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March 2004 - Posts

Wednesday, March 31, 2004 5:22 AM

A new way to look at news

Found this via Ole's Critical Section. A "spatial news map" derived from Google data. Critical Section - Tuesday, March 30, 2004 10:44 PM Okay, now this is cool ! I don't even know how to explain it - it is a spatial "newsmap" constructed from Google
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Tuesday, March 30, 2004 7:35 PM

Final Four and MLB schedules for Outlook

Calendar Updates has posted the NCAA Men's Final Four schedule for Outlook as well as the complete Major League Baseball season schedule. Download your favorite team(s) today.
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Tuesday, March 30, 2004 5:47 AM

Spyware Blaster 3.0 - great protection

This is an essential piece of your tool kit for keeping malware off of your PC. Download it, install it, and know you have another layer of defense in place. Spyware Blaster is free for individual use. SpywareBlaster: "Spyware, adware, browser hijackers,
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Monday, March 29, 2004 4:35 PM

ActiveWords launches a discussion forum

The good folks at ActiveWords, in a blazing display of customer responsiveness, have launched a discussion forum for their user community. A number of customers had asked in the Yahoo Group, which suffered from all of that medium's shortcomings, for a
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Monday, March 29, 2004 1:36 PM

Note to self... literally

"Note to self..." was a favorite phrase not too long ago. Now, thanks to FutureMe.org, you have a way of sending a note to yourself at any time in the future you'd like. This is a fun idea - an e-mail to your future self, delivered whenever you'd like.
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Monday, March 29, 2004 5:39 AM

Alternative energy - feline power

Thanks Tariq! A good one for a Monday morning. Tangible Thoughts got this in the mail. Whoever originally wrote this I salute you. > A UK magazine recently held a competition, inviting its readers submit new > high fundamental scientific theories on ANY
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Sunday, March 28, 2004 7:34 AM

Audible.com has the 9/11 hearings available for free

I've been listening to the testimony before the 9/11 Commission all weekend thanks to Audible.com. They have made this important slice of current history available free of charge to all. If you don't currently subscribe to Audible.com, you can listen
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Saturday, March 27, 2004 6:53 AM

Basecamp - "blog simple" project management on the web

I discovered this web-based project management tool a few weeks ago and have been dabbling with it in preparation for a collaborative project to develop a book proposal. Basecamp is deceptively simple to use (very easy but a ton of features) and can actually
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Friday, March 26, 2004 5:13 PM

The GIMP turns 2.0

The GIMP - The GNU Image Manipulation Program In a world where it's often said there's no free lunch, it's reassuring to share news like this. Linux users and open source devotees are quite familiar with The GIMP, an openly distributed image composition
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Friday, March 26, 2004 9:16 AM

Axsoft is offering a free 3-user license for their bug-tracker

Axosoft: Free 3-User Offer Axosoft is offering bloggers a free 3-user version of their .NET & SQL based OnTime defect tracking software ( bug tracking software). For more information, visit http://www.axosoft.com/Free3UserOffer.htm . An interesting way
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Friday, March 26, 2004 8:49 AM

Blogjet Update - getting better with each release

The latest release of Blogjet is now available. New keyboard commands, support for multiple categories per post, and an option to delete drafts after posting are the highlights. Dmitry, the developer, suggested in a recent post on the forum that he's
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Friday, March 26, 2004 6:29 AM

Save 40% on Office 2003 books at Amazon

I'm not sure how long this offer lasts so check it out as soon as you can. A good selection of Office 2003 books are now 40% off at amazon.com. Use this URL: http://www.amazon.com/office2003 Found in today's "Microsoft This Week" newsletter (03/25/04)
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Thursday, March 25, 2004 5:22 PM

Using Smart Tags in Word

Todays issue of the Microsoft Insider Update newsletter has a great tip on Smart Tags and how to use them in Word. Microsoft Office Assistance: About smart tags You can subscribe to the newsletter here .
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Thursday, March 25, 2004 6:04 AM

WIRED: RSS is everywhere

WIRED has a nice article about RSS and it's increasing visibility and usefuleness. The article includes the following of list of tools including two of my favorites: NewsGator and Bloglines. Found at Gizmodo who, by the way, just added XML, RDF, and Atom
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Wednesday, March 24, 2004 6:34 AM

OneNote & Onfolio

I do most of my writing these days in OneNote. It's always available with the click of a mouse or by invoking an ActiveWord . Whenever I'm on a conference call, attending a webinar, or sitting in a meeting, I have a SideNote open to capture anything interesting.
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Tuesday, March 23, 2004 9:07 AM

