Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Edit Your Photos Directly in Flickr

12:15PM Adam Pash | Popular photo sharing web site Flickr has partnerted with online image editing web site Picnik to integrate photo editing directly in your Flickr account. To use it, just log into your Flickr account, click on a picture, and then click the new Edit Photo button. When you do, you’ll be asked if you want to enable Picnik to open inside your account (see screenshot below). Once you accept, the Picnik editor will fire up in your browser and you can crop, rotate, resize, sharpen, correct red-eye, and tonnes more from the comfort of your Flickr account. And that’s just the Edit tab! Click the Create tab to add effects, text callouts, shapes, touch-ups, and frames to your pictures. This editing tool won’t replace Photoshop by any means, but if you’re not a professional photo editor but you are a Flickr enthusiast, you can now upload your pictures straight to Flickr and then edit as you please in your browser. If nothing else you can get rid of the red-eye in those party photos you never got around to fixing and then re-uploading. Thumbs up! Edit your photos! On Flickr! [Flickr Blog] More »

Team Allure wraps up Movember

12:11PM Sarah Stokely | Well, the longsuffering loved ones need suffer no more – Movember is over for another year, and the Mo’s have been shaved off. Team Allure, ably captained by Seamus – formerly of Gizmodo AU – managed to raise $355 for Movember. The proceeds go towards men’s charities helping fight prostate cancer and depression. A worthy cause indeed. And now back to our regularly scheduled, stubble free programming. :) More »

Minimize Your Inboxes

12:00PM Gina Trapani | In his productivity bible Getting Things Done, David Allen says that you should minimise the number of collection buckets for all the information coming into in your life. (Collection buckets include a paper in-basket, email inbox, voicemail box, feed reader—anywhere new “stuff” channels into your day.) You should have as many in-baskets as you need and as few as you can get by with… If you have too many collection zones, you won’t be able to process them easily or consistently. A few different services and tools can consolidate your inboxes and collection buckets, from email to voicemail and even paper and snail mail boxes. Let’s take a look. Single phone number with GrandCentral: Ever since I switched my main number over to a GrandCentral number, I never looked back. You can ring all or any subset of phone numbers you’ve already got on a per-contact basis with GrandCentral, or send calls to voicemail or screen them as messages are being left. Voicemail notifications come straight to your email box (if you work primarily in email, like I do, this is priceless), and you never have to worry about giving out your number. See more on how to consolidate your phone lines into a single number with GrandCentral. Single email address with Gmail and Google Apps for Your Domain: This may be the fourth Gmail post of the day, but what the hell. Since Gmail can fetch and send mail from any POP-enabled existing address, it’s a fabulous way to consolidate old addresses into a single place. Don’t want to give up your custom domain gina@example.com address? Google Apps for Your Domain gives you Gmail without the @gmail.com domain in your address. Send paper to your digital “inbox” with the ScanSnap: This one I haven’t gotten set up for myself yet, but it sounds like the best instant, scan-paper-to-PDF solution on the block. Over at 43 Folders, blogger Ryan Norbauer describes his Fujitsu ScanSnap workflow for a paperless existence. Definitely giving this a try myself in ‘08 so I can ditch the paper in-basket and use the digital “inbox” folder on my computer exclusively. Snail mail: Okay, so most people don’t have the problem of multiple mailing addresses. But if you’re a freelancer who moves around a lot—or you’ve got a small business you’d like to have its own address—I can’t recommend getting a PMB (Private Mail Box) enough. Sure it’ll cost you a couple hundred a year, but the freedom to give out your mailing address without worry and even move without having to change your address is awesome. How do you minimize the inboxes in your life? Tell us about it in the comments. More »

Add System Monitoring to Your Desktop with CoolMon

11:00AM Adam Pash | Windows only: Freeware application CoolMon monitors your systems vitals with attractive desktop-embedded widgets. In very basic operation, CoolMon displays information like RAM usage, hard drive space, and CPU load, but with the right plugins you can embed just about anything on your desktop—like new email alerts, weather, the song you’re currently listening to, and so on. If all you’re looking for is more of a plain-text to-do list on your desktop, check out previously mentioned Samurize. Mac users should take a look at GeekTool. Setup for CoolMon is a little quirky, so check out Simplehelp’s post guide if you’re having trouble. CoolMon is freeware, Windows only. CoolMon [via Simplehelp] More »

Bring Your ABC to the Desktop with ABC Now

10:24AM Sarah Stokely | Our national broadcaster has added another string to its multimedia bow with the release of desktop gadget ABC Now, which is essentially a media player which lets you get ABC news headlines, radio streams, podcasts and TV highlights on your PC. You can also get weather updates.One nice feature is the ability to create a Favourites menu. When you’re browsing content in the “Find” section, each item has a “heart” icon and a “+” sign, which you just need to click to add to your Favourites list.Cricket fans should note that “technical difficulties” mean they can’t broadcast the cricket through ABC Now yet. You’ll need to be using either Real Player or Windows Media Player. Right now ABC now is Windows only, but they’ve promised a Mac version soon.I’ve raved before about our national broadcaster’s efforts to do multimedia broadcasting well, and ABC Now is a nice addition to their offerings. I’ll need to do some experimenting to see if this standalone gadget can be incorporated into iGoogle or something similar. If you experiment, let us know how you get on in comments.This new feature was spotted at APC.  More »

Honey the Best Remedy for Coughs

10:00AM Adam Pash | Winter means colds, and colds mean sore, scratchy throats and coughs. Wired reports that, according to a study by the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine, the best remedy for that cough may not be your over-the-counter cough medicine, but the old folk favorite, honey. The study actually focused on children (for whom stronger cold medicines aren’t recommended), and although I doubt honey can knock you out like a spoonful of NyQuil, the honey stood up very well in the tests, consistently outscoring cough medicine in parents’ ratings of their children’s symptoms. Plus, who wouldn’t down a spoonful of tasty honey any day if it yields results and means you won’t need to choke down NyQuil? Study: Try Honey for Children’s Coughs [Wired] More »