One year ago, you organised your holiday card list with Google Spreadsheets More »
I’m pleased to announce that we’ve been doing some work behind the scenes to add some useful features to Lifehacker AU. You may have noticed that you can now view comments from both Lifehacker AU and Lifehacker US, which I’m pretty excited about.
Not quite as exciting, but still useful is our new FAQ. If you have any questions about what’s going on around here, please check it out. If you think I left anything out, please leave a comment.
It may have been aimed at kids and the education market, but a lot of Linux geeks have been looking forward to checking out the Linux-based ASUS Eee PC mini-laptop. I got my hands on a review unti last week, and let me say upfront this review will not look at whether this laptop would be great for kids – I’m not a kid anymore and I don’t pretend to know what they need or like in a computer. I wanted to roadtest how the Eee PC would work as a laptop replacement for an adult user. Read on for the full review. More »
Just because email is “always on” doesn’t mean that we need to always check and respond to it, reminds the Lifehack.org blog today. Back before dialup, it was normal for people to go online to download their email, then disconnect from the internet to read and write responses offline, at their pace. Then the next time they went online, their email responses would go out. There wasn’t a culture of instant response. But as email has become a primary communication tool (and broadband has given us ‘always on’ internet), it’s been very easy for us to get in the habit of letting email sidetrack us constantly through the day. The tip from Lifehack.org is to treat your email like snail mail, and break the cycle of checking and responding the second new email arrives:
Decide what time (or times) you will deal with email each day. At that time (assuming you deal with it once a day) you will have the last 24 hours worth of emails waiting for you. Set up an efficient system to deal with all of your emails in one sitting. Sort, process, act and delete, until there is nothing left. Then turn off your email.
The gist of it is you need to train yourself, and the people who email you, that email is not efficient for instant communication. I’m still winnowing down my email subscriptions and folders to minimise the amount of email alerts I get over the course of the day. So does the “once a day” ethos appeal to you – or is it too hard to resist the “you have mail” alert?
Treat your email like snail mail and walk away with change [Lifehack.org] More »
If you’re a customer of BigPond Wireless Next G and you’re running OS X 10.5 Leopard, you may have experienced some connection issues, according to APC magazine’s Danny Gorog. He says when he tried to set up his network, the wireless card (Bigpond’s Next G 7.2 Wireless expresscard) didn’t like Leopard and the connection manager would keep disconnecting. While Telstra says a fix is on the way, Danny has written up a workaround at APC which involves downloading the latest driver for the Sierra card and deleting the “Sierra Watch” application which is causing the problem. He’s written up a full walkthrough with screenshots.
Connect to BigPond Wireless Next G in OS X 10.5 Leopard [APC]
Steve Jobs has said the iPhone isn’t 3G because 3G is too power hungry resulting in short battery life. For Australians this meant the iPhone looked like it would only be available through Telstra, as it’s our only EDGE-based mobile network in the country. But the CEO of AT&T, network partner of the iPhone in America, has now confirmed that the 3G iPhone is on the way. Does this mean we might have a choice of 3G network providers when iPhone reaches these shores rather than being locked to just one provider? Fingers crossed. More »
Google Reader has added a “Discovery” section which recommends new feeds to you based on the RSS subscriptions of people who share similar interests with you. This list is automatically generated and takes into account your location, your existing feed subscriptions as well as your Web History (which I assume means your browsing history). They’ve also added drag and drop editing of feed subscriptions which means you can move feeds between folders, or change the order of your feeds or folders. But the Google Operating System blog points out that you still can’t rename folders or tags.
Google Reader Improves Feed Management [Google Operating System] More »
Mac OS X only: Previously introduced money management web app, Wesabe, makes it even easier to manage your money with a free dashboard widget. The widget has two views: transactions and accounts. The accounts view (shown above) displays the balance of each account. The transactions view (not shown) displays the most recent 10 transactions. The dashboard widget makes it very easy and convenient to manage your finances at-a-glance. The Wesabe dashboard widget is a free download for Mac OS X only.
Wesabe’s Mac Dashboard Widget [Wheaties for your Wallet]Windows only: Manage your PuTTY sessions from the tray with freeware stand-alone app PuTTY Tray. In addition to sending sessions to the tray, PuTTY Tray adds transparency, URL hyperlinking, always on top and automatic session reconnects. Though subtle, everyday users of PuTTY should find these enhancements very refreshing. PuTTY Tray carries the same look and feel as the original PuTTY with the aforementioned features spliced throughout the configuration pane. PuTTY Tray is a free download for Windows only.
PuTTY TrayStudents: Get through the end of the semester with College and Finance’s guide to the art of “BSing.” If your semester of slacking finally caught up to you, or if you just don’t have enough time to write a quality paper, College and Finance’s guide should help you churn out a decent essay. When all else fails, write an awesome conclusion – So, if you’re having trouble with the essay, and you can’t seem to remember some important facts, don’t get too discouraged. In my experience, some people have fewer facts, but write a better essay than others, and therefore receive the higher grade. This isn’t a guarantee, but if you at least have a well-structured paper with a solid conclusion, the professor should award you some style points.
Don’t forget that there’s no alternative to good old fashioned hard work. College and Finance’s guide certainly won’t save you if you haven’t prepared at all. However, it should help when you just haven’t prepared enough.
The Art of BS: How to Succeed on Papers and Essays [College and Finance]
