I will write about my experiences when time permits, but for now how about this… blogging from TextMate. That’s right, this post was written and posted from inside TM!

Here’s five web applications you can’t live without:

Sandy

Because “everyone deserves an assistant”, the clever team at Values of n give you Sandy, an electronic executive secretary to help manage your busy life.

Need to remember a meeting with your Boss? Send Sandy an email, and she will remind you when the time comes. Need to remember contact information for someone you just met? Send it to Sandy, she’ll categorize it as a contact. Want to check out a new website but don’t have time? Send the details to Sandy and she’ll check it out, summarizing the site’s recent changes.

Sandy starts each day by sending you a “Daily Digest” listing all the things you need to accomplish. She reminds you about appointments and reoccurring tasks. Sandy will keep track of books you want to read, compile a grocery list, and much more.

All of the magic is accomplished through the exchange of a few naturally worded commands sent to Sandy via email. Sandy sends reminders by email, or by SMS to your mobile phone. If you are a Twitter fan, Sandy can even take instruction in the form of a tweet.

Jott

Next on the list is Jott, a service that converts voice messages to text. The concept is simple, call Jott and say who you want to communicate with, then record your message. Jott transcribes the message and routes it to a recipient via email, or takes some predetermined action. Jott’s transcription is surprisingly accurate, just speak clearly and a little slower than usual.

Record email to your self or others, set reminders, create lists, and even link to other web services like Sandy (a powerful combination). In a bit of reverse technology, Jott recently added, the ability to call and have your favorite RSS feeds read to you… great for the drive to work.

Signing up is simple, just tell Jott what phone numbers you want to use to interact with the service and you are ready to go.

Google Reader

For information junkies, Google Reader provides a way to rapidly consume RSS feeds from your favorite web sites, weblogs, and news services. Reader aggregates and provides a “river of news” enabling you to quickly review and read the stories that interest you. Its layout is clean and simple (like every other Google service), and if you take advantage of the well thought out keyboard navigation, you can sift through hundreds of feeds in a short amount of time.

Categorize your feeds into folders, and tag with additional keywords to help you quickly spot your favorites. Share interesting or important posts with the whole world, or just a few friends. Google Reader is the cream of the crop web-based feed aggregator.

Backpack

Backpack gives you a place to put and organize your stuff. Notes, lists, ideas, images, just about anything electronic can be kept in your Backpack. Developed by the crew at 37 Signals, Backpack was one of the first in the new wave of less is better (not more) applications that does a few things really, really well, and nothing more.

Store your stuff in one place, or spread it across several pages. Create lists wherever you want, reorganize list items, and check things off when you get them done. Add a few notes or even upload files to a page so you can find them later. Backpack even lets you email content directly to a specific page using a super-secret email address.

Driven by a simple, intuitive user interface, Backpack is truly a pleasure to use. Open a free account, and create up to five pages; paid accounts let you create more.

Gmail

Suffering from ‘inbox overload’, ready to declare ‘email bankruptcy’, let Gmail handle the myriad messages that find their way to you each day. A great layout, slick interface, and of course the best search technology available make this the perfect web-based email client.

Tag messages using keywords, build filters to act on messages before they clutter up your inbox, and use keyboard navigation to read and organize your messages. Combine all that with 6GB+ of storage for free and incredibly effective spam protection, and you have an efficient solution to manage email.

Did I miss anything. What are your favorite web-based applications?

The ability to graphically browse remote servers via SSH is great, but I found out that trying to edit a remote file chokes Vim. Apparently the netrw module does not handle an SSH URI, but rather prefers SCP. So a quick nautilus-script to the rescue.

#!/usr/bin/env python
 
import os, sys
import re
import urllib
 
files = []
 
def unescape(uri):
    return re.sub(r'\s', r'\ ', urllib.unquote(uri))
 
for file in os.getenv("NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_SELECTED_URIS", None).split("\n"):
 
    if re.match(r'^file://', file):
        files.append(unescape(re.sub(r'^file://', r"", file)))
 
    elif re.match(r'^ssh://', file):
        files.append(unescape(re.sub(r'^ssh://([^/]+)(/[^/]+){2}/(.*)$', r'scp:///', file)))
 
    else:
        pass
 
if files:
    os.system("""gvim """ + " ".join(files))
 
sys.exit(0)
 

Still some work to do, but for now it’s simple and effective.

