment.

Review: Xobni Extends Outlook’s View, But at a Cost

Dustin Wax — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:00:00 +0000

Outlook is a well-established presence on the business desktop, providing millions with their email, calendar, contacts, and tasks. It’s such an institution, in fact, that when Microsoft radically revamped the Office suite’s interface in 2007, it left Outlook largely unchanged.

Although it’s big and sluggish, there’s no denying that Outlook does what it’s supposed to do. Not quickly or with style, but consistently and effectively nonetheless. The thing is, though, that we have moved beyond just email as our major form of business communication. In the increasingly real-time and social world, a big ol’ email client seems a little… old-fashioned.

Xobni is an attempt to bring Outlook into sync with the socially-networked world. Available in a free and paid “Plus” versions (the paid version offers advanced search capabilities and calendar functions), Xobni adds a new pane to your Outlook window packed with information about the sender of whatever email you’re currently viewing or the contact you’ve selected.

Working with Xobni

The image to the right is what Xobni looks like on my system. I’ve selected one of my own emails from the “Sent Mail” folder and obscured some of my personal information, of course.

At the top is a “business card” view with my phone numbers and email addresses, as well as my title and the company I work for. Below that is a graph of how many emails I’ve sent and received to and from this contact (which is me, which may be why the numbers are odd), but that’s just the default – the five buttons above that chart allow me to select different functions. If I click the orange button, I get actions I can perform relating to the contact – make an appointment or send an email, in this case. The other three buttons open the contact’s LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter profile. (You can pick and choose several social network functions – other options that I did not choose are buttons for Skype and Hoovers company search.)

LinkedIn gives you their location, current company and title, and number of connections, plus a link to their full profile.
Facebook gives you your contact’s “Wall” and a link to their profile.
Twitter gives you your contact’s status updates, plus buttons to view their profile and follow them – you an also post updates through Xobni, though it’s far from a replacement for a full-featured Twitter client.

Basically, the top of the Xobni window is devoted to information about your contact. The next part is about your relationship with that contact. The “Network” part is the most mysterious to me; according to their website, Xobni analyzes the “From:”, “To:”, and “CC:” fields of incoming emails to determine who among your contacts the sender also has some connection to. For instance, if I have the CEO and the CFO of a company in my address book, and I get an email from the CFO that’s CC’ed to the CEO, Xobni knows that the two are connected.

“Conversations” condenses all my previous exchanges with that contact into threaded discussions. Click on a discussion and you can read the messages in the thread, see who was involved in the conversation, and pull out any files exchanged. (You can also hover the pointer over a discussion and a pop-up will preview the first few messages in the thread.) A slider at the top allows you to move from the first line or two of each message to full messages. Click a message in the thread and the message itself opens in the Xobni bar, with buttons to reply or forward, or to open in an Outlook window.

Finally, “Files Exchanged” is what it sounds like – a list of every attachment the contact has ever sent you or that you’ve sent to them.

At the very top of the Xobni window is the search bar, allowing you to search both contacts and email messages. The results are broken into 5 categories: People (contacts with your search term in their name, company name, email address, etc.), Messages (any email with your search term in it), Files Exchanged (any attachment with your search term in the filename), Appointments (any appointment that includes your search term; this is technically a “Plus” feature – clicking an appointment returned in search in the free version will open an upgrade pitch), and Tasks (again, any task with your search term in it).

Verdict: Is Xobni useful?

Xobni helps uncover a great deal of information, most but not all of which is particularly useful. I can’t imagine what use it would be to know that a particular contact tends to email me in the afternoon more than the morning, but it’s kind of interesting to look at. The social networking features are the most useful part, I think – already I’ve discovered profiles for and added on LinkedIn and Twitter a client that I’ve just started working with.

Much of the usefulness of Xobni is hampered by the fact that, like Outlook itself, it’s fairly slow and resource-intensive. For example, it took nearly a minute hovering my mouse over a discussion with 24 messages in it for the pop-up to populate with message previews! Searching takes significantly longer than Google Desktop’s Outlook plugin – and even longer than searching the whole desktop from the Google Desktop sidebar.

Now, that could have just been my PC – it’s a few years old, with a 2.4 GHz Athlon x64, a gigabyte of memory, and Windows XP with Office 2007. Hardly a speed demon! But a search for “Xobni” on Twitter reveals that I’m hardly alone in finding Xobni too slow. Here’s a sample of messages just from the last couple of hours:

“all xobni did for me was sloooooow down outlook. didn’t keep it long.”
“installed xobni… again… we will see if my laptop can handle it this time”
“I had xobni. it’s heavy, and not really effective or accurate. had many issues with that.”
“Xobni is a Really good product but occasionally it stalls outlook for a while.”
“my biggest problem comes when I try to read the conversation between some of my contacts with xobni.”

To be fair, there are positive mentions, too, like this one from an obviously pleased user:

“I’ve been using Xobni since around Feb. 2009. Kind of hooked on it. “

(Incidentally, the Xobni team is quite active on Twitter; comments about Xobni are often replied to by @xobni within minutes!)

Xobni creates its own index of your email, so it definitely needs a lot of resources. It is possible that it’s not Xobni’s fault that it tends to be slow – perhaps Outlook, as big and ponderous as it is, just isn’t a good platform for third-party applications – but it is Xobni’s problem. While it provides some useful information and functionality, especially related to social networking, none of the information it provides is worth waiting for, especially if I can get the same information quicker just by Googling it.

People with older machines — or lower-end new machines — just aren’t going to get much out of Xobni. If you have a more powerful computer, though, Xobni might well be worthwhile. Fast searching, threaded discussions, and social networking interface all make Xobni a useful product, provided you don’t spend time waiting for it to respond.

Dustin M. Wax is a freelance writer and project manager at Stepcase Lifehack. He is also the creator of The Writer's Technology Companion, a site devoted to the tools of the writing trade. When he's not writing, he teaches anthropology and gender studies in Las Vegas, NV. He is the author of Don't Be Stupid: A Guide to Learning, Studying, and Succeeding at College.

Follow him on Twitter: @dwax.

Share This

Review: aNobii for iPhone

Leon Ho — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:00:09 +0000

aNobii.com is a cataloging and social networking website for booklovers. On aNobii you can catalog your book collection on a beautiful wooden shelf and meet people with similar reading tastes. aNobii has an international following with information on over 10 million books, including 200,000 book reviews spanning 15 languages.

aNobii has just released an iphone app, and we’ve had a chance to try it out. The bottom line: this is the best iPhone app for booklovers we’ve seen so far.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the features that set aNobii apart:

Barcode Scanning

The barcode scanning feature is a major selling point. Rather than starting from scratch with their own system, aNobii has partnered with Barcode Monster, a startup that focuses on software that enables ordinary webcams to scan barcodes.

The interface is intuitive. Click on the “Scan” button and you’ll go into camera mode, with a semi-transparent hint that helps you fit the barcode into the right spot. You don’t have to press any button; the app starts scanning automatically when your hand is steady (using iPhone’s accelerometer to detect movements), and stops when it recognizes a barcode. On our first try it took about 5 seconds. We quickly got the hang of it, though, and soon were averaging scans in about a second.

One thing to note is that when it scans, it keeps making the standard shutter sound. aNobii’s explanation is that Apple does not allow real-time processing of video recording at the moment, so they have to resort to taking still pictures rapidly instead. If you are scanning a bunch of books, the shutter sound can get annoying. You can turn it off by muting your iPhone.

Another caveat is that barcode scanning is only available to 3Gs users, probably because earlier models lack auto-focus. For those with a 3G or 2G phone, there’s a lite version that has the same features except barcode scanning.

After a barcode is recognized, the cover and the title appears. Click on the cover to see the details of the book.

Search

You can search for a book by entering the title, the ISBN, or by scanning its barcode. We’ve tried a dozen English titles from our office and aNobii has information for all of them.

Book info

For each book, you can see reviews, basic details, and which online bookstores are selling it. Not every book we’ve tried had as many reviews as we would like, though. It would be more convenient if there are links to reviews from other websites as well.

Wish List

You can make a wish-list of books you want to read. This is a helpful reminder next time you visit a bookstore. This feature is simple and gets the job done.

Shelf

Using your iPhone as a barcode scanner, you can build your collection quite quickly. While the wooden shelf looks very nice, there seems to be little need to have your collection in your pocket. On the other hand, your mobile shelf will sync with your shelf on the aNobii website, which is more useful as you can share your collection with friends and fellow booklovers.

aNobii is $1.99 in the iTunes App Store.

Pros

Barcode scanning is fast and easy
Intuitive interface to build your collection or wish list
Allows you to find reviews handily – great for shopping at bookstores
Work seamlessly with the website version (http://www.anobii.com)

Cons

Barcode scanning is limited to 3Gs only (there’s a lite version for 3G and 2G)
Social network features available on website are not available on this iphone app

Leon Ho has a decade of experience in technology and the Internet. He was a manager of Software Engineering at Red Hat, Inc. and led an international team of software engineers. In 2007, Leon left Red Hat to launch Stepcase as an umbrella for both Stepcase Lifehack and Stepcase Apps. Recently, he won the #4 spot in BusinessWeek's Top 24 Young Asian Entrepreneurs.

Share This

9 More Apps to Help You Get More Out of Your Android Phone

Dustin Wax — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 14:00:00 +0000

With new android phones just out and even more on the way, I thought it would be a good time to release another list of neat-o Android apps. My last Android post (part 1 and part 2) focused on apps specifically for increasing your productivity; this post includes all manner of apps. Some will help you be more productive, some will just help you have more fun.

(Note: Some of these are paid applications. As with iPhone apps, an initial rush of free applications in the Android store seems to be giving way to higher-quality, low-priced applications that allow developers to devote more time and effort to upkeep and support.)

1. AK Notepad

AK Notepad is a basic memo pad for Android, with a few niceties. The interface color and text size are nicely customizable, and it can be set to automatically convert email addresses and URLs into clickable links (useful for remembering websites you see in ads or magazine articles while you’re out and about). Since Android doesn’t sync to a desktop the way Palm and Apple devices do, there’s no direct way to get notes off your phone, but individual notes can be sent by email (or other programs that allow it) and all your notes can be exported to the SD card and opened from the device when you plug into your PC’s USB. (Text files from your PC can also be placed on your SD card and opened in AK Notepad.)

2. Dial Zero

Route your calls around pesky (and slow) voicemail systems with Dial Zero, a database of workarounds for hundreds of companies. Each entry includes the company’s main phone number (which it will pass to the dialer if you press the green “phone dial” button), a description of how to reach an operator or agent, and comments from others who have used the app.

3. Hi-Hiker

Meant for wilderness explorers, Hi-Hiker also functions as a great fitness app. Functions include a GPS tracker, pedometer, stopwatch, weather information, maps, an altimeter, a compass, a flashlight, and a quick-dial button to call for emergency help. Most of the functions use the GPS, so make sure you have a full charge before leaving “home base” for too long!

4. Greed

Greed is a Google Reader application for Android phones, which does a much better job on the small screen than Google’s web interface for Reader. One important feature is the ability to cache your feeds on the SD card for later viewing – great for when you’re about to get on a plane or driving cross country (well, riding cross country – don’t drive and read, kids!) and will be without cell-tower service for a while. Although not a specialized podcast app, you can also subscribe to podcast feeds and download the files so they’ll show up in your media player. Greed is good.

5. Places Directory

Places Directory was designed by a Google employee, so you know it’s good. It offers location-based search to help find nearby restaurants, post offices, comic book stores, or whatever. It can get your location either from the GPS or from the nearest cell tower. Give it a long-press to dial a phone number or open a map, or a short-press for info and user reviews (each press opens a different contextual menu). A compass needle will tell you what direction you’re headed and what direction to go, and you can save a list of your favorite places (to quickly find a Starbucks in a strange town, for instance).

6. Qik

Shoot and stream live video from your phone with Qik. You can have Qik send out a tweet whenever you’re recording, and you can embed your video in other sites using the automatically-generated embed code. The only downside is that you will burn through your battery at a pretty fast rate – but it’s useful for catching quick clips on the go if you don’t have a camcorder handy.

7. Skype Lite

Skype all you want on your Android phone using Skype Lite. Works fine over 2G, and imports all your Skype contacts and other account information. If you have SkypeIn, you can even get Skype calls on your Android phone!

8. Taskiller

Android phones multitask, meaning that there are often several applications still running in the background when you open an ew one – or even when you aren’t doing anything at all. Unfortunately, Android makes it difficult to know what’s running in the background (and using up your battery). Taskiller opens a list of all running apps and allows you to close them individually or all at once. You can also switch between apps easily using a long-press.

9. Wertago

Wertago offers location-sensitive nightlife search coupled with social networking functions (friends, status updates, profiles, messaging, picture sharing) so you can find out what’s going on right now, where your friends are at, and what the best place to hang out might be. Nightclub listings include ratings from other users, distance from you, mapping, and search by tags (like 18+, dancing, dressy, etc.), and how many of your favorite Wertago users are there at the moment. If you’re a clubber, this is an essential app.

Got any other cool apps that Lifehack readers just have to install on their shiny new Android phones? Let us know about them in the comments.

