Chrome Week : Our favourite Chrome apps (Part 2)

Apr 14

 We already told you about some of our favourite Chrome apps in the first post of this series, So this time its time to dive a little deeper into applications/extensions that will actually help you to do things for which you otherwise would need an application. We have broken them down into some easy categories for you to follow.

Entertainment.

I think the days we actually stored music on our devices and played back those files are as obsolete as shouting “Put the needle on the Record” at some teen playing a DJ gig with his laptop. Since we are talking about Chrome extensions here, I can only assume that you have a connection to the internet all the time.  With so many free audio streaming services available the only thing that is keeping you from playing the latest Shakira album over and over (and over) is your bandwidth cap.  Some of the Chrome extensions we love here are  Spotify and Soundcloud. Sure you get some commercials when you use the free service, but that’s just like real actual radio. If you should be in the business of running your own PLEX server at home and would like to stream your (audio and video) content on your Chromebook ? Try the Plex app. (But do make sure that you open up the right ports on your router if you want to access your server from the outside).

Production.

But what about when listening to music is not enough ? There are a couple of great apps out there that will actually help you MAKE some music. From simple voice recording with “Voice Recorder” to rather complex audio mixing with Audiotool. Want to annoy your friends by badly mixing 2 tracks together using an online DJ mixer ? Try Until AM.

Connecting to other machines.

But what if your Chromebook isn’t enough and you need to connect to other systems and devices ? When you need an SSH session to your Linux machine (or your mac) at home “Secure Shell” is without a shadow of a doubt one of our favourite applications. It reminds us of the popular Windows terminal client PUTTY only 4983 times better. It remembers sessions you have saved to your servers across multiple sessions of Chrome, so you always have your connections at your fingertips. If you need to go a step further and dive into the graphical side of things, you might want to try “Chrome RDP” to connect to your  machines running the Remote Desktop Protocol. 

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Productivity.

Ok, The only reason you bought a Chromebook (or use Chrome) is so you can spend hours on 9gag and Reddit. So its a good thing we even dug up some productivity apps. Outlook.com might be a little bit of blasphemy in this Gmail centered environment, but the Chrome app DOES get you to your mailbox environment even though its not controlled by the “Big Bad G”. Another pretty simple Chrome app we found is called Workflow. Workflow lets you organise your tasks into lists and sub-lists. It’s more like a text based mindmap but it does give you a pretty good overview of what you are working on and what subtasks are involved. Speaking of “simple” and “text based” we found “Writer” to be a very nice distraction free text editor for writing up text without being distracted. We love the “black and green” terminal like interface, especially if you run the Chrome app fullscreen. Writer lets you download your writings to different formats or saves them to the cloud so you can continue editing them in another chrome browser.

And finally

With all the commotion about the Heartbleed exploit .. Install the Lastpass Chrome app and sort out your passwords once and for all.

 

 

Links.

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Chrome Week : Our favourite Chrome extensions (part 1)

Apr 13

When you think of it “having applications inside of a browser” might seem like a bizarre idea. However this IS the case when you take a look at Chrome and the Chrome OS. All chrome applications that are available in the store (and that turn your Chromebook from a porn-browsing paperweight into an actual “computer”) are also perfectly usable inside the chrome browser.
The great thing about these chrome extensions (or chrome apps) is that they are highly cross platform. Whether you are running chrome on your Chromebook, your windows or Linux machine or even on your mac : Chrome apps will look the same everywhere. The also have vastly the same possibilities (and limitations) everywhere. Most of them might not be usable if you are offline, but most of them do simulate a full fledged application (where it not that you KNOW they are running inside a browser). As we hop from OS to OS we write sweet love poems to the following list of chrome-apps for giving us a consistent and pleasurable experience .

Feedly
Some chrome apps are just links to web services, and with the Feedly chrome-app there is not getting around it. Its basically a link to the web based interface of Feedly. The good thing is : Feedly looks good, its fast and it works. The Chrome app takes care of logging in for you and BOOM you are reading through your 2908383098 unread articles. Good luck with that.

chrome-extensions

Pocket
“Oh – Ah” .. I want to read that later ! That’s something we scream about 4 times a day when we tread upon an interesting article that is just to long to read at that very moment. I hit the “save to pocket” icon in my top tool bar and the article gets saved (with pictures and everything) to Pocket. Whenever I feel that i’m browsing around aimlessly ( Facebook – newspaper- Reddit – 9gag – newspaper …) I punch up the Pocket extension and browse through the articles I saved earlier. Pocket also has a great mobile app that lets you read the articles offline on your mobile device AND have the articles read out to you with a text-to-speech function that sounds like Stephen Hawkings hot sister.

