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Productivity and organization roundup
2008-01-10 01:42:00
Due to severe tiredness syndrome (STS) having to do with me staying up with my girlfriend talking about partial integration and two-variable volume calculation (this sounds like I actually know what I’m talking about) I have to postpone (pun partially intended) writing anything of essence today. I have some cool stuff lined up, but until then, take a look at some great posts on other sites. Uninstall productively with Revo Uninstaller from gHacks Prevent recent programs from showing up in the start menu via AskTheAdmin Disabling the pesky error reporting window in XP by HowToGeek Removable magic tape for the organization ninja in you via Lifehacker.com Spice up your iGoogle with some visual hacks found on Web Worker Daily
More About: Organization , Roundup , Productivity , Organ

Copy paste files with your keyboard
2008-01-08 04:34:00
This may be someone everyone knows, but about 3 months ago I was sick and tired of copying files all over the place and I decided to see if the familiar copy-paste combos work with files, and indeed they do. This increased my productivity a lot, I hate clicking through all those menus to do one simple function. Just select any files (or all files with Ctr+A), copy them with either Ctr+C  or Ctr+Ins and paste them to where you want them to go with Ctr+V or Ctr+Del. I don’t know how many people know this, it was quite new for me. Also, the Ctr+Inst and Ctr+Del keys also seem to be unknown, while on many keyboards they are much easier to access than the other one.
More About: Keyboard , Files , Copy , Paste

StoryMash - Collaborative fiction
2008-01-07 13:47:00
Now this will not necessarily be about productivity, but it’s one of the better ideas going around the internet today. StoryMash is a web 2.0 service that invites people to collaborate on the same story. Not only do these people work together, but users can vote on which part they like best. In essence, this means that they are choosing how the story should go on. This is simply great from the readers’ point of view, since it allows for interactive written fiction, which is pretty much a first. It’s also great from the writers’ point of view, since even of one of their chapters is not voted in, they can try to take the story that way in the next chapter. It’s a test of their abilities, it teaches them better writing skills, and they also have fun. If you need to clear your head from the business of every day life, remember that sometimes doing something fun, or unproductive ultimately leads to ore productivity on your part. If you have a few minutes, ch...
More About: Fiction

Why I like Vista
2008-01-07 01:55:00
I can just see you coming… What?! How can anyone like Vista , it’s a pile of °!%+! Well, no it isn’t. I will try and make a more compelling argument, but for those who are really rigidly anti-Vista, we won’t be able to convince each other. I will be writing more positive than negative points, but this is only because I see Vista treated unfairly. I know there are a lot of nagging things still in there, I will not be mentioning many of them. First of all, I am looking at this through the eyes of a totally normal user. I am not a developer, or someone who spends hours in a Windows registry. I also hold nothing against Linux, I’ve tried Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Simply Mepis, all had their merits. I also don’t hate Bill Gates, or Steve Jobs (although I still need to try a Mac), and whenever I find an operating system that suits me better, I’ll change without thinking. I believe I am quite impartial. So let’s take a look, at why I like Vista. ...

Post roundup for your reading pleasure
2008-01-06 23:13:00
Hi Guys! It’s time to put on your pajamas, get some tea (ice or otherwise), sit back or collapse in your chair, put on some mellow music, burn the incense and read some of the awesome recent posts from other blogs. Relax, enjoy, and become more productive and organized! Install Wikipedia Locally from gHacks 5 ways to backup your emails from MakeUseOf Multiple tab startup in Firefox and IE7 (awesome tip) from Ask The Admin 9 great Firefox addons for writers from Freelance Switch Use Gtalk and Twitter to update your Google Calendar from Geeks Are Sex Optimizing Windows startup from Stuff for Getting Things Done Additionally, check out the Hack Your Day Wiki, complete with guides and all (yay!), and also check out my very first podcast (with an extra pic of my sick girlfriend) while reading Why be productive when you’re sick.
More About: Reading , Post , Roundup , Pleasure

Cloud based task management - Zirrus
2008-01-06 12:25:00
There is a Hack Your Day Wiki Guide for Zirrus available! I always love testing task management apps, especially ones that endeavor to bring something new to the table, no matter how well or how badly they do. If it has to do with organization or productivity, I’m already there. Zirrus is a very simple task manager with a feature like tag-clouds, that is the more important the task, the larger the text representing it becomes, read on! (more…)
More About: Management , Cloud , Task

