wow, post much, joi? – I was online ALL day yesterday.. need.. to get… it blogged… 🙂
So one of the many blogs I read is Merlin Mann’s blog, 43 folders, on personal productity (snicker all you want! I love it, how else could I get all this stuff done?). Any way, he did a post the other day called “What’s in my menubar?” that inspired me to list the same (tons of other people too – it got 1200+ diggs).
So here are my fav applications I use to help me on my Mac:
gmail notifier – little icon in the menu bar that check for emails every 5 minutes or so. I use this constantly, especially the drop down menu functionality to see if it is an email i need to read now or not. I also use it as my test to see if I have wifi connection in the various places I get free and unpredictable wifi.
adium – I love this im program. I was a Trillian gal when I was a PC gal and was very happy to find an app that let me use all my im clients, even Gtalk. Plus I changed the cute Adium dock duck to a Domo Kun who waves his arms around in my dock when someone im’s me . It’s adorable.
Flock – Since I started blogging, the right click action to send your selction to your various blog is very handy. Plus I can upload flickr pictures right to it and it accepts all firefox plugins. Has been nice so far for me.
Twitter – Oh twitter. Even though I had a relatively strange and abrupt conversatioon with Biz Stone at SXSW about the validity of COPPA fines agianst Xanga , I was smitten with the coolio twitter bubble screens through out the conference and vowed to at least try to get into it after SXSW. None of the twitter interaction methods grabbed me and I was starting to doubt how/why anyone could incorporate it into their work/life until I found twitbin the other day. It’s a firefox/flock plugin that make a running left hand column list right in your browser. You can choose to just look at friends or the public timeline. I switch. The public timeline is often all korean, which is just hard to see all the time. Today, I was riveted by NickWilson’s play by play of his wife’s labor (not graphic, just where they were in relation to the hospital). We will see how long this last for me, but I am liking it currently. Practically, it’s a great tool for coordinating at conferences.
netvibes – see my last post. i heart netvibes.
spirited away – cool little app I learned from Merlin’s site. “Spirited Away checks each running application’s activity, and if an application isn’t active for a certain fixed time, Spirited Away hides the application automatically. It is, in effect, Spirited Away :-)” I have it set to 90seconds and it’s great. I am notorious for having too many windows open.
iGTD – Also from the Merlin site. This is a to-do program that helps you separate your various tasks into contexts and projects, as well as whether it’s active or you are waiting for something to complete it. I definitely don’t use it to the extend of it’s capabilities, but I like it for what I use it for.
Smultron – this is a text editor for programmers, but I use it for simple word processing. It has a cool interface and tabs your open text documents. Plus the icon is a strawberry and the buttons are cool looking (I know…but I spend so much time on the computer, it may as well make me happy, right?)
moo cards – Just ordered some, so not totally sure I am gonna love them, but I have a good feeling. They are basically personal calling cards that you make by cropping your flickr (or other program) pictures. You can customize the back to say whatever you want. I chose 34 pictures, so I will get 2-3 of each picture in my pack of 100. I am excited to see them. 🙂 Plus their API with Flickr worked really well.
schmedley – Found this in someone’s comments last night when I was researching readers and aggregators. I don’t like it for the reader/aggregator function, but I love the weather, flight and image trackers. Haven’t confirmed if the SMS part works, but like it in theory. And it has meebo in it, but thats another idea i like in theory and have yet to incorporate practically.
joost – finally joost. i love tv. and i love community. so adding the 2 together sounds like a good plan. I finally got an invite care of GigaOM. I tried it out last night and it hiccuped so much I eventually left it. The content is lacking, and I didn’t get a chance to see anything because of the load time. But I know it’s in beta and I will hang in there. It’s a great idea, so it’s worth a bit of patience. Plus all the content providers are staring to perk up and jump on. I will keep my eye on it.
There are probably more , but I promised myself I would go play outside today. 🙂 Hopefully one or many of them help you out too!
Joi Podgorny 