Despite having “more than enough beta testers and feedback,” the Windows 7 team is extending the availability of the free preview download through Feb. 12, with two firm deadlines. Here’s the breakdown:
Productivity guru and Mac lover Merlin Mann walks through his favourite Mac menu bar applications, highlighting his favourite time-saving apps. We’ve actually covered most of the apps Merlin’s mentioned at one time or another in the past, including:
When you want to quickly compose and fire off a message with Gmail, you’ve got a lot of options. Chances are none of them are as fast as gCompose. We’ve covered similar alternatives in the past, like our very own Supercharged GmailThis bookmarklet, but none of them offer the compose-and-return-to-work speed of gCompose. Instead of a regular Gmail compose window, gCompose speeds up the compose process by linking to the iGoogle Gmail gadget’s compose window, which strips what you don’t need (it doesn’t load Gmail chat or your inbox, for example) but still keeps the features you want (like contact autocomplete). Created by blogger Andrew Kortina, gCompose comes in a variety of formats: a simple gCompose bookmark, a gCompose bookmarklet that opens a new window for your message, or a gCompose plugin for previously mentioned Ubiquity. The post offers instructions for setting up gCompose with your Gmail account, so follow the link below for details. If you’ve got a faster method of firing off an email with Gmail, let’s hear it in the comments.
The Fastest Way to Compose Gmail Messages – gCompose Bookmarklet [Kortina]Photo-sharing web site Flickr has updated their popular Flickr Uploadr utility (the app that uploads pictures and videos to Flickr), boasting more stability, better support for different file formats, and improvements for handling larger uploads.
Firefox only (Windows/Mac/Linux): Firefox extension gui:config adds an advanced settings panel with easy access to options normally hidden behind cryptic about:config options. Once installed, the extension adds a new Advanced Settings item to the Tools menu for accessing the hidden settings. Rather than making you install the add-on to see if the settings apply to you, we’ll just take a quick tour through all of the screens so you can visually figure out if you want to install it or not.
Windows only: Your system’s got a fancy keyboard with a host of handy media shortcut buttons, but they only work with a select few apps. Media Keyboard 2 Media Player fills in the support gap. Once installed, MK2MP acts as a middle man between your keyboard and popular media-applications like VLC, Xion, XMPlay, 1BY1, and Winamp. The application runs almost invisible to the end user, passing the keyboard command onto the application with the right trigger. You can enable and disable common media-keyboard keys for each program, and specify whether it sits in your system tray or stays incognito. If the program you need to control isn’t yet available, the application is in active development and open to suggestions for new players to be added. Looking for a new media player in general? Check out the Hive Five results for best desktop media players. Media Keyboard 2 Media Player [via gHacks]
Windows only: Batchrun is a graphical script creation tool that eliminates the need for knowledge of arcane scripting languages to execute batches of commands. Using the application is fairly simple, albeit a little clunky until you get used to it: Start by using the Add button to create a new line, then choose a command to execute from the drop-down list. Once you are done, there’s a handy option on the File menu to save the script directly to the desktop or startup folder. One of the notable commands in the list is “End Process”, which could be used as an alternate method to quickly kill multiple programs, a handy option for your toolkit.
As Google Notebook dwindles into non-development, more services open up to catch all your web-captured data. One week after startup Ubernote jumped in, Evernote and Zoho Notebook arrive on the scene.
