Web Apps

I am a web App/service junkie. Here are some of the accounts I use regularly on the Neb:

Google Reader
Every RSS junkies must-have (I'm a power RSS guzzler and follow about 200 blogs in my feed)

Remember the Milk
Best TO-DO list application I've ever come across. Tasks are taggable, keyboard shortcuts abound, the interface is clean & slick, and the whole thing is in the cloud! Surprised Google haven't bought these guys out.

FaceBook
This is where I keep in touch with my meat-space friends - old school friends, friends that have emigrated etc. Go through phases with Facebook - sometimes can't live without it - sometimes hate it.

Flickr
Need I say more...

Twitter
I was a very early adopter with Twitter - opened my first account after it was 5 months old. Posted madly for about a month and then ignored it for a few years. With the recent introduction of twitter lists I've become a daily user again - although I follow others much more than I actually post. Finding it a very useful info source - like I recently needed a new hosting service and just followed a feed of all tweets mentioning the new host for a week before commiting.

Delicious
Bookmarking & Tagging are some of my favourite pasttimes. And delicious has been great - its integration with Firefox is superb and there are loads of useful 3rd party apps. However I've always said that what D lacks most is the ability to search the full content of the pages you have bookmarked (rather than just titles and descriptions). There are some workarounds for sure, but they're tiresome. And with over 3000 bookmarks I am now needing this feature more than ever. Considering shifting to Diigo.

Read it Later
Great simple little App that does just what it says. Couldn't live without it.

Amazon
My old favourite - had an account here since 1998. Use it to research books extensively and its music reviews are excellent too. Great wishlist management also - especially with the Universal wishlist bookmarklet.

To come:

Evernote
I'm an a avid collector of quotes and other snippets of info on the web. I used to use Google Notebook for this but since its demise have been meaning to open an Evernote account. I think the time has finally come...

DropBox
Most of my work and private internet stuff is "in the cloud", I just need a cloud place to keep certain Excel files accesible and all would be perfect.

TweetDeck
Since re-engaging with Twitter I have now got 3 different twitter accounts, so the time has come to get a service which acts as a master "dashboard" and allows you to post to diff accounts from the same place. My research indicates that TweetDeck is the best.

Diigo
As discussed above, although I have since found that evernote may negate both diigo and delicious.

I want one...

http://www.stefandidak.com/office/index.php#seven1

(ok so I'm up to 2 monitors and will soon be hooking up another old analogue (=3), but the home office (yes I said HOME office!) in the pic is definitely on the "Lotto Winnings Wish List")

the Algorithm

As much as I complain about work, I can't say I don't work in an exciting industry.

The SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) world went through its biggest shake-up of the year the past few weeks. Google rolled out (unannounced as always) a major change to their search algorithm and Page Ranks have been hit across the entire www. People in the SEO industry (and that kinda includes me) are abuzz with activity.

Its a fascinating process to watch. The industry has (and always will be) shrouded in mystery. The big G will always keep it like that, as the God that they worship is Relevancy, and if people know how the Algo works they'll game it so that their (often less relevent) sites get to the first page. So the Algo is the Secret Recipe, probably the greatest secret (certainly most valuable) in the universe today. It makes for a kinda Cloak-n-Dagger environment, which is pretty exciting if you're that way inclined.

And after the big Algo change hits, and everyone assesses the damage, the explanation theories start exploding. This expert says "This is why your Page Rank went down", the next "No, that's not it, its this other factor", and the next "Guys, Page Rank doesn't even matter anymore!"

The truth is that NOBODY actually knows (Except a select few in the Googleplex who are probably surveilled 24/7 in case they spill the beans in any Billion $ bribe).

And even if somebody DID actually know, that info is only current until the next change (which will pretty much come about once G has worked out that too many people now know, and too many irrelevent results are sneaking to the top). So its a Cat-and-Mouse industry sorta like the game played between anti-virus companies and virus creators.

