Make Tech Easier » Trevor Dobrygoski

3 Sites to Easily Share Your Documents With Others

Trevor Dobrygoski — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 13:26:05 +0000

With all of the different ways to be social on the web, one of the things you may not think of sharing is your documents and presentations. I was surprised there are as many sites out there offering just such a service. When I really thought about it, it makes a lot of sense. These sites are they are like Youtube or Vimeo for documents.

Like many other types of social sites, these document sharing sites have the same basic idea to them; post all of your documents and presentations for all to see. Large companies like Ford use these sites to share fact sheets and marketing PDFs. They can be a really great place to research a topic or get ideas for a project you you may be stuck on.

Some of the sites offer the option to buy documents such as contracts, invoices and even ebooks. I noticed, while perusing through some of the sites, quite a few publishers and online magazines have accounts.

1. Doc Share

Doc Share offers a great variety of documents to view and download. Four categories (Business and Legal, eBooks, Essays or Guides and Instructions) make finding the type of document you are looking for easier, While these categories are fairly broad, they do help narrow your search.

The Social Part

You can give “kudos” up or down similar to Reddit or Stumbleupon. Of the three, Doc Share seems a little more laid back. When I went to the site for the first time, one of the recently added documents on the homepage was song lyrics and another was celebrity mug shots. The layout is a bit bland too.

2. Doc Stoc

Doc Stoc has millions of documents, both pay and free, in an easy to use layout. The layout is a little more categorized than others making it much easier to sift through the myriad of shared documents. (*note – while writing this post, I found A LOT of spam documents on this site. They were really easy to spot though.)

The Social Part

If you find something you like, you can save it to a folder. These don’t need to be files you have uploaded, anything on the site can saved. What I have used this particular site for in the past is finding great templates or inspirational presentations.

Of the three, this seems to be the least social on-site. It has basic sharing options like a Twitter button and you can embed a document into your site. To me, this one feels more like going to the library versus a Barnes and Noble or used bookstore.

3. Scribd

Scribd seems to be the most hip site of the three. They overhauled the site this past summer and added all kinds of features. Simple things like signing in with your Facebook info or Open ID show these guys are a bit more in-tune with whats going on.

There are plenty of categories to help narrow your searches. In addition to categories, the community tab lets you search for popular people you may want to follow.

The Social Part

This is the most social of the three. Scribd lets subscribe to other peoples feeds. You can update your on-site status with what you are reading by pasting a link to the document you are reading or publishing. This update is called a “Scribble”.

If you come across a presentation you want your Facebook or Twitter followers to know about, you have the buttons share. Others are also available along with the the code to embed it into your site.

How do social document site help you share your documents with your other communities?

image credit: Saxoji

3 Sites to Easily Share Your Documents With Others originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

25 Time Saving Bookmarklets You Will Want to Have in Your Browser

Trevor Dobrygoski — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:14:26 +0000

I noticed recently that many sites, applications and services are offering bookmarklets. I know I have about 40 of them, of which I use 10 very regularly.

For those of you who don’t use bookmarklets or arent quite sure what they are, here is a brief description.

What are Bookmarklets?

Bookkmarklets are a tiny java script application designed to add one click functionality to your web browser. There are hundreds of different uses, many of which save the need to run a desktop program.

A few programs with bookmarklets that have been mentioned on Make Tech Easier before are:

Webnotes
Hootsuite
Zementa
Evom
Posterous

Why Use a Bookmarklet?

The main reason to use them is to save time. As an example:

To email a copy of the Webnotes post to someone, use the “Gmail This!” bookmarklet. A window will pop up just like when the compose button in Gmail is clicked. The link and email subject are automatically added. If you want to add more to the body of the email you can explain what the link is before you email it.

Other reasons to use bookmarklets are:

Sharing things quickly on a social media site
Spell check
SEO
URL shortening
Adding the site to a social bookmarking site (ie Delicious, Digg, Reddit)
Subscribing to a RSS reader
Eliminating the ads and bloat for printing

20 other useful bookmarklets

1. Share on Facebook

Share sites on your Facebook wall or send as a message

2. Share on Friendfeed

Share links on both Friendfeed and Twitter with this one bookmarklet

3. Gmail This!

If you are going to pick one from this list to try, pick this one. It will save immense amounts of time and keep distractions at a minimum.

4. Evernote

Great for the avid Evernote user. send a link with tags, web clip, and notes to the notebook of your choice. This is a very quick way to add things without keeping the page or desktop app open all the time.

5. Serendipity (Reddit)

Randomly displays a site. A lot like Stumbleupon

6. Add to RTM

Quickly add a reminder or to-do

7. Vox This!

Add content to your Vox Blog

8. Readability

If you do a lot of reading on the web, this customizable bookmarklet will rock your world. It removes the bloat and formats the text in a way that is easier for YOU to read.

9. Spell Check

Checks spelling of any page, even published pages. Any word spelled wrong or not in Firefox’s dictionary will be highlighted.

10. Subscribe in Google Reader

Fast way to add a RSS feed to your Google Reader

11. Xray

Great for web designers. Click the bookmarklet then on any item on a page. Information like dimensions, position and border is displayed.

12. Share on Tumblr

Easily share a link on Tumblr

13. BugMeNot

Use BugMeNot database of usernames and passwords to sign in to “registered users only” websites, like news sites.

14. Boxqueue

Add videos to your Boxee Queue for viewing later. You need both a Google account and Boxee account to make this bookmarklet work.

15. DiggThis!

Quickly add sites to Digg.

16. Password Generator

If you have trouble coming up with secure passwords all the time, save some time and energy by installing this bookmarklet.

17. Google Translate

Super handy for those times when you end up on a site written in a language other than your native tongue.

18. TweetBurner

You know there had to be at least one Twitter something or other in the list.

19. Pagezipper

Features like continuous scrolling and auto resizing of images for your browser window make viewing sites less work.

20. Printliminator

Eliminate items on the page you DO NOT want to print. Great for pages or blogs without a printer friendly version of the page or post.

Including the one we have previously mentioned at MakeTechEasier, here are 25 of the useful bookmarklets that you can place in your browser. These are only a small portion of what is available. All of them are made to save time or make your browsing experience more personalized or enjoyable.

What bookmarklets do you use?

Image credit suchitra prints

25 Time Saving Bookmarklets You Will Want to Have in Your Browser originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Get Your Homepage Organized With 43marks

Trevor Dobrygoski — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 21:58:36 +0000

A few weeks ago I was re-listening to an audiobook by Seth Godin called “Purple Cow”. One part talked a little bit about a person who randomly sent the people at Google an email if the word count got too high on the main search page. These emails help them keep the search page exactly what it is designed to do. Compare the main search pages of Yahoo.com and Google.com; which one are you more likely to get distracted on?

My main personal homepage has been iGoogle for a long time. I use the tabs to keep things sorted. In those tabs are a some RSS feeds, a couple gadgets, webmaster tools and some mindless time wasters. I have to admit, I really don’t use the different things on the homepage much; they are what I am used to.

When I am sitting at my desk and trying to focus on work, it is all too easy to lend my attention to something much more interesting than what I should be doing. Going to a search site or looking at the auto suggestions when typing in a bookmark tag can easily steal your attention.

I have recently been trying out a different homepage at work. 43marks isn’t as flashy as some of the homepages out there, but flashy is usually distracting. How 43marks differs from other homepages, is how much it offers in such a simple layout. 43marks combines two things people use on a daily basis: bookmarks and search engines.

Having four options to search at your fingertips without all of the typical distractions and random links associated with some sites is a breath of fresh air. Google, Yahoo, Bing and Wikipedia are probably the most commonly used search engines. All of them aggregate the “top sites” in a different way. Type in a search term and get the results from Google; to see what Yahoo,Bing or Wikipedia simply click that tab and the results shift to the other search engine’s results.

To personalize your 43marks homepage, follow these steps:

1. Click on the the “customize yours” tab in the top right corner of the main page.

2. Enter in a user name, email address and a password twice.

3. Once you are all set up, you will have a default list of bookmarks and RSS feeds.

4. To change the bookmarks and RSS feeds, click [Manage]

5. Three options are presented to you: Manage Bookmarks, Manage RSS Feeds and User Settings.

If you want to wipe the slate clean, 43marks does give an option to delete all bookmarks.

