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I enjoy a nice "Under Maintenance" page

 in Uncategorized  tagged development / Finance / Mint / software / usability by

Sometimes it’s the little things that make a difference.  I was in the middle of adjusting my monthly budgets on my favorite financial management site, mint.com, when all of the sudden the site went into “maintenance mode”.  All the changes I made to my budgets were probably not saved and I have to go back and do it all again.  This would annoy most customers but for some reason (I’m attributing my lack of annoyance to the pretty maintenance page) I’m ok with it.

Since I work in software, I understand that peak hour maintenance modes are sometimes a necessary evil – although we do everything possible to avoid.  It’s refreshing when a company goes that tiny little bit further and pretties up their maintenance page.

I took a screen shot just because.

 

Minor Productivity Tips with QuickSilver

 in Uncategorized by

I love QuickSilver on my mac.  When I have to get a new mac, Quicksilver will be the first application I install.  I know there are a TON of sites that have great Quicksilver tips and tricks, but I wanted to take a few minutes and show some of the shortcuts I use everyday.

1.  Bookmarks for QS

I love the fact that Quicksilver indexes my internet browser’s bookmarks.  99% of the time I open my favorite web pages through Quicksilver.  Example: ctrl+space > “min” > Mint.com is opened in Safari.

Also, when I land on a site that I want to come back to but I don’t necessarily want to clutter up the bookmarks bar, I’ll bookmark the site and dump it into the “Bookmarks for QS” folder.  That way I can easily get back without having to drill through tons of folders or browser history to remember where I was.

2.  Google search from QS

Love this one but I can’t take credit for figuring it out.  See Setting up a Google web search Trigger for instructions.

3.  Opening a folder for developing in TextMate

ctrl+space > navigate to the desired folder > tab > open with > textmate.  And it opens the folder in TextMate as a project.  Here’s a little attempt at a screen cast I made while playing with Camtasia.