Productivity Sauce

Archive and Explore Your Tweets with Tweet Nest

Mar 10, 2011 GMT

Tweet Nest allows you to back up your tweets in a MySQL database, and you can use this nifty Web-based application to display and explore you tweets. Tweet Nest runs on the Apache/MySQL/PHP stack, and it's pretty easy to install. Grab the latest version of the application, unpack the downloaded archive, and move the resulting directory to the document root of your server. Make then the inc/config.php writable by the server, and point your browser to your Twitter Nest installation (e.g., http://127.0.0.1/tweetnest). A simple wizard guides you through the setup process.Next, you have to point your browser to the http://127.0.0.1/tweetnest/maintenance/loaduser.php URL to load the user...

Install Font from Google Web Fonts on Ubuntu Using a Simple Bash Script

Mar 07, 2011 GMT

The Google Web Fonts repository contains an ever-growing collection of high-quality open source fonts which you easily embed into your Web site. But what if you want to use them on your desktop? A simple Bash script from Web Upd8 can do the trick. Fire up the terminal and run the following commands: cd && wget http://webupd8.googlecode.com/files/install-google-fonts chmod +x install-google-fonts ./install-google-fontsOnce the script has done its job, you can use the installed fonts on your machine. Nifty!

Back up Email with a Single Command

Mar 03, 2011 GMT

The Web is awash with tutorials on how to back up your email. Strangely, none of them covers probably the easiest and most efficient email backup system based on the excellent IMAP Grab utility. This tiny Python script acts as a user-friendly wrapper for the getmail tool. Using the script, you can set up a fool-proof email backup solution using just a single command.Deploying the IMAP Grab backup solution is a cinch. First off, install the getmail package using your distro's package manager. Download then the latest IMAP Grab package, unzip it, and move the imapgrab.py file to the directory of your choosing. Make the script executable using the chmod +x imapgrab.py command.To make sure...

Extension Watch: Copy Without Formatting Extension for Google Chrome and Chromium

Feb 28, 2011 GMT

The Copy Without Formatting extension fixes one of the biggest annoyances in the Google Chrome and Chromium browsers. When you copy a text fragment, the extension automatically strips it of all formatting. This way, you don't have to reformat the text snippet manually, when you paste it in a document.This one-trick pony extension can be a great time-saver, and you can tweak its settings to your liking in the Options section. Here you replace the default keyboard shortcut with your own as well as enable the Auto-copy feature which automatically copies the selection. You can also enable the floating button which appears when you select a text fragment. This allows you to perform the copy...

Instant Photo Sharing with Min.us

Feb 22, 2011 GMT

Photo sharing services are a dime a dozen these days, but Min.us stands out from the crowd for two reasons. Firstly, it makes the process of sharing photos ridiculously simple. Secondly, it offers software for the Linux desktop and the Android platform, so you can share photos directly from your machine or mobile device. Sharing photos using Min.us is a one-step procedure. Point your browser to http://min.us and drag the photos you want to share onto the Web page. This automatically creates a new gallery and uploads the selected photos to it. That's all there is to it. Minus generates short URLs for each photo and the entire gallery which...

Read ODF Documents on Android with OpenOffice Document Reader

Feb 14, 2011 GMT

Despite its name, the OpenOffice Document Reader (OODR) app for Android can handle not only OpenOffice.org Writer documents, but also LibreOffice and ODF files. OODR is not exactly overloaded with features, but it does support some basic text formatting and images, and it lets you copy text. When installed, OODR acts as a helper tool for several popular apps, including Dropbox, File Expert, and ASTRO File Manager. This means that you can view ODF documents from within these apps using OODR. You can also use OODR to open ODF attachments in the Gmail app. Although OODR is decidedly a bare-bones app, it can come in rather handy when you need...

Create a Multi-boot USB Stick with MultiSystem

Feb 11, 2011 GMT

Thanks to tools like Unetbootin and Ubuntu's Startup Disk Creator, creating a bootable USB stick with your favorite Linux distro has never been easier. But both of these utilities have one tiny shortcoming: they allow you to install only one distro on a USB stick. Enter MultiSystem, a nifty tool that can squeeze several distros on to a single USB stick. Not only that, MultiSystem lets you add a persistent storage for each distro, and the tool automatically generates a boot menu with a few handy options. An older version of MultiSystem is available in the Ubuntu software repository, but if you want to install the very latest release of the...