Critical Onfolio update available

A bug has been discovered in Onfolio 1.0 that can lead to corruption of the Collection (.cfs) files. Onfolio has released version 1.0.1 and is urging all users to update immediately. This isn't unusual with a 1.0 release although the severity of the problem
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Tuesday, March 23, 2004 6:28 AM

So many toolbars, so little time

Dogpile Toolbar offers, among other niceties, a scrolling ticker of RSS feeds. From their site: Add Dogpile to your browser and search from anywhere on the Web. The FREE Dogpile Search Toolbar installs in seconds and includes: Web Search - Find the best
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Tuesday, March 23, 2004 5:51 AM

NCAA Sweet Sixteen brackets for Outlook now online

The folks at Calendar Updates have posted the Sweet Sixteen schedules for the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament. Go get 'em! (And go Syracuse!) Calendar Updates - Free Holiday and Sport Team Schedules for Microsoft Outlook
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Monday, March 22, 2004 7:28 PM

NCAA Tournament brackets - how to pick the winners

Here's a timeless set of tips for filling out your NCAA brackets. Wish I'd found this sooner. I might not have picked Kentucky to make it all the way to the final game... Oh well, my brackets might be busted but Syracuse is back in the Sweet Sixteen,
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Monday, March 22, 2004 12:07 PM

Chapura syncs high-end Palm units with Outlook

Just received ths notice from Chapura which will be of real interest to owners of the high-end Palm Tungsten T-3 and E devices: Chapura today announced that PocketMirror Professional XT 3.1.7 is available to synchronize Tungsten T3 and Tungsten E devices
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Sunday, March 21, 2004 9:25 AM

Google me this Bartman

So true, so true. Thanks to Stephen Toub for posting this. Google before asking questions Found this on the web this morning... it's almost scary how true this really is. I almost never ask a question these days before first doing a well-crafted google
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Sunday, March 21, 2004 8:50 AM

Blurring the lines

I've often noticed a tendency for people to compare new and innovative tools to something they already use as a way to define the new product. It's human nature, I suppose, to refer to the known when describing the unknown. In the past few weeks, this
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Saturday, March 20, 2004 6:26 AM

Outlook NCAA Brackets for Round Two

The folks at Calendar Updates have posted the second round schedules for the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament. Go get 'em! (And go Syracuse!) Calendar Updates - Free Holiday and Sport Team Schedules for Microsoft Outlook
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Friday, March 19, 2004 3:22 PM

Walter Mossberg likes Onfolio

There's a reason Walter Mossberg is the most widely read and most influential writer about technology. The man is good! He's able to get more information into fewer words than any other technology writer I read. In Thursday's Wall St. Journal, Mossberg
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Friday, March 19, 2004 11:52 AM

Grateful Dead and iTunes Music Store near a deal!

OK all you Deadheads out there (I know you're out there). How cool is this? Every show, every note... wow! http://www.macminute.com/2004/03/19/gratefuldead The Grateful Dead are finalizing a deal with Apple to make every live note they've ever recorded
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Thursday, March 18, 2004 6:15 PM

Plaxo responds to privacy & security concerns

I posted not too long ago about the Plaxo contact management system and included it in my equation for maximum productivity . In the comments to that post, a couple of readers raised issues about security, privacy, and just how Plaxo's business model
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Thursday, March 18, 2004 7:44 AM

Jeff Sandquist's Seven Day Rule for Software

Jeff Sandquist - a Microsoft Evangelist - has a seven day rule for software junkies. His crieteria for what constitutes a "keeper" is eerily like my own. It's like the guy was reading my mind ;^) Jeff Sandquist - Microsoft Evangelist - If its good enough
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Wednesday, March 17, 2004 8:20 PM

David Allen blogs!

A tip 'o the hat this St. Patrick's day to Buzz and Scoble who have apparently convinced productivity guru David Allen that he really needs a blog! If you've been reading here for any time at all, you know that I am a total believer in Allen's Getting
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Wednesday, March 17, 2004 6:26 PM

Lookout for Outlook Update

Lookout has proven to be an indispensable add-in for Outlook (see my earlier posts) adding Google-like search and allowing me to find anything in Outlook in less than a second. A new beta was released today with a number of performance enhancements and
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Wednesday, March 17, 2004 6:19 AM

Getting Things Done with Onfolio

If you read more than a couple of blogs, by now you've heard something about Onfolio , a new search information management tool released Monday with huge fanfare on the web and in the blogosphere. Of course, I found out about it from Scoble on Sunday
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Tuesday, March 16, 2004 6:35 AM

Bruce Schneier's Crypto-Gram now has an RSS feed!

