New Things, a Round-Up

There have been quite a few new (or new-to-me) things to experiment with lately. Of course, this directly coincided with the ramp-up for Fall term, so I haven’t done very thorough explorations. But here’s what I’ve fired up at least once lately.

• Ubiquity
  The link will take you to information about this Firefox extension. I don’t normally watch videos online (I know, I know, but my connection at home isn’t fast enough to make the experience pleasant), and this one started off cheesy, but it got interesting fast. I’d love to see a set of commands for libraries that I could subscribe to. Searching the catalog, proxifying stuff, citation generation, open URL resolving… and that’s just the stuff that we can already do using existing tools. It seems like the possibilities for on-the-fly mashups are almost limitless.
• DragDropUpload
  This is another Firefox extension that I just found and LOVE. It lets me drag a file onto the upload dialog box for things like my email, and it’ll fill in the file path for you. None of that annoying stuff like clicking “browse” and then navigating through your computer’s file structure. So Easy.
• EverNote
  I’ve been using Evernote for years, but the new version is significantly different. I’m not a fan of the rate and number of upgrades it goes through (really, do you want to emulate iTunes that much?), but it works on my iPod Touch, it captures and interprets screen shots (yes, interprets, as in, reads the words in an image and lets you search them later), and is generally pretty slick.
• Remember the Milk
  Other people have been using this for a while, so it’s not really “new,” but I hadn’t used it before, so it qualifies for this list. I have a love-hate relationship with task lists of any kind because I usually don’t list out tasks in great detail, preferring to work toward an ultimate goal rather than concentrate on the bits and pieces. Anyway, for now, the Gmail-integrated version seems to let me do my minimalist kind of listing in a way that makes sense for me. The main web site annoys me (too many ways of selecting tasks to modify them, none of them easy… check boxes, roll-overs, direct clicking… everything seems too dynamic to actually let me just get in and change a date), but the gmail integrated list is great.
• Google Chrome
  This is a brand new web browser from Google (alpha release, PC only). It has potential, but it’s not at a place yet where I can use it comfortably. It doesn’t play nicely with the college’s CMS. It also doesn’t handle extentions, and I love my Firefox extentions. Most specifically, it doesn’t handle adblock (not surprising, considering Google’s reliance on ads). Not having adblock is an education, let me tell you.
• Digsby
  My co-worker uses this as his chat aggregator. Since Meebo has been on the fritz a lot lately, I downloaded it and use it when Meebo is down. I like it well enough, but when Meebo is up (which is more often this week than last, thankfully) I’m there already anyway, so I’m likely to stay there.
• WorldCat Copyright Evidence Registry
  I’m on the campus copyright group, so this caught my eye immediately. It draws on OCLC’s collected information about the books held in thousands of libraries, and highlights the information that’s relevant for copyright research. Ideally, people will start adding more and more copyright-relevant information to these records.

What have I missed?