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Clearing the Cache — Google Edition

Scott Blitstein — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 21:30:19 +0000

Like many of us, I spend a lot of time on the web and come across a staggering number of interesting things. In Clearing The Cache, I pull out some of my favorites and share them with you here.

It seems like there was a lot of news coming out of Google this week — here are some highlights:

I share Simon’s enthusiasm in the new Shared Folders feature for Google Docs. There is a reason this has been the most often-requested feature for Docs and I’m thrilled to see it introduced and implemented extremely well.

While not really a productivity app for most users, quite the opposite actually, Google Building Maker is an insanely addictive way to look at your city and contribute 3D building models to Google Earth. Be careful before you click, you could lose hours here.

The Gmail team is always introducing new features in Labs, some useful, others not so much. The new Lab feature, “Got the wrong Bob?” looks to be one of the more useful ones. It attempts to determine if you’ve added the wrong folks to your distribution list based on your past emailing habits. With the auto-complete option it’s easy to accidentally choose the wrong person, this could be a life-saver to keep from sending things to the wrong people. Another handy new Gmail Labs feature, “Google Docs Preview,” lets you preview the contents of a Google document, spreadsheet or presentation right in your Gmail inbox.

I’ve been meaning to write about the Google Squared search functionality for a while now as I don’t think it’s getting near the attention it deserves. In essence, Squared attempts to present search results data in a more concise format — extracting common information from multiple sources for easy comparison in a tabular format. This week brought some major upgrades in both the amount of data returned and the ability to export it out for further analysis.

Since Google Wave invites began rolling out, Google Voice has seemingly been pushed down a notch as the product folks want access to. But if the demand is still there among your friends and family, you’ll soon be able to share the love by inviting them to Google Voice.

Which bit of Google news was most exciting for you this week?

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Clearing The Cache — Updates Edition

Scott Blitstein — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 20:00:18 +0000

Like many of us, I spend a lot of time on the web and come across a staggering number of interesting things. In Clearing The Cache, I pull out some of my favorites and share them with you here.

Online identity manager DandyID, which I covered back in July, has added some nice improvements to its privacy options, specifically the option to control which of your identities is visible through your online profile or shared widgets.

Simon shared some great integration news about Outright and Expensify. It’s wonderful to see the Small Business Web initiative really moving forward.

Browser Opera Mini jumps to beta 5 — an impressive looking release for the mobile platform. Tabbed browsing and password management look like standout features.

Social Contact Manager BatchBook now lets you create custom web forms that tie right in to your CRM database.

The folks over at MailChimp just announced a very cool Twitter-themed email template for their email marketing service. Link your MailChimp account to your Twitter account, and you can automatically pull in profile information including colors and backgrounds, follower numbers and recent tweets to use in your campaigns.

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Clearing the Cache: BlackBerry Edition

Scott Blitstein — Fri, 08 May 2009 16:00:25 +0000

Like many of us, I spend a lot of time on the web and come across a staggering number of interesting things. In Clearing The Cache I pull out some of my favorites and share them with you here.

Need to get your music fix? Try Pandora for BlackBerry or Slacker for BlackBerry; both offer outstanding radio services.

Last week I wrote a brief snippet about gwabbit for BlackBerry as a means to easily capture contact info from your emails, but you may want to also take a look at Anagram’s BlackBerry offering as well.

Spend a lot of time on your BlackBerry? Our friends atjkOnTheRun can help you find out if you affinity has reached the level of addiction.

SimpleHelp offers up a step-by-step tutorial on how to set up Google Sync for Blackberry.

Finally, I just love Nicholas Bate and his hilarious ongoing series of posts documenting the species known as Homo Berriens:

“Accentuated fingers enable small keyboards to be adroitly managed at speed while simultaneously executing other activities such as eating cereal, walking the dog or sky-diving.”

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Clearing The Cache: Tasks & Time Edition

Scott Blitstein — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 20:00:50 +0000

Like many of us, I spend a lot of time on the web and come across a staggering number of interesting things. In Clearing The Cache I pull out some of my favorites and share them with you here.

