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Improve productivity by moving your taskbar
2008-04-11 08:30:00
Martin from gHacks usually writes great technical posts, but it seems he’s not bad at productivity at all. He wrote a post explaining why he keeps his Windows taskbar on the right side of the screen. “Moving the taskbar to the side makes it possible to display additional windows before the Windows grouping feature kicks in” Sure enough, he reports that you can minimize about 25 applications to the tray before they become totally unreadable, so if you work with a load of windows, this may be a breath of fresh air. This is great for widescreeners, since they have the screen real estate to do this anyway. While I despise having so many windows open, sometimes you just have to, so this is a great tip, although it does take some time to get used to. _________
More About: Productivity , Improve

Create desktop internet applications with Prism
2008-04-10 09:35:00
A great new tool Mozilla is working on is called Prism , and it gives you the ability to create an application for your desktop out of any web service. Great examples are Gmail, Google Docs, Remember the Milk, but you can do it for any web page really. Essentially it is a sort of browser that opens up a page, but does so outside you normal environment, making everything browser free. This means that you can focus more on a specific page, which may lead to productivity, but it also means that there will be no data loss if Firefox or IE crashes. It also enables you to keep your email app or other page open all the time easily. You can create an application out of any page using a simple dialog, just type the URL and the name you want to give it. Simply clicking ok will create a one-time app, but you can save it to the desktop later. Saving it to the desktop (or creating a shortcut) means you will be able to launch your app any time from the place you saved it to. I simply love Prism be...
More About: Internet , Applications , Desktop , Create

Gmail is hiring
2008-04-09 07:08:00
I am not really into showing people job opportunities, but this is too good to miss! Gmail is hiring people for four different positions in seven locations including Europe, so all you European computer wizzes take a look! Although I’m perfectly happy doing what I do, I would love to work with Google, I’m really sorry I don’t live in the US, or have the programming skills it takes, it seems the only position for me is CEO. If you’d like to be a rapid prototyper, an analytics engineer, a software engineer or a user interface software engineer head on over to the hiring page for more info. If you get the job from my referral, you could implement an idea I have maybe, perhaps put an ad fir Hack Your Day into every simgle piece of email that goes through Google. Best of luck to all the applicants! _________
More About: Hiring

Find out how fast you type
2008-04-07 18:02:00
People who work a lot at a computer may find that their productivity is defined by their speed typing skills. The faster you type the less time you spend doing it (or the more you can type), ultimately you do more. If you want to find out just how fast you are, take this handy Typing Speed Test my friend Karl from Ask The Admin found a week or so ago. I would say that a score of 50 or so is average, I got 63 if I recall correctly. If you are concerned about some health issues get a nice squishy gel hand rest and buy a natural keyboard which will suit your wrist positions better. Learning to type quickly is a must for online entrepreneurs, but you also need to type correctly, so be sure to master both aspects. _________
More About: Find , Type , Fast

The blogger’s link between planning and reaction time
2008-04-05 17:38:00
Reaction time is very important nowadays, especially if you work as a blogger or as someone else who feeds on info. I need to fix some problems at my day job again so I didn’t write new posts, but had a few draft titles written up. I had a Prism review on my agenda three days ago, Lifehacker covered it yesterday; I had a Doomi review on my list since Monday, gHacks covered that this week too. As you can see a lot hangs in the balance and staying on top of all this info is an important task. The way I found I can get there before anyone else (or at least at the same time), is to carefully plan my information scraping technique. Getting your news regularly as a habit will increase your productivity much more than if you would actually be sitting in front of your RSS feed for 24 hours a day. The reason is that you have to write and publish these stories as well, not just read them. Therefore I suggest two different approaches, you can decide which works best. As I have said, I ...
More About: Time , Planning , Link , Reaction

Batch resize images with Squash
2008-04-03 11:53:00
While Photoshop can take care of any batch action needs you may have, few people know about these features and using a separate tool just for this purpose may prove to be easier and more productive. I read about Squash a few days ago on gHacks and I very much like both the interface and the features, although features maybe a bit stretching it, maybe feature would do better. Squash is simple, choose images, choose an output directory, choose a file suffix if you need it, set the size and that’s it. I am actually all for lightweight apps like this, simply built for this one purpose, in which it performs pretty well. I would appreciate a few added features like maybe choosing a file type, but otherwise the app is already fine, it is even available for Windows and Linux. If you need a simple tool for image resizing and don’t need any bells and whistles to go with it take Squash for a spin. _________
More About: Images , Batch , Resize