6. In the RSS Manage RSS Feeds tab, the same option to start from scratch is available.

* A pretty easy way to add a feed is to click on the RSS icon most sites have. This will pull up a page with the feed address listed. The feed URL should look something like this – http://feeds.feedburner.com/MakeTechEasier

The RSS part works well, but if you want to change a feed from ESPN to Make Tech Easier, you need to delete the old one and add in the new name and address.

7. In the User Settings, you are presented a four options:

Choose whether you want your page to be private or public so anyone can see your list of bookmarks and RSS feeds. If you choose public, just give our the URL to your page. Mine is 43marks.com/trevor_dobrygoski

How you would like the RSS feeds displayed – Expanded or collapsed
The maximum number of books marks to display in each category column
How you want the bookmark or RSS link to open when clicked

With all of the distractions present to anyone who works online, 43marks is a great solution to wrangle the information you NEED to look at and none that you don’t.

What tools do you use to cut down on distractions when you work online?

Get Your Homepage Organized With 43marks originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

6 Useful Web Apps To Help You Job Hunt

Trevor Dobrygoski — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 12:30:25 +0000

Job hunting these days is a battle. With fewer jobs available in certain industries, one needs to be efficient, streamlined and spot on in their quest for employment. Below are some things I personally use or have used to keep abreast of possible opportunities. Even if you are happy in your current career or company, it is never bad to be prepared in case you find yourself in need of a job.

1. Google Docs

Google Docs is a great place to design, store, and collaborate with other people on your resume. Your resume can be exported as a PDF, RTF or a Word document for easy viewing by your potential employer. With hundreds of easily customizable templates for both resumes and cover letters, this is a easy choice.

It is a good idea to keep your resume up dated. If you set a reminder in the calendar of your choice to update your resume quarterly, you will have less work if a lay off strikes. Another benefit to updating your information often is you are less likely to omit important details about your accomplishments.

2. Ingboo

Ingboo is a service that gives you a way to aggregate search results from a huge number of sites. In the job tab; Simply Hired, Craigslist and Hotjobs are 3 of the 11 sites from which you can be notified of newly posted job opportunities. The updates can be emailed in a daily digest, as soon as new results appear or at a selectable time of the day. Ingboo also can send updates right to your Twitter account. If none of these methods to view the results are appealing to you, going to Ingboo.com to see the results is always an option too. Ingboo is working on a Blackberry app which will help you keep up with your searches while mobile.

3. RSS

If you are using an RSS feed reader for viewing new posts on blogs and websites, using it for your job search will be a piece of cake. If you are not using any kind of RSS feed reader, Google Reader and iGoogle are good options to those who have a Google/ Gmail account. If not, other services for Mac, Windows and mobile devices are available.

The way to use RSS for a job search is simple. Create a search the same way you are accustomed to on a site like Monster.com. Instead of saving the search, scroll all the way to the bottom of the page and click on the RSS feed button.

You will be prompted to choose what reader you want to use. Once subscribed, all of the new jobs will arrive in this feed within moments of being posted. Here is what a feed would look like on your iGoogle hompage.

4. Google Alerts

If you are looking at a specific company’s career page, the odds of them having an RSS feed with job updates are pretty slim. In this case, you can set up a Google alert for when a page changes (if a job is added). The results can be emailed to you weekly, daily or as soon as a change happens. This is done with some advanced Google search formulas like these:

if you were looking for a job at Apple

(inurl:job OR inurl:jobs) site:apple.com

if you were looking for a job anywhere in Denver, Colorado.

(inurl:job OR inurl:jobs) denver

(inurl:career OR inurl:careers)

These alerts work well because most companies post job openings on a page with [job] or [career] in the URL. By adding in a site:operator or a location, the search is narrowed and becomes more useful to you.

5. InSide Job

Usually apps on Facebook aren’t thought to be very useful in the search for a job. Granted Facebook can be a good way to network (when you aren’t distracted by Farmville or Mafia Wars); this is one application however, is making a good argument to be on Facebook.

Here is how their webpage describes the app:

Inside Job lets you contact people who have interviewed, worked, or are currently employed at the places you want to work at next!
InSide Job users can also:
-Get the inside scoop on their prospective employer before the interview;
-Network with people in similar fields; and
-Find the right people to hire as service providers.

6. A Blog

A personal blog is a good thing to keep up on whether you are working or not. Many free blogging platforms (Wordpress.com, Blogger, Typepad…) give you an avenue to let people and potential employers get to know you. You can choose to display work accomplishments, personal stories, your thought on your industry news or anything you would like others to know about you.

The more positive information is on the web about you when a client or potential employer is looking you up on the web, the better. Job hunting is a full time job. You need to market yourself and control your online profile/ information in a way no other generation has before.

Leave any job searching tips and tools in the comments below.

Image credit bjmccray

6 Useful Web Apps To Help You Job Hunt originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

5 Tips for Google Spreadsheets

Trevor Dobrygoski — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 12:40:04 +0000

I see posts on business oriented sites almost daily shelling out tips for every inch of the Microsoft Office Suite. An equal number of sites talk about Gmail, giving tips and ways to be more productive while using it. What about Google Docs? Docs can do some equally fancy stuff too.

Slowly but surely Google has been adding a feature here and a feature there. Some have been bigger steps than others; all of them are chipping away at the reasons you need to buy an office suite. I’m not going to get on a soapbox and shout to the world. I will however, give you a few nifty tips to make using Google Docs spreadsheets a little easier.

1. Lookup

Much like other spreadsheet programs, Docs can do calculations and formulas. The question to ask is the other programs would be, “Do you have built in Google search?” No? Hmmm…. well anyway, here are a couple handy formulas to enter into the desired cell to utilize Google’s search. Make sure to keep the quotation marks surrounding the terms you are adding.

The values will automatically update as the information changes; imagine the possibilities.

=GoogleLookup(”entity”; “attribute”)

Replace entity with something like Ireland and attribute with population.

=GoogleFinance(”symbol”, “attribute”)

An example for this function would be: =GoogleFinance(”AAPL”, “Price”) The result would end up being what ever the current stock price is.

=GoogleTranslate(”text”, “source language”,”target language”)

The translation function is really cool. It allows you to translate a word or a few sentences from English to Modern Greek or Chinese to Spanish. The most difficult part is having to use ISO 639-1 country abbreviations.

For easy access check out this list of all the functions available.

2. Google Doc Forms

A Google Docs Form is a very simple way to add a survey to an email or website. The basic idea behind these forms is to gather information and automatically aggregate the results into a spreadsheet. You also have the choice to get an email notification when someone completes the form or add a gadget to your iGoogle page to track all of your surveys.

Creating a form is really straightforward.

1. From the main Google Docs screen, choose New — Form

2. If you don’t like the plain blue and white color scheme, you can pick a new one by clicking Theme.

3. Click apply on the new theme to start editing.

4. From there, simply type in the question, choose the type of question you’d like it to be and if it is required to complete the survey.

5. If you click the Share button, there is an option to email the survey or even get the code to embed it into a web page on your site.

3. List View

List view is a fast loading version of a spreadsheet you can publish or embed to your website. The settings you determine in the Share menu will carry over to the spreadsheet you embed.

One of the coolest parts is the spreadsheet is auto-updating. If, for example, you have stock quotes or dollar amounts from a fundraiser; these will all be updated on the embeded version instantly.

If you are a Google Sites user, you can add a editable version of the spreadsheet onto the page by going to the Insert menu.

List view provides a few basic ways to modify data:

edit cells
add rows
filter and sort data
cells with formulas can’t be edited in this view

4. From Your Mobile

If you have an Android, iPod touch/iPhone or Nokia S60, you can access and manipulate your Google Doc spreadsheets. I was a little disappointed there isn’t a Blackberry or Windows Mobile access, but I’ll live.

