shahine.com/omar/

Last week I was hanging out in Kepler’s books, one of the best bookstores I have ever found. I came across this wallet called the Tyvek Mighty Wallets. I was intrigued, initially by the cool NYC Subway Map design that was used to make it. Being from NYC, there is something about the subway map that I love. In fact the line I used to take all the time is right on the front (4, 5, 6).

So I started to play with this wallet. I immediately recognized the paper like material used since you have felt this if you’ve ever received a FedEx envelope. It’s called Tyvek and it’s one of those amazing inventions made by accident at DuPont. God I love DuPont. They make such cool stuff out of fossil fuels and recycled crap.

Every 2 years I go on the hunt for the minimalist wallet. I want something small and light than can hold some dead tree money, some credit cards, and receipts and such. The Tyvek Mighty Wallet weighs close to nothing and is pretty indestructible. It’s also cheap at $15 and can be recycled when done.

Of course I tweeted this find last week. Jeff Atwood managed to reply immediately and I knew a blog post was forthcoming . He seemed to latch on to the dotmatrix version of the wallet which has Pi printed out on it.

Here it is if you want to peruse the interesting comments, of which one is from the designer of the Tyvek wallet (Terrence Kelleman). He placed a link to a video that does a great job of giving you the skinny on this amazing wallet.

The company, Dynomighty design, has a bunch of neat stuff. I’m thinking custom wallets would be cool as would the Luggage Tags.

In fact, Jeff, how about a Codinghorror Wallet?

Also if you are into it, you can make your own wallet from a FedEx envelope.

For a long time I’ve searched the web looking for a great application launcher for Windows. Mac users have QuickSilver, the holy grail of application launchers. In fact I’ve never used QuickSilver, I always read about its awesomeness.

First there was SlickRun and I used it for many years. In fact I loved SlickRun (and still do). However, it’s not a general purpose launcher and will not index your hard drive for applications, folders and whatnot. It will let you define some great keywords though.

Then there was Launchy. A great launcher but it lacked the ability to create Keywords like SlickRun. The UX was slick though.

I’ve tried SkyLight (from the makers of AppRocket), a beautiful application, but dog slow. I mean painfully slow (it would take a few seconds before it would allow me to type a command. SkyLight is a WPF app and to be honest, I’ve found that all the WPF apps I’ve tried have similar performance problems (Witty and bTT).

Executor

At long last, Executor added support to index any folder you specify on your computer, allowing me to replace both Launchy and SlickRun. I tried Executor last year but the inability to customize it with your own search paths was limiting since I store little utilities in my roaming portable apps folder.

Executor has a lot of functionality. It took me a while to set up the UX and behavior the way I wanted. Here is a screen shot of what you’d see if you typed “ad” into Executor:

As you can see, I use the large 2 line icon view, which is helpful if you use Executor to index your Documents folder for Folders and you have more than 1 with the same name:

And of course you can use it as a general file system browser… much better than Start –> Run.

With Vista we all get a nice solution to the Start Menu Mess, as Jeff Atwood describes in his post Typing Trumps Pointing. While this is a great solution for my parents, I personally need the power of defining custom keywords and search paths (like my Portable Apps directory).

Executor has a lot of features, so I’d recommend you check out this page which lists some of the cool things you can do.

So happy that Amazon now supports adding products from anywhere on the Internet to your wish list. Amazon has become my defacto place for storing things I want, or things I want people to buy for me!

This replaces Google Shopping List which wasn’t very good anyway.

Get your Amazon Wish list Bookmarklet.

Earlier this year I wrote:

2008 Will mark the end of Personal Finance Software. Quicken will de-emphasize being offered as a shrink wrapped/downloadable product and move to a subscription model.

Mint.com and Wesabe will continue to steal users away from the shackles of Microsoft Money and Quicken.

I look forward to this...

And this morning I read this:

“Microsoft Money Plus continues to be a valuable tool for our customers; however the feedback we are hearing is that the incremental updates to the software don’t merit a new product every year. Given this, we have decided against releasing a 2009 version of Money Plus. .. We are moving off of an annual release cycle for Microsoft Money Plus (no Money 2009 version in the fall), with future release dates TBD” (to be determined).

Good time to switch to Mint.com or Wesabe.

I’ve been using Mint.com for over a year now. Earlier this year I switched “full time” as it sort of crept up on me. They finally have all the features I required in a personal finance package:

• Budgeting
• Investment accounts (401K etc)
• SMS and Email alerts of transactions / balances
• Auto-Updating balances
• Amazing self correction of merchant names
• Cash Flow tools
• Accounts are always reconciled
• Zero Configuration Installation (no DRM).
• Mortgage and Loan accounts

I seriously love Mint. Now if they could just make an iPhone app!

Couple of months ago I wrote about how these guys can’t get Calendar Sync to work.

Well, it’s taken us a long time (cause sync is hard), but by partnering with the Outlook team we now have Mail, Contacts & Calendar sync for all Windows Live Hotmail users via Outlook Connector 12.1.

Previously calendar sync was a “premium” feature that only worked with the old MSN Calendar service. Now it’s free for everyone, like it should be!

The Calendar sync now part of the Outlook Connector will sync “all” your Windows Live Calendars in Outlook allowing you to view them side by side or overlaid. This includes any calendars you have shared or are sharing with others giving you read/write access to your calendars online and offline.

Another benefit is you get a Birthday Calendar for all your Windows Live Contacts. This is a great way to stay on top of Birthdays (in addition to fbCal for Facebook, which you can now subscribe to in Windows Live Calendar).

Read more on the Hotmail team blog.

Download the new connector here.

PS – Calendar Sync is done using FeedSync formerly known as SSE.