Make Gmail a productive centre ….

May 26, 2009

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            I have been into Gmail for about 3 years.. But today Gmail is turned into the Ultimate Productive Centre… It’s already pretty clear that Gmail is the best tool for email, and integrations with calendar and chat have made it the go-to place for much of our information. But the Gmail Gadgets brings the pieces of puzzle together. Just have a look to the following gadgets to make the Gmail more productive.

1. Email: Gmail is how email should be done. With great filters, you can keep your inbox fairly clean. There are dozens of smart little innovations, from automatic contacts to a “send and archive” button and much more. If you’re not using Gmail for email yet, you should strongly consider a change.

2. To-do: Gmail only recently added a Tasks feature, something most of us have been wanting for a long time. It’s just about the simplest to-do list there is.  Its just simple as that. You can add tasks, re-order, just check it off the completed tasks. You can set time and date constraints in most simplest way. Cool feature: you can turn an email into a task, which means the task is linked to the email, and you can easily open the email by clicking on the task. Enable Gmail Tasks by going to Labs (in the upper right corner of Gmail)

3. Calendar. Google’s Calendar (Gcal) is hands down the fastest, easiest and best calendar I’ve used. And now it’s in Gmail’s sidebar, so you can see your events at a glance while in Gmail, and even add tasks quickly without having to go to the calendar. And the most interesting feature is that you can use Gcal offline just like our Google Documents and even the Gmail. Enable the GCal gadget in Gmail by going to Labs.

4. Docs. Are you still using a desktop word processing or spreadsheet app? Consider switching to Google Docs & Spreadsheets, which I use exclusively now. It’s online (with offline access now), it’s simple, it opens the usual formats, and it’s so much better for collaboration.no need to sync docs between computers or carry them around on a USB flash drive. And now, with the Docs gadget in Gmail, you can open your docs from within Gmail, making it even more of a one-stop center for all your productivity and information needs. Enable the Google Docs gadget in Gmail by going to Labs.

5. Twitter. A lot of people are finding Twitter to be an incredible place to connect with others, to find great things to read, to keep in touch with what’s happening now. But keeping your Twitter app open all the time can be unproductive. Enter Twitter Gadget, which takes seconds to install into Gmail and lets you have the most important functions of Twitter right within your all-in-one productivity center.

6. Bookmarks. Want to look up a site you bookmarked earlier? I’ve been using the delicious gadget for Gmail, and it works pretty much as you’d expect — you can see a list of your most recent bookmarks in the Gmail sidebar.This will change your online experience more productive.

8. Social media. What about other social media you might use… Put them right in Gmail with the Facebook, MySpace and Friendfeed gadgets. There are even gadgets for Digg and Flickr.

10. Offline Gmail. One of the problems people use to have with Gmail is that it’s online — meaning that if you can’t connect to the Internet ,you can’t use Gmail. Well, that’s now changed with Gmail’s offline mode — you can read, compose and organize messages while offline, which is nice.

 

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Now Twitter is available in WordPress.com

March 27, 2009

 

                               Now WordPress.com gets integrates with Twitter.  WordPress.com is providing a hot twitter widget in the sidebar, to keep your readers with your updates and comments.

Now you can quickly and easily keep your readers connected to your updates on Twitter, and make your blog the home of even more of your content.

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Above shown is the screenshot of Twitter widget in WordPress.com.

All the links that you post in the Twitter remains clickable in the sidebar, and also the the @ replies link too.

To add the Widget into the Wordrpess.com

  • Just head to Appearance > Widgets in your dashboard.
  • Click “Add” to add it to your sidebar, and then click “Edit” to set your Twitter username and choose how many updates you’d like to display. No passwords needed.

Have more than one account on Twitter? No problem. You can add as many as you like! Just add another widget as you did before.

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Some Crazy people – Building the entire Gmail Interface

March 25, 2009

These guys in the video sure made designers and developers who build any interfaces not too proud because they re-paint the entire Gmail interface up from scratch, bit by bit with the use of Styrofoam. The entire interface looks as good as a real one, except that you cannot check nor compose email. But seriously, hats off for the amount of work they’ve put in. Watch the video yourself.

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Top 28 Air Applications for Designers & Developers

March 13, 2009

Adobe AIR is marvelous. Simple as that. It takes either or all HTML, JavaScript, Flash or Actionscript and builds you a desktop widget that is compatible across all operating systems and can be used at any time off-line. There are very few limitations, and anyone with even a little programming knowledge could build an app with relative ease.

Download the latest version of Adobe AIR here: Adobe AIR 1.5.1 (15mb).

Here are 28 Amazing Adobe AIR applications for Web Designers, Developers and Graphic Designers. Can we have some more, please!

Designview

Design View » 
Description : GUI tool for  Flex applications layout composition.

Richflv

RichFLV » 
Description : RichFLV let`s you edit flv files.

Snippage

Snippage »
Description : Snippage lets you easily make widgets out of parts of any web page. You do so by opening “snips” which are little web browsers you can crop down.

pixus  

Snippage »
Description : Snippage lets you easily make widgets out of parts of any web page. You do so by opening “snips” which are little web browsers you can crop down.

lita

Lita – SQLite Administration Too »
Description : A free, multi-platform administration tool for your SQLite Databases

Enbased

Em based layouts – Vertical rhythm calculator »
Description : Web developers using XHTML and CSS, will find this tool marvelous.

Read from the author’s Blog.

