Tools I Use

I was asked — in preparation for an upcoming interview — to describe the software that I use regularly, so I thought it might a good post here.

Blogging: Typepad and Tumblr

I have used nearly every platform out there, but I still have a mass of blogs — /Message, /Ground, and /Mind — on Typepad. I started /Message in early 2006, but I had been using Typepad for a long time. At Corante, we used Moveable Type, and in the past I have tried Blogger and WordPress.

A lot of people have suggested that I should move to WordPress, and I am considering a WordPress experiment with /Edgewards: the site/blog thingie I am designing for the /Edgewards blog swarm. More to follow on that later this week.

I tumblr at /Ambivalence, where the tagline is “no tech, only flesh”. That was originally just an experiment in tumble blogging — I also tried Soup.io for awhile, but I like the network in Tumblr. It’s really a stream of bits of media from other interesting Tumblr users. Very fun.

I have fooled with various blogging editors, but I generally just type directly into the tools UI, or when offline I use TextEdit. I generally type directly in HTML except for using returns as paragraph markers.

RSS Reader: Snackr and Google Reader

I don’t like the RSS reader experience, so although I manage RSS feeds in Google Reader, I don’t go there much. I had tried Feedly as an Firefox add-in that works on top of the data in Google Reader, but it kind of made my head ache, and it required me to scroll around and click on things. I recently discovered Snackr, and have fallen in love with it (see Snackr: An RSS News Ticker), and I keep it running all day, periodically clicking on something that catches my eye.

Snackr is also integrated with Google Reader, so I didn’t have to start by loading RSS feeds.

Microblogging/LifeStreaming: Twitter, Strands, Tumblr

I am deep into Twitter, following 600+ and being followed by 4200+. I tweet around 10 times a day, and oftern more, like when I am attending a conference (see Twitter Stream: Day One Of TechCrunch 50) where I often live twitter.

I don’t enjoy Friendfeed or other conversational flow apps, at least not historically. However, I signed up for Strands this week, and I find it to be promising as a lifestreaming and conversational flow app. More to follow, probably next week. I have also signed up for Yammer, which recently — and controversially — won the top honors at the TechCrunch 50 beauty show last week, but that is more in the way of a small scale experiment. More to follow on that experience.

Here’s my desktop, with the browser out of the way, with various streams: RSS (via Snackr), Twitter (via Tweetr), Strands, and Yammer.

Desktop: Streams, Streams, Streams, originally uploaded by Stowe Boyd.

Documents, Presentations, Spreadsheets: Google Docs

I am moving onto Google Docs very fast. This week I will be creating new presentations there for Web 2.0 Expo Berlin, Shift in Lisbon, and Defrag in Denver. I have experimented with Slide Rocket, Zoho, and Empressr, but Google Docs — at least at the moment is my preferred doc platform. It’s integrated with Gmail, and the Gears offline capability is going to be huge. At the moment, I still can’t edit presentations offline, but in the future I will be able to I bet.

Email and Tasks: Gmail and Remember The Milk

I have switched over completely to Gmail based email. I even have created /Edgewards email accounts for contributors to the various blogs here.

I wrote a long post at Unclutterer about using the Remember The Milk task management tool that is so beautifully integrated with Google’s mail product (see A simple way to simplify email). That is just about the only way I make lists of things to do.

Personal Information Management: Backpack, Google Docs

I experimented with moving my “chords and words” styling of music from Backpack to Google Docs spreadsheets, but the ease of doing that in Backpack has convinced me to keep my Backpack account.

I recently tried to use Drop.io as an alternative to Backpack and Basecamp, but I will have to see whether the folks behind that application can make it stable and general purpose enough to meet my needs (see A Deep Dive Into Drop.io). I spoke recently with Sam Lessin from Drop.io, and he spent half the call going off on wild-eyed tangents about changing the way that people work, and so on, and I couldn’t keep him focused on near term product improvements. Real promise there, but I am fading off the platform, moving some things to Google Docs and some back to Backpack, which I like enough to pay the $10/month, I guess.

Email, Communications: Gmail, Gtalk

I hardly use IM anymore. I used to spend a lot of time in AOL IM, and then later in Gtalk connected to AIM, but since Twitter has come along, that has pretty much shifted to Twitter. In fact, I often run Gmail without Gtalk running, since I hardly use it. I generally just have direct messages going back and forth in Twitter. Partly that’s because they don’t have a desktop client for Mac, I guess. Yes, I know about Adium, but I have never really liked it, and now that traffic has dwindled to almost zero anyway. I will officially turn off Gtalk today! Ping me on Twitter, or text me, if you want to talk. I am texting more now than ever, too.

I am involved in an experiment with OtherInbox.com, but I think it will prove too difficult to explicitly change my email addresses with various service, like Expedia, so that OtherInbox can do smart things with their emails… since right now all the special handling is “coming soon”. Might take another look in a few months.

