Every day it seems we spend more and more of our time in front of a computer screen.  Whether it’s a monitor on a desk or a tiny hand held display on our phones, computers are such an essential part of our day to day lives that for most of us they are almost as indispensable as oxygen.  Given that so much of our time is spent in front of these machines, it behooves us to learn as many ways as we can to do our computer aided tasks as quickly and efficiently as possible.  Or, as David Allen said upon learning  that he’d been awarded the “Golden Slacker Award”, “the laziest people come up with the coolest ideas.”

With this in mind it occurred to me that we could create what could possibly be the ultimate list of online time-savers ever compiled.  Basically what I was thinking was that each of us has probably discovered at least a couple online resources that we now find indispensable to our daily routine and what I am hoping is that with all of your help we can catalog these into a truly exhaustive list that can then become its own page on this site and serve as a truly exceptional reference for GTD’ers and Lifehackers of all stripes.

To keep the list focused I thought I would establish a couple of criteria to narrow recommendations down a little bit.  Thus, for inclusion in this list, the application must result in an actual time-savings of some type- whether by virtue of reducing keystrokes, condensing multiple tasks into one task (or at least fewer tasks) ,  by eliminating the need to do extensive navigation with a mouse, by automating complex actions or by virtue of eliminating the need to navigate to a site to obtain a query result from said site.  Second, the time-saver in question must be free and generally available. (No closed betas allowed although open betas are fine).  Third (and this one should go without saying but I’ll say it anyway) these time-savers must work on a Mac or PC or Linux machine, a PDA, a mobile phone or a tablet computer.

Please provide your time saver in the comments and what I will do is regularly update the list by moving the time savers up to the body of the post.  If/when we get a number of time savers sufficient to justify creating a unique page for the list  I’ll create such a page and provide a list of credits to those individuals that have taken the time to help us expand this list.

I’ll start with a couple of my favorites.  Incidentally, contributing a time-saver is more than just saying “I like xyz”.  We need the application, the URL, what it does and why you like it. If if is a particularly complicated time saver an example would be helpful too.

Here we go:

1.     YubNub <http://yubnub.org>

This is my all time favorite time saver and one that I probably use a hundred times a day.  Primarily because it is incredibly versatile and is actually thousands of unique time savers rolled up into one slick Ruby on Rails application.  In essence YubNub is a command line for the web.  What it does is allow you to harness the power of thousands of different web servers to do specific tasks by using the URL bar of your browser (or a widget or a stand alone application) as a command line.

What can you do with YubNub?  Almost anything you can think of.  The limits are your memory and/or your imagination.  Some examples:  (after opening a new tab (or clearing the contents in the URL bar in an existing tab) I could enter: g David Allen GTD.  The results? This command would yield a Google search for the terms David Allen and GTD.  The savings?  Instead of first going to Google and waiting for the page to load and then typing these terms into Google I did this with one keystroke.  Okay, maybe that’s not that spectacular but what about this?  ebay Green Laser.  This would give you the results of an eBay query for green lasers; again, saving the navigation first to eBay.  Still not impressed?  How about this one?  gimyim Chewbacca. This little query would result in a split screen that contains image search results for Chewy in both Google Images and Yahoo Images (this one usually wows even the most jaded LifeHacking experts cause they’ve never seen split screen queries using two different search engines at the same time).

There are literally thousands of YubNub commands; everything from reverse number lookups to langauge translations to code checking, to site-specific searches.  Need to search TechCrunch for something?  Just type “TC” and your search string (leave out the quotes) and YubNub will find the terms assuming they actually appeared in the popular blog.  Plus if you want a command that you can’t find you can make your own.  The “create” command allows you to build your own YubNub command instantly.

I am constantly amazed by the power and versatility of this online time-saver, it never fails when I try something that simply seems intuitive and it does exactly what I thought it might.  What, for instance, do you suppose the “gmap” command plus a location would yield?  From my own experience at least, YubNub is hands down the most powerful, useful and utterly indispensable application I use.  I don’t think I could live without it.

2.      Fluid <http://fluidapp.com/>

Attention:  For Mac Users Only!  Are you a tabbed-browsing junkie?  Do you regularly use web applications like Gmail, Google Docs or WordPress?  Have you ever had your browser crash costing  you hours of work as a result?  Then Fluid is for you.  This application allows you to create site specific browsers.  In other words, Fluid allows you to create a browser that acts like a stand alone application.  Each one runs as a stand alone Cocoa app meaning that if your browser crashes it doesn’t touch what your doing in your SSB’s that you created with Fluid.

Fluid even lets you create a Dock icon to launch each specific SSB . Fluid can also be converted to a MenuExtra SSB (sits in the Title Bar at the top of the screen) and in spite of running in a separate instantiation of Cocoa each SSB still retains the full functionality of the parent browser (bookmarks, spell check, etc.)

I love fluid for using web applications like Gmail.  I don’t lose my work nearly so often and when I’ve got forty tabs open I don’t have to hunt for the ones I use most often.  If you’ve got a Mac I highly recommend you try Fluid  unless you’ve got nothing to lose! (get it?)

Okay, so that’s a start, now it’s your turn.  Please send in your favorite Time saving web applications and together we can compile a page that equals thousands of saved hours for everyone!

Tags: Downloads, GTDtimesavers, Getting Things Done, Oliver Starr //