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Quicksilver as a Productivity Tool...

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This is cross posted over at TechLearning...

In my role as a building administrator, I often find myself working to document my interactions with students and staff in a way that allows me the greatest flexibility and also provides a date and time stamp that makes reviewing and documenting the interactions easy. Recently I have been exploring the use of a Mac OS X application called Quicksilver. Quicksilver has been described as the Swiss Army Knife of productivity applications. At its simplest level it is an application and document launcher that can easily be invoked from the keyboard. For example if you wanted to launch the application Firefox, you would invoke Quicksilver, and begin to type the application name. Quicksilver will quickly find the application, and once highlighted all you need to do is hit the return key and the application launches.

quicksilverIn addition QuickSilver, is extendable, and also allows you to work with applications and documents and invoke them to do tasks. For example, Garrick Van Buren has developed a plugin, QSPress, that allows you to quickly post to a Wordpress weblog directly through Quicksilver. I have recently been using this to jot down notes during classroom visits. The plugin takes advantage of categories, so my classroom visits are nicely organized on my private weblog for later review. In addition if I choose to I can easily take the same notes, and with a just a few keystrokes, quickly email them to the teacher using a Quicksilver extension that allows me to integrate it with my Gmail account.

Another interesting use of Quicksilver is for posting images to Flickr. I sometimes find myself writing posts that include screenshots. I use a screen capture tool called SnapNDrag to grab these screenshots. SnapNDrag takes the screen shot and places it on the clipboard. Using the Flickr Quicksilver plugin, I can invoke Quicksilver, paste the clipboard contents, (which is actually the file path to the latest screen grab image...) and post it to my Flickr site. All with just a few keystrokes. Then from within Wordpress I can include the image in my post.

The examples mentioned above just scratch the surface of how you can use this productivity tool. For more information about Quicksilver, please following links below:

My Maps+ ...

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My Maps+ is a service that makes it easy to embed Google Maps "My Maps" into web pages. You can use the site to customize the look and size of your map and then generate code for embedding into a web page or weblog. Another feature is that you can download the needed javascript files and load them on your own server eliminating the need to point back to their site when the maps are loaded.

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TwitterCamp

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screenshot_01"TwitterCamp is a desktop application that allows you to monitor tweets from your friends using the popular Twitter service. The application is especially suited for running on large displays such as plasmas, LCDs, and projectors at conferences. It is simple to customize the interface so that you can use the application for your conference..."

By way of LibraryClips

Twitter Updates for 2007-04-21

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  • Talking to the folks that are putting the eco-roof on the Lewis outdoor classroom... #
  • Heading out to pick up pizza for dinner... long week at the ranch.. Earth Day Work Party tomorrow at Lewis... If in PDX come and help out, 9 #
  • Earth Day Work Party at Lewis today: 9:00 - 1:00... #
  • Chatting with Joe Luft... #
  • Heading over to school... #
  • All done a Lewis. A great turnout for Earth Day: Pictures here... http://flickr.com/photos/lewiselementary/sets/72157600104034305/ #

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Twitter Updates for 2007-04-19

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  • Reading: "Get a First Life: A One Page Satire of Second Life" (http://tinyurl.com/2m9t8a) #
  • Good Morning from Portland... #
  • At Lewis... putting together a painting easel for our life skills classroom... #
  • Visiting another school this morning #
  • Back at school for a bit, than to another meeting.... #
  • In an admin meeting... #

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Twitter Updates for 2007-04-16

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  • heading home for dinner... #
  • Watchn Dodgers/S.D: Anniversary of J. Robinson breaking color barrier,lots of great interviews,a history lesson disguised as a baseball game #
  • looking at: http://tinyurl.com/2cfy68 #
  • ESPN has a nice feature on Jackie Robinson on right now... #
  • Good Morning from Portland... #
  • At work... Looking to order a video camera... #
  • Reading: "Giving Away Information, but Increasing Revenue - New York Times" (http://tinyurl.com/2wuv3a) #
  • Lunch duty... #
  • Helping with ESL testing... #
  • Just finished Staff Meeting... Shared the Sir Ken Robinson talk from TED 2006... #

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Twitter Updates for 2007-04-15

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  • At circuit city looking at a HD JVC Camcorder. Pretty nice... #
  • At blockbuster... Cyprien goes to much cooler places than I #
  • playing with posting to Wordpress from Quicksilver... #
  • @cyprien: Take good notes... Post good notes... #
  • Taking Nando to visit his cousin... #
  • At daughter's soccer game #
  • At Lewis... getting ready for the week... #

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Posting to Wordpress from Quicksilver

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Testing of posting to Wordpress via Quicksilver on Mac OS X. Planning to set up a private WP blog for taking notes of staff and student interactions at school... screenshot_02 Update: Looks like it works. Am using Quicksilver along with the QSPresstitle script . Lifehacker has a good series of posts about Quicksilver and how folks use it as a productivity tool. For example to illustrate this post I wanted to grab a screenshot of the Quicksilver interface, and place it into Flickr so I could include it in this post. Using the application SanpNDrag, I was able to grab the image to the left and place it on the clipboard, then I invoked QuickSilver, pasted the clipboard contents into the Quicksilver window, tabbed over and invoked the Flickr upload command and the image was uploaded to my Flickr account. I have Wordpress set up so that my Flickr photos are easily accessible via the Wordpress editing window.