Creating multiple profiles in your Netflix account isn’t new – but it’s something that I found myself setting up for my (soon to be permanent!) other half yesterday. He was logged into my Netflix account checking to see what I had coming up in my queue, but then he started clicking on watch instant videos and I realized that he was going to muddle up my recommendations!
Then I remembered about creating profiles in your Netflix account. I quickly set one up for him and told him to rate, review, and watch as much as he wants…logged into his profile. Of course, then I realized it may be useful for you to see how easy it is to set up profiles for everyone in your family. See how below (please excuse my hideous voice, I have an awful cold):
Google Chrome has a lot of Extensions worth checking out, but these are three that I find myself using throughout the day. Don’t expect a lot of bells and whistles here, folks – these three Extensions just help me get things done a bit quicker. Watch the screencasts that follow the brief introduction to see how they can work for you:
The Picnik Extension for Chrome allows you to easily take screenshots and edit them using the online image editor Picnik.com.
The Session Manager Extension gives you a really handy way to save your browsing sessions so that you can come back to them later – without having to bookmark a bunch of sites.
Tab Menu is an Extension that allows you to easily sort through, organize, and even close your tabs within a drop-down menu in your bookmarks toolbar.
My Weekly Browsing Schedule is a Firefox Add-on that allows you to create a schedule of when certain Websites should open in your browser.
After you install it you just need to go to “tools” then select “My Weekly Browsing Schedule”. A window will pop open so you can add the URLs to all of the Websites you want Firefox to remember to open for you. You can select specific days of the week and times for each Website or you can choose to open certain sites whenever Firefox starts.
There are other options for personalization such as creating a delay before the sites open and you can choose whether or not to open a Website up in a new browser window or tab.
To see My Weekly Browsing Schedule in action, watch the screencast below:
Readtwit allows you to turn your Twitter stream into an RSS feed. It removes shortened URLs and allows you to read the actual content right in your favorite feed reader.
First you need to connect Readtwit to your Twitter account and then you can easily subscribe to the RSS feed it creates. You can also create filters to remove certain people you follow from your feed as well as remove specific hashtags. The only real feature that I see missing is the ability to create a feed that only includes specific people – or a way to create a feed for a specific list that you’ve created on Twitter.
To see Readtwit in action, watch the screencast below:
Scribbly is an application that runs on Adobe Air which allows you to quickly take notes and then email them to yourself with one click. Its feature set still leaves a lot to be desired, but it’s still a useful little tool and worth a look.
After you install it you just need to click on the icon located in your system tray and add your email address to the settings so Scribbly will know where to send your notes. You can jot down notes, copy and past links and even quickly add a time-stamp by clicking on the clock icon. That’s really about it. I do have my own requests for features, of course:
- The ability to add multiple email addresses so I can send my shopping list to my boyfriend fiance .
- A button so that I can clear the list – right now it seems that I have to delete items myself.
- More control over how Scribbly behaves. I’d like the option to have it go away after inactivity instead of having to hit the Esc key.
To see Scribbly in action, watch the screencast below:
With the New Year quickly approaching (less than a month away!!) I decided it would be a good time to find a new tool for establishing healthy habits – out with the bad and in with the good! That takes us to Rootein (pronounced “routine”), a service that allows you to create and track tasks, or Rooteins. The premise behind Rootein is that it takes 21 days for something to become a habit so, hopefully, after using Rootein for about a month you’ll begin to effortlessly perform these tasks, thus forming a healthy habit.
After you sign up for a free account you just need to enter in a Rootein – anything from running 2 miles every day to remembering to call your mom.
You can create as many Rooteins as you’d like and then simply select the one that you’ve done and mark the date on the calendar. Every time you perform one of your Rooteins just check in and then continue on with your day. You can create reminders so that you never forget to, say, water your plants.
To see Rootein in action, watch the screencast below:
Duffel is a trip planning tool that allows you to clip and save ideas and links for places you are planning on visiting or for a vacation that you dream of someday taking.
Creating a Duffel is simple: Select the location of where you want to go, give your trip a name such as, “When I win the lottery,” and then choose to make it private or public. Your Duffel will then be created and open preloaded with suggestions of where to stay, sightseeing attractions, and notes that can be edited.
If you added dates to your Duffel (you don’t have to add dates, which is helpful since most of my trips are wishful thinking) then you can drag and drop notes and activities under each day that you’ll be in a location to create an itinerary. You can also invite friends to join you on Duffel and allow them to collaborate with you. You can add other Duffel users as contacts so that in the future you can easily invite them to collaborate on a trip.
Probably the most useful aspect of Duffel is the bookmarklet. It allows you to add any Web page that you’re viewing to a Duffel and add notes, phone numbers, and addresses. So if I find myself on a Website for a luxurious hotel in Paris, I can simply click on “Add to Duffel” and add it to my “When Pigs Fly” trip. To see Duffel in action, check out the screencast below (best viewed in HD in full screen):
Last night I was pleasantly surprised to see that I finally had Twitter Lists enabled in my Twitter account. Of course, 5 minutes later I realized that Twitter had opened up Lists to everyone and I was quickly reminded that I’m really not all that special.
If you haven’t given Twitter Lists a try, this screencast should give you a quick overview of what they’re all about and how to use them properly. On an unrelated note, Happy Halloween!
Linkli.st allows you to quickly and easily create lists out of links that you find on the Web. You can share these lists with friends and allow others to add links to your list, which is great for collaboration. It’s free to use and only requires a sign-up if you wish to use all of the handy features.
You begin by giving your list a name – I called my first list, “Recipe Ideas for Thanksgiving,” which I filled with links to online recipes that I’m thinking of making for Thanksgiving. I made my list public and allowed others to add to the list. When you enable these features, other people can see your list and add relevant links to it. People can also reply to a list, which really just creates a new list which will be linked to the original list. The “reply” feature had me a bit confused at first, so hopefully when you see it in the screencast you’ll get my drift. There’s also a bookmarklet which enables you to add links to your lists, wherever you are on the Web.
You can share the URL of your Linklist with friends and grab the embed code for your own blog or Website. People can also subscribe to your different lists so they’ll know when you add something new.
Linklist doesn’t have set rules for how you should use it, and that’s one of the reasons I like it so much. Planning a vacation? Create an ideas Linklist and share it with your traveling companion. Want to show off a list of your favorite blogs? Create a favorites Linklist and share it with your Twitter followers. Check it out and if you create a Linklist, share it in the comments!
To see Linklist in action, watch the screencast below:
TinyGrab is an application that works with your Mac OS X or Windows screenshot tool to help you quickly share the screenshots you take.
After you install TinyGrab simply take a screenshot as you normally would (you can change the hot-keys in your preferences if needed). TinyGrab will almost instantly copy a short URL to your clipboard which links to your image. You can share this URL wherever you like – Twitter, IM, email, you name it. These URL’s will also be stored in your system tray or dock so you can access them again.
You also have the option of uploading your own images from your computer and TinyGrab will give you the same short URL to share with others. TinyGrab works fast. Really fast. If you want a way to almost instantly share screenshots with all of your Twitter followers, I highly recommend checking out TinyGrab. Currently the free version supports 10 free uploads a day but you can upgrade to a premium version for a minimal one time payment.
To see TinyGrab in action, watch the screencast below (best viewed in HD in full screen):
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