UPDATE: Five Reading Tools - part IV: Read Quick

How embarrassing.

In my tiny review of Read Quick I lamented about the fact, that one could not mark an article read (in Pocket) directly in Read Quick.

Also, and option to mark the article as read, once you are done with it, would be nice.

Oh, was I wrong.

This apparent lack of a feature was so annoying to me, that I decided to click on the "finished" icon next to the article - and voilà... a new menu appears, with the usual range of sharing options, but also an Archive icon.

Archive - of course - is the pocket way to mark an article as read.

So I stand corrected, Read Quick does fully sync with Pocket.  Hooray!

Speaking of Pocket, here's a nice little info I got from them... it appears I'm amongst the top 5% of pocket users. Another hooray!

Five Reading Tools - part V: Reader in Safari

And finally... on my iPad in Safari I use the Reader.

It has about the same features as Evernote Clearly, except that it is not an extension and only exists on iOS.
Luckily it is built into the browser since several iOS version (not sure how long) and therefore is just there (for free).

It also comes with a reading list feature, but I never use that, simply because I want my reading list centralized (i.e. pocket).

I only use it to clean the article of all the clutter around it, and it works like charm.

All you need to do is press the little reader icon (seems to represent some text lines as in "text only") left of the URL bar.

Our Wikipedia entry looks like this (click to enlarge).

Nice thing is, that links work.

Five Reading Tools - part IV: Read Quick

Now for something quite different:

While I studied at TU Vienna (Computer Engineering) I took some lectures in Computer Linguistics offered by the Linguistics Department of the (regular, good old) University of Vienna.One of those lectures/courses was about Text Comprehension and Computers (this was 1990), and I was the proud presenter of the topic Reading on the Screen.

One of the methods I came across during preparation was Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP). It is about presenting one word (or very short phrase) at a time at a fixed location. This allows for reading rates of up to 700 words per minute [1].


Flash forward 22 years (ouch) and imagine the déjà vu I had, when I learned about ReadQuick. Because it is exactly an implementation of this.
ReadQuick is an iOS app, that uses Pocket, Readability or Instapaper as a back-end service to store/queue the articles and then presents them in RSVP style.

You can set the speed yourself (in words per minutes). I'm currently at 335 as you can see. You'll notice that over time your reading speed will increase - as advertised. I think I started around 220 or so.

One nice side effect is, since the article size (in words) and the speed is known, it can tell you how long in minutes this article is, or how much you have left.


It actually is a totally different reading experience. After a time you'll get rid of "reading" and just absorb the text as it flies by.

It's $4.99 in the app store, but totally worth it.

The longer or more narrative an article is, the rather I read it with ReadQuick. However, you do need a quieter environment then for the rest (at least I do), because once you get distracted, you cannot easily jump back one sentence or paragraph.

Also, and option to mark the article as read, once you are done with it, would be nice.

Unfortunately, this app is iOS only for the time being. An Android version is said to be in the works.

~~
UPDATE here.

--
[1] Mills, C.B./Weldon, C.J.: Reading Text from Computer Screens. ACM Computing Surveys 19,4 (1987)... to be found here. Well at that time, I got it from TU Vienna Library back in the days.

Five Reading Tools - part III: BeeLine Reader

Beeline Reader is a Firefox and Chrome extension very similar to Evernote Clearly, but with a little twist...

They use a color gradient that "flows" along the line and creates a high onctrast between two lines.
See how the color changes from black to blue to red and also varies saturation:

Supposedly this should make reading easier. Quite frankly, I cannot judge this, but it seems to work.

The drawback is, that it only allows for reading, no saving, printing, ...

If you are a Firefox or Chrome user, install it from here and try it. Worthwhile.
Again, here's our Wikipedia entry for comparison with the other tools. Click to enlarge.

Five Reading Tools - part II: Evernote Clearly

Evernote Clearly is an extension to both, the browser and Evernote.

I guess, it is fair to say, that it only makes sense to use Evernote Clearly, if you are an - at lest modestly - active Evernote user. But see for yourself.

To quote their own website:

Clearly makes blog posts, articles and webpages clean and easy to read. Save them to Evernote to read them anywhere.

And that's really it.

I use Clearly whenever I'm on a PC/browser and want to read some longer article or post [1], or when the web page is cluttered with too many gadgets, ads and nonsense - primarily when I need to read it now (otherwise I'd use pocket).

