Can’t get tickets to that crucial concert or essential sporting match — or need to get rid of tickets you can no longer use? It might be worth checking out TicketChoice, a fan ticket exchange for selling unwanted tickets. (eBay would be another obvious option were it not for its apparent willingness to block sales any time a sporting body kicks up any kind of fuss.) There weren’t too many tickets on sale when I checked it out (though you’re set if you fancy a little Coldplay), but presumably that will vary depending on time of year. There’s no commission if you do sell tickets, but be cautious; some events specifically bar any form of resale. TicketChoice
Author, actor, presenter and brainbox Stephen Fry is a technophile of long standing (reputedly, he was the second ever owner of a Mac in the UK after Douglas Adams), and he’s also a major Twitter advocate. In an interview with the BBC, he propounds an interesting theory about much of the current “flavour of the month” coverage of Twitter:
If people want to announce their new this or their new that, they’re going “I’m not going to do an interview, I’m not going to sit in the Dorchester for seven days having one interviewer after another come to me, I’m just going to Tweet it, and point them to my website and forget the press”.And the press are already struggling enough – God knows they’ve already lost their grip on news to some extent. If they lose their grip on comment and gossip and being a free PR machine as well, they’re really in trouble. So naturally they’re simultaneously obsessed because they use it (as it fills up their column inches) but they’re also very against it. So you’ll get an increasing number of commentators going “Aren’t you just fed up with Twitter? Oh, if Stephen Fry tells me what he’s having for breakfast one more time, I think I’ll vomit.” They really will have a big go at it because it attacks them, it cuts them out.
I’d be the last to discount the prospect of media sour grapes, but I suspect a lot of the Twitter coverage has as much to do with (1) genuine confusion about Twitter’s usefulness and (2) the endless hype cycle that typifies coverage of just about everything, not just potentially threatening technology. I also don’t see it as a case of either/or — undoubtedly Twitter and its ilk provide new options, but that doesn’t entirely eliminate the old ones. What do you think? Photo from Wikimedia Commons
Stephen Fry: The internet and Me /a> [BBC News]We love the Moleskine notebook for its durability and versatility. Reader Joe Mansfield really loves his Moleskine, so he decided to create some free Moleskine icons using Google Sketchup to bring that love to his desktop. Actually, he asked his friend, Max Brown, to do it, and the results are quite nice. The icons are currently in the RSRC icon format (which is aces for you Mac users), but if you want to enjoy this icon set on your Windows computer, converting RSRC to ICO isn’t that difficult (ignore all the .sit talk and just extract the ZIP).
Icons [Engrave Your Book]BackTrack was the winner of our recent Hive Five for best Live CD, so we decided to take it for a test drive and show off a few of the features for everybody else.
When you’re a busy law student renting a small room, your stuff needs to be tightly organised. See how one attorney in training elegantly fits an office into a tiny bedroom.
Mac OS X only: Lightweight outlining application Tree builds outlines quickly and easily, then displays your outline in a novel left-to-right flow between child and parent elements. There’s not all that much to say about Tree beyond that. It’s lightweight and fast, is full of keyboard shortcuts for quick outline creation, and it can export any outline to OPML, meaning any outlines you make in Tree should be simple enough to import to most other outlining apps. Tree is a free download, costs a hefty $US40 if you want to upgrade to the unlimited version. (Incidentally, as the Download Squad post points out, that’s the same price as the much more robust OmniOutliner, so you may want to give that a look if you’re considering paying for the full version.) Got a preferred outliner you’re already using? Let’s hear about it in the comments.
Tree [via Download Squad]Windows only: Don’t mutter to yourself about how slow your drive is, benchmark it to know exactly how fast it is (or isn’t) moving. HD_Speed gives you real-time feedback on any drive’s transfer speed. All disks are not created equal, so if you have a nagging feeling that one of your flash drives is under-performing, it probably is. HD_Speed is a lightweight (82k!) portable application that monitors disk read and write speed in real time to help you assess disk performance. You can use HD_Speed on virtually any media: floppy disks, CD/DVD drives, hard disks, and flash-based media like USB drives and SD cards. While the real-time testing is useful for instant feedback, if you’d like to test for problems cropping up over time you can set the duration of the test and tell HD_Speed to log the process for later review. HD_Tune is freeware, Windows only.
HD Speed [via MakeUseOf]Windows only: Personal journal application iDailyDiary stores your daily musings in a simple interface, locked away behind a password-protected and encrypted file.
iDailyDiary is extremely easy to use—just give your first diary a name and password and start typing away—each day’s thoughts are accessible through the easy-access calendar on the bottom or the arrows on the toolbar. The diary minimizes to the system tray, requiring a password anytime the window is restored—so nobody can spy on your personal thoughts even if you step away from your workstation for a moment. iDailyDiary is a free download for Windows only.
iDailyDiaryDrop.io, the no-hassle file sharing service, opens up real-time a streaming chat view for any file you create on the site. That means you, a group of collaborators, or the whole world can talk about your stuff.
In other words, Drop.io is kinda moving into the space of real-time chat-and-file services like Campfire. Drop.io, however, has a few advantages going into that ring, as any “drop” you create and watch (by heading to drop.io/drop_name/chat, obviously replacing drop_name for your own variable) has all the same plug-ins as a standard drop space. You get a dedicated number to call and leave voicemails on (posted as MP3s), mobile phones (iPhone and G1 for now) can chat with a “stream key,” files can be emailed in, and, coming “very soon,” third-party clients like Pidgin or iChat can join in the discussion. And anyone in the room can make themselves aware of changes with a wide variety of network alerts:
One notable feature missing from Drop.io real-time chat, as compared to Campfire is, simply, search. Seeing what everyone just recently said about the big news is cool, but that link suggested yesterday is a bit more crucial. Still, if you’re looking to create a one-off or regular, password-protected chat space to discuss files, ideas, and the like, Drop.io might be a good place to try out a little real-time collaboration. drop.io streaming [Drop.io via CNET]
Founding Editor Gina Trapani runs through the Gmail Labs and user scripts that make web-based Gmail irresistable. We’ve posted our 10 Labs picks—tell us which Labs, scripts, or extensions belong on the Super-Ultimate Gmail List 4040XE.