Create shortcuts to your spreadsheets on your home screen
Edit cells
Add data
Sort columns to give you relevant data first

5. Styling

Even though it isn’t an option in a drop down menu, the forms can be modified. You do have over 70 themes available, but if that isn’t enough for you, here are a few tips to spice them up even more by Gill Smith.

What are your productivity tips for Google spreadsheets and forms?

image credit: TaopaiC

5 Tips for Google Spreadsheets originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

20 Fun and Interesting Mashup Sites

Trevor Dobrygoski — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 12:21:46 +0000

Many creative sites are using two or more sites to create new services. These services have been dubbed “mashups”. Some of these mashups use services such as Google Maps, Twitter, Last.fm, but can be any two web applications to create something new.

Sites often release their API or even their source code to build upon. Because of this, sites like Google Maps are frequently used in mashups.

Below are some of the interesting mashup sites that you may not even know they exist.

1 .Lastfmlovetweet

I use this all the time. Everytime you “Love” a song on Last.fm it is automatically updates your Twitter account. It adds the hashtags #lastfm and #love to your tweets.

2. Ask.mosio

SMS a question and have it answered by a community of users. Think of it like the ‘phone a friend‘ lifeline on Millionaire, but through SMS. They also have apps making your mobile device even more useful.

3. Facesaerch

Yes, you didn’t read wrongly, nor did we type wrongly, the ‘a’ and the ‘e’ were in the right place. What Facesaerch does is to show your Facebook updates in a iTunes Coverflow way.

4. Hotelmapsearch

Uses Google maps to mark hotels in a specific city. Select specific criteria (ie price, brand name, or number of stars) to narrow your search.

5. Flickrsudoku

Basically it’s sudoku with pictures from Flickr showing numbers.

6. Pixelpipe

Upload your pictures and video to your 100+ social networks, photo/video sites and blogs with this uploader

7. Tweetwasters

Have you ever wondered how much time you’ve wasted using Twitter? Here is your chance to see.

8. Fotoland

See where the Flickr pictures were taken via Google Maps

9. Memry

The classic game of Memory with Flickr pics

10. Skatespotter

Find great spots to skate or skateshops marked on Google Maps.

11. Coffeeseeker

If you are a caffeine addict like I am, use this one to find coffee shops within a user selected distance from you on Google Maps.

12. Openfilm

A mash of commercial and user submitted videos. It is very indie stuff for the most part.

13. Dvdzreview

Reviews of new DVD movies. If you like what you see, you can buy it or rent it from numerous places.

14. Triplify

Triplify is a site which searches Yahoo, Google and Bing and displays the results in a slightly more visually appealing way.

15. Tweetbars

Show off the real you by displaying tweets in your email signatures or website. This little piece of HTML code is all you need.

16. Twitpay.me

If you want to send me a couple dollars you can send it via Twitter using this cool little tool. (@trevord209)

17. Windowshop

Window shop for popular items on Amazon.com in an interesting way. Use the arrows to navigate through the stacks album and book covers.

18. Let Me Google That For You

I like this one a lot. Do you get a lot of lazy people asking you to look something up for them? If so, this site will give them the results they are looking for, but make them feel lazy for asking.

19. Kvetch

This one is basically a Twitter complaint aggregator. Some are pretty funny.

20. 2realestateauctions

eBay real estate auctions mapped out via Google Maps. Get directions and see the neighborhood without leaving your couch. If you like it, get directions and go make an offer.

That’s all for now. Do share your favorite mashup sites with us in the comments.

Image credit: delgaudm

20 Fun and Interesting Mashup Sites originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

42 Useful Portable Apps For Mac

Trevor Dobrygoski — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 12:26:28 +0000

A while back I posted 10 Useful Portable Applications to Run On Your USB Drive. I thought it was time to do the same type of post for all of the Mac folks. If you do not find something in this list to suit your needs, with a few Google searches you are likely to find something to work for you.

1. Cyberduck

Opensource Mac FTP client. If you aren’t using Cyberduck, here is a basic run through.

2. Portable VLC OS X

The play anything media player. Highly recommended if you are using multiple computers.

3. Portable Adium

All-in-one instant messenger (Google, ICQ, Yahoo, AIM, MSN…)

4. Portable Firefox Cross Plartform

Firefox for both Windows and OSX. Use Firefox with add-ons like Xmarks to sync your bookmarks.

5. Portable Thunderbird Cross Platform

The cross platform version of Mozilla Thunderbird will allow you to access your email application anywhere you have a computer with a USB port.

6. Netfixer

Easy to use webpage capture tool. Use the optional bookmarklet to activate the application.

7. Camino

An Opensource web browser built for Macs by Mozilla. Some Firefox-like add-ons are available, but not near as many. Greasemonkey scripts can also be converted for use with Camino.

8. Neverball

Game of skill and patience. Use the mouse to tilt the floor and move the ball; it sounds easy, but it isn’t.

9. FSuite

Over 40 portable apps spanning everything from games to word processors, media players to a BitTorrent client, you shouldn’t be lacking anything in this pack of applications.

10. SmillaEnlarger

A image tool used to resize, especially to magnify .BMP files in high quality.

11. iStumbler

Find AirPort, Bluetooth, Bonjour and other wireless signals and services. Lots of extra information about the networks available in the area.

12. Bean

Free rich text editor compatible with Microsoft Word.

13. ViewIt

Quick-to-open image viewer which supports nearly all commonly used image formats.

14. Inquisitor

Lets you find information on the web in the same way you use Spotlight. Start typing and it will begin to return sites based on your criteria.

15. iBackup

Simple, small application to help automate backups.

16. Paintbrush

A simple Cocoa-based image editor for when Photoshop would be too much of a hassle.

17. Maintenance

System maintenance and repair utility, with different versions for Tiger and Leopard. Some uses are: repair permissions, delete applications, reset Spotlight’s Index, run periodic scripts…

18. Tofu

Text reader that arranges text on a page in columns sized properly for the window you have open. No scrolling up and down, just left to right.

19.TextWrangler

Very powerful very free text editor great for distraction free writing.

20. Portable Abiword

Opensource word processor. Read, write and save to OpenOffice.org, Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, Rich Text Format.

21. Xmind

Opensource mind mapping and collaboration application.

22. Portable Gimp

Opensource image editing. Many very powerful features in a very lightweight package.

23. Portable Inkscape

Opensource graphics editor similar to Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw or Freehand

24. Portable OpenOffice.org OS X

Complete Opensource office suite able to read and write to most commonly used file types.

25. AppCleaner

An app uninstaller that removes all of the accompanying application files.

26. PureFTPdManager

Opensource multi-user Secure FTP manager, great fro servers or networks.

27. Portable Nvu OS X

Opensource web authoring similar to Dreamweaver

28. Portable Audacity OS X

Opensource recording and editing software.

29. Google Chrome

Google’s web browser on a stick.

30. Smultron

Simple text editor with a massive amount of features

31. Highlight

Screen highlighter (great for presentations)

32. OnyX

Maintenance, optimization, and personalization utility (10.4 or 10.5

33. uTorrent

P2P file transfer. (Here are some set up instructions)

34. Fugu

An opensource SFTP, SCP and SSH client. Esay to set up and use.

35. Portable Check Off

Stand alone to-do manager.

36. Transmission

BitTorrent client. Great for creating and downloading torrent files.

*37 through 42 are listed to only work with OSX 10.4

37. Portable Safari

Bookmarks and preferences on your portable drive.

38. Portable Mail

The same mail and preferences on your portable drive you are used to on your main Mac (use with Portable Address Book).

39. Portable iCal

All your calendar events can go with you on your portable drive.

40. Portable Address Book

Contacts are kind of essential, take them with you on your portable drive.

41. Portable iChat

Keep all your buddies on your portable drive.

42. SyncPAppX

Sync your portable apps with local ones.

Which portable Mac apps do you use?

image credit: Michael Dale Bernard

42 Useful Portable Apps For Mac originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

6 Google Sites You May Not Know About

Trevor Dobrygoski — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 12:34:25 +0000

By now you may have guessed I’m a big fan of Google. Not because they are the biggest kid on the playground, but because they have an awesome approach to what they do. They see people needing something and they solve the problem for free. How can you not succeed when you give people what they want for free?

