Digital Simple » Thursday: From the Hip

A Simple Genealogy Site

Sherman — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 05:11:38 +0000

Every since I got my “sea legs” as a web developer I’ve dreamed of designing a simple but comprehensive website to help create family trees. I can stop; Geni.com does it beautifully.

Whether you’re a when-you-can genealogist (like me) or a die-hard family hunter, geni.com is a simple tool worth a hard look,

A really simple home page

Sherman — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 05:00:55 +0000

I love when I see stuff on the web that does just what I want it to do. Fav4.org does.

Choose the four websites you want it to display (from a list of 20 or so), set it as your internet homepage, and you have a super-simple place to start your web browsing.

Beautiful!

A great way to search for recipes

Sherman — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 18:25:23 +0000

I don’t cook, but if I did I’d consider using Bing to plan my next meal. When you search for a food item (skirt steak) you get an option to view recipes from delish.com, MyRecipes.com, epicurious.com and others right in the search results.

You can read more about Bing’s new recipe feature here, or visit the site to start planning your next meal! Have a great weekend

A great smartphone comparison

Sherman — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 03:50:30 +0000

You’ve probably heard a lot of talk about Smartphones (think of “The Works” pizza). Google recently released a new one – the Nexus One – adding to your shopping choices. If your like me, there’s only one option, but for anyone looking to shop around BillShrink.com has made your initial comparison easier. This isn’t every smartphone available, but it’s a good place to start.

Click here to read the whole thing.

What time is it

Sherman — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 17:03:09 +0000

If you’re like me you have friends and family all over the country. I want to wish them a happy holiday on Friday morning but I don’t want to interrupt dinner (or wake them up too early).

A quck check to WhatTimeisitThere.info is all I need – it tells me what time it is in New England and Hawaii. Sure, I could figure it out on my own, but this looks nice too!

Growl

Sherman — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 19:22:17 +0000

If you’re like me there are a lot of things happening on your computer that you may or may not want to know about…

You get an email and just want to glance at the sender and subject.
You started downloading something and want to know when it’s done.
Your random song mix changed and you want to know the artist.

Let “Growl” give you a heads up. Once it’s installed other programs on your computer (that support Growl) can send notifications message to your screen. If it’s something you want to ignore you can; if it’s important you know.

Growl is a simple way to know what’s going on. Download it now and get the message.

Click here to download Growl for your Mac.

Click here to dowload Grown for Windows.

It can help you find (almost) anything

Sherman — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 21:01:46 +0000

Sometimes you just want to find a website fast: American Airlines, new york subway map, something about The Flash… or whatever. You could Google it but there’s an even faster way.

If you’re in your web browser: just start typing what you want where the web address would go, then hit enter

Your browser has a default search engine that’ll do the rest: If it can find an exact match it’ll take you there directly (saving you a trip to Google). If there’s no “perfect” match you’ll see some search results to choose from.

Find a mailbox

Sherman — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 16:30:40 +0000

Do you need to post a letter – a real written on paper kind? Don’t want to leave your NetFlix in the overstuffed mailbox in your apartment? Use Mailboxmap.com to find the nearest mailbox.

A simple way to get the “snail mail” out.

BONUS: If you’re on a mobile phone, use this version instead

Google Reader

Sherman — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 18:20:13 +0000

Do you like reading news and blog sites but don’t have the time to click through them all every day? Give Google Reader a try!

I’ve wanted to write about Google Reader for quite some time – it’s one of my favorite tools and I use it constantly - but I could never come up with a simple way to talk about it; thankfully Google’s done the heavy lifting.

“Have trouble keeping up with the sites you visit? Read them in one place with Google Reader, where keeping up with your favorite websites is as easy as checking your email … Google Reader constantly checks your favorite news sites and blogs for new content.”

If you visit a few web sites or hundreds; let Google Reader gather all the new stuff for you!

It’s a Simple Way to keep up with Digital Simple… and other blogs too! You’ll need a google account to get started; once you have one make sure and click here

Select All

Sherman — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 14:11:10 +0000

If you want all the files in a folder – to delete, move or whatever – there’s a simple way to “Select All”

Start by clicking one item in the folder that you want, then hit CTRL+A. It’s that simple. You should see all of your files highlighted.

This works exactly the same way on the mac, but choose Command ()+A instead

“Select All” isn’t limited to files either. It works almost everywhere in your computer

√ In a word or excel document to choose everything
√ In your email to get all your email messages
√ In your music and photo manager to select all your media

The list goes on.

So if you want it “all”, now you know a simple way to get it.