Matthias works at the University of Heidelberg in Germany in the New Media Center. He blogs at x28's new Blog

Matthias's Top 10 Tools as at 11 February 2008

1. Notepad for quick notes to self, for drafts of longer emails, and for texts that will become HTML. With its quickness, immediacy, and lightweight, it is closest to paper.
2. Outlook Express for email, because this is what we also offer to our students in our pool rooms (since we did not get netscape mail working reasonably in this roaming environment).
3. NewzCrawler as RSS reader. Since I think RSS is a great blend between email (push) and web (pull) I don't like it to be too much integrated into either of them, but rather love my specialized, standalone desktop reader.
4. Internet Explorer 7 as browser, for a similar reason as 2. above, and because Firefox still does not support the root certificate of the German educational network DFN.
5. SSH File Transfer especially for syncing office and home materials, see previous separate post.
6. Windows Explorer. This may not count as a tool, but some of its features are very important for me, such as
   • "shortcut to", to mitigate the hierarchical filesystem by a dense network of cross-references (I described my desktop usage and filing habits earlier),
   • and the "preview pane" (available in Vista via Organize > Layout) to facilitate simple card sorting of Notepad notes when used with AutoArrange switched off.
7. Wordpress also for notes management. After a long time of struggling with text files and testing with a personal wiki, I finally moved my notes to Wordpress.
8. Slideshare. I like to bookmark individual slides of a presentation, e. g. when posting to del.icio.us.
9. DeepaMehta. I use this "semantic desktop" for very special purposes that justify the considerable effort: When a category of my notes collection has become too large and I want to visualize the network of their associations.
10. PowerPoint. I am still using PowerPoint 2003 as a mindmap but I am very disappointed that PowerPoint 2007 no longer supports this usage, and therefore I look for a replacement

Matthias's Top 10 Tools as at 14 August 2007

1. Notepad for quick notes to self, for drafts of longer emails, and for texts that will become HTML. With its quickness, immediacy, and lightweight, it is closest to paper

2. PowerPoint as mindmap much more often than for presentations. I described my favorite (simple) techniques here, and the relationship to concept maps and real mind maps here.

3. Outlook Express  for email, because this is what we also offer to our students in our pool rooms (since we did not get netscape mail working reasonably in this roaming environment).

4. NewzCrawler as RSS reader. Since I think RSS is a great blend between email (push) and web (pull) I don’t like it to be too much integrated into either of them, but rather love my specialized, standalone desktop reader.

5. Internet Explorer 7 as browser, for a similar reason as 3. above.

6. SSH File Transfer especially for syncing office and home materials, see previous separate post.

7. Shortcut to. This may not count as a tool, but it is very important for me to mitigate the hierarchical file system by a dense network of cross-references. I described my desktop usage and filing habits earlier.

8. MS Office (Rest). Similarly like with Powerpoint, I use the rest of MS Office often for other purposes than the standard ones.
   • I need Word mainly for printing web pages in a more readable format: 2-column.
   • Excel is for me mostly a transitional stage from text files to Access tables or back. Also for occasional Autocomplete tasks.
   • I use Access more often for short-term sorting or rearranging tasks than for long-term storage of facts or other information. Furthermore, Access serves me as transitional medium for importing keyword lists from text to powerpoint. Both is described here.
9. Wordpress also for notes management. After a long time of struggling with text files and testing with a personal wiki, I recently moved my notes to Wordpress.
10. DeepaMehta  I use this “semantic desktop” for very special purposes that justify the considerable effort: When a category of my notes collection has become too large and I want to visualize the network of their associations.