Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Two new toys for writers

Command line searching of Google! -- HSM

Goosh

I want to take a moment to plug two new tools for writers and researchers. The first I found thanks to Slashdot. It’s called Goosh. Goosh replaces the standard Google web page interface with a simulated command-line shell. As much as I like graphical interfaces, I have found that there are certain tasks that are more efficiently done by using the command line. If you use Google as much as I do, I think that you may find that investing the time to learn this shell saves much time when doing actual searches instead of slogging through endless Google web pages. On my (very) old computer, I find that I can do my Google searches in about 1/10 the time that I can using standard Google.

Here’s is how Goosh works. When you start Goosh, it defaults to web searches. To search the web, all you have to do is type the keyword on the command line. It then shows four results. To see more results, just hit enter. To go to one of these results, type the number of the result that you want and then it will open in a new tab. (It may open in a new window on your machine, since I have Firefox set to automatically open any new window requests in a new tab, unless I tell it to do otherwise.)

Blog searching is just as easy. While your prompt says /web, you have one of two choices. You can change the default search to “blog search” by typing the word “blog”, or if you just want to do a single blog search while leaving the default set for web, just type “blog” followed by your keywords, like so:
blog anarchism

There are a lot more commands available, and a brief summary of them is available by typing “help” at the Goosh prompt.

Goosh is not for the casual Googler, since it requires a little bit of a learning curve. I wish that it had a little more documentation and tutorials than the “help” command. But if you are a hard-core Googler, and are comfortable with command-line interfaces, you might find that it’s a big time saver. As a matter of fact, I am thinking about making Goosh my default start-up page. I’ve only been using it for a couple of days, and I wish that I’d found it years ago.

Two new toys for writers

eHistory

Some software suggestions for digital media, editing and online storage -- HSM

 

eHistory

SansBlogue: Backup Zotero!

SansBlogue: Backup Zotero!

Good information on backing up Zotero until the commons gets up and running -- HSM

Backup Zotero!

For those who have not backed up their Zotero databases. Zotero is brilliant, but one feature it needs is an easy way to backup the data. No one wants to have to recreate the database for a whole thesis or book! Till the wonderful people who program Zotero get that fixed here's how to DIY a backup (with a video for those who like to SEE how:
In "Documents and Settings" under "Application Data" and hidden under "Mozilla" in the "Firefox/Profiles" directory is one for "Zotero" just COPY that to a CD or memory stick and you are safe(r).

SansBlogue: Backup Zotero!

LibX and Zotero: Firefox Extensions for Librarians and Library Patrons

Need to look at LibX....Good place to start....HSM

LibX and Zotero: Firefox Extensions for Librarians and Library Patrons

Around the Corner - MGuhlin.net : VLC Media Player Tutorials

Around the Corner - MGuhlin.net : VLC Media Player Tutorials 

"need to take a look at these"  -- HSM

 

Around the Corner - MGuhlin.net

http://mguhlin.net

Monday, June 09, 2008

VLC Media Player Tutorials

 

For a long time, I've wanted to compile my VLC Media Player tutorials--a series of steps on how to convert video/audio, etc--using this awesome, free open source tool that works on Mac, GNU/Linux and Windows. Clay Burell finally broke me down with the final straw via a tweet at 11:00 PM or so at night (past my bedtime).

So, for fun, I added some tutorials for using VLC Media Player to accomplish the following...only one of them has screenshots, but I'll add those as time allows.

  1. Convert FLV to MOV using VLC Media Player
  2. Save to MP4 from a DVD
  3. Save Audio to MP3/OGG from Video

As time allows, I'll add more tutorials to this page.

Around the Corner - MGuhlin.net : VLC Media Player Tutorials