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Some
of the applications I use most often aren 't desktop apps, they ' re
Web apps that I access through a web browser. Gmail, Google Reader, and
Google Docs, for example. GMDesk is an Adobe AIR-based client for these
and other Google-based services. It 's based on the idea that you
shouldn ' t have to fire up a web browser just to check your email.


The concept is sound, but the execution leaves a bit to be
desired. We 've seen other attempts at taking Web apps away from the
browser. Bubbles and Mozilla Prism are two examples. But as with those
programs, GMDesk just doesn 't seem to offer much functionality that
you couldn ' t get from a browser. What 's more, while Prism and
Bubbles offer stripped-down browser-style windows that tend to be a
little lighter on your computer ' s RAM usage than Firefox or Internet
Explorer, GMDesk eats 100 + MB of RAM as soon as you Launch it.


There are two other factors that make GMDesk a bit limiting.
First, the fonts in Gmail are kind of small and awkward to read. And
second, you can only have one window open at a time. So if you like to
keep both Gmail and Google Reader open throughout the day, you 're
going to want to fire up a web browser.


That isn 't to say that GMDesk is useless. If the developer can
reduce the RAM usage, and / or allow you to open multiple windows or
multiple tabs, it would be nice for Gmail addicts to keep a window open
all day while resisting the temptation to do some Web surfing when they
should be working .

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Love him or hate him, productivity
blogger Merlin Mann has presented a good way to help keep on track. The
idea is to avoid the seductions of the Web to stop a moment to make
sure you 're wasting your time on what they really want to be in
spending.


In his blog on the subject, Merlin describes the
opening of folders filled with all markers at once, which have the
potential to suck large amounts of time. Therefore, created a page on
your site that asks "Is this what we want to do now? "And he placed at
the first favorite in each of their folders of Favorites.


While this is a great idea, if you don 't operate in
the same way, the complete opening of the favorites folders at once,
this probably won ' t help much. But what if you can configure your
browser to open this page by default every time you open a new tab in
white or new browser window?

With the
NewTabURL extension for Firefox, you can do exactly that. Slick, and useful.

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We've covered clipboard applications for OS X in the near past (well-nigh exhaustively), so it's only fair that Windows clipboard applications get a little love and affection.

ClipX is a handy little clipboard manager for Windows which allows you to copy multiple items to your clipboard, then pick and choose which one to paste, either through a mouse selection or use of a hotkey. ClipX allows you to copy both text and images.

ClipX abounds with customizable options:

* Change how many items to remember on the clipboard (up to 1024, perhaps a number of significance for the developer)
* Choose a sound to play when a clipboard entry is recorded
* Enable multi-user or multi-session support

ClipX has plugin extensibility as well. Here are a few of the more useful ones:

* ClipX Stickies Plugin 1.8: Keeps a list of permanent entries at the bottom of your history.
* ClipX Auto Update Plugin 1.5: Automatically checks for and downloads the latest version of ClipX.
* ClipX Limits Plugin 1.1: Lets you ignore some clipboards based on size in memory.

ClipX is free, though donations are appreciated. Windows only.

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Joost seems to be reducing its game
plan a bit. The Sunday Times reported that the online video platform
will focus exclusively on content distribution in the U.S., where has
the largest audience. So far, Joost has provided videos worldwide,
although we could see that the content was determined by their country
of residence.


competition was founded by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus
Friis, the founders of Skype. The aim was to offer users an application
to see high-quality video over a peer to peer network, rather than
spend all day squinting in the style of YouTube videos embedded in Web
pages. But while Joost has managed to sign a major content partners
such as Viacom and CBS, you can generally find more per day Hulu or the
content of the BBC iPLAY.


Joost also is hardly the only name in the game these
days. The company faces competition (if one can consider that the word)
from other online video services including Babelgum, Vuze, VeohTV, and
Miro. However, there 's remains an important issue that must be
answered: Does anyone really use any of these services on a regular
basis to watch videos, or are the type of programs you download once to
leave before and then perhaps remind launch every few weeks to see if
there 's nothing new?


Does it really matter if Joost goes off in the UK and
other markets? Does it matter to you if the store closes up in the
U.S.? Let us know in the comments.

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Chrome Google, the Google browser
that experts from around the world have speculated for years about has
finally arrived, at least in beta form. So what is it? Most exactly
what they 'd expect from Google: ' sa browser, but simplified. Google
opted to use open source WebKit browser as the basis of chromium.
Curiously, only one version of Windows Chrome is currently available,
although WebKit is the basis for the Safari browser on the Mac
operating system.