Once you installed the browser extension, you will find the Clearly icon in the toolbar. When needed, you just click on it, and it will overlay the current web page with it's own cleaner content-only view.

You can clip and save to Evernote directly from Clearly and you can also print the cleaner version.

Here's the reference Wikipedia entry as viewed through clearly (click to enlarge).

As you can see, this is really a clean and smooth reading experience. Try it on one of the ad-cluttered news sites for a start.

And most importantly: it comes with this cool Luxo Jr-like desk lamp as an icon. Always a plus.

--
[1] not necessarily long form, just longer than e.g. one browser page

Five Reading Tools - part I: Pocket

Pocket (formerly: read it later) allows you to save an article / URL to your pocket list for later consumption. The pocket list is not device specific, but kept "in the cloud", so you can access it from everywhere. You can see it as a competitor to Instapaper or Readability.

The main use is, that when I find an article or post interesting (or too long to read on the mobile while on the underground), or just stumble upon a post, but don't have the time to read it right now, I put it on my pocket list.

95% of the time this will be from Feedly [1], the remaining 5% are from Facebook, G+ or  Twitter. Yes, I'm still one of those grumpy old guys from last century, who use RSS.

Once click from Feedly, and it is in my queue.

If find the following important features extremely useful:

Easy to queue

Pocket makes it really easy to put an item into your reading queue or list.

Feedly, for instance, directly supports Pocket, and all you need to do is press the pocket button to send an item to the queue.

All my browsers have extensions that allow me to send the current document/URL to the pocket list.

On Android, Pocket is integrated in the Share menu, so all apps that can share content via the SendTo Intent, automatically support Pocket as well.

iOS introduced a similar share menu (now combined with AirDrop), however, Pocket does not (yet?) support it.

What Pocket does nicely (both on iOS and Android) is to detect that you have a URL in the clipboard, and allows you to add it with just one click. So you can easily copy the URL from the Facebook app or browser, switch to pocket and simply save it there.

Available everywhere

Once an article made it into the pocket list, it can be read from everywhere. PC/Browser, iOS, Android.

I personally do 90% of the actual reading on my iPad, 10% on my Android mobile.

So my pattern is, queue from Android (while on the road) and read on iOS (at home).

Easy to read

The number one reason I queue article to pocket, is that I don't have the time to read them when I discover them (again...commuting on the train / underground). Or the device is to small.

The other reasons is, that pocket (like all the other tools I show in this series) removes all the disturbing gadgets from the web page, and shows only the pure content (+ content related images).

This is how Wikipedia (which is quite clean on the web, to be honest) looks in Pocket [2] on the iPad. You can spot that it does not too well with structured content (the start of almost every Wikipedia entry) but does very well with "regular" writing. (Click both images to see compare)

Once an article is read, you can decide if you want to delete it, or archive it. Either way, when you're done, you should get it of of the queue.

When you decide to archive (which is what I usually do), it does help to add some tags to it (tag icon) before you send it to the archive (check-box icon).

That's how pocket works for me.

You mileage may of course vary.

--

[1] or Google Reader back in the good old days.

[2] I will use the very same Wikipedia entry for comparison in this series.

Five Reading Tools

No worries, this is not one of those link bait "10 best..." posts... I simply want to introduce 5 tools for online reading that I'm using or trying right now (apart from RSS readers, etc etc)

So over the next couple of days, I'll be posting about

• Pocket (formerly: read it later)
• Evernote Clearly
• Beeline Reader
• Read Quick
• Reader in Safari

Stay tuned.

Sharing Thunderbird Address Books... some experience

This is a follow up to my post on Sharing Thunderbird Address Books Between Computers with Dropbox.
I've been using this for 3+ weeks now, and here's the experience.

Overall it works quite well, however:

1. I noticed 2 occasions where the filesystem link from the address-book in the Thunderbird profile to the one in the "My Dropbox" folder got lost. The abook.mab in the profile folder then all of a sudden is a real file with not connection whatsoever to the dropbox file.
   
2. Dropbox deteced one replication error and marked it accordingly, by renaming the "older" file as "abook (computername's conflicted copy date).mab"

In both cases replication of the file to and from other computers then fails.
The latter is easy to avoid - at least in my case: Don't have Thunderbird open at the same time on both computers.