Share This

Roll Your Own TwitPic-like Media Hosting Using Posterous

Dustin Wax — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 14:00:00 +0000

One of the more useful aspects of Twitter is the ability to quickly broadcast images, videos, and other media to your followers, making it an effective “mo-blogging” (mobile blogging) platform. Twitter doesn’t have this ability built in, though; sending pictures or video clips to Twitter requires using third-party services like TwitPic. Most Twitter clients will automatically upload images to these third-party hosts and add a link to your tweets, making the whole experience rather seamless.

This is a pretty good solution for casual sharing, but if you’re using Twitter as part of your personal branding efforts, or if you’re serious about the media you’re distributing, you might want more control over how your media is stored and displayed online. TwitPic and the other services don’t offer much in the way of page customization. They also scatter your content over several sites.

Then there’s the Twitter API limit, which limits access to only your last 3200 tweets. Assuming you’re sharing things on Twitter that are more important than what you ate for lunch and what cute thing your cat just did, you might worry about losing your online history as you build up past the 3200 mark.

Having discovered too late Twitter’s API limit (I’m almost to 3700 tweets at the moment), I decided I didn’t want to risk my images and other posted material becoming difficult to access – although much of my Twittering is purely personal, my stream is an important part of my online professional presence, and I want to make sure it’s not only archived but accessible moving forward.

Enter Posterous. Posterous is a lifestreaming service that sits somewhere between Twitter and a blog in terms of features. It’s not really intended for essay-like blogging, but rather for capturing images, video, web links, and thoughts quickly and easily. What’s important here is that you can post via email or even SMS message, and it can be set up to automatically forward anything you post to Twitter, Facebook, and a number of other services (including your own blog). Using Posterous, I can create a permanent record of the images, videos, audio clips, and other material I post to Twitter, and I can do so in a customizable, brandable space that offers me far more control over my content than I have with services like TwitPic or even Twitter.

Here’s how to set up and use Posterous as a home for all your tweetable media.

Set up a Posterous account

An unusual thing about Posterous is that you can’t just go to the website and sign up – you create an account by using the service.

Send a photo, video, or just text email to post@posterous.com.
Within a few minutes, you’ll receive a confirmation email with a link to your newly-created site. At the moment, your post is it’s own stand-alone site. Click the link that allows you to change your password.
Posterous assigned you a username based on the username of the email address you sent your first email from (the part before the @ sign). Change that to whatever you want your site’s URL to be (it will be “username.posterous.com” where username is whatever you choose) and enter a password.
Now go to the “Manage” screen and start customizing the site.
Click “Edit this site” to change the name of the site and add a theme under “Theme and customize my site. If you know CSS and HTML, you can create your own theme. Also, you can upload a header image to really brand your site.
If you really want to get fancy, you can set up your Posterous site under your own domain name; follow the instructions on the “Edit” page.
You can also enter your Google Analytics Domain ID to track visitors using Google Analytics. Follow the instructions on the “Edit” page.
Click “Edit my profile” to add personal information and upload a photo of yourself.
From the “Manage” page, click “Manage emails and phone” to add other emails and your cell phone number so you can post from them. I recommend adding your main email address and your phone’s email address (if it’s different from your main email).
“From the “Manage” page, click “Autopost to Everywhere” to add your Twitter account and any other accounts you want to post to via Posterous. You can add Facebook and other social networks, image-hosting sites like Flickr and Picasa, and your own websites, among other services.

Now you’re set up to post to Posterous and have those posts forwarded automatically to Twitter (and wherever else you choose).

Post images, videos, and other media via Posterous

Add an address book entry to your contact manager for Posterous. Add both the main email address, post@posterous.com, and the SMS short code, 41411.
Anything you email to post@posterous.com will be automatically forwarded to all the services you’ve set up under “Autopost”. The subject line will be the title of your post at Posterous and will make up the body of your Tweet, so limit yourself to 130 characters (to leave room for the shortened URL to your post).
Posterous automatically resizes images to fit your theme. If you send multiple images, Posterous will create a very nice gallery so that all of them can be viewed within the main post. Videos are embedded in a Flash player, as are MP3 files you send to Posterous.
If you might only want to post something to Twitter, Facebook, your blog, or elsewhere, add one or more of the following email addresses to your address book entry:
- Twitter: twitter@posterous.com
- Flickr: flickr@posterous.com
- Facebook: facebook@posterous.com
- Tumblr: tumblr@posterous.com
- Any other blog: blog@posterous.com
- Posterous only: posterous@posterous.com
You can post text-only entries through the SMS number. Type “POST” (without the quotes) and enter up to 110 characters.
If your email program adds a signature line or a “Sent via” line, you can make sure that doesn’t get added to your post by typing “#end” (without the quotes) at the end of the text you want in your post.
You can also add a “Share on Posterous” bookmarklet to your browser for one-click posting from the Web. Any text and images you select before clicking will be posted (and you can add your own text as well). If you don’t select text, Posterous will scan the page for likely “excerpts” on the page, which you can scroll through until you find the part you want to post.

Drawbacks

While I think there are a lot of benefits to tweeting this way, even for regular text tweets, I have to admit there are also a few drawbacks. The most notable is that you have to remember to limit yourself to 130 characters (or less) in order to accommodate the link to your Posterous page. As if 140 characters wasn’t short enough!

Another drawback is that you can’t post through your favorite Twitter client – you have to use email or SMS to get your post to Posterous. In effect, Posterous becomes your Twitter client – but only for posting.

Finally, many Twitter clients offer previews of images on the more popular image- and video-hosting services. Your followers won’t be able to preview your images on Posterous in their Twitter client.

Obviously, I think the benefits outweigh the drawbacks, but you should be aware of them before taking the plunge yourself. If Twitter is not just a pastime for you, but a real part of your business or professional life, this is a way to take a lot more control over the content you post to Twitter.

Share This

8 Keys to Internet Security

Dustin Wax — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 14:00:00 +0000

In a recent post, I recommended Panda’s Cloud Antivirus as a decent free antivirus program. Others have recommended different programs, and that’s fine – in the end, I don’t think there’s much meaningful difference between the various antivirus programs, at least in terms of security.

Much more important than which antivirus program you use (or anti-spyware, or firewall, or any security software), or even if you use one at all, are the practices that make up your online behavior. People who do risky stuff on the Internet will get a virus, sooner or later, regardless of how good their security software is. On the other hand, many security experts don’t use any antivirus software and still manage to avoid viruses.

I don’t recommend that you follow in the footsteps of the security experts – the nature of their calling demands a kind of paranoia that few of us can maintain. I recommend a solid package of security software (I run Cloud Antivirus and Windows Defender) but only as a safety net – something to pick up the slack when we make mistakes, not a first line of defense.

The thing with security, online or anywhere else, is that it’s always a trade-off between protection and convenience. I can tell you how to absolutely avoid any risk of computer virus, spyware, or trojan: stay offline and never install anything or use any removable storage media. That’s 100% perfect protection, but it would severely hinder your computer usage. It’s like securing a house: You could build a door-less, window-less titanium-sheathed reinforced-concrete bunker around your house and be absolutely sure burglars couldn’t get in, but you probably wouldn’t want to live there.

The tips below are sufficient to account for all but the most determined attacks against your computer. No amount of software or behavioral change can protect you from every possible attack (if the NSA wants to get on your PC, they are probably going to do so) but you can protect yourself from virtually all of the attacks you’re likely to face online.

I owe thanks for most of these tips to Leo Laporte and Steve Gibson, hosts of the TWiT netcast Security Now. If you’re interested in computer security at a very deep level, this weekly show is your ticket, and I heartily recommend it!

1. Use a router.

The very nature of the way routers works acts as an effective hardware firewall, preventing access to computers on your home network from outside the network. Put simply, when you request something from the Internet – say, you click a link, check your email, or enter a URL – the router notes which computer on its network the request came from so it can send the reply to the proper recipient. If a would be intruder attempts to enter your network, the router checks its list of outgoing requests and, if none is found correlating to the attackers’ IP address, it ignores it. It basically doesn’t know which computer to send it to, so it throws it out.

If you simply cannot use a hardware router, make sure your operating system’s firewall is turned on. This is almost, but not entirely, as good.

2. Do not open email attachments.

I know, who doesn’t want to see pictures of Anna Kournikova naked, right? Email attachments are a major vector for infecting computers, because it’s so easy to fake the sender so the email looks like it came from someone you know, and everybody loves opening attachments from people they know. It could be a funny picture of penguins, after all. But bottom line, don’t open attachments. If your email client automatically opens or previews them, turn that feature off. Even if it’s from your mom, and even if your mom says she opened it and it’s fine, still don’t open it. (By the way, next time you’re at mom’s, reinstall Windows. She’s got tons of viruses now.)

Now, I know that sometimes you have to open attachments, so here’s a simple test to know when it is most likely safe to open an attachment:

You know that the email is from the person it says it’s from. That usually means that either they said they were sending it, or they’ve written a note that only they could have written.
You are expecting an attachment from that person.
You know the person who created the file.
There is a compelling reason to open the attachment. I’m sorry, ma, but a good laugh isn’t enough to get me to risk my computer’s security.

If you can’t be absolutely, 100% sure on all these counts, trash it.

3. Do not download bittorrent files.

That sucks, I know, but since you’re never absolutely sure where the file comes from, where it’s been, or who might have altered it, bittorrent is risky. Downloading a Linux distribution from Ubuntu is probably ok; downloading it from Pirate’s Bay is a bit dodgy. Downloading Oscar screeners of movies that haven’t been released yet is super-duper dodgy. It’s a real shame to have to forego sticking it to The Man because of practical concerns, but you’re taking a big risk downloading an unknown file from an unknown person about whom the only thing you know is that they don’t feel any compunctions about breaking the law.

4. Do not download warez, porn, or other dubious files.

First they came for my bittorrents, then they came for my porn! It just gets worse and worse, doesn’t it. But really, think about it – people who distribute illegal copies of illegally hacked software a) are demonstrated lawbreakers, b) are familiar with programming code, and c) had access to the code you’re expecting to install on your computer. As for porn, while I’m sure there are plenty of Good Samaritans out there who distribute free pornography simply out of a desire for greater happiness in the world, some small number of them do it for financial gain. If they’re giving you free porn, they must be making money off you another way, and one of the easiest is to install a bunch of malware on your computer, run whatever code they want on it, and then sell the use of your computer to spammers, phishers, and other unsavory sorts. You want to know how bad these guys are? They don’t even care if they give pornography a bad name!

5. Do not download anything from sites you’re unfamiliar with.

Again, if you’re intending to install something you’ve downloaded onto your computer, you have to know that only people you trust have had access to it. Adobe, Microsoft, and other software manufacturers are generally trustworthy, as are sites like C|net’s Download.com. “Bob’s Free Software I Like a Whole Bunch” might not be quite as safe a bet.

6. Turn off Flash, Javascript, and other browser plugins.

Flash ads have been used to install viruses. So has Javascript code. You don’t have to do anything to get infected this way; you just visit a site with the malicious code on it and *bam*, you’re infected. Because of that, hardcore security folks turn off Javascript and either block or never install Flash. Personally, I think it limits the usefulness of the Internet too much; I’ve decided to risk running Javascript, and use the FlashBlock plugin in Firefox so I can select which Flash objects on a page I want to run (allowing me, for instance, to watch YouTube videos while preventing Flash ads on the same page from loading).

7. Do not click links in email.

It’s very easy to hide the real destination of links sent in email by using HTML where the text reads “www.perfectlysafesiteyouknowandtrust.com” but the actual URL is “www.reallybadsiterunbymeanpeoplewithnofriends.net”. This is how phishing scams work – you think you’re going to PayPal or your bank, but really you’re going to a page designed to look just like your bank’s login page but hosted on the mean people’s server. Also, bad guys often put unique tracking IDs into links, so that they know exactly who clicked on a link – which means that they know which email addresses out of the millions they sent spam to are valid, which makes them worth more money to other spammers. Um, yay?

7a. Do not click shortened URLs.

I don’t like this one, because I like Twitter and you lose a lot of functionality if you don’t use a service like bit.ly or is.gd to shorten URLs, but these links are scary. When you hover your mouse over a link, the URL appears in the email or browser’s status bar, meaning you can verify that the link heads to where it says it does. When you do the same with a shortened URL, it just says the shortened URL. There are Firefox extensions like UnTiny that will reveal the true destination of shortened URLs, and some Twitter clients do as well, but until a universal solution is standardized, these URLs remain a bit scary, security-wise.

8. Install all security updates.

Unless you’re a multi-national mega-corporation running oodles of mission-critical custom-designed software, you need to install security updates as quickly as possible upon release. If remembering to do this isn’t something you think you’d be likely to do, set your computer to automatically download and install updates. Increasingly, we’re seeing “0-day” exploits – viruses and trojans written to make use of security flaws before those flaws are corrected by – or, in some cases, even known to – manufacturers. Keeping up-to-date is essential to keep even marginally safe.

I know that, the world being what it is, someone will be thinking right about now, “Hey, why don’t you just switch to Mac OS X or Linux?” It’s true, those operating systems get far fewer viruses and other problems than Windows PCs, but most experts seem to agree that this is at least in part because there are so many Windows PCs and so few Mac and Linux PCs. (There are plenty of Linux servers, but those are under professional supervision, which goes a long way towards making up for any security weaknesses Linux has.) Bad guys program for the system that allows the greatest spread of their malware, and right now, that’s Windows.