Many are in their Labs stage of development. A lot of the sites you have grown to love have been in Google Labs at some point. Google Maps, Reader, Docs and Alerts are just a few. Here are a few cool sites you may not be aware Google has in the lab.

Trends

Trends is a very handy research and comparison tool. Typing something like [VW, Ford, Fiat] into the search bar results in graphs, location of searches and related news displayed. By comparing multiple search terms simultaneously, time is saved importing the data into spreadsheets or a graph. All of the information is right at your finger tips.

I have also used Trends when quickly comparing keywords (although much better tools are available) to get a general idea for the popularity of the search term.

Specialized Search

To help narrow your search, Google offers specialized search engines for different topics. An example might be if you are looking for Linux how-to information. You could go to the Linux search and type in your search term there. This will filter out all of the Windows server information, in-turn cutting down on the amount of sites you might have to look through.

The current specialized searches are: Mac, Windows, Linux, BSD, US Government and University Search lets you to search to a specific school website for things like enrollment info or course schedules.

News Timeline

Search a date in the past to find out what happened. The advanced search allows different criteria to be set up such as a specific newspaper, magazine, blog or baseball scores.

While using Google News Timeline, I did come across some issues. One problem is the magazine or newspaper must have a digital version available in Google’s Book Search or the News Archive. This may be a little bit of a snag if you are trying to do an in depth search for something.

Google Moderator

Moderator is a really simple idea. Create a “series” and invite general public to ask questions, give tips, make suggestions or just about any thing else you can think of. It is kind of a mashup of a forum and crowd-sourcing. Your audience will ask questions, then the same people will vote on the question letting you know how many people agree or disagree with what was asked. With some creativity, this could be a great proving ground for products, ideas or services.

Fast Flip

A quick way to scan through different news sources at the same time. The news feeds can be narrowed by a topic, source, most viewed and several other options. Fast Flip shows a small screenshot of the page usually just big enough to see the major headlines. When you spot something, just click on it to make the page large enough to read. If you could customize the sites and save your choices, it would be pretty cool RSS reader.

City Tours

Offers a variety of attractions mapped out using Google Maps. Directions, approximate time to see the attraction, walking times to the next destination, ratings and hours of operation. It pretty much takes the guess work out of planning a touristy trip.

What kind of app or site would you like to see Google make next?

6 Google Sites You May Not Know About originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Mac: Manage Your App Windows More Efficiently With Windowshade X

Trevor Dobrygoski — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 12:30:00 +0000

A few months ago, Damien wrote a post about the need to keep windows open on top of others for better productivity. While Afloat for Mac does exactly that, Windowshade X does a little bit more.

WindowShade X is a small software (3.3MB) with plenty of great and useful features that allow you to manage your application windows more efficiently and quickly.

Before WindowShade X

When working with multiple windows on a Mac, you have a couple of options.

* Expose is by far, in my opinion, the most useful native application on a Mac for accessing multiple windows fast.

* Spaces groups open windows into separate work areas.

* Command + M will minimize the open window to the Dock.

While all of these can help manage several open windows, problems still remain. Viewing, quick access, locking a window on top of all others are a few.

After WindowShade X

I”ll give you three guesses what kind of problems WindowShade X solves. If it takes you more than two, your just plain slow. Get a cup of coffee and come back, I’ll wait here.

Okay, now that everyone here is a little more awake, here we go again.

Windowshade

The first solution offered is the namesake of the application. When the title bar of the window is double clicked, the body of the window disappears like a shade. This is great for things that need to be easily accessed, yet out of the way. This feature coupled with Growl notifications are great when using an instant messenger. The message can be read from the pop up notification. If I need to respond, the window is tucked away and easier to get to than if it were in the Dock.

Transparent Windows

The next feature you didn’t know you needed but will fall in love with is making a window transparent. Double clicking the title bar while holding the Ctrl button allows you to see the window(s) behind the one you are working in. The opacity is adjustable in the settings menu. At first I wasn’t sure I would use this feature a lot. Then I started to make it transparent for no reason just to try it. What I noticed is, I can watch a video playing in the background while I am typing notes. I can look at the cool desktop picture of the day or have a Seesmic open so I can monitor my Twitter feed.

Minimize-In-Place

This is probably my favorite of the features. Simply put, it minimizes the open window to the bottom of the screen with a double tap of the Ctrl button. The placement can be changed in the settings menu. I have mine go across the bottom of the screen. What makes this different than using the Command + M shortcut, is you can reopen that same window with another double tap of the Ctrl button. Minimizing a window this way is great if you want to look at something on the page directly behind the open window.

Keep Windows On Top

This last feature can be used in combination with the Windowshade and transparent window options. By double tapping the Command button, the window is locked on top of the others. It can be unlocked in the same way. I was amazed at how much time this feature saved me. Some ways you may want to use this feature would be if you are copying and pasting sections of one form to another. Having both windows accessible by clicking back and forth is a huge time saver. Another great use is, when used in combination with the “Windowshade”, the shaded windows can float on top of the windows for easy access.

The standard commands for minimizing like Command + M still work. However, when the standard methods are used in conjunction with these new features, you will be amazed at how much time you wasted toggling between windows before.

Windowshade X is free to try, but costs $13.50 to own. The demo software is fully functional and is available for trial for up to 15 days. Download it here.

How do you manage multiple open windows on your Mac?

Mac: Manage Your App Windows More Efficiently With Windowshade X originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Mac: How to Create a Basic Script With Automator

Trevor Dobrygoski — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 11:55:27 +0000

If you are one of the growing number of Apple users, you have likely come across a strange looking robot guy in your Applications folder. For a long time I ignored this application. It looks pretty confusing when you open it up. All that is on the screen 3 columns; one with application names, one with actions and the last is a big blank window to drag the scripts to.

This can be very intimidating if you have absolutely no idea what yo do next. Sure you can randomly drag actions into the window then hit run to see what happens. Odds are you will get an error or nothing will happen. After a few times of trying without success, most people give up and tell people on Twitter it sucks.

The first step in the process is to decide what you want automated. The example below is very simple. Batch Image Scale is something I use all the time. I have a couple different image scale scripts for different sizes. Setting multiple versions up may take you a few extra minutes initially, but it saves a lot of time in the future.

Create A Script

1. In your Applications folder, open Automator.app [Cmd + Shift + A]

2. In the first column on the left, choose the an application. When you select an application, the Actions in the second column change.

3. Select the Action you would like to perform. A good place to start is an action like Ask for Finder Item. When setting up a Workflow where there may be multiple files or folders involved, make sure to check Allow Multiple Selection.

4. In some cases a warning box may appear. If this does happen, read it carefully. In this case, the pop up is asking if I want to copy the files and make the changes to the copies. Making the changes to the copies will preserved if anything were to go wrong.

5. In the far left column, click the Preview app. Drag the Scale Images action to the window.

6. Select the pixel or percentage you would like the image scaled to. In this case I chose 500 pixels for this example. If you are taking really large pictures and want to send them via email, you may want to choose a percentage instead.

7. This is what your basic Scale Image workflow should look like.

8. Here is a before and after of the information pane showing the change in dimensions.

9. Now that you know the Workflow does what you want it to, it’s time to save it. In the File menu you are presented with three options: Save, Save As and Save As Plug-in. The Save and Save As options are pretty much the same thing. Both ask you to name the file, choose a location to save it to and in what format you want to save it. The two format choices are Workflow or Application. The main difference is, a Workflow is like a draft which opens in Automator and can be edited. If you save it as an Application, no changes can be made.

The other choice is the Save As Plug-in option. The reason for saving the Workflow as a Finder Plug-in is when you need to resize images in a folder on my desktop, you can CTRL + Click to get the menu. In this menu highlight Automator and there is your Workflow.

Premade Scripts

For those of you who may not be comfortable with making a Workflow/Application in Automator, there are many sites and forums where people post them for free. Some of the people go as far as writing more advanced scripts and use Automator to run those scripts. A while back Damien posted 20+ Useful Automator Scripts. On these sites, there are many other scripts. If the 20+ in the post don’t do it for you, look around on those sites, there are many many more.