$ mkdir -m 0700 -p Maildir/{cur,new,tmp}

The -m and -p options are no-brainers, but the {cur,new,tmp} was new to me. It was easy to figure out what was going to happen… one command to create the Maildir directory, and the three subdirectories, I was simply unfamiliar with the syntax. A quick look at the Bash man page and I discovered Brace Expansion:

Brace expansion is a mechanism by which arbitrary strings may be generated.

A comma separated list between opening and closing braces is expanded by the shell including any preamble (in my case Maildir/) or postscript. Brace expansion can also generate ranges:

$ echo {1..10}
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Cool, huh?

I got to thinking about photos. I’ve been using an old 2.1-megapixel camera for the last few years, and while it’s sufficient for shooting pictures at the kid’s sporting events, it is not the best camera for capturing truly beautiful photos. It was time to update. I set out to find point-and-shoot in the 7+ megapixel range that is easy to handle, has a big zoom range, good image quality, and of course, works with Linux.

The first 2 cameras I looked at were the Canon SD-750, and Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T100. Both are capable cameras, but each had drawbacks. The SD-750 is a bit small for my liking, and has a fairly low 3x optical zoom. The DSC-T100 fairs slightly better with a 5x optical zoom, but since I prefer to stick with SD memory card compatible cameras, Sony’s offerings drop right off the list.

I stumbled across a Ubuntu forum post that mentioned the Panasonic Lumix, and after reading several reviews, I became interested in the DSC-FZ8 with 12x optical zoom. While this camera is smaller than it’s traditional SLR counterparts, it is much larger than other cameras I had considered. Big drawback. Then I discovered the DSC-TZ3.

The Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ3 is only slightly larger than the Canon and Sony cameras I tried, but actually feels much more comfortable in my hand. The DMC-TZ3 features 7.2-megapixel resolution, image stabilization, and a Leica DC lens with 10x optical zoom (15x Extended Optical Zoom). It uses SD memory and is accessible via USB as a mass storage device or PTP interface (good for Linux). The camera offers a host of other features too numerous to mention. I picked one up at Amazon for $329 (including a free 1GB High-speed SD memory card).

Impressions so far: Very nice camera. Easy to use; takes vivid, colorful photos; awesome zoom, with incredibly effective image stabilization; very fast burst mode (3fps) for action shots.

Drawbacks: Linux support (libgphoto as Panasonic DMC-FZ20) is so-so; access is best via PTP. Picasa (my preferred photo management application) does not capture EXIF information, but fortunately, Digikam does. So for now I will use Digikam to unload into my Picasa photo folders… small price to pay I guess.

I’ll post samples soon.

After mixing a batch, and tearing up an old cotton T-shirt, I gave it a try. At first pass, the streaking was minimized, but still there. I applied a more generous amount of solution to the cloth and went at it again. After some light rubbing the streaks were gone, and the display is good as new.

There is a better way. Select the first message in the series and then hold the Shift key while clicking the check box next to the last message. This combination selects all messages between the first and last.

Although this is a standard UI behavior, I have been unable to locate any documentation that mentions this method of selecting messages is available. I wish that Shift + x worked the same way.

When I say simple, I mean one line of code:

location.href = location.href.replace(/^http:/, 'https:');

This script ensures your Gmail session using Firefox takes place over a secure HTTP connection providing a reasonable amount of protection from eavesdropping and other shenanigans. Add other domains for which both a http and https URI exist and Firefox will always use https. For example, I added:

http://www.google.com/calendar/*

http://docs.google.com/


http://docs.google.com/*

Now all Google Calendar and Google Docs & Spreadsheets sessions are secure. But don’t stop there, any domain will work… not just the Google properties.

Download links: Greasemonkey (install this first), GMailSecure