Category Archives: applications

The new Google Bar introduces logo based navigation

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In the process to unify all their web apps Google has now introduced a new way to navigate all their web apps – the new Google Bar. If you hover your mouse over the logo, it shows a menu with links to the main Google apps and a submenu for the rest. To me, that looks very exciting since it’s a whole new way to navigate. Here’s the video from the blog.

Over the last years, people came to expect that the website logo is always a link back to a websites’ homepage. It’s a standard now that helps lots of users go “back to start”. The Google approach goes even further and is not only a link to the homepage but also to other important areas (in case of Google – web apps). That saves space and also makes the logo the first stop for the navigation.

However, as new as this seems, if we look at operating systems we see something similar. A button to access the systems apps and functions. And now there’s the Google operating system button. Looking into the future I’d expect that lots of other websites will use that feature.

Send and archive e-mails VBA macro in Outlook

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A couple of years ago a friend asked me if it is possible in Outlook to select the folder where a email is saved after it is being sent. He had this feature in Lotus Notes and wanted this also in Outlook so that he can have all messages – sent and received – for a given project in one folder.

Unfortunately this function does not exist. Even after years and Outlook 2010 approaching, there’s no function like that. Even Gmail with the great feature that you have all messages in one threaded view, does not allow you to select the label for a email before you send it.

Now, there’s a solution – well, there has been a solution for some years, but I had it only on my work PCs ;) It’s a VBA macro that can be installed in all Outlook versions (even in Outlook 2010 beta). After you click on “Send e-mail” a folder selection window allows you to select a folder.

Here’s a video of how it works:

Send and archive an e-mail in Outlook from Michael Hartmann on Vimeo.

As a nice side effect, you can also “archive” sent e-mails in your “Deleted Messages” folder and don’t have to worry about them anymore.

Go to installation and code or click on “Outlook send and archive” in the navigation.

Clicktale subscriptions – boost your account

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Recently I have been invited to beta test ClickTale. Although I can’t tell much about the service itself yet there was one very interesting thing.

What is ClickTale
ClickTale is a website trackting tool that records the interaction of a user with the page, even mouse gestures. So it gives you the possibility to see how a user acts. You don’t know what he thinks since the mouse movement may not be the same as the eye movement. However, since many people move the cursor pretty soon to clickable areas (to not waste time) it still gives you a good impression. The visitors for the site are randomly selected to ensure that not just a special group (the early morning office surfers) are selected for all your available recordings.

Subscription models
As many other web services ClickTale has several subscription model to choose from. They allow for different amount of recordings per day. This is ok for sites where you want to test continuously, but this is not the usual case. For those who do tests every once in a while when a new feature is released ClickTale offers one-time boosts that give you a certain amount of recordings.
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In my opinion this is a very reasonable choice to give the users what they need. I haven’t seen any other web service using this model. Sure, Backpack or Basecamp let you change your subscription each month, but this might not be the right thing sometimes. This is not to say that every service should have one-time boost but for this service this definitely makes sense.

Delete your account on wordpress.com, and maybe other web2.0 apps

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Over the last months and even years I have registered with a lot of sites. Most of them I just try to check out because they are pretty new and are apps that seem to be worth using. However, I assume 90% of sites I register with I don’t use more than 2 – 3 times. Then I would really like to delete my account. Most of the time it’s hard to find how to delete your account, but sometimes it’s just impossible.

Today I wanted to delete my wordpress.com account. Why? I just don’t use it. I searched for a way and found a faq-page which told me something I just couldn’t understand.
Can't delete wordpress.com account
Why would the software or database crash if an account is deleted? If you write your app code properly that won’t ever happen.

This question is a very important question, especially if someone thinks about OpenID. Can I unregister from a webpage. What happens to my data? Any suggestions?

37signals new product launched – Highrise

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Chicago based 37signals just launched Highrise, an online shared contact manager. It looks quite similar to their existing and successful applications, Basecamp, Backpack, Campfire and completes the “suite” of easy to use personal and business web applications.

Unlike Google or many others, 37signals does not try to replace currently existing desktop applications, such as Word, with a web version (Word will be around for some more years, so competing against is really hard and maybe even sensless). Instead, they create products that solve problems better than many others by making it just simple, easy and a pleasure to use.

Since Highrise is out just a few hours ago, I won’t give any detailed review yet. However, one feature I already like. Adding categories to tasks:

Highrise_task_categories

This makes the task list a lot easier to view. Also, look at the grouping in GTD style.