The new generation of online presentations?
2008-01-06 10:32:00
I’ve tried a few online presentation apps, but to me they all seem pretty limited and while they do get the job done, you won’t be able to put together compelling slideshows. Some people have the view that it doesn’t matter how your presentation looks, because if it looks good, it will only divert attention from the actual presentation. While I agree with this, some people aren’t the best speakers, or have to speak to kids, who aren’t the best listeners. Some people just enjoy making good looking presentations. It seems that a team of web-developers have set out to migrate the power of desktop presentation to the internet in the form of a new application called SlideRocket. I’m sorry to say it is in closed beta, but I’ve applied for an invitation, and contacted them for expedition, so I hope to bring you the low-down soon. Until then I can tell you from the presentation they have that it looks awesome. You can have an extensive library (I do...
More About: Online , Presentations , Generation , Resent

Joe’s Goals - A Hack Your Day Wiki Special
2008-01-05 19:39:00
The catchy titled Joe’s Goals (run by Ian actually) is a very novel approach to tracking your tasks. It is a pointing system in which you create positive and negative tasks and indicate which you have done and how many times. With this data you will get a score and you will be able to see how you did.It’s a great way to stay in competition with yourself, since you will be striving to get better and better points. For a more in-depth review, please do read on, or read the Hack Your Day Wiki Guide on Joe’s Goals for a full walkthrough of the app. Use it for reference, use it to learn, print it and mail it to friends, deposit $1.000.000 on my Paypal account, go crazy! (more…)
More About: Special

Import Outlook PST files into Thunderbird
2008-01-05 07:04:00
If you’ve tried switching email apps, you know that it’s not all that easy as you would think. Exporting stuff from Thunderbird is a nightmare, while importing into it is only fractionally easier. I just stumbled on to a helpful extension, that at leasts gets rid of the importing issue. The PST import plugin let’s you import from Outlook data files, where all Outlook data is stored. Hence, you can import selected folders only, making it truly a one-click wonder program. Best of all, since this is an extension, it is cross platform, so you can export your Outlook data and import it into a Linux Thunderbird installation. I recommend this ti all of you who want to make the leap from Outlook to Thunderbird. Download Outlook PST import from Softpedia (via Lifehacker)
More About: Files , Import , Hunde

Why be productive when you’re sick
2008-01-03 00:06:00
I know it looks like I’m taking this a bit to the extreme, but don’t worry, I won’t have you all working (too much) when you’re down. I do think however that you can do a lot of stuff when you’re sick, like organizing yourself, paving the way to productivity. Even if you do it in small steps, and not only in relation to your work, it’s still worth the time, in the end you have quite a lot of that when your sick right? Let’s take a look at why you should take the time out to be productive, even when you don’t really feel like it, trust me, it’s worth it! (more…)
More About: Sick

Lightweight Adobe Acrobat Reader replacement
2008-01-02 20:03:00
I’m not much of a PDF power user, I never really understood what the fuss is all about, until I began to learn about publishing and so on. I think PDF is a big mystery to many people, at least those who aren’t used to file formats that much. I will acknowledge the need for huge and expensive PDF editors, since this format enables publishers, writers and a host of other professions to create great documents, to the exact specifications of the press, or printer. What I don’t understand though is why I need a 22Mb download to be able to just view these files. I don’t need awesome functions, all I need is the ability to scroll through a document and to search for terms, perhaps to print if necessary. Some time ago I found the perfect application for this purpose, since then it has been at the core of my Windows installation. Foxit reader is a lightweight application without any frills. It let’s you view PDF files and gives you some basic features like good ...
More About: Adobe , Reader , Adobe Acrobat , Adobe Acrobat Reader , Acrobat

Control Firefox with advanced mouse gestures
2008-01-02 03:18:00
Navigating the net is becoming easier and more intuitive by the minute. The ease of access trend has created a way to go back and forth between pages very easily, using your mouse, without having to click any specific button - but rather by being able click and drag anywhere. I’m sure many of you already know this, but I urge you to read on, I will be giving some advanced productivity tips as well! (more…)
More About: Firefox , Mouse , Control , Vance

