(Check out The Beta News for the rest).
I made it in Season two of “Show me your desktop” with some other established bloggers like Guy Kawasaki, Dan Lyons aka Fake Steve Jobs, Duncan Riley, Larissa Meek, Lisa Brewster, Amber Mac and Jeremy Schoemaker. In the interview I talk about some of the applications and software I use on a daily basis. It’s a fun way to get to know me so check it out and tell me if your desktop looks like mine. Are you an Apple or PC person? What software do you use daily? Tell me in the comments.
Click this thumbnail to see a larger view of my desktop.
See Connected Internet for more information on season two of “Show me your desktop.”
Does it make you feel like this?
In conclusion, when looking at some other bloggers interviewed in the first round I discovered a blog called Zen Habits that talks about productivity, time management, working from home, and helpful tips I like. The blog talks about things I’m interested in like finance, productivity and organization tricks.
SARAH AUSTIN 
Desktop pic for me is a sunset scene I took from the window of my computer room.
I’m a mac user, mainly because I don’t like Windows much & because when I did a costing of how much it would take to replace my aging linux box with a top spec homebrew machine it worked out cheaper to go mac.
Software I use daily: Flock for web browsing – it’s Firefox but with a LOAD of social networking extensions so it works well with Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, Livejournal & so on. iGTD for Getting Things Done – I have it sync to my iCal & then Spanning Sync syncs iCal with Google Calendars, and the Spanning Sync install on my MacBook Pro syncs it down to my laptop whenever I’m using that.
Development: Eclipse with Subclipse, SpringIDE, Hibernate, & Java EE plugins.
I would use MySQL for my local database but it’s been broken since the Leopard upgrade, so I’m gradually getting to grips with Apache Derby. I tend to use TextMate a lot as my main text editor. GIMP for photo editing & artwork, Skype for video conferencing. Meebo for IMs (brings them all together nicely), MoneyDance for finances, and of course World of Warcraft is my main game of choice.
By: Matt Moran on February 18, 2008
at 12:23 am
@Matt, Wow, homebrew machine? Cool! I have a MacBook Pro and I love it. It’s so amazing how everything has come together…I love my Apple computers.
I need to sync my flickr with my iphone email so I may upload while mobile. Something that only takes a second to do… I need to just do it asap.
WOW…. who else plays that here? If so on a Mac or PC?
By: sarahmeyers on February 18, 2008
at 12:31 am
On my personal computer, the applications I use daily are Firefox. Yep, that’s it. Boring. I use it to connect to my various emails, voice mail, calendars, chatters, etc. Top among those are GMail/Calendar, Yahoo! Mail, Meebo, and CommuniKate for business voice mail, email, and web conferencing.
I am a computer systems engineer, so at work I use Outlook, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Word, Visio, Excel, Access, Microsoft Management Console with a long list of snap-ins, and VMWare to build test environments.
I posted a screen shot on my blog. It happens that I just cleaned the desktop yesterday. It will pile up with icons and then I’ll go through and file them all-just like a real desktop! Imagine…
By: Bob on February 18, 2008
at 3:33 am
Oh…
@sarahmeyers- I played WoW for about four months at release on Windows. I played again the following January for about two weeks. It was a little too much like work for me.
By: Bob on February 18, 2008
at 3:34 am
[…] Read the rest of this great post here […]
By: I’m Showing off My Desktop | time management on February 18, 2008
at 5:37 am
I’m trying to figure out what that yellowish sharp looking object is in the middle of those pebbles on your desktop… 😛
By: Wyatt Song on February 18, 2008
at 11:51 am
@Bob, I checked out your desktop! What’s up with the picture of the bird? It looks like some evolved Galapagos Island bird with two heads. Does it really have two heads? What chats do you go onto for Meebo? I use them too.
By: sarahmeyers on February 18, 2008
at 4:52 pm
@Wyatt Song, I think it’s a rock. Not sure.
By: sarahmeyers on February 18, 2008
at 4:52 pm
I’m really glad you took the time to answer my question. I’ve learned a lot from these small interviews.
Zenhabits is a great place. Because of Leo’s advice there I’m up 30 mins. earlier every morning now 😉
About my favourite program I’m divided between Flock and Firefox. For some reason I use Flock at work and on my laptop, but on my stationary I use FireFox.
I use StumbleUpon a lot too. It’s a great time waster, but also a source of inspiration.
I haven’t really given Meebo a chance yet. I still use Windows Live Messenger and Skype (and Gtalk occasionally).
Oh and Photoshop from time to time, but I’m a real noob with that.
By: Dennis Bjørn Petersen on February 18, 2008
at 10:01 pm
I checked out ZenHabits too. Popular blog that I didn’t know about before this post.
By: FTWBears on February 18, 2008
at 11:33 pm
@sarah- re:Deskop, It’s a [url=http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/birds/blue-footed-booby.html]blue-footed booby[/url]. It only has one head, silly. In fact, they do live in Galapagos.
re:Meebo, I use AIM, MSN, Yahoo!, and Gmail. I don’t like to install the full clients, especially AIM, because I find them to be invasive. I rarely use the Meebo chat rooms. I used Meebo Me widgets for a while, but since none of my various blogs or profiles get much traffic, I lost interest.
How do you manage all your accounts? It must be a full time endeavor.
By: Bob on February 19, 2008
at 5:14 pm
@sarahmeyers: Yeah, back in the mid-late ’90’s it was cheaper to go get all the bits from someplace like Maplins or PC World & stick ’em together yourself, if you wanted a high spec, upgradeable machine. All the big PC manufacturers were doing integrated graphics & sound cards & these were advancing so fast you’d basically have to gut your PC to upgrade it. With a DIY box you knew exactly what was going into it too. That said, I dunno why, but every time I put Windows onto a linux box as a dual-booter, within a few months the hard drive died. So when the Mac Mini came out I realised I wanted a machine that ran some kind of unix, and was reliable yet affordable. I’d used macs back in about ’89 when I got my first job, as an advertising compositor at the local paper, & I liked using them. So, now I have an old mini g4, an iMac 20″ (the old white plastic sort, 2GHz Intel), & the MacBook Pro 2.4GHz 15.4″. I usually recycle my computers through my family – basically give away the ones that are too old & slow to my parents or sister. My wife gets the iMac when I upgrade in a couple of years (when iMacs have 32″ screens and have twin quad-core CPUs or the like).
I *love* Skype at the moment. It’s my main way of staying in touch with my family while I’m working in London. It’s great to be able to video call them & see my kids. I miss them hugely when I’m away all week.
@Bob: Meebo rocks – the Yahoo Messenger client works only occasionally on my MBP, so I moved to Meebo a couple of weeks ago. What can I say? Never installing a client again!
By: Matt Moran on February 20, 2008
at 8:17 am
@Matt Moran, that’s how I feel about the home brew boxes. The parts to build a proper gaming rig are too expensive to justify unless you’re a 6 hour per day gamer, which I’m not. If you’re not gaming, you can buy a decent PC for $300-600. Heck, I bought my laptop for $650. I can’t bring myself to blow away a legit copy of Windows to install Linux. That’s driven by the same part of me that stands on the end of a diving board, not quite ready to jump in.
By: Bob on February 20, 2008
at 4:31 pm