Informed by Me

For those of you who use Coda, make sure you get the latest update.

If you’re still not using it… oh well.

Here’s a link to the realease notes for version 1.0.4.

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.

This tiny tutorial from Muffin Research shows how to enable tabs in Textmate for editing multiple files in Transmit.

Very handy!

Today I’m starting a “Media Diet” as proposed by Tim Ferris in his book “Four Hour Workweek.” Just for one week I can’t watch more than 1 hour of TV per day (which I don’t do anyways). I can’t read any non-fiction books, magazines, or newspapers. I can only read 1 hour of fiction every night and I have to stay away from compulsive web surfing (This is something I do all the time).

The whole idea is to become selective of what you put in. There’s only that much input you need, to be able to give forth good output in life. You can’t read all the time and expect to write tons at the same time! If you want to write tons, then just write tons!

So anyways. I’m in. For one entire week I’ll stay away from my Google Reader and my RSS feeds.

The perfecto tool to get complete screenshots of any webpage is Paparazzi. It’s easy to use: just write down the url, press capture, and save.

And it’s free.

I’ll download and check the Gelato CMS. Seems like a small, cool and easy tool to use.

It’s apparently more of a Tumblelog than a full featured Blogging tool. I like the simple Tumblelog approach to posting and maybe I’ll even switch to it sometime.

Social networking sites usually have a feature once you register in which you’re asked to give your password to your email account (for ex. Hotmail or Gmail) and they browse through your contacts to perform certain actions (for ex. invite them to the service).

How do they do that? What type of script goes through your contacts? Has anyone done this that can point me in some direction?