Sometimes however, this is tricky, because you need Dropbox to replicate the file before you start Thunderbird on the other computer. So e.g. when you hibernate one PC whilst Thunderbird is still running (keeping the abook.mab file open and locked), the file will not get uploaded to Dropbox. When you then start Thunderbird on the second computer and modify the address-book... voila... replication conflict.

I still don't know what caused the link failure from problem #1. Will continue to monitor this.

Sharing Thunderbird Address Books Between Computers with Dropbox

In the previous post I described how to synchronize your Thunderbird signature (file) across computers using Dropbox.

This was a fairly easy task, because Thunderbird let's you specify the signature file as an absolute path, so you can put your signature anywhere on your computer.
For whatever reasons, the address book has to reside in your profile folder.
So if you want to synchronize Thunderbird address books across computers using Dropbox, this is a bit more tricky.

First, we have to somehow have the address book file in the "My Dropbox" folder, and still in the profile folder.
Luckily, Windows XP (and later) do have links in the NTFS filesystem - contrary to what most people think/know.
Technically they are called NTFS junction points, but usually referred to as links.
You can create them with the FSUTIL utility.

So what we'll do is.

1. Find the "master" address book
2. move it to the Dropbox folder
3. replace the original file in the profile folder with a link to the file in the Dropbox folder
4. repeat step 3 for all computer.

So, assuming you already did register for Dropbox and install it, here are the details:

1. In Thunderbird check the name of he address book you want to synchronize. In the Address Book window, select the address book of your choice and then properties. The only property there is the name.
2. In the Config Editor, locate the file name for your address book. This can easily be done if you filter the view on "ldap_v2.servers.*.descr". This will list all the address book names you have, including the one we are looking for (from step #1).
3. Find the id of your address book.
   It is is right behind "ldap_2.servers.".  Something like "pab" or "default".
4. Once you have that identifier, you can get the file name from "ldap_2.servers.yourid.filename". It is most likely abook.mab. [1]
5. Then locate your Thunderbird profile folder.
   This is (as a default) in the Thunderbird folder of your personal Application Data directory. The fastest way to get there is via Windows Start Menu → Run → "%appdata%" (literally with the percent signs). Then go to Thunderbird, then Profiles and then pick the profile you want to modify (if you have more than one).
6. Now find the file from step #4.
7. Be sure to exit Thunderbird now, so that all files are closed and available to you.
8. Move the file from step #6 to your "My Dropbox" folder (again, this can be easily opened by double clicking on your Dropbox icon in the task bar).
9. Open a command line (Start → Run → "cmd.exe" ) and change directory to your profile folder form step #5.
10. Find the "My Dropbox" folder in your file system. It's quite close to the Application Data folder. Try something like a "dir %homepath%\abook.mab /S /B" to find the exact location of the file.
11. Create the symbolic link with the following command:
    

    fsutil hardlink create abook.mab "..\..\..\..\My Documents\My Dropbox\abook.mab"

    Before you do this, you might want to check with dir, if the abook.mab file can really be found with the above path. Correct your path as appropriate. You can also use the absolute path from step #10.
12. With a "dir abook.mab" verify that the "logical" file is back again with the correct size.
13. Start Thunderbird and verify that your address book is available and correct.
14. Go to computer #2 
15. Repeat steps #1-12 as above, just do not copy the abook.mab (or whatever the name is) to the Dropbox folder. Only delete (or rename) it in the profile folder, before your create the link with fsutil.
16. When you start Thunderbird you should now have all the addresses from computer #1 available.
17. Repeat #15 for all remaining computers

ONE BIG CAVEAT:
I haven't been using this method for long, so I can't really say how stable this works, especially if there are "replication conflicts", i.e. when you update the file on both computers before Dropbox has a chance to synchronize. Should there arise major problems with my setup, I'll post them here.

Comments section is of course open for your findings.

--
[1] in the following paragraphs I will - for brevity - only call it abook.mab; please substitute your file name as appropriate.

Sharing Thunderbird Signature Between Computers with Dropbox

Granted, having the signature file for your e-mail in sync between two or more computers is not amongst the top IT problem of the century.
However, if you change your signature frequently (because you include some simple banner message or seasonal greetings, etc etc) it suddenly becomes important.

In my case this is between my company laptop and my home desktop. Both have the same IMAPS access to our corporate mail server. But as IMAP and Thunderbird[1] go, you are in sync with your mailboxes, but not with all your other data, like address book and signature.

Let's take a look at the signature first, since this is easier (from a Thunderbird perspective).