During the installation process, Google asks Chrome to
import your bookmarks, browsing history and passwords. This lets you
choose to use Chrome almost instantly. Curiously, Chrome will ask if
Google wants to be your default search engine, or if you want to
specify a different one. Kudos to Google for this, when the supply of
its own browser, it would be tempting to say "using a browser from
Google, use Google 's search ".

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Because copying and pasting is just too much effort sometimes, the fine developers of Kallout have been kind enough to create a tool that improves the ease and convenience of performing searches.

Download the 3.2mb installer (Windows Vista and XP only), and Kallout will nestle itself into your system tray and go to work. To activate it, just highlight some text in any program and Kallout's blue balloon icon will appear, bestowing upon you its numerous search options. Some results (like Wikipedia, Google, and Google Maps) are overlayed directly on your current window. Others, like Facebook and MySpace, launch in your browser.

Results can be a little iffy, which stands to reason for a piece of software supporting so many different searches (41 as I'm writing this). Testing Williams College on Facebook, for example, probably won't find you any alums because it's tied to display names. Some results are incredibly slow to arrive - eBay, I'm talking to you - but you can hardly blame Kallout for that. Highlighting iPod gave me an almost instant list of reference books from Amazon, but the eBay results took so long to appear I nearly fell asleep.

Unfortunately, it's a bit on the beastly side, consuming about 24 megs of memory on my XP system. Still, if you like having a vast array of search options constantly at the ready, Kallout is tough to beat.

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If 've ever used a keyboard app
launcher as Launchy, executor, Quicksilver, or Gnome Is ' ve probably
you ask, why doesn 't Microsoft build something like this in Windows?
Now Microsoft Office Labs has launched a free keyboard launcher called
Speed Launch.


speed launch adds a little bull 's eye on your desktop.
To add a program frequently, file or document to the launch speed, just
drag the finish line. You can then activate the launch speed hitting
Win + C to open the program window. You can hit the buttons to perform
actions or specify the type in the box. In other words, it does quite
what they 'd expect to make any keyboard launcher.

But
speed launch has some peculiarities. First, the
program doesn 't lose or disappear unless you press the X button at the
top right. Secondly, doesn 't seem to be a way to change shortcut keys
to bring up the speed of launch window. So if, like me, you happen to
have a computer with a clumsiness of placing the Windows key, there 's
no way to change shortcut keys.


The program is also a little memory of a pig, using as
much as 30 MB RAM, which is much more than similar programs Launchy as
executor or use. This seems strange, especially given the fact that the
speed of launching doesn 't its index of program files or menu items
start automatically, something that both of the other programs.


In general, the speed of launching doesn 't stack up
particularly well against the competition. But 's worth noting that
this is a pilot project that ' s still under development.

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If you spend any amount of time around to
move files using Windows Explorer, click the repetitive can get
tiresome. Folder Guide is a menu that improves the speed of its
navigation: add a folder to your guide, and access it is a two-click
operation of any file browser window or dialog box.


Adding a folder to folder Guide can be done in two
ways. To launch the main program, click the Add button, create an
alias, and navigate their way. Curiously, the developers chose to use
the view of exploring what it means that there 's do not have access to
right-click shortcuts that ' ve already created to make navigation
easier.


The easiest - and most logical way - is simply to
navigate through the folder and right-click on it. Choose a folder to
add to the guide, and you 're doing. You won 't be warned of an alias,
so to edit the name default ' ll need to use the application itself.


SNCE Folder Guide works with the dialog boxes that the
file 's available just about everywhere you want to make navigation
faster directory: Attach in GMail, selecting a place to store a
snapshot of screen, you name.


Folder Guide is free, and only for Windows, of course. No mention is made on the site of Vista or 64-bit compatibility.

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MediaJoin is a free Windows utility
that connects multimedia files. Probably could have figured that from
its name. But 's get a little more specific, do you? The program lets
you select a group of audio or video files, put them in order, and then
spit out as a long media file.


For example, say you 'is a bunch of MP3 files
representing a live concert and you ' d not only have a long record
that will play the entire concert from start to finish. Just select the
MP3, select your output format, and MediaJoin will do the rest.


The utility even lets you mix and match the types of
files. Therefore, you can combine WAV, MP3, WMA and files output and
results in a single file. One thing to remember is that it seems to
make some MediaJoin recompression. Therefore, if you 're starting with
one tablet as well as the media MP3 format that you might notice some
loss of quality in the finished product unless you choose her as
uncompressed WAV format exit.

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