Fine, I guess I'll actually contribute. Google Calendar via GCALDaemon (a very powerful little program). So, I’ve got a calendar at the bottom of my screen with a horizontal list of the days of the month, with different colors for different states (nothing that day, something that day, weekend, etc). Very cool.
RocketDockI hate Macs. I’ve said that before. But, when moving to Rainmeter and getting rid of my Vista sidebar, I was out a launcher. I found RocketDock and the Lucid icon set that matches almost perfectly with the Rainmeter Enigma skin. In otherwords, perfect integration. Oh, the I-hate-Macs thing. Right.
See, RocketDock is a lot like the Mac docking station at the bottom of the screen. It’s a line of icons that pop up when you mouseover them. You can connect them to files, directories, programs, websites, whatever. The
Lucid icon set makes it look less Mac-y, which I like.
CD Art DisplayI listen to a lot of music.
MediaMonkey has been a real help, since my collection is rather large. However, I didn’t like the Mini- or Micro-players and I didn’t want MM to be open all the time on the desktop. But, I like seeing the CD covers. I also like having lyrics displayed. Enter CD Art Display.
I now have, on the desktop in a very unobtrusive, 3D display, the art work for whatever song is being played in MM. Just to the right is the track title, artist and album, along with the remaining time. The “case” the artwork is displayed in also has a progress bar and basic controls.
But here’s the best part. I use
MiniLyrics to search and store song lyrics locally. CAD takes those and displays them on the desktop in such a way (that I’ve customized, obviously) that it blends in seamlessly with the Enigma skin!
It’s like a dance, it really is.
Google CalendarI like desktop applications. I can’t help it. I like the GUIs. Still, I can’t use Outlook when I’m at work. I also know that, at some point, I’ll have a data and messaging plan on my phone and I’ll be able to Sync it from anywhere. What’s the point of using software that’s only on one computer when I’m hardly ever there?
So, I switched. Gcal, here I come. I’ve had my email forwarded to Gmail, my Rainlendar syncs with Gcal, and my Remember the Milk is integrated into the Gmail page and the Gcal. Oh, and I sync my Gmail contacts with my Outlook contacts (two-way sync) so if I change something in my phone, sync it to my computer, it automatically updated in my Gmail. Incidentally, you'll want Google, Outlook and Rainlendar all sync'd. They're all pretty small and run in the background (except Google Talk, any Jabber client, and it also has plug-ins for RSS feeds, email notifiers, weather, etc., and apparently the newest version also supports MySpaceIM, and can manage your Twitter and Facebook, too. The Basic version is free, but the Pro version allows you to auto-hide it when it's docked on the edge of the screen, a wonderful little feature. It autologs all conversations, makes webcam and voice chat very easy, is great with file transfers and has customizable skins. It's nice.
uTorrentuTorrent is the best torrent client out there, period. It's small, powerful, customizable, schedulable, and just all-around the best. It doesn't hog system resources like Azureus and looks good, unlike the official BitTorrent client put out by Brian Whatshisname (who sold out, incidentally). Of course, uTorrent should only be used for legal, fair-use torrents.
TVersityMusn't forget about TVersity. It allows you to stream media and re-encode on the fly. I use this to stream from my laptop, over the wireless network to my PS3. The PS3 is a Sony product, and therefore can't read any other proprietary codecs, so sending them via TVersity eliminates the need to re-encode everything before watching it. I've only run across a couple codecs that TVersity won't convert, but those are weird ones that you hardly ever run into.
Bonus:
UbiquityQuite possibly the single greatest Web 2.0 (3.0?) plugin available. I’ll let you see for yourself. Spend time with it. Snuggle down with it. You’ll love it. Apparently Mozilla is adding it to Firefox officially in the 3.2 or 3.5 release, which means much better support. Nice.