But if you’re still not convinced, I’ve got an even better idea for you. Both Mac OS X and Linux have demonstrated security vulnerabilities, and as they become more common are likely to become targets for hackers. So they’re not really safe bets. Instead, try BeOS! It may be riddled with security holes and only run on Pentium 4 and earlier PCs, but I can guarantee you, nobody is writing viruses for it!

For everyone else, whether you use Windows, Mac, or Linux, make sure to follow the rules above and, chances are, you’ll be just fine.

Share This

The First 10 Free Apps to Install on a New Windows PC

Dustin Wax — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 14:00:00 +0000

It’s about that time for me again: my desktop is a couple years part its prime and my laptop just died (no display, no hard drive activity, no wifi, and a recent history of turning off suddenly for no good reason – those are all bad signs, right?), which means the near future holds a new PC for me. Which means a blank slate on which to impose my computer-using will.

Setting up a new computer goes through five stages:

Denial: I’ve got a new computer. Nothing can go wrong now!
Anger: No, I don’t want to subscribe to AOL. No, I don’t want Norton updates. No, I don’t want a 60-day trial of Office 2007. There are HOW MANY security updates?!
Bargaining: I’d do anything to be able to use this thing!
Depression: I’ve been uninstalling Norton components for 17 hours now. If I have to restart the PC one more time, I swear I’ll kill myself… All I want to do is update Twitter!
Acceptance: OK, let’s install some good stuff now!

Once you’ve installed all the updates, uninstalled all the crapware, entered your wifi password, and set your screensaver, it’s time to make that shiny new PC do stuff, and for me the doing starts with installing a pretty fixed list of free applications.

1. Panda Cloud Antivirus

If you did the right thing and uninstalled Norton or McAfee (the two antivirus programs PC manufacturers get paid big bucks to include on their machines), the Windows Security Center will be bugging you about your system being unprotected. So, first order of business is to install a new antivirus. I used to use the free AVG Antivirus, but I’ve found that at some point – in every version of AVG I’ve used – it stops updating automatically. So a few months ago I decided to try Panda’s free Cloud Antivirus, and I’ve been very happy: updates happen in the background, files and problems are quietly taken care of, and it only ever bugs me if it needs my attention to decide what to do about a detected virus. This is the antivirus I’ve installed on all my family’s PCs, too, since it runs virtually undetected.

2. Firefox

IE8 is a big improvement over previous incarnations of Internet Explorer, but so is a husband who only beats you once a week instead of everyday. Frankly, I’ve had enough of IE. It’s still packed with the same annoyances as always, and its neat new features are so dense and obscure I don’t think anyone will make much use of them any time soon.

Firefox, on the other hand, is by now like a comfortable pair of shoes – it works well, it makes sense, and it’s getting better and better. Sure, it takes up about a Godzilla-byte of memory, but other than that, it’s Good Software. And of course, it’s vastly extensible, making it not just a browser for me but a research tool (with the addition of plugins for Evernote and Zotero) and webmastering tool (with Scribefire and FireFTP plugins). The only real downside is that every update seems to break every extension – but at least it has extensions!

3. OpenOffice.org

I own a copy of Office 2007 Pro (I got it free at an industry event) but I still install OpenOffice.org. (The dot-org is part of the software’s name, for reasons known only to the demons who inhabit the 6th level of software marketing Hell.) The free productivity suite includes a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation creator, database, and graphics editor – everything just about anyone needs to get work done. Some things it does better than MS Office, like handling bibliographic citations. Most things it does just as well. And it’s some $400 less than the comparable version of MS Office.

4. Thunderbird

Although Microsoft’s Outlook Express got a new name and a facelift in Vista, it remains the same piece of cr-… er, software it’s always been, with all its limitations. Outlook is great for businesses, but it’s overkill for most people – and can bog down even powerful systems. Mozilla’s Thunderbird occupies the “just right” chair, offering an interface similar to the Outlook/Outlook Express interface and plenty of power. Plus, like Firefox, you can customize its functionality with a wide range of plugins.

5. Picasa

You might have thought I’d have said “The GIMP” for a free graphics editor, but most people don’t need that kind of power. For organizing snapshots and applying the occasional red-eye reduction, color or contrast adjustment, and novelty effect, I like Picasa. The interface is easy to use, it integrates easily with Google’s web-based Picasa Web Albums service, allowing me to easily share photos or groups of photos, and it does basic photo editing tasks well.

6. Skype

In class yesterday I mentioned Skype and a student asked “What’s Skype"?” Only 2 of 10 students had heard of it! Oh, man – get Skype!!! Skype is a voice-over-Internet system that works, and works well. Voice or video calls to other Skype users are free, no matter where they are and where you are. The optional SkypeIn and SkypeOut services let you accept calls from and make calls to regular phones (landlines or mobile) for very reasonable rates – I think I pay about $60 a year for the complete package, which gives me unlimited calls anywhere in the US and Canada, unlimited incoming calls at my own phone number in my area code, and of course voice mail. I use it all the time, too, to interview sources for articles – and back when I was doing Lifehack Live, I used it occasionally to record my podcasts (using the CallGraph plugin, a free Skype call recorder).

7. VLC Media Player

While it lacks the style and pizzazz of iTunes or Windows Media Player, VLC has those other media players beat hands-down for one good reason: it plays everything. Oddball video formats, open source audio codecs, Flash videos – whatever you have, chances are, VLC plays it. It has other features, too, but I never use them. For me, VLC is simply the must-have video player. There’s a portable version that can be run off a flash drive, too, which is handy for me since I often want to show videos in class and I’m not sure the machine provided will have the right codecs.

8. Handbrake

You want to put videos on your portable media player, you get Handbrake. It’s that simple. Handbrake is easy to use (a lot of video transcoding software forces you to deal with all sorts of questions about muxing, bitrates, and so on; handbrake has a bunch of presets, although more advanced control is there if you need it). Handbrake works with DVDs or video on your hard drive, so whatever the source, you can likely get it onto your Zune (or even iPod if you’re one of the few that owns one).

(OK, give a guy a break – it’s funny!)

9. Digsby or Pidgin

What instant messaging network is everyone you would ever want to chat with on? Wait, you mean, they’re not all on the same network? Where do you live, reality?!

If you do live in reality and your friends, family, and other contacts are scattered across several different IM networks, you’ll want to install either Digsby or Pidgin, both of which are fine IM clients that hook up to most of the available IM networks. I use Digsby, because I like the way I can theme the interface (with big, chunky text for my old eyes!), and because it includes Facebook support, which Pidgin doesn’t (but Pidgin works with a lot of networks Digsby doesn’t support – it’s a question of which ones you want or need to use). In both, you can log into all your IM networks at the same time, and see all your contacts regardless of which network they’re on.

10. CDBurnerXP

CDBurnerXP is neither limited to burning CDs not limited to systems running Windows XP. Go figure. Anyway, it burns CDs and DVDs, including Blu-Ray and HD-DVD discs, ISOs and other disc images – heck, it even supports LightScribe! A great substitute for expensive (and notoriously bug-prone) Nero and Roxio suites if neither came with your computer.

Once I’ve installed those 10 apps, I’ve got a pretty good system set up, and I’m ready to get to work. What about you? What free software is at the top of your list when you’re setting up a new system? Let us know in the comments.

Share This

12 Free Android Apps to Help Get Things Done (Part 2)

Dustin Wax — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 14:00:00 +0000

This post continues the list I started in Part 1, adding apps for managing contacts, collaborating, and accessing computer services from your Android phone (or, in the near future, other device). As before, I’m including links to the developers’ homepage when available, but all of these apps can be downloaded from the Google Market on your Android phone. And all are free (or were when I accessed them). So here we go:

7. PrinterShare

PrinterShare lets you print over the Internet on your own printer at home or at the office. Sign up for a free account, install and configure the server software on the computer your printer is attached to, and then you can print from your Android phone from anywhere (so long as you have network access via 3G or wi-fi). The big drawback is that you’re fairly limited to the type of content that’s printable: contacts, photos, and webpages. However, with more and more work shifting to the Web, you can usually find a way to get your content into the web broswer to print it (e.g. sending email attachments to Google Docs and sharing as HTML).

8. RemoteDroid

RemoteDroid turns your Android phone into a remote touchpad and keyboard to control your PC. The screen becomes a touchpad just like you’d find on a laptop, with right-click and left-click buttons; the keyboard functions normally, except one of the alt keys becomes “CTRL” so you can do CTRL-keystroke combos like CTRL-V to paste.

RemoteDroid works over your home wi-fi network: you run the server on your PC and enter the IP address on the app to connect. If you’re trying to think of why you’d do this, consider watching video content on your big monitor or through your TV; now, you can use your phone to control the computer from across the room to pause, adjust volume, skip to the next video, or whatever.

9. ShareYourBoard

This app is for storing and sharing whiteboards – after a meeting or presentation, open Share Your Board and snap a picture of your whiteboard. Share Your Board automatically trims the image (saving just the marked-on part of the board), adjusts contrast and color, and adjusts the perspective of the image, producing a flat, legible image that can be shared with others and commented on. You can take multiple images over the course of a meeting to assemble a kind of slide-show, too. Images can be shared via MMS, email, or sent to programs like Twidroid (a Twitter client), PostBot (a Wordpress client – see Part 1), Picasa, or PrinterShare.

The image in the screenshot above was captured in an unlit corner of my apartment; the only lamp is a three-bulb unit across the room which uses compact fluorescent bulbs (which give an awful yellow cast to photos); my whiteboard is surrounded on all sides with index cards and business cards I’ve tucked into the frame. As you can see, it’s done a fairly good job of isolating the relevant stuff (there’s an index card at the bottom) and making a very readable image of the keyboard shortcuts for my transcription software.

10. Upvise

Upvise is collaborative project management software comprised of several modular “applications”: contacts, notebooks, projects, tasks, and so on. The Android app integrates with an online service (both free, though there is a paid “Premium” level that offers a few more features) so you’re not limited to collaborating with other Android users. Projects and notes can be shared, tasks can be assigned out, and ideas can be voted on by anyone in your group. A sales application allows business users to track and follow-up leads. One nice thing: the contacts application will import all your Google contacts (although, as far as I can tell, it doesn’t sync new contacts back to your Google address book).

11. StarContact

StarContact is a replacement for the default Dialer software, allowing you to search your contact list (using the T9-style keypad shown in the screenshot, a more compact version, or the regular keyboard). You can also search within non-name fields in your contact list (like address, company name, and notes) as well as by initials. Other than that, it looks and acts like the normal dialer, making it easy to adapt to if you’re already used to using ANdroid’s built-in software.

12. Wapedia

There are several Android apps for searching and displaying Wikipedia articles, and to be honest, they basically all do the same thing. Wapedia does it very quickly, with entries nicely formatted for the mobile screen and very good image rendering and scaling. You can also access specialized wiki sites, like the Muppet Wiki, Wookiepedia, WoWWiki (World of Warcraft), the Recipes Wiki, Wiktionary, and several others.

(Note: Wapedia is a site that can be accessed from any browser, but here I’m talking about the dedicated app that acts as a front-end to the website.

What are your favorite Android apps for keeping yourself engaged, informed, and productive on the go? Since it may not be too long before Android goes mainstream, let us know what we should look for when we crack open our next smartphone or netbook.

Share This

12 Free Android Apps to Help Get Things Done (Part 1)

Dustin Wax — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 14:00:00 +0000

With a raft of new devices scheduled to join the lonely T-Mobile G1 in Google’s lineup, the Android operating system looks like it’s not only going to be around for a while but may well give its fellows smartphones from Apple, Blackberry, and Palm a run for their money. With its Linux-derived core and slick user interface, the Android system is proving to be very adaptable – it will even be available on netbooks pretty soon.

I’ve had a chance to play with a 1 for the last few weeks, and more importantly to try out some of the 5,000 apps currently available on the Market, Google’s built-in alternative to the iTunes App Store. Out of this amazing variety of available applications, I’ve found a good dozen free ones that would be perfect for Lifehack’s readers – apps that can help you stay organized, stay effective, and stay productive no matter where you find yourself.

In the interest of space, I’ll post this list over two days: six now, six later, presented in no particular order. If you’re an Android user, feel free to let us know your favorite apps in the comments. If you’re not, just wait – you might find yourself using an Android device before you know it!

Note: Although I’m including links to each apps homepage, where available, all of these apps can be downloaded directly from the Market app on your Android device.

1. Action Complete

Action Complete is a GTD-based task manager allowing you to view your projects and next actions easily. The tab-based interface includes sections for next actions, waiting-for items (tasks you’re waiting for others to complete before you can move on to the next task in a project), projects, and “pending” someday/maybe items. Every task and project can be tagged and associated with specific people and places, and the app offers several sorting options to sort by tag, people, places, urgency, or project. A web-based version of the app is in development, although the site gives no details about what additional features that might offer.