If you have any interest in information security you've got to be reading Schneier. Now you can read him in your RSS aggregator. Schneier.com: Crypto-Gram: March 15, 2004 NEW: Crypto-Gram now has an RSS feed: Anyone who's having trouble getting Crypto-Gram
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Tuesday, March 16, 2004 6:18 AM

Customer Evangelists on blog tour

Ben McConell and Jackie Huba, are on a blogging tour. Today's stop is at: Brand Autopsy: Welcome - Creating Customer Evangelists Yesterday, they stopped by BusinessPundit where you'll find a very nice review of their book, "Creating Customer Evangelists"
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Tuesday, March 16, 2004 5:59 AM

Blogjet update - great new features

Amazing what happens when you get busy. I lost track of the latest releases of BlogJet while covering some other topics and stopped by their forum to see if anything was new. All I can say is "wow!" once again. In two new beta releases, this tool has
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Monday, March 15, 2004 11:16 AM

More NCAA bracket fun

Mindjet has released their MindManager mind map containing the field of 64. Even if you do not have a copy of MindManager X5 Pro, you can still play by downloading and trying their 21-day free trial. Yeah, it's a marketing ploy, but who cares? It's great
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Monday, March 15, 2004 10:53 AM

NCAA schedule in your Outlook calendar

The good folks at Calendar Updates have made the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament schedule available for download. As with all of their Outlook calendar downloads, this is free. Each calendar item does include links for buying stuff as well as additional
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Monday, March 15, 2004 5:28 AM

Natara Bonsai - much more than an outliner

PDA 24-7 has just posted my review of Natar Bonsai for Palm OS and Windows. Bonsai is a powerful and versatile application that is equally adept a managing simple lists and textual outlines and complex projects. The new version enhances almost every aspect
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Sunday, March 14, 2004 7:35 PM

Looking for the NCAA brackets?

ESPN.com has the men's and women's NCAA brackets in GIF and PDF formats. Go get 'em and may the best team win! ESPN.com: 04 NCAA Tournament
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Sunday, March 14, 2004 12:19 PM

Happy Birthday Albert

It's Albert Einstein's birthday today. One of my true heroes.
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Sunday, March 14, 2004 7:22 AM

Mayfield: Morph your news reading

Ross Mayfield is on my daily "must read list". Here's a particularly eloquent quote about morphing your news reading to give you the best balance of coverage about what's going in the world. Serendipity - I was just having this discussion with one of
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Sunday, March 14, 2004 7:01 AM

Seth Godin gets RSS religion...

...and the blogging and aggregating world will never be the same now that the "big sneezer" himself has gotten on board. ;^) Seth's Blog: I've made the switch to RSS I've made the switch to RSS Which means it's going to be hard to get me to shut up for
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Saturday, March 13, 2004 2:22 PM

SpamBayes for Outlook - separate the SPAM from the ham

In my recent "equation for productivity" I included a link for SpamBayes. This is an open source project that uses a Bayesian algorithm to determine whether a message is spam or ham (SpamBayes-speak for a potentially good message) by scanning the entire
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Saturday, March 13, 2004 8:24 AM

Have you gotten your good news today?

Here's my Saturday silly item. You should find at least one thing to make you laugh at this increasingly popular spoof of Google and USA Today. Goodle Good News
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Saturday, March 13, 2004 6:29 AM

This might be Anagram for the Palm

I just found Inbox for Palm OS on the terrific PDA 24/7 web site. This looks to be an Anagram -like tool for the Palm OS. It lets you swipe across any text selection and then tell the Palm what kind of entry (Datebook, To Do, Calendar) you want to create
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Friday, March 12, 2004 4:34 PM

Crabby Office Lady on OneNote

Crabby Office Lady loves OneNote. Click below to learn why (hint: it has somthing to do with productivity). Microsoft Office Assistance: Crabby introduces you to OneNote I'm in love. I mean all-out, I-want-to-be-with-you-all-the-time kind of love. The
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Friday, March 12, 2004 6:47 AM

Plaxo takes the drudgery out of contact management

I must admit I've resisted the Plaxo contact manager updates I receive daily for a long time. I've tried a number of services that promise to keep my contact list up-to-date in the past and most of them are either so obnoxiously intrusive that I delete
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Thursday, March 11, 2004 5:55 AM

Get Anagram and stop the copy-paste twitch

In yesterday's post, I built an equation for maximum Outlook productivity. I got a lot of feedback and it's clear that many of the tools I mentioned are quite familiar to at least some fo you. The biggest unknown in my arithmetic seems to be Anagram -
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Wednesday, March 10, 2004 6:39 AM

