You might have heard about the power of mind mapping from studious co-workers or, say, a certain blog, but never had the drive to jump in and start sketching. Text2MindMap, a free visualisation web app, makes turning your ideas into node-based maps as easy as hitting Tab. Type or paste text into an input box, using indents to break up your ideas into categories, and then customise the font size, node colours, and more. When you’re done messing with your map, download it in JPEG format (interactive Flash downloads are said to be coming soon), and there’s no limit to how many you can create.
Lynette Chandler of Tech Based Marketing has put together a short-and-sweet guide to setting up a data-gathering web form using Google Docs‘ spreadsheets tool. Follow the easy-to-grasp instructions, and you’ve got a clean form that can be embedded on any page and streams data back to a spreadsheet you control. Great for grabbing info for events, adding a “Contact Me” form to your web site, or any other data-gathering need. Featured video: quick and easy forms [via Office Tweaks]
Web app Bradicon is a super-simple tool to convert most of the major graphics formats—JPG, PNG, BMP, or GIF—into icon files. We’ve previously posted a similar tool, but Bradicon’s wider file range and two-step process make it a great bookmark for anyone fixing a desktop or personalizing a file package. Thanks, Jerame!
Windows only: When you dig up that old Outlook PST (Personal Folders) file from years ago you cleverly secured with a hard-to-guess password—and now you can’t guess it—you want PstPassword. Turns out that Outlook passwords aren’t that difficult to figure out, because this handy utility detects the PST’s on your system (or you can open one up specifically) and reveals several possible passwords that can open the file. The developer writes:
Last weekend, I indulged in some entirely unseasonal spring cleaning activity and took the cudgels to my Facebook profile. I attacked my Applications list and got rid of all those stupid quizzes people had nagged me to take, and I ditched a whole bunch of random groups (sadly, I never did get around to panic buying carrots on May 15). End result? A much less cluttered profile and a renewed enthusiasm for the site. Take a few minutes to clean up your profile; you’ll be glad you did.
It’s not surprising that Google decided to make a submission to the ACCC over eBay’s controversial plan to make PayPal the sole payment method available on the site. It’s not surprising that Google asked that its name was kept off the public version of its submission. And sadly, it’s not surprising that — as a great story at AuctionBytes reveals — an Australian eBay user, David Bromage, managed to deduce Google’s involvement by looking at metadata attached to the PDF file. But is it possible to avoid those kinds of problems?
In a fascinating piece for BBC News, Maragret Robertson argues that it’s only a matter of time before we all start listing our experience with PC and console games on our resumes. Not only is gaming now so widespread that it’s a legitimate inclusion in the hobbies list, she suggests, but it’s even a good way of demonstrating your potential usefulness to an employee:
It’s becoming increasingly common for gamers to list things like running World Of Warcraft guilds in their applications, and increasingly common for employers to recognise the organisational, managerial and inter-personal skills such experience brings.
I’m in two minds about this – undoubtedly games (especially online games) can demonstrate persistence and collaborative skills, but if I saw someone talk about their WoW guild-building skills, I’d start questioning why that candidate couldn’t talk about more directly relevant experiences for the job at hand. What do you think? Time to add Halo to the CV, or will that frag your chances of getting hired?
Like all web-based desktops (or “webtops”), Glide OS offers applications and document access on a virtual desktop you log into using only your browser. But today they unveil one very useful feature that sets it apart from previously mentioned EyeOS and its cousins: the Glide OS desktop application, which imports and syncs desktop files to and from your Glide webtop.
