Productivity Sauce

Save Ink and Planet with Ecofont

Jan 07, 2009 GMT

What do Swiss cheese and Ecofont have in common? They both have holes, and a lot of them. According to SPRANQ creative communications, the creator of Ecofont, perforating font's characters helps to reduce the amount of ink or toner used for printing documents.   Why holes and not squares? Ecofont's Web site states, "After extensive testing with all kinds of shapes, the best results were achieved using small circles. After lots of late hours (and coffee) this resulted in a font that uses up to 20% less ink." Ecofont is based on the popular Bitstream Vera font and is released under GNU GPL.

Extension Watch: List.it

Jan 02, 2009 GMT

Adding note-taking features to Firefox is not a new idea, and there are a few extensions out there that allow you to scribble notes right from within the browser. So which one to choose? If you need a tool which a) makes it extremely easy to enter notes, b) searches the existing notes, and c) synchronizes notes between multiple machines, then you should consider list.it. To install the extension, you have to sign up for a lits.it account (you need it to synchronize notes).   Once installed, the extension adds a Note icon to the status bar. Click on it, and you can quickly enter or paste text in the opened text field. To view your notes, press the appropriate keyboard shortcut (by...

Transliterating Text in OpenOffice.org

Dec 19, 2008 GMT

Here is a problem: when working with an OpenOffice.org document you need to insert a few lines of text in a language that uses a non-Latin alphabet, for example Cyrillic. Of course, you can enable the Cyrillic support on your system, but it's overkill if you only need to write just a few sentences every now and then. Instead, you can use the following OpenOffice.org Basic macro to convert a selected text fragment written in the Latin alphabet into its Cyrillic version; for example "martyshka" -> "мартышка", "ogurec" -> "oгурец", and so on (this process is known as transliteration): Sub Translit() Dim ThisDoc As Object Dim...

Five Reasons to Make Friends with Puppy Linux

Dec 17, 2008 GMT

By now, you might have noticed that I'm a big fan of Puppy Linux. I wrote about this tiny Linux distro in Linux (Pro) Magazine, and extol its virtues at any given opportunity. It is the distro I'm running on my workhorse ASUS Eee PC 701 4G netbook, and it helps me to stay productive not only in airports, cafés, and hotel rooms but also at home. But if you are still undecided whether you should give Puppy Linux a try, here are five reasons why this little gem deserves a closer look.   Puppy Linux is not only lean, it's also lightning fast. On boot, the entire system loads into RAM and runs from there. If you are using Puppy Linux on a notebook or netbook, this also helps to increase...

Extension Watch: Tomfox

Dec 11, 2008 GMT

The Tomfox extension for Firefox is a real boon for Tomboy addicts. It allows you to select a text fragment in any Web page and turn it into a new Tomboy note. So if you use Tomboy for storing research notes and links, Tomfox can save you a lot of unnecessary cutting and pasting.   Once installed, Tomfox adds the Create Tomboy Note command to the context menu. Select a text fragment in a Web page, right-click on the highlighted text and choose the Create Tomboy Note item from the context menu. This creates a new Tomboy note with the selected text. Better yet, Tomfox conveniently inserts a clickable link to the source Web page.

Five Firefox Extensions for Mobile Users

Dec 10, 2008 GMT

While you won't find any Firefox extensions designed specifically for mobile users, there are a few add-ons you might find particularly useful when you are on the move. Here are five of them. Mobile Internet connections are getting faster, but they can still be prohibitively expensive, especially when you travel abroad. One way to reduce your bandwidth costs when you are on the move is to use the AdBlock Plus extension. This nifty tool scrubs the websites you visit for advertisements. By removing ads, AdBlock Plus makes more space for the page content, which can be extremely useful if you are using a laptop with a smallish screen such as ASUS Eee PC. This also makes the pages load...

TaskPaper.web: Ingenious Web-based Task Manager

Dec 05, 2008 GMT

Before you choose a full-blown Web-based everything-but-the-kitchen-sink kind of task manager, ask yourself whether you really need all its frills and fancy trimmings. If the answer is no, then consider TaskPaper.web. Even though it's a rather bare-bones task manager, it packs a few nifty features and a sleek interface to boot.   TaskPaper.web is very easy to install. It doesn't require a database back-end, and the entire application consists of just a handful of files. Copy them into a directory on your server, and the application is ready to go. The first thing you'll notice when you open TaskPaper.web in your browser is its rather unusual way of storing and presenting to-do...