ClipClip - Your online scrap book
2008-04-03 11:45:00
I am not a huge fan of clipping tools, there do seem to be a lot these days, but I found ClipClip worth the mention since it is so simple and for scrapping purposes it is effective. The idea behind clipping tools is pretty simple, you can highlight a section on the web, pics and all, click the ClipClip bookmarklet and your clipping will be saved in your online ClipClip scrapbook. You can use this tool quite productively if you are researching for a present, or for something else because you can clip pics, text and then later mix them up to form ideas. This is not the way I perform best, but scrapbookers will love the idea and using really is as simple as a few clicks. _________
More About: Book , Scrap , Online

Start GTD with a mind sweep
2008-04-03 11:34:00
When people start out with GTD I think they get overwhelmed because they’re expected to go from no, or unproductive organization to writing  everything down, categorizing and dealing with stuff. A method I read about on Stuff for Getting Things Done is very much like what I first did when GTD hit me. The point of doing a mind sweep is to let everything transfer itself from your head, down onto paper, or on to the screen. On one hand, this will let you organize the most data you have, so you can create your GTD system fully, but on the other hand it also gives you clarity of thought and a warm fuzzy feeling that you’re not going to forget anything, since it’s down on paper. I would actually recommend doing a mind sweep every now and again, say monthly, it would be the equivalent of reaching into the corners of the room when cleaning. You do take down your thoughts regularly, just as you also clean, but now and again it may prove effective to reach into the co...
More About: Start , Mind , Sweep

Log everything you do and become more productive with RescueTime
2008-04-01 18:08:00
During my dayjob my boss recommended an awesome application called RescueTime. Basically it is a simple app residing in the system tray that monitors what you do all the time. It periodically sends this data to the RescueTime server, and by logging on to your account you can view how productive or unproductive you were. I think this is one of the best productivity measurement apps I’ve ever seen, warranting it a bit more in-depth look on my part. Setting up RescueTime Setup is really easy, all you need to do is go to the RescueTime homepage and register for a free account. Once done, download the desktop application and install it (currently available for Windows and Mac). When you run the application it will reside in the system tray, right-click it and open the preferences. On the basic tab you can enter your registration details so the app knows where to send the data, and you can also set it to go to your dashboard with a double-click, I have this enabled. On the advanced ...

Google Docs offline being rolled out
2008-04-01 11:00:00
Google is implementing Google Gears into Google Docs , a feature long awaited by many in the online community. This means that you will be able to use Google Docs without internet access, and when you do manage to go online your stuff will be synchronized automatically. Offline access will probably mean that you will loose some features, but no loss of data, and the ability to edit documents online. I don’t really know what features you can use, since I haven’t got the feature yet, but I’m sure that basic text editing will be seamless. The benefits of Google Gears is great, now you don’t have to worry about getting disconnected or if you’ll be able to work from the train or not. Just go to offline mode, write all you want and when you get wired again docs will sync on its own. The feature is initially only offered in English, and for now only for text documents, no spreadsheet and presentation mode yet, but I’m sure the time will come. I am eager t...
More About: Google

5 steps to managing a blog writer’s workflow
2008-04-01 09:28:00
If you blog a lot, especially if you do it professionally, a lot of your day will be spent writing and reading stories. An RSS feed is an integral part of this, both for finding stuff to write about and also to keep yourself up to date on news. I think Google Reader is an excellent tool to manage 90% of your workflow in terms of writing and reading, it ads a great deal to my productivity at least. I used to send myself the stories I wanted to read or work on through Google Reader (take a look at the post here), but since I’ve switched to a tag and folder based approach. Here’s how I manage my blog workflow in 5 steps to maximize my productivity. 1. Organize your feeds by importance Instead of organizing my feeds by category it is more effective from an organization point of view to doing this by importance. This is helpful because I may have 1000+ unread items from some news feeds, which is not a big deal, but just one post missed from a site like the official Google blo...
More About: Blog , Workflow , Steps

Google’s April Fools
2008-04-01 08:01:00
Google really does come up with the best pranks on April 1st. Most pranks I see around the web and in real life are either quite dull, or are quite evil and over the top. Google manages to balance this somehow and provide us with more charm than we are used to. Last year they had a Gmail Paper prank, which I am ashamed to say I believed. I will try and let myself off the hook by saying that I actually saw it a few days after, so I didn’t suspect, but seriously. this isn’t a bad idea, just wasteful. I mean I have tons of email from my significant other I’d love to archive, although I could of course print it at home. So another April Fools has come and it’s time for Google gDay, the search engine that searches tomorrow’s news. Lottery numbers, team standings, breaking news, you get it all. My favorite part is the third comment “This is old news. I read about this announcement yesterday on Google”. Hilarious, good job again Google! _________

