organization

Green plastic breakthrough from Big Blue, Stanford

A group of scientists from IBM and Stanford University announced Wednesday a chemistry breakthrough that could change the nature of plastics and plastics recycling.

Using organic catalysts, the team has developed a new method for producing and breaking down plastic polymers.

"Additionally, the team has developed a new strategy for the synthesis of high molecular weight cyclic polyesters and the generation of new families of biocompatible polymers for biomedical applications," according to IBM.

In terms of real-world application, the science could lead to plastics becoming endlessly recyclable rather than junk in a landfill.

As IBM points out, many … Read more

Quick Tip: Get your photos organized on your Mac

So you have all your photos in iPhoto on your Mac, but you also have copies of many of those images around your hard drive. What do you do? Photo management can be tricky at first, but with a little bit of knowledge on how your Mac organizes images, you can tame the beast.… Read more

Make slick-looking databases of just about anything

Bento is a database app from the makers of Filemaker offering plenty of great features, but its deliberate lack of focus may make it difficult for people to grasp its usefulness. Bento is loaded with templates to create databases of people, places, or things using nice-looking graphics. The interface takes some time to get used to, but with a little poking around (and once the major features become clear), the true power of Bento starts to materialize.

Bento can be used to catalog just about anything in any number of ways. Comic book collectors could use the program to catalog … Read more

Database genie

Database management applications have come a long way since Symantec introduced Q&A. Lantica's Sesame Database Manager is perhaps the best-known Q&A follow-on, and latest versions still provide an exclusive Q&A translator. Sesame is a cross-platform-capable, client-server database application development and management suite with built-in word processing and publishing capabilities that businesses, organizations, and even individuals can use to manage large amounts of data and create useful applications. These applications include invoices and receipts, reports, e-commerce, inventories, and virtually any kind of form or record.

Sesame's latest versions boast an upgraded form-based interface … Read more

Harvest Power lands cash for compost, biogas

Trash hauler Waste Management said on Monday it has invested an undisclosed sum in Harvest Power, a Boston-area company developing techniques for turning organic waste into energy or fertilizer.

Existing investors Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers and Munich Venture Partners also increased their investment in the company.

Harvest Power already operates a facility in British Columbia that turns food and yard waste into compost. It also is developing anaerobic digester technology to produce biogas from those same wastes. The biogas can be burned in turbines to make electricity or heat. It can also be converted into compressed or liquefied natural … Read more

Focus on the task at hand

OmniFocus is a high-powered, flexible, feature-filled task-management app that's based on the widely used Getting Things Done (GTD) productivity method, but it's designed to accommodate a variety of work styles. OmniFocus uses a GTD-esque approach ("Capture, Organize, and Do") to handle actions, projects, and contexts. You work in a relatively clean, two-pane interface, with folders and projects in the sidebar and grouped actions in the main outline (where you add, edit, and check off actions).

Within this interface, it's easy to set up versatile contexts for your actions, distinguish between sequential and parallel actions within … Read more

More than a map

MindVisualizer Standard is an intuitive program that allows users to create diagrams to organize a wide variety of types of information. With an attractive interface and flexible features, it's a great way to create visual representations of information in a straightforward format.

The program's interface is sleek and intuitive, reminding us of Microsoft's Office products. Getting started is easy; the program guides users through the process of creating topics and subtopics, and users can customize the shapes of both the topics and connecting lines. MindVisualizer easily allows users to insert icons and images into the diagram; it … Read more

Nothing plain about these Fences

Fences Pro builds many requested features on top of the publisher's free version, Fences. The original helps you corral your desktop icons into tidy, organized spaces on your desktop, and then rename, resize, and move them around at will. This premium version now lets you name a default folder in which all newly installed icons should appear--not just the Desktop. In addition, Fences Pro showcases a list of rules you can configure to deposit specific types of icons (images, music videos, etc.) into any "fences" you created. The icon installation rules worked well in our tests, saving … Read more

Browse and store

S3 Browser is designed to be used in tandem with Amazon.com's Simple Storage Service (S3), a Web-based storage solution. You can use S3 Browser to upload your files to Amazon.com's service. S3 Browser makes transferring large amounts of data to the S3 site easier. You can also use this program as a BitTorrent client to download files from remote locations.

S3 Browser functions much like an FTP client. Once you add your account to S3 Browser's interface, you can select which files you want to upload to Amazon, load them into the application, and monitor … Read more

Reminder minder

AllNotes Personal Organizer provides a simple set of tools for keeping track of a date and staying on top of events. The program's bare-bones simplicity and easy navigation make this a great choice for basic reminders.

We enjoyed the program's simple interface. It buries itself in your task bar and only has a few, easy-to-understand command options. Nothing about it left us with questions about how to operate this software. With a few simple clicks, we were able to enter dates and times, write ourselves a quick note, set an alarm, or post a note or event on … Read more