Scary story

The Story of Stuff is a concise, well written mini-documentary that exposes the true nature of the shopaholic consumer lifestyle many of use lead. It shows in an easy to grasp, straight-to-the point way why this culture of consumption is unsustainable, and how the droves of stuff we buy on weekend shopping trips -and most likely dump within six months- is destroying not only the environment we ultimately depend on to survive, but also the people that help to create it. The video provides some really eye-opening statistics and is bound to have you thinking twice about your next purchase (and hopefully every purchase thereafter). The full video can be downloaded from the site, and some teasers are available on YouTube, including this one:

Effective Internet Lockdown: Browser applications

When I discussed Internet Lockdown habits, one of the major practices I mentioned was to kill online applications when not in use. Email and instant messaging are obvious culprits in this regard, but a web browser has even larger time wasting potential. This can be a problem when your everyday workflow involves the use of web based applications or HTML based documentation. My solution is to run these applications in a browser that strips down all potential for stumbling from your tool or reference site to other, potentially time wasting, sites.

Prism

Prism is a Mozilla labs webrunner application that strips the browser down to it's bare essentials. After installing prism, setting up a new web application simply involves specifying the URL and a name for the application and deciding where you would like the shortcut to be placed. Clicking on the new shortcut opens a completely minimal browser with no address bar or tool bar, containing your web app as if it were running normally in Firefox.

I use this approach for everything from our SourceForge installation to Google Notebook and documentation for Lua and Ant. I've found it has made an enormous psychological difference allowing me to safely use web applications without negatively affecting my focus.

GooSync adds task 'sync'

The Google calendar synchronization tool GooSync has had a new feature added to it's premium service: Task synchronization.  The naming is somewhat misleading, in the same way as the "contact synchronization" feature, since neither of these actually synchronize any data with any Google service. What they do is store the information on their own servers, acting as an easy to use backup service.

Also like the contact tool, the lack of real synchronization is compensated for with the ability to manage tasks on the GooSync website, allowing a user to add new tasks or edit or delete existing ones. This is a nice convenience, however it doesn't quite make up for the need to still enter tasks manually into Google calendar. No additional setup is needed on a device already configured for GooSync use, which makes utilizing the new service as simple as carrying out a normal Sync.

Task synchronization/backup is hardly a feature that would convince someone already on the fence about purchasing a premium subscription, but it is a nice bonus addition for those that are already paying for the full service.

Earth Hour

Ecogeek has a post today on an initiative called Earth Hour, in which companies and individuals around the world turn off their lights in a show of recognition of climate change. While as South Africans many of us may joke about Eskom making the decision for us it is worth taking part in. Unfortunately this is a bit short notice as the scheduled time is 8pm tomorrow evening, but I'm sure you can think of something to do with the lights out for an hour ;)