Online Alternative to Utilities
Saturday, December 31st 2005 | Ismael Ghalimi
Previous posts have identified online services as candidate alternatives to most useful functions offered by a personal operating system and an office productivity suite, including file management, word processing, spreadsheet editing, presentation building, project management, emailing and bookmarking.
Not directly covered, yet often mentioned, are the use of Salesforce.com as an alternative to Microsoft Access and the use of LinkedIn as an alternative to Outlook’s contact manager. I will cover these in future posts. In the meantime, here are some online alternatives to some utilities offered by Microsoft Windows:
Online Alternative to Calculator: Google Calculator. Unless you’ve created a shortcut for it on your Windows toolbar, the Calculator is one of those hardest-to-get-to applications that require no less than three mouse clicks to launch. Instead, I find myself using the Google Calculator on a daily basis, sometimes for quite complex calculations involving unit conversions and scientific operations, something that the Windows Calculator is incapable of. And because a Google search field can be found on most web browsers today, any calculation is just one carriage return away now. Tip: the Google team just added a currency converter too.
Online Alternative to Command Prompt: YubNub. This social command line for the web goes beyond what Google Search can provide. It integrates with Amazon, del.icio.us, eBay, Flickr, Google, Technorati, Wikipedia, Yahoo! and many other popular services, while letting you create your own services. Tip: it also comes as a browser plugin.
Online Alternative to Desktop: Browser tabs. The desktop is the place from where the most useful applications can be launched and the most current documents can be opened. A working alternative to it this can be found with the proper use of browser tabs and the configuration of online services they link to. Personally, I tend to use a single browser window with one tab per major online service (del.icio.us, Gmail, LinkedIn, Salesforce.com, TypePad) and one or two tabs for web browsing. The home page in Salesforce.com tends to serve as a desktop replacement, even though the setup of custom links and their reordering is particularly cumbersome (request to Salesforce.com team: please improve). Also, while the home page in Salesforce.com displays the ten last used objects, showing the ten most frequently used ones might be a good idea too. Overall, there is ample room for improvements here.
Online Alternative to Notepad: Self emailing or attached notes in Salesforce.com. For quick notes that will require further work, I usually send an email to myself. Doing it in Gmail is usually faster than launching Notepad, and the email will sit in my inbox until I process its content, which ensures that I will not forget about it. For more contextual notes, I attach notes to objects in Salesforce.com such as a Contact, an Account or an Opportunity. And because the ‘New Task’ button is a couple of screen inches away from the ‘New Note’ one, I usually tend to create a task instead, which adds a deadline and makes it conveniently appear into my master task list. Hint: when trying to get things done, tasks are always better than notes.
Entry filed under: Office 2.0
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So… in regards to Google Calculator, a quick tip: you need to learn to use Firefox “Quick Searches”. it’s very simple… you should be able to Google it really quickly.
It seems apparent to me that you don’t know how to use them from reading this post. The basic idea is you can bookmark a query, replace the query variable with “%s”, and set a keyword or letter.
So for example I use “g” for Google. That way when I type in “153434 / 323 + 45323″, I automatically get 21,529,687.9 spit back from Google. No need to even visit the Google homepage. The only problem is you get to miss all those pretty holiday graphics Google puts up.
But maybe you already knew this. If not, I hope that it helps. This and learning Google’s syntax for everything from mapping to definitions is the single biggest productivity tool I can give anyone in the world. I also use it to search Wikipedia, and a few other popular sites.
Michael,
Thanks for the tip. I like it!
I’ve been checking out YubNub.
Going to need to check it out some more.
I have no need for 99% of their search acronyms. But you can customize them. I guess I’ve created my own shortcuts and am to used to them. However, like most web based applications, it decentralizes the intellegence, allowing it to be standardized on any computer, and — I’m not sure, I have to check into it — any web browser.
I can’t do Firefox quick searches in Safari… And I have to sync them between my various computers. The syncing doesn’t bother me. I appreciate setting up my quick searches on different computers, because it reminds me which ones are important. However, if I could bring this functionality to Safari or IE, on any computer I use, that would make me take the jump.
It’s all about usability and workflow.
Michael,
I could not agree more. It’s all about usability and workflow.
I was drawn to your blog because I recognized from your between the lines ZDNet podcast episode that you seem to be incredibly interested in how people use applications. Workflows, usability. Not many people pay that much attention to how they use applications in this way.
Michael,
Thanks! I’m interested primarily because I use them a lot, and I have a passion for making them better, in much the same way a craftsman likes to have the right tools for the job. And for me, the tools are almost as important as the job itself.
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