Category: Resources

Street Tech pal Alberto pointed us to this amazing database list of “Office 2.0” applications (that’s 2.0 as in Web 2.0, not Office as in Microsloth). The list itself was built using Dabble DB an amazing Web-based database application. You can see a demo of Dabble DB is action here. Another Office 2.0 database site, maintained by Ismael Ghalimi has an updated list of Office 2.0 apps, with reviews, and other resources. Ismael also keeps a list of his Web-based office set-up.

Thanks, Alberto!

A week or so before the Maker Faire, I got an email invite to a social network that had been set up for Faire presenters and attendees. I took the link and set up my page on CrowdVine, a very cool service created by an ex-O’Reilly employee, Tony Stubblebine. Within a few hours, I watched an entire community popcorn into existence. It was quite inspiring. People got the evites, logged on, patched in their RSS feeds, their Flickr sets, their soc bookmarks, started friending each other, and leaving comments. It really was a great asset to be able to see who was going to be there, talk to each other about meeting up, learning about new people, etc. I identified a number of people at the Faire based on their photos on the site and read background on others.

CrowdVine is really easy to set up and use, so much so, I’m tempted to set up a Street Tech socnet, though I don’t know if there’s a real need for it. If you *are* in need of a such a network, especially for an event, you likely won’t find a quicker way to spark up a flash crowd than this with this site.

In today’s “Geek to Live” column, Gina shows you how to use iTunes’ Smart Playlists and PDF support to create an organized, searchable library of all your PDF docs. Who knew?

I’ve been really groovin’ on the Open Office apps of late, the final nail in the coffin of Microsoft on my desktops (excluding XP on one machine). Wanting to go deeper with the OO suite, I went in search of books or other resources, and discovered there are some great PDF manuals on OO’s Documentation site. You can also get a number of them in dead tree editions, such as the third edition of the OO Writer Guide, a 450 pg tome, via Lulu, for US$20.

The Documentation site has some really good How-To pieces, lots of templates, articles about OO, FAQs and other useful stuff. Worth spending some time poking around there, especially if you’re new to OO.

Attention Mac open software shoppers. Lifehacker’s “Download of the Day,” called Burn, looks worth checking out:

“While there are a lot of burning apps available for the Mac that can cover some of these bases individually (Disk Utility for disk images, iTunes for audio, etc.), Burn is by far the most powerful, free, all-in-one burner for OS X I’ve seen. Burn is free, Mac OS X only.”

Link to the rest of the item.

As many of you may already know, I’m a big fan of the HipsterPDA. I’ve been using one for the last year and a half and still love it. I’ve been using the D*I*Y Planner Hipster PDA, a series of printable 3×5 card forms. I haven’t been back to their site in a while and just discovered there’s a new set of cards, Version 3, which includes tons of variations on the themes of Notes, Calendars, Contacts, Projects, and even includes cool new cards like Story Boards, MindMaps, and Plot/Character trackers (over 80 cards in all). They also have cover designs and OpenOffice templates for creating your own cool covers. Sweet!

In response to our piece on retro CueCat library scanning, a blogger on GeekswithBlogs wrote about another site/service for barcoding your stuff. Barcopedia allows you to use a webcam to “scan” barcodes. And they’re building a user-created database of everything, from books and CDs to the contents of your kitchen and bathroom medicine cabinet. As the blogger says, if they make this thing extensible, open the API, there’s all sorts of cool places this sort of tech could go.

In Kevin Kelly’s latest Cool Tools, he “reviews” GetHuman, an online database of human operators for big companies that normally port you into Voice Jail. This is definitely a must-bookmark site.

Customer Service is also given grades by users of the GetHuman base. Wow, look at all those Ds and Fs. CS: A dying art to be sure.

This so so cool. From Lifehacker:

PodZinger, the site that enables keyword searches within audio and video podcasts, now lets you search inside YouTube videos as well. Here’s the scoop from the company’s blog:

Now besides simply searching on the metadata of the video files, you can search for terms that are actually mentioned inside the audio, allowing for a greater likelihood you will find relevant material.

We kid about the Pr0n. That’s just to get your attention. Surely, that’s not what our sweet and innocent Street Tech readers want to keep from prying eyes. But whatever it is, if you’re on Mac OS X, Mac Geekery has an excellent tutorial (called, um… “How to Hide Your Porn”) on (short of installing third-party apps), how you can hide and secure data stores using tricks and features native to OS X.