Wordpress 2.5 is here!
2008-03-31 21:26:00
Over the weekend I had some serious fun, so I didn’t even write posts, and it seems I missed out on an important bit of news, Wordpress has secretly released 2.5 behind my back. I’m glad to say that it was released on my birthday, possibly as a present to me, I was waiting for the release for quite some time, so nice one Wordpress! I will be installing it on the blog soon and will tell you guys what I think, from what I’ve seen it looks pretty awesome. From what I could tell without actually trying, version 2.5 mainly increases the admin’s ability to monitor and manage the blog by providing a better, more productive interface. It also makes the dashboard a widget page, much like you would see on Netvibes, I’m looking forward to taking it for a spin. _________

FireFTP - The ftp client for Firefox
2008-03-31 21:17:00
An application that is among the first 5 install is actually an extension for Firefox . FireFTP is a simple ftp client for Firefox, but is probably one of the main applications for my productivity. It enables me to upload and download files like pics for my blog easily, without having to leave my browser. This means I don’t need to open an extra program, and I can just open it in a tab anytime, even open up multiple instances if I want. The application doesn’t provide as many features as SmartFTP, a standalone program, but if simple file transfer is all you need I can heartily recommend it. A great feature I use is that you can set default locations for your local machine and for the ftp site. Just navigate to a location on your PC and a location on the server, go to manage accounts - edit, click on the connection tab and click on the use current button for both locations. If you backup a lot you can also sync locations, going between directories simultaneously. _________
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Change the location of your Documents folder
2008-03-31 20:57:00
In Windows Vista and Xp I love the way the user accounts are handled with music, documents, pics all available in an easily understandable structure. However, I find that data and disk management wise it is much better to have all these on either a separate drive, or a separate partition. You can change the default location of user folders which means that the data in them will be accessible through the original location, but also in a new location you specify. The data will actually be stored in a new location, the old location will serve as a short cut to them. In Vista, all you need to do is right-click the Documents folder for example and choose properties. Click on the location tab on the top left and using the move button, select a new location for your files. Click yes to move all your files to the new location and from then on, whenever you click on Documents in the start menu, or choose it from a save dialog you will actually be going to the new location. In XP the method i...
More About: Change , Location , Folder

How hexadecimal colors work
2008-03-29 09:14:00
Do you use some tool like Photoshop or an online color picker to choose your HTML colors? We use things like #ffffcc and #454545, who knows what these are and what they are doing here eh? Well as you will see hexadecimal is not that complicated at all, let’s take a look. I bet many more of you know RGB notation, since the name says it all, Red, Green, Blue. The three numbers in an RGB value (ranging from 0 - 255) represent the intensity of these three colors, with 255 being the most intense. For example, (0, 0, 255) would be as blue as it gets, since red and green values are set to 0, while blue is set to 255. Actually hexadecimal notation is exactly the same, with different ranges. If you group a hex value the same way as you do with RGB, for example #00 00 ff, you would get the same result as with the RGB(0, 0, 255). As you can see, hex ranges from 0 to f, with f being the most intense. Knowing how these colors work enable you to change colors quickly on your website becaus...
More About: Work , Colors

Lego Digital Designer
2008-03-28 19:44:00
You’d be surprised at how a software essentially geared toward a game can give you a lot in productivity. Lego Digital Designer is also unique because it is fun, it can be considered a game, while it can also be an important tool for Lego fans, designers and artists. A quick download of the application will enable you to build any Lego model you want, with more than 700 brick types to choose from I’m sure you can think of something to build.This tool could bring Lego more into the lives of today’s digital generation, no matter how great games become, Lego is still my favorite. Heck, I still play with Lego today, although nowadays I buy Technic almost exclusively, but I am aiming for some Lego creator soon! A great feature is that you can check the price of your model, which you can subsequently order. I don’t understand why so many pieces are left out of this, you will see that when placing some elements the application will tell you that this will disable pr...

