I’m a big fan of to-do lists - they represent such a simple concept (write things down and don’t try to remember everything) and yet they do so much to keep my life organized. I actually have several to-do lists running at any given time - short term tasks, long term tasks and then a variety of sublists with questions and thoughts to consider on a variety of topics that I may want to investigate in the future.

Ever since I started these lists I knew I’d have to keep track of them in one of the applications I use most often - either my email client or my browser. I did not want to use yet another application just for this purpose.

For a while I tried to manage the lists in Outlook using the built-in Tasks feature. It just wasn’t as flexible as I would have wanted it to be so I eventually turned my attention to my trusted web browser. Could I find a web-based application for this simple purpose?

There are actually plenty of free web-based applications for tracking to-do lists, but most of them follow a hosted model where you’re just allowed to use the application and can’t actually control it. I wanted a web-based app that I could get used to, keep under my control and not worry that the company running it might go away some day.

Around that time I was researching the wiki concept for a work project, and I realized that it was the perfect application for what I needed. A wiki application is software that allows users to easily maintain web pages by putting the focus on the data being published as opposed to the technical details of the method used to publish it. The best example of a wiki is the well-known site Wikipedia. In my case, an added bonus of the wiki concept is that wiki applications are very good at tracking changes made to a document - that was something I was looking for.

I quickly found a nice list of various wiki applications I could choose from and realized that I needed some criteria to allow me to eliminate some of the choices. I just didn’t have the time to try out every single wiki in the list.

This is the criteria I came up with:

• Free or open source - why pay for something when there are so many free alternatives to choose from?
• Must run on Windows XP - just to eliminate any wiki apps that were specifically meant for Linux
• Not based on PHP - I didn’t want to deal with installing and configuring PHP on my desktop
• No database backend - many wiki apps use MySQL or Microsoft SQL Server as a database backend but there are also enough of them that save data in plain-text files

With this I was able to quickly eliminate many of the apps on the list above and narrow the list to a more manageable size. Finally, after trying out some of the remaining apps, I found the wiki application that seemed the best fit for my needs:

ScrewTurn Wiki

They offer a Desktop Edition that can easily be installed in Windows XP. It requires that the .NET Framework version 2 be installed, and it will automatically open a browser window where you can download the .NET Framework if it’s not already installed.

Once the installation is complete, you should be able to access the wiki in your browser at the default location - http://localhost:8080/Default.aspx.

You can then proceed to create your first wiki page by clicking on ‘Create a new Page’ in the left menu. It will ask you to login - the default password for admin is ‘password’ (no quotes).

Enter some text, save your changes and there you have it - your first wiki page.

You can now go ahead and tell your friends that you just installed a wiki on your computer - they’ll be impressed

Filed under: Computers, Productivity | No Comments »

Did you know that sometimes you can find some great deals on eBay by searching for misspelled titles? That’s right. Sometimes, in the rush of listing an item on eBay sellers don’t pay close attention to the title they use and they might introduce a typo.

How exactly is that good for you, the buyer?

Well, when an eBay listing has a typo in its title it means it will not be found by the majority of the buyers who search by the correct spelling of that particular word. Most of the buyers on eBay use the search function to locate the items they’re interested in buying. If a seller lists an iP0d for sale (that’s with a zero instead of the letter o) nobody searching for an iPod (with letter o this time) will find that listing. When not many people see a listing, it usually means it will sell with a pretty low price … if it will sell at all. Sellers often start auctions with low starting values hoping to attract enough bidders and generate a bidding war that will push the price up.

Here’s a story about one such auction where a typo made all the difference:

Most Expensive eBay misspelling ever

How can you, the eBay buyer, take advantage of this? The good news is that you don’t have to sit there at the keyboard trying to come up with all the ways to misspell a word - there are sites out there that will do that for you automatically and also search eBay for the misspelled items. Here are a few of those sites:

• TypoHound
• FatFingers
• SpellingSearch

So, the next time you’re looking for an item on eBay remember to check out these sites - you might just find a great deal.

Filed under: General Interest Links, Money saving tips | No Comments »

Where do you go when you need to take a quick look at your weather forecast? There are plenty of free applications you can install on your computer that will run constantly in the background in your system tray and provide you with weather information whenever you need it.

I try to stay away from installing applications on my computer that will compete for limited system resources and just add more delay to the startup time. When I need weather info I just need a quick website that will give me the needed data fast.

Weather.com is probably the best known weather site - however, it has a lot of information that I usually don’t need and to me that makes the site layout very crowded.

I recently found another option - SimpleWeather.com. It’s a quick, no-nonsense site where you can easily find your weather forecast - no travel forecasts, no maps, no confusing data - just what you need to get the information quickly (see the snapshot below).

Once you look up the forecast for a particular zip code you can easily bookmark that URL for future reference.

Filed under: General Interest Links, Reference | No Comments »