Have some items on your list you just don’t want to tackle? The Execupundit shares his idea for Unpleasant Task Day. I say it’s brilliant.

Getting Things Done away from your computer? My time tracker of choice, freckle, has made available a Hipster Time Tracker which brings their dead simple interface to paper.

Tsheets adds the ability to update your time sheets via Twitter. For many of us the Twitter app is ubiquitous so it’s no surprise that more and more applications are opting for this type of integration.

Our own Jim Courtney recently reviewed Tungle, another tool to ease the pain of scheduling meetings. I’ve yet to find one that really works like I want, so I’m giving tTungle a shot now.

The Apple Blog offer their take on the new version of the Daylite Productivity Suite.

What interesting finds do you have in your cache? Share them in the comments.

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Clearing the Cache

Scott Blitstein — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 22:00:34 +0000

Like many of us, I spend quite a lot of time on the web and come across a staggering number of interesting things. In Clearing The Cache I pull out some of my favorites and share them with you here.

Allbizanswers offers some useful advice if you’re bogged down in details.

The guys over at TwoGuysTech will be celebrating the one year anniversary of their informative and entertaining podcast next week. Don’t listen? You should.

Our jkOnTheRun friends share their Kindle 2: First Impressions.

The launch of Internet Explorer 8 brings with it Microsoft’s History of the Internet.

While we’ve discussed Dealing With Distractions here, The Execupundit shares some likely obstacles to getting things done in What’s Your Wall?

If you’re a Microsoft OneNote user – head over to iheartonenote, a new community for users of the all-purpose organizational tool.

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Clearing The Cache

Scott Blitstein — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 18:20:21 +0000

Like many of us, I spend quite a lot of time on the web and come across a staggering number of interesting things. In Clearing The Cache, I pull out some of my favorites and share them with you.

Record and search voice notes on your Windows Mobile phone – Our friends over at jkOnTheRun alert us to the very cool Microsoft Recite preview.

Looking for stock photos? Mike at Two Guys Tech says Get Free Images at Free Range Stock. Give a listen to their weekly podcast while you’re there.

Bring idea management and collaboration for your team with Kindling.

When taking questions after a presentation or on a panel, Michael Wade explains why it’s important to Let Your Answers Be Wise and Brief on Execupundit.

@sbbuzz, the weekly Twitter tech talks I mentioned earlier have been a great success. If you’ve missed the buzz, you can still catch a summary of the Feb. 10th Edition.

Ben Barden, developer of the Injader CMS asks entrepreneurs: How Committed Are You?

What interesting finds do you have in your cache? Share them in the comments.

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Clearing The Cache

Scott Blitstein — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 21:00:40 +0000

Like many of us, I spend quite a lot of time on the web and come across a staggering number of interesting things. In Clearing The Cache I pull out some of my favorites and share them with you here.

Daniel Akst says I Once was Chic, but Now I’m Cheap as he goes back to PC (via Execupundit).

Gregg encounters an amusing dialog box from Adobe.

Using Windows 7? Tim shares The Bumper List of Windows 7 Secrets (via Geek in Disguise).

Nick Lewis shares his Web Development Warchest.

GigaOM gives us details on the BarackBerry.

What interesting finds do you have in your cache? Share them in the comments.

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Clearing The Cache

Scott Blitstein — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 20:00:46 +0000

Like many of us, I spend quite a lot of time on the web and come across a staggering number of interesting things. In Clearing The Cache I pull out some of my favorites and share them with you here.

Congratulations to Garvin and the Serendipity team for a fantastic 1.4 release of their wonderful blogging platform.

With the holidays here, and perhaps some free time available, jkOnTheRun points us to some Good Old Games for your netbook.

Slash7 shares a Jump Start Credit Card Processing Cheat Sheet – thanks Amy.

Andreas Gohr shows you how to Setup DokuWiki in <15 minutes.

Wayne Smallman tells us Why we need a blogging code of conduct. What do you think?

