Guest posts: Firefox OS, Simple Environmental Habits and more

I had a couple of guest posts come out today, and while I’m a little late in letting you know about them, I think you might find them interesting:

On Lifehack.org: Firefox OS: Why My Hard Drive and Software are Obsolete … I think this article could do well on Digg, so if you like it, feel free to Digg it!
On The Good Human: 12 Simple Habits to Help the Environment

If you missed my previous Lifehack.org articles, check them out:

Posted on 2 April 2007 in Habits, Technology |
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Comments (19)

stayfly Says:

April 3rd, 2007, 2:17 am

great posts!

I’m a huge fan of Google and I’ve found their products have changed the way I compute

I’m also very interested in protecting the environment

keep up the good work!

zenhabits Says:

April 3rd, 2007, 2:20 am

Thanks stayfly … I appreciate your encouragement, as always. - leo

David Says:

April 4th, 2007, 22:00 pm

Thanks again Leo!

Jess Robinson Says:

April 6th, 2007, 5:03 am

While I find the FireFox OS article interesting, I can’t help thinking that google paid you to write it. Are they the only game in town? That scares me.. One fire in a google data centre and..

I do wonder where they backup all that data to.

Jess

Leo Says:

April 6th, 2007, 5:36 am

Hi Jess … you make a fair point, and you’re not the first to wonder if Google paid me. As I said in the comments of that article, I’m not a fan of google itself, but think that some of its products are just the best in their respective categories. I asked other people to suggest online apps that are better than Gmail, Google Reader, or Gcal, and no one did. I’m also more than willing to try out other products, and if they’re better, I’ll switch.

However, next week I have another post on Lifehack that gives the best alternatives I’ve found for those google products, so hopefully that will satisfy that criticism.

When I was done writing the Firefox OS article, I realized that it was Google heavy, but I didn’t think anyone would mind, as these are just my personal preferences. I wasn’t recommending that others adopt all of the programs I use — I was just showing that there are good online apps that could be used exclusively, if your needs are as simple as mine. I think many of the commenters took my article too literally, reading it as me suggesting that everyone drop their hard drive, desktop software and OS and use only the products I mentioned. Obviously that won’t (and can’t) work at this time, especially as you obviously need an OS to run Firefox, but I was just pointing out a trend and the fact that the *type* of OS you use isn’t as relevant today (and will be less so tomorrow) as it was yesterday.

Thanks for allowing me to clarify that, Jess. Also, if google would like to pay me for the article, I won’t turn down their money. :)

Jess Robinson Says:

April 7th, 2007, 4:20 am

Thanks Leo, I guessed that was more or less the case. This morning it occurs to me that it’s maybe a result of Google allowing their employees to work on what they like 20% of the time. I like that philosophy, and when you’re spending the other 80% of the time doing specific stuff, what you come up with in the other 20% has to be something that helps/moves the normal work along and contribute to it..

Or that’s my thought anyway, I often find myself trying to solve work problems at home in my spare time ;)

Jess

Leo Says:

April 7th, 2007, 5:48 am

That’s an excellent point, Jess … perhaps the subject of another post?

Olaz Says:

April 7th, 2007, 12:40 pm

I’m excited about trying out Tracks. I must be an eDolt. It seems as though I am going to have to spend quite some time just to understand all of the apps I have to install just to find out if I am going to prefer to use Tracks rather than Outlook, which I am using now. Is Tracks truly an online app? Will I be able to access from any computer?

I liked the article. I didn’t know Google had a “convert to pdf feature.” That’s cool.

Leo Says:

April 7th, 2007, 15:09 pm

Hey, Olaz … I had the same problem with Tracks when it first came out, until I found some hosted versions of the program. Try these:

http://tracks.tra.in
http://gtdtracks.com

Thanks for the comment!

Jess Robinson Says:

April 7th, 2007, 19:23 pm

Post, Me? nono, you post, I read ;)

Jess

alex Says:

April 12th, 2007, 6:22 am

hi nice site.

Unknown Says:

May 6th, 2007, 18:24 pm

Links:

User Says:

May 6th, 2007, 19:47 pm

Links:

Guest Says:

May 6th, 2007, 20:30 pm

Links:

robert Says:

June 14th, 2007, 15:31 pm

hi all.

Alan Says:

June 30th, 2007, 2:50 am

Thanks for a great article, its interesting that many people seem to be going toward the ‘all online’ route. I was going that way because I had started playing with Puppy Linux (Linux in under 100Mb - it fits on a pen drive) and didn’t want to load it down with a heavy-weight office suite.

I am using ThinkFree rather than Google Docs as they and Sun have created a Java version of OpenOffice that is much more powerful than Google’s tools. You can edit complex MS Office documents, which Google cannot handle. I think they give you 2Gb of free storage.

I really like ‘My Yahoo’ too, their new mail is very good. I exported all my Palm contacts and Calender and my Firefox bookmarks to Yahoo, so now as you say I have ‘one page to rule them all’, except its Yahoo not Google!