Have you used Automator to make any useful scripts?

Mac: How to Create a Basic Script With Automator originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Top 10 Gmail Labs Add-ons to Increase Your Productivity

Trevor Dobrygoski — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 12:40:46 +0000

For quite a while, Google has been releasing add-on features for a good number of their web applications. Gmail, Calendar and Reader all have several user selectable features. Links to these experimental add-ons can be found on the Google Labs page. Not all of the add-ons are perfect, but they are kid tested and mother approved.

Here is a quote about the Labs add-ons from the top of the Gmail Labs page:

“Gmail Labs is a testing ground for experimental features that aren’t quite ready for primetime. They may change,break or disappear at any time.

If (when) a Labs feature breaks, and you’re having trouble loading your inbox, there’s an escape hatch. Use http://mail.google.com/mail/?labs=0.”

I apparently have nothing better to do with my time than add fancy features to my Gmail. I’ll go ahead and save you the time of figuring out which of the Gmail Labs add-ons you should head for and give you the top 10 to get you started.

1. Send and Archive

This add on is great if, for example, you send a group email. Even if you have the original message in a folder and labeled, replies will often show up in your inbox. Instead of clicking on the send button when you send a follow up reply, click the Send and Archive button. Doing this will remove the message thread from your inbox making it viewable in the labeled folder.

2. Mark as Read Button

You would think this is a feature that was built in from the start, but it wasn’t. Having this button will let you batch mark all of the selected emails as read. Big time saver if you don’t want to open them all individually.

3. Hide Unread Counts

I don’t use this one anymore because I worked out a good system for automating most of my incoming emails. This feature, however, is a good one for people who leave everything in their inbox, yet hate knowing how many unread messages you are ignoring.

4. Canned Responses

Think of canned responses like a vacation or out of office reply. You can have this pre-thought out reply sent to anyone with selected keyword, email address, in response to an ad you posted or in reply to the contact form on your site. When setting up your filter(s), one of the actions you can select is to send a canned response.

5. Mail Goggles

If you are have poor math skills when you are not tired or haven’t been drinking, this add-on should probably be avoided. Here is how Mail Goggles works. If you try to send an email during a user specified time period, say 10 PM to 4 AM, you will be asked to do a 3 simple math problems. This may seem simple enough. If you get the problems wrong, the email is saved to your Drafts folder instead.

When basic addition and subtraction seem like quantum physics, it may be a good indicator you need to catch a couple hours sleep. Odds are your seemingly well crafted email, is probably not quite ready to be sent.

6. Text Messaging (SMS) in Chat

Sending a quick SMS is a nice little addition to the mini chat gadget in your Gmail navigation bar. When you hover over the contact you wish to SMS, a pop up box appears. In the “More” drop down is an option to send an SMS. If the person signs into to Gtalk, you have an option to toggle to chat. This keeps the previous conversation in the same window.

The SMS feature is currently for USA phones only.

7. Navbar Drag and Drop

Drag all of the widgets in the left sidebar to the order that makes sense to you.

8. Undo Send

How many times have you wanted to unsend an email because you forgot to add a file. Maybe you said something you instantly regret saying. This little gem gives you the chance you to unsend the email for up to 10 seconds after you sent it. You CAN actually take your words back.

9. Offline

If you activate this add-on, Gmail will place an optional shortcut icon on your Desktop. Each time you open up Gmail while you have an active internet connection, Offline will sync your email to your computer. You will have access to the majority of the features you need like composing, reading, searching, moving things into folder, etc. You obviously can’t send or receive new emails if you do not have a network connection. When you reconnect, all of your changes are synced and composed emails are sent.

10. Filter Import/Export

Exporting all of the filters you have worked hard to create is just plain smart. Imagine having to redo all of them over again, one by one. I have about 40 filters so this is a huge time saver if anything were to happen. After you export the XML file, you can email it to yourself for safe keeping.

For those of you who aren’t using any of the additional 50+ add-on features Gmail has to offer… shame on you! Don’t you know there are needy people using Hotmail that would love to have what you have?

How have you personalized your Gmail inbox?

Top 10 Gmail Labs Add-ons to Increase Your Productivity originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Better Manage Your Gmail Inbox With Aliases

Trevor Dobrygoski — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 22:08:40 +0000

A while ago I was perusing the Google help files and found a cool little tidbit. It didn’t really hit me right away how useful it could be. Once I started to use it, I wondered how I got by not having it before. What I am babbling on about is Gmail’s ability to handle aliases. These are variations of your email address, not totally different email addresses, going to a common inbox.

The main idea behind using aliases in Gmail is to help you automate organizing incoming emails. Most people I know have separate folders for different people or projects. When an email is received, it eventually gets manually moved to the folder in which it belongs. Some who use desktop programs like Mail or Outlook may have rules set up. Few people however, take the time for this with their web based email accounts. This is one of the reasons people spend so much time dealing with email everyday.

By simply giving your client, work, contest entry forms, social media site… an alias to your email address, you can have it automatically sent to a specific folder. This will save immense amounts of time sorting the messages in your inbox.

It is really quite simple to add an alias. All you need to do is add a [+] then your a word or abbreviation to your notmal email address. Here is an example. Let’s say your email address is john.doe@gmail.com. If you wanted to add “jm” for junk mail, your junk mail alias would look like this john.doe+jm@gmail.com

You may want to write down the additional words or abbreviations you use so you can use them more than once. Here are some examples of short additions. There really isn’t a character limit for the alias, but you don’t want to go overboard.

eb = ebay
sc = soccer team
jm = junk mail
bt = beta trial
ja = job applied for or job application

There’s really no limit as to what you can use for the alias. The sky is the limit.

Examples Uses

1. Job Hunting – This can be a super handy feature to use when seeking employment. You could have your john.doe+ja@gmail.com alias on your resume and applications you fill out. This way when you get a reply, it will be aggregated into your “job hunt” folder.

2. Selling Online – Give an alias link such as john.doe+cl@gmail.com for your contact information in an ad on Craigslist.

3. Sports Teams – If you are on or manage a sports team (yes, even a fantasy football team counts).

4. Collaborating on a Project - Have all of the emails for different projects go into different folders.

Setting Up a Filter

Setting up a filter is pretty important. If you don’t do this part, it makes using an alias pointless. For those of you who don’t know how to create a filter and label, here’s how.

1. Click the Settings tab in the top right of your Gmail inbox page.

2. Click on Filters

3. Click on Create a new filter

4. Type your email address with your alias in [To:] field

5. Click Next step

6. Check the boxes for the actions you would like. In this case I chose the following options:

Skip the Inbox (Archive it)
Apply Label – Job Hunt (If you don’t have a label created, click “Create new label” and choose a name.)
Never Send it to Spam

7. Click Create Filter

In the end, you should see something like this.

What are the ways you plan to use aliases?

Image credit – Adria Richards

Better Manage Your Gmail Inbox With Aliases originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Hootsuite: All You Need to Manage Your Twitter Account Online

Trevor Dobrygoski — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 12:07:31 +0000

If you are unfamiliar with Hootsuite, it is a very feature-rich web based Twitter client. Their tag line is “The Professional Twitter Client”. This is very true. It has a great number of configurations and options which make managing one or multiple Twitter accounts very easy. Many of its features are pretty appealing to big businesses who use it, of which, there are some pretty big names listed on the Hootsuite homepage.

I personally do not use the desktop application, so I am going to talk about the web version.

Tabbed Windows

First off, it has tabbed windows just like most web browsers. This feature alone is a great reason to try it. The tab feature allows for multiple accounts to be monitored with multiple columns per tab. If you are monitoring anything, this is really a time saver.

The columns can be a group, search, account timeline or keyword tracking. If you’d like to track your business or a product you are selling, you can set up an entire tab full of columns dedicated for that. I use the group function to track people I follow in the technology field. It is a lot easier to see what they are saying if they are separated from the herd.

