ThinkLemon

Category: Utilities

Utils

  • PocketMod: Not everything needs to be digital

    Why should you need a several hundred dollar/euro pocket organiser that’ll last for just one day on batterypower? Why not rethink paper? It’s been used for a few hundred years and still going strong. If you accidently drop or sit on it the interface it’s still readable and writable. No need to go look for that damn adapter. If you don’t need it anymore, just chuck it in the bin. 🙂

    Start PocketMod Enter PocketMod: The Free Disposable Personal Organizer! The all-in-one organizer you need. Containing among others: “Dots game, 2007 calendar, food diary, tip tables, music staff sheets, story boards and more.”

    Many things make this little personal organizer special, here is a list.

    1. It fits easily in your back pocket or purse.
    2. It’s as cheap as one piece of paper (Because that’s all it is!)
    3. It opens like a book. Leading to easier to find, more organized notes.
    4. The first page has a pouch, big enough to carry a business card!
    5. Customizable with “Mods” tailored to your needs.
    6. It’s free and fun!

    Get yourself a PocketMod right here and impress your friends with your latest gadget. Paper, printer & scissors not included.

    Anyway, it’s one of nicest Flash RIA’s i’ve seen in a while. There even is an offline Win/Mac version. Nice!

    (Found at Fredscapes.nl)

  • Commercial ads inside Google Earth

    Here’s something I noticed lately. Advertisement through placemarks.
    I saw a few of these placemarks passing by on Googleearthhacks.com. What struck me was that they are blatant commercial placemarks. Whether they were put together by GE enthousiasts or not.

    A few examples:

    Although their info is on a board (GEH), the same info is not included in the placemark itself. A missed opportunity if you ask me.

    Anyway. I’m not saying this is bad perse. Maybe someone travelling around asia needs a place to sleep or somebody wants to dive off a dam. Who knows. But this makes me wonder what else you could do to use GE to ones commercial advantage. Please don’t let it be spam.

  • Macromedia Studio 8 Trial software available

    Macromedia Studio 8 The all new trial version of Studio 8 is available for download. As well as version 8 of Dreamweaver, Flash Basic & Pro and Fireworks.

  • Google Blogsearch & Webfeeds

    At first look there are no orange XML/RSS chicklets in Google Blogsearch. But if you look at the bottom of the page just above the pagination there’s this line where you can subscribe to either an Atom or RSS feed for the search results.

    E.g.: “Thinklemon” search results in Atom and “Thinklemon” search results in RSS.

    This is great stuff for some ‘egosurfing‘. 🙂 But I have to give it to MSN Search. As a search engine they were there first.
    If it weren’t for Firefox’s Live Bookmarks I would just have missed this option.

    Update: It seems that the feeds are ordered by relevance per default. You’ll need to sort your results on date first (top right) and then subscribe to get a feed ordered on post date.

  • Google Blogsearch

    Google launched a dedicated blog search engine today.
    You can read the FAQ here.

    It seems that Google also uses the engine for their free Blogger weblog service. Which makes me wonder how they will sift out the splogs, as Blogger is/was not willing to take down spam/autogenerated/offensive weblogs.

    Of course it’s beta. Need I mention?

    [Via The RSS Weblog]

  • Mozilla Firefox 1.5 beta 1 is out

    As stated on the Mozilla.org Firefox projectpage:

    Firefox 1.5 Beta 1Firefox 1.5 Beta 1 is now available for download. This is the first Beta release of our next generation Firefox browser, to be released later this year, and it is being made available to our developer and testing community for compatibility testing and to solicit feedback.

    Note: This is not the final release of our Web browser, it has been made available for testing purposes only, with no end-user support. If that sounds scary, you’d probably be better off with the latest version of Firefox 1.0.

    Installing it on a production environment generally is a bad idea as it will break a lot of your extensions. But if you’re dying to take a look, do so here.

    The roadmap states there will be a Firefox 1.5 Beta 2 following in October. So it should be safe to say that the final 1.5 will be available before the holiday season? *knock on wood*
    Surprisingly *the other browser* is due for release around ‘Mid-Late Q4‘. Are the fox and the e about to clash at the end of this year?

  • Apple iBook. On Second Thoughts.

    Apple iBook 12" It’s officialy a month ago since I bought my 12″ Apple iBook. Coming from a WinTel world I must admit, it has been an overall positive experience. But there also have been some quirks I haven’t got used to.