BPG, by the way, was not unscathed, with his primary biz site knocked overnight from a Page Rank of 6 to a PR 4. But me, I been in this game for a while, and I got a few tricks up my sleeve. I'm betting I'll be back up at PR6 in about 3 weeks time :)

GTD

I've been very focused on "Getting Things Done" lately.
And harnessing the full powers of web2.0 to do so. Here's some of the cool things I've implemented lately:

• Opened a "Remember the Milk" (RTM) account*
• added an RTM overlay calendar onto my google calendars
  
• added an RTM widget to my iGoogle personalised home page
• Downloaded the freeware - Launchy (awesome!)
• Downloaded the freeware - AutoHotKey and written some scripts to launch certain websites/ progs with customised keyboard shortcuts
• Added a whole lotta new FireFox add-ons - IE View lite, Foxylicious, FireFTP, and Tab Mix Plus.
  
• Played around with a whole lot of Tab Mix Plus Settings.
  
• Added the Google Wikimedia Subscribed Links service to my Goog Search results (so every time I do a search in Google a wikipedia article with corresponding keyword appears under the result)
• Downloaded Avast Anti-Virus
• Downloaded PC Tools Firewall Plus

And I still got plenty plans:

If "Remember The Milk" works for me, I'm gonna finally ditch Outlook (with the very useful FranlklinCovey Plan Plus which I've been using fr years) and switch to Thunderbird - the Mozilla answer to an email client. I'll then use the add-on to integrate Thuderbird and RTM (and possibly even Google Calendar). I've already seen some of the other Thunderbird add-ons available, and they ROCK.

(I'm having a bit of a toss-up between migrating to Thunderbird OR switching all my work emails to Gmail, but at this stage Thunderbird is ahead)

If RTM works I'll also be adding Google Gears so that I can work offline on RTM (on different machines) and it will synch both copies with my online Master RTM account.

Also thinking of re-activating my Twitter account and piping feeds to Facebook, theWORDproject.com and that incredible blog - BiPolar Etcetera. But then I'm thinking maybe I should just stick with the STATUS feature on my Facebook account, and if I get really daring I can put the Facebook Widget on said website and blog, thereby displaying my status (Twitter Style) to my millions of readers on those two of my web properties. (Incidentally Google was nuts to by Jaiku instead of Twitter - Twitter was started by the guy who started Blogger and sold it to the Big G, and we all know what a hit Blogger is :)

HEY, if any of you guys use any of the above services I'd luuurve to hear what you think.

***
Anyhow I gotta dash, my latest net@nite podcast awaits, and there's about 400 new RSS feeds sitting in my Google Reader account.

Yeah, life can get complicated when you're a geek...

* The more I go into Remember-The-Milk, the more I'm thinking that it's a sitting duck for a Google takeover. You saw it here first!

It's complicated...

I said that I wanted to start demolishing the firewalls between my online persona and offline personas. So I drew the above diagram to clarify in my mind how it all fits together. Complex or what???*

In the middle you'll see Firewall 1. On the left of this firewall is what you guys know of me. On the right is my recently established REAL NAME (with REAL MEATY FRIENDS) Facebook account. And the place where I want to make the first attack on Firewall 1, is where the big dark arrow breaks thru the wall.**

You may notice that there's also a Firewall 2 to the right. This is the one that seperates my biz life from my private life (online and offline private). This second firewall will be the last I ever breakdown (if ever). Because the industry that I work in is so full of arsehole conservative suited morons that any whiff of bipolarhood would likely send them scuttling to their mommies.

Not sure if you really needed to know all of that, but there it is anyway :)

***

Thanks for the comments and concern on last post. You guys are right, the alcohol decision needs more consideration first. 2. Yes, I know I've been like a pinball on steroids lately - I think the spring sunshine is finally kicking in. But rest assured the over-enthusiasm will soon fizzle. It's Monday tomorrow remember.

Later ...

*This excludes all my other web accounts like YouTube, Lulu, Bookcrossing, Feedburner, Technorati, Google sites etc. etc.

** I'm happy to report that since writing this post one of my readers and fellow BiPolars has broken thru firewall 1 and is now an official friend on Facebook.

Microsoft Haiku

The Web site you seek
Cannot be located, but
Countless more exist.

Windows NT crashed.
I am the Blue Screen of Death.
No one hears your screams.