Drag and Drop Ease

Drag and drop rearranging of tabs and columns makes it super easy to arrange things in an order which make the most sense to you. This is a great advantage if you have more columns than screen space. For example, you don’t always need to see your pending tweets column. If it was one of the first columns you created, by default it is near the front. Simply grab it and drag it to the end of the line. If you need it again, you can scroll over to the end of the row to take a peek at it.

Users

This is a feature geared more towards businesses or a group needing multiple users for the same account. If you want to give employees or other people access to update on your account, this is a great way to do that. The account owner becomes the administrator for the account. Each person has their own log in and password, yet the admin can choose what accounts the person can post to and also cancel their account if needed. In each separate account, the user can select to have their initials automatically added to each tweet. This helps differentiate who is sending what.

URL Shortener

The built in URL shortener saves the step of having to go to a different site or use a third party service to shrink the long URL you are posting. If you see a link with http://ow.ly/ then some letters and numbers, that’s a link from Hootsuite. Another benefit you receive from using the on board shortener, is click tracking.

Stats

If you have ever been curious how many people are clicking on the links you tweet, the built in tracking of all the ow.ly URLs. Its great for businesses or really anyone who wants to see how engaging they are to their followers. Below are a few of the different style graphs.

Here are a couple other graph views

Scheduled Tweets

This is a cool feature that helps you still appear active, yet allows you to not be tethered to your computer. You can schedule tweets for minutes, days or months ahead. If you wish to be notified when the scheduled tweet is sent. If you are scheduling a bunch of tweets, it’s not be a bad idea to have a column dedicated to pending tweets.

Bookmarklet

The bookmarklet allows for tweeting and delayed tweeting without having the Hootsuite page open all the time. When you click the bookmarklet, a window pops up. In the window (after you sign in) will be a shortened link, the name of the site and a description of the site. If you would like to send it right then, just hit send. If you’d like to schedule it, click schedule and pick the date and time you want the update sent. You can also receive a notification when the tweet is sent.

Embeded Columns

I haven’t see any other Twitter clients offer this. (Maybe I over looked it.) Hootsuite makes it super easy to embed the stream of tweets from one of your columns. To do this click the [<>] symbol. A box will pop up asking for the title, dimensions you’d like the window to be and how often you want the stream to refresh. After you click the grab code button, the code is generated. Just copy and paste that to your website per the instuctions and your done.

Does this web application have enough for you to ditch your desktop Twitter client?

Hootsuite: All You Need to Manage Your Twitter Account Online originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

CyberDuck – Freeware Mac FTP Uploader,

Trevor Dobrygoski — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 12:21:47 +0000

If you have your own website, blog or are uploading information online somewhere, there is a decent chance you are using a FTP uploader of some sort. When I originally had a need for this kind of application, I did a little digging around. The name that kept popping up was Cyberduck. I looked at some of the other options. What won me over was it is extremely easy to use. Cyberduck is more than just an FTP uploader, it is more like a web browser for hosted files. Oh, not to mention its free.

Easy Set up

The ease of setup really surprised me. All you need to do is click the [+] in the bottom left corner of the bookmark window and a window opens (see below). In that window you only need two pieces of information, your server address and username. (You will be asked for your password when you connect for the first time.) If you have more than one destination you are uploading files to, you will want to change the nickname of the new bookmark, but it isn’t necessary; the default nickname is the server address. Additional information is needed if your going to use SFTP (recommended over FTP). The port number is the most important. If it does not connect using port 22 (the default SFTP setting), you may need to ask your web host. Some web hosts use different protocols, here is a list of options you can choose from:

FTP (File Transfer Protocol)
FTP/TLS (FTP secured over SSL/TLS)
SFTP (SSH Secure File Transfer)
WebDAV (Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning)
Amazon S3
Rackspace Cloud Files

Browser-like Ease of Use

Part of what I like about Cyberduck is the similarities to a web browser. What makes it more more like a browser than a Finder window is the bookmarking feature. If you have multiple sites or even multiple folders on the same site which you need to send files to, no problem. Each destination can have a bookmark just like you would have in Safari or Firefox. Simply click on the bookmark and the connection to that destination is opened.

Drag and Drop

To keep on pace with the simplicity Apple users are accustomed to, Cyberduck allows drag and drop functionality. Many other applications offer this in the most basic sense; these guys took it a step further by adding some Mac-like features. One of these features is spring loaded folders. I know when I am moving things from folder to folder, I really love this feature. Another super cool feature is being able to upload files without opening a connection to a server. Drag the files onto a bookmark for the destination of server you’d like the file to be uploaded to.

In the picture below, you can see there is not an option to disconnect. A connection will open for the length of the upload then disconnect again.

Synchronize

Files on the server can be synchronized with the those on your computer. You will be prompted to select the location on your computer to synchronize the files with. Cyberduck will only sync files that have changed. Whether or not they have changed is determined by the size of the files and the last time the files were modified. You will be asked to authorize actions, including what to do if there is are missing files.

Dashboard Widget

The widget is a great option for quickly uploading files to one folder. This is a great option for uploading pictures or files to a specific location on more than on occasion. When you configure the widget, you can select a path to a specific folder. This setting only affects the widget, not the main application.

Archive and Unarchive (SFTP only)

A handy feature is being able to archive and unarchive files and folders remotely on the server side after its uploaded. Being able to transfer smaller files, means faster upload times. Your remote systems must have the archiving tools tar or zip installed on their end for this to work, if they don’t it won’t be possible.

Other Integration

Cyberduck integrates really really well with many native and 3rd party apps. Spotlight, Mobile Me, Bonjour, external text editors, Applscripts, Growl and Keychain are a few. If you have a Mac and need a super simple way to upload and access your files in any of the protocols listed, Cyberduck delivers. Its like the FTP uploader Apple forgot.

How does Cyberduck compare to other uploaders you have used?

CyberDuck – Freeware Mac FTP Uploader, originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

A Hands-on Review of Google Voice

Trevor Dobrygoski — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 12:27:57 +0000

As some of you may know, invites are being sent for Google’s new service aimed at simplifying your phone usage, Google Voice. I received my invite about 2 weeks ago and jumped at the chance to try it out. With so many features that appealed to me, I was like a kid in a candy store when I was able to play with it for the first time. For me, this service was a great solution to a lot of the complaints I have with using the phone. Being a Blackberry user, I was also VERY happy about the Blackberry app available right from the get-go.

Below, I will explain the layout of the site, then get deeper into a few of the main features. There are several other features to this service if you’d like to check them out for yourself here.

The Basics

The simplest explanation of how Google Voice works is this. Give out your new Google Voice telephone number to people. (Unfortunately, yes you need a new phone number.) When someone calls that number, it will ring all of your phones/ phone numbers. If you do not answer the call, it goes into a common voice mailbox.

The set up is really easy and only takes a few minutes to complete. You are asked to enter a zip code, then pick a new phone number, PIN for your voicemail. The next step is adding in your other phone numbers which you can be reached. Google displays a one time numeric code on the screen. You will receive an automated verification call where you are asked to type in the code. That’s all there is too it.

The layout of the homepage looks similar to a basic Gmail account.

At the top left of the page on the homepage, reside two tabs. One says Call, the other SMS (text message). If you click the Call tab, a window pops up with the option to dial a number and have the call sent to the phone you choose. If the SMS button is clicked, it offers to send a free text message right from your computer.

Farther down the left side are the options to click on the inbox, trash, history and Spam. Yup, that’s right, you have a Spam folder for your phone now. (More on that later.) You can also see the contacts, voicemail, SMS and other tabs down the left side.

SMS

The text messaging feature is pretty cool. Aside from letting you send messages via the home page, it also logs them. Inside your inbox, you can see both their text and your reply. This feature may be very useful for a person who sends a small to moderate amount of messages. On the other hand, if you text like most people under the age of 25, you may have a very full inbox when you sign in.

Call Screening

The screening option is something that should have been around a long time ago. When someone calls your Google Voice number, if they arent in your contact list, they will be asked to say their name. When you decide to take the call, you are presented with four options: take the call, send the call to voicemail, send the call to voicemail and listen to the message as it is recorded or record the call. If you don’t have a need to screen your calls, this feature can be turned off in the settings.

