Informed by Me

Freebase is now open to public. To understand what Freebase is you should check out the introductory video.

Inspired by Khoi Vinh’s Grid Computing and Design article and his fantastic presentation Grids are Good I built for myself a small Processing file that I’ve been using for about 3 months now. It generates a .png with a customizable grid that you can import into Photoshop or whatever tool you use for designing your sites.

The background maker lets you customize the width of the grid and the padding between the vertical columns.

The file is not a “finished product” at all. Let’s call it in alpha state. But if you’re a Processing user go ahead and grab it. I hope you find it useful and build a better one. (And then let me know so I can start using yours).

web_grid_background_maker.pde

Today as I uploaded a few photos in Flickr I noticed that they had upgraded their upload page and are now using a very slick tool. It’s beautiful.

So in case you want to know how it’s done, this is it: SWFUpload. A tool that’s described as:

A small javascript/flash library to get the best of both worlds - The great upload capabilitys of flash and the accessibility and ease of html/css.

I’ve been using iGTD for a couple of months. It’s a great tool and if you’re a strict GTD follower you should give it a try. It’s has many great tools such as calendars, next action reviews, iCal sync and Quicksilver integration.

But one of these days I looked into the real usage that I gave it and noticed that my habit is doing this:

• I submit things I have to do via Quicksilver to specific projects and contexts
• I launch iGTD every once in a while to review things I have to do whenever I get a feeling of “what should I do now?”
• I sync with iCal

So basically what I need is just a small app that can let me handle Projects, Contexts and Deadlines. That’s it.

I think I found a proper replacement in Actiontastic by Jon Crosby.

I’ve loved that the UI is simple and uncluttered. It’s got all that I need and is not filled with extra features.

Actiontastic has a simple, clean and easy to use UI

One thing though: Next to my projects and contexts there’s no number indicating how many tasks I’ve got pending. This is a major need for me. Hope it gets introduced in the next version. But for now, check it out.