A couple months ago I added a free, open source plugin to my Mac called f.lux that promises to relieve eye strain and insomnia caused by blue screen glare. It adjusts my screen’s color temperature based on the time of day to reproduce more natural lighting conditions.

It turns the whites on my screen to more of a peachy glow as I geek into the night. I haven’t noticed any performance hit on my MacBook Pro so I’m just going to tell myself that I’m adding years of good vision by using this app. Also works on Windows and Linux.

Related articles

• Does the color temperature of a computer screen affect sleep patterns? (skeptics.stackexchange.com)
• F.luxing Brightness (andrewl14.wordpress.com)

Image via Wikipedia

If you haven’t heard of Chrome OS, it’s Google’s attempt to do away with the desktop altogether and have everything that happens on your computer happen inside the browser. This means that instead of opening Outlook for your email, you go to Gmail or Hotmail on the web. Instead of opening Photoshop to resize that photo, you use Aviary.com. Instead of desktop apps, you switch to web apps. After Google’s recent announcement that schools would be able to lease Chromebooks for $20/student/month, educators have been wondering if they could depend on a laptop that doesn’t come with its own desktop, has the internal storage of a mid-range smartphone, and only works when it’s connected to the Internet.

Yaysaying

Some people are excited at the prospects of moving completely into the cloud and leaving expensive, slow desktop computers behind. After all, Educause has been warning us since 2009 that cloud computing was on the horizon. Chromebooks boot up instantly, run lightning fast, and cost less than half of what you can expect to pay for a Macbook. It truly is possible to keep up with most common computing tasks using only web-based apps. For the Chromebook to exist, there has to be a full suite of web apps that enable you to do most common computing tasks in a browser with no (or few) compromises. That suite of apps exists. Email, office docs, audio creation, image manipulation, vector drawing, video editing, productivity apps, social media– all of these can happen in a browser now. Don’t believe me? Type your favorite piece of desktop software into Alternativeto.net and find the many cloud alternatives that can take its place. For free. In a browser. If you’re the type of person who spends most of your time in a browser, these devices might be perfect for you. If you’re not, you probably fall into the next category….

Naysaying

Others think that we are simply not ready to cut our ties to the trusty desktop and plant our feet firmly in the Cloud. A netbook minus the ‘net is not much of anything at all, IMHO. If you often find yourself outside the reach of WiFi or 3G data connections (which many of us often do) then you know just how important it is to be able to work offline. If you depend on a certain piece of software that only comes on your chosen OS, you might be loath to leave it behind for a cloud alternative. Add this to the increased responsiveness and power of desktop apps over webapps (we’re seeing people’s clear preference for apps in the world of smartphones) and the wealth of free and open source desktop applications available and it feels premature to kiss our old friend the Desktop goodbye.

The Way Forward

I think the best thing about Chrome OS is that you don’t have to actually use it to get the benefits it offers– you can choose to go “all webapps” in whichever OS you happen to prefer.  This fact also means that you don’t need a CR-48…. you can still get a Mac, Windows, or Linux computer (or build your own!), install Chrome browser, and enjoy all of the pleasures that Chrome offers PLUS the offline desktop apps you love and depend on. I’ve long been a proponent of software that has online/offline syncing capabilities like my beloved Evernote, the amazing Dropbox, or the venerable Thunderbird email from Mozilla. I’ve also been patiently waiting for a day when I could get a powerful laptop for under $400 that does everything I want it to do. The fact that Google has been working so hard to bring us a computing experience that doesn’t depend on the OS you’re running means that these dreams are becoming a reality.

Now, you can get a cheap, powerful laptop computer, install the free open source Ubuntu Linux OS on it (to get all the goodies that a true desktop OS with real apps brings), and then run all the webapps I want– right there in the browser.  The fact that we have viable choices on the desktop and the cloud changes the conversation from an “either/or” to an “also/and”.

For schools trying to offer a high quality- modern computing experience to students on a budget, this represents a viable vision of how to make that happen.

Related articles

• Chrome OS Launches in June, Only on Notebooks (pamil-visions.net)
• How to install Google’s Chrome OS (zdnet.com)
• Meet The New Chromebooks (appreaders.com)
• So.. Chrome OS has no Desktop? (thechromesource.com)
• Chromebooks Take Us Closest So Far to a Post-PC Era (customerthink.com)
• Will the Google Chromebook Replace Your Laptop? (pcworld.com)
• Google Chromebook, Do You Consider Buying One? (ghacks.net)
• Google Chrome OS: Too secure to need security? (go.theregister.com)

Image via CrunchBase

The recent explosion of great tools that simply run in a web browser has been amazing. From tools like Google Docs, Evernote, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, Prezi, and Rememberthemilk and the venerable Gmail– you can access powerful tools for free wherever you are. However, sometimes a web browser is not the best interface for the kind of work you want to do. This is where desktop clients for webapps really shine. Here is a great article from Mac.AppStorm.net about 60 great Web apps with strong desktop clients. Am I missing any? Let me know in the comments.

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• Milkify – Desktop application for Remember The Milk (milkify.com)
• Get Instant Desktop Notifications From Your Web Apps With Notify.io (makeuseof.com)
• Google Brings Bug Bounty To Web Apps (informationweek.com)
• Coming Soon in Google Docs: Third Party Apps, Cloud Printing and Sync (googlesystem.blogspot.com)
• 5 Great Reasons To Use Seesmic Desktop 2 As Your Twitter Client (makeuseof.com)
• Twitter Client For Your Browser – TicknTalk (mindjumpers.com)
• Ditch Desktop Apps for Webapps, Free Up RAM, and Enjoy the Best of Both Worlds [Webapps] (lifehacker.com)

My big mission this summer is to learn how to adopt David Allen‘s Getting Things Done method into my way of handling email. Thunderbird (with the Lightning plugin) has all the tools you need to GTD quickly and easily.

Getting Things Done with Thunderbird

Updated: Please see the bottom of the article

Well, I have been at my new job for 3 weeks now and my GTD implementation seems to be holding up quite well – at least in terms of my email anyway!

As I have mentioned before the company I work for uses Thunderbird
as its main email system (although Outlook Express and Entourage are
available for those that prefer them). To begin with it was a bit odd
having to tell half the office how to spell my surname – a
centrally stored address book is certainly a big advantage that
Microsoft Outlook has over other systems. However I’m finding the
functionality of Thunderbird brilliant in my GTD habits.

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• David Allen on Getting It All Done (ducttapemarketing.com)
• Tips for ‘Getting Things Done’ (online.wsj.com)

clipped from lifehacker.com Windows/Mac/Linux (Adobe Air): Klok, a free time and project-tracking app for the Adobe Air platform, is a great time-tracking solution for multi-platform users, as well as anyone who likes to keep it simple. Simple projects allow you to simply create and describe time entries on a drag-and-adjust grid, or use a template like “Web project” to automatically create sub-categories of HTML, design, text, and the like. You can also use Klok as a work timer using the “Work On” button, and export reports and invoices for clients. Klok is a free download for any system running the Adobe Air platform.

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• Colabolo – Collaborative Task Management Service (gajeebo.com)
• Focus Booster helps you stay focused (downloadsquad.com)

The open source community has created free alternatives to many of the most popular commercial software titles. This is a godsend for cash-strapped schools and the teachers who want to do cutting edge work but only have older machines.

At OpenSourceMac.org and OpenSourceWindows.org, you will find lists of great software that do everything from word processing to 3D modeling and are free and legal to use on any computer. I encourage students to put these apps on their own computers and they LOVE to try out all the free goodies!