I have been slightly interested in python for a while, but just never got around to actually writing anything. Not that I am enough of a programmer to be particularly swayed by one language over another – but the path of least resistance for writing plugins and such for the Linux desktop seems to by python. This was a simple project that taught me some basics, and since there isn’t a nicely developed perl module for the Google API I went on with the python.

Lets say you just made a little spreadsheet in OpenOffice

Now you want to share that amazingly complex spreadsheet with your lawyer on Google Docs

Now it’s up there…

and you can edit and share with friends

Nautilus, the Gnome file manager, lets you drop scripts of your choosing into ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/. When you run the script on a file through the right-click menu the file name gets passed to the script. I knew this was possible, and have played around with OS X folder actions before, but I have to say that in practice this is a lot easier than AppleScript to me.

Grab the python script yourself, download and install the gdata python API, edit the file to have your own username/password, and right-click your way to uploading fun. Disclaimer: this is just a quick and dirty thing, do not expect it to be good.

If you’re not already a user of the fabulously popular user-generated social news site digg.com you’re missing out. This week there has been a huge overhaul, making it much easier to customize the site to your liking. Whether you’re interested in celebrity gossip or dorky Linux stuff, this is a great place to stay on top of the latest stories.

I’m also very impressed by the new Podcast section. I’ve used Odeo in the past, and I have to say that this is even easier. You can browse or search through podcasts by category, looking for the most dugg podcast. Then within that podcast you can jump right to the most dugg episode and listen to it right within your browser… very very smooth and seamless.

Become one with digg.

When I entered my freshman year of college I had a nice short haircut. I figured that this would be the last few years before I entered the work force and would need to be presentable. I decided to just not cut my hair for a couple years. This is what it looked like. I kept telling myself that it would look cool later. I was wrong.

As the title says!

read more | digg story

This bloke started out in july with a red paperclip that he swapped for a pen. He swapped the pen for a door handle. He plans to continue this chain of trades until he can acquire a house or an island. He�s documenting it on this blog.

What a great example of wealth-building through trade. This should be mandatory reading for all Econ 101 students around the country. By simply making individual mutually-beneficial trades, this dude hopes to eventually turn a red paperclip into a house. He’ll be able to do it too, and so could you… except trading in currency is normally a bit easier than the barter system. Microeconomics rocks.

read more | digg story

Future Evite crusher Upcoming.org is the lastest in a seemingly endless suply of Ajax powered web pages to be scooped up by search giant Yahoo.

In July of 2004 Yahoo purchased Oddpost, a future-looking web-based email provider whose features far outweighed that of the status quo Yahoo Mail and Hotmail. Oddpost is the foundation of what will be the next iteration of Yahoo mail with features to peer-pressure even the innovative Gmail to advance. Add the new Yahoo mail to the queue of advanced web applications coming soon.

March of 2005 brought Yahoo’s next purchase of a fast growing web app, Flickr. The online photo sharing, storage, and social networking tool has continued to flourish under the rule of Yahoo. Users can share their photos with the world and participate in communtiy driven groups and tag their way to a better experience.

Upcoming.org is more like Evite meets Washington Post Online meets Flickr. They have embraced the ever-popular folksonomy paradigm, allowing social tagging of events and creation of groups. Upcoming has the idea of a “metro”, or a geographic metropolitan area for which you are interested in events. The first thing I thought of was Andrea when I saw this site, because its a great place to announce all those little events that may normally only be announced in the City Paper.

Like the Netflix website or LiveJournal, there is a community-centric theme on Upcoming.org where you set people as friends, join groups, and actually enjoy using the site. Rather than rude information-squeezing or bombarding the user with ads, the site embraces a more open feel that we’re starting to see more of on the web. They make use of popular and open technologies like RSS and iCalendar and put the information back in the hands of the users with an open API like Flickr, Craig’s List, and Paypal.

On the surface it seems that this site is geared toward more public events, but in my testing it seems quite capable for personal events. Upcoming allows you to create personal venues (like your house) and personal events (like a dinner party). You can simply enter in email addresses of people you would like to invite and off goes the message. Unlike Evite, you actually see details of the event in the email message rather than being cat-herded onto a banner ad viewing site. For those (like me) that often need a gentle reminder of where they need to be and when, Upcoming offers SMS event reminders for free. In fact, free is the norm on Upcoming.org, both monetarily and philosophically. I created my account without even giving them my name!

All in all, I’d recommend adding Upcoming.org to your online toolbox. The community will ultimately drive this site and I can see a lot of improvement on the horizon. Check it out. Tell me what you think. Avoid evite like a disease.