Recently in Productivity Tools Category

My reading comprehension starts to drop if I'm pushing myself much beyond 300 words-per-minute. I've always loved reading; online, in print - give me information and I'll digest it. I only wish I could read faster, so I could cover more ground. Fortunately, AceReader Pro is designed to help users boost their speed and comprehend more of what's being read. Whether you read on the Kindle, newspapers, blogs, text books, or paperback novels, AceReader is designed to improve both speed and comprehension with continued practice. Assessment tests help you gauge your current skill level, using your education level to benchmark. Drills help increase your abilities by pushing you to read words at faster rates than you would under normal conditions.

More importantly, drills are customizable, allowing you to import your own text to further push the bounds of your abilities and learn with content that may be more specific to your reading needs. The time you'll gain from faster reading will more than offset the cost of the application. The Deluxe version lets you create your own tests, which is useful for teachers or parents who are helping a student learn. A networked version, designed for lab environments, is also available, with the ability to control learning from a central administration point. The free 30-day demo is fully functional, missing only some additional text content for testing and drills. Download AceReader Pro to read faster and retain more of what you read. [Windows 9x/2k/XP/Vista $49.95]

This cool text messaging trick comes by way of my Seattle real estate agent. If you're in need of the address or phone number for a business or restaurant, you can always call 411 for help. If you send a text message to 466453 (which spells Google on a phone dial pad), you'll get the address and phone number on your screen, so you don't need to write anything down or worry about getting reconnected. Simply write the name of the business city and state in the body of the message and hit send. I used this to successfully track down pizza near the house I'm moving to simply by typing Pizza Bainbridge Island, WA and hitting send. I got three different pizza places back, with full address and phone number for each.

This feature also works for doing price comparison from retail stores. Simply type price and the UPC or ISBN code for a product in the message body and you'll get back comparison results to your phone. While this is a free service, you do have to pay your carrier's standard rate for messaging. I've been a proponent of Google's free 411 service (800-GOOG-411) for awhile now, but didn't realize you could get similar help via text messaging. Couple 466453 with kwiry for building to do lists and you've got 2 useful reasons for having text messaging.

David Geller of video email service, Eyejot, tipped me off to a cool new service for anyone with a cell phone. If you have text messaging on your phone, but never found it useful, go sign up for Kwiry and you will change your tune. Kwiry's tagline, 'text it before you forget it' sums up the service perfectly. When you run across something you need to remember while you're away from home or away from your desk, whether it's something to research or the perfect gift for your spouse's birthday, simply send a text message to Kwiry from your phone. Kwiry stores the message, does a Google search, Amazon lookup, and several other searches against the message text. Back at your computer you sign on to your Kwiry account with all that information at your fingertips. You can subscribe to your 'Kwirys' with an RSS reader so that they are readily available in your favorite reader. The service also supports categorizing Kwirys as tasks.

Like most new Web services, there's a semi-social component where you can share your Kwirys with the world (or only with your friends), which might be useful for a kind of group collaboration. If you're still optimizing your personal productivity system, Kwiry is definitely a great addition to the toolkit. The key missing feature is the ability to send a camera phone image along with the text so you've got the visual cue that went with your text.

Bookmarks are one of the worst implemented features in the history of the browser. You need special software to tell you when Bookmarks expire. Most of them are immediately forgotten, making a Google search more useful. They're like a breadcrumb trail you can't easily follow, because it becomes cluttered with too many crumbs. There's no easy way to recall your favorite links without digging through a mess that even when categorized in folders is still a mess. That is until Firefox came along with Bookmark keywords.

You may still bookmark things never to return again, but using bookmark keywords, you'll have lightning fast access to the pages you visit regularly. It's so useful, I'd argue that bookmark keywords are a reason to switch to Firefox all by themselves. To really harness this feature, you also need to download a handy Firefox Extension called OpenBook. Here's how to harness the power of Firefox Bookmark Keywords.

With Firefox installed on your system, download the OpenBook extension, which allows you to show more fields as you add a new bookmark. Once OpenBook is installed, go to Tools > Add-ons and click on the Options button for OpenBook.

This allows you to customize the box that pops up when you add a new bookmark. The image here is my chosen configuration options, you may find something else you prefer. The key thing is to check the box next to Keyword textbox.

Go to a page you want to bookmark. jakeludington.com is a great choice! ;) Type Ctrl+D on your keyboard or Bookmark this Page. Your dialog box will show you the site name, url, and a blank keyword box. You can but any string of characters in that keyword box. I chose my initials, 'jl' for the example. Click OK to save the bookmark.

Now it's time to demonstrate your new power. Navigate away from the site you just bookmarked or open a new browser window. Go to the address bar (F6 can get you there) and type jl (or whatever you put in as the keyword). You're automatically taken to the site. No digging through your bookmarks, no typing the full URL. You can configure literally hundreds of these keywords to save you time. Here's how I use some of them:

g = Gmail
gd = Google Docs
tm = Techmeme.com
nv = Newsvine.com

I have a longer list of places I type in frequently, but that gives you an idea of what you could do. Typing two characters is always faster than typing the full url or reaching for your mouse and pulling something down from a list. A similar principle can be utilized anywhere in Windows using ActiveWords.

I mentioned trying out Callwave's visual voicemail service during CES 2008. I also mentioned being disappointed with the quality of the speech to text conversion. Callwave's service was free and in that case, I got exactly what I paid for. On January 15, I started testing SimulScribe. SimulScribe is free for 30 days and then will likely cost me $9.95 per month at the rate I get messages on my cell phone. The voicemail to text conversion done by SimulScribe isn't perfect, but it's pretty awesome.

Dictionary words are converted from speech to text with no problem. Most European names come through nicely as well. Names originating from Asia haven't fared so well and neither do all the wacky Web company names, but I didn't necessarily expect them to. The important thing is I'm not guessing at what the message is trying to tell me the way I was with the Callwave service. Instead of wasting time listening to messages, I now get them in my inbox, where I can easily act on whatever it is someone needs me to do - that's a huge time savings for me and a surefire guarantee that SimulScribe gets my business as soon as the trial period is over.

Try reading your voicemail - it will save you time and keep you from ever having to listen twice to decipher a phone number again.