Tools
PollDaddy Integration
Mar 16th
Hey all, this is a test poll from PollDaddy.
Which of these do you think has been game-changing?
( surveys)
Changing my Default Browser
Mar 16th
Today, I decided to make Google Chrome my default browser and not use Firefox at all. Let’s see how many days this will last. I’m already missing Adblock 
.
The Google Friend Connect Experiment
Mar 12th
I’ve added Google Friend Connect support to this site. Just click on the ‘Join’ button on the Google Friend Connect panel on the left column of this page. And let’s see how that works!
Syncplicity – Simply Awesome
Mar 12th
The other day, I had blogged about Live Mesh and how useful it is. But just today, I replaced Mesh with Syncplicity. The best part is the application integration it has with Google Docs, Scribd, Piknik and Zoho Docs. Of course, it is not without glitches. It needs DotNet3.5, and it really takes a long time to synchronize folders. Give it a go if you have the time. Updates later!
Tools I use (and would recommend) – Part 2
Mar 12th
Techmeme and Live Mesh covered here.
Google Desktop (without the gadgets) – I always had problems with GD whenever I had installed it. I would use it for a few days, realize what a memory hog it was and uninstall it. I realized the real memory hogs were the desktop gadgets and not the background Google desktop process itself. The only bad part about GD is the indexing. I had some 50+ GB of data on my work laptop and it took GD almost 3 days to complete indexing. But now, I can’t live without Google Desktop. I’ve usedLaunchy for launching my files, applications etc. but the Google Desktop search bar is just super cool. I can use it to launch programs, search my desktop and even search the web.
Windows Live Writer is for all the blogging fanatics. If you ever felt the need to blog from your desktop, without taking the pains to use a browser to login to your blogger account, upload images and then publish the posts, then you definitely need Windows Live Writer. And from this post, you very well know how yours truly posts his blogs.
If you are a heavy user of Outlook Calendar and Google Calendar, you need Google Calendar Sync. The name says it all.
Talking about Multimedia players, I know everyone’s favorite is VLC or Media Player Classic. But my favorite is The KMPlayer. Use it and tell me if it isn’t better than VLC. With an active forum and active development community, KMPlayer is by far the best multimedia player I’ve seen.
Paint.NET – Do you need to crop a photo, or do you want to resize, or may be save a screenshot that you just took? Paint.NET is the best way to do it. MSPaint doesn’t have the quality and the images saved look grainy. Use Paint.NET to add that professional look to your edited photos.
Talking about web apps, I guess everybody’s favorite mail client is Gmail. Of course, even mine, but the best part of Gmail I like is Gmail Labs. As of today, I have 15 lab features enabled and I use everyone of them. My favorites are Offline Gmail, Right-side Chat, Mark as Read button, Tasks, Quick Links (looks like, I like all the labs features I’ve enabled 
). In fact, I stopped using Google Talk desktop client (do you know it’s a drain on your system memory?) and started using Gmail chat.
Buxfer – my life saver. The best expense management application (at least, according to me). I’ve tried Mint but I’ve never liked the sharing of my bank, credit card credentials with Mint. It’s like giving away your identity. Buxfer on the other hand, lets you import statements without actually giving your bank credentials.
Google Reader – when not immeresed in Techmeme, I use reader. The new UI tweaks are really good!
Google Docs – my favorite destination for spreadsheets, forms and documents.
Flickr – Somehow, Picasa doesn’t seem so refined in terms of UI. Also, in terms of storage space. On the other hand, Flickr gives you a 100MB per month which I think is pretty reasonable. And the Flickr UI – just amazing.
Firefox Add-ons – Needless to say, Firefox is my default browser. I use Chrome for quick browsing. My favorite Firefox add-ons – Adblock Plus, DownThemAll,Download Statusbar, Screengrab and Xmarks.
Let me know your favorites and if there are any errors!
Tools I use (and would recommend)
Mar 12th
Caution: This post is hyperlink-heavy!
Every single day, my day starts with my iPhone (I was a proud owner of AT&T Tilt also called HTC Tytn II, before finally giving in to the iPhone craze; more about my sad short experience with the Tilt later). First I check my personal mail (Gmail IMAP setup on my iPhone). Next, I check Google Finance and I curse Google for not coming up with a Google Finance iPhone app (or even a custom iPhone website). Then, I check my favorite site – Techmeme.
I don’t know why but every single day, just before loading Techmeme on my iPhone, there is this anticipation and eagerness. Is there a new web 2.0 application? Did Google finally come up with GDrive? Did Firefox release another beta for 3.1? Did Chrome finally introduce extensions? Did Walt Mossberg just finish reviewing a new product? Did Palm Treo get released? Techmeme just delivers and I greedily absorb every bit of news. You see, Techmeme is a technology news aggregator. You too can suggest (using Twitter) something that you just noticed on the web to Techmeme (like I do sometimes).
Up next is Windows Live Mesh. Did you ever save a phone number or email address to your work computer and realized at home you don’t have that information with you? May be you didn’t, but I always faced that problem. But now I don’t, thanks to Mesh. Mesh lets you create cloud based storage folders and they show up in Windows as blue colored folders.
You just add files to this folder on Windows and there is a Mesh Monitor that runs in the background to upload the files to the cloud (you get cloud space up to 5GB). The best part is you can connect multiple devices to the mesh, so your information is synchronized across devices. Even better, there is a web interface where you can download your documents and you access this from any browser and even from your iPhone.
More in the next post. Do you have any alternatives for these? Let me know.