Evernote
Here we can only say one thing : This is without a shadow of a doubt one of the very best Evernote clients for Linux. By the time that our popular note taking application to release a native Linux application, pigs will have colonised other planets. There have been some attempts by open source beard bearing goblins to make a client that interfaces with Evernotes API on Linux .. but the chrome app takes the cake. Sure it won’t work offline, but it IS the cleanest way to connect to your web based version of Evernote on ANY OS.

Google Drive
Why would one need Google drive when one has Dropbox or even the locally installed Google Drive client ? The answer is simple. This extension does not drop the Google files into your desktop ecosystem .. this IS the Google desktop ecosystem. Not only do you get easy access top all the files you have stored on Google Drive , you can also instantly access them in the very same window, regardless of your OS. Whether you would like to write a love poem to Miley Cirus, do a spreadsheet on how you will managed your finances one you marry her .. or draft up a slideshow on why a care-bear should be featured as your upcoming company logo .. its all right there in ONE window.

Google Calendar
Without my calendar I am lost. Browsing over to my calendar in the cloud and logging in to enter an appointment ? I’m too lazy. The Google calendar extension gives you your calendar in a window at the click of a mouse. I love having the short cut to this Google app (Because that is what it is) on my desktop is just too darn handy.

Google Mail
In know I might be boring you to death with Chrome apps for “standard” Google services .. but they ARE the ones that do what they do just right. The cool thing is that these (native) Chrome apps do give you the luxury of a standard desktop applications like notifications and the ability to become the “default’ application for handling any email shortcuts.

Gliffy
Visio. Microsofts ‘Miauw Du Chat’ when it comes to drawing up complicated flowcharts or organisational charts that feature your name waaaay down the bottom. There aren’t a lot of replacements from this app in the cross platform world. Good thing that there is Gliffy, Gliffy is free and has all kinds of nice flowcharts and funky network diagrams for you to play with. Gliffy even lets you store them on line (all though the number of Flowcharts you can save is limited in the free version).

Mindmeister
We all have brilliant idea’s. We just don’t have the brilliant idea to stuff something (like a piece of paper or a pencil) in our pocket to write them down. That’s not such a bad thing because pen and paper is a pretty shitty way to manage an entire brain fart. You want to be able to draw branches and sub-branches. You want to organise your thoughts into categories and subcategories . You want to do this anywhere and preferably .. for free. Enter Mindmeister. A great online mindmapping tool that works on any device that comes with a browser (except the Nintendo Wii). Aside from having native clients on IOS and Android that sync with the cloud, Mindmeister now also has its own chrome app. You can only store one or two acts of brilliancy online in the free version .. but nobody ever said that you should have just ONE brain dump per document.

any.do
The one thing you have to DO with TO-DO lists is keep track of your to-do’s. If your to-do’s are stored on different devices, one of the things you need to do is keep them in sync. Any.do does sport a native IOS and Android client that syncs your Todo list with the cloud. The great thing about its chrome app is that it creates a nice pop-up window that you can set to the side and keep track of your to-do list that way. Any-do is as polished as a native app and looks identical on every os. Love it !

Links.

There are of course more Chrome apps out there that might carry your favour. Tell us about them in our comments section.

 

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Any.do : Slider friendly todo application keeping you on your toes.

May 23

You have heard me tout praise about the wonderful todo application Wünderlist before. This nice looking todo application helps you keep track of items to procrastinate, while they are easily cataloged in lists and available on your various mobile devices. Sure : Wunderlist comes with an IOS app, a Chrome extension and a web interface. However lately the Android version of Wunderlist seriously got on my nerves. A known bug (even with the current version) makes the application start “flashing” on and off, if you accidentally rotate the screen when the app is open. Since I was not in the mood to have a stroboscopic todo list.. it was time to jump ship.

The requirements were simple : A free application, with clients on the 2 biggest mobile platforms, a free synchronization option, to-do lists, browser extensions for Chrome or Firefox and a good old web interface : Slider friendly. 

Remember the Milk came close, but you can only sync your items once every 24 hours when you use the free account. Hopping from device to device every 3 minutes does not make that a good thing. So ANY.DO is the great alternative. Its free, has a very VERY good looking IOS and Android application and a killer chrome extension that lets you add pages to your todo list, but also manage your entire todo environment just from the corner of your address bar. 

