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Free Software: Two Minute Timer for OS X
Better late than never, I suppose 
Many, many moons ago I wrote a tiny little two minute timer application for Windows as a free alternative to the $10 offering from the David Allen Company. I got more than a few emails asking for a Mac version. Well, ask and you shall receive!
This is a little different than the Windows version - it’s actually an Automator workflow converted to an application. Here’s what you’ll need to run it:
Invites Available for Pownce, the Twitter Killer
Just a quick one, kids. I was recently invited to test drive the new Twitter-ish web app, Pownce (from Digg-founder Kevin Rose and others). It uses the new AIR interface stuff from Adobe, and it’s pretty slick.
My only complaint thus far is the inability to send messages from my cell phone. Otherwise, it’s pretty nice - looks a lot like the Twitteriffic application for windows.
At any rate, I’ve got 6 invites available for the first 6 folks who comment here. Cheers!
FileHamster: Version Control for the Rest of Us
Ahem. Cough. Cough. Testing. 1. 2. 3.
Well hello there gentle readers! My name is GTD Wannabe and I’m standing in today for Brett, who’s about to give birth. Well, my name’s not really GTD, and he’s not really going to be doing the heavy lifting 
but you know what I mean.
I want to introduce you to a version control system today. Given that the Cranking Widget’s tag line is “GTD, Productivity and Life Hacks for the Rest of Us”, I shall make a bit of an assumption that you’re not all keen users of version control systems.
Quick Winstikker Update
Just a quick update regarding WinStikker (a little Windows desktop application I wrote to quickly and easily create new Stikkits from your desktop). One of the biggest requests (read: complaints about it was the 500-character limit on the main input field. It was written this way because, per Stikkit’s documentation, the Stikkit engine will only process the first 500 characters of text that it receives.
But, a great many of you emailed me asking to remove this limitation, so I did.
5 Slick Ways to Abuse Lifehacker’s Texter Application
For those who aren’t readers of the venerable Lifehacker (and if this includes you - for shame ;)) - Adam wrote a little windows application awhile back called Texter that allows you to create hotstrings that expand to longer pieces of text. For example, when I type ‘cwb’ and hit Tab, it replaces ‘cwb’ with ‘http://blog.crankingwidgets.com’. Basically, you just create a short representation of a long piece of text that you type regularly and let Texter do the heavy lifting.
Obviously, the benefits of an application like this are immediately apparent and are virtually without limit. As such, there are some more esoteric uses that I’ve implemented that I think you all will enjoy (beyond things like email signatures and URLs)…
Free Software: WinStikker Goes Open Source
Since posting WinStikker awhile back, I’ve had a few requests for the source code so people could monkey with it themselves. Well, ask and you shall receive.
This probably won’t interest most of you, but to all the C# hackers and stikkit enthusiasts out there, here it is. I’ve created a subversion repository and imported all of the source code needed to build the application, as well as a simple windows batch file to do the actual build.
WinStikker - Quickly Create New Stikkits From Your Windows Desktop
(Update: WinStikker is now Open Source!)
Any more of this stuff and people are going to start to wonder if I work for Values of n (makers of Stikkit - and no, I don’t work for them - yet ;). After writing the python script described (badly) in the previous post, I was somewhat inspired to hack out another tool to help make Stikkit even easier to use/adopt. With that, I give you WinStikker!
First of all, I have to say this - WinStikker is a hell of a lot easier to use than the Gmail Contacts script All you need is your stikkit API key (which WinStikker should prompt you for, the first time you run it). That’s it, then you’re ready to go. Here’s how it works:
