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Archive for the 'Web tools' Category

Any useful online tools

:: Tag clouds for your To-Do lists

Posted by Andrew on 23rd October 2007

Zirr.us is a very simple “to do” list for the rest of us. They incorporated a number of web 2.0 characteristics (it combines Ajax/DHTML), like tag your tasks. Zirrus gives users two “to do” lists to keep track which can be defined as “Braindump” or “Now” for more immediate “to do” items. Zirrus lets you view your items in both a list and cloud view, that allows items change their font size according to various priority levels.

Zirr.us provides a fresh approach to task management.

Its features are:

  • View and enter tasks quickly and easily, from anywhere.
  • Put everything on your mind in your Braindump list. Put near-term tasks in your Now list.
  • Set due dates and priorities. Categorize with tags.
  • Overdue tasks move automatically to your Now list.
  • Work with your tasks in an informative task cloud, color-coded by tag and sized by priority.
  • Sort alphabetically, by date, or by priority.

Posted in Web tools, Time management, Tips, Office, Productivity | No Comments »

:: Create, Manage and Access Your Lists with Gubb

Posted by Andrew on 21st October 2007

Gubb allows you to create lists, what makes it different is its accessibility.

These are some of the ways how you can use its reach functionality:

Managing projects
Whether it’s business, a middle school bake sale, or a personal interest project, gubb makes it quick and easy to organize materials, tasks and due dates. Share your list with other people working on the project, and assign tasks and due dates.

Collecting thoughts
Ever feel like your head’s going to explode with all the things you have to remember? Let gubb keep track of them–no papers to lose!

Keeping shopping lists
Create and edit shopping lists on your computer, then have gubb text them to your phone. Portable and organized. If you forget to put the list on your phone before you leave the house, no problem–just text gubb and gubb will reply with your list.

Staying on top of your todos
Sort a list by separating the items you’ve already completed, stick a due date on an item, rank the items in order of importance, and even get the satisfaction of crossing things off of your list!

Planning an event
Weddings, birthdays, seasonal parties…let gubb keep track of all the lists that go into event planning. You can work together with others in “real time” by sharing gubb lists, assigning tasks, having gubb keep track of deadlines using due dates and more!

Staying in shape / organizing your exercise or diet plan
List your goals and check them off as you complete them, or use gubb as an exercise or meal idea keeper. Send your lists to your phone and take them with you to the gym or the grocery store.

Planning your next vacation
Keep track of places you want to go, airline reservations, logistics and more using gubb lists. Share your itinerary with your travel companions and archive lists after completing your trip to remember how you planned it.

Keeping track of books you want to read or movies you want to see
Let gubb take care of all the lists that used to get jotted down on receipts, napkins, and the backs of other documents.

Writing down and keeping track of your goals or New Year’s Resolutions

Each list has it’s own email address, you can post new entries to this list by email or SMS and even send any list to someone or yourself by email or SMS.

You can:

  • Create Lists
  • Add as many items as you want to your lists.
  • Drag & Drop Lists
  • Drag & Drop Items
  • Retrieve/Add By Text
  • View Lists In 1, 2, 3 or 4 Columns
  • Prioritize Items
  • Assign Due Dates To Items
  • Check Off Completed Items
  • Archive Completed Items
  • Change List Colors
  • Email Lists To Yourself
  • Email Lists To Other People
  • Text Message Lists To Yourself
  • Text Message Lists To Others
  • Retrieve/Add By Email
  • Maximize/Minimize Lists—”fold/unfold”
  • See Just One List At A Time (If You Choose)
  • Sort Lists (Priority, Date Due, Alphabetically, etc.)

Posted in Web tools, Time management, Productivity | 1 Comment »

:: 42 Best Online Tools for Job Hunters (except freelancers)

Posted by Andrew on 18th October 2007

Amiko - Online resume generator.

Careerbuilder.com - General job search site.

Climber.com - Fill out a survey about yourself and get matched to a job by your interests.

CompanyMeetCreative.com - Part time, freelance, and contract job offerings for creative types.