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Download Portable Mozilla Firefox 3.0.7

March 9, 2009

 

firefox-usb-portable-edition-logo It has been enough time to Mozilla Firefox 3.0 release and we already have Firefox 3.0.7 in our hands but if you are like me who still loves and use Firefox 2 then you might think of using portable Firefox 3.0.7 which allows you to enjoy latest firefox version without need of uninstalling your existing working firefox.

Here is portable version of recently released Mozilla Firefox 3.0.7 which you can carry in your USB flash drive along with you. Portable Firefox 3.0.7 has all features of normal Firefox 3.0.7. Firefox 3.0.7 fixes several issues found in Firefox 3.0.6

Download portable Mozilla Firefox 3.0.7

Please note: Firefox 3.0.7 Portable versions is slower than normal version

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18 Tools for Designers & Bloggers

March 5, 2009

I’m always sharing what tools are useful to me via Twitter, but just incase you don’t use it – I wanted to share here! I always get asked what productivity tools and apps I use on a regular basis and I pretty much open all of these everyday. There are a few apps that are similar in type because some may be all in one tools or I’m just starting to use one more than the other. Check these out, they are ones I would recommend to a designer/blogger/creative type.

Communication Tools

yammer

Yammer

Connect and share with the people in your company or organization. It’s like twitter but for companies. Anyone in a company can start their Yammer network and begin inviting colleagues. The privacy of each network is ensured by limiting access to those with a valid company email address.

skype

Skype

Free calls, video calls and instant messaging over the internet.

 

tweetdeck

Tweet Deck

TweetDeck is an Adobe Air desktop application for twitter.

More tools :

Organization Tools

Drop Box

dropbox

Dropbox syncs your files online and across computers. Up to 2GB for free.

Design/Dev Tools

textmate

Text mate

Code/text editor, simple!

Read the complete story from the authors blog.

 

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The Best Web Development Books

March 2, 2009

 

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                      Some of you are aware that I’ve been quietly collecting vote for the best web development books available. After roughly three weeks, I’m ready to reveal the results. The books will be categorized according to their subject matter.

CSS

cssMastery

         CSS Mastery

          By bringing all of the latest tips, tricks, and techniques together in one handy reference, this book demystifies the secrets of CSS and makes the journey to CSS mastery as simple and painless as possible. While most books concentrate on basic skills, this one is different, assuming that you already know the basics and why you should be using CSS in your work, and concentrating mainly on advanced techniques.

JavaScript

proJavascriptTechniques

          Pro JavaScript Techniques

          Pro JavaScript Techniques is the ultimate JavaScript book for the modern web developer. It provides everything you need to know about modern JavaScript, and shows what JavaScript can do for your web sites. This book doesn’t waste any time looking at things you already know, like basic syntax and structures.

PHP

phpSolutions

   PHP   Solutions

         The book has been written with an eye on forward and backward compatibility recommending the latest PHP 5 techniques, but providing alternative solutions for servers still running PHP 4.3.

 Read the complete story from the authors blog.

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Get $100 worth Facebook Advertising Coupon

February 27, 2009

 

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                   Facebook is not only the largest Social Network on worldwide web but also a great advertising platform for small-medium enterprises, and facilitate the small-medium enterprises The Visa Business Network is offering US $100 worth advertising coupon for just installing their application.

Just go this application page and add the application to your profile and within mins you should receive an email from the Facebook team with code to redeem which you would need to enter into Admanager billing section voila! you should have $100 into your account!!!

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20 awesome free OS downloads that aren’t Windows 7

February 27, 2009

 

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                        For the last few days, Windows 7 is just about the only OS anyone has been talking about. I figured it was high time for us to share the love and take a look at some other interesting free, downloadable operating systems.
Here’s a collection of 20 that are worth checking out. There are plenty more, so if you’d like to add your favorites, share them in the comments!

Fedora 10 (pictured) – One of the few live distros that didn’t have any trouble with the hardware on my MSI Wind netbook. My acid test: can it properly suspend and wake? Yes – and it does it faster than Windows XP, Vista, or Windows 7. OpenSUSE and Ubuntu both failed to resume properly.

Damn Small Linux – I wouldn’t feel right not listing Damn Small. It’s pretty amazing what you can do with a whole OS that’s not much bigger than most Windows antivirus applications. 50mb gets you Firefox, XMMS, VNCViewer, MS Office Viewer, and much more. It’s also easily extendable through the MyDSL service or by using the apt command.
Linux Mint - While it’s based on Ubuntu, Mint has some features that I think make it a bit more user-friendly. For starters, there are several easy ways to find and install new software including the dead simple Mint Software Portal. Find an app, click the install button, bada bing!

Read the complete story from the authors blog.

 

 

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Carry Google Chrome on a USB Drive

February 25, 2009

There are a lot of people who loves to carry  portable softwares in their USB drive. Or else  if you are behind a corporate firewall and chromeportableusb can’t install software, this is the solution of the problem. Now Google chrome gives portable avatar Google Chrome 2.0 portable.

Like the other portable softwares, it has all the  features available in the main Google Chrome. It  doesn’t requires a installation, just unzip the files inside a folder and start browsing in Google Chrome.

To download the portable copy of Google browser click the download link.

googlechromeportable

If any problems occurred during the regular installation of Chrome from the Google pack, download the offline installer from here.

With Google Chrome portable, all user settings including web history and cookies are saved on to the same folder – the program settings are saved in "Chrome" folder while the user settings go in the "Profile" folder.  Portable Chrome was earlier tested on Windows XP SP3 and Windows Vista SP1 machines.

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