Offsides? I think not...

Pomodoro Timer application

After reading an article on infoQ, I started using the Pomodoro technique. It works pretty good, but I do still strugle with making my self take a break after the 25 minutes is up.

I recently spent a few days and created a simple timer application to monitor my pomodoros, it is pretty rough around the edges, but good enough for a first release.

I wanted to check out Appcelerator and their Titanium framework, this seemed like a simple enough app to get started with. Titanium allows you to build an app using html, css and javascript then the Titanium framework will 'compile' your code into a desktop application that targets all major operating systems; Windows, Mac and Linux.

In the end I did not really use any of the Titanium Api in my code, just jquery, css and html.

Code is available here: http://github.com/house9/tick-tock-desktop

or download the binaries here:

http://api.appcelerator.net/p/pages/app_page?token=H4m4AYM4

jsfiddle is awesome!

http://jsfiddle.net/

I had seen some blog posts on jsfiddle before, but just checked it out for the first time, a great way to experiment with javascript code, comes built in with jquery, mootools and more

Snag-it for the Mac

I have used Snag-it on Windows for many years - it is a great product!

During the last year I have been using Ubuntu and Mac and been missing Snag-it; Shutter on Ubuntu is 'ok', but not quite on the same level as Snag-it

I was happy to discover that there was a beta of Snag-it for the Mac

http://www.techsmith.com/snagitmac/

Free right now, been using it for the last month - it seems even better than the version for windows!

Need to find real estate comps? www.redfin.com

Need to find real estate comps? www.redfin.com is a sweet site. Not only can you search for new homes on the MLS listings but you can also search previous Sale Records. I don't know of any other site that offers the same functionality. Click the 'More Options' link by the 'Search Listings' button.

Another really nice feature, If you find a bunch of homes for sale in a viewable area on the map, click the 'DOWNLOAD' link to get all of the info in excel (csv).

Uptime and performance monitoring made easy - pingdom.com

This is a nice service - http://pingdom.com/

Get an email or SMS alert if your site is not responding. They ping your site from multiple servers in both North America and Europe.

They offer one free account where you can ping a single url or get one of their payed monthly plans if you have additional sites to monitor.