Your file was so big.
It might have been useful.
But now it is gone.

Chaos reigns within.
Reflect, repent, and reboot.
Order shall return.

Yesterday it worked.
Today it is not working.
Windows is like that.

Stay the patient course.
Of little worth is your ire.
The network is down

Total & utter Neb addiction.

I won't be posting again until Saturday. Nor tweeting. I have finally admitted it - I am totally and utterly addicted to this horrible thing in my monitor. I may as well be in solitary confinement (but with broadband). There really wouldn't be much difference.

For a long time I convinced myself that it was NOT an addiction, it was by choice, because I love it. But I think the defining attribute of addiction is persisting with something even when it is materially detrimental to your life. And this IS detrimental. I've done precisely 20 hours work in the past 2 weeks. Just now Mrs M & I will be living in a shack in the local shanty town (everything else having been repossessed by creditors), and you know what - I won't even have noticed, as I'll still be glued to this flickering rectangle thing about 40cm from my nose.

It's not gonna be easy. But for all-or-nothing BPGuy, cold-turkey is the only way. So if you see a post on here (Or my twitter widget) please be sure to curse the hell out of me.

PS. I won't be visiting any other blogs either for the next 4 days. I still love you but like I said it's Go Big, or Go Home.

Tweeting on Twitter.

I succumbed. I swore that I already spent too much of my life online, and that joining Twitter would be a bad, bad idea.

But in the meantime I've been following all the hype. Steve Ruebel, author of one of my favourite RSS feeds can't get enough of Twitter.

And then I heard Ev, the genuis behind Twitter, been interviewed by Amber Mac and Leo Laporte on my favourite tech podcast. It turns out that Ev was the guy who originally started Blogger. And then sold it to the big G. And what he had to say was very interesting:

When people first look at Twitter, their reaction is: "who the fck would want to do that? Post little one-liners to a website all day long?" But Ev was also there at the beginning of blogging. And you know what: when blogging first started everybody said: "who the fck would want to do that? Post a few paragraphs to a website every day?"

Yip, I reckon Twitters gonna be the next big thing. And their awesome widget (see top of my right bar) slots right into your blog, so its not EITHER blog OR Twitter. They complement each other big time. Tweeting is just the micro-version of Blogging.

Only problem: Twitter is taking off so thundering fast that their servers are taking strain. And also - a few clones have already popped up. Who wants to bet that the Big G will be talking to Ev soon?

SO: If you've got a Twitter account hook up with me
And if you don't got a Twitter account, well you're a fckn twi....

widgets, widgets, widgets

Man, I love widgets. They're bringing out my inner geek. Soon I'll be closer identified to the geek camp than the bipolar camp.

So in my right bar I've now added my del.icio.us tag cloud. And the biggest cloud, you'll notice, is blog-buddies. Yeah, I suppose this is my weak attempt at a blogroll. I've been feeling guilty about not having a blogroll for a while now, and just haven't gotten around to it. So this is it - and so very easy to manage (once set up!).

And if you're thinking sheesh, BPG has so few bookmarks, that is an untruth. It took considerable geekery to put a firewall up between all my bookmarks (934) , and the bookmarks suitable for BiPolar Daily (23). What I had to do is set up another delicious account (BiPolar Guy), and add that to the network of my existing "Master account". Whilst at it, I set up a 3rd account, which only my biz clients will see. Multiple Personality Disorder 4 sure.

PS if you're a blog_buddy of mine and I forgot to add you - Yell. This thing is still in beta.

I want one

One of the gadget RSS feeds I follow steered me to WickedLasers.com. Man, do I want one of these things. I'll quote the blurb from their homepage:

"Let's get something straight, you've come to the wrong place if you are looking for a laser pointer. We do not sell laser pointers. Wicked Lasers can burn, slash, melt plastic and when your lighter runs dry, it'll even light up your smoke. This is a joke right? Well you can see here. Have you seen videos like that anywhere else? Didn't think so. Can your laser pointer do that? Didn't think so."

YeeHaaa!
Damn pity that they cost $2000. I better not visit this website when the mania Gods are in control...

Comic Relief # 2

The world is coming to an end

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