Chrome extensions

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Posted by jaslar
Jul 6, 2013 at 04:28 PM

When the Chromebook first came out, I didn’t find the “live in a browser” idea very compelling. But I spent a little while today looking at a couple of things that this crowd might find interesting: extensions that operate as light, attractive, highly focused apps. After a while, I can see that it could be quite possible to live within Chrome’s tabs, especially as the apps and data are portable across Windows, the Mac and Linux (but not, alas, the iPad, although I imagine this will change eventually).

First up: Do It (Tomorrow) at http://tomorrow.do. It’s a user interface that will make you laugh. Click to open the book and you get two pages: Today and Tomorrow. No categories, no priorities, no subtasks, no Getting-It-Donnybrooks. You can choose between two typefaces. After you type in something to do, you have three options.
1. Click on it to draw a line through it.
2. Click on a little arrow to move it to Tomorrow.
3. Don’t do anything. It stays on Today.

That’s it!

Given the ultra-sophistication of this PIM-savvy forum, I realize that such a extravagantly minimalist interface won’t be seriously considered. But I find myself absurdly pleased with it. I mean, Today or Tomorrow. That’s all we’ve got, anyhow. Do we need more? And the learning curve is under 10 seconds.

The app is free, and sync automatically to Adylitica. If you would prefer to have it sync with Google Tasks, too, that’s $4.95.

The second extension is Yommoo, “my sticky note whiteboard.” It’s free. You can find it at http://www.yommoo.com/. Again, it has nothing like the sophistication sought in the recent thread on the topic here. Again, the options are simple:

* create several whiteboards
* create a sticky note, and drag it around, off, or back onto the screen
* search the notes not currently on the screen
* use a “o” (the letter oh) before a line to make a task
* share the whiteboard via an email invite

I’ve been messing around with planning a trip with my wife. It’s a nice spot to stash notes

The third is Mindmaps, at http://mindmapsapp.blogspot.com/. This HTML5 mindmapping app has a couple of interesting twists in the User Interface. But it doesn’t take long to work it out. It saves to Google Drive and Dropbox. I found some of the file management options a little odd (it seemed to replicate itself every time I saved a file). But it makes for reasonably attractive mind maps.

Finally, I’m writing this in the “Memo Notepad” extension—another one from the producers of Do It (Tomorrow). It looks a lot like the iPad notes app—title on the left, ruled notepaper on the right. You can pay 50 cents to turn on direct email from the note, or $4.95 to save to GDrive or Dropbox.

My point: I’m noticing a decided turn in my preferences toward simple and ubiquitous. The Cloud approach means that you don’t pay very much for the functions, wind up with a portable desktop, and the user interfaces are pleasure to use.

Is anyone else playing around with this “platform?”

Posted by Dr Andus
Jul 10, 2013 at 08:32 AM

jaslar wrote:
>Given the ultra-sophistication of this PIM-savvy forum, I realize that
>such a extravagantly minimalist interface won’t be seriously considered.
>But I find myself absurdly pleased with it.

Thanks for the write-up. I’m too invested in the Win/iOS world at the moment, but I also generally prefer minimalist interfaces, so if that’s what Chrome is going to be (and it stays that way), then my interest is piqued!

Posted by Captain CowPie
Jul 11, 2013 at 01:19 AM

>First up: Do It (Tomorrow) at http://tomorrow.do. It’s a user interface
>that will make you laugh.

I really liked the simplicity of Do It Tomorrow. It is similar to what I do in my time management system. I use TaskPaper and have a list for Today, Tomorrow, and BrainDump. I put things on the list to do either Today or Tomorrow, with a running list in Brain Dump to choose from if needed.

It is similar to Mark Forster’s system in his book Do It Tomorrow, although I believe he has moved on to another system since then. Sometimes simplicity is a good thing!

Vince

Posted by Dr Andus
Apr 28, 2014 at 02:36 PM

A Chrome extension for OCR-ing text in images on the web: “Grabbing Text from Images with Project Naptha”

http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/grabbing-text-from-images-with-project-naptha/56835

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