technology tips and music recommendations with a personal touch

This tip is part of an automation series I’m running to showcase 24 of my most useful computer automation tips.

I want you to stop for a second and think about this: when you boot your computer, how many windows do you have to push away until you can get a clean desktop to start working with?

How about this: do you remember the last time you were working on a task and some stupid window popped up asking for some kind of confirmation? Do you get this window often? Don’t you wish the computer was smart enough to remember your choice and not display it over and over again?

If you resonate with any of the above, then today’s automation tip will fit you just perfectly.

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This tip is part of an automation series I’m running to showcase 24 of my most useful computer automation tips.

In the first post of this series, I’ve talked about how you can find and access any file in a split second using Google Desktop. While Google Desktop can also be used as an application launcher, it doesn’t do a very good job at that.

If you’re unfamiliar with what an application launcher is, here is a short description:

Application Launcher is a fancy term for a simple tool – a piece of software that stays in the background and, when you type a given key combination, gets up and helps you find the right application, file or action you want to execute. Instead of moving your mouse around, aiming and clicking at things, you just type a shortcut (usually Ctrl+Space), start typing the name of the program you want to execute and hit Enter. Simple and fast, and takes a tenth of the time you’d have needed to search the shortcut with your mouse.

Now if you’re wondering whether the title of this post is somewhat exaggerated, then let me break it down for you:

I did my homework: I’ve surveyed most of the popular Windows application launchers, including my all-time favorite one, ENSO. It turns out that the application launcher I’m presenting today requires by the far the least amount of keystrokes to do the job. Why? Simply because it doesn’t require you to type any shortcut (like the Ctrl+Space mentioned above) before you start typing the name of the application you want to launch. So let’s see how that’s possible. Click here to continue reading →

Ever since my post about my secret to productivity (automation), I’ve been meaning to compile and present the complete list of all my automation tools and tricks. In that post, I’ve mentioned briefly some of the things that I automate in my desktop and browser.

This time around, to celebrate the relaunch of the blog, I’m starting a 24-day post series (the biggest I’ve ever embarked upon) with 24 ways you can use to automate your digital life.

With “digital life”, I mean your daily interaction with your PC, including the desktop operating system and the browser. So essentially the tips in this post series are categorized as either Windows- or Web-related. It’d be interesting to see how many of the Windows-related tips can be applied to the Mac. However, all Web-related tips should be relevant to anybody using any popular operating system.

Every one of these automation tips is explained in dead simple terms with a step-by-step procedure for implementing it. Non-tech savvies as well as geeks should find this material useful and come out with at least one or two automation tricks under their belts.

So what do I mean by automation and what’s in it for you?

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Facebook is a wonderful social network. I’d even go as far as saying it’s one of a kind. In less than 2 months, I’ve gone from being indifferent, to trying and hating it, to giving it a second shot and actually falling in love with it, until finally I became obsessed with it and started spreading the word about it in my social circles.

So given this newfound obsession with Facebook, how can we, if not cure it, find a way to make it worthwhile?

I had this simple idea a while ago which was: why not we actually use Facebook for what it was intended? That is, why not use Facebook to maintain and grow our relationships with the people we care about?

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God bless Web 2.0 for giving us the technology to share our passion easily with the rest of the world.

Some of you, even my friends, don’t know that I am passionate about photography ever since high school. At that time, I won the photography class award for creating a portrait photo composition of my brother, using a darkroom technique of combining two negatives to create transparency effect in the composite photo (anybody know what that technique is called?). The winning photo was also featured as a Photo of the Day on PhotoPoint.com in October 6 2001. However, I lost that precious photo when that site went out of business on December 2001. I still hope of finding that photo stashed somewhere, someday.

Anyways, fast forward to 2007, my interest in photography is still on and that’s why I hang out at Flickr almost daily. I don’t take photos anymore, but I enjoy browsing interesting photos. Coincidently, “interestingness” is the exact term Flickr uses to describe a regularly updated patch of the most “beautiful, amazing, moving and striking” new photos on Flickr.

Here is where Web 2.0 comes into play:

I needed a way to get those photos delivered to me as soon as there is a new patch. Naturally, I was looking for an RSS feed for only the interesting photos on Flickr. While that wasn’t available on Flickr website, a simple search in Google returned a result of some guy who posted this very exact RSS feed. Here is the address:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/InterestingFlickr

So I subscribed to this feed and I usually receive 100+ new photos a day in my Google Reader. Granted, not all of them are interesting to me. However, there are usually 5-10 photos a day that simply stand out as plain gorgeous and amazing. I usually add those ones to my Flickr favorites collection, and I’ve been doing that for the past couple of months.

Now here is the punch line: if you like what you see, then you can too subscribe to my favorite photos stream using this RSS feed:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/AlaeddinFavPhotos

Think of this collection as the combined goodness of Flickr’s finest photos, excluding the almost-pornographical ones that might get you fired at work. I promise to keep this stream of photos consistently fresh and interesting.
How to get your own favorite photos feed:

1. Get Firefox browser.
2. Install Greasemonkey extension.
3. Install Flickr user favorites feed script.
4. Find and share your favorites RSS feed link in your Flickr favorites page.

I think I'm on a roll here with this whole productivity-related posts. Thanks again to Ben from the Instigator blog for "instigating" this meme.

For a while I've been wanting to share our cool way of sharing stuff at work. In any typical office working environment, you've got a lot of e-mails flying back and forth between desktop workers. The e-mails are mainly forwards of interesting videos, pictures, articles or documents found on the Web or received through personal e-mails. Most of them are non-work related. Hell, when I got back from my vacation last week, there were 215 e-mails sitting in my inbox, of which about 10% only were related to my project. Most of the others were simply links to interesting sites and articles from my friends (honestly, some of them weren't even that interesting).

The Problem

While I appreciate the gesture, sometimes it gets really annoying to mix work- and non-work-related stuff in the same inbox and having to sort them out. Furthermore, getting frequent new-mail notifications can be very distracting and it often breaks my creative flow.

The Solution

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Since we’re in the subject of being productive, I wanted to share with you yet another productivity tip that is especially important for me since, as you can see, I’m a music addict.

You might be asking: what’s productivity got to do with music? The simple answer would be: it takes the hassle out of finding, playing and organizing music, and keeps it a pleasurable experience! Does this sound like something you want to have?

I reckon that lots people are either using the default media player that ships with their system (e.g., Windows Media Player on Windows PC), or are using third party music players either because they have to (read, iTunes) or because they chose to.

When you have the choice of which media player you use to play music on your PC or Mac, it amazes me how many people settle for the default media player, and it really makes me feel sad seeing how many hoops they jump through to try and do the basic things like playing and rating songs, building play lists and managing their music collection. So if you’re that person, then take a couple of minutes today to read and find out about the world’s best media player.

Everybody, I want you to meet Winamp. A brilliant free media player that will rock your world with its super-friendly user interface and ease of use. If I had to describe Winamp in one sentence, it would be:

What Winamp is for music is much like what Firefox is for the web!

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A recently launched group project started by Ben at the Instigator Blog aims to collect the web’s most comprehensive list of productivity tips. Everybody can chip in with their secret productivity tips. In the end, we’re going to compile one huge list (and hopefully publish it in a downloadable e-book) that anybody would find immensely useful.

What’s my secret?

One word: automation.

Let me elaborate on that a bit:

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