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Just a note about an application (Windows only though) I've started using: GreenPrint http://www.printgreener.com/. This marks possibly the first time I've ever sent a software recommendation to my friends and family. If its good enough for them, it might be good enough for some of you!

GreenPrint adds a step between hitting the "Print" button and actually sending the task to the printer. This step allows you to weed out the wasted space before printing and/or saving. It is very easy to use.

How often do people waste paper when printing prototypes, brochures, etc? You can easily prevent 20% of your total printing. Save closer to 50% when printing "1-page" web pages that so often have that one nearly blank page at the end. Save over 50% when printing things with lots of "hidden" text. Ever seen a spreadsheet print 4 blank pages for 1 "real" page (or more)?

There is a free version (GreenPrint World) that is supported by unobtrusive ads, but is not free for commercial use (ie, in the office). C|Net's download.com reports it as verified free of spyware/malware. Home Premium is corporate licensable. Volume licensing is available for the Enterprise version; I don't have a clue what their terms are. Home Premium and Enterprise have additional features. All run on Windows 2000, XP and Vista.

NOTE: I have no interest in the program other than it being a smart way to save trees, time, and money. This isn't spam it is a real review. If you want to see a demo before installing, go here: http://printgreener.com/tutorial.html

• Do you ever:
• need to print only SPECIFIC pages, not everything?
• want to define rules for things like "don't print blank pages!"?
• want to remove images from your document?
• prefer to save a PDF file instead of printing?

• GreenPrint will allow you to:
• remove entire pages (easily, graphically)
• print only text (whole document or selected pages)
• print only images (whole document or selected pages)

NOTE: Don't just use the right-click menu for these, use the "Tools" menu for more control

• Once done you can:
• Print to any of your configured printers
• Save to a PDF (replacing tools like CutePDF)
• Email immediately as a PDF (I didn't get this working but you can email saved PDF files)

• GreenPrint will also:
• Automatically remove blank and "header/footer only" pages
• Automatically remove pages via configurable criteria (ex: less than X lines, etc)
• Alert you before removing pages automatically
• Track the amount of money saved (and define costs on a per-printer basis)
• Track how many pages you have saved
• Handle printer configuration (like you have now)
• Collate pages

• PS. As with any 1.00.00 software there are bugs. I reported two today to their support address. I got replies back in under an hour.

How many messaging accounts do YOU have? If you're like me you've got enough that you either a) don't check them all as often as you might like or b) check them enough and feel your e-life slipping away. Especially once you factor in MySpace and Facebook (or if you're like some of us, factoring those in multiple times).

Fuser.com is a web 2.0+ service from Confluence Commons aiming to be the answer. And they've just opened their doors to you (they had been in a semi-closed testing period for awhile, which is how I got in to play around). Sign up up and view all of your email from a single spot. When I mean "a single spot" I mean that you can see all of your messages in a single folder sorted by time. Someone sent you an email 5 minutes ago and someone else sent you a MySpace message 4 minutes ago? They all appear in the same message listing. And when I say "all of your email" I mean that it will let you set up accounts for the following services:

Standard email (IMAP, IMAPS, POP3, POP3S), AIM, AOL, Comcast, Gmail, Hotmail (MSN, Windows Live), Netscape.net, Outlook Web Access (Exchange 2000, 2003, 2007), Yahoo! Mail, SquirrelMail as well as MySpace and Facebook inboxes.

And you can send messages as if they are coming from any of those services as well.

In addition they have some other integration with MySpace and Facebook to show you who contacts you the most with a Leader Board. They're looking for user feedback on their service and features and actively soliciting feedback and additional services to be supported (for instance, I requested LinkedIn as another service and was told its being developed).

Its not a final product, there is plenty of room for your suggestions and UI improvements. People with just a couple of accounts, especially ones that can notify a central email account of new messages, probably won't see as much benefit from it. But for those of us with a ton of legacy accounts out there it can be a very handy tool.

They're funded by Jared Polis, the entrepreneur (and now democratic candidate for the U.S. house of representatives) who previously sold Blue Mountain Arts and ProFlowers.com

PS. I'm not affiliated with either Mr. Polis nor Confluence Commons. I live in the area and have met a couple of the Fuser folks after doing some testing and feedback for them and am excited to see the product go live so everyone out there can help improve it.

