So many newsletters, tweets, emails and stuff, aren’t we loosing focus?
Starting this week I will make a weekly selection of what I found interesting. 4 or 5 personal spotlights that I find worthy to write about. Something missing or you would like to see addressed? – just drop a comment.. I probably will check it out for you.
Taking off..
1. Evernote is getting big
Quick growth for Evernote, the note-taking service. I started to use the desktop version not so long ago. It’s easy to use and you can sync your notes with your iphone or other mobile devices. I still need to use the iphone app .. if it’s that inspiring as the desktop version, I will blog about it in another post. PcWorld listed Evernote this week in the 49 Best Apps for All Phones.
2. The power or weakness of Digg?
Digg has some mayor issues with its users not accepting the recent drastic changes of the application’s interface. As I never used digg seriously, I cannot judge if these are deserved critics, however it stresses once more the power of social media. Digg users started to use Reddit to post stories to Digg! For the ones that don’t know, Reddit is a competing service for submitting and rating news stories.
Yes, you heard that well ;)
Not sure why I didn’t fell in love with Mac’s native browser having an iMac for over two years now. Firefox is top-notch: it has firebug, yslow, the web developer tool bar (see earlier posts), it is and will be my developer browser!
Chrome has some similar webdev plugins, but Safari seems to have poor support for web developer tools (suggestions are welcome of course, I didn’t really dig into it cause I firefox is my webdev browser)
However.. the interface is slick (as all Mac products: they just feel right). It is freaking fast. It has the delicious and readitlater extension, so I am basically settled for Safari as my default browser :)
safari is really fast
Another nice feature is Reader. Annoyed by adds and other clutter on websites? – Safari detects if there is an article and if so, it shows a Reader button in the address bar. Clicking the button, you just get the article in a pdf-like format in the same browser window/-tab. Nice and clean!
By the way, a service as readitlater has the same advantage: it leaves you with the bare-bone content you want to read, no nonsense!
webpage with adds and other irrelevant stuff
safari detects it is an article and gives you a reader button
the article is displayed inline as pdf, no disturbing adds
the article is displayed inline as pdf, no disturbing adds
4. Google is releasing new tools
Google has released Call. I didn’t try it yet, cause I mainly use Skype or an old-fashioned telephone, but I hear it functions quite well and it is attractively priced. More interesting to me is Realtime search that allows you to monitor social media updates by date, time, location and even see full conversations in chronological order. Intro video:
It has a nice interface:
.. and even allows you to create customized mail alerts:
New gmail inbox: I am curious how this will feel and if it really saves time dealing with email.
Preview: article tech crunch and, as usual, funny google intro movie:
** just now I am writing this I see it in my gmail. The Priority inbox is unobtrusively layered on top of your normal Inbox. I have more things to say about mail handling, so I will save that for another post.
5. Reading books on iphone
I used stanza and calibre for some time now and I think these are great apps. However, with my ipod touch I noted that there was a “books” directory where I never could put epub books in (maybe my mistake).
Now with my new iphone I could. Well.. it said I should install ibook, so I downloaded it from the itunes store. iBook has a simple interface, page flips are fast. You can adjust brightness settings just from there and, main advantage, you can just drag and drop books from iTunes (btw, iTunes 10 just came out!)
With stanza I had to connect to my localhost using calibre’s web server. It worked perfectly, and you can download multiple ebooks this way, far better than other readers I’ve tried. But it costed some clicks (eh.. touches) more. Ah.. and the book shelve of iBook is just lovely ;)
OK I hope I didn’t play all my cards so that next week I’ll have fresh meat on the table again ;)
Leave me any comments or idea you have, it would be awesome to continue the conversation here ..
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Web spotlights – 2010-35
Pilot
So many newsletters, tweets, emails and stuff, aren’t we loosing focus?
Starting this week I will make a weekly selection of what I found interesting. 4 or 5 personal spotlights that I find worthy to write about. Something missing or you would like to see addressed? – just drop a comment.. I probably will check it out for you.
Taking off..
1. Evernote is getting big
Quick growth for Evernote, the note-taking service. I started to use the desktop version not so long ago. It’s easy to use and you can sync your notes with your iphone or other mobile devices. I still need to use the iphone app .. if it’s that inspiring as the desktop version, I will blog about it in another post. PcWorld listed Evernote this week in the 49 Best Apps for All Phones.
2. The power or weakness of Digg?
Digg has some mayor issues with its users not accepting the recent drastic changes of the application’s interface. As I never used digg seriously, I cannot judge if these are deserved critics, however it stresses once more the power of social media. Digg users started to use Reddit to post stories to Digg! For the ones that don’t know, Reddit is a competing service for submitting and rating news stories.
As @dcurtis remarked it sharply: The Digg community has destroyed the Digg community while it was trying to prevent the Digg community from being destroyed. Well done.
Hard times for digg, let’s see if they can fix the issues and regain trust…
3. Flirting with safari
Yes, you heard that well ;)
Not sure why I didn’t fell in love with Mac’s native browser having an iMac for over two years now. Firefox is top-notch: it has firebug, yslow, the web developer tool bar (see earlier posts), it is and will be my developer browser!
Chrome has some similar webdev plugins, but Safari seems to have poor support for web developer tools (suggestions are welcome of course, I didn’t really dig into it cause I firefox is my webdev browser)
However.. the interface is slick (as all Mac products: they just feel right). It is freaking fast. It has the delicious and readitlater extension, so I am basically settled for Safari as my default browser :)
safari is really fast
Another nice feature is Reader. Annoyed by adds and other clutter on websites? – Safari detects if there is an article and if so, it shows a Reader button in the address bar. Clicking the button, you just get the article in a pdf-like format in the same browser window/-tab. Nice and clean!
By the way, a service as readitlater has the same advantage: it leaves you with the bare-bone content you want to read, no nonsense!
webpage with adds and other irrelevant stuff
safari detects it is an article and gives you a reader button
the article is displayed inline as pdf, no disturbing adds
the article is displayed inline as pdf, no disturbing adds
4. Google is releasing new tools
Google has released Call. I didn’t try it yet, cause I mainly use Skype or an old-fashioned telephone, but I hear it functions quite well and it is attractively priced. More interesting to me is Realtime search that allows you to monitor social media updates by date, time, location and even see full conversations in chronological order. Intro video:
It has a nice interface:
.. and even allows you to create customized mail alerts:
New gmail inbox: I am curious how this will feel and if it really saves time dealing with email.
Preview: article tech crunch and, as usual, funny google intro movie:
** just now I am writing this I see it in my gmail. The Priority inbox is unobtrusively layered on top of your normal Inbox. I have more things to say about mail handling, so I will save that for another post.
5. Reading books on iphone
I used stanza and calibre for some time now and I think these are great apps. However, with my ipod touch I noted that there was a “books” directory where I never could put epub books in (maybe my mistake).
Now with my new iphone I could. Well.. it said I should install ibook, so I downloaded it from the itunes store. iBook has a simple interface, page flips are fast. You can adjust brightness settings just from there and, main advantage, you can just drag and drop books from iTunes (btw, iTunes 10 just came out!)
With stanza I had to connect to my localhost using calibre’s web server. It worked perfectly, and you can download multiple ebooks this way, far better than other readers I’ve tried. But it costed some clicks (eh.. touches) more. Ah.. and the book shelve of iBook is just lovely ;)
OK I hope I didn’t play all my cards so that next week I’ll have fresh meat on the table again ;)
Leave me any comments or idea you have, it would be awesome to continue the conversation here ..
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