2. Locale

Locale is interesting – it allows you to set various events to be triggered when certain conditions are met. For instance, when the battery hits 30%, you can dim the screen, turn off wi-fi, or lower the volume. When you get to work, you can turn off the ringer, change the background, or send an SMS or Twitter announcing your arrival. Conditions it will respond to range from GPS/cell tower coordinates, contacts, battery level, dates, and times. A number of third-party apps will also link to Locale so you can trigger them as well.

3. Astrid

Astrid is a solid task manager developed by the Google folks (you know Google always makes good stuff). Tasks are easy to add and easy to check off when you’re done (my least favorite thing is having to “edit” a task to mark it “complete”). You can also add a timer – you know I like timers! – to help you build that sense of urgency. But what people like most about it isn’t the features but the notifications, which offer friendly encouragement to help motivate you to finish up.

Also, Astrid plugs into Locale (see above) so you can set geographical reminders (as in Toodo, below).

4. TooDo

TooDo is another task management application, this time with online synching, either with Toodledo or Remember the Milk. Synchronization is both ways – tasks created or marked completed on TooDo can be seen online, and vice versa. It also has a couple of really nice features – first, you can add voice, photo, and video notes to your tasks, and second, you can set geographical reminders to pop up whenever you’re in a specific location (based on the GPS).

5. PF Voicemail+

PhoneFusion’s Voicemail+ offers a really slick way to get visual voicemail on your Android phone. You need to register for a free account and forward your voicemail to them (which not super-difficult, and is required for other voicemail replacement services like YouMail as well). Once it’s set up, though, you’ll be able to scroll through your voicemails, listen to the ones you want and ignore the ones you don’t (they’re identified by number and name from Caller ID), delete messages, and respond by text.

6. PostBot

PostBot is an open source app for posting text and images to Wordpress blogs (Wordpress.com or self-hosted). You can set up multiple blogs and choose which to post to from the settings. Control over how images post is somewhat lacking – you can choose to align them left, right, or center when you set up the blog; after that, all images will be posted the same way unless you change the settings. Other than that, this is a great little app for posting quick thoughts and photos from your Android phone.

That oughtta keep you busy for a while. Make sure you come back tomorrow to check out six more!

Share This

How to Get More Out of Your Home Network

Dustin Wax — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 14:00:00 +0000

For most people, a wireless router is just a way to share your broadband Internet connection across the several computers and wifi-enabled devices in your house. Your router is not just a point of connection to your cable or DSL modem, though – it connects every other computer and device in your house in one big network. With not much work at all, you can easily take advantage of this to make home-wide backups simple, to centralize your music collection, to share household files and services, and even to operate computers on other rooms. We’re used to going over the Internet to share resources on other computers, but all the Internet is is a gigantic, industrial-strength version of the network in your own home.

A quick overview of your home network

Your router is a simple device, really – all it does it bounce data from one computer to another. When I upload a picture from my laptop to my Picasa account, for example, my laptop requests a connection from my router, which accepts the connection and requests the file, which my laptop sends. Then the router readdresses the data in my photo to the modem, which readdresses it to a router on my broadband provider’s network, which sends it out onto the Internet bound for the routers at Picasa. (OK, I’m simplifying a little, but that’s the basic gist. All I’ve really left out are the order of priests who chant the holy invocations that run the Internet.)

Out on the Internet, every computer has an address, a crazy number that looks like this: 74.125.127.147 (that’s Google’s homepage, if you’re wondering). On your home network, every computer has an address, too – a crazy number that looks like this: 192.168.10.4 – the last two digits being anything from 0 to 255. On the Internet, the URLs we’re familiar with (google,.com, lifehack.org, etc.) are aliases for those crazy numbers – their secret identities. The crazy numbers are the “IP address”, the location of the computer we’re looking for. On our home network, we’re stuck with the crazy numbers (for now – in a moment I’ll show you how to replace them with more memorable addresses.)

To find out the IP addresses of the computers on your home network:

On Windows, open a command line (Start > Run and type “cmd”) and type “ipconfig” – several lines will come up, including your IP address.
On Mac OSX, look under your system preferences.
On Linux, use your magic telepathic powers to mind meld with the machine. When that doesn’t work, try “/sbin/ifconfig” at the command line.

Now, unless you got fancy when configuring your PCs, your router technically assigns a new IP address to each computer when it logs onto the network. In practice, I find that routers tend to assign the same IP address to the same PCs pretty consistently, but to be certain you can go into your computer’s network settings and copy the IP address, subnet mask, and default gateway in, giving each computer a permanent IP address.

Here are some things you can do to get more out of your fancy home network:

1. Centralize content to one main computer

I have a desktop PC that’s on all the time that I use as the central “hub” in my home network. Because it has the biggest hard drive in the house, I use it to store all my documents, media files, photos, and everything else. Most files Are opened from and saved to that single My Documents folder; if I need a file on another computer – for example, if I’m going to be working on something while traveling with my netbook, it gets saved to a Windows Live Mesh folder and automatically synced back to the hub whenever I’m online.

You don’t need any special software to open files from or save files to another computer on your network – not usually, anyway. Even on mixed networks, most contemporary operating systems include software to allow them to communicate with other OSes. I find that even streaming audio and video across my home network is hitch-free – so I can watch a video on my netbook in the bedroom even though the file’s on my desktop in the living room.

2. Backup like a superstar

Since everything important is on one computer, I only have to backup from that computer. All new files are copied to an external hard drive from that computer every night using SyncBack. For redundancy, I also backup that computer to Mozy. The My Document folder on my two laptops is mirrored on the hub computer using Windows Live Mesh (which means they’re also backed up online at the Windows Live Mesh homepage).

3. Run a server

Since I do some web design from time to time, I have a webserver running on my home network – on the hub, naturally. Installation is simple: download XAMPP, run the installer, and you’re done. XAMPP installs Apache, the industry-standard web server; MySQL, the industry-standard relational database; and PHP, a scripting language. I also have a Rails server running on the same computer, from when I was using Tracks, a Ruby on Rails-based GTD app.

So, for instance, let’s say I’m working on a new website. I create a new directory in the “htdocs” folder in the XAMPP directory and install Wordpress into it. Then, from any computer in the house, I can type “192.168.10.4/newfolder” to work with Wordpress, just like I’d installed it on the Web. That looks ugly, but to be honest, I don’t type all that: I type “olympus/newfolder” into my browser, because I’ve modified the hosts file – on which we’ll talk in just a moment.

4. Use any computer in the house directly with VNC

Let’s say I’m on the couch and I want to check something on the desktop but I don’t want to get up. Easy – I fire up UltraVNC and voila – the screen from my desktop appears on my netbook (well, some of it – I have a 20” widescreen on my desktop and a 9” screen on the netbook, so I have to scroll around a little to see the whole screen…).

UltraVNC is free, open source, and simple to use. Download it and install it on every computer. It will install both a client, for viewing other computers on the network, and a server, for sharing the host computer’s screen with others. To view another computer’s desktop, run the VNC client, enter the IP address of the remote computer, enter the password, and that’s it – you can go full-screen and it’s like you’re sitting right in front of the remote computer.

Here’s one thing I use this for: Olympus, my hub computer, is right next to the TV (thankfully it’s a really quiet computer) and has TV-out. So I run Hulu Desktop (or other video) on the hub, in full screen mode, feed the image to my TV via an S-Video cable, and use my netbook as a remote control using VNC to access Olympus’ desktop. Perfect.

5. Edit your hosts file to give your networked PCs easier-to-remember names

If you do a lot of network stuff, you’re going to get tired of typing “192.168.100.114” and the like. It would be much better if you could just use words like you do on the Internet, right?

You can do that easily enough by adding entries to your computer’s hosts file. Normally when you enter a URL into a browser, the computer sends out to your ISP’s DNS servers to translate that word into an IP address, but first it checks the hosts file – if the hosts file gives an IP address, it skips the DNS lookup on the Internet. What this means is that you can assign the IP addresses of your computers names that are easy to remember, like “minerva”, “mercury”, and “oracle” (those are computers and devices on my home network – I”m sooooo clever!).

To change your hosts file:

Go to c:\winnt\system32\drivers\etc\ on Windows 2000 and XP Pro or c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\ on Windows XP Home and Vista and open the file called “hosts” in Notepad (or another text editor; in Vista, you have to run Notepad as an administrator).
Open Terminal.app on Mac OSX and enter “$ sudo nano /private/etc/hosts “ without the quotes.
Go to /etc on Linux and open the file “hosts”. Most likely.

There should be a line that says “127.0.0.1 localhost” – don’t touch that. Below it, start entering lines like this for each computer on your network: [IP address]<tab>[Desired name]

So, for example: 192.168.10.2 olympus

Don’t forget the tab between the IP address and the new name. Notice I skipped 192.168.10.3 – that’s the computer I’m writing on now, and if I want to access it from itself, I just type “localhost”. Now, when I type “olympus” int the browser window, it connects to that computer. Since XAMPP is running there, I get the home page for Apache – which I could replace with something of my choice, but I haven’t. If I want to run Tracks, which runs on port 3000, I would type “olympus:3000” into my browser.

6. Share a printer

It’s stupid to have a printer attached to every computer in the house. Instead, I have a single laser printer attached to the hub, and I can print to it from any PC on the network – as long as the hub computer is on, which it always is. (Technically, because I have a networked printer, I could plug it directly into the router, but the router’s up near the ceiling and I don’t want another cable hanging down, so I connect it to the hub PC instead). Although I don’t currently have a color inkjet for photos, when I did, it was connected to the hub PC too.

To share a printer, just go into the Printer settings on the computer it’s connected to, right-click, and select “Sharing…”. Turn on printer sharing. Now, go to “Add printer” on the other PC, and search the network for your printer. If all goes according to plan, your computer should install teh drivers from the host computer, and you’re set. If it doesn’t go well, you may need to use the install disc or download te drivers from the manufacturer’s website, and follow the instructions for installing a network printer. (It’s more complex on OSX and Linux, but google “share printer” and your operating system’s name and I’m sure you’ll find easy enough directions.)

The End

Do you have cool network tips to share with your fellow Lifehack readers? Share your network setup in the comments!

Share This

How to Get Audiobooks Onto Your Zune – and Off Again

Dustin Wax — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 14:00:00 +0000

Although I am a professional writer and blogger, although I keep up with the latest tech trends, although I am, might I say, something of a geek, I do not iPod. I don’t even iPhone. This is not a political nor even a religious position, it is simply the Way That It Is.

When Microsoft released the Zune, I scoffed. Until one day, I sauntered past the Zune display at a local Mega-Duper-Mart and, out of the corner of my eye, caught a glimpse of a sight so hideously ugly, so repulsive in all its aspects, that I stopped dead in my tracks. The Brown Zune. Truly glorious in its ugliness, the Brown Zune features design that puts Soviet prison designers to shame – a squat, brick-like shape sheathed in a brown exterior whose ugliness is only increased by the green highlights when the light hits the device just so.

I had to have one. And that dream came true one happy Christmas morn when I opened my present from my then-girlfriend – pure Brown Zuney goodness.

To be honest, it’s not at all a bad media player. The desktop software is pretty good, if a little resource-hungry; the sound and video are great; the device’s interface is at least as good as any other media player’s interface (yes, including iPod’s) – all in all, I’m happy with my Zune.

Except for one big thing. Although a firmware update some time ago added audiobook functionality to the Zune, in its infinite wisdom Microsoft decided they wouldn’t add it to the desktop software. Instead, Zune users need to use third-party software – Audible’s for Audible audiobooks, Overdrive for everything else – to transfer audiobooks onto the Zune. I am not an Audible member, so I haven’t really used their audiobook manager, but I do use Overdrive quite a bit. Unfortunately, it’s a little weird, especially when it comes to deleting audiobooks from your Zune.

One thing neither Microsoft nor anyone else has seen fit to make easy, though, is how to get audiobooks from non-Audible and non–Overdrive sources onto your Zune. Maybe you have an audiobook on CD that you’ve checked out of your library, or one that you own. Because of licensing issues, it can be difficult and in some cases impossible to find those files online – and in any case, why should you re-purchase an audiobook you already have in your possession, just for the “privilege” of listening to it on your Zune instead of on 18 CDs?

Now, you can rip the files and install them like any other music file, but you’d better listen straight through, because you won’t be able to resume playing from wherever you left off. You can also rip the files and edit the ID3 tags, setting the genre as”Podcast”, which will put all the files onto your Zune as a podcast, allowing you to stop and resume – but in my tests of this technique, the files came out in a random order that was useless. Since many audiobooks have tracks every 2 or 3 minutes, you can end up with hundreds of files for a long book, and searching every few minutes for the next one when you’re barreling down the freeway isn’t exactly a relaxing way to enjoy a book.

Fortunately, there is a way to make the Overdrive audiobook manager work for you and, with a little work (not a lot) you can rip audiobooks to your Zune, and remove them, quite easily. Here’s how.

Using Overdrive with Overdrive Audiobooks

The Overdrive Media Console is used most often by libraries for handling DRM’ed, time-limited audiobook downloads for their clients. My library, for instance, offers audiobooks for a three-week “Checkout”, during which the title is unavailable to other patrons. It’s not the greatest thing ever, but it’s a fair-enough compromise between publishers and rights-holders who would prefer people buy books and libraries and their patrons who are committed to the free exchange of information.