My equation for serious Outlook productivity

Outlook's extensibility is one of it's great strengths and the 2003 version is the best yet at supporting a large number of add-ins. Being the software addict I have admitted I am, my Outlook installation includes a carefully selected group of add-ins
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Tuesday, March 09, 2004 6:11 PM

Getting Things Done add-in for Outlook 2003

NetCentrics has at last released a version of the Getting Things Done add-in for Outlook that is compatible with Outlook 2003. This add-in provides a toolbar, custom views, and other enhancements to facilitate using David Allen's Getting Things Done productivity
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Monday, March 08, 2004 4:50 PM

NCAA Tourney brackets in a Mind Map!

This may be the coolest promotion I've ever seen. Mindjet , the publishers of MindManager X5 Pro, the mind mapping tool I use, sent me an e-mail today offering a version of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament brackets rendered as a mind map. What a smart
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Sunday, March 07, 2004 4:14 PM

XP SP2 online training resource for developers

A good article over at Ars Technica talks about the changes the forthcoming XP SP2 package will create and a reference for developers to learn more about what is changing. Despite the title of the article, it's not just insecure applications that will
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Sunday, March 07, 2004 7:10 AM

Wikipedia - a "copyleft" encyclopedia you can help build

Wikipedia is a terrific community project to create a free encyclopedia on the web using a Wiki framework. There are thousands of articles on the site which is is very well organized and easily searched. You can sign up to join the community and share
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Saturday, March 06, 2004 6:50 AM

Weird Latin Phrase game

Saturday is a good day for some silly stuff. I think I'll make it a tradition to post about something completely goofy that makes me chuckle every Saturday. Building a tradition, like journeys, begins with a single step... er, post, so here goes: Postatem
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Saturday, March 06, 2004 6:13 AM

Antivirus must be free?

When I first read the title of Robert Vamosi's latest at AnchorDesk, I thought "yeah right... that's gonna happen". He makes some excellent points though. The virus outbreaks and cred-wars we've seen tell me that the problem is only going to get worse
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Friday, March 05, 2004 6:29 AM

InfoSpace toolbar will display RSS and Atom feeds in ticker

eWeek reports that InfoSpace is upping the ante in the toolbar wars. Their newest version will add the capability to display RSS and Atom feeds in a ticker display alongside stock prices. This follows Yahoo's recent release of an RSS module for their
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Thursday, March 04, 2004 3:13 PM

NNTP posting add-in for NewsGator released

One step closer to perfection. Now I can finally post to my newsgroups right from inside Outlook! No more launching Outlook Express. (And the crowd goes wild...). Seriously. Add author Matt Hawley to my list of Outlook heroes. Excentrics World NNTP NewsGator
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Wednesday, March 03, 2004 8:48 PM

Harvard announces free tutition for students from families earning under $40K

Imagine the impact of this a decade from now. Now imagine how that multiplies when other top-notch, well-endowed schools like Stanford, Cernegie-Mellon, MIT, etc. ante up to Harvard's challenge. Boston.com / News / Education / Higher education / Harvard
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Wednesday, March 03, 2004 8:38 PM

Amazon offering RSS feeds

Scoble reports that Amazon recently turned on a whole bunch of RSS Feeds .
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Wednesday, March 03, 2004 6:47 PM

Neil Young: Internet Entrepreneur?

Neil Young has, like Miles Davis and David Bowie, reinvented himself so many times that you need a scorecard to keep up with his persona du jour. He's been a long time favorite in my home and my wife has absolutely flipped over his latest effort - a story
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Tuesday, March 02, 2004 8:36 PM

Time's running out on the free ActiveWords offer

Just a reminder. If you haven't taken advantage of the free copy of ActiveWords SE being offered by The Office Letter, you have until March 15th. Chris and I have posted about this incredible productivity booster and Chris recently awarded ActiveWords
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Tuesday, March 02, 2004 9:08 AM

How to succeed in a crowded product category

I've written a review for PDA 24-7 about the latest launcher application for Palm OS 5 devices. AppShelf is the newest creation of Hiroaki Imazeki, a truly gifted developer in Japan. Even though the launcher space is pretty crowded, Imazeki has managed
Posted by marc | 0 Comments
Monday, March 01, 2004 6:33 AM

Queryster changes the rules for search on the web

Forgive them the "ster" at the end of their name. Querystery is a sort of search aggregator that can, very quickly, provide you with a direct comparison of what results you'll find at the most popular search engines. And it does this with an unusual graphic
Posted by marc | 0 Comments