So .. if you want to cross-platform slide your way out of procrastination, we highly recommend you give any.do a try.

Links : any.do.

What is YOUR favorite todo app ? Tell us in the comments section.

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The last item on your current todo list : Install todo.txt

Feb 20

Yes, because, quite frankly, that will be the end of your current todo application. Wether or not you are using a modern day todo list like Wunderlist on your smartphone or you are writing down your items on a running Cheeta (It takes a while but it’s a great workout  ) you might just switch to todo.txt after you read this post.

Why ? Because todo.txt is a slider friendly way of keeping track of things. They offer an an Android version (1,47 $) and an Ios version (1.99) that will give you a nice mobile application, but the kicker of this service is, they also offer a command line interface ! Straight from your favorite command line (if you are using Linux of course) you can manage and update your todo list from anywhere. The command line script can be downloaded for free. 

 

This “compatiblity” is because todo.txt stores your todo list in a textfile, a human readable textfile that can also be opened using just any text editor, AND you can actually read and understand what it says.

Todo.txt is pretty brilliant in its simplicity. I love adding another command line app to our list, but a little disappointed these guys don’t have a free app in the stores. (Like for example Wunderlist). Todo.txt also lacks a web interface (bit of a bummer there) but overall offers their users great value for money. You might want to try it out : Its explained in this video here 

Links : todo.txt

How do YOU keep track of your todo’s ? Tell us in the comments section.

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Getting things done with Wunderlist.

Sep 24

If procrastination was considered an artform, I think us ADD geeks would be considered the very masters. Only we would not have started our artform yett, we would do so tomorrow. First we need to see this video abou this cat on Youtube.

As a remedy to this “affliction” we are blessed with, information overloaded techno-philes with the attention span of a butterfly tend to lean towards guru’s like David Allen and his famous ‘Getting things done’ techniques , or, if we could spare the time, listen to Merlin Man rave about his “42 folders”. Having been at both points I can only conclude that the rantings of these “superheroes of productivity” depress me to no end. I feel like i’m NOT getting things done and for the life of me can’t come up with 42 folders to put those things in.

And yet, during many times my mind is overloaded with tasks, idea’s, things I should not forget, Issues that have been sitting on the back burner for so many months. So “getting those things done” would be nice. If only to organize the myriad of NEW tasks and idea’s, random thoughts and more that I come up with to “drown out” the nagging backlog of what I still need to do.

So here comes rat-hole number 2 : Looking for a “system”. I have seen geeks depart in the valley of the “GTD’s” (*getting things done) in the quest for a perfect ‘organisational system” . I have yet to see one of them return. Looking for a GTD system and tweaking it can be some time consuming it becomes an activity, i dare say and “obsession” all on its own. Defeating the purpose of the system. You get nothing done because you are still tweaking your GTD system.

I’ll spare you that one way trip into that black hole by sharing what I found this week.  The need I have is as follows. I need to keep track of several (many) issues for work, some of them done by others, some of them need to be done by me. I need to keep track of those issues, make notes, follow them up etc. Untill now I had just used Outlook (of all things) and some pathetic attempt at folders to do so. I must say .. it was not a success. Why ? Because Outlook (and the folders) are in my office and I am on the road. Item number 2 brought me closer to my goal : 2do is an App for the iPad that consists of a fairly well featured todo list that let me follow up on all of those things. Allthough there was no link between “2do” and my Outlook, I played “biorobot” and typed over all the things I needed to remember. But 2do was flawed in several ways. Only available on the Ipad and with no “cloud functions”, 2do is an insult to a cross platform slider.

Enter my Solution : Wunderlist : A very well built 2do application that lets you add, categorizdddddde organise and liquidise ( lets mix up the usual adjectives here) your tasks. It looks pretty good , is fairly stable but there IS one thing that lets it rise to the very top of the list : Its cross platform and “cloud bounces” your data up and down to the several devices you have. Did I say several ? That is because I meant it. Available for the Ipad, Iphone/ipod and the Android it helps me “get things done'” in ways David Allen could never do. I love the layout, the reminders, and the sheer fact that I can punch up a Todo list on my phone and have it available everywhere. With desktop versions for Windows, OSX, Linux (only 32 bits) , and the entire range of mobile devices, I cannot hide behind the excuse that my current device has no access to the interface of my 2do list. (When everything fails and i’m stuck in a Cave with a Thin client, I can still use the web)

So give it a spin and … Get things done :   http://www.6wunderkinder.com/wunderlist/  Oh btw : It IS of course … Free.

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