All of these methods work, success greatly varies depending on your work and thought style however. With this in mind I will say that Journler isn’t going to be for everyone… or maybe it is!

Price:
journler right from the get go won me over with it’s price … FREE! (as in beer. for now). This is a “feature” pretty much non-existent in this software market with some apps/suites costing up to $130! Now you probably noticed I said “(for now)” above, this is because the developers are moving the application over to a shareware model… everyone’s gotta make ends meet.

Features:
The feature set is what sold me (as it should be when using an App.) it can be as cut dry and simple or as needlessly complex as you desire. This is something we don’t usually see. From most of the “personal productivity” software I’ve used you’re given a series of tools and a set idea as to how they are going to be used. Not the case with journler.

Notes:
Keep your thoughts stored just how you had them. Attach files, record your own video or audio clip. Insert HTML elements … make a todo list with HTML checkboxes. Toss pre-fixes on list items or high light a line out of a copy and pasted paragraph. I would go so far as to say that the interface for composing and organizing your ideas inside your notes rivals Word or Open Office.

Organization:
Labels, Tags, and Folders on my! Corny I know, but seriously you’ve the ability to organize your notes any given way… even multiple ways! Using Labels and Folders would be enough to keep a veteran personal productivity app user happy. When you consider Tagging and Smart Folders along with this the way you organize your ideas almost becomes blaring obvious.

Smart Folders: (my favorite feature)
It’s like real time message filtering for your notes. You’ll create a Smart Folder that doesn’t actually contain anything, nor will it ever per-say. Smart Folders are more like a logic location, any give item can span multiple Smart Folders based on that items characteristics. I’ll give you a simple example.

I’m a web developer by choice and trade, I love it. With that said at any given time I’m usually juggling work, freelance, and my own projects simultaneously. This means I have serious collisions of time and ideas. I might have 50 separate tasks from 3 different projects 13 of which are Urgent. Now rather than look over notes from a 3 projects and find the ones I’ve labeled as “Urgent” I could simply create a smart folder. Using the stupid simple interface I could add a “requirement” or “exclusion” for items that should appear in this folder. In my example I’ll say I want “all” notes with a “label” or Urgent. The smart folder would instantly populate with my 13 labeled notes for all projects/categories/etc.

Great!… now lets say an entire project is placed on developmental hold, these tasks are no longer urgent because of the dev freeze but once that project begins development I’ll need them to remain urgent. I could now edit my Smart Folder and depending on your organizational preference exclude that project from showing up in said filter. If using folders you could tell the smart folder to “exclude” notes from folder “project foobar”… or if using tagging (my preference) “exclude” notes tagged “foobar”.

Application Integration:
Talk about stream line! Journler hooks into some of OS X’s most popular Apps. While composing a note attach a file (also note the files are reference pointers, so if you update that file… it’s updated in the note) using finder… or view an attached file in Finder. However you can also attach a contact from your Address book, or email a file/note from Mail. Attached an XLS file… have Office installed, it already knows and shows the Office Excel Icon as the viewing option. Listen to an MP3 file you’ve attached or watch a vid right inside the app using native Quicktime support. Hook dates into iCal and link them to existing iCal entries. It even hooks into Spotlight, just type in the title of the note you want to view and Spotlight tracks it down, hit enter and it opens right up in Journler. All of this is done so smoothly you’ll start to wonder why other applications don’t do it the same way. As if that wasn’t enough Apple Script integration allows you to write your own functionality!

Summary:
I consider journler although one of my newer Apps easily one of my MVP apps. As I get more used to it and discover new ways to use and implement it the more I fall in love with it’s simplicity and functionality. I’d suggest everyone give it a week worth of trial and see if you don’t agree. It’s so open anyone could find a way to utilize it…. and I mean anyone… Soccer Mom’s to NASA engineers.

check it out @ http://journler.com/

When the chat feature first launched one of the first things my less tech-savvy friends expressed was that a lot more time was going to be wasted on the site. While I see their point I can still see the use of it. For one thing, it means you can now chat with the people you’ve added on Facebook but aren’t quite comfortable with yet to give them your actual IM accounts. C’mon, you know you have those friends!

