I knew it existed, but I was only faced with it truly when I started writing my blog. There is a kind of spam that I think is a bit annoying, but acceptable. These are the people who own a company or web service, and go around on people’s blogs, writing quasi-useful comments with their link inside.

First of all, it is not really good netiquette to include your link in forums, or comments. It may also get filtered if a blog has a very aggressive spam filtering system. Second of all, you can enter your website in the form, and if someone likes your comment, they can click on your name and whoosh, they’re at the site. The goal would be to write an interesting enough comment.

However, I am prepared to accept “spam” like this, that is at leas half relevant. I wrote a post on managing your tasks with Remember the Milk a while ago, and recently approved the following comment:

“The logo is cute - no doubt
I was using the service untill I realized I needed something more. Now I’m with Wrike.com [http://www.wrike.com/]. It’s a very cool project management service.”

I can’t say 100% that this is spam, but I’m pretty sure, since Wrike is a pay for application. It’s also not exactly a substitute for Remember the Milk, but, it is similar. I also like the fact that the commenter actually read some of the post. I really-really dislike spam, but comments like this are acceptable, since they show you alternatives.

If you have a service you want to promote it’s fine posting a comment in every blog I think, but at least make the effort to contribute to the subject at hand. If you do, I think you should be ok, even if you put in your link, I mean I understand that services need traffic. If y”our product is really bad, no amount of traffic will save you anyway.

If you loyal readers remember, a while ago I showed you a guide to batch renaming files. I just found the best alternative for you Max OS X guys out there.

Batch renaming is one of the best productivity things you can do, since file operations like this can otherwise be the most tedious and boring jobs, prone to mistakes as well. With File List, the tool used for batch renaming you can set up file operations that would take you the best of a day, and it will be done in a minute instead.

You can rename extensions, set lower and upper case, and as much as I can see of it, if you know some programming, you can set up very complex rules. The app comes with easily controllable complex rules already, so don’t be intimidated.

I love batch renamers because I can not tell you how much I hate it if I have to do the same thing to more than two files. My productivity drops way down and start making mistakes. If you use a Mac, take a look, you’ll love it.

I first heard that Microsoft has a desktop blogging app and said “yeah right…”. I wasn’t really referring to my disbelief in the existence of the product, but rather in the fact that it’s any good. First of all, I wasn’t very comfortable with desktop blogging software and second of all, I mean what good would a Microsoft blogging app be? I could post to Live Spaces? Yay…

Well, as it turns out, I was very wrong. I first tested the app about 3 months ago, and now I’m experimenting with using it exclusively. It worked when posting to blogger, and works perfectly for Wordpress as well. Finally Microsoft has realized that there are actually other companies out there. It recognizes popular platforms to the extent that the Wordpress logo is stylishly placed in the sidebar, I can add categories like I would in Wordpress and I can set publish dates. I can also go directly to my Wordpress dashboard and view recent posts and drafts (which can be added to Wordpress drafts as well).

One of the best features is being able to write in the environment your post will be shown in, ie: your blog template. This web layout for me only shows my header, with a small fault, but I think this is actually due to my css, not Live Writer. More importantly though, the width of the post is correct, which is essential when planning post pics and ads and so forth.

You can insert pics from your PC or the web, you can insert links, tables, maps, even videos, and they all work perfectly. In the end when I post, I see no difference between a post made form Wordpress and a post made from Live Writer. The great benefit it gives me and the way it helps me in my quest for the ultimate productivity ninja gold medal is that it lets me write when I’m offline. I can write multiple drafts, and post them as Wordpress drafts, or complete articles later on. This may help me steer clear of distractions, as sometimes when working that Stumble Upon button becomes very inviting…

I love that you can set your blog up so that images are uploaded to an ftp server automatically. This helps me in organization, and rids me of the need to open my ftp client. Also very helpful when working offline, since I won’t forget to find a pic and upload it. Oh, and once you entered your ftp server and username/password, you can browse for the folder, even create a new one, no need to enter it manually. A small, but nice touch.

If you work with multiple blogs, wither for guest posting or as owners, your productivity will again be pushed up. You can add multiple profiles, so you can post to any blog you have. The great benefit for guest posters like me is that I can switch the blog on the fly. So if I write a post and don’t know where I will publish it, I just save it as a draft and I can decide later. When you switch, the view automatically changes to reflect the new blog, and pressing publish will now publish to the current one.

