A bout a week ago, I came across an article over at Webware about using Gmail as a baby book. Rafe Needleman pointed out how setting up a new Gmail account would be a really simple solution for parents who want to keep a record of what is going on in their children’s lives. He said, “although it’s not elegant, it sure is easy.” With that in mind, we thought about how easy it would be to take this idea a little further and to use Gmail as a journal.
The easiest way to go about doing this would probably be to create a new email address for your journal so that its sole purpose is to keep a record of what’s going on in your life. Think about how simple yet really organized this could be. You could create labels for each month of the year so that later on, it’ll be easy to go back and read entries from a certain date. You could even create a simple filtering system (learn how here). Including important pictures from events that happened in your life would be a cinch and then they’d always be there for later reference.
One benefit of using Gmail is that your whole journal is searchable. Want to find the entires where you talked about a wedding you went to months or years ago? Just search for wedding and Gmail will pull up every “message” that had the word wedding in it. Another benefit is that it’s private. You don’t have to worry about anybody snooping into your business because the messages are only there for you to see, unless of course you wanted to share it, and then you could easily forward the entry on to someone.
Again, life Rafe said, it’s not that this is an elegant solution for keeping a journal, but it is very simple to do.
Windows; Mac
Last week we wrote about some terrific rulers for both Windows and Macs, but it looks like we missed a top-notch alternative. Nate pointed out in the comments that a free app called Rulers is his favorite option for Macs, but it turns out that there is also a Windows variant that works exactly the same way. Now how sweet is that?
Rulers, despite the name, does a lot more than just measure stuff. Checkout the video below for the features in action, but here’s a list of what it can do:
Unlimited rulers creation
Multiple units of measurement support
Multi monitor support
Take a screenshot of selected area or whole screen
Magnifier
Color picker (RGB and Hex)
The screenshot tool is rather interesting in how it works. You basically create a bunch of measurement points on the screen, and it will let you take a screenshot of each area where your points intersect. You kind of have to see how it works in the video to really understand it.
Overall this is definitely one of the more clever free applications that I have seen because of how it bundles so many nice features into one package.
Today we’re kicking back for some laughs and taking a look at a handful of funny jokes from around the web that most of you will enjoy. It’s been a while since we’ve compiled a bunch of jokes, so let the geeky humor continue!
Joke #1 - Researching on the Internet
Mother: “How’s your history paper coming?”
Son: “Well, my history professor suggested that I use the Internet to research my paper, and it’s been very helpful.”
Mother: “Really?”
Son: “Yes, so far I’ve located 17 web sites that sell them!”
Google actually made an interesting move yesterday in terms of how people can collaborate on the spreadsheets they create. If you take a look at the Share tab in one of your Google Spreadsheets you’ll notice a new option towards the bottom that’s new. With it you can share a spreadsheet that can be edited by anyone and everyone which, as Google OS points out, essentially makes this a wiki.
A feature like this is nice because users don’t need an account to collaborate on a spreadsheet. Unfortunately that also means that the URL for the document can easily be shared, and you could quickly start finding unwanted information popping up. I guess it’s fortunate that Google provides a rather extensive revision history so that in a single click you can go back to before the unwanted changes were made.
What I would really like to see from Google is a way to password protect a document without needing a username. That way you could distribute a password to, for example coworkers, without having to worry about the public stumbling across the document. And then you could also change the password at your own leisure. Now that would be perfect for some of the things that I’m working on.
Windows; Mac;
One thing that has always amazed me is the fact that none of the desktop feed readers currently available synchronize with Google Reader. Maybe I’m wrong and I just haven’t searched hard enough, but we’re getting a little closer with ReadAir. It’s a free (and open source) download that leverages off of the relatively new Adobe Air to bring your Google Reader feeds to your desktop.
At first glance it will probably remind you of Newgator’s free NetNewsWire app for Mac’s, and I’m guessing that there was definitely some inspiration taken from it. Don’t be fooled by the appearance… this is a both a Mac and Windows application since it runs on Adobe Air (doesn’t appear to work in Adobe Air for Linux). Albeit it does look a little weird on Windows since the skin is still the same, but it’s not any weirder than iTunes on Windows.
There are some pitfalls though. You can star, share, and search items in your feeds, but there are no offline capabilities. For some people the whole point of using a desktop feed reader is so that they can easily read the news when their not connected to the Internet, but you can’t do that with ReadAir. Plus there are no keyboard shortcuts, and no more than 20 items can be viewed in a single feed. Yeah, those are some deal breakers for me.
