Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Clearly



Another browser extension that I have been using extensively (without realizing it) is “Clearly”. It’s a browser extension from the makers of Evernote – the mighty elephant which helps you remember everything!!
Clearly is a browser extension which sits on your browser toolbar and de-clutters your web page in one click. Often, when we start reading something on the net, apart from the article that we are reading there are umpteen forces which distract you and pull you in their direction – ads, pop up banners, links to other sites / pages, whether needed or not. More often than not, we end up clicking on the links and end up reading about ‘how to make money online’ whereas, in the first place we would have started reading something about ‘entrepreneurship’.
‘Clearly’ saves you from all the distractions and helps you to concentrate on the main article / feature that you are reading. With one click, ‘Clearly’ hides all distractions from blogs and articles. When you click on ‘Clearly’ from within a web page, it slides in giving the page you are reading a PDF document kind of look – sans any ads or links. After you are done reading, you can click on the return arrow and the original page comes back. Or, if you want to read the page at a later time, you can click on the Evernote clipper and the page is saved in your Evernote. Multipage articles show as a single page continuous article with ‘Clearly’.
‘Clearly’ has 3 preset themes Newsprint, Notable and Nightowl or you can even make your own presets. You can read more about it and watch a short video about ‘Clearly’ here:

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Apps I Use






A 100 plus apps on my android and a couple of them on my laptop – either as standalone apps or browser extensions, I took a stock of my apps sometime ago and was shocked to see so many apps!! A 100 plus on my mobile, a dozen or so on my laptop, browser!!!
But how many of these apps do I actually use? If I do use all the apps what do I use them for? Are they all useful apps? How many of them are free apps and how many paid apps? Once I started thinking on these lines I realized that there are a few apps which I have been using for a very long time, without even realizing that they are not a standard part of my mobile or the browser, for instance. These apps have become such an inseparable part of the main device that I cannot imagine the device / browser without these apps.

Rapportive

Let me give you an example – Rapportive – which is a nifty little plugin for Gmail, and, a wonderful one I must say. After installing this plugin no one who sends me an email can escape by not providing any details. Just with an email id, rapportive scans the web and shows me all the details I need to know about the person – his/her Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Picasa, Windows Live accounts are displayed on the right hand side of my mailbox!! Instead of ads!!! Awesome!!! Any digital / social presence of the person sending an email is pulled out and displayed right along with the mail.
If I want to connect to his LinkedIn account, I can do it right from my Gmail inbox, just click on ‘connect’ and a box with the invitation pops up, click on ‘send invitation’ and that’s it, how convenient, same with Facebook. By clicking on Google+, Picasa and Windows Live you will be able to view the person’s g+, Picasa or Windows Live profile respectively. Oh yes!! Not to forget the last two buttons, Recent Mail – clicking on that takes you to recent mail from that person (though Gmail has the convenience of threaded conversation style email display) and ‘Compose’ button – self-explanatory I suppose.