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Clearing The Cache – OneNote

Scott Blitstein — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 21:10:40 +0000

Like many of us, I spend quite a lot of time on the web and come across a staggering number of interesting things. In Clearing The Cache I pull out some of my favorites and share them with you here.

Here are some of my favorite OneNote resources that I’ve flagged recently:

Microsoft Office Online tips us to a great demo of how to Take OneNote to class.

jkOnTheRun shares a great user contributed OneNote 2009 Day Planner. I’ve downloaded it and it’s very well done – Nice work David

7Breaths with a phenomenal GTD OneNote implementation (via Lifehacker)

OneNote Tips & Tricks on Outlining in OneNote

Don’t have OneNote but want to give it a try? Microsoft offers a free trial

And finally, I love our WWD readers. One discovered DropBox through our review and then goes on to use it for great things, like to share his OneNote notebooks on multiple machines. I’m now doing this as well and it works brilliantly.

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Clearing The Cache – Success or Failure Edition

Scott Blitstein — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 21:55:31 +0000

Like many of us, I spend quite a lot of time on the web and come across a staggering number of interesting things. In Clearing The Cache I pull out some of my favorites and share them with you here.

In light of the Values of n acquisition, GigaOM wonders Will Twitter Become Your Personal Assistant

blah, blah! technology declares Pownce is Dead

Friendly Bit says Follow the 10 ground rules, or fail on the web

CRM Provider Entellium files chapter 11

Managing Leadership advises on Exploiting Success (via Execupundit)

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Clearing The Cache – Lists Edition

Scott Blitstein — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 17:00:47 +0000

Like many of us, I spend quite a lot of time on the web and come across a staggering number of interesting things. In Clearing The Cache I choose a theme, pull out some of my favorites and share them with you here.

Freelance Switch on Holding Yourself Accountable

Toodledo, the excellent To-Do list manager, releases their native iPhone app

The Execupundit gives us 10 Reasons Used to Sink Good Ideas

Mike’s excellent chat with Laura Fitton about To-Do list alternatives and how to Envision Your Week For Productivity

Nicholas Bate on 7 Things which (paradoxically) will lower your productivity. (via Cultural Offering)

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Clearing The Cache – User Interface Edition

Scott Blitstein — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 16:00:47 +0000

Our friends over at BatchBlue give a shiny new look to their their BatchBook CRM.

Clustering is key to the new Google Blog Search homepage.

If impersonation is the sincerest form of flattery, 37signals should be honored by this extremely faithful reproduction. Or more likely outraged.

Yahoo announces version 2.6 of the Yahoo Interface Library (YUI) – OStatic gives us the rundown.

The Windows 7 team on how they are Managing Windows windows

GIMP 2.6 offers a spiffy new User Interface

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Clearing The Cache – Blogging Edition

Scott Blitstein — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 15:06:43 +0000

The Windows Vista blog team announces the Best Vista Website

Simple Help teaches us How to install WordPress on your Windows PC

Zoho sponsors Cloud Avenue blog to focus on online business applications

Smashing Mag offers up a WordPress Developer’s Toolbox

Serendipity is a powerful, feature filled weblog application and a worthy WordPress alternative.

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Clearing The Cache – Productivity and Getting Things Done

Scott Blitstein — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 14:30:07 +0000

Mike and Laura teach us how to Envision Your Week for Productivity

ReadWriteWeb discusses Getting Things Done in the Enterprise

My favorite To-Do list app is great at “Getting Things Done”

Are you a Mac user waiting for Google’s Chrome? Foreword gives you some things to do while you’re waiting

Done being productive for the day? GigaOm says Join JamLegend

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Clearing The Cache – Email

Scott Blitstein — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 20:00:55 +0000

Execupundit shares The Biggest Email Sin

jkOnTheRun takes a Poke at the Peek: email only device

Merlin Mann talks Inbox Zero

Publish just about anything by email with Posterous

Convert your webmail to standard POP/SMTP with IzyMail

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