Does anyone actually subscribe to /.?

I actually had a prospective employer ask me to list the best threads I've been a part of (my job is technical marketing and one of the things I do is look around for things related to my current job to clear up when they are misstated).

I have something like 750 posts, but non-subscribers only get to see a 25 comment history. If you are a subscriber, I would love it if you could page through my comment history and mail me the results.

Yeah, you don't owe me anything, but if you're reading this you probably got here because you either very much agreed or very much disagreed with my comments. If you're in the former category and are a subscriber, maybe you'll take pity.

If not, maybe I'll do it some day :)

Ok, so I finally figured out what my next job should be ... Slashdot Analogy Critic.

Come on ... if you're going to make an analogy, examine it for 10 seconds before posting it. Make sure it actually holds up. Is it as close to "apples to apples" as can be, or is it "Apple to Coors"?

Seriously, is it just /. or are bad analogies everywhere? Most weeks I find I've torn apart some seriously bad analogies. Sure, I've probably posted a couple with holes, but these were really bad.

Think it though a bit more, everyone will thank you.

A quick thread that pretty well sums up how I feel about the way /. and Google and like can really abuse their best participants ...

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=101442&cid=8655929

...
Pasted here in case the above link ever dies but I may miss parts of the discussion because of it

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Re:Yeesh (Score:1)
by thesaur (681425) on Wed Mar 24, '04 08:57 AM (#8655929)

However, that cannot prevent an attack by Google. You wouldn't want to block requests referred by google.com, because you do want people to find your site, right?

As reported in a previous story [slashdot.org], Google linked their main logo graphic to an information academic site and brought it down [swin.edu.au]. Subsequently, Slashdot hit [swin.edu.au], but it didn't hold a candle to Google. Fortunately, such attacks by Google are rare. Of course, there is no way to determine your risk for a Google attack, unlike slashdot attacks.

The best idea is to always keep your server ready to handle any load.

I'll probably get modded down for this, but so be it.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]

Re:Yeesh by thesaur (Score:1)
Re:Yeesh (Score:1)
by Jahf (21968) on Wed Mar 24, '04 10:59 AM (#8657449)
(Last Journal: Wed Oct 29, '03 04:29 AM)
Depends on if you care if people see your site ... I know one guy who takes all traffic referred by Google, /. and a couple of other sites (he occasionally publishes tech goodness) to the Google cached version of his page.

Most people can't afford to keep their personal servers ready to handle 1% of the load that Google's image fiasco or 10% of a popular article on /. can throw at them.

Should those people be penalized by not being able to have their own site (rather than surrendering control to a bunch of web farm monkeys)? No, sites like /. and Google, which espouse the idea of being good net citizens on principle should realize that often they are some of the worst net citizens out there.

Wow ... wasn't expecting it to turn into a rant, oh well :)

And who cares about being modded down? *laugh*
        [ Reply to This | Parent ]

Re:Yeesh (Score:1)
by Jahf (21968) on Wed Mar 24, '04 11:05 AM (#8657551)
(Last Journal: Wed Oct 29, '03 04:29 AM)
btw I doubt even the referer->GoogleCache mechanism would save most sites from the inadvertant DDOS that Google provided by that image link. Just more argument to Google and /. being better citizens.

Perhaps /. could wait to publish a story until Google had it cached and then give the -option- in a user pref to allow links to be rewritten to the Google cache ...

Perhaps Google could add a new piece to the stale robots.txt standard like "cache-link-only" so that Google would know the author was only interested in being in the Google engine if Google directed all links to it's own cache for that particular site.

Both are opt-in programs that allow the rest of us to have good conscience when viewing tiny sites via links from beasts like Google and /.

BTW, I don't want people to get me wrong ... I might not have a -job- without /. or Google since I use them for research and learning every day along with a host of other sites. I don't want them -gone- I just want them to be a bit more responsible for their actions. To paraphrase J. Depp, they're "something like big dumb pupp"ies ... in this case we like to pet them and they're usually sweet but sometimes they can bite the hand that pets them when they get overzealous.