Productivity Sauce

Extension Watch: Personal menu

Nov 28, 2008 GMT

If you are using a netbook to stay productive on the move, a tool that can squeeze a few extra pixels from the limited screen space is undoubtedly a welcome addition to your software arsenal. Meet Personal Menu, an extension for Firefox which allows you to replace the entire Menu toolbar with a single button. This not only frees up a good chunk of screen space, but also lets you put all the essential commands right at your fingertips. Once installed, Personal Menu adds three buttons to the Navigation bar: Bookmarks, History, and Menu. The latter contains by default only the Edit This Menu command, which you can use to add...

Receive Large Files with Droopy

Nov 24, 2008 GMT

Droopy is a simple Web server which does only one thing: it allows users to upload files to your computer. Useless, right? Wrong. When you need to receive a large file or document, Droopy can really prove its worth. Sure, others can send you a file using one of the many services or utilities that allow you to send large files, but why bother if you can just fire up Droopy and let them upload the file directly to your machine? To make Droopy work on your computer, make sure that you have Python installed on your system, download the droopy script, and make it executable using the chmod +x droopy command. That's it. In the terminal, switch to the directory with the droopy script, and start...

Distraction-free Writing with PyRoom

Nov 20, 2008 GMT

PyRoom is not the only distraction-free editor out there, but it does contain a few useful features that make it a good choice for users who are looking for a lightweight full-screen editor. For starters, PyRoom allows you to edit multiple documents, a boon for writers who have to work on several files simultaneously. While support for multiple documents falls under the nice-to-have category, word count is an essential tool for any writing professional. PyRoom not only offers this feature, but also allows you to check word count using a single key press. The editor also supports auto save, so you won't lose your work if you forget to save the file. PyRoom features keyboard shortcuts for...

Screencasts on Linux Made Easy

Nov 19, 2008 GMT

Need to create a screencast to demonstrate an application feature or nifty software technique? The easiest way to do this is to install the recordMyDesktop screen recording utility and the gtk-recordMyDesktop graphical front-end to it. Most mainstream Linux distributions include both packages in their repositories, so you can quickly install them using your system's package manager. On Debian-based distros like Sidux, installing both packages is a matter of running the apt-get install recordMyDesktop gtk-recordMyDesktop command. The utility saves the recorded video as a .ogv file, which is fine if you want to share it with other Linux users. But if you want to share the screencast with...

Manage Amazon S3 with s3cmd

Nov 14, 2008 GMT

While Amazon S3 provides reliable and cheap backup, you need a third-party application to put the service to some practical use. JungleDisk is one of the most popular Amazon S3-based backup solutions out there, but it's not the only fish in the sea. If you are looking for a no-frills tool which can help you to manage the Amazon S3 service, try s3cmd -- a simple command-line utility written in Python. Before you start, you have to sign up for the Amazon S3 service, if you haven't already done that. To install s3cmd on your machine, download the latest release of the utility, unpack the downloaded archive, use the terminal to switch to the resulting directory and run the python setup.py...

MyToDoListPHP: No-frills Task Manager

Nov 11, 2008 GMT

If you are looking for a no-frills Web-based task manager, you might want to take MyToDoListPHP tool for a spin. Based on the PHP/MySQL stack and sprinkled with AJAX, this simple task management utility allows you to add and delete tasks, assign them to different users, add notes to tasks, and mark them as completed. Nothing earth-shattering, just a simple and effective application you can install on your local network or integrate into your own solutions.

Analyze GnuCash Data in OpenOffice.org Calc

Nov 07, 2008 GMT

Want to analyze your GnuCash data using OpenOffice.org Calc? This guide provides step-by-step instructions of how to pull financial data from GnuCash and work with them in OpenOffice.org Calc. In addition to that, the guide demonstrates how to use Calc's Data Pilot feature to make sense of the extracted data.