Word from Oakland today that Ask Jeeves has just added a bunch of new reference and research features to Ask.com. Details and examples have just been posted on the AJ Blog.

• page translation
• improved dictionary
• synonyms
• pronunciations

more from SearchEngineWatch.com

technorati tags: search engine, ask jeeves

OmniDrive has recently begun accepting applications for beta testers of their new online file storage offering; it looks to be the Gmail of online storage.

You can store files in your own private encrypted storage area, share and collaborate within your organisation, share with your friends, or publish to the general public. All this from a lightweight application that integrates with your host platform and gives you nothing new to learn.

The developers say that OmniDrive will free you from devices, so no more lugging that USB key around. And with versions of the client available (or soon to be) for all platforms (yes even Mac, and the Pocket PC) they could be just the storage revolution I’ve been waiting for.

Developer’s blog
flickr photo stream

technorati tags: software, freeware, beta, storage, online

Link via Daryl’s Flock Blog

And boy is it cool! All you have to do is drag any link from the page you’re browsing, and drop it on the Drop Link to Lookup icon in the top right hand corner of your flock topbar. A few second later and you have a list of relevant links to scroll through in the listbox at the top left.

technorati tags: software, freeware, browser, mozilla, flock, extensions

I’ve been using flock almost since the time it of its first release–I love it! One thing that was missing, in fact the only thing missing, was all the cool extensions. Well I found a place where you can get flock extensions. One currently hot extension is foXpose.

foXpose for flock

Pimp your flock with other sweet extensions:
The Ultimate Flock Extension List
Flock Extensions

technorati tags: software, freeware, lifehack, browser, flock, extensions

Top Productivity Boosters for Windows

I have vowed to balance the Mac-heavy Lifehacker.com with a good dose of Windows power (alot like girl-power but it’s skinable). This week I read a post at Lifehacker on the top productivity boosters for Mac; well, anything Mac can do, Bill can do too. So, here are the nearest matches for those apps listed in the original MacWorld article.

Automator ($129) link
My favorite Windows alternative to this pricey gadget, and there are a few (e.g. Robot, AutoHotkey, etc.), is AutoIt .
AutoIt, now at version 3 allows Windows users to script anything that they could normally do with the keyboard, and mouse.

• Run programs
• Manipulate open windows
• Interact directly with windows controls (i.e. buttons, listboxes, etc.)
• Create a GUI for your script
• Access the clipboard
• Compile, and distribute scripts

How much for all that? Nothing, nada, zip, zilch, FREE!

Delicious Library 1.5 ($40) link
Gotta admit, this one had me stumped. I couldn’t find anything for Windows that scanned barcodes via a web-cam, but then I realized; none of my stuff has a barcode. Ok, books have an ISBN, but none of my DVDs or CDs still have the barcode–that functionallity is totally lost to me.

What I did find was this inexpensive little program called Media Manager ($25). Just key in (or use a barcode reader) the ISBN number for books and Media Manager will go to Amazon and get the details for ya. Pop a CD in yor drive, and Media Manager will query FreeDB for the info. A DVD and Media Manager will hit up IMDB for the details. It’s like lickable wallpaper; you lick a schozberry, and it tastes like a schnozberry, you lick a…well you get the picture.

You also might wanna check:
Music Express
Music Collector
Purple Parrott’s Media Manager

LaunchBar 4 ($20) link
I almost hate to do this, there are so many application launchers for Windows, but the best are SlickRun, AppRocket, and PC-Com.

• SlickRun (free)–my personal favorite–sits quietly at the bottom of your screen until you hit the hotkey combination that activates it. Then you just type in a magic word (user configurable) and presto! link

• AppRocket($18), by Candy Labs, is by far the most similar to LaunchBar 4, but that doesn’t mean it is the most powerful. When you run AppRocket you get a little search-as-you-type drop down list. You can add items to the list, but AppRocket scans important areas of your harddrive when installed, so it is handy right out of the box. link

• PC-Com(free to $10), gets the nod as most powerful of the three. Type in a word and PC-Com searches your harddrive for a matching document or application, once found PC-Com stores the location as a keyword so that you don’t have to search again. You can create your own keywords, record macros, access applications with hotkeys, search the web, and a buttload of other stuff. PC-Com comes in two flavors: free, and Pro. The Pro version is $10. link

OmniOutliner ($70) link
This was a no-brainer. KeyNote is an opensource tabbed outliner with features like:

• Multilevel pages
• Blowfish or Idea encryption
• Styles
• Macros
• Plugins (an SDK is available)
• Templates

And since it is opensource, the fact that it is no longer being actively maintained by the original developer is no problem.

SuperDuper 1.5 ($28) link
At $49.95 this is the only one of the bunch that actually outpriced the Mac software, but because the features of CasperXP most closely matched those of SuperDuper I included it here.

• Make a bootable backup
• 1-Click cloning
• Scheduled backups
• Harddrive ghosting

Those are just some of the features.

TextWrangler 2.1 (free)
I’ve already covered Windows alternatives to TextWrangler in another post. But my pick for this category is ConTEXT, the programmers editor. It can replace Notepad, open an unlimited number of files (of unlimited size), has powerful customizeable syntaxt highlighting, is multilingual, macro recorder, and much much more. ConTEXT, like TextWrangler, is free.

This sounds like a pretty cool idea, but I wanna know more about the flags.

If there are things that I may forget in the morning (a charging iPod or cellphone, a DVD I need to return, bribe money) I simple take one or both of my reminder flags and place it on top of the item I want to remember. Also, I can leave notes for myself under the flags as well.

Link

technorati tags: gtd, lifehack, reminder

If you’re like me you can never find a pen and paper when you need it; even if you manage to lay hands on a scrap or two, who knows what will become of them by the time you remember to add them to your inbox. But you’re almost always near a phone. Heck! I’m looking at two phones sitting on my desk right now. If you’re lucky, your phone comes with a notepad, or a scheduler application, but typing (even with T9 turned on) can be hazzardous to your health, not to mention the number it does on creativity.

So why not make use of Odeo’s Phone Record?

Figure 1: Odeo’s Phone-It-In Setup Screen

It’s simple:

• Join Odeo
• Under the Create Tab, click Phone 415-856-0205
• Set up your phone service (see Figure 1 for detail)
• Enter the Phone-It-In Sequence into your speed dial.

After the first few times, I decided to try and automate the steps by entering pauses between each checkpoint; it was hit or miss.

David Seah (one of my favorite bloggers) mentioned that he had discovered an Oblique Strategies widget for the Mac OSX Dashboard. I don’t use a Mac, but I have been using the Kapsules (for Windows) Oblique Strategies widget for about six months.

I have even found a similar widget for the Yahoo! Widget Engine (formerly Konfabulator).

Fear not you huddled Windows masses, I’m trying to keep up.

technorati tags: dashboard, lifehack, widget, software, freeware

One year ago today, I wanted to write a book. Life got in the way. One month ago, I wanted to write a novel, again life got in the way.

Using the great online tool RSS2PDF (http://www.rss2pdf.com/), you can put a feed into a pdf, then convert them to a pocketmod using PDF to PocketMod. RSS2PDF even encourages you to link to their tool, so I’ve found you can actually paste the entire URL when it tells you to open a pdf.