Lab notes

CoolJune 30, 2005 6:14 pm

MyPalmLife’s John is also excited about EverNote. Not surprising. I’ve been using EverNote for a few months now and can’t imagine getting any work done without it. Every person I show it to, loves it. That’s the sign of a great product.

I use it to capture anything, from the really important stuff to the menial — I can add stuff without a filter because EverNote makes it super easy to find that stuff later on. Like a blog, you can easily scroll to edit things from the most recent to way back then, or zoom on all the posts tagged with a certain category. And the full text search is amazingly fast. You can enter text, drag & drop from a different application, or capture from the Web using a FireFox extension (I hear there’s also one for IE). I just can’t wait for EverNote to come out with a Palm version (they say September), and for it to work with Google Desktop Search.

EverNote is a fantastic tool for capturing ideas, content, tasks and all manner of stuff from virtually any electronic source. In it’s self this may not seem so radical but it incorporates so many other great and unique features I cannot list them here – not least because I’m still finding them!

Link

NewsJune 29, 2005 9:32 pm

You heard it here first! The artisans in the Yahoo Search atelier have been toiling away on a great new Yahoo Search product, My Web 2.0, and it is going into limited beta today. It’s the long rumored and greatly anticipated Social Search: better search through people you trust! And it has all the ingredients for a healthy Web 2.0 experience, including:

• Control what you see (and want to see) by your social network
• Open APIs for developers to mess with
• RSS feeds for pulling out the stuff you’re interested in

And of course:

• You can tag more than a kid with ADD on a third grade playground (including location, time and people tagging)

Quote, courtesy of the Flickr blog.

Tags 4:21 pm

The Google Maps API lets developers embed Google Maps in their own web pages with JavaScript. You can add overlays to the map (including markers and polylines) and display shadowed “info windows” just like Google Maps.

Link

UncategorizedJune 28, 2005 9:56 pm

Jason Sweeney has seven tips for faster Web browsing.

tip the third: Keyboard shortcuts. Learn them and use them. Your mouse is only slowing you down. The ones that I use the most are ctrl-l and ctrl-k .

Link

Uncategorized 5:42 pm

Apple just released iTunes 4.9, which adds podcast support. There’s also an update for iPod software to support this feature. If you’re not already anything else, here’s a great way to get started.

Update: iTunes 4.9 is definitely the best podcasting client I’ve used. One click to subscribe to a feed, one click to get specific shows from the feed (iPod mini = need to be picky), and it takes care of everything else. Even discarding the show after you’ve listened to it. If you want to (I do), of course, pretty much everything is configurable.

The iPod update creates a new podcast category in the main menu (but you need to manually enable it, first). Separating podcasts from everything else means it will never shuffle NPR shows inbetween alternative rock and 80’s. And in case of doubt, clicking Select twice brings up the show’s description.

RSSJune 27, 2005 4:26 pm

Scoble links to a variety of feedback on the MS announcements.

Me? I want to start using it. Yesterday.

Technically, RSS w/Lists is a simple extension slapped onto an existing specification. And it’s not even a big extension at that. But think of all the possible applications, and all of a sudden this announcement has much more weight. Right now, RSS is practically a blogging API, and for all the other uses, that’s practically its bread and butter. RSS w/Lists make RSS a data API. Isn’t that what the Web 2.0 is all about?

UncategorizedJune 24, 2005 6:26 pm

Making Wrong Code Look Wrong

A Bright, Shiny Service: Sparklines

How the Web changes your reading habits