Graphics, Photos, Images: Flickr, Skitch, Evernote, Tumblr

I post most photos that I take with a camera to Flickr. I consider that my photo stream, and I make bound volumes every year to give out as Xmax presents to family. I also use Flickr as a place to store and serve screenshots that I embed in posts at my Typepad blogs. That is partly because Flickr supports a easy mechanism to post pictures to my Typepad blog, but also because Skitch — which I use to take screenshots — has an built-in way to post to Flickr. So: I take a screenshot by selecting Skitch’s ‘crosshair screenshot’ in my Mac Toolbar, drag the rectangle around a region on the screen, and let go. Skitch then opens and I press the upload button, sending it off to Flickr, as I have configured it to do. A few seconds later, a new browser window opens shoing the image in Flickr. I save it, perhaps adding some tags, and always deleting the ‘uploaded by Skitch’ annoying ad that the app sticks in. Then I can click on the photo in the Flickr photostream, and select ‘post to blog’, and select the typepad blog to send it to. I hit send, and the post is automatically made, although there seems to be no way to tell Flickr to post the image as a draft. I thin have to open them new post and either copy the Image code in it and delete it, or use it as the start of a new post, usually saving it as a draft initially.

I also upload images of business cards — and not much else — to Evernote, but I find myslef relying less and less on stored business card information. In most cases I have people’s email and phone info in my email record at Gmail, so I am slowly winding down on my initial effort to use Evernote this way (see Personal Application Update , and Business Cards: Replaceable With EverNote?). I guess I should simply drop it.

I am uploading a lot of images on Tumblr. /Ambivalence is a stream of posts which reflect bits and pieces of the interests that I don’t yet have a dedicated blog for, like design, erotica, and gadgets. It’s a great tool and community for that. I wish more of my friends were involved there.

Web Conferencing: DimDim

I recently wrote about my discovery of DimDim, a web conferencing app that I have been using for the past several weeks, as part of my project to travel less and enjoy it more. At the time, I stated that it lacks a two-way video-conferencing capability, but Steve Chazin commented on the post, clarifying that:

Stowe,

Thanks for the Dimdim mention. As DD [the CEO of DimDim, who also commented on the post] suggested, please let us know if you have any questions, concerns or suggestions for us. We’re always trying to make Dimdim better, easier, and more enjoyable. BTW, Dimdim Pro ($99/year for unlimited meetings) does have 2-way video chat so you and one other attendee can share webcams/mics. Also, the built-in multi-user collaborative whiteboard (with a Wacom tablet attached, for instance) is being used by many to do remote brainstorming/thought sessions. Here is a video of that feature sans Wacom tablet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGrSQF7n2VE&fmt=18

I might spring for the $99/year, but it starts to bang against my inborn dislike of services that want $10/month of my money, which is partly why I am moving apps like Basecamp.

Video Streaming: Mogulus and Ustream.tv

I just wrote up my move from Mogulus to Ustream — see Mogulus and Ustream.tv: I Am A TV Station — and I have nothing to add, except that I have not gotten around to redoing the initial /Aviso show or tweaking the widgets on this site to show Ustream.tv instead of Mogulus, but that’s coming, hopefully tomorrow.

Expenses and Invoicing: Expensify and Blinksale

I continue to use Blinksale although my one-time hopes that many others would use it, and I could have electronic interaction with my clients around financial transations has largely faded. At least with Blinksale, which has had functionally zero changes in the last several years. I just use it an an electronic spreadsheet that produces pretty invoices and let’s be know what is outstanding. I would switch to something better in a second.

A lot of what I track for clients is expenses, and Blinksale isn’t particularly helpful in that regard. I have signed up for Expensify, but have not gotten my debit card for that service, which will track expenses and apply to to another credit card, and which provides a simple way to create expense reports from this information. (I have a longer review in the works at Unclutterer.) It may be that Expensify is general enough to allow me to drop Blinksale altogether. We’ll see.

Conclusions

I have finally weaned myself from Microsoft: I have even taken the Powerpoint app from my Mac dock, like I had done so long ago for Word and Excel. I still have the apps, but I only open them once in a blue moon.

Most all of the information I am managing has its home on the web primarily. The words and chords for my own songs are on Backpack, although I use the Packrat app to synchronize to my desktop, so I can access offline. Likewise, I am using Google Gears to access Google docs offline.

Things I am not using very much at all: Facebook, LinkedIn, Xing, Ning, YouTube, MySpace, Basecamp. Not for me, I guess, although I have used all in the past to some degree, and some quite a lot, like Facebook and Basecamp.

I am living in a world of streams. My desktop is a collection of streaming applications where others’ actions propagate themselves to my sight every few seconds.