When you check out an Overdrive book, you download an ODM file to your hard drive which is opened by default with the Overdrive Media Console, which will download the actual book. Once it’s on your computer, you can listen to it in Overdrive, or transfer it to a device. To install it on your Zune, connect your Zune and then close the Zune software (which will probably open when your PC detects that the Zune is present). Now, simply select the book you want to transfer (unfortunately, Overdrive Manager cannot transfer multiple titles at the same time) and hit the “Transfer” button, which will open the Overdrive Transfer Wizard. The Transfer Wizard will find the Zune, then ask you which parts you want to transfer over—usually, you’ll select “All”, hit “Next”, and wait; when the files are all transferred over, click “Finish” to return to the Overdrive Manager.

Deleting audiobooks you’ve already put on your Zune is… well, it’s weird. If you delete the book from the Overdrive Media Console window, it deletes it from your hard drive, but not from your Zune. So don’t do that. Instead, you want to select the book and, in a stunning break with intuition, click “Transfer” as if you were going to put the book on your Zune. Wait for the Zune to be detected, then deselect all of the parts of the audiobook in the Transfer Wizard. Hit “Next” and wait for the Transfer Wizard to do it’s thing – think of it as replacing the files that are on their with the no files you want. Hit “Finish” and the audiobook is gone from your Zune.

Creating Audiobooks from Your Own Mp3s

If you have your own audiobooks that you’d like to listen to on your Zune, you’re going to have to do a little prep-work, essentially fooling Overdrive into thinking you have an “official” Overdrive audiobook. You’ll use a couple of pieces of free third-party software to make this all work.

1. Rip the Audiobook

First of all, if the audiobook isn’t already converted to mp3, you need to rip the audiobook. I use CDex for this, although you can use any ripper, even the one built into Zune. To save space on your Zune, you can greatly reduce the bitrate from what you’d use for music – the spoken voice simply isn’t all that complex. 128k is more than adequate for most audiobooks – 64k will sound perfectly good, even. You can also rip in mono, cutting the file size in half. If your mp3 convertor has a setting to optimize for speech, use it – it will make sure that the least data loss occurs in the richest parts of the human voice.

2. Merge the Files into One Big File

This step is not strictly necessary, but when it comes time to delete files (see below) you’ll be glad you did it. Use an mp3 merging program – I like mergemp3, which is free and easy to use – to combine all of the files in your audiobook into one giant mp3 file. This is much easier to work with – some long books take up 25 or more CDs, each with 10, 20, or more tracks – that’s a lot to keep track of! Using mergemp3, you just select the folder where your files are, hit “merge”, select a file name and a place to save the file, and wait a few minutes. Make sure you save the file to its own folder – this will be important in step 3.

3. Create the Guide File and Transfer with Overdrive

Now you have a great big mp3, but you don’t quite have something the Zune will recognize as an audiobook. What you need is a WAX file, which is basically the meta-information that defines the mp3 (or mp3s if you did not merge them) as an audiobook. To create this, download the Zune Overdrive Wax Creator. Before you run it, tough, go online and find a picture of your book’s cover and save it in the same folder as your ripped audiobook (make sure it’s in JPG format).

When you run the Wax Creator, it will immediately ask you to choose the folder where your audiobook’s files are stored. Find it, click next, and wait – the program will scan the folder, create a file listing all the mp3 files in the folder (which is why you want just the audiobook and the cover image in the folder), add the cover image, and open the Overdrive Transfer Wizard. Now, you can transfer the file just as you would any normal Overdrive audiobook.

Delete Audiobooks with Overdrive

What you’ll notice when you make your own audiobooks is that they don’t show up in the Overdrive Manager like “proper” Overdrive audiobooks do. And if you try to delete them the same way – by running the Transfer Wizard and opening the Wax file for your audiobook, then deselecting the files associated with it – the Transfer Wizard will give you an error.

So how do you delete your audiobooks? If you haven’t updated to version 3 of the Zune firmware, there’s a registry hack you an use to mount your Zune as a hard drive, allowing you to browse the directory structure and manually delete the files. This doesn’t work for people with up-to-date Zunes, though.

All is not lost, however – you can still fairly easily remove your audiobook files from your Zune, using Overdrive. To do so, initiate a transfer and click the “Advanced” on the screen that pops up after it’s detected your Zune. In the new screen, click the “Browse” button, which will open a new window allowing you to examine the contents of the Audiobooks folder on your Zune. Drill down to the folder containing the book you want to delete and right-click it – there’s only one option in the right-click menu, and that’s “Delete”. Select it, cancel out of the Advanced options, cancel out of the Transfer Wizard, and you’re done.

Hopefully Microsoft will add better support for audiobooks in the next version of the Zune Desktop – ripping audiobooks and listening to them on your Zune should be at least as easy as ripping music CDs to your Zune, which the Zune desktop software does automatically (it will even set that as the default action to take when you insert a CD, if you let it). Until Microsoft comes to its senses, though, it’s nice to know that you don’t have to carry a box of 26 discs and a CD player to listen to your latest audiobook. Like me, you can fly your Ugly Brown Zune with pride!

Header photo courtesy of yngrich via Flickr

Share This

10 More Linux Resources for Kids

Dustin Wax — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 14:00:00 +0000

Yesterday, I wrote about Linux distributions designed with kids’ needs in mind and some of the software for children that runs on Linux. Today I thought I’d share some of the other resources I came across while researching a likely candidate to install on my nephew’s and niece’s new PC.

Switching Your Kids to Linux by Scott K. This is a great primer for parents getting ready to give their kids a Linux system. The author walks parents through the steps of getting your kids ready, such as making sure open source software like Firefox, Pidgin, and Thunderbird are already installed on any Windows systems your kids might use, so that when you give them their Linux system, the only thing they have to get used to is the new interface, not new programs.
Be sure to read the comments on this one for some further insights and advice from other parents who are teaching their kids to use Linux.
The Linux for Kids Experiment. Paul Barry at Linux Journal relates his experience getting his kids to use Linux – which proved to be easier than even he had thought. One good tip he gives is to set up a window with links to all the kids’ favorite apps (or the most appropriate ones) so that kids can access them more easily. Again, there’s some good information in the comments, too.
SchoolForge is a directory of open source educational software. Though SchoolForge includes software for Windows and Mac as well as Linux, most programs will run on Linux and everything is clearly marked.
Open Source Programming Languages for Kids. Although not every kid will be interested in learning to program, some will, and Linux offers plenty of tools to help kids learn from basic to pretty advanced programming concepts. Ryan McGrath reviews three programming languages and kid-friendly environments to learn how to use them. These will run on Windows or Mac, too, so don’t feel left out if you aren’t quite ready to build a Linux system for your kids!
Using Linux to Teach Kids How to Program by Anderson Silva. Since programming is a complex skill, parents may want a little direction in how to get their kids started. Anderson Silva discusses some of the basics of LOGO, a programming tool where kids learn programming syntax to make a “turtle” draw pictures.
KidZui is a Firefox extension that transforms your plain-vanilla browser into a kid-safe Web browsing environment, with access to hundreds of thousands of pre-screened websites, videos, and games. It is vital, of course, that you teach your kids safe browsing habits and that you provide appropriate supervision when they’re using the Internet, but for younger kids this can be especially difficult – how do you explain what they shouldn’t do without having to explain concepts they may not be ready to understand? A safe “sandbox” like KidZui offers a safety net to back up your own instruction – and helps parents find fun stuff for their kids to do online, too!
Adobe Flash Player. Because of licensing issues, many Linux distros do not come with Flash installed. However, your kids will quickly tire of their YouTube- and Flash-game-free computer, so it’s a good idea to get it installed quickly. Just go to the link from your kids’ Linux computer, select “Linux”, and follow the instructions to get Flash up and running on your Linux box.
Free eBooks and AudioBooks for Mobile Computers. I went looking for a decent eBook reader for my nephew’s and niece’s computer, and found this site with links to dozens of eBook resources. Because it’s intended for mobile computing, some of the resources listed are for Linux-based PDAs, not PCs, but other than that there are a lot of great resources here, from readers to websites to download free AudioBooks and eBooks.
YuuGuu. Since I’m going to be supporting this computer, I want to have some way to access it remotely. LogMeIn, my preferred remote access service, doesn’t have a Linux server yet (though one is supposed to be coming by the end of this year). VNC works great and is pre-installed on most distros, but is complex to set up on a home system behind a router and without a static IP address (if none of that means anything to you, it would be even more complex for you to do!). YuuGuu is the only desktop sharing service I could find that is both free and Linux-ready, so I’ll give it a try – the only downside is that it looks like I”ll have to have someone initiate a session from the kids’ computer in order to do remote support.
My Game Company is a distributor of “family-friendly” games for all platforms, including Linux. Linux isn’t known as a gaming platform, but there are some pretty good titles out there, and even some commercial games. The owners of My Game Country screen them all for excessive violence, foul language, and adult sexuality to provide parents with games they can be sure won’t raise too many difficult questions in young players’ minds. Although the owners are explicitly Christian, the game content itself is not Christian – and I think the standards they use will please most parents Christian or otherwise.

I’m a little disappointed at the lack of resources available for parents looking to explore Linux with their kids. It’s surprising, since Linux has virtually created the huge niche of childhood computing as an affordable alternative to Windows for schools in poor countries. There are now-defunct sites like “linuxforkids.org” that appear to have once been developing resources, but are now only link farms. I’ll be happy to see new players on the field paying some attention to what seems poised to become an important computing niche.

Maybe you know some good resources. If you know of anything, let us know in the comments!

Share This

Linux for Children

Dustin Wax — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 14:00:00 +0000

I recently took possession of a pair of older PCs – the natural consequence of nagging one’s older relatives to get something a little more “post-Columbian” – and of course my first instinct is to refurbish one as a Linux PC for my nephew and niece, ages 7 and 5. My nephew, especially, is computer-obsessed, and I figure that giving him a complete child-friendly, education-focused PC might encourage some more productive “play” than he gets using mom and dad’s PC.

Kid-Friendly Linux Distributions

Believe it or not, there are several distributions of Linux intended for use by children as young as 3 years old. Child-oriented Linux distros tend to have a simplified interface with large, “chunky”, colorful icons and a specialized set of programs designed with kids in mind. Some of the better-known distributions aimed at children include:

Sugar, the operating system designed for the One Laptop Per Child project. Sugar is a radical departure from traditional desktops, with a strong emphasis on teaching programming skills, but is very strongly geared towards classroom use. Although I’m pretty comfortable using Linux, I’m afraid Sugar might be too different for me to help my nephew and niece make use of it.
Edubuntu is based on the popular Ubuntu distribution. Designed to be easy to install and very Windows-like in its operation, Edubuntu would be my first choice if I were using newer hardware. With its rich graphical interface, though, I worry that these years-old PCs, neither of which have graphic cards, will lag running Edubuntu. And given kids’ attention spans, I’m afraid that would be a major barrier to getting them to use it.
LinuxKidX uses a KDE-based desktop highly customized for children, and is based on the Slackware distro. The only drawback for me is that most of the support material is in Portuguese (although the distro I linked to is in English), making it hard for me to be confident about my ability to help if there are any problems.
Foresight for Kids is based on Foresight Linux, a distro distinguished by the use of the Conary package manager. Conary is intended to make updates and dependencies much easier to manage than other package managers – in English, it should be easier to install and update software. On the other hand, finding software packaged for the Conary installer might be a challenge, though I expect the most popular programs are being adapted by the Foresight team.
Qimo is another system based on Ubuntu, but designed to be used by a single home user instead of in classroom instruction. The system requirements are fairly low, since it’s designed to be run on donated equipment which Qimo’s parent organization, QuinnCo, distributes to needy kids.

Given the low specs of the equipment I”m working with, Qimo seems idea for me, but since most of these will run from either a Live CD or a USB memory key, there’s no reason not to download them all and give each a try to see what you – and, more importantly, your kids – like best.

Linux Software for Kids

In addition to the kid-friendly interface, all of the distributions above come with an assortment of software that’s either designed especially for kids or has special appeal for kids. This includes specifically educational software intended to teach math, typing, art, or even computer programming; typical productivity applications like word processors and graphics programs; and, of course, games. Of course, Linux doesn’t have nearly the range of games that are available for Windows PCs, but my thinking is, the games are good enough for younger kids, and older kids will gravitate towards consoles (my brother and sister-in-law have a Wii).

Some of the software available for kids includes:

GCompris, a set of over 100 educational games intended to teach everything from basic computer use to reading, art history, telling time, and vector drawing.
Childsplay is another collection of games, with an emphasis on memory skills.
TuxPaint, an amazing drawing program filled with fun sound effects and neat effects.
EToys is a scripting environment, more or less. The idea is that kids solve problems by breaking them down into pieces, scripting them, and running their scripts – the same way programmers do. But the goal doesn’t seem to be to teach programming but rather to provide an immersive learning environment in which kids learn foundational thinking skills.
SuperTux and Secret Maryo are Super Mario clones, because kids love Super Mario. You already know that.
TomBoy, a wiki-like note-taking program.
TuxTyping, a typing game intended to help develop basic typing skills.
Kalzium is a guide to the periodic table and a database of information about chemistry and the elements. Great for older students.
Atomix, a cool little game where kids build molecules out of atoms.
Tux of Math Command is an arcade game that helps develop math skills.

