My Life In Beta

Google Talk + Gmail = Free voicemail reminder

2006-11-09T04:05:00.000-08:00

If you want to leave a message for yourself, to record a quick thought or a short brilliant idea, you can use Google Talk and Gmail and have it available online.

How can we do that? Gmail supports the standard "plus" addressing scheme. The "plus" method of addressing lets you add additional words to your account name (the "left side" of your email address.)

So, add new "friend" with email address youraccountname+voicemail@gmail.com to Google Talk. (Don't worry if he's never accepted your invitation. :-)) Use it every time when you want so send voicemail to yourself. To keep things tidy, you can create label AnsweringMachine in Gmail and filter all your voicemails. You can even set filter to forward it to another email address as an email notification so you don't forget. There is also a "hidden" built-in label "voicemail" (search for label:voicemail) that you can use if you don't want some special filtering.

PBwiki, wiki for everyone

2006-02-11T14:26:00.000-08:00

Let's spread the word about PBwiki. (And they'll double my storage. :-)) They say “PBwiki makes creating a wiki as easy as making a peanut butter sandwich” and it's totally true. The hardest part of creating wiki with PBwiki is choosing the name for it. Best feature: you can download a ZIP file of your wiki pages (including all revisions).

Google Talk + Gmail = Ultimate Online Notepad

2006-02-10T14:56:00.000-08:00

If you have two Gmail accounts, you can use Google Talk to post notes to Gmail. First, set "Save chat history" in both Gmail accounts. Start Google Talk and sign in with your main account, add your "alter ego" as a friend and send an invitation. Sign out. Sign in with your "alter ego" account and accept the invitation. Sign out. From now on, every time you sign in with your main account, you will see that your "alter ego" is offline. It doesn't matter. When you want to post some note to have it available anytime/anywhere when you are online, just click your "alter ego" name and send it. Google Talk will respond with message - "alter ego" is offline and can't receive messages right now, but your message will be saved in chat history. Go to your Gmail account and check it. :-)
This also works with PortableGaim from USB drive, if you have it configured to connect to the Google Talk service. Isn't that great?

del.icio.us and Firefox Live Bookmarks

2006-01-23T11:44:00.000-08:00

If you have a bunch of del.icio.us bookmarks that you visit on a daily basis, tagged them "daily". Then go to http://del.icio.us/USERNAME/daily, click on the RSS Feed Icon (small orange square) in Navigation Toolbar, and choose "Add 'RSS feed of USERNAME's bookmarks' as Live Bookmark..." Change the name of live bookmark to "daily" and create it in Bookmarks Toolbar Folder. You will get a little orange icon on your Bookmarks Toolbar. Click on it and you will see all your del.icio.us bookmarks tagged daily. From there you can even open them all in tabs with just one click.

Writely Bookmarklet

2006-01-11T14:11:00.000-08:00

This one is for the users of Writely, a great online documents editor and document sharing service. Inspired by Writely Quick Note Bookmarklet I've created a Add to Writely bookmarklet that will append selected text to existing document. (If you just want to add a short note, don't select anything.)

javascript:q = %22%22 + 
(window.getSelection ? window.getSelection() :
document.getSelection ? document.getSelection() :
document.selection.createRange().text);
if(!q){void(q=prompt('Add to Writely',''))};
if(q)location.href='http://www.writely.com/MiscCommands.aspx?
command=appendtext&docid=DOCUMENT_ID&appendtext=
<br /><br />'+escape(q);void(0)

The URL of Writely document is in format http://www.writely.com/Doc.aspx?id=DOCUMENT_ID and you should edit Add to Writely bookmarklet and change DOCUMENT_ID to ID of your desired document.
When you click the bookmarklet you will get blank page. That's OK. Your document has been modified, but Writely does not have any kind of notification that the modification was successful when adding notes this way.
If you share that document with others, they can append to it too. Unfortunately, you can't append snippets of HTML code.

!note Bookmarklet

2005-12-21T03:58:00.000-08:00

Let's start with one little bookmarklet. This one will add selected text to Yahoo! Notepad.
1. Drag the link !note to your Bookmarks Toolbar.
2. Select some text, click the bookmarklet, sign in (if you aren't already), choose folder and save your note.

Updated: Now it works with IE6 SP2 and you can drag it to the Links Bar. Thank you, subject m. (See comments for details.)