Productivity Sauce

Mar 27, 2012 GMT

When it comes to reading and managing RSS feeds in the terminal, Newsbeuter is hard to beat. It's easy to get to grips with, and it offers a handful of powerful features which let you juggle multiple RSS feeds with consummate ease.

Newsbeuter can import existing feeds in the OPML format, so you don't have to start from scratch. The RSS reader features a flexible tagging system which lets you keep tabs on multiple feeds. The search feature lets you search through all downloaded articles, while the killfile... more »

Mar 22, 2012 GMT

As you might already know, I use the Pygmynote script to track tasks, manage notes, and store important bits of information. Most of the time, I access the script from the terminal using an SSH connection. But there are situations when I need to quickly check certain Pygmynote entries from a web browser. To be able to do this, I cobbled together a simple PHP script that pulls records containing the snip tag and displays them as nicely formatted pages.

You can downloaded the PHP script and the accompanying... more »

Mar 19, 2012 GMT

At first sight, GloboNote looks like yet another sticky notes tool. But this unassuming application has a few clever tricks up its sleeve. For starters, GloboNotes offers a handful of text formatting options, including bold, italics, and underlined. The utility allows you to organize notes into groups, and you can display and hide all notes belonging to a specific group in one go. GloboNotes also sports the ability to perform simple calculations directly in notes: type a... more »

Mar 16, 2012 GMT

Dukto is a simple utility that can come in handy when you need to move files and text snippets between machines on your local network without relying on a third-party service. Dukto is ridiculously easy to use: install it (binaries are available for different Linux distros and platforms), launch it, and the utility automatically detects other machines running Dukto. You can then send a file or an entire folder to any recipient in the Buddies list. To do this, click on the desired recipient,... more »

Mar 15, 2012 GMT

Need a dictionary tool that works equally well on a Linux desktop and Android devices? Consider Aard dictionary. This is a rather competent dictionary tool that can handle humongous references like an offline version of Wikipedia with aplomb. Aadict can also manage multiple references and dictionaries, so you can look up a word in multiple sources at once. The application uses its own aar format, and the project's website offers tools... more »

Mar 14, 2012 GMT

Turning a bunch of text files into nicely-formatted online documentation can be a real chore, unless you use a helper tool like d. This Python-based software can convert text files formatted using the Markdown markup into a ready-to-publish set of HTML pages. To deploy d on your system, you need to install a few packages. On the latest version of Ubuntu and its derivatives, you can do this by running the following commands:

sudo apt-get install python-pip python-dev build-essential libxml2-dev... more »

Mar 12, 2012 GMT

If you want to add a dash of GUI goodness to your Bash scripts, you have several options. You can use Zenity or Kdialog to quickly add simple dialogs and message boxes to Bash scripts. However, both tools are rather limited, and for a more complex GUI design you might want to give YAD a try. If you are using Ubuntu, you can install YAD from the WebUpd8 PPA. Of course, you can compile YAD from source using the standard ./configure; make; make... more »