Not all distros come with all of these games, but they are easy enough to install from the online repositories if your chosen distro doesn’t come with one or more of them. Of course, most distros also come with standard Linux programs like OpenOffice.org (an Office-like suite of productivity apps), AbiWord (a Word-like word processor), GIMP (a powerful image editor), Pidgin (a multi-account IM client), and Firefox.

Linux is a complex operating system, but it’s also a highly customizable one – for kids, that means a system that can grow as they do and a powerful learning environment. Of course, children’s computer use should not be totally unsupervised – any kid can stumble across Web content that might be pretty uncomfortable for mom and dad to have to explain – but kids should have a chance to explore the possibilities of today’s technology and get their hands dirty, like kids do. And worst-case scenario – your 6-year old borks the operating system and you re-install. Wouldn’t you rather it was on the Edubuntu system, rather than on your mission-critical work PC? (Make sure you back up the /home directory regularly so you don’t lose all your kids’ drawings, poems, stories, or whatever.)

Do you know of other kid=friendly Linux distributions? Have you set up a Linux PC for your kids? Are their other games or programs you’d recommend? Let us know your experiences in the comments.

Update: Comic book writer Jeremiah Gray emailed me after this post came out to tell me about his series of Ubuntu-oriented Linux tutorials published in comic book format, Hackett and Bankwell. You can order printed copies or download PDF versions fro free from the website, and each is heavily supplemented with links to related resources on the Web. And they’re not bad reading, either! Looks like a great way to get kids (and even adults) up to speed with Linux.

Share This

Adobe Moves Closer to Online Office Suite with Presentations, Spreadsheets, Premium Plans for Businesses

Dustin Wax — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 14:00:00 +0000

Long-time readers of Lifehack know of my ongoing love affair with Adobe’s online word processor Buzzword, since last year part of the Acrobat.com suite of online applications. “Love affair” is not too strong a phrase, either – I like the interface and ease of use so much that I was inspired to write a book, Don’t Be Stupid: A Guide to Learning, Studying, and Succeeding at College, just for an excuse to have something to use Buzzword for.

Last year, Adobe integrated Buzzword into Acrobat.com, adding online file storage and sharing, an online meeting space, and a file-to-PDF convertor, all accessible either through the website or through a very slick AIR application that runs on your desktop.

I’ve been waiting for Adobe to take the next step with Acrobat.com by adding spreadsheets and presentations, and now they have. As Acrobat.com comes out of Beta, an online presentation editor and spreadsheet has been launched in Adobe’s Acrobat Labs.

Adobe has also announced premium plans for businesses, offering unlimited PDF conversion for their Premium Plus subscribers and 10 conversions a month for Premium Basic users (free users are limited to 5files per month), the ability to host larger meetings using ConnectNow (up to 20 for Premium Plus, 5 for Premium Basic users, and 3 for free users), and an unspecified (as far as I could find) increase in ability to store and share files. The rates are a little steep: $15 a month for Premium Basic and $35/month for Premium Plus – I think we have to assume that more features will be available down the line for business users.

Presentations and Tables

I won’t be upgrading to a Premium plan, since I’m just a guy, you know? I will be looking rather closely at the spreadsheet and presentation editors, though – that’s something I can use! Currently I use SlideRocket for presentations, and was hoping that Adobe would being something like SlideRocket’s very Adobe-esque interface to the Acrobat.com suite, and from first impressions, it looks like they have. It’s quite similar to Buzzword’s interface, as is Table’s (Adobe’s name for the spreadsheet editor), and since that interface is a big part of my love for Buzzword, I think I’m going to like this. A lot.

Tables incorporates a bunch of automated features – for example, columns automatically inherit the data format of the first cell entered. Take that,Excel! Better yet, it offers great collaboration features. Several people can work on a spreadsheet at the same time, with indicators showing you which cells other people are working on at any given time. If you need to sort or modify a table, you can enter “Private View” so that your changes won’t be reflected in the table others are working on.

Unfortunately, tables isn’t exactly a spreadsheet – yet, I hope. It’s an easy way to present and organize data, but there is no way to add formulas or automate functions. But it’s a great table editor – hopefully spreadsheet functions will be added soon, and it would be nice to see the table editor as it stands incorporated into Buzzword, too.

Presentations is a little more refined, with a good set of tools and themes for producing quality presentations. Unfortunately, you can’t export to PowerPoint, only to PDF. However, the built-in presentation mode is pretty slick, and you can share the presentation online with anyone via email. Collaboration is slick, as in Tables – several people can work at the same time with suitable safeguards to prevent conflicts.

With Photoshop Express, Adobe is creating a pretty nice suite of online apps. They are by far the nicest-looking and most pleasant to use of the recent crop of Web-based apps. I’m still waiting for Buzzword to add support for styles so it can be fully compatible with Word, and for all the Acrobat.com apps to be integrated with the Acrobat.com file storage and sharing repository – it’s simply odd that documents created with Buzzword are saved separately from all the documents you’ve uploaded, or that documents you’ve uploaded can’t be opened in Buzzword.

But all in all, Adobe is putting out top-notch apps and deserves a lot more attention than they’re getting so far. Try out this latest crop of applications and see what you think!

Share This

10 More from the Webware 100

Dustin Wax — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 14:00:00 +0000

Last week, I looked at the apps chosen by CNet for the productivity section of the Webware 100. There were, however, 10 other sections – 9 categories of apps voted for as top in their class and an extra categories of apps chosen by the editors at CNet. This week, I want to look at a selection of applications from the rest of the Webware 100, with an eye towards their use to increase or improve personal productivity.

Some of the categories aren’t very productivity-oriented, like the music and audio section – I love Pandora and Amazon MP3, but I can’t say they help with my productivity in anything but the most indirect way (by giving me music to listen to while I’m working). The browsing category is particularly useless – picking the 10 best apps for web browsing is a bit like picking your ten best fingers. But scattered throughout the list there were some interesting apps, worth taking a look at.

1. Digsby/Pidgin

Both Digsby and Pidgin are multi-protocol IM clients, meaning you can use them to connect simultaneously to a variety of instant-messaging networks: AOL, Yahoo, MSN, Google Chat, and others. I use DIgsby, which is highly customizable with various skins, which allows me to chat in a very clean, clear, and large-fonted format that’s easy on my aging eyes. Digsby offers integration with Facebook’s chat system, which is nice – the built-in client on Facebook tends to crash on me a lot. It can also pick up your Twitter account, but I find that much too annoying and difficult to work with in Digsby, and leave Twitter duties to dedicated clients. (Interesting that there were no Twitter clients in the Webware 100…)

2. Skype

I certainly don’t need to sing the praises of Skype – the VoIP service is already beloved by many. I pay about $40 a year for a SkypeIn number, unlimited US SkypeOut calling, and voicemail, and use it as my business phone. A cheap handset attached to my desktop makes it very phone-like to respond to calls; for interviews for articles I’m working on I use a $30 Logitech headset and either CallGraph or Skype Call Recorder to record the calls to MP3 (always ask permission when using call recording software!). I also use PamFax to send faxes for a small fee (which can be taken from my Skype credit).

3. Gmail

Like Skype, the glories of Gmail are widely known. What makes Gmail more than just another email service are the various “extras” Google has added to the service, both directly and as options available through labs. Some of my favorites:

Canned responses for saving snippets of text (up to whole emails) to reuse in future messages;
Tasks which also integrates with Google’s Calendar, allowing you to place dated tasks directly onto your calendar;
IMAP access which means I can check my email from wherever, online or through a client, and not worry about things I’ve read showing up as “unread” when I download my email on a different computer;
Google Docs and Google Calendar integration allows me to view my calendar and recent Google Docs from Gmail;
Google Chat pop-ups directly in the Gmail interface.

4. Dropbox

Dropbox is a file syncing service that has one feature that sets it apart from similar services: shared folders. You can set up a folder on your desktop that is “mirrored” on another desktop – say, a client’s or collaborator’s. Then, whenever you want to share a file to them, you just drag it into the folder, and it’s uploaded to their computer (or held until the next time they’re online). So far, I’ve only used this for work, but I think I’m going to set up two folders on my parent’s computers. The first one will be on their desktops, and I’ll use it to send them family photos and other files (since the whole concept of “email attachment” seems so confusing to them). The second will be deep inside the folder structure, which I’ll use for backing up my own files – since all they do is web browse and read email, they never come even close to using up the 160 or 320 GB of space on their hard drives, making it a perfect site for my off-site backup.

5. Drop.io

Drop.io offers an easy way to share large files – with no sign-in or registration necessary. Of course, you can create private, password-protected repositories, but you can also just upload a file and send people the drop.io/whatever URL. You can upload up to 100MB for free, and photos, videos, and audio get converted so they can be viewed or listened to online.

6. Aviary/Picnik

Aviary and Picnik are, believe it or not, high-quality online graphics editor. Aviary is the more complex of the two, offering full-featured vector and raster creation and editing, spread over 4 sub-apps. Picnik is more of a touch-up app, allowing you to sharpen, adjust colors, resize, and do other photo editing tasks. Online image editing is a bit of a solution in search of a problem – local apps like Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, or even IrfanView are more powerful and work faster, but folks with netbooks, especially those with small flash-based drives, will appreciate the ability to work on an image now and again without having to install software or wait for their slower processors to apply unsharp mask..

7. Evernote

Evernote keeps getting better and better. The basic idea is you can make notes in various ways – type directly, clip form the web or other documents, take a picture, record a voice note – and the program keeps it organized. Evernote also syncs to an online repository (subject to transfer limits) and to any other computer you install the client on. Apps for mobiles like iPhones and, just released, Blackberry allow you to create and send notes in a variety of formats from your smartphone (unfortunately, neither iPhones nor Blackberries have good enough cameras for up-close shots of text like business cards – try putting a magnifying glass or card over the lens for close-up shots). My favorite recently-discovered feature is the ability to store and index PDF files, of which I have hundreds (academic articles downloaded for various research projects). Since I have a free account, I don’t sync these online – they’d quickly use up my monthly transfer allotment.

8. Google Voice

Only available to former Grand Central users, Google Voice offers powerful call forwarding and voicemail services. Basically, you get a single number that you can have forwarded to any or all of your phones – and you can set up rules to decide what gets transferred where. Voicemails can be forwarded as audio files to your email, or you can read – yeah, “read”, since they do so-so voice transcription on your messages – them online in a very Gmail-like interface. Got a troublesome caller, maybe from an autodialer system? Mark it as spam and block it, just like email! You can also make low-cost international calls, but a) I don’t have any to make, and b) the process is a bit complex, so I’ve never tried this.

9. Windows Live Sync

You’d be forgiven for mistaking Windows Live Sync with Windows Live Mesh – both synchronize files placed into a designated folder over the Internet, and both are free. Oh, and then there’s Windows Skydrive, which doesn’t sync but, like Mesh, offers online file storage. Apparently, all these services will one day be a single service, probably called Windows Live Skymesh Sync (or, more typically Microsoft, Windows Live File Storage and Online File Synchronization for Windows, Premium Professional Version 2010). Whatever it’s called, the technologies involved are pretty slick – I use Mesh to backup my netbook, storing all my documents in a folder that’s synched to my “regular” computer’s desktop (and from there saved to an external hard drive and, through Mesh, to the Web).

10. Twitter Search

THe only Twitter-related choice in the list, this once gave me heartburn at first – I mean, really? But after a little thought, it seems a more fruitful choice. Twitter Search is what transforms the screaming multitudes on Twitter into a resource – a cross between a social network, news feed, and trend tracker. It’s real-time, which means you get what’s going on right now, and several Twitter clients incorporate it into their interfaces. I keep a couple of Twitter searches in columns in Tweetdeck – one that catches sites, tips, and jobs for writers, another that lets me know when people are talking about Lifehack, and a couple of “topic of the moment” searches for whatever I’m interested in on any given day.

Well, that’s my take on the Webware 100. A lot of the apps chosen were, to be perfectly honest, a bit… well, boring. Maybe that’s what happens when web applications stop looking like the future and start being the present? In any case, I feel like there’s more interesting stuff going on out there – maybe you’ve got a favorite web application or service that didn’t make the list? Let us know in the comments.

Share This

Getting Productive with the Webware 100

Dustin Wax — Thu, 28 May 2009 14:00:00 +0000

CNet’s Webware 100 singles out 100 web-based applications for excellence in 10 categories. Unlike some other awards which recognize new services, the Webware 100 are selected as “best-of-breed” from among all the applications currently available.

The upshot is, there’s some pretty good apps on the list! Here, then, are my thoughts on the 10 selected in the “Productivity” category; in a future post I’ll look through some of the selections from the other 9 categories (Audio and Music, Browsing, Commerce, Communication, Infrastructure and Storage, Location-based Services, Photo and Video, Search and Reference, and Social and Publishing).

