Dopp Juice Archive

If Google (or god forbid MSN) is still the first page you see when you open your web browser, it’s time to catch up with the Web 2.0 revolution. You can use that “Home” page so much more efficiently by loading it up with what’s important to you. And as TechCrunch just pointed out, if there’s one thing Web 2.0 is creating for you, it’s start pages, desktops, homepages… whatever you want to call them. I just started using Netvibes because they were included in the list of Best Web 2.0 Software of 2005. They’re incredibly easy to get started with, and so far I’m pretty happy. I think they could stand for a little more customization in appearance (I’d like to be able to play with font size, color, and spacing to increase readibility and affect emphasis), but in general, they’re as smooth as baby’s T-1 line. And I love that they have a flickr module so I can add a rotating series of photographs to brighten my day. But wait, there’s more. TechCrunch gives us the following list (these links will take you to more in-depth descriptions about the sites):

• Eskobo
• favoor
• Google
• Goowy (this one uses Flash)
• Microsoft Live
• Netvibes
• Pageflakes
• Protopage
• Zoozio

Go pick one and customize it with your news, weather, bookmarks, and favorite rss feeds. And say goodbye to someone else’s predefined portal to your web experience. Oh yeah, and of course, this is free.

Here’s a fun site: Peanut Butter Wiki (or “pbwiki” for short). It’s a site of free wikis. Anyone can create one. You’ve probably heard of wikis, but they’re kind of a tough concept to wrap your brain around. Here’s the idea: Wikis are websites that allow anyone (or a select group) to edit the content. And they mean it. If you have access to editing a wiki, you can delete the whole page. Or add all sorts of profanity. Or work on an honor system and collaborate effectively. The idea is that you’ll do the latter. What trust! What great faith in mankind on the web! And it’s all in plain text! You don’t even use HTML!Well, there are some safety nets. Wikis keep tabs on old versions of files, so a previous one can be restored. Certain big wikis like Wikipedia keep an eye out for “nonsense and vandalism” and ban those authors immediately. But do you realize that anyone (yes, even you) can edit that internationally widespread encyclopedia? If you know something about “stuff,” why don’t you put it up there? But back to Peanut Butter Wiki… It’s a useful free tool for getting some info on the web quickly. And it’s even more useful if you want other people to contribute to it. Check out my wiki for a demo. I’ll even give you the password once you get there, so you can edit it. Then you can build your own and wiki-wiki to your heart’s content.

After all my grunting about expensive planners that are either too big or too small and never customized to me, I just found a (hopefully) great solution — a hack for turning a regular notebook into an idea organizer. The instructions for building it are here: PigPodPDAI like it because my brain works in spurts of ideas, rather than in blocks of appointments. Capturing and processing those ideas are a challenge for me; they often get lost in the dated pages of agendas. This system is based on idea spurts. In the first 24 hours, I put five pages of ideas down on paper — ideas that have been bouncing around in my head for weeks without a place to live. They thanked me.As for cost, the author writes about turning Moleskine notebooks into this fabulous mechanism — but I have a hard time spending $15 – $20 on 100 pages that I’m likely to fill up in a month or two. So I bought a $2 spiral-bound that included a moveable plastic tab (like the “Today” bookmarks in “real planners”). I think it will be just right.So far it works great. My creative mind feels more honored than it has in a long time, and my obsessive planning side has a checklist always nearby.