Productivity Sauce

New Version of Calibre Brings a Slew of Improvements

Oct 18, 2012 GMT

Calibre receives at least a couple of updates every month. Most of them feature minor improvements and bug fixes. But once in a while, Calibre's developers push a major update that brings new features along with some significant enhancements and improvements. Case in point: the latest 0.9 release that packs a raft of new stuff. The new version supports the MTP protocol for USB connected devices. This means that Calibre can now properly handle Android devices. When you connect an Android device to your computer, Calibre automatically detects it and treats it as a regular reading device.A lot of work has been done to improve Calibre's library management...

Turn Sublime Text into a Task Manager with the PlainTasks Plugin

Oct 10, 2012 GMT

While Sublime Text is a powerful text editing tool, you can put it to other practical uses through third-party plugins. Take, for example, the PlainTasks plugin. It turns Sublime Text into a simple yet flexible task manager. The plugin uses a plain text file for storing tasks, so you can easily synchronize it across multiple machines and open it in any other text editor. The easiest way to deploy PlainTasks is to use the Sublime Package Control tool (see the Installation page for instructions on how to install Sublime Package Control). In Sublime Text, choose Preferences | Package Control, select then the Install Package command, type PlainTasks to locate and...

Turn Google Chrome and Chromium into a Powerful Text Editor with TextDown

Sep 29, 2012 GMT

There are several apps in Chrome Web Store that can turn your favorite browser into a no-frills text editor. But probably none of them offer the power and flexibility of the TextDown app. This editor is designed for working with Markdown files, but it also offers a raft of useful features that make it an excellent general purpose text editing tool. TextDown can be used offline, and you can use the editor to work with local text files. To enable the latter feature, choose Tools | Extensions and tick the Allow access to file URLs check box next to the TextDown entry. TextDown also supports text shortcuts for more efficient writing, and you can specify your own text shortcuts in the Words...

Use Reddit on the Move with Diode Reddit Browser

Sep 28, 2012 GMT

I don't know about you, but I'm addicted to Reddit. I permanently keep Reddit's website opened in a separate tab in my browser. And when I'm on the move, I use the Diode Reddit Browser app. Diode is based on the last open source version of the Reddit is Fun app. When the latter went close source, developers created the Diode fork to keep the open source app alive. Diode is not the most feature-rich Reddit client in the Google Play store, but all essential functionality is implemented. You can search and browse sub-reddits, upvote posts, view and add comments, and submit posts. You can configure Diode to check your Reddit mail, too. This feature is disabled by...

Take and Sync Notes with nvPY

Sep 28, 2012 GMT

Notational Velocity is arguably one of the best open source note-taking applications. Sadly, it's available only on Mac OS X. But despair not: nvPY provides a viable alternative to Notational Velocity for Linux users. nvPY is not the prettiest application out there, but its interface is functional and it offers several useful creature comforts. The application sports a global search feature which lets you quickly find notes containing a specific search string. nvPY can handle Markdown and RST formatting, and you can convert formatted notes to the HTML format. Most users will also appreciate the built-in word count feature. nvPY also allows you to create internal links to other notes using...

View Your Raspberry Pi's Stats with the Raspberry Pi Sysinfo Script

Sep 27, 2012 GMT

Need a quick and dirty way to display your Raspberry Pi's essential stats? Consider Raspberry Pi Sysinfo script. The entire solution consists of a single PHP script and a couple of graphics files, so deploying it is rather straightforward. First of all, make sure that Apache and PHP are installed on your Raspberry Pi. Grab then the latest release of the scripts, unpack the downloaded archive, and move the resulting sysinfo folder to the /var/www directory on your Raspberry Pi. That's all there is to it. Point your browser to http://127.0.0.1/sysinfo (replace 127.0.0.1 with the actual IP address or domain name of your Raspberry Pi), and you should see the overview generated by the script. ...

Fix "Improved" Saving Functionality in GIMP 2.8

Sep 27, 2012 GMT

GIMP 2.8 is a fine release, no doubt about that. But along with a plethora of improvements, the new version brought several changes that not all GIMP users appreciate. Chief among these changes is the modified save behavior. Previously the Save command saved the file in its original format. In version 2.8 the save feature saves images in GIMP's native XCF format. This means that if you open a PNG file and then hit Ctrl+S (or choose File | Save), GIMP prompts you to save the file in the XCF format. To save the file in its original format, you have to use the File | Overwrite or File | Export commands. If you find the new behavior annoying, the Save/export clean...