tech


4
Mar 09

TaskPaper (GTD on Mac OS X)

A while back during MacHeist 2 last year I acquired a copy of the GTD application for OS X called TaskPaper. At the time I didn’t think much of it, I saw it as a simple app for making to-do lists rather than anything else and I didn’t really have a need for it. It has been sitting in my Applications folder almost completely unused for almost a year now until I started looking into GTD methods to get some hint of organisation around all the stuff I’m doing.

I played around with the Things demo for a while and I have to say I was quite impressed with it. Things provides a really nice interface which made it easy to use, which was a big plus. Things also sports an iPhone app which synced perfectly with the Desktop version. The one thing (no pun intended) that put me off was the price. Buying the pair of applications for both the phone and the desktop would cost just over €50 which is quite a bit, considering the times we’re in. I also found that while Things sported a lot of nice features, that I wouldn’t necessarily use all of them, so it wasn’t really worth it.

Then I re-discovered TaskPaper sitting in my Applications folder. After firing it up and looking at it properly for the first time I realised it was much much more than a simple application for making to-do lists.

Continue reading →


29
Jan 09

o2sms on Mac OS X

I’m a huge fan of the o2sms, a command line application for sending free SMS messages using the websites of three of Irelands most popular mobile operators being o2, Vodafone and Meteor. All of these operators offer the functionality of sending free text messages from their own websites giving users the option to send up to 300 free SMS messages per month, which is quite a lot considering they charge up to €0.11 per message when you use your phone.

The only problem I find with using these sites is that it takes quite a lot of steps to actually send a message. Open Firefox, load the website, login, navigate to the webtext page etc… This is where o2sms steps into the equation. It acts like a specialised browser that automates the actions taken by the user to send SMS messages and provides the functionality through a CLI (command line interface), reducing the process to a single terminal command. Continue reading →


22
Aug 08

XBMC Project

For a long time now I’ve wanted to construct a cheap-ish media centre device for the house and I finally took the plunge a few weeks ago when I bought an original xbox for the purpose. There are a lot of ways to modify an xbox but I eventually decided on the softmod approach which meant minimal soldering on my behalf. It was also the cheaper option as I already had many of the materials lying around the house. Continue reading →