But I digress.

The coolest app I’ve seen in a while and which I bought earlier this week is Ocarina, billed as “the first true musical instrument created for the iPhone.” Further, “Ocarina is sensitive to your breath, touch and movements, making it even more versatile than the original.”

1. Google polling place.
2. Type in your address:
   
3. Go there.
4. Vote.

]]> http://gabeanderson.com/2008/11/04/find-your-polling-place-vote/feed/ http://gabeanderson.com/2008/11/04/find-your-polling-place-vote/ http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/gabeanderson/~3/436865325/ http://gabeanderson.com/2008/10/30/search-dont-sort-your-email-files-with-x1/#comments Thu, 30 Oct 2008 12:19:54 +0000 gabe http://gabeanderson.com/2008/10/30/search-dont-sort-your-email-files-with-x1/ One of the must-have utilities in my daily work arsenal is X1, which archives every email and file on my computer in real-time — as new emails come in and out, and as files change — and enables me to search for anything with lightning-fast speed. It’s like Gmail for the workplace since you use it with Outlook or Lotus.

Download the X1 Professional client and start indexing your emails, then you never have to worry about organizing your emails into folders again. Just like Gmail: Search, don’t sort.

You can search by keyword/phrase or specify other criteria like From, To, Subject, or even Attachment name, and your archived emails pop up instantly:

If you’re looking for an email you sent, just start to type the word “Sent” in the Folder Name column and boom! There are all the emails matching your search term in your Sent Items folder.

X1 will search your active Exchange mailbox as well as all of your archived .PSTs. Since I started my current job more than 4 1/2 years ago, I’ve rarely permanently deleted any email, so I have more than 170,000 archived and instantly searchable emails, thanks to X1 (that total includes old support emails from when we were a smaller company and support emails would come directly to my account).

Here’s a cool way to use X1, which many of my colleagues and I do:

1. After you’ve read or acted on an email, just delete it (like archiving in Gmail).
2. Ensure your Outlook settings will never empty your Deleted Items folder (Tools -> Options -> Other -> Uncheck Empty the Deleted Items folder upon exiting).
3. Set X1 to index your Deleted Items folder (Tools -> Options -> Indexing -> Email -> Outlook -> Select Folders To Scan).
4. My Deleted Items folder gets auto-archived to a local .PST folder along with other mailboxes every 14 days, so everything just works automatically and keeps the size of my mailbox on the Exchange server down, and my Outlook running fast:

If you use your Outlook to check other email accounts via IMAP, you can even configure X1 to index those accounts or specific folders in those accounts.

Another tip: Set the X1 preference to  Keep copies of email in index (Tools -> Options -> Indexing -> Email). This ensures that your email previews pop up as quickly in X1 as they do in Outlook itself.

I’ve tried other desktop search tools — yes, even Google Desktop — and X1 is far superior to every other one out there.  X1 just works and works well.

Since then, I’ve downloaded lots of free apps and have even bought a few (Scrabble, TriCalc, Election ‘08). Some are must-have apps (Facebook, Pandora) and some are silly and just for fun (Lightsaber, More Cowbell, Jared).

Yesterday Google released the long-awaited  Google Earth for iPhone (iTunes link) and I downloaded it immediately after reading about it in TechCrunch.

It’s truly stunning and really fast (at least via wifi). After installing it, I fired it up (which takes a minute or so, but isn’t so bad) and clicked the locate button in the lower left-hand corner. Seeing the Earth from space, courtesy of NASA satellite imagery, then watching it zoom down on the map right to my house was pretty incredible. I mean, sure, we’ve all seen a similar thing on the desktop version of Google Earth or on Google Maps, but to watch this on my iPhone was pretty sweet.

I started dragging around the map, zooming in and out, and the redraw rate was pretty quick. I took a cross-country trip to the Golden Gate Bridge and marveled at the level of detail — it was like I was flying right above the towers of the bridge and looking down at the cars. I then zoomed over to our old home on Treasure Island and looked down on it with incredible detail.

All this imagery and it’s integrated with Google Local search, so it’s fun, educational, and practical.

This is one must-have app in any iPhone’s arsenal. And even if you don’t have an iPhone, this app alone is one more reason to get one.

My colleagues and I have been working like crazy the past few days, weeks, and months to launch our new suite of elearning tools today, and after a 5-hour go-live conference to bring our revamped website and award-winning support site online, I’m pleased to say that Articulate Rapid E-Learning Studio ‘09 is now live!

Here’s the press release.

I’ve long been a huge fan of Firefox and it will likely continue to be my primary browser, but already I’ve caught myself with both browsers open since Chrome is just so fast.

Some of my favorite Chrome features include the following:

• Speed, speed, speed — it’s incredibly fast (both app launching and Web browsing) and TechCrunch has also raved  about it
• Optimized speed of using Google apps like Gmail, Docs, etc. (who knows their apps better than Google itself?)
•  The home tab, which shows your most-visited sites
• The single-search toolbar (type in your searches and URLs in the same field)
• The separate-process tabs (this is a huge deal since if one site/tab crashes, it does so in isolation vs. locking up your entire browser, as Firefox and Internet Explorer do)
• The ability to drag a tab outside the primary browser and drop it anywhere on your screen (too cool!)

I also really like the easy-to-understand comic book that Google launched with Chrome to explain the underlying technology (as a support professional, I especially appreciate this unique approach to documentation):

If Chrome offered support for the following, using it as my primary browser would be even more compelling:

• RoboForm (not really a Google problem, but one that hopefully RoboForm can solve)
• Foxmarks (sounds like support is on the way)

There was some early controversy about a sentence in the EULA that suggested Google was going to claim the right to use any content you produced in Chrome (email, blog entries, etc.), but Google was quick to respond to the outcry and updated its terms.