CoolWorks.com - Job listings for summer and seasonal jobs at national parks and resorts.

Coroflot.com - Allows for creatives to publish an online portfolio and search for jobs.

Craigslist.com - The famous Craigslist. Select your city and search for jobs in your area.

Cvwarehouse.com - Lets you search for jobs in a confidential manner.

Daylo.com - Post yourself, list any specialized skills you could bring to a job.

Eluta.com - Job searches focusing on Canada.

Emurse.com - Helps you convert your resume in to the hResume format for online use.

GiggedUp.com - Post video resumes of yourself for prospective employers to search.

Glendor.com - Currently only covers San Francisco, shows jobs by markers on a Google map. Plans to expand to other cities later.

iHipo.com - International jobs and internships.

Indeed - Searches several job sites, newspapers, associations and company career pages.

Isabont.com - Helps you manage your job search by letting you organize yourself.

Job-a-matic.com - Post job listings, and even add a job board to your existing site

Jobazaar.com - Focuses on small jobs, all the way down to needing someone to mow the yard.

Jobburner.com - Focusing on technical jobs, post your resume and search for jobs.

JobBoardReviews.com - Reviews job boards and helps you pick the right one for you.

JobDig.com - Dedicated to the Midwest, focuses on employment, training and opportunities.

Jobfox.com - Fill out your profile, view your job matches, and let people hunt for you.

Jobneters.com - Jobs from multiple countries, earn rewards for referring others.

Jobpile - Aggregates from numerous jobs boards to let you search them all at once.

Jobsearcheasy.com - Browse and search for jobs and earn prizes while you do it.

Jobster.com - Post your resume, get advice, join networks.

Layoffspace.com - A site for the unemployed to gather, network and help each other find work.

LinkUp.com - Job aggregator that monitors thousands of employers websites.

Mapdango.com - View classified job listing on a Google map, seeing what is in your area.

Monster.com - One of the best known job search engines.

PageBites.com - Works for both employers and job seekers, searchable by jobs and regions.

Peekface.com - Read reviews of employers written by people with experience in the same company.

Probook.com - Professional networking site for Canada.

Recruit.net - Millions of jobs from all around the world. Search by keywords and location.

Resolio.com - Create a professional looking resume and publish it online.

SalaryScout.com - Ever wondered if you were getting a fair salary offer? Use this site to compare it to what others report.

Sidejobtrack.com - Job tracking, invoicing, reporting & project management for the

part-time independent contractor.

SimplyHired.com - Millions of jobs harvested from numerous sources.

Whototalkto.com - Give people leads in to your former job, while getting tips on the one you want to get.

WorkTree.com - Job search engine with browsable categories including government jobs and Fortune 1000 companies.

Yahoo HotJobs - Jobs board owned by one of the largest web companies.

YorZ.com - Search for jobs or network with people inside your industry.

Posted in Web tools, Job | 5 Comments »

:: How to Scan Text Without a Scanner

Posted by Andrew on 16th October 2007

This method requires either a cell phone with camera or a normal digital camera. Photograph the document, email the image to qipit website for cleaning and then extract the text from this cleaned image using SimpleOCR, a free word-recognition software.

Here’s the complete instruction:

1. Place the book / newspaper / magazine page on a flat surface and photograph it. Keep a steady hand and make sure Flash is turned off else the final image may appear to be washed out.

2. Now upload that photograph to qipit.com via web or email. Qipit, a free service, will straighten the image and create a much cleaner and readable document from that picture.

Open the MyDocuments folder in Qipit.com and download that converted file as JPG by clicking the document preview icon.

3. To extract text from this JPG file, we will use a free software called SimpleOCR. The OCR software will recognize the words in the JPG image and generates a text file.

Posted in Web tools, Tips, Software, Mobile, Productivity, Photos | No Comments »

:: How to enter web resources bypassing required registration

Posted by Andrew on 2nd October 2007

BugMeNot.com is a site that generates login names and passwords for registration sites.