The only shortcoming of the app is that if you have some pre-built code you use from the code menu in Wordpress you can’t really add it that simply here. I only use a few like the “more” tag and Adsense codes which I can either paste using Shortkeys, or I can actually recall them from memory (awesome). Also, I use a plugin for entering keywords and descriptions, which I can not use with Live Writer. I go to my admin panel a lot, and filling out this info is not a big thing, I can do it once a day, filling out 3 posts, which takes about 3 minutes, but the time Live Writer saves me is at least 30 minutes.

Overall, this application is a joy to use and I am still discovering cool new stuff. This is one of the best Microsoft programs I have ever seen, possibly Office 2007 is the only one that may come before it. Live Writer gives you a great environment in which you can work, but it helps you in productivity, organization and all other aspects of blogging.

I just found an application called IndyWiki that enables you to browse Wikipedia in a very different way than you’re used to. You search for a term, and it will show you a multitude of related things, like pics, links, sections and so on.

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Although the interface is very intuitive, I think it needs a considerable facelift. It’s stark, and uses a gray interface reminiscent of 1997 applications. Despite this, the application is easily usable and is actually useful, it will increase your productivity by bypassing browsers and only showing you related info.

If you enter a term it will display pictures related to that term and the related article (if there is no disambiguation), plus related links, leading to other articles. I found it refreshing that you don’t see the whole article, you see only the first section. You can view other parts by using the contents navigation pane to the left. I love this because many times the info I want is in the middle of an article, but I don’t exactly know at which section. I can click on a section and take a look, if not there I just click on another one, no need to go back to the top.

If you enter a term like “GTD” you can see that the term refers to two different items. In the links section, you can choose which of the two you want, in this case we are looking for Getting Things Done of course.

Overall I think this may be a useful application, but there are some speed issues, as well as navigation and looks. It’s at 0.9.7, so I’m guessing the features they are looking for initially are implemented, and maybe for 1.0 they will develop a better interface.

Yes, I know, it sounds a bit weird, but I’ve gotten into the habit of taking notes using Firefox’s Goggle search field. Basically, a few thoughts on posts came to my mind and I didn’t have any pen and paper at hand and I didn’t want to open a notepad.

I came up with a solution that proved to be a great way of jotting down some thoughts in a productive way. All I do is when something comes to mind, like writing a post on Adobe Buzzword (coming up), is I open a new tab (Ctr + T) and type “Adobe Buzzword” in the search field. I don’t even wait for it to load, I go back to what I was doing immediately.When I am ready to “process” these thoughts, I go to the tab with the search and I will remember that I wanted to write about and in addition, I have already started some research by searching for it. When you process you can decide to write it down somewhere else, save the page as a bookmark, or just delete it.

I actually have a separate Firefox window (Ctr + N) open for this because it keeps my thoughts separate (I work a lot in Firefox) and I can also batch bookmark all my ideas at once. You can do this by the bookmarks menu and selecting bookmark all tabs (Ctr + Shift + D). When you are ready to make another pass at them, just go to the bookmarks menu, select the folder where you stored them, right click and select open all in tabs. Be careful, because your current tab will also load one of the bookmarks.

You can play around with setting up folders for this as well, or maybe posting some of these to del.icio.us or some other bookmark site, there are quite a lot of possibilities. For now I just use this casually, but I will look into it a bit more when I get the time. If any of you have any ideas please do share.

If you manage your tasks from Basecamp and track the time you work you will find Simply Invoices and elegant solution to create invoices for your clients.

It will enable you to create simple, but stylish invoices, generated automatically from Basecamp info. That’s about all there is to this app, but the ability to create invoices and export them to pdf so fast is a huge asset, you can use your time in more productive ways than spending hours on invoicing.

A great feature is inline editing, which means that once the data is imported and the invoice is created, you can still edit the entries, and you can also create new entries. This is a great feature if you keep track of some non-billable items on your Basecamp list. You want to see them for your own purposes, but you can’t put them on the invoice, so being able to just delete them right off the invoice is a great help.

Simply invoices is a pay-for service with a free option. This should be enough for basic use for anyone, you will only experience some visual differences. The free option gives you five templates and you can not customize your logo, a “made with Simply Invoices” comment will be shown on the invoice. Sadly, templates does not mean that the invoice is green or black, but rather templates for projects. So if you work as a freelance writer, you need to create a template for each type of work and then create the invoice. If you have 6 types of work, I guess you can delete a template and create a new one every month, but that is a bit tedious.

Luckily the paid versions aren’t too expensive. The lowest priced is $9 per month and allows custom logos and link free templates with a template allowance of 10. The next two options give you 20 and unlimited templates, for $16 and $25 respectively. If you actually need 20 or unlimited templates I don’t think that the 25 bucks will be a huge hindrance. but the time you save ad the productivity you gain is a lot.

Take a look at Simply Invoices and watch the video tour