Preview more thumbnails in Windows
2008-01-01 23:44:00
A part of Windows I never understood was image thumbnail previews. This feature is awesome in Vista (and XP), and supports most commonly used formats. If you want to preview TIFF or PSD files however (still pretty common) you will not succeed. Some clever people have developed a freeware solution to this problem, adding more file types to the preview list. The page boasts 19 image types, which includes the 4-5 already native to Windows, but this is still pretty cool. The best part is that it isn’t a script or an app running in the background, but rather a shell extension, and is only called upon when needed. Personally I get quite bothered if I have 20 pics in a folder, out of which I can preview 18, but not the other two. This is probably due to my organization and productivity Ninja senses. I think this is a small, lightweight solution to an equally small, but nagging problem, so it’s worth the try. Just one quick note, on the download page Vista support is not yet off...
More About: Preview

Happy New Year round up
2007-12-31 20:04:00
Happy New Year everyone! I hope you all had a great year and that your new one will be at least as great. If you didn’t have a good year, well here’s your chance to do something about it, sit down, get organized and be productive! For those of you who need to work today, I have put together a roundup of my most popular posts, happy reading. Using Google Reader and Gmail together Use Google Calendar to send free SMS messages A guide to batch renaming files Note taking made easy with Übernote Separate work and play with user identities How to get out of the shower without freezing
More About: Round Up , Happy , Happy New Year , Round

Windows Photo Gallery or Google’s Picasa
2007-12-30 23:46:00
As some Google searches will prove, this has been a debate that has been going on for some time. I was actually faced with the same problem just today, and not because I wanted to write a post about it, but because I had a practical problem I needed to solve. The problem has two parts. One is solved by Picasa , the other is solved by Windows Photo Gallery . In the process, I tried to determine which is better, without success. I have developed a method though that works for me, so perhaps it has some workarounds that might for you too, read on! (more…)

Separating work and play with user identities
2007-12-28 23:12:00
While I do like to have everything in a centralized location, for a few very distinctly drawable boundaries, I like to keep them separate. I work for an online company where I manage a lot of projects, and I also blog a lot nowadays. For me it is best and most productive if these two are separate, but this is quite hard to do totally. I have just come up with a solution using Window user identities that aims to organize me. When I recently reinstalled Vista, I created three accounts. The one labeled “Daniel” is where I keep all my personal stuff, like photos, music and so on. The one labeled blog is where I manage everything related to my online stuff like posts, guest posts, other articles, website promotion and so on. The third is where I have all the stuff related to my dayjob. This method has considerable advantages, but I’m sorry to say it has quite considerable disadvantages. It looks like it will work for me, but I don’t want to yell that out loud just...
More About: Play , Work , User

Always scroll wherever the mouse pointer is
2007-12-28 04:11:00
If you’ve ever tried to scroll with your mouse but couldn’t, this small app (script) is for you. I bet everyone knows that microsecond of panic. “Oh no, my mouse isn’t working! Or maybe Windows froze? Did time itself stop???” In the end you realize that the window is just out of focus, another window has popped up somewhere which leaves you without scroll ability. To stop this horror from happening, some clever German people have developed a script that runs in Windows to enable you to scroll the window the mouse pointer is hovering over. The only problem is that it sits in the system tray, clogging up space (see  post on hiding system tray icons) and it also seems a waste to have an app for such a specific task. It could also include some other advanced mouse features and be developed into a suite of small apps. Download PCW Hover Wheel from their website, story via gHacks
More About: Mouse

Huge selection of quality icons at Icon Archive
2007-12-27 23:47:00
As I’ve said before, I am constantly changing how my Windows looks. This may not be the peak of productivity, but it makes me comfortable and let’s me work in an environment I like. Finding icons for my “hobby” has actually been one of the harder tasks. Yes, I know there are hundreds of sites and so on, but many of the icons look old, something from the Win 98 era. I found a huge archive of icons at Icon Archive , and so far I haven’t seen those 256 color ones I so dread. Personally, I don’t like realistic icons either, I prefer the abstract, things that are icons, not small pictures. You can find both here types here in folders ranging from people icons to system icons. Have a look at IconArchive to revamp your Windows
More About: Icons , Huge , Quality