Comfort or productivity?
2008-03-28 15:44:00
In many cases in my own life I find that I am either productive or comfortable. By this I don’t mean that I have to sleep on the floor after a productive day, what I mean is that many times you need to trade your personal freedom to work productively according to GTD and other task management theories. The reason is mostly scheduling. I have three projects and I could schedule each subtask for a day next week but I won’t. The reason for this is that if I don’t complete my schedule on a given day I’ll feel bad, and the whole project will suffer overall. If you have projects which do not have a very strict deadline I would advise against scheduling them daily because it will cause you discomfort. Writing a to-do list for the week is fine, or doing 4 day to do list is perhaps even better, this way if you don’t complete a task you can bump it to next time. The advantage of scheduling flexibly like this is that you can make use of your personal highs and low...
More About: Productivity , Comfort

Get rid of the downloads window in Firefox
2008-03-28 11:39:00
One thing I very much hate about Firefox is the download window. Whenever I download anything an annoying window pops up. I would be ok with it if it would materialize in the background, but instead, after each link click to download it springs up in my face. Of course I don’t really hate Firefox for this, since there had been an addon around for ages to help with this problem. Download statusbar puts all your downloads in a bar at the bottom of the browser, saving you from that nagging download screen. All finished items can be cleared with a mouse click, but if you don’t clear them the only problem it causes is a 15 pixel bar at the bottom of the screen. It increases my productivity a bit because it removes the pop up, and also because now I don’t have to click close every time I download something. This is one of my must-have addons, after each OS reinstall it’s one of the first ones I download. _________
More About: Downloads , Window

Mount USB drives to folders
2008-03-28 11:27:00
Martin from gHacks just shared a really good tip on his site on mounting USB drives to folders, instead of assigning drive letters to them. This is great if you have a double or triple boot setup, since you are likely to have at least 4-5 partitions, all with separate drive letters. Martin suggests creating a folder named USB for instance and then mounting all drives there. This also helps get rid of some confusion and navigation issues, since USB drives will now be more a part of your file system than before. To read exactly how to do this, take a look at the original article on mounting USB drives to folders, I don’t want to take any of the limelight here. _________
More About: Folders , Mount

Flickr tag browser
2008-03-28 02:11:00
A quick stumble led me to one of the best tag browser sites I’ve seen lately. Flickr related tag browser brings together design and usability in a great way. Enter any tag into the slightly slanted box and you will be presented with pics applicable to that tag. You will also see a tag cloud around the pics with related tags. They work surprisingly well, GTD will give your productivity, moleskine, hipster and a lot more phrases which really do have much in common with GTD. Navigation is simply awesome with the automatic zooming in and out, you really have to try it to appreciate it. If only this exact technology was implemented in a search engine, it would be search productivity heaven. _________
More About: Browser

Folder navigation productivity
2008-03-28 01:52:00
I always liked Windows explorer and although I acknowledge its shortcomings, I never really grew accustomed to replacements like WinCommander or Xyplorer. An application I just found while reading Lifehacker enhances explorer with one of the best features yet, the ability to jump from folder to folder really quickly. Direct Folder s gives you the ability to navigate through your folders much more productively by letting you navigate to any folder you specified before hand from anywhere inside an explorer window. Just double click on an empty space to bring up the menu, and select the folder you want to go to. This is free so far, if you want some added functionality you can buy the pro version which supports jumping to the last used folder, setting default folders for apps and so on. All in all this is a great app for productivity which should ease folder navigation for you. _________
More About: Productivity , Navigation

Photoshop Express test drive
2008-03-28 01:14:00
Today I took the freshly released Adobe Photoshop Express for a test drive, the online version of Photoshop (sort of). The reason that I say sort of is that there is no painting and drawing, this is strictly a photo editor application. Photoshop Express looks much like Buzzword, the previous Adobe online product. I quite like the way things turned out if you can stop yourself from trying to find all the features of its desktop counterpart. After the considerable loading time (I have a fast connection) everything went smoothly, so it was well worth the wait. When you have loaded a picture you can perform the tasks on it via the right sidebar which contains all the actions. You will find most of the basic tools you need for touching up your photos a bit like crop, rotate, red eye, white balance, sharpen and so on, and six effects to use for fun. All these are executed very well, one of the best features I think, is the way it displays changes. If you click saturation for example you w...
More About: Drive , Test Drive , Test

Enabling cool desktop effects in Ubuntu
2008-03-28 01:02:00
Ubuntu 7.10 comes with the awesome Compiz meaning desktop on a cube, window animations and so on, but you may be at a loss since it doesn’t work. I actually managed to get it to work quite simply, despite the fact that many forums propose long terminal sessions and so on. From a fresh Ubuntu install it is very important to update. Simply going to the update manager in system - administration will not work, you will still see that your system is up to date since you need to expand the library of where the manager looks. Go System - Administration - Software sources. Once there on Ubuntu software mark all checkboxes, except source code. Switch to the third party software tab and mark both checkboxes, then switch to the updates tab and mark the first three checkboxes. If you go to update manager now you will see a lot of updates and install them. The restricted driver for my video card was immediately usable. When I wanted to enable desktop effects I got the message “The Co...
More About: Desktop , Ubuntu , Cool , Effects