I think I’ll be sticking with NetNewsWire until something better comes along, but I do like Google’s online feed reader better than Newsgator’s. So hopefully a better Google Reader synchronization option will come about so that I can use a desktop client on my computer, and use Google’s new iPhone interface when I’m on the go.
The digital future appears to be one that embraces touch-screen technology, or so Microsoft thinks. Last year they showed off the $10,000 Surface, which is a large touch-screen table that can interact with things that are placed on it. For example, the Surface has started showing up in AT&T stores as a way for users to compare and contrast devices that they sell.
On a relatively cheaper side they are now looking at a way to make whiteboards interactive. All you’ll need is a few hundred dollars worth of equipment including a computer, a screen, projector, an infrared camera, and three infrared lasers. Oh, and an application called Plex that runs on Vista. Put all of that together and you get the Microsoft TouchWall.
According to Crunchgear there are no plans to commercialize the product, but as you can see in the video demonstration there are quite a few practical purposes. Meetings could become more interactive as you flip through documents in front of the attendees, or classes could benefit from being able to draw/annotate on items that appear on the screen. This really brings a whole new level to whiteboards, and offices would surely scoop something like this up if it was only a few hundred dollars.
Here’s a video that shows off some of the touchy-feely goodness:
Win; Mac; Linux Adobe has announced that the first Beta of Flash Player 10 is now available for everyone to download. It comes with al kinds of really nice features and improvements, but the best thing that we’ll probably see come out of this is the newly available 3D effects. One example that they gave of where this could be useful is taking 2D images and arranging them in a rotating 3D carousel similar to that seen to the right. Making your own Cover Flow clone wouldn’t take too long either then.
Concerned about performance? According to Adobe they are pushing some of the graphical processing onto the user’s video card so that the processor can be used for rendering special effects:
One of the best things about the creative features now available in Adobe Flash Player 10 beta is that they won’t slow down performance. With Flash Player 10 beta, developers can enable SWF content to render through the memory bandwidth and computational horsepower of the GPU hardware processor, freeing up the CPU to do more - such as render 3D content and intricate effects, and process complex business logic.
Here’s a list of some other notable new features in Flash Player 10 Beta:
3D Effects - Easily transform and animate any display object through 3D space while retaining full interactivity. Fast, lightweight, and native 3D effects make motion that was previously reserved for expert users available to everyone. Complex effects are simple with APIs that extend what you already know.
Custom Filters and Effects - Create your own portable filters, blend modes, and fills using Adobe Pixel Bender, the same technology used for many After Effects CS3 filters. Shaders in Flash Player are about 1KB and can be scripted and animated at runtime.
Advanced Text Layout - A new, highly flexible text layout engine, co-existing with TextField, enables innovation in creating new text controls by providing low-level access to text offering right-to-left and vertical text layout, plus support for typographic elements like ligatures.
Enhanced Drawing API - Runtime drawing is easier and more powerful with re-styleable properties, 3D APIs, and a new way of drawing sophisticated shapes without having to code them line by line.
Visual Performance Improvements – Applications and videos will run smoother and faster with expanded use of hardware acceleration. By moving several visual processing tasks to the video card, the CPU is free to do more.
It will probably be a little while before we start to see developers making use of the new technology offered in Flash Player 10, but once a majority of users have upgraded the developers will be all over this like a kid in a candy store.
Even I think that EverNote would be a better choice. But any ways, thanks a lot for sharing this helpful tip, Ashley.... By Haris on Helpful Tip: Using Gmail as a Journal...
Wouldn't it be easier to use a program such as EverNote? It has more features, especially for these kind of functions.... By Change on Helpful Tip: Using Gmail as a Journal...
Ben,
I do agree to some extend when you say that FF is more safer than IE. But the point I am trying to make is that, ... By Techbuzzard on CyberNotes: Top 10 Firefox Extensions to Impress Your Friends
Hi Ashley
I thought readers may find this explanation of battery fires interesting:
http://risk-safety.com/battery-fi... By Anonymous on iPod Nano Catches on Fire - Is a Battery Recall Coming?
A bout a week ago, I came across an article over at Webware about using Gmail as a baby book. Rafe Needleman pointed out how setting up a new Gmail account would be a really simple solution for parents who want to keep a record of what is going on in their children’s lives. He said, “although it’s not elegant, it sure is easy.” With that in mind, we thought about how easy it would be to take this idea a little further and to use Gmail as a journal.
Windows; 
Mac
Linux
Adobe 
CyberNotes