Merge two imperfect photos to create the perfect shot
2007-12-27 19:21:00
Browsing through my RSS feeds like the diligent person I am (yeah right…), I stumbled upon an awesome program called Group Shot . This cool product from Microsoft Labs takes a series of photos taken of the same people and merges them to create the perfect shot. If you want to take a shot of two people and on one pic only one of them is smiling, and in the other, only the other person, you can use Group shot to take the smiling person from each picture and create a new pic, all smiles. This will be especially useful, now that I took bajillion pictures of my family at Christmas. I’ll be experimenting with it, but according to the post it works like a charm, with little tweaking. Have a look at Freeware Genius, where I found it with cool picture examples and download Group Shot from Microsoft
More About: Photos , Perfect , Create , Merge

Backup Firefox with the push of a button
2007-12-27 11:00:00
Once in a while we all need to reinstall Windows from scratch. We may buy a new laptop, we may be upgrading, or we may just feel like it sometimes. Migrating programs can be a bit tedious though, especially if they store a lot of info like Firefox . You need to organize your bookmarks, make a note of all addons, export or write down passwords. To make life one bit simpler and more productive you can use the nifty Mozbackup application to backup Firefox, and Thunderbird (even Seamonkey) in a few clicks, here’s how. (more…)
More About: Backup , Button , Push

How to hide notification icons
2007-12-26 06:08:00
When we install programs many of them clog up our Windows by placing notification icons on the tray. Sometimes this is warranted (Skype, battery status), but in many cases I just don’t see the point (Open Office launcher, nVidia icon). If you go to the respective programs you may be able to remove them, but it may help you to have them there once in a while never the less. To work around the problem of ugly vs useful (or productive vs pretty), you can hide the notification icons you don’t use. Just right-click the bottom bar in Windows, select “properties” and go to the “notification area” tab. There you can click “hide inactive icons”, this will automatically hide those you don’t use often. he drawback is that when you do use it, Windows will only hide it again after a long time. If you click customize you can set the properties for any program ever used in the system tray. You can choose between “hide”, “show&...
More About: Icons , Hide

How to be a productive evil overlord
2007-12-25 11:49:00
This list is one of the funniest lists I have ever seen. I know people visit the blog for productivity, but you need to let loose once in a while. As a special Christmas post, here’s something lighthearted. Remember, to be productive and get organized you need rest, fun and happy times overall. The list endeavors to give you tips on being an evil overlord, or more precisely, on how to keep on being one. This clever person has noticed that many an overlord hath fallen due to gloating at the end, falling into his/her/it’s own vat full of acid and so on. To keep fellow aspiring overlords from danger he has put together the ultimate list, enjoy! How to be an evil overlord
More About: Evil , Overlord

Backup all your emails in one central location
2007-12-24 16:55:00
Like my friend Martin from gHacks, I too am experiencing the email account shower. I now have about 6, but even when I had only one, I was looking for a solution to back up all my mail and burn them onto a CD. I used Outlook until now, but I may change my mind due to a little program called Mailstore. Since saving all your mail in Outlook is either time consuming or hard to import to any other program I don’t really like it. Mailstore is awesome because it not only saves your mail from Outlook and other mail programs, it also supports POP and IMAP, so you can grab the mail right off yourserver. The awesomeness just grows because it has the handy feature to actually view the email right then and there, and even search through them. All you need to do is input the source of the emails and then wait for the program to load them. You can set it up to backup to any location and you can even burn it to a CD or DVD. If you want to backup a Google account don’t forget to choose ...
More About: Backup , Location , Emails , Central , Loca

How (not) to use labels productively in Gmail
2007-12-22 01:40:00
I am starting off on a long road, trying to make my central Gmail account my main information center, and as part of this I am rethinking my labeling system. I just noticed that I am following very bad practice, essentially duplicating information instead of actually adding information content. I have several labels like “Viki” (my girlfriend Victoria), “Mom”, etc. I have these family members also tagged with “Family”. While it does marginally make sense to tag them with family, but there’s no sense in creating a label for each important contact. The reason is that these are sort of auto-categorized, since all emails from Viki come from the same email address. Therefore why should I assign a label? Labeling email is to create meta info, a common point for more than one email. But for contacts the common point is the contact itself. The other problem with this method of labeling is that with every day my label count grows by at least 1-2. Th...
More About: Labels