Since everyone on your friend list are supposed to be your friends there isn’t any way to block certain people just yet, at least I didn’t find any way. You can a “go offline” but all it does is disable your ability to chat with anyone, so if you wanted to chat with some people and not with others you’re out of luck for now.

The chat can be popped out which is nice, meaning you can have the chat without actually being on the site itself though there aren’t any sounds or distinctive visual cues to tell you there is a new message when the window is minimized. Annoying for me when I want to get people’s messages, but a blessing for those who want to check for messages on their own time. Personally it just means I’ll be checking for a new message every 5 seconds, and no, I’m not nearly as popular to warrant such actions.

Facebook, Facebook Chat, Twitter, Pownce, Google Reader, Socialthing, Friendfeed, UNEASYsilence. I think the internet officially hates me. When will I ever get time to go outside?

Remember those temporary Tattoo’s you used to get when you were a kid? Time to have them enter the digital age. You can now order special inkjet tattoo paper that will let you create your own design.

Once it is printed you apply an adhesive sheet to the printout and smooth out any bubbles. When you remove the adhesive sheet, the printed tattoo will be left with a sticky surface allowing it to be applied to your skin with a wet sponge. The tattoos are water-based and non-toxic, so while they’ll stick around for about a week if you avoid bathing or showering, they can easily be removed with just soap and water.

A 5 pack of the paper is available for about $25.

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Here’s an experiment in keepings things small and confined to one Javascript file. There are no external image files or anything, everything is rendered with Javascript using either canvas elements or old fashioned div-making tactics (for IE). The sprites are stored in custom encoded strings in a format that only allows 4 colors for each sprite but in turn only takes up around 40-60 bytes per sprite. [...]

It is by no means a complete clone or anything, it’s not even an entire level and several key things are missing, such as mushrooms, Koopas and stuff. It was merely done as a sort of proof-of-concept and to see how small it could get.

Now, if only it could be playable on the Blackberry – we would have a complete time suck here.

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ImageShack has taken the wraps off its new, and free, BitTorrent downloading service.

What you have to do with ImageShacks new service is download the .torrent file on your computer and upload it to ImageShack, then ImageShack downloads the file and gives you a link to the full file.

Currently ImageShack’s servers are overwhelmed with new signups they have temporally suspended new signups – but if you are an existing ImageShack member you can enjoy this really cool web app.

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I’m a clean lines kind of guy. Minimal, Earthy but every now and again I need some pop – a conversation piece – in every room. There is no better room then the entertainment room, right?

When you are chilling at the couch with your remote, might as well have Homer chill with you.

Available for about $30 for delivery on 8/31.

Wonder if I could use this as a soap dish in the shower? ;)

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If you caught last night’s episode of South Park and you frequent the internet you were sure to recognize all the various internet stars there. The video above shows what I think is the highlight of the episode, but it was a funny episode overall and you can watch it here.

I think my favourite quote is “You’re the what what in the asshole kid.”

You’re familiar with T-Pain by now, right?

MediaChance has released a free application for dual and triple monitor users. To boil this program down it simply puts a taskbar on your 2nd or 3rd screen. MultiMonitor will show the applications that are open on only that monitor. A couple of extra bonus features are a clipboard extender that shows up in the lower right of your 2nd display. There is also a button near your minimize button that can automatically move your windows to your primary or secondary display.

Windows only and totally free

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To use TextBuyIt you send Amazon an SMS to 262966 with the name of the product you are looking for then if Amazon stocks the item (my money is on that they do stock it) it will tell you the price. Taking it one step further if you like the item listed you reply back with an item number and someone from Amazon will call you to finalize the order. Kinda nifty for on the fly price comparisons. Usage of the service will incur no additional fee.

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