Outliner/PIM roll call: Fall 2011

Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Nov 10, 2011 at 09:55 PM

Dr Andus wrote:
>Thanks guys! If you use any similar time (and movement) savers, I’d be
>glad to hear about them.

I’m glad you mentioned this. Indeed I find that even as my information management applications change, some ‘minor’ gems remain faithful servants. They deserve an honorable mention:

- Slickrun, already mentioned by several; I launch all my programs with a maximum of two letters. It has become so much second nature that when I work in somebody else’s computer I will keep hitting Alt+Q (the shortcut to evoke SlickRun)

- PopPeeper; a tray mail checker and the fastest way to review new mail. Apart for POP it handles IMAP, webmail, and even RSS (the non-free version)

- Rainlendar; a calendar waiting in the system tray, displaying all events from Outlook, which in turn is synced with Google Calendar via Google Sync.

- PureText; a tiny resident utility to convert clipboard contents to plaintext at a keystroke

- TextTally; a similar utility to count words in the clipboard

- Diacrit, to easily insert the occasional accented characters not covered by my keyboard setup

- Simidude, to share the keyboard among various computers, even cross-OS

- Brainstorm with Magic Paste on, to rapidly collect texts from various sources for further processing

- PDFill Tools, to split, merge and rotate PDFs

- EasyTether, to connect my laptop to the internet via my Android phone when Wi-Fi is not available; no dongle or separate plan required

- AnVir Task Manager, to control extraneous startup items and warn me if my PC’s resources are used up too much

- With Skype having become my preferred method of oral communication as well as instant messaging, a very useful tool is Grecorder, which will backup Skype chat conversations to Gmail, labeling them as such.