Anagram’s Free iGoogle Gadget’s Ten Minutes September 29, 2008
Posted by Jeremy Wagstaff in calendars, organizers, productivity.2 comments
Anagram is a program for quickly parsing copied text to fit into the correct fields of software like Microsoft Outlook. It does a pretty good job, too; I’ve been using it for years. But recently it launched a free online version of its software via an iGoogle gadget, allowing users to parse text into Gmail or Google Calendar (and Jigsaw, though I’ve not tried it.)
Verdict: Not bad, but needs work.
My ten minutes: You’ll need iGoogle—Google’s version of NetVibes and Pageflakes—and you’ll need to install the gadget. That’s easy enough: Click on the appropriate buttons and you’re good to go:
Now copy an address or an event and paste it into the gadget text box:
You’ll be prompted to allow access to Gmail:
And then, hey presto, the copied text should be in the relevant fields of Gmail:
You won’t see the contact (or event) until you refresh your Google Calendar (or Gmail) page:
This is not bad for free, and useful if you’re a big user of Google products. But it’s too many steps and browser windows for me, especially compared to the Anagram standalone app—one keystroke and you’re pretty much done.
And while Gmail is actually a very useful place to dump contacts, it’s not so good for getting them out—most synchronizing applications don’t take stuff out of Gmail, although they will put stuff in. So it makes more sense, for example, to capture contacts in this way and put them into, say, Outlook, and then synchronize those contacts with Gmail than try to do it the other way around.
Another grumble: It doesn’t seem to like it if you’ve already got a contact of the same name in your address book. An error appears:
And Gmail offers no easy way to merge contacts in your database so no hope there.
That said, kudos to the guys at Anagram for offering something of their otherwise excellent product for free.
Bottom line: useful if you’re a big user of iGoogle, Google Calendar and Gmail. Or, I suppose, Jigsaw. Otherwise, don’t bother.
Schmap.me’s Ten Minutes September 19, 2008
Posted by Jeremy Wagstaff in contacts, information, maps, mobile apps.add a comment
What is it: Schmap.me is an easy way to add a link to your location for emails, signatures, SMS messages etc. (I wrote about Schmap in my DestinAsian column a year ago.)
Executive summary: does what it promises quickly and smartly.
My ten minutes: Setting things up is easy enough.
Type in the name you want to have as your address www.schmap.me/loosewire, for example:
If it’s available the box will turn green.
Enter the address on the next page and the Google Map on the left of the address will immediately jump to that location:
There’s a room for notes, which is smart for driving directions:
(There are more fields available if you want them.)
The resulting page is simplicity itself:
It also looks good on a phone:
Verdict: Great stuff. This space is always a bit of a nightmare and while it’s possible to send people links to Google Maps, the page is usually a bit ugly and certainly not pleasant to view on a phone. Nice to see something simple and neat and doing what it promises without lots of unnecessary extras.
Yuuguu’s Ten Minutes September 12, 2008
Posted by Jeremy Wagstaff in chat, collaboration, screen sharing.add a comment
What it is: Yuuguu (from the Japanese word for fusion) is “a solution to help people work together remotely, through any firewall, across different platforms, with as many colleagues as needed, just as if they were sat right next to each other.”
Executive summary: Good way to quickly get up and running and share screens and chat online with colleagues and friends. Don’t expect cute graphics; the name is about the only Web 2.0 thing about this service. And the price: free.
Installation is pretty smooth. A 10 MB download, the usual installation stuff:
You sign up from the application itself:
It’s cute enough to try to figure out your name from your email address. Always a good sign.
You can add people manually, or have Yuuguu find them for you:
It’s early days, I guess: No one I knew seemed to have an account, or it didn’t find them:
Which was weird because I know at least one person using it who is also in my address book:
Still, it works pretty well from there on, if you don’t mind the Java feel to it all. Add contacts and you can share screens straightaway, either at high res or faster low resolution:
Both seemed to work even on slower connections. You can chat at the same time:
You can also get cheap international calls through the software, though I didn’t try that.
Verdict: There are other products out there, and they may be as good, but this is a good simple effort for collaborating, or, as the company says, just surfing and co-habiting online.
RSS Mixer’s Ten Minut.es September 8, 2008
Posted by Jeremy Wagstaff in RSS.add a comment
What it is: A simple tool for combining RSS feeds into ‘mixes’ and sharing them.
Executive summary: Does the job well, despite a few time-outs. Fast and fuel efficient, and makes mashups easy. Well, simple mashups easy.
You don’t need to sign up to use it. Just add the URL of the site you want to grab a feed from (if it’s only got one feed, you probably don’t need to enter the RSS feed URL, just the site):
Add more feeds by clicking on the black + button:
Once you’re done, click on the Mix it button:
If you sign up (free and painless) you can do other things.
Download the Firefox extension and add feeds from their sites.
Click on the button and you’ll be taken to a page, giving you the option of starting a new mix, or adding to an existing one:
Alternatively, look through the lists of feeds other people have added, select one you like and click on the Add to a mix button:
Verdict: Simple and well-executed. I wasn’t crazy about the errors, or rather the fact that I didn’t know what to do about the errors, or whether they were being fixed. Instead I got an error message but one that said they were still waiting to be processed:
Still, it’s still in alpha and looking pretty useful. Great tool for journos.