The site is a boon to those who want to keep online anonymity or stamp out spam. According to the site’s homepage, 14,000 websites have been “liberated” from registration bondage, and it’s clear many people are doing whatever they can to avoid really logging in.

Lets say you’re browsing web and at one point you click a link to an article on a site but instead of getting the article you get a screen asking you to signin or register. Cool thing about internet is that whatever is expensive or annoying never lasts long, one way or another users will find a way around it. For above problem we got bugmenot.com which can instantly provide you with bogus username/pass combination for almost 150.000 ‘must register to access’ websites (news sites, forums, social networks and so on).
There’s also Mailinator for those who want to register but don’t want to use their real e-mail address. And there’s spamgourmet for deleting unwanted e-mails.

Posted in Web tools, Tips | No Comments »

:: Take full control of your weight

Posted by Andrew on 3rd March 2007

It is no secret that some of us want to loose weight.

Take control of your weight

In order to loose weight, you need to use up more calories than you eat. To do this, multiply your ideal body weight (in kilograms) by 15 (if you are active) or 13 (if you are not so active). The result is the maximum number of calories you should eat per day to gradually achieve your ideal body weight.

  • Use the chart below to determine the range for your ideal body weight. Aim to get your weight into the ideal range. Don’t overdo it and drop too far below that range.
    weightcontrol.gif
  • Remember that loosing weight gradually and keeping it off is better for you than loosing weight quickly and then putting it back on again.
  • A rapid increase in body weight (i.e. overnight) may be a sign of fluid retention and you should consult your physician promptly.
  • Calculate and monitor your body mass index (BMI). This is one way to determine when extra pounds translate into health risks. The BMI is a measure that takes into account a person’s weight and height to estimate total body fat in adults. The higher your BMI, the greater your risk of developing additional health problems. You can calculate your BMI by dividing your weight in kilograms by your height in metres, squared (or visit http://www.nutri-facts.com/bmi.asp where you can find a calculator that will do this for you).

I should like to point out some FREE online tools for keeping your nutrition/diet daily journal. Track how much stuff you eat and see if you’re missing out on some.

* FitDay
* Traineo
* My Pyramid Tracker
* Ontri
* The Daily Plate

Good luck!

Posted in Web tools, Health | No Comments »

:: Define and track your life goals

Posted by Andrew on 2nd March 2007

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Make personal goals and find others to share and work toward these goals with you at Life Tango, a collaborative goal-setting community

Want to lose some weight? How about travel to Europe, learn Spanish, or spend more time with your family? Once you write down your goals at Life Tango, you can explore the community to find other folks who share the same interests, and then invite these people to help you along your journey.

Posted in Web tools, Productivity | No Comments »

:: How to transfer text notes between computers

Posted by Andrew on 2nd March 2007

The easiest option to transfer text data from one computer to another is via the USB thumb drives - create a text file using notepad, save it on the USB drive and carry it to your next computer.

Now if you were to do this copy-paste via the Internet instead of USB - you can either save the text message as a draft email message or just send the text as an email addressed to yourself.

But when the text is meant for sharing with others, what do you do ? Again there are a zillion services like yousendit, Google Docs, Zoho, rapidshare where you can upload the text file and others can download or read from that URL.

No rocket science involved here but there are few nice services that are designed just for sharing short snippets of text among users via the Internet. Type the text on their website, click the save button and your text is instantly available for anyone to read or copy-paste.
shortText.com is a simple tool to post text online, with minimum fuss. No sign ups, no sign in, just instant web presence for your information.

It accepts text upto 30,000 characters - just paste the text in a form and create your own unique URL that will stay forever. You can also link to pictures or videos on the internet. The text can be protected with a password.

cl1p_logo.jpgcl1p.net - This internet clipboard is much like the ShortText service with some key differences. You can create custom URLs for free and decide how long the text should be visible on the internet. The text can be optimized for printing as well.

Give these services a shot and you’re likely to find them cool even when they do just simple things. Unfortunately, none of them support HTML yet.

