As you might be able to tell I’m quite taken with the Google suite of online apps. Gradually since starting to use Gmail I’ve noticed that I’m using my inbox more like a to-do list than just a repository for my incoming email. Combined with a couple of other free online apps you can turn it into a useful personal organiser.

In order to make this work though, you need to be disciplined in keeping your inbox empty… (I was put onto this way of thinking by way of two posts, the first from ZenHabits, and the second from Tim Ferris who writes a lot of sense…) Inboxes full of mail make me shudder, you know who you are…

In addition to acting on incoming mail promptly, I use the Google calendar to mail me about things I really need to do (as well as sending me texts to let me know and appointment is imminent).

The final weapon in the arsenal is Hasslebot. This is great for irregular reminders. If you want to be reminded to call someone every few weeks, but you don’t want it to appear too regimented you can get Hasslebot to mail you roughly every 14 days. And the key word there is roughly. Because of that you’ll seem spontaneous, just don’t let them know your secret…

The neat thing about getting these reminders thru your inbox is once you get into the mind set of having an empty inbox it provides a real incentive to act on the reminders you receive in order to have the warm fuzzy feeling you get from knowing where your towel is…

Give it a go for a week, see if it works for you and let me know how you get on.

After checking thru the logs for the site, I noticed a few of the articles were attracting a small but steady trickle of visitors. This is probably due to the titles being close to a couple of fairly common searches. In light of this I’m rewriting the two that get the most hits.

The main reason for this is vanity. I don’t want visitors clicking on a link to this site from a search engine and then discovering that they’ve wasted their time. When people arrive here I want them to find what they’re looking for, I want this site to be of use to them.

Seeing as one of the posts is only one sentence long it shouldn’t be too difficult to knock it in to shape. Basically it needs to be the article you would expect to see from reading the title.

So the aim for all future articles is to be useful and informative. Oh yes, and pay close attention to the titles to make them catchy and relevant. (There’s more to this blogging malarky than meets the eye…)

Been to the Ordnance Survey Outdoor Show at the NEC today with my brother. We only stayed a few hours, about as long as it took to wander round the two halls. It was a bit of a disappointment really, nothing really stood out. The show itself was half and half big name brands and regional tourist boards touting for business.

I’m not sure if we need shows like this any more. Even at a exhibition like this you can only ever show a small fraction of the kit that is available. For example, there was only one tent manufacturer in attendance, Vaude… For an outdoor show that seems like a bit of an oversight. Maybe the remit was too wide and the venue too small.

I freely admit that I’m a picky customer, consciously acting out an inverted snobbery that I’m not proud of admitting too. I like my gear specialised, and if it’s an obscure brand so much the better. Maybe that’s why I didn’t get as much out of it as I was expecting. Won’t bother next year…

The intention was to do a few posts in the same vein as the Firefox extensions ones detailing the software I can’t live without installed on my (various) personal computers. Then I realised that there isn’t any…

Well, almost none. Aside from a few heavy hitting graphics applications that I keep around for design work, there is surprisingly little that I need.

MP3 Player - pretty much a given for computer users everywhere.

Graphics tools - one bit-map based, one vector based. The Gimp and Inkscape respectively. (Or occasionally CorelDraw X3 now I’ve got access to it again.)

And now I’m really struggling… Surely there must be more than three software packages that I need. After much thought I realised there was another.

Open Office - as a matter of principle. The only thing I use this for now is to knock a GoogleDoc into shape for printing, which is something I rarely do. (I think I’ve printed two sheets of A4 since Christmas) I hate printing reams of useless tat out even more than I hate Microsoft. So I try to have as little to do with either as I can.

Anything you can’t live without? Drop in a comment and we’ll try and guess how long it’ll be before you can do that thru a browser window…

Yesterdays round up of add ons were the kind of tools that would be useful for anyone. Todays bunch are a bit more specialised. You might not find them immediately useful, but if you’ve got a specific itch that needs scratching, they can’t be beat…

FireBug - essential web design tool. I can’t belive how insanely great this is. If you need to dive into the code of a site to see how it works there’s nothing better. Want to make changes to any site on the web on the fly? You can with Firebug. (Unbeatable for blog theme tweaking…)

FireFTP - platform agnostic FTP tool. Because I use both Linux and Windows on a daily basis, I got fed up with switching FTP clients. With FireFTP you don’t have to, it’s all done from the browser. Remember, the browser is the new operating system…

FireUploader - for easy and quick access to my Picasa account. I’ve been uploading a huge amount of photos recently, and frankly the Picasa interface sucks. You can only upload five files at a time. With FireUploader I can upload directories full at a time. Also integrates with lots of other services for extended usefulness…

Google Notebook - The more I use it, the more uses I find for it. Not strictly a Firefox extension, more a Google product. Highlight a chunk of website and clip, it’s in the notebook. Great for research and, well, taking notes… Highly recommended if you haven’t tried it already.

Well that’s the extent of the add ons I can’t live without. Do drop me a note if you try one of them you don’t already use…