Contacts

Since everyone already uses multiple Google apps in every other part of your web experience, it makes sense that Google Voice would be in sync with your Gmail contact list. If you have them separated into groups for personal and business for example, you can set up a different voicemail message for each group. If they are not in a group or even in your contact list, you can have a generic message for these people.

Spam

Okay, in my opinion this one is the second best feature. (I’m saving my favorite for last.) Just like an email, if you choose to, you can select a person or phone number as Spam. From that point on, when they call they are sent right into voicemail.

Voicemail Transcription

That’s right, you did read that correctly… Google Voice will email and/or SMS you a written copy of what was said in the voicemail. If you are anything like me, you dread listening to your voicemail messages; people either leave way too much information, or not enough. In your email or Google Voice inbox, you are able to both read and hear the voicemail. SMS and voice messages can be archived and starred just like in in your Gmail inbox. This feature alone was enough for me to make the switch.

How do you feel about Google managing your telephone needs?

A Hands-on Review of Google Voice originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Seesmic Update: Web Preview and Updated Desktop

Trevor Dobrygoski — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 12:23:05 +0000

The folks at Seesmic have been busy little beavers recently. Not only did they put out an upgraded for the desktop application I reviewed, they debuted Seesmic for the web. The release is being calling it a preview, which I’m guessing is a lot like a beta. The web application offers a lot of the same functionality available in the in the desktop app, but gives you the ability to access it from any web browser.

Web Preview

While the web version of Seesmic is currently limited in comparison to the desktop app, it is very usable and very cool. This preview release has all the basics with a few of the extras similar to the new features in the desktop app 0.4 upgrade. I am sure if they update the site with as much frequency as the desktop, it will have more features than you can shake a stick at in no time.

Features

When you hover over the profile picture, you are given three options: unfollow, message, or profile.

Click on the picture and it opens a pop up style window showing the profile info and a large picture.

The columns can be dragged and rearranged into any order for ease of viewing.

When you see a person @mentioned in a tweet who you are not currently following, simply click on their name to display a large profile pop up. In the pop up you can see all the basic info such as: their bio, how many people following them and how many people they follow. In another tab you can see some of their most recent updates.

The search bar does just what you would expect it to do. Type in a search term and finds tweets with those words in them. The results are displayed in a new column. These searches can also be saved for later if the column needs to be closed. The saved searches can also be accessed when you go to Twitter’s site.

You have a choice between a single column feed or multiple windows. A feature that I found appealing, is when you change the view to single column mode, the profile pictures are removed profile pics. This makes it a bit easier so scan through the updates by creating a more list like feed, similar to an RSS feed reader. Depending on the view chosen, the columns also auto size to fill the area.

Desktop Update

In the 0.4 updated desktop application, several new features were added. The two I am happiest about are the collapsible sidebar and the previously mentioned single column mode. The reason being, there isn’t always a need to see multiple accounts and every little update. In some cases I am going through tweets from a search. I am not going to reply to a DM for a little bit, so there isn’t a need for the added distraction.

A short list of the feature upgrades are:

* The option to set how many updates are in your timeline
* Single column and multiple column view
* A collapsible sidebar
* A fixed width column setting with user adjustable width.
* Miscellaneous fixes for better performance.

I am very excited to see what becomes of web based Seesmic, the preview shows a lot of promise. There are features I (and I’m sure many others) have grown accustomed to in the desktop app. Features much like being able to log into multiple accounts, accessing Facebook updates, user lists and quick access to favorite tweets. But, if nothing else, having the web and desktop versions be able to sync would be fantastic.

What would you like to see in the future updates of Seesmic web?

Seesmic Update: Web Preview and Updated Desktop originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

11 More Alternative Search Engines You May Not Know

Trevor Dobrygoski — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 11:33:53 +0000

There are a number of alternative search engines on the web which are not as well known as Google, Yahoo or the heavily marketed BING. Many of these search sites serve a niche market so they never gain mainstream popularity. A few of the newer search sites are incorporating results form social media sites, and for good reason. Information on these sites is becoming more and more essential because of the like-real time stream new results.

About a year ago, Damien compiled a list of some lesser known niche search engines; this post is adding in a few more to that list.

Social Media Search

1. Topsy

Topsy searches Twitter for links that are relevant to your search. Topsy ranks results based on how well they match your search terms, and the influence of the people talking about them.

2. CrowdEye

CrowdEye scans through tweets, retweets, links and more on Twitter to find your results. The outcome of your search is a graph showing the popularity of the search term for up to three days, other tags, links, tweets, and popular hashtags relating to you search. This seems like a lot of information to have in front of you all at once, but it is laid out very well and is easy to pick out what you want.

3. Collecta

Collecta weeds through Flickr, comments on blog posts, Twitter, Jaiku, Identica and articles on sites and blogs for results that match your search query. Like you may imagine, Twitter results tend to be the an overwhelming number of the results due to the volume of tweets. In the sidebar to the left, you can filter out the Twitter updates and see the photos, comments and articles.

4. Icerocket

Icerocket exclusively searches blogs, news feeds and social media sites; it is also one of the only search site that said it included Myspace.

5. Scoopler

Scoopler pulls info from Twitter along with other sources like Youtube, blogs, Flickr, twitpic etc. to give you the latest articles, pictures and video.

6. OneRiot

OneRiot analyzes the links people share on social sharing sites like Digg and Twitter then indexes the content for your viewing. The result is the freshest possible content from around the social web in near realtime.

IRS Document Search

7. IRS.gov wizard

The IRS.gov wizard sifts through roughly 4,000,000 pages on the IRS tax document site. This kind of search will save you immense amounts of time whether you know accountant-speak or not.

Search Alerts

8. Trackle

Trackle is not like most search sites, it has a multitude of preset search categories to choose from such as: travel, celebrity gossip, stocks, classified ads, health, crime and many more. When a category is selected, you can enter in up to three keywords to search. Once there are results that meet your criteria, you will be notified by SMS (text message), daily email, instant email or you can just check the site at your leisure. This is a lot like Google alerts, but easier for most purposes and searches more than just Google.

MetaSearch

9. iBoogie

The way iBoogie works is similar to other meta search engines. It queries multiple search sites to pull up a wider variety of results from the search terms you enter. Where iBoogie differs, is how it sorts the results into categories in the left sidebar. By dividing up the results like this, it helps you narrow down your search even more. Sure you can do this on most other search sites, but this saves you a step or two.

10. MetaCrawler

MetaCrawler uses “metasearch technology” to get results from the web’s major search engines. Because multiple search engines are queried, you get a greater variety of results than a single search engine typically gives. Like most, the results are a combination of sponsored and non-commercial sites. Sponsored results are always clearly identified with a “Sponsored”

11. GoodSearch

Out of all the search sites on this list, GoodSearch is the only one that will make you feel like a better person for using it. Goodsearch donates half of its revenue from your search to the schools and charities you ask them to. When you type in a word or phrase to search for, the search is performed by Yahoo!. The difference is, GoodSearch donates a portion of the money advertisers pay to have ads and sponsored links displayed. Also on the site they offer coupons to many online retailers. So if you do a lot of purchasing online, might as well help a worthy cause at the same time.

What sites do you use to get information from?

Image credit: gatewayyyy

11 More Alternative Search Engines You May Not Know originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Easy Twittering and Facebook(ing) with Seesmic

Trevor Dobrygoski — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 12:00:20 +0000

In the battle of the social media sites, the two that seem to be everywhere these days are Facebook and Twitter. The hardest part of immersing yourself in any type of social media, be it for fun or for business, is managing it well. With all of the web based options available, most are geared towards managing a single site or account; it’s great to see Seesmic stepping up and making a very user friendly solution to manage multiple accounts for Facebook and/or Twitter.

The Seesmic desktop app is a free cross platform Adobe Air based application. This very usable Adobe Air based desktop application was designed by the same folks that made Twhirl. If you have used the Twhirl app before, you should definitely give the Seesmic app a try. It is a happy medium between having too many features which can make it hard to use, and too little features which would make it not very helpful.

