The StyleSheet » Useful Things

Social Mention

Kristine Fernandez — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 19:55:42 +0000

We have all Googled ourselves before to get a glimpse of our online presence, but here is a tool that you can use to measure social media buzz in a meaningful way: Social Mention. Social Mention analyzes 80+ social media sites and aggregates the data into measures like strength, sentiment, passion, and reach. Passion, for example, demonstrates how likely someone will continually mention your product, site, etc. These measures, as well as its stream of all social media mentions, will help keep you aware of your online reputation and provide you insight into communicating about your company in a positive way.

ClipMenu

Steve Garcia — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 19:33:43 +0000

ClipMenu allows you to save a history of your clipboard items, so that you don’t override what you originally copied when you go to copy something new. You can save up to 50 clipboard pieces with this free Mac download.

GAget & Polaris

Izzi Hassan — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 17:08:59 +0000

If you own a Mac and use Google Analytics to keep tabs on your website’s viewership trends, GAget is worth checking out. This simple widget gives you an up-to-date overview of your site’s statistics right from your Dashboard! To install, download GAget, enter your Google Analytics email address and password, and select the profile you wish to view.

Got a PC? Use Google Analytics on a daily basis? Then you’ll love Polaris! Polaris lets you view a snapshot of your Google Analytics profiles right from your desktop, in a shiny Adobe AIR based widget.

Hidden Files

Jeff McAllister — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 17:03:31 +0000

On the Mac operating system, files that are not typically meant to be opened remain as hidden. Although this certainly lends to a more tidy folder structure, these hidden files can be eating up your hard drive space. Recently, my portable flash drive was showing that nearly all my space was occupied and appeared to be empty. Using the free download, Hidden Files widget, I was able to see it was leaving ‘ghosted’ trash files on the drive. This was holding nearly 2GB of useless information. As always, if you are uncertain as to what truly is trash, do not delete it!

Vlingo

Kristine Fernandez — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 20:30:50 +0000

Full discretion mode: I text, Google, and navigate on my phone while I’m driving. While I like to live life on the edge, my mother was less impressed. Vlingo, the nifty phone app available for iPhones, Androids, and Blackberries, was her motherly recommendation (mandate) to keep me hands-free without losing access to all of my favorite phone activities including texting, updating my Facebook status, hearing incoming messages, and even booking a hotel.

iOS 5 Message Flagging

Margeaux Denson — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 20:07:56 +0000

With the arrival of the iPhone 4S and iOS 5, Apple also introduced two features which work very well with Outlook for Mac: Flagging Messages and Tasks. You can flag messages that you have read, but want to follow up with later. The new iOS 5 Tasks feature is part of the Reminders app. You can sync tasks, set reminders, set a repeat schedule, add a priority and add notes to tasks. Additionally, Outlook for Mac has a feature that displays your flagged messages as tasks.

Kindle for Mac

Jeff McAllister — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 21:04:41 +0000

With a quick and free download through Amazon, Mac users can have access to over a million books through Kindle for Mac. The application allows user to view comments from other readers, highlight and make notes, change color modes and look up words or phrases instantly in the built-in dictionary. For PC users, Amazon also offers a Kindle for PC free download.

Adaptive Images

Nick Weynand — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 14:30:41 +0000

Installing the Adaptive Images script will help your website run better on mobile devices. It takes large images on your site and dynamically creates smaller versions of them that display nicely on smaller screens.

Fluid 960 Grid System

Steve Garcia — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 15:51:54 +0000

More of a technique rather than an app or plugin, the Fluid 960 Grid gives your website the flexibility to maintain the design of a website regardless of the size of the browser it’s viewed in. While standard design generally uses a fixed width (often 960 pixels) that scales down when viewed on smaller devices, or shows a lot of background on widescreen monitors, fluid design resizes the content to fit to the device itself.

Wunderlist

Carly Smith Hohl — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 15:57:42 +0000

Wunderlist is a great task management app that allows you to sync your to-do’s across all of your devices. You can create new lists, assign due dates, and share your tasks with others.