Category: Productivity

Google has published an improved help center which gives information on advanced search operators such as "link:":

Google supports several advanced operators, which are query words that have special meaning to Google. Typically these operators modify the search in some way, or even tell Google to do a totally different type of search. For instance, "link:" is a special operator, and the query [link:www.google.com] doesn't do a normal search but instead finds all web pages that have links to www.google.com.

This is helpful if you do day-to-day SEO analysis. Read full article: Advanced Google Search Operators

You may not use them all, but there are some great ideas for email filters here:

I receive hundreds of email messages a day, but only a couple dozen actually make it into my inbox. Thanks to the automated power of full-strength email filters, just the messsages that are important enough to deal with catch my attention when I'm busy.

Read filter details at Geek to Live: Essential email filters

A great Gmail tip:

In Gmail, I keep finding it really useful to hit the Contacts button on the left side navigation area, and then click on a contact’s name. What comes back is a little contact card area up top (complete with picture, if they’re a Gmail user, or if you’ve bothered to add pictures to your contacts).

Full article at lifehack.org

A nice service if you're wanting to buy or sell a house:

Yahoo! Real Estate has integrated the previously-mentioned Zillow home valuation service into Yahoo! Maps.

That means you can look up the home values of your house, your friends' and enemies' houses on Yahoo! all mapped out with nearby homes for comparison.

More here: Find your bosses' home value with Zillow and Yahoo!

Some great tips here for all manner of ailments. I was intrigued by the 'sleep on your left side to prevent acid reflux'  tip. They provide supporting medical reasons for the tips as well.

Other examples:

Soothe a burn, cure a toothache, clear a stuffed nose...

Read full article: 18 Tricks to Teach Your Body

Get a Mozilla Firefox Cheat Sheet, compliments of Leslie Franke.

Here are the web applications I use the most:

• D3 'Kinkless' GTD System -- Getting Things Done Wiki -- the lifeblood of my daily task management (http://www.dcubed.ca)
• Gmail -- Email
• Google Notebook -- Save/manage links and other content in a Wiki-like format
• Google Analytics -- Web site stats
• Bloglines -- RSS Reader
• WordPress -- Blog site software
• Zoho Writer -- Server side Word processing, document collaboration, and version control

Here are the Firefox Extensions I've found to be most useful:

• ColorZilla -- Advanced Eyedropper, ColorPicker, Page Zoomer and other colorful goodies (http://www.iosart.com/firefox/colorzilla/)
• Session Saver -- magically restore your last browser sessions pages (http://adblock.ethereal.net/alchemy.cgi/SessionSaver)
• IE Tab -- Open IE only pages in embedded IE (http://adblock.ethereal.net/alchemy.cgi/SessionSaver)
• Livelines -- Add RSS feeds to Bloglines or Sage with the RSS icon on the location bar (http://heygom.com/extensions/categories/livelines/)
• Greasemonkey -- Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension which lets you to add bits of DHTML ("user scripts") to any web page to change its behavior. I find it useful to add functionality to Gmail. (http://greasemonkey.mozdev.org/). I use the 'Gmail Macros', 'Gmail Label Colors', and Gmail Conversation Preview' scripts.
• Broadband Speedtest and Diagnostics -- Check out your internet connection speed (http://www.gotomyhelp.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=18)
• Gmail File Space (gspace) -- This extension allows you to use your Gmail Space (2 GB) for file storage (http://www.rjonna.com/ext/gspace.php)
• Del.icio.us -- Manage your bookmarks independant of your browser; share links with your friends (http://del.icio.us/)
• Google Notebook -- Clip and collect information as you browse the web (http://www.google.com/googlenotebook/overview.html)
• DragDropUpload -- This extension lets fill an upload input of a form using the drag and drop service from the system (http://percro.sssup.it/~pit/mozilla/dragdropupload/)
• CoLT (short for "Copy Link Text") -- copy a hyperlink's associated text in different ways (http://www.borngeek.com/firefox/colt/)

Mac users have been excited about WriteRoom, a no-frills text editor that whose background color is an eyeball-friendly black and the font is a cool green Courier, which looks very familiar to command line lovers. No distractions and a slim column complete this optimized environment for the serious writer.

Windows users have an alternative in Dark Room. It looks promising, but is still rough around the edges at this point.

Perhaps the best alternative of all is to build your own WriteRoom clone on Windows using Microsoft Word.

Google outlines how they deal with their most valuable asset -- people.

At google, we think business guru Peter Drucker well understood how to manage the new breed of "knowledge workers." After all, Drucker invented the term in 1959. He says knowledge workers believe they are paid to be effective, not to work 9 to 5, and that smart businesses will "strip away everything that gets in their knowledge workers' way." Those that succeed will attract the best performers, securing "the single biggest factor for competitive advantage in the next 25 years."

Read more at MSNBC.com