It doesn’t look like much. It’s a small white board with some slap dash writing on it. Heck, it’s almost like chicken scratch in places, and the lines aren’t straight. The board contains the presentations held during BarCampStL, BarCamp St. Louis. Notice the list isn’t formal, neat, and LUNCH is the biggest entry, but that’s how things work at a BarCamp. BarCamps are about an unconference style versus the traditional way folks get together for conferences. Instead of elaborate planning and plotting up front, it’s about the dynamics of real people interacting spontaneously. St. Louis’s first BarCamp went extremely...
By Mike Fruchter of MichaelFruchter.com (Twitter/FriendFeed)There are hundreds of Twitter applications on the market, many of which have been covered previously on this blog, including a number of clients, such as TweetDeck and Posty. With the Twitter ecosystem continuing to grow, as evidenced by last night's post on SocialToo, I wanted to touch upon a few that I use, and that I feel are unique and useful. This post highlights fifteen different Twitter tools that I believe would be excellent additions for your Twitter toolbox.1) TwufferTwuffer is a simple, useful utility that allows you to schedule pre-written messages for posting...
Filed under: Utilities, Office, Web services Deadline is a really great web-based alternative to the standard desktop to-do apps. There are several ways to interact with it and access your to-do list, including via Jabber/Google Talk, through Atom, RSS and iCal feeds, and email. Deadline understands input in natural language, so you can write something like, "call mom on Tuesday," and the web app will schedule it appropriately.The Deadline UI is well-designed and not distracting, with edit and delete buttons readily accessible next to each item. Inspired by Twitter, to-do items have a 140 character cap to accomodate SMS support...
FriendFeed wants to turn the web into a giant chat room with realtime updates from all kinds of different sources — blogs, Twitter, Flickr, Digg and all the other sites FriendFeed supports. FriendFeed recently launched an experimental new feature — realtime updating — which allows you to see all the latest FriendFeed posts without refreshing the page. The minute one of your friends add something new a clever bit of Ajax automatically drops the post into your page. As Robert Scoble points out, what FriendFeed has done is essentially turn the web into a giant chat room. There’s no need...
Survey Time! Please take a few moments to fill out the brief The Daily WTF Reader Survey. Thanks! "My boss showed me his new AARP card," R Handorf wrote, "I guess I wasn't the only one who noticed that he started wearing bifocals." Seth Jeacopello notes, "the bank down the street has been having some issues getting the temperature to output correctly on their marquee." "Well," Martin Cowen writes, "I guess that's a surefire way to ensure food safety." "I really just want to print," noted Jared Youtsey, "but I can't seem to figure out whether feature...
Filed under: Mac 101If you frequently download files via iChat file transfer or Safari, then you may want to know where the files came from later on. This information can be found using a simple Get Info command in the Finder. Right-click on the questionable file and select "Get Info" (you can also click once on the file and press command + I). Once you are in the Get Info window, click the "More Info" disclosure triangle. Look in the "Where from" field to identify your file's origin. If you downloaded the file from an iChat file transfer, you will...
Filed under: Software, iPhone, App StoreSoftalk, a UK development firm known for their messaging and productivity solutions, has released the first iPhone spreadsheet application. The application has the really original name Spreadsheet, costs US$7.99, and is available now from the App Store (click opens iTunes). The first release features over 50 functions and the ability to email spreadsheets created on the iPhone to Mac or PC for further editing. The function list includes:Date/time functions -- DATE, DATEADD, DAY, DAYABBREV, DAYNAME, HOUR, LASTDAY, MINUTE, MONTH, MONTHABBREV, MONTHNAME, NOW, SECOND, TIME, TODAY, YEAR General functions -- COL, COUNT, ROW Math function --...
Filed under: Features, How-tosHow many times have you been watching TV and wanted to quickly add a to-do or event (maybe both) to iCal? In this Mac Automation post, I'm going to show you how to create both a to-do and an iCal event from within Automator. You will be able to add new items to iCal without ever having to open it. Let's begin. Creating the Automator Workflow (New iCal Event)First we need to create an Automator workflow that will add the to-do and event to iCal. To create the workflow, just add the "New iCal Events" action to...
When Apple’s App Store was first announced, many of us envisioned a fleet of applications that would turn the iPhone into a mobile computing powerhouse - any functionality that Apple neglected to include would be quickly introduced by third party developers. Unfortunately, the store has largely failed to deliver on that potential, as developers have shied away from full-featured, useful apps in favor of flashy novelties that are cheaper to produce and more profitable. There may be a few diamonds in the rough, but you’d never know it - 75% of the top apps list (which is the first...
Ever wanted to send emails to someone in future at some later date/time? Don’t get too excited. I’m not going to share some trick on how to time travel and send emails, so don’t get your hopes high! Coming back to the topic, today I stumbled across a cool service that lets you send emails in the future. EmailFuture.com is a free way to send yourself emails in the future. Whether it’s a reminder email in half an hour or a message to your future self in 10 years. There’s nothing much you have to do to send emails. Simply...
For all our DEMOFall08 coverage, click here. HeyCosmo has launched two new free social utilities at DEMOfall 08, HeyCosmo MyConcierge and HeyCosmo Blaster. HeyCosmo MyConcierge aims to eliminate the time wasted on everyday tasks such as finding a plumber at 3am or finding a restaurant on short notice by placing actual phone calls to service providers. Users enter their location and the type of business or service they need into HeyCosmo’s site, along with a list of requirements. Using the company’s “robo-call technology,” MyConcierge calls vendors or services to identify the ones that fit the user’s specific criteria. HeyCosmo users...
Filed under: iPod Family, iPhone, App StoreTUAW's going Back to School! We'll be bringing you tips and reviews for students, parents and teachers right up until the bell rings. With students heading back to school around the country today, many are heading back with an iPhone (possibly a iPhone 3G, no doubt). In this post, I'm going to suggest a few iPhone applications that you can use to stay on task, and, of course, "make the grade." Most of these applications are free, considering that most students are low on money (especially college students). Assignments (iTunes Link)Assignments is an application...
Yesterday I dusted off my old G4 and set it up in order to mess around with Unity. Unity is a high-level 3d game creation engine that many ex-Director users have switched over to. Games made in Unity can play on Mac or Windows, but the authoring environment is Mac only. I hope to be able to post my thoughts here on Unity as I explore it’s capabilities. Day 1: Installing the trial I downloaded and installed Unity 2.1, and immediately ran into a problem: the app was booting to a completely blank dialog box with just an OK button...
