www.nickhodge.com

I think Particls just changed my life. I’ve replaced my Microsoft Win­dows Vista Side­bar with this new ver­sion of Particls. Hav­ing Particls watch the web for me keeps me on-the-ball, more than caf­feine. Well, almost.

Hav­ing inter­viewed Chris and Ash­ley from Particls, and vis­ited their lair in Bris­ve­gas, I knew these guys where onto something.

Upon return­ing from my 2 weeks off work on hol­i­day, I had a couple of thou­sand feed items all demand­ing my instant atten­tion. Hol­i­days are a mech­an­ism for adjust­ing your per­sonal APML. Along with two cats and a bag full of wash­ing: it was dif­fi­cult to pri­or­it­ize what was/was not important.

Chris Saad let me into their secret: a new Sidebar-focused ver­sion of Particls

Feed­ing the moun­tain through Particls, the import­ant stuff popped onto the top.

Liv­ing my work­ing life online in the intar­webs, it is way too easy to lose those nug­gets and jew­els in the streams and tubes.

Why turn off the Vista Side­bar? On my laptop, screen real-estate is pre­cious, and what is most import­ant needs to be flow­ing in front of me to grab my atten­tion. My eyes move focus to move­ment (think hunter, not gatherer) — and with Particls ‘mov­ing’ items as they flow in, it grabs my attention.

Gad­gets that I have used in Vista have been static inform­a­tion; or at least some­thing that I am happy to view once per hour or so.

So, these static pieces of inform­a­tion can stay in Inter­net Explorer as favour­ites, Win­dows Live, and there­fore in online services.

Particls is no gad­get. It is now a must-have desktop applic­a­tion with the screen space it deserves.