FreshBooks

FreshBooks is my new invoicing and bookkeeping app, as I’ve described recently at FreelanceSwitch. Like several other apps, FreshBooks offers the ability to create and send nicely-formatted invoices (including, for a small fee, by US mail), track payments, monitor expenses, and keep track of cash flow. Aimed at freelancers and small businesses, FreshBooks is affordable and simple to use. What sets it apart from similar web-based and desktop-based apps is its integration with other services, such as Outright (which helps determine your quarterly estimated tax payments).

Google Calendar

When I started using more than one computer on a regular basis, I discovered the difficulty in keeping an Outlook calendar accessible across several machines. That is, after all, what Outlook Exchange is for – but of course Exchange is incredible overkill for managing a single calendar. Enter Google Calendar. With it’s fairly good natural language parsing (which allows appointments to be entered by writing “Lunch with Bob Smith tomorrow at Joe’s Diner”) and integration with other services (like to-do lists Toodledo and Remember the Milk) as well as easy importation of iCal calendars from other sources, Google Calendar fits the bill very nicely. And with the new Google Sync software, I can easily and automatically sync my Blackberry’s calendar to Google, so I always have an up-to-date calendar with me. For simple task management, Google recently announced that the Tasks previously available in Gmail would now be accessible in Google Calendar, which is a nice touch if your to-do list needs are fairly basic.

Google Docs

Although I’m a big fan of Adobe’s Buzzword for online word processing, I tend to use Google Docs a lot more. Partially that’s because it was recently integrated into Gmail, which means I can save attachments directly from an email into my Google Docs storage, but I also appreciate the ability to use styles in Google Docs that convert into Word styles when I export my files to my own computer. I don’t use the spreadsheets or presentations nearly as much – only because I don’t use any spreadsheets or presentations that often. But I recommend them quite a bit – they’re pretty easy to use, and the spreadsheets allow you to integrate dynamic data from Google searches, which is pretty neat.

Intuit QuickBase

Quickbase is a little out of my league, I admit. An enterprise-ready database, it can be applied to literally hundreds of tasks, from CRM, project management, payroll tracking, and just about anything else you’d build a database to handle. As an enterprise-level application, it’s priced way out of the reach of an academic/blogger like myself.

LogMeIn

For a nomad like me, who might find himself sitting in front of a half-dozen different computers over the course of the day, LogMeIn’s free service level is a lifesaver. No matter where I’m at, I can get secure access to my home PC, which means I can check my email, pay bills, and do other online asks without entrusting my passwords or credit card numbers to a machine I don’t have any control over. I can also work on documents and other projects from wherever – I just leave them open on the desktop at home and log in to work throughout the day. Finally, I’ve installed LogMeIn clients on both my parent’s computers, allowing me to work on their computers remotely whenever they run into trouble.

Microsoft Office Live Small Business

Imagine you could set up a free website on a free domain with free email and free hosting and free file storage. Believe it or not, that’s exactly what Microsoft Office Live Small Business offers! I used this to set up a website for a local non-profit that had no funding yet – it fit the bill perfectly. While the service includes an online site builder, I was able to upload my own HTML files, too. What’s missing is a blogging and/or content management system, which means that when they say “small business”, they mean small – the service is really intended as a way to set up a brochure-type web presence suitable for local businesses.

Microsoft Office Live Workspace

Office Live Workspace is a strange duck in the world of web apps – the free account allows you to store and share up to 5 GB of documents, but there’s no online editing. Instead, files open in and save from your locally-installed Office software: Word, PowerPoint, Excel. Great for small-scale collaboration where you can be sure everyone has the same software. You have to assume that this is a backend for a future version of Office that will be accessible through a browser, but so far, Microsoft’s been pretty mum.

Mint

I haven’t used Mint, but I keep planning to. Mint is a personal finance system that promises to end your personal bookkeeping woes. Enter all your bank, credit card, and other financial account numbers, and let Mint do it’s thing. The service automatically categorizes your expenses and keeps a running tally of how much you’re spending on what so you can see at a glance where your budget is hurting and where it’s strong. When Mint first came out, there was a lot of worry about entrusting your financial information to a website, but so far, there haven’t been any problems, so they seem to be doing the security thing right.

Remember the Milk

Remember the Milk is not my task manager, but it’s a close contender. I use Toodledo (and more recently have been using Nozbe), but would use Remember the Milk in a second. It’s fast, easy to use, and integrates with a number of other services including Gmail and Google Calendar. Reminders are sent by email, SMS, or IM, and you can easily share your task list with others if you are so inclined.

Zoho

Zoho’s online office suite is arguable much better than Google Docs. The word processor, spreadsheet, and other office productivity apps are nearly indistinguishable from their desktop counterparts and offer features Google Docs hasn’t even thought of yet. Plus, Zoho offers CRM, project management, and invoicing software, making it an effective set of tools for a freelancer or small business (where its collaboration abilities really come in handy, too). They also offer an incredible database application, which Google Docs has no response to.

Are you using any of these services? What have your experiences been? Would you replace anything on the list?

Share This

The Case for Online Word Processors

Dustin Wax — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 14:00:19 +0000

It’s no secret I am a fan of online word processors — computing in the cloud is just the thing for a guy like me who (I’m told) is apt to find his head in the clouds as well. I’m writing this on Google Docs, and have made no secret of my love for Adobe’s Buzzword (which unfortunately seems to have some issues on the computer I’m using right now). Zoho Writer has gotten a little use from me as well.

I was recently asked what the big deal was — why should anyone go online when there’s a perfectly good copy of Office, Works, WordPerfect, OpenOffice.org, Pages, WordPad, LaTeX, AbiWord, KDocs, or any of a multitude of other powerful, effective, and highly usable word processors available from the desktop? What advantage could a feature-limited online word processor possibly offer.

It’s a good question, and one that boils down as much to subjective factors as to any absolute benefits word processing online might offer. And it’s a question with as much relevance for the whole range of powerful Web 2.0 apps that have emerged over the last couple of years and which look set to dominate computing in the near-to-mid-future. Spreadsheets, image editors, presentation software, databases, and more are migrating online, and it’s reasonable to ask why, and to what end?

What follows is my response to the question — the reasons that matter to me as an end-user of many kinds of online applications, particularly word processors. There may well be other, even better, answers to the questions online apps pose; at the same time, some of my reasons might not apply to everyone, or even to anyone other than me. But in the end, I think that my experiences aren’t all that unique, and while I might represent an extreme in some regards, the reasons that online apps work well for me will apply to at least a significant number of other people, if not most.

Availability
The main benefit of online word processors for me is their availability from any computer with an Internet connection. Since my schedule puts me in front of a number of different computers throughout the course of the day, and changes as well from semester to semester, I can’t count on being able to access the same software on one computer that I used on the last — and unfortunately, although most modern file formats can be read by any word processor, there’s always the risk of losing formatting, pagination, or fonts opening a document created in one program (or version) in another.

Using an online word processor means I have a standard format and interface from computer to computer — I don’t have to worry about whether the version of Word on this computer matches the one on the computer where I started my document, or whether I won’t be able to open it at all. I just log in to Google Docs or Buzzword and continue where I left off — as I am with this post, which I started writing in my office at the university and which I’m finishing on my netbook at home.

Off-site storage/backup
Another advantage of cloud-based word processors is that no matter what kind of trouble I get into, my documents are still safe and sound on servers hundreds of miles away. I can’t tell you how many thumb drives I’ve left in computers — or put through the washing machine. I’ve never done that with the Internet…

The document storage online word processors offer gives me an excellent off-site backup for important documents, even ones I don’t create or work on online. I feel a lot better knowing that copies of my most important documents exist far away from my home, just in case.

Collaboration/Sharing
When it comes to collaboration, most online word processors beat even the mighty Word, hands down. Documents can be worked on live, rather than emailing copies back and forth and trying to keep track of versions. More important, you don’t have to contend with Microsoft’s awful, awful, awful Track Changes (which isn’t to say other word processors do it much better…).

Plus, most online word processors allow you to set various levels of permissions, so that you can offer read-only access to one group of viewers, full editing privileges to another, and the ability to add comments to a third. You can often post documents directly to the Web, too, which can be quite handy.

User interface
Finally, some online word processors just have good user interfaces. Google Docs is simple, streamlined, perfect for just opening a document and slapping some thoughts together. Adobe’s Buzzword, on the other hand, is simply gorgeous — it inspires me just to look at it. I wrote the first 10,000 or so words of my book, Don’t Be Stupid, on Buzzword just to keep using it!

It seems foolish to point to the way an app looks as an advantage, but I’d argue it’s a very real factor. Tools matter — ask any carpenter. Buzzword to me is like I imagine a finely forged chisel is to a woodworker — my fingers just itch to get to work. Google Docs is like a set of sturdy wrenches — nothing too fancy, but I know it gets the job done. While there are desktop-based apps that also feel quite good to use, the stripped-down interfaces of online apps seems especially well-suited to this kind of inspiration.

So there you have it — four big reasons why I use online word processors, even when I have Office or some other program easily accessible. Like I said, there may be other reasons — and maybe you have reasons I haven’t thought of. Why not share your thoughts in the comments below?

Share This

The Trend of Productivity Accessories is Here

Leon Ho — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 05:08:22 +0000

This year, the technology trend is going from web into mobile. If you have followed this year’s Mobile World Congress, you will see there are so many new phones from different vendors. It’s all about big screen with a focus of productivity.

We are entering into a new technology era. Mobile used to be a single function device. In recent years, mobile has acquired some extra features. The most common are music player, productivity suite and utilities, and online capabilities. Some road warriors can now carry a mobile phone in their pocket and continue their work on the road.

How will the mobile technologies be developed from here, to assist you on your work and life everyday? We’re not just talking about cell phones. We’re seeing a constant rise in gadgets that talk to each other and deal with your information for you. Let’s have a look into the not-so-distant future.

Prada Link

Recently I have been invited to witness the launch of LG Prada II phone. Along with their phone, they have released another product, called Prada Link.

Prada Link is a watch with a twist. It could do normal functions like time, date, and alarms on its tiny screen. It also previews SMS and shows the incoming call number. It means that you can read SMS while pretending you are looking at the time. You can reject calls with your watch so you won’t feel awkward taking your phone out when you are in a meeting. You might feel safer to look at your watch when you are waiting for the traffic light when you are driving, then going through the phone.

This is quite neat. What we are about to see are different multi-function accessories that could help you in different parts of your life. Here are some I dream about — some of which are already on the rise:

A very small bluetooth earring for music and voice call.
A shoe with pedometer that connects to your mobile phone to count walking steps (case in point, Nike + iPod).
A pair of glasses with screen to show information on the directions and traffic information.
A ring with smart ID chip that you could use to pay for anything or access security points.

We’ll get there – and are getting there even today, as you can see with the launch of the Prada Link.

The Network of Things

The Prada Link is part of the network of things, a colloquial phrased used to refer to the increase in technology that communicates on a mundane level with other technology to make our lives easier. This “network of things” starts with the radio chips on inventory being moved cross-country or even internationally so that suppliers can track movement, and goes as far as the Prada Link, a watch that talks to your phone, and RFID (Radio-frequency identification) chips or barcodes in business cards that lets you access more information than a small piece of cardboard can.

Speaking of RFID, the network of things is growing to include the network of people, where RFID implants allow you to pass through security points or pay for goods, though at this time the technology is only useful in a small set of limited circumstances. Security guards in hi-tech installations are some of the first to use this technology. It has long been predicted that a time will come when RFID or something like it is what gets you through at the airport in lieu of identification, and what pays for your groceries instead of a debit or credit card.

While we’re not walking around with chips in our arms now, it opens up interesting possibilities and ideas when productivity machines and the human machine collide.

Interconnecting Gadgets

Electronic gadgets have been mass-market products for some time now, but for the most part these gadgets have been created with an interface for only one other input: the human operating it. The trend we’re seeing is gadgets interfacing with each other, instead of a human, in order to save us time. The Prada Link interfaces with your phone to bring you information in a much more accessible and swift manner, and it allows you to prioritize: does that message require immediate attention? If not, no need to pull your phone out right now. The Prada Link might lead to a few more second dates if you tend to scare them off with obsessive phone checking!

Perhaps in the future we’ll see gadgets that know whether or not to interrupt you with certain information based on rules you give it, much the way we set rules and filters in our email today. You could tell a future Prada Link not to let you know about calls from family while in a work meeting, but allows you to make exceptions for (for instance) a pregnant wife who is close to term. This is the ultimate interface between gadgets: when the gadgets know whether or not to interface with you at all.

Share This

5 Mac OS X RSS Readers Worth Giving a Shot

Joel Falconer — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 13:30:45 +0000

There was once a time when my favorite RSS reader cost a fair but not insignificant price and the open source alternative wasn’t up-to-snuff. I won’t name any names, though you can probably deduce their identities by ruffling through some articles I wrote before I switched to a decent web-based solution (not all of us are able to resist the tides of trends and time, y’know).

There are probably a whole lot of RSS readers for the Mac; I haven’t tried them all and I won’t claim too. In fact, I’ve only tried a few of the most popular. I’m not the kind of person to spend countless days and weeks trying out new applications. I like to find something that works well, lets me get my job done the quickest, and get on with life. In my opinion if you want to be a productive person, that’s a habit you should also develop — too many so-called “personal productivity enthusiasts” spend half their time looking for new software. Unless reviewing the stuff is your job, there’s no sense in spending more than a small amount of your time doing this. That is what articles like this are for.

