TextMate is a super-powered word processor beloved by coders and productivity geeks like Merlin Mann and Matt Haughey and available in a Windows port, but where does that leave Linux users? If they haven’t already fallen under the sway of Vi or Emacs, they can download a few files and plug-ins to give GNOME’s default text editor, gedit, many of the features—including word completion, quick file browsing, and highlighting switches—that Mac users have enjoyed for so long. Some of the plug-ins touted by the handy guide below are installed by default in gedit and just require an enabling click, while others require a bit of unpacking and placement. For writers and coders just getting started, it could make gedit a great learning tool with a gentler learning curve.
Google Notebook Adds Mobile Features
Google quietly added mobile functionality to its Notebook web clipping tool recently, giving phone browsers some of the functionality of Notebook and its recent Bookmarks integration. The mobile version lets users add notes to a “Mobile Notes” notebook and browse their existing bookmarks and notes. That’s about it, unfortunately—no adding of bookmarks or labels, note editing, or searching from the smaller screen. But for devotees of the Notebook—and those using it to Get Things Done—it’s a nice tool to have on the go. Like most mobile Google webapps, Google Notebook requires an XHTML-compliant browser that also allows SSL traffic.
Overlay Drawers onto Your Dock’s Stacks
Mac OS X Leopard only: One of the nice things about Stacks—or annoying things, depending on how you look at it—is that the topmost document icon appears on your Dock, instead of an indicator of which folder contains it. To solve this problem, the icon designer at Optica Optima’s offering a set of icons for download that add a drawer-like image to your Stacks. The screenshot above displays the Downloads, Applications, and Documents folders as Stacks sporting the drawer icons. Pretty! To add the icons to your Stacks, just download and unzip the package, and move the appropriate icon to the folder. For more fun along the same lines, here’s how to add custom icons for your Mac hard drives.
Disable and Enable the Screensaver in One Click
Windows only: Sick of your Windows screensaver coming on in the middle of watching a video or referring to what’s on-screen? Tech site the How-To Geek set up a shortcut to temporarily disable the screensaver (without having to click your way to its settings by hand) using a small utility called FlipSS. Mac users, you can get this same functionality with Caffeine.
Google Earth Forecasts and Displays Current Weather
The recent Google Earth update introduced lots of new layers, but one extremely useful layer that passed under our radar (as it were) at first glance was the addition of a new weather layer. The layer includes radar information, current conditions, and forecasts pulled every 15 minutes from Weather.com and a cloud layer that updates hourly from the Naval Research Laboratory. So if you’re already obsessed with Google Earth for its stargazing and live flight tracking features, now you’ve got one more use for the freeware, cross-platform atlas.
