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Sylvania Light Flute – LED task light

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Sylvania light fluteOsram Sylvania Products Inc 72261 Led Light Flute – SilverWhile strolling the aisles of BJ’s the other day, I discovered this great LED task light called the Light Flute. It’s made by Sylvania and it is just one of the coolest LED lights I”ve seen. What makes it so great is its overall design and functionality.

The case of the light is made of anodized aluminum which is light and strong. It feels very sturdy and the end-cap unscrews to reveal the 3-AAA batteries that power 4-white LED lights. The innovative mounting base allows for several different mounting options… magnetic, adhesive and screw mounting.

The slender light is 8.5″ long and about the diameter of your little finger. It can be mounted just about anywhere and is great for mounting under your desk when trying to re-route cables. It could also be used as emergency lighting, as an under-counter light, closet lighting… the list could go on and on.

The Light Flutes were sold as packs of 2 for about $17 at BJ’s and are also available from Amazon.com.

I haven’t had them long enough to comment on how long the batteries will last, but LED lights are generally pretty efficient so I would expect a minimum of 10-12 hours of continuous light and perhaps much more. I’ll update this post once I have a better idea of battery life.

Quix app packs a lot of tools into a small footprint

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Quix logoQuix, authored by Joost de Valk, is a huge productivity enhancer for webdevelopers, and anyone wishing to have easy access to a plethora of handy tools.

Quix is am extensible bookmarklet that you simply drag into your bookmarks toolbar in Safari, Firefox and several other browsers. Then by invoking Quix, a command line opens up in a small window into which you can enter easy to remember default commands to perform a variety of functions. Since it is extensible, you can create your own custom commands as well.

Quix command-line window

For instance, say you want to quickly check what your ip address is… you would invoke Quix, type in “myip” in the command line and hit enter and you’ve instantly got your ip displayed in your browser window. Another example is if you want to measure the size of an element on a webpage, you’d invoke Quix, type in “ruler” and a cross-hair appears on your screen with a dimensions palette next to it and you can easily measure a graphic or any area on the current webpage you are on.

I haven’t counted all the functions available in Quix but there are surely over 60 of them and most are easy to remember… “ruler” for the aforementioned ruler tool, “gs” for Google search, “a” for Amazon search, “bitly” for bit.ly URL shortening, you get the idea. The complete list is located on the Quixapp website

It’s a real time-saver and obviates the need to have lots of add-ons since so many functions are taken care of by Quix. Joost admits that the inspiration for Quix came from another similar app called Shortwave which was created by Shaun Inman.

Check Quix out. It may be one of the handiest tools you have at your disposal. You can get it from quixapp.com

Update: I’ve also created a quick tutorial on the installation and usage of Quix.