NewsFire

NewsFire has been around for quite some time. It’s a free download from the NewsFire website. NewsFire sports a very simple two-pane view, with feeds on the left and feed items on the right. That said, it’s attractive and easy to read from. It doesn’t make use of tiny fonts by default like one or two readers I’ve used in the past. Search is fast and will run your query through every feed you’re subscribed to pretty much instantly.

If you’re a chronic sorter, then you might find NewsFire falls a little short. You can create smart folders, but you can’t use labels or tags to organize certain items or feeds. Its organization features are good enough for most users. Where it falls down for me the most is the lack of synchronization.

Shrook

Shrook is an interesting application. It’s free, but the look and feel of the application is — to my eyes — very dated. I found the website to be much the same. Evidently Shrook’s founders are function over form types (like all programmers, right?). Looks aside, it has some really interesting features. Instead of setting up smart folders based on keywords, Shrook will use Bayesian statistical filtering to pick out items of interest, and you teach it by picking out examples. It’s a learning RSS reader. It also uses a Distributed Checking mechanism to keep you as up-to-date as possible with new feed items; when one copy of Shrook checks a feed and find new items, it broadcasts the presence of a new unread item to other copies of the application around the world.

Shrook features synchronization by way of Shrook.com, a web-based version of the reader that will sync with copies of the app on various computers.

NetNewsWire

Maybe you don’t need to go checking my ancient articles after all. Before I moved to Google Reader, I was a NetNewsWire user. I was happy to pay for the software because it’s great. I can still get through all my feeds in NetNewsWire faster than any other reader, including Google Reader. NetNewsWire is now completely free, so there’s no obstacle to trying it out — just go here. NetNewsWire features a variety of views, a bunch of keyboard controls that don’t require contortionist acts and let you fly right through your feeds, detects microformats allowing you to quickly add data to iCal or Address Book, and has a tabbed browser right inside. All very cool.

Additionally, NetNewsWire’s owners Newsgator own a web-based reader, a Windows reader and there’s a version of NNW for the iPhone. The web-based reader acts as a synchronization server. If you want synchronization between just about every device you’ve got, try this app.

Vienna

Vienna is the only open source reader on this list, and as far as I know the only open source RSS reader for the Mac that’s currently worth looking at.

These days, Vienna looks a fair bit nicer than when I used it for a good six months a few years back. I haven’t been able to stress-test it though, but in times past it really suffered under a heavy load and got quite slow. Vienna’s got a nice quick filtering bar on launch that enables speedy research and trend monitoring, blogging app integration, and a bunch of helpful but pretty standard features. It has certainly come a long way over time.

Google Reader

Google Reader is a good web-based feed reader, though not without its quirks (sometimes I’ve seen duplicate items I’ve already read in the All items view, and sometimes things just get stuck and items won’t get marked as read). You can separate your feeds into folders, though creating and maintaining them is tedious. When Google Reader isn’t being a pain, it’s great being able to fly through your feeds with just your scroll wheel — items are marked as read as you scroll past them — but more often than not this doesn’t work out. Sounds like an awfully negative review for the reader I’m actively using right now, eh? I suppose it’s all about convenience.

But it is good. It does work well and the bugs aren’t serious enough to be worried about. It’s the only reader I’ve used that has a social aspect — you can share items, and if you’ve conversed with someone via Gmail you’ll see their shared items too. It features a Trends screen that lets you peruse your readership statistics, but no smart foldering or statistical sorting as yet. The Trends screen lets me know that my most frequently checked feeds are those pertaining to the forums or blog at the sites I manage and edit, which I’m sure will be happy news for my employers if they’re reading this.

I’ve been a bit unfair by throwing Google Reader into the mix; it’s not fair on the desktop applications to be compared to a web service and it’s not fair on a web service to be compared to desktop apps. I use Google Reader myself these days, so it gets my vote, but it was a long and hard struggle to give up the comfort of a good desktop app. For that reason I’d have to call a tie between Google Reader and NetNewsWire, which is the best of the list in my opinion — especially now that it’s free.

Offering a unique perspective and insight on productivity based on his experience as a writer, musician, family man and manager, Joel Falconer has been published online and off, and brings to Lifehack's readers practical advice you can use to be more efficient and effective.

Share This

Things for Mac: Intuitive & Streamlined Task Management Software

Joel Falconer — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 13:30:53 +0000

I’ve followed the development of Cultured Code’s Things with keen interest since it was announced in its early stages. It seemed like it was going to come closer to providing a truly seamless and ubiquitous, but most importantly, smooth application for managing the things that need to get done each day.

My problem with task management applications is this: they require too much conscious effort on my part. Task management apps should flow, should make using them easier than jotting things down on a napkin. Many are perfectly functional but don’t put the effort into creating that flow. Things is the first OS X task management application I tried where I felt like I didn’t really have to try, despite it some similar features to other offerings.

It received its fair share of praise and criticism while in beta, and I referenced both Things for Mac and Things Touch (the iPhone and iPod touch version) in articles here and elsewhere, but I always find it best – in terms of good etiquette, at least – to allow a product to exit beta before judging it.

For those of you who want to save time, my verdict is this: it’s still the smoothest experience, and I still don’t feel like I have to try. For those who want the grand tour, follow along with me.

The Inbox

The first thing you’ll see when you open Things is the Inbox. Falling in line with good GTD methodology, you capture everything in your inbox as you go, and you process it later at an appropriate time. For me, this is the cornerstone of the system, and any good custom productivity system, because it allows you to keep track of everything that needs doing without allowing it to steal mental processing power and attention at that time.

The Inbox is built so that you can rapidly enter tasks in succession as they come to mind, which is great for a mind-dumping session. You can just enter the tasks as they are, or you can include notes and a deadline. Usually for a mind-dump, the description of the task is sufficient, but the extra features come in handy.

Of course, rapid mind-dumping is important and Things caters to this, but perhaps even more important is ubiquitous capture. If all you want is ubiquitous capture on your one computer running Things, you’ve got it with the help of the Quick Entry feature. Tap a keystroke on your keyboard, and this window will appear:

After you’ve captured tasks either on the fly with Quick Entry or in a mind-dumping session, getting those tasks sorted is an easy and smooth process. Once you’ve done some initial set-up work with Things, it’s a matter of drag-and-drop, and the occasional need to begin a new project or area of responsibility.

Things offers ubiquitous capture beyond the computer, but it comes at a price. That price is the need to own an iPhone or iPod touch. You can then purchase and install Things Touch which is an excellent companion with sync capability, but is the subject of another review, another day.

Today

One of my favorite parts of Things is the Today screen. This section allows you to see tasks you have either manually designated or automatically (and perhaps recurringly) scheduled to fall on the current day. Basically, it lets you narrow down and focus exclusively on the tasks you wanted to get done today, and it reminds you of any deadlines that might’ve slipped past your memory.

I often have hundreds or thousands of tasks floating around in my task management software. Don’t worry, I haven’t been writing one thing here and doing another for the past year, because many of these are someday/maybe tasks I’d like to get around to in the future, when I have the time and inclination. But still, having dozens of projects and plenty of someday ideas can be a little distracting when you need to hunker down and work. I don’t need to or want to see them on a day-to-day basis; I need to see what I assigned for today on my last weekly review, hunker down, and get off the computer in time for dinner.

And this is something I miss in too many programs: there’s not enough to focus you. There’s plenty to capture, sort, record, archive, and do all sorts of librarianesque stuff. But focus is perhaps the most important, and most frequently missing, key to having an effective and efficient day.

The Next screen is another pane of focus, but of a different sort. Today is a focus restrained by chronological factors. Next is, as GTDers would expect, a list of the immediate next actions of each project or area of responsibility you’ve used Things to track. Today helps you focus on what you need to do to finish work and go home. Next helps you focus on what you need to do to move each of your projects forward, whether you want to finish them this week or this year.

Scheduled & Projects

The Scheduled pane shows you a list of all tasks for which you’ve elected to assign a due date or a recurrence. The way the data is presented is refreshing; some programs sort the tasks by numerical dates (like 12/12/12). It’s important to see this data, but what’s better is to sort the tasks by a more human-readable name and provide the exact date next to the task description as Things has done.

So what you get here are tasks sorted by names like Daily, Every month, or just March, to give you an overview of when and how often things happen:

I would suggest that Cultured Code implement a calendar view so you can see what’s coming up in a more tangible way.

Projects is a succinct, well-presented listing of all your active projects, as well as your someday and scheduled projects which can be hidden from view until the time comes. I haven’t got a lot of them going on in this reviewing deployment of Things – there are a heap in my day-to-day deployment and I’ve just taken that and stripped it of sensitive projects for screenshots, and that happened to be most of them!

Things will give you the name and rough due date of the project, along with the number of tasks inside and a satisfying checkbox for when you’ve completed the whole thing.

The pane for active projects themselves gives you all the information you’ve recorded regarding the project as a whole at the top — description, due date, notes, tags, and so on — followed by a listing of all the tasks that comprise the project, with similar data available. You need to double-click tasks to see info other than the description (which I think is a good thing), but the project overview information is persistent:

Area of Responsibility provides a place to assign those tasks that don’t fall under a time-constrainted, results-oriented project, and are either one-offs or recurring tasks for a role you occupy. This pane works a lot like the Inbox, a clean listing of the tasks, and nothing but the tasks.

Someday

Every good system needs a place for you to dump the ideas you’ve ubiquitously captured but can’t or don’t want to work on yet. Someday items and projects stay out of the road until you’re ready to review them or drag them onto the production line. If a piece of task management software doesn’t have a Someday section, I won’t use it, so I’m glad to see this.

What I’d Like to See

While Things is a great piece of software and is now my preferred day-to-day digital task management system, there’s one place where I think it falls down the most: synchronization. The ability to sync between my phone and one Mac is a great start, but I have more than one Mac and I spend equal amounts of time working on each.

So while Things works great when I’m out and about and need to remember something, or I’m plugging away at my iMac, I’m left out in the cold while I’m on my Macbook Pro. So far I’ve made this work by using Things Touch, but trust me when I say this approach gets mighty tiresome. I’m longing for Things to synchronize between my iPhone and multiple Macs.

Perhaps the best way to facilitate this would be by syncing through a service like Remember the Milk; it saves Cultured Code from having to develop an entire online infrastructure to facilitate said synchronization over the Internet, and it allows you to access your tasks wherever there’s an Internet connection if you don’t have an iPhone or you lose it.

Go take a look at Things for Mac — I highly recommend it!

Share This

Stepcase Lifehack » Technology

Searching for a Shared Virtual Workspace?

Review: Xobni Extends Outlook’s View, But at a Cost

Working with Xobni

Verdict: Is Xobni useful?

Review: aNobii for iPhone

Barcode Scanning

Search

Book info

Wish List

Shelf

9 More Apps to Help You Get More Out of Your Android Phone

1. AK Notepad

2. Dial Zero

3. Hi-Hiker

4. Greed

5. Places Directory

6. Qik

7. Skype Lite

8. Taskiller

9. Wertago

Roll Your Own TwitPic-like Media Hosting Using Posterous

Set up a Posterous account

Post images, videos, and other media via Posterous

Drawbacks

8 Keys to Internet Security

1. Use a router.

2. Do not open email attachments.

3. Do not download bittorrent files.

4. Do not download warez, porn, or other dubious files.

5. Do not download *anything* from sites you’re unfamiliar with.

6. Turn off Flash, Javascript, and other browser plugins.

7. Do not click links in email.

7a. Do not click shortened URLs.

8. Install all security updates.

The First 10 Free Apps to Install on a New Windows PC

1. Panda Cloud Antivirus

2. Firefox

3. OpenOffice.org

4. Thunderbird

5. Picasa

6. Skype

7. VLC Media Player

8. Handbrake

9. Digsby or Pidgin

10. CDBurnerXP

12 Free Android Apps to Help Get Things Done (Part 2)

12 Free Android Apps to Help Get Things Done (Part 1)

How to Get More Out of Your Home Network

A quick overview of your home network

1. Centralize content to one main computer

2. Backup like a superstar

3. Run a server

4. Use any computer in the house directly with VNC

5. Edit your hosts file to give your networked PCs easier-to-remember names

6. Share a printer

The End

How to Get Audiobooks Onto Your Zune – and Off Again

Using Overdrive with Overdrive Audiobooks

Creating Audiobooks from Your Own Mp3s

1. Rip the Audiobook

2. Merge the Files into One Big File

3. Create the Guide File and Transfer with Overdrive

Delete Audiobooks with Overdrive

10 More Linux Resources for Kids

Linux for Children

Kid-Friendly Linux Distributions

Linux Software for Kids

Adobe Moves Closer to Online Office Suite with Presentations, Spreadsheets, Premium Plans for Businesses

Presentations and Tables

10 More from the Webware 100

1. Digsby/Pidgin

2. Skype

3. Gmail

4. Dropbox

5. Drop.io

6. Aviary/Picnik

7. Evernote

8. Google Voice

9. Windows Live Sync

5. Do not download anything from sites you’re unfamiliar with.