Firefox addons page face-lift
2008-03-27 23:43:00
The go to page for Firefox extensions just got revamped and they did a really good job with it at that. The overall design is much smoother and more eye-pleasing, but they managed to pour some usability in as well. Rating and commenting is now very simple and viewing screenshots is much easier using the menu below as well. Now extensions reviews look much more like Amazon reviews giving you info at a glimpse, and detailed info as well if you need it. Mozilla is probably ready to roll out Firefox 3 soon and is getting ready with this makeover. Even if FF3 is a bit down the road I always like to see companies actively upgrading their sites. _________
More About: Page , Face , Lift , Face Lift

How to schedule when you’re overflowing with tasks
2008-03-26 23:28:00
I used to find myself so many times in situations where I needed to do a lot of work, but actually didn’t do anything because sorting out the initial chaos seemed so impossibly that I just pushed the whole load in front of me. Doing some scheduling works wonders if you have similar problems, just writing it down will clear you head and you will know what to do and when. Keep in mind that the approach below works best when you need to sort out a lot of stuff in a short time, but I am finding it increasingly useful for my day to day stuff too. I use a 3 step process here’s how. I create two lists and one table at the end. You could merge all these into just one table, but I find that having them separately helps, so you can view your tasks in context. As my first step, I jot down the projects I need to work on, usually in order of priority. Write blog(s) Create my main personal site Record CD After I’m done, I write down the sub-steps that need to be taken for each...
More About: Schedule , Tasks

GoodSearch - Find what you need and support charity
2008-03-26 22:23:00
I just found a cool service called GoodSearch which is simply a search site, but promises to give half its revenue to charity. You can even specify which charity you want to support and if they can verify it, they will send the money to them. The reason this works great is that you can also buy from adobe.com or Bestbuy through them for example. This way, even if you don’t normally use GoodSearch, you can just buy through them and know that you will be donating some money to charity as well. For you this means a warm fuzzy feeling, the charity gets money as well, and so does GoodSearch, so everyone is now a happy camper. I wouldn’t exchange simple Google for anything, but I think whenever I order online I will do it through them, if for nothing else, just to acknowledge that I love this idea and I think there could be hidden possibilities here. We search hundreds of items every da, why not try and use this to do some good? _________
More About: Charity , Find , Support

Auto-press Windows dialog buttons
2008-03-26 22:07:00
If you hate confirming that yes, you do want to delete the file in question (hence the reason you pushed delete) I just found an application via Mysticgeek’s Realm that could save you from a lot of OK pushing. PTFB (Push the freakin’ button) basically sits in the background waiting for dialogs to appear and presses the pre-designated button for you. The great thing is that you can make it dialog specific, so you can enable it only for file deletion notifications, or only for overwriting and so on. You can set up the delay time as well, although I don’t really see the point, maybe unless it’s part of a macro. By the way, there is a pro version which can do a lot more, but for basic usage this is perfect, especially if you are batch deleting some files one by one, it will save you a lot of time (time saving = productivity). _________
More About: Windows , Press , Auto , Dialog , Buttons

Using labels, tags and categories productively
2008-03-26 14:51:00
I know that there are certain definitions for each of these, but let me tell you my views on how I use them, and how I think using them leads to productivity. Usually you can only use one of these, occasionally two, like in Wordpress, but you can usually substitute one of them by using folders, or other structure elements. Categories I think categories are the simplest to use, I just think of them as folders. I try to limit categories as much as I can in many cases I come up with a pre-fabricated category list. It doesn’t matter if you add to it a bit, but you should keep it as simple as possible. The biggest problem I see is that people try to use categories to search for specific things. If you are looking for one specific article on the site for example you should not be able find it using categories. From user’s point of view it doesn’t make sense for two reasons. First of all, users can just use the search box or use tags as you will see later on. Second of al...
More About: Labels , Tags

Links from around the web
2008-03-25 10:12:00
Here are some of the links I liked today, from hard drive problem anticipation, to advanced Thunderbird, you are bound to find something to make you a bit more productive, happy reading! Don’t forget, if you have any link suggestions for me you can send them directly by email, or add it to your del.icio.us account and label it with “for:danielpataki” and it will show up in my account as well. How to tell when your hard drive is going to fail - Lifehacker Four ways to run webapps from your desktop - Make Use Of Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron Screenshot tour - Lifehacker Quickly resize Photos in Vista - Sizlopedia Five advanced Thunderbird tips - gHacks _________
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