Smarterware

Minutes ago I posted an update to the Better Gmail 2 Firefox extension, which adds all sorts of functionality to Gmail. Since Gmail Labs launched, there’s been less of a need for Better Gmail 2 features–so this revision clears out a lot of redundant stuff and pares things down to the items Google doesn’t offer (yet?).

My favorite addition to this new version 0.7.3 is the awesome Unread Message Count in Favicon script, which adds that helpful little red unread message count to your Gmail tab’s favicon (shown above). Note: A similar script which includes chat alerts is Gmail FavIcon Alerts, which I’ll try to get permission to include in future Better Gmail 2 versions.

Download the latest version of the extension using the button here, or hit the homepage to see the changelog for the nuts and bolts of what was added, removed, and updated.

This succinct set of workday guidelines is a nice blueprint for getting productive on the important stuff and ruthless about cutting the crap. Written on a unknown “major corp” whiteboard pictured here, they read:

QUALITY vs quantity, UX process.
Check email ONLY:

• 10AM
• 1PM
• 4PM

Send any time
Set email to check every 3 hours.
NO email on evenings.
NO email on weekends.
EMERGENCY? = Use phone.

FOCUS 1-3 Activities max/day
LOG 1-3 Succinct status bullets every day on team wiki

MINIMIZE chat
MAXIMIZE single-tasking

OUT by 5:30PM
~No excuses~

These common productivity edicts are worth repeating; recently I advised Harvard Business readers to use a daily three-item task list myself. I’ve been practicing this technique every weekday without fail for the last six weeks, and it’s served me well (though I’ve gotten cocky and the list has started inching up to five or six items). On top of sleeping, showering, eating, working out, commuting, cooking, and communicating, the reality is that three things DONE is a bigger set of accomplishments than it seems. As for the rest of these–well, I’m working on them. Hat tip to Caterina.

Apple’s done a nice job of raising the browser visuals bar with yesterday’s release of the Safari 4 public beta web browser. This thing is very unstable, but very pretty–kind of like your ex. Here’s my full screenshot tour, published over at Lifehacker this morning: A Hands On Look at Safari 4’s (Crashy) Eye Candy.

Smarterware.org has been live for two weeks now; it’s still positively fetal! Still, it’s been so much fun starting something brand new with free software and a cheap hosting plan and doing the whole thing myself from soup to nuts.

If you’re here, you should know about a few ways to get the most out of this site and let me know what you’d like to see as it grows up.

New Feature! User profiles. To leave a comment here, you’ve got to sign in after registering for an account (or you can use your Facebook credentials or OpenID). Going through that annoying step is worth it, though–once you do, you’ll have a profile page here with your web site, bio, and comment history listed. Check out what a profile looks like: here’s my profile, and here’s user drmelho. To enter your web site URL and bio, when you’re logged in, click the “Edit profile” link on the sidebar.

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After all the hullabaloo last week about Hulu dropping support for Boxee, the popular Mac-based XBMC port, a new beta of Plex (another Mac XBMC port) drops, which offers a working Hulu plug-in in its new App Store.

As a fan of the entire XBMC project, any new release on any platform is exciting, but besides the original Xbox version, I’ve spent the most time with Plex. (Here’s a Plex writeup I did over at Macworld last October.) To install Plex plug-ins via the new App Store, install the latest beta version 0.7.8, and under Applications visit the store. There you can install apps–like the Hulu, YouTube, TED Talks, and TWiT viewers, for example–upgrade and restart them. Right now I’m streaming red carpet highlights from the Oscars last night thanks to Hulu through Plex without a hitch (or a hack).

Nice work, Plex crew.

Update: I asked Plex’s lead developer Elan Feingold if he could explain why Hulu got pulled from Boxee and other XBMC ports but works on Plex. He said,

Basically, Boxee was keeping around Hulu data on their servers, and XBMC reverse engineered the player to come up with their hack. Obviously not kosher. We use WebKit to display the site just like Safari does, and make sure it fits in the Plex window, so in a sense we’re just a specialized web browser for the TV.

Had a fun week flitting about various online outlets, and I wanted to share the carnage I left behind. Over at Harvard Business, I get all Stephen Covey on your ass and published a post on how to mitigate the urgent to focus on the important. The Blog Herald interviewed me about my transition from Lifehacker to Smarterware. Then Leo Laporte and Sarah Lane were very kind to me on this week’s episode of the net@night podcast. I had so much fun chatting with Leo I agreed to get in on this Sunday’s episode of This Week in Tech (TWiT) alongside Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing and Ryan Block formerly of Engadget. You can watch it live at 3PM Pacific time right here. Update: Here’s the MP3 for download and listening. That is all. Have a great weekend!

Waferbaby is running a fabulous interview series with various netizens who describe their current hardware and software setup, then what their ideal setup would be.  I got to run down mine today, and had a lot of fun with that last question. A taste:

My ideal computer would be self-upgrading–that is, it would start with at least a terabyte of hard drive storage and 10GB of RAM, but it would organically grow more memory and drive space over time as I needed it. I would be able to fold this ideal computer into a wallet-sized square that fits in my pocket (like the car on the Jetsons), but also unfold it into a 50-inch touchscreen to watch movies or use it as a whiteboard. This computer would stay cool even when I left it in a car on a 90-degree day–in fact, it would keep the car cool for me. This device would barely use any electricity, and when it did it would wirelessly charge its batteries whenever we were within 20 feet of an outlet automatically. This computer would back itself up securely online over an ever-present superfast internet connection, and firmly but gently prod me when I’m working too much or on the wrong thing. It would read my mind and transcribe my thoughts onto my hard drive whenever I think, “I’ve got to remember that.”

See my full setup at Waferbaby. Thanks, Daniel!

What would your fantasy computer be like?

Not only am I the kind of hopeless nerd who spends a lot of time in the terminal, I’m also the kind who, in the face of countless elegant pieces of task management software, decides to write my own.

Today I released the newest version of my three-year-old todo.txt command line interface–a 600-line bash script that lets me add to, check off, and slice and dice my todo.txt file without a full-on editor.

To download it and try it out, or just see a screencast of it in action, check out my full writeup at Lifehacker this morning: Todo.txt CLI Manages Your Tasks from the Command Line.

Leaving your full-time job in the midst of a recession is either a really stupid or really smart decision. Since I just made the move myself, I’m going to make the case for smart.

If you can swing it, a recession is an ideal time to stop being an employee and start doing your own thing. Your plans to go freelance, start your own business, or take a sabbatical shouldn’t be on hold right now because of the economy. While the fear mongers might be saying you should be grateful just to have a job at all, I challenge you to expand your vision.

Now’s a fine time to take a risk because there’s just not much to lose.

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Anyone who makes things for a living should watch author Elizabeth Gilbert’s 20 minute talk at the TED conference this month (full video below). Gilbert published the mega-Oprah-bestseller Eat, Pray, Love which is soon to be a movie starring Julia Roberts. In this talk she explains one way she’s found to quell the anxiety that comes with following up after a big commercial success. Namely, she’s gone back to the ancient idea that creative inspiration is an entity separate from us, which speaks through us: the muse, as it were.

It’s not a popular idea these days.

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