One IM program to rule them all
2007-12-21 17:37:00
One of the problems I was having when I started working was that I didn’t want to mix my work with my private life, and on the net this is not as easy as you might think. You need different emails, different instant messaging addresses, user names, passwords and so on and so forth. First of all you need to be composed enough to go to the trouble of being consistent. If you need to add a new contact quickly you still need to make a decision if the person is a business contact, a friend, etc. You then need a way of organizing your contacts so you can productively work with them and remember who is who and why and where. You need to look for an all encompassing IM program. (more…)
More About: Program , Rule

Remember the milk integrates with Gmail
2007-12-21 17:05:00
I have definitely said before that Remember the milk is my all time favorite web 2.0 app. It’s a really flexible to-do list, it can be used for GTD purposes quite well, and can organize you and make you more productive in the blink of an eye. They have just released a feature for the new Gmail that is just so cool. If you’ve used Outlook you probably know that when you flag an email it creates a task for you. You can then sort and edit these tasks. The same functionality has been added to Gmail with the help of RTM and it works very well. You can choose to activate email task addition by staring email, or adding a specific label. You can also add tasks as you would normally, editing them right there in Gmail. The best feature is that you can edit all the details like tags and URL and so on right there and not have to go back and forth between the RTM website and Gmail. I would enjoy the option to add notes there too and I also miss the tag suggestion feature which made a...
More About: Milk

Note taking made easy
2007-12-18 19:09:00
Throughout my internet life I have always been trying to find a note taking service that works. My main problem is that I need to be able to organize, save and quickly find anything. I found Nottr a while ago, which was fine, since it supported tags, but it closed for some reason, leaving me crying in the rain. Enter Übernote, an app very closely related to Nottr. It looks like a Gmail account modified to handle notes. The internal mechanics are very similar, and so is the design, and for me this is a good thing. Simple, easy to use, all in all, it works. Let me explain to you in mind boggling detail why I love this new web 2.0 app so you may share the awesome knowledge and perhaps put it to good use while developing your productivity and organizational ninja skills, read on if you dare! (more…)
More About: Note , Made , Easy , Taking

Productivity with a whopping 100 list?
2007-12-18 18:15:00
I found a great post talking about how lists of 100 can make you more productive, by forcing your brain to think of unique options. The theory behind it, in my interpretation, is that for some things it is so hard to come up with 100 solutions that you need to kick yourself to actually think of something new. The basics are that you need to do this in one sitting, no coming back tomorrow to think of new ones, and get rid of all distractions (including ones in your head). You then sit down, and write 100 solutions to the problem at hand. The first part of the results will be quite uninteresting, things you already know to do, since these are at the tip of your thinking. The next forty are where the patterns are, these are the “variations on a theme” type ideas. The last 30 entries where be where you can potentially find some good ideas, interesting, unique and new ways of solving the problem. I think the thing you should always remember is to let yourself think outside of...
More About: Productivity , List

Using goal oriented email addresses
2007-12-16 20:22:00
Recently I have started using goal-oriented email addresses, instead of descriptive ones. my reason for this is that I can create much more email addresses if one gets spammed and I increased my email organization, and my productivity by a whole lot. I used to always think that my name was the best mark for my email address. I stil think this is true, but there are a lot of cases where you don’t need people to know who you are. Not because you have something to hide, but because it’s unnecessary. Here’s the method I use that enables me to keep track easily, know who is sending me what and why, and which email address I need to use and when, it will all become crystal clear, just you wait! (more…)
More About: Email , Goal

Analyze licence agreements quickly
2007-12-16 10:24:00
I have to say, I never really thought about reading EULA’s. I usually don’t think they have any relevance to me, and of course I am wrong, but I’m just lazy in the end. You may find a marketing catch, or other restrictions. In fact, a friend of mine who manages a lot of webpages told me that he just recently took a peek at his ISP’s contract with him. He heard somewhere that while they state “unrestricted access” (meaning unlimited GB of downloading), this is in fact not true. The contract has a part where they define the term “extreme use” and they set it at a monthly average of 160Gb (for three consecutive months). If you’re a webmaster like him 160 GB’s fly away quite easily and he recently became really worried about this, for fear of contract termination, since that is what extreme use will induce. To get around such catches, simply use the EULAlyzer to find these problematic places. While there is no 100% guarantee, t...
More About: Licence , Analyze , Anal