First we need some file location that can always be accessed from all participating computers. Preferably not only online, but also when offline.

Dropbox is the ideal solution for that: it synchronizes folders of your computer to the (cloud) storage of Dropbox. From and to multiple computers. That's the trick here.

Let's for this use case here ignore all the photo album and public sharing or collaboration features dropbox offers. We just use it for file sync to the cloud (and back again).

So obviously, you have to register for Dropbox and install the software on all participating computers.
[waiting for you to do so ... ]

The default folder is a newly created folder called "My Dropbox" in your home directory. This folder will be in sync across all computers, then.
So let's put our signature file there:

1. Start on the computer, where you have the most appropriate or up-to-date signature file.
2. In Thunderbird go to your account settings (Tools >> Account Settings) and pick your account there.

3. Check where you current signature file resides... 
4. Go there in Windows Explorer and copy (or move) the file to your Dropbox folder.
   You can easily open your Dropbox folder with a double-click on the Dropbox icon in your status bar.
5. Once the file is there, on the Account Settings page change your signature file to the new location. 
6. And then - in Thunderbird - create a new email to check if it has been picked up correctly.
7. Now the other computer. The signature file should already be in your Dropbox folder. If not, trouble-shoot that first.
8. Once you find the file there, only change the location of the signature file in Thunderbird- as above - to the one in the Dropbox folder.
9. Again, create a new email to verify.
10. Repeat for all remaining computers...

Now you can update your signature on any of those computers, and it will be picked up by the others.

Neat, isn't it.
And it didn't cost us a dime.

I started this about 2 months ago and had to change my signature (a least) 3 times or more in the meantime. Works like a charme.

The synchronization of the address book is a bit more complicated, and will be covered in a separate blogpost.

--
[1] and other IMAP clients

Wordle - Beautiful Word Clouds:

Wordle is a cool online tool to create really beautiful word clouds out of a given ... eh .. dictionary, if you will, or list of words, actually. The more frequent a word is (in this list) the larger it will be represented of course.

Here is my tag cloud for this blog (as of just before this post):



Wordle can also go directory to a del.icio.us accunt and pick the tags as input from there.
So here's my del.icio.us tag cloud:



You can change the orientation, font, colorings, ...

Quite nice, I thought.

TinyURL API

Just noticed that TinyURL also has a (more or less) proper API.

http://tinyurl.com/api-create.php?url=yoururl

with yoururl of course being your url...

Try http://tinyurl.com/api-create.php?url=http://it-conservations.blogspot.com for your favorite blog and see what you get.

Do get Arrington'd

When I said "Don't ge Arrington'd" I - of course - implied "without being prepared."

So here the perfect example of getting on Techcrunch and have Michael Arrington drop his jaw.

Adobe Hires Co-Inventor of Image Resizer Technology - the technology that amazed me as well.
(Thanks m3 for the pointer)

Thumbalizr

So, here's an update on the Thumbalizr service I could not report on earlier - see IT conservations: Don't get Arringtoned.
Whatever the reason for the failures earlier today (CET) was, the service now runs - and I'm to humble to attribute this to my rant... ;-)

The purpose of Thumbalizr is to enable you to make "screenshots" of web pages of virtually any size. You can choose between 2 modes:

1. screen - you only get that portion of the page/document, that would fit on a screen
2. page - you get the whole page/document

IT conservations would look like this (screen) or this (page).

From the latter you can tell that blogger and my list of tags don't make a great layout...

Path Copy

Thanks to Gernot for suggesting this great tool the other day.
Ninotech Path Copy
What it does is soo simple but it really helps. I've just been using it for a couple of days and can hardly imagine myself living without it.
Well, no, not that bad, I do still have a life (he said while posting to his tech-blog on a weekend ... nudge, nudge). Yes I do.

Anyway, here's what PathCopy does:

Ninotech Path Copy is a shell extension for Windows 95, 98, NT4, 2000, and XP that enables to copy the path of a file or directory to the Clipboard. You can then paste the path in to your document, e-mail, etc. You copy the path of a file or directory by right-clicking it in the Windows Explorer and choosing Copy Path from the context menu. The context menu then offers nine standard ways of copying the path, in addition to the user defined copying methods that you create yourself:

and you can pick whether you want to shortname or longname of the file, or the full path, or the full network path (UNC), ... Great.

Thanks, Gernot.