These are a Few of My Favorite Things

This weekend I realized it has been almost a month since my last post. When I started this blog I set a goal of writing at least one entry every month, but I've been so busy working on projects these last weeks, that I have not had a chance to write anything. Hear are a few of my favorite web applications or services.

Bookmarking and Sharing Services
Services like addthis.com or addtoany.com which those familiar images such as () that let people bookmark your web pages. I prefer these buttons compared to those tools such as that found on toprankblog.com. The former display the links using css/javascript when you mouse over the image, while the latter display all the sharing/bookmark links as icons visible on your web page.

Yahoo Pipes & Google News
I know I've mentioned in previous blogs, but I still think they are a great way to keep up with subjects that interest you. Along that same path is Google News - if you create an account with Google they let you customize your News page with search terms. Yahoo pipes is more selective since you need to specify the sources for your information (RRS feeds, web site URLS, Blogs...) and flexible if you spend a few minutes learning how to build filters and other controls. They also let you build mash-ups such as this US population map. Google will give you a wider range of results, sometimes revealing the unexpected golden nugget in the form of an article about an item that you find very interesting but not on your normal list of news / information sources.

SnagIt and Camtasia Studio
SnagIT is utility by techsmith.com which is one of a handful of applications that improve the screen capture capability of Windows. It lets you capture & save part of a window or all of a screen which is larger than your monitor and requires scrolling to see. Camtasia lets you record your PC screen as a video. It can add a voice overlay with a microphone or add text and graphics to highlight a section of the screen.

Pandora
Finally I want to mention Pandora. Log in, provide a list of music which you enjoy and they will pipe music, related to your list of favorites, to your computer. I spend may hours on the computer and most of the time I have a window open to pandora.com playing music from one of my lists, or music from a list someone else has published.