Saturday, December 15, 2007
Add a Whiteboard to Your Hipster PDA
11:00PM Kyle Pott | Turn a notecard into a miniature whiteboard by wrapping it with packing tape. As shown above, packing tape can also be used to laminate notecards you want to protect. The downside to carrying a notecard wrapped in packing tape is that you’d also have to start carrying a dry erase marker. Regardless, if you’re a frequent doodler, big thinker, or work in an environment where dry erase markers are abundant, you can reuse notecards that would otherwise get scrapped. Make A Pocket-Size Dry Erase Board [via Lifehack.org] More »
Organise Your Money in 2008 with Wesabe
10:30PM Kyle Pott | As the last few days of 2007 slip away, make a New Year’s resolution to get your finances in order with Wesabe. A few months ago Adam kicked Mint’s tires. After giving Mint a whirl, I knew it wasn’t for me. With Wesabe’s plethora of features, open source mindset, and strong community backing, it’s the perfect money management app for my needs. More »
Use a Screensaver as Desktop Wallpaper with Wallsaver
10:00PM Kyle Pott | Mac OS X only: Turn your desktop into a photo slideshow using freeware app Wallsaver. Wallsaver is a very simple application written in AppleScript that replaces your wallpaper with the current screensaver. Setting the wallpaper as Flurry (shown above) is pretty annoying, however, using your pictures folder is an excellent way to use your desktop as a digital picture frame. A few months ago we showed Linux users how to get the same effect using a nautilus hack. Thanks, NineTailedFox! Wallsaver [NWW Network] More »Optus adds excess fees to Fusion broadband
11:00AM Sarah Stokely | There have been some disappointing changes in the Australian broadband pricing landscape lately, with Optus the latest offender.We already told you that iiNet had followed Telstra’s lead in adding upload charges to its naked DSL offering, and now Optus has added excess usage fees to its Optus Fusion broadband service.Previously, Fusion customers had their service speed limited (let’s call “shaping” what it really is) when they hit their download limit, but earlier this month Optus changed the terms, adding an excess usage charge of 15c/MB for the first 2GB of data over the limit. After the customer goes 2GB over their limit, the service is then speed limited to 64kbps on the 2GB and 7GB plans, or 128kbps on the 20GB plan.The broadband community website Whirlpool wrote up the changes,and said this excess charge could be as high as $300. They also printed a reply from Optus, which said it provides tools to help customers monitor their usage if they wish to avoid charges. Given how quickly you can rack up 2GB of downloads, I don’t really think an SMS or email notification will help terribly much unless you’re sitting in front of the computer waiting breathlessly for your download to complete.It’s really a shame to see ISPs move away from the speed limiting model which means the customer knows exactly how much they’ll be paying for the service, and they get speed limited rather than charged a fee if they go over. I particularly dislike pricing regimes which are set to hit less knowledgeable computer users the hardest, which this one is likely to do. Something to think about next time friends or family ask for advice on which ISP to use, in my opinion.
Optus Fusion stings users with excess fees [Whirlpool] More » Freeze a Shapeable Ice Pack with Rubbing Alcohol
11:00AM Gina Trapani | Need to ice that stubbed toe or twisted ankle? You don’t have to buy a fancy pack or try to balance a block of ice on your skin. Outdoors blog Uncooped says you can freeze rubbing alcohol and water in a Zip Lock bag to get a malleable ice pack that can take any shape for comfort. The alcohol keeps the water from freezing, thus the bag of slush wraps around your injury easily. You can also use dishwashing liquid for the same purpose. How to make a shapeable ice pack [Uncooped] More »
Newseum lets you tour the world via headlines
10:59AM Sarah Stokely | Newseum – the Interactive Museum of News - is a bricks and mortar museum being built in Washington DC, but its website already has a wealth of information including “Today’s Front Page” - snapshots of front pages from over 400 newspapers in 40 countries around the world.You can view the front pages via lists of newspapers, or in a photo gallery format, but the map view is perhaps the coolest.By selecting the map view, you can select a region of the globe and mouse over the map to be shown the front page of the newspapers in that area. It’s a nice visual way to take the news pulse of the globe, although the international representation so far seems sparse. Today’s front pages returned only 1 newspaper from London, and only 2 from Australia (the Sunday Age and the Courier Mail).Thanks for the tip, Cam!
Today’s Front Page [Newseum]
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Gmail Adds New Shortcuts, Easy Undo
10:00AM Adam Pash | As Gmail continues its slow (but sure?) trek towards integrating the keyboard shortcut goodness that is the Gmail Macros script in our very own Better Gmail Firefox extension, they’ve been throwing in lots of handy new shortcuts along the way. We already highlighted Gmail’s best new shortcut, but as it turns out they snuck a couple other shortcuts in under the radar: The undo action (when available) with a keypress of ‘z’ (Ctrl-z anyone) and access to the More Actions drop-down menu with the ‘.’ key. The undo shortcut is particularly useful, since virtually the only time I needed to leave my keyboard in Gmail was to undo a archiving a message. On the other hand, the More Actions shortcut seems like a crippled version of the ‘l’ shortcut in Gmail Macros. Remember you can get a look at all of the default shortcuts at any time in Gmail by typing a question mark (?), or head to the keyboard shortcuts page linked below. Keyboard Shortcuts [Gmail Help via Steve Rubel's Twitter] More »
Quickly Sort Any List with the Alphebetizer
9:00AM Adam Pash | Need to alphabetise something in a jiffy but don’t want to fire up Excel and import the data to do it? Head over to The Alphabetizer, a simple but surprisingly useful webapp that quickly sorts any list into alphabetical order. The Alphabetizer can strip HTML from lists, remove duplicates, ignore indefinite articles like “a” or “an”, and handle lists separated by new lines, commas, tabs, or any custom delimiter you like. You can even print your list once it’s sorted. The Alphabetizer might not be an everyday webapp for you, but it is a useful tool for the right occasion. The Alphabetizer [via Confessions of a freeware junkie] More »
Move Email from Outlook to Gmail
8:00AM Gina Trapani | Outlook users who want to move to Gmail—or just back up their existing Outlook mail there—can do so using Gmail’s IMAP access. Tech blog Digital Inspiration covers how. In a nutshell, set up IMAP access to Gmail in Outlook, and drag and drop your folders onto Google’s servers. Simple. Export and Backup All Emails from Outlook to Your Gmail Account [Digital Inspiration] More »