In a nutshell, the Seesmic desktop application allows you to save searches, post to multiple accounts, make user lists and see one or many streams of updates through multiple columns. I know this may sound a little too simple, but that is kind of the point. Other desktop or web based apps out there might have more features or a shinier packaging, but do you really need the extras? The main reason why people dread social media is the time that it takes to keep up with it; having a simple set up with pretty much everything you need and nothing you don’t is a good thing, isn’t it?

Here are some of the features:

While looking at the column of tweets and Facebook updates, if you see something that interests you, you can open another column. This is done by selecting a person, doing a search for a keyword or looking at a userlist, then clicking on the detach column button at the top. You can open several of these columns side by side, usually two or three in addition to the main column will probably fill the screen left to right.

If you have an account for a specific URL shrinking site, Bit.ly for example, Seesmic lets you log in and use your own account. Some of the URL shrinking sites give you stats on the links you post.

Notifications come via a Growl-like pop up window at the bottom of the screen. In the settings menu, you have the option for the duration the window stays on the screen and whether or not it makes a sound each time it pops up.

Much like on the Twitter site, you have a search option. Unlike the Twitter site, you can save searches. This gives you a list of of past searches right in the side bar. Having selections in plain view makes it easy to compare keyword searches to a new topic or hashtag.

Adding media to a post is drag and drop simple. Much like the URL shrinking sites, you can choose what image sharing service to use.

Like most things these days, there is an iPhone app in the works. There wasn’t any information on the Seesmic site about what you would be able to do from your iPhone, but I would venture a guess to say it will have pretty much the same functionality as the desktop application.

The folks at Seesmic are also working on a web based version. I like the way they decided to do the desktop version before the web version. It makes more sense based on the intended use to have a desktop application. Being able to log in while your at a different computer and manage your accounts is a good back up option.

How do you keep track of your Facebook and Twitter updates?

Easy Twittering and Facebook(ing) with Seesmic originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

ShoZu – Social Network Updating Made Easy

Trevor Dobrygoski — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 12:22:25 +0000

There are plenty of sites and programs out there that will let you upload your pictures or videos to one or two of your social media sites, but people like choice. Would 50 supported sites plus email and FTP uploading be enough? That should let you share enough stuff to make even your Kindergarten teacher proud.The whole point of the the social sites is to be social and show people whats going on in your life; ShoZu will help you do this on almost every popular sharing site out there.

When a picture or video and the accompanying text is uploaded, ShoZu will CC your email and/or other destinations you choose. If you upload the same thing to all of your sites, that feature alone will save you immense amounts of time. Below are a couple ways media can be uploaded a couple different ways:

The Desktop Application

The ShoZu desktop app runs with Adobe Air, so you need to have that installed along with the most recent version of Adobe Flash installed before the app will work. Once the desktop application is installed, if you have previously set up an account, you will need to log in. If not it takes a minute or two to set up a new account.

When logged in, you will see the list of destinations you have previously chosen on the web page. This can be a couple, or it be a lot; I have a few here that I use.

The process for uploading pics, video or text is super easy. Simply drag and drop the media you want to share into the window. The picture or video will show up in the window. Type a short caption in the small box and any additional text into the big box. Some sites won’t show the extra text.

*For those wondering, the picture is of a 12 pound bowling ball painted pink with lots of metal flake. It was chained to the soon to be groom’s leg for a bachelor party.

If you would like to send the same thing to multiple sites from time to time, click the next destination; the picture and text stay in the windows making it super simple. The program remembers what you upload to where. After you upload a picture, a check will be by the destination so you don’t post the same thing on the same site multiple times.

From a Mobile Device

These day more people than ever have data enabled phones. One of the main reasons people like yourself purchase this kind of phone is so they don’t need to be tied to their computers for work. This also applies for uploading pics to their social media accounts. The device I use is a Blackberry Curve; it is a little limited compared to other devices I checked into. Some of the features like the feeds from Twitter, Facebook and Podcasts do not come to to the Blackberry app. I was a little sad about this, but I have other apps that I have grown accustomed to using for that stuff. From other devices, having the ability to see what your friends are doing, makes ShoZu a one shop application for mobile social networking needs.

The upload of the pictures, video and text is very similar to the desktop application. Select the picture, add text and the destination. Quick and simple, exactly what you want from the your mobile device.

Mobile Blogging

If you fancy yourself a blogger, being able to add posts on the fly is great. Sites like Blogger, Wordpress, Livejournal, Windows Live Spaces and more let you post on the go. Here is a post to a Wordpress blog to give you an idea of how it will look.

Other Features

Citizen Journalism Sites sites like CNN, BBC News, and Reuters let you upload newsworthy pictures Some other places you can upload your photographic wonders to via ShoZu are Email and FTP sites.

With the laundry list of features ShoZu has, I am sure it will fit it well with anyone who has the need to share media online.

How do you update your social networks?

ShoZu – Social Network Updating Made Easy originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Review of Opera Unite: Putting a Web Server In a Browser

Trevor Dobrygoski — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 12:03:13 +0000

Opera Software recently released a Beta version of its new web browser, Opera Unite. The beta version offers some really cool features that are very new to mainstream web browsing. If you are not familiar with the Opera browsers, you may want to give them a look. They have been making a great desktop product since the mid 1990s; Opera is also the most popular HTML browser for your mobile phone.

Like many modern browser, Opera 10 (Unite) offers tabbed browsing, a download manager, add-ons, speed dials (up to 25 favorite sites shown as a thumbnail), bookmarks with tagging; you know all the basics. Of course there are plenty of ways to customize the look, but the layout of the browser window is similar to that of Safari, Firefox and others.

Some of its Great Features

Built-in BitTorrent client

Opera Unite comes with a BitTorrent client that allows searching for and download of torrent files.

Cross-platform syncing

Opera Link enables you to sync bookmarks, speed dials, bookmark bar, notes, etc. with other devices including your phone running. As long as device is running a current version of Opera, Opera mini or Opera mobile; your information is right there and ready for you.

Customized search

The customizable web searching gets you quick access to Google, eBay, Amazon and more with the search field in the upper right corner. Or, for even quicker searching, search directly in the address bar using built-in and customizable keywords. For example, type “e VW Rabbit” in the address bar to search for “VW Rabbits” on eBay.

Web server within browser

The innovative features Unite is bringing to the table are really going to turn some heads. The idea behind the “services” as they are calling them, is to create a web server within the broswer and make each computer accessible from anywhere on the web, allowing you to retrieve information from it just like you would from a website or server. There will be more services to come, but right now here is what Unite comes with.

Media Player – Access your local music collection from anywhere on the Internet.
Web Server – Host a web site from the local computer.
Photo Sharing – Share photos directly without uploading to a middleman site like Flickr.
File Sharing – Allows sharing files directly between users; no emailing or torrent sites needed.
The Lounge – A chat interface hosted on your computer.
Fridge – Lets other people can put a virtual sticky note on the your refrigerator door like back in the day.

My Experiences Using the New Features

I do have to admit that these features are a really good idea. I think for people who embrace the new browser, the services could take the place of many third party hosting and application sites for smaller scale usage. However, while playing with the services feature, I did run into a few instances where I needed to reset the sharing part of the browser. There was no specific reason, just an unnamed error. I am sure as it gets closer to the final release it will be a lot more stable.

With the growing number of data enabled mobile devices, having all of your information synced is becoming more important by the day. Both the desktop and mobile versions of Opera are very fast browsers to surf the web. Having the ability to sync my bookmarks (which I imported from Firefox), coupled with being able to surf the mobile web via a HTML browser while I’m out is a really great thing in a pinch.

I don’t see myself making a total transition from Firefox just yet. I am going to keep using it part time and keep an eye on what services they roll out in the coming months. I wouldn’t write off Opera, they have been in the background for a long time making a really reliable browser. In the end, all the bells and whistles can make a browser fancy, but speed, usability and reliability are what matters. (Sorry Internet Explorer) Download Unite here and see what you think.

What are your thoughts on the Opera browsers?

Review of Opera Unite: Putting a Web Server In a Browser originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)