Ampers & Dot

For a while now I’ve had the idea to have a weekly column to promote something tech-related that I actually use. As a Social Media Consultant I’m basically online all day long and come across many links, sites, social networks, toys, software, hardware, and so on, that help me be more productive and happier in my daily work. I’ve got the kind of job that has an infinite to-do list, so anything I can pick up to make me work more efficiently, I’ll do it. With hopes that I can help others be more productive on the web, I’ll pass along my knowledge and someday you can buy me a beer to call it even and we can then become less productive together. And thus the Things I Like series was created.

Things I Like #1: TASKBAR SHUFFLE

Let me start off by saying that I’m a bit of an organizational freak. For me to work productively everything has to be in place and ready to go. With my desk, this is pretty easy, as moving papers into folders is a task I mastered years ago. Unfortunately, digital items are trickier and not always movable.

Here was my problem: every day I come into work, start up Outlook, then my to-do list/time tracker, then my RSS feed, then work for clients in order of priority (remember, I didn’t say “organized”, I said “organizational freak”). By doing this, I accomplish a perfect order to everything in my taskbar (the bottom row of open applications in Windows) and I can quickly navigate to any one I needed. From left to right I always have Outlook, Task Tracker, RSS. The three biggies. But what if one of them accidentally closed?

Everything would be screwed up. I’d actually have to quit applications to get things back in order. Enter: Taskbar Shuffle. As the name suggests, Taskbar Shuffle allows you to drag and drop items on your taskbar to put them in any order you want.

This little application has saved me countless minutes a day- being able to open applications in any order- and drag them into the order I like them. Is it silly? Yes. Do I care? No.

Go get it free at the nerdcave