Many of us spend so much of our time using Internet applications that it makes sense to rethink the browser as its own operating system — exactly what Google is doing, of course, and taking aim at Microsoft and Windows.

Chrome is currently only available for Windows Vista and XP SP2, but there will likely be a Mac version before too long (and no doubt a mobile version for your cell phone).

Finally, here’s a helpful tip on how to integrate Internet Download Manager for use with Chrome.

If you haven’t configured FolderShare (see blog entry) or DropBox (see blog entry), or simply forgot to sync a particular folder or file, then why not just access your computer remotely?

Enter LogMeIn.

LogMeIn is incredibly simple and secure to use — and it’s free. Here’s all you do:

1. Create a free account (note that they do offer premium services, too).
2. Click the option to Add Computer to your account for each computer you’d like to access remotely (a small app runs in your system tray). You must do this from the computer you’re configuring for remote access.
3. From your laptop or any other computer in the world, go to the LogMeIn site, sign in, and connect to any of your online computers:

And that’s it! Right in your Web browser, you’ll be remotely controlling your computer as if you were sitting right in front of it. If you have multiple monitors on the computer you’re accessing, that’s no problem, either - you can toggle between them with ease. You can even leverage LogMeIn to add additional virtual displays to your laptop or remote machine — the ultimate in multitasking. That is, I can work on one project or window on my local laptop, then switch to my remote machine for another two screens of productivity.

GoToMyPC is a competitive product from tech giant Citrix, but it’s not free. You have to pay $19.95 per month, but it’s virtually identical to LogMeIn. I used to use GoToMyPC, but switched to LogMeIn years ago and haven’t looked back. One key difference: GoToMyPC gives you access to file management and a transfer utility, which is a feature only available in the LogMeIn Pro version ($12.95/month), but with other file transfer utilties and the ability to email yourself anything while you’re logged in, there are certainly ways around that feature.

My company uses GoToMyPC’s sister product, GoToMeeting, which is invaluable both for sales demos and supporting customers when email just won’t cut it. GoToMeeting offers screen sharing, remote desktop control, and more, but that’s a topic for another day.

In the meantime, set up LogMeIn and you’ll never leave home without your computer again.

• Public link sharing to share any file with anyone
• 2 GB of free online storage space for public shares
• Photo album sharing & viewing

Dropbox is a great way to quickly share any file — small or large — with anyone. Let’s say I want to share the downloadable Articulate Presenter help documentation with you. Here’s what I’d do:

1. Copy (or move) the file from my computer into my Dropbox -> Public folder (on my Vista machine, the path is C:\Users\gabe\Documents\My Dropbox\Public).
2. Once I drop the file in my public Dropbox, I’ll see a blue icon indicating that it’s syncing to the Dropbox servers:

   

3. When the icon changes to a green checkbox, I’ll know the file is on the server and ready for sharing:

   

4. Next, I right-click the file and select Dropbox -> Copy public link to copy the link to my clipboard:

   

5. Finally, I give you the link (here on my blog, via email, or in an IM). The link looks like this:

http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/64503/AP5_Help_Documentation.pdf

And there you have it: An easy way to share big files — that might be too big for email — with friends  or colleagues!

The revision feature of Dropbox is great, too — so that if you accidentally overwrite a file on your computer or decide you want to rollback changes, you can restore an older revision via Dropbox.

You can currently sign up for the Dropbox beta (and watch their intro video) on the Dropbox site, but you’ll get in right away if I invite you, so let me know if you want an invite.

(Thanks, Tom, for the Dropbox heads-up and invitation!)

FolderShare is free, peer-to-peer file sharing — or self-to-self file sharing, as the case may be. I use it both ways.

As noted on the FolderShare Web site, use the app to do the following:

• Keep files in sync across your computers.
• Share folders with friends.
• Access your files from any computer.

In fact, the concept is so simple, the learn more page is incredibly concise. Additionally, FolderShare is a simple way to ensure that your most important files are always backed up on at least one other machine.

Getting FolderShare set up is super-easy. Here’s all you have to do:

1. Install the small app (it’ll always run in the background).
2. Create an account.
3. Specify a folder whose contents you want to synchronize.
4. Repeat on other computers.

Here are some ways I use FolderShare for both work and personal stuff:

Work:

• Group shares for files we want to share with everyone (doubles as backup on colleagues’ machines since if your machine crashes, files are still on the machines of others)
• Project notes and documentation
• Articulate Presenter project share (see Method 2 of my Word of Mouth blog entry on the topic)
• Screenshots (I take lots of screenshots for blog entries, supporting customers, etc., so I like to have access to my screenshots across all machines)
• Daily software builds (so that our dev, QA, and support teams always have access to latest versions of products in development)

Personal:

• Private share (for a quick and dirty way to share files between laptop & desktop)
• My RoboForm Data (sync your RoboForm data folder so you always have latest logins,SafeNotes, etc. on all of your computers)
• Quicken (ensure my latest financial data is always present and backed up on all of my computers)

All that and once you install it, it just works — automatically in the background.

Thanks to Wakerupper, now every day is a hotel day.

It’s simple:

1. Go to the site.
2. Enter your desired date and call time.
3. Input your phone number.
4. Optionally, type some text to be transcribed (reverse-Jott style, as Tom pointed out).
5. Get a wake-up call (or any reminder call, for that matter) — you can even snooze your call.

(Thanks for the recommendation, Tom!)

Between this and my new iPhone 3G, I’m surrounded by a sea of techno-euphoria tonight.

Oh yeah, and my favorite bullet point from the Wakerupper site: “Escape from a boring date or meeting.”