Posted in Web tools, Office | No Comments »

:: Social Dictionary and Thesaurus

Posted by Andrew on 28th February 2007

A new online dictionary and thesaurus has been launched recently. It is called WordSource.

It’s main benefit over sites like Dictionary.com is in its very cleanly design and no wslogobeta.gifadvertisements. You can also look up a word by simply adding it to the URL (so word.sc/welcome will pull up the definition of “welcome”).

This site also has a number of social features, allowing users to upload photos that are relevant to the word, add tags, rate words, etc.

Posted in Web tools | No Comments »

:: Presentation without PowerPoint

Posted by Andrew on 28th February 2007

Empressr.com is the first web-based application that lets you create, share and store presentations online. It goes beyond current presentation applications by enabling you to incorporate rich media features, like streaming video and animation, to create the most dynamic presentations possible.

empressr_2dmain_thumb.jpg

With Empressr, you can create a rich media presentation in minutes. And you don’t need to have experience with Flash in order to create it. That’s because Empressr has an intuitive wizard that assists you in selecting the text, fonts, images and multimedia assets you wish to use - making it a snap to create an impressive presentation.

Any presentation you create can be shared with clients, team members or friends and family. You just use Empressr’s integrated tool to send them an email with a link to your presentation. Then all they need is a web browser to view your presentation online.

Posted in Web tools, Office | No Comments »

:: YouTube video conversion and saving

Posted by Andrew on 27th February 2007

It is a great online service that will convert video, audio, and documents. You upload the file, enter your email address, and Zamzar will send you a note when your new file is ready for download. And moreover - it is absolutely FREE of charge to use.
zamzar-logo.jpg
You can either enter the URL of the video, or use a new browser plugin to automatically find videos to convert on the page you’re visiting.

Zamzar will allow you to convert files from YouTube, Google Video, Myspace, Revver, putFile, Break.com, Apple Trailers, Dailymotion, Metacafe, iFilm, Grouper, and Blip.tv. You can convert files to a variety of formats, including 3GP, FLAC, MP4, and AVI.

Posted in Web tools, Movies | No Comments »

:: WiFi Cafe Hotspots Locator (USA)

Posted by Andrew on 27th February 2007

Many people enjoy using their laptops and PDAs enabled with wireless Internet adapter WiFi. It means that you can access Internet in airports, cafes, malls if you have a device with WiFi.

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The problem is of course to locate the places where this wireless internet is available in your area or where you are travelling to. Here comes this web site: http://hotspotr.com/wifi that allows you to search for such places.

Posted in Web tools, Communication | No Comments »

:: Create a poster from your photo

Posted by Andrew on 25th February 2007

If you wanted to print a big poster but your printer is A4 size only, there is a solution.

This web site www.blockposters.com offers you a free services of making your own poster of any size.
It works like this. You upload your image/photo, then slice it to the number of pieces you need depending on the piece’s size.

The output you get is a PDF file that you can print out page by page on your printer.

Posted in Web tools | 1 Comment »

:: Online mindmapping tool

Posted by Andrew on 24th February 2007

Mind mapI am sure you know about Mind Mapping concept.

It is used for organizing your notes and information in a non liniear format. This is believed to be more effective as both parts of your brain are used.

If you want to try it on a computer, you may look at this free program FreeMind or use the following free online service: www.bubbl.us for your brainstorming.

The concept is pretty basic: you write your thoughts in bubbles, which you can then connect to other bubbles, eventually creating as complex (or not) diagram as you could possibly want. It’s a great way to quickly jot down and map your ideas; and you can create as many of these as you want.

Posted in Web tools, Software, Productivity | No Comments »

:: Online Password Manager

Posted by Andrew on 11th January 2007

When traveling it may be handy to have access to your passwords to various email accounts, forums, social bookmarket sites, etc.

passpackdatasecurity.jpg

Here comes this quite interesting online password manager https://www.passpack.com/html/ . It allows you to set two tier password protected access to your data. First of all it is a login password to enter the site and then you can protect each record individually.

Posted in Web tools | No Comments »