    So here’s a short list of things I hate or love about my Mac:

    • Dashboard is overrated. I’ve looked at it maybe 3 times. The concept of widgets is OK, but it’s on the edge of geekiness a.k.a. ‘who’s using it?’.
    • No Delete-button. There’s only ‘Backspace’. Why? As with the rest of OS X, it’s too keyboard centric, meaning I have to use Command+… everytime I want to get something done. Like switching applications. The dock, despite it’s coolness does NOT replace the Windows taskbar. I’ve got to hand it to Windows, where I’ll be operating my mouse all day and occasionally using the keyboard.
    • Killing applications. I still do not fathom the concept of killing all windows and still have the application running in the background. Please tell me why I want a memory hogging app running in the background without an apparant GUI?
    • Microsoft should learn about this installer alternative of ‘packages’. Installation is just a matter of dragging a package to your ‘Applications folder’. That’s it. No questions asked. It’s there. Use it.
    • The same with de-installation. Just drag it to the bin and you’re set. It’s gone. (Apart from some deep-hidden settings that you did not get away, even with using ‘regedit’ on Win. In fact it brings back the good ‘ol DOS days, drag’n’drop this time. :-))
    • Exposé rules! Besides patent-issues, this could make Windows great. For all you MS people, imagine this: Just press one button and see every app running as a thumbnail and seeing what it is doing at the moment. Imagine having several Mediaplayer windows open and seeing them playing all at the same time, while checking your downloads progress. (Again: Why not a mouse-button somewhere in the GUI?)
    • As for default browsers. Safari RSS is not all that. So I’m sticking with Firefox + extensions. I could not imagine living without.
    • It is when I switch to my Dell that I sorely miss the trackpad with scrolling capability. Trackpads have been around for ages, why didn’t they come up with the idea of using two fingers to scroll a page before? It is like the scrollwheel on a mouse. Once used to it you can’t live without.
    • Standby = Standby (or Sleep as it is called on a Mac). Meaning, whenever I close the lid of my iBook it does what I want. Namely, go to sleep (or standby) in a moments notice. And here’s the big part. Whenever I decide to open the lid, the OS springs back to life, sub-second.
      (In fact I just did it just now. Just for fun. :-))
      I noticed this, while waiting in vain for my Dell to come back to life from a standby. It never did… and it’s not exemplary for this Dell. Be it hardware or OS, it’s not working on Wintel.

    So here it is. My list of quirks after one month of Mac. 🙂

    (Added: trackpad with scroll)
    (Added: sleep/standby)

  • Katrina + CNN + Google Earth

    Makes for some interesting first.

    I’ve been following the Katrina aftermath this week and today, watching CNN, I noticed something familiar. One reporter used Google Earth, live, in his report of what happened to downtown New Orleans. Highlighting, zooming in, several parts of the stricken city to discuss what has happened. In the mean time swapping between GE & current footage.

    Amidst the human tragedy that’s still going on, this was one of the things that struck me.

    (Sorry, no screenshots.)

    Update: Google Earth Hacks has a special page with all the ‘Hurricane Katrina and Flooding’ placemarks. There’s also a forum discussing all the material that’s available in GE.

    We will attempt to keep these files updated with the latest aerial photos showing the flooded areas of New Orleans, to help residents of the area to stay informed.

    Update 2: Via the Google Blog I found these additional links. 1. The special Katrina page at earth.google.com with overlays for GE. Some instructions here. 2. For people without GE there’s this special Katrina Google Maps page. (Originating article.)
    Furthermore there are the Flickr Katrina & New Orleans tags showing related pictures.

  • Google Sitemaps Verification & Mobile

    Google Sitemaps has seen an update.

    Verification
    If you verify that you are the owner of the submitted ‘sitemap.xml’, you get to see some extra statistics about the indexing process. Although I see some errors on URL’s that aren’t even in my sitemap.
    Go to your sitemap controlpanel and click the verify link next to the sitemap. Just follow the instructions.

    Google Mobile WebMobile Sitemap
    If you run a mobile-enabled (WAP) site you now can also submit sitemaps. See for more info:

    Maybe something for the guy running Wapipedia.org (The mobile version of Wikipedia)?

  • Firefox & BitTorrent

    Opera supports it already. And now it seems it may be incorporated in Firefox as an extension. The FirePuddle extension is currently under development and it will be some time before a version for the general public will be available. Probably somewhere around the release of the next Firefox installment?