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New flybuys Earns Discounts Faster (But They're Not Good Discounts) Kimberly Wiefling, author of Scrappy Project Management, offers some advice over at Web Worker Daily for keeping team projects together and moving forward. Her best advice, however, applies equally to personal projects: Make the goals as clear as possible. Say the goal is launching a new website. “Often, [teams]find out they don’t all have the same idea of what success is six months from now,” said Wiefling. “Is it just launching the prototype? Is it the home page works, but everything else is clunky? What about bug free. Is it full of bugs or working smoothly? How long does a page take to load? A lot of details get lost in some of the high level, ‘Hey, get the site up in six months.’” Make sure the goal looks the same to everybody.
In both full-time jobs and working freelance, I’ve found that most disastrous big-package projects fell apart precisely because the two sides of the table never agreed on goals in the first place. How do you ensure everyone you’re working with (and for) knows what the true goals are? Share your thoughts in the comments.
3 Scrappy Project Management Techniques to Master (Plus 2 Tips) [Web Worker Daily]Windows only: Free application Shock Desktop caters to those who have their own idea of a perfect icon layout on their desktop and dislike applications (or people) that mess with it. After creating one or more desktop “profiles” with the taskbar-nested application, you can restore them at any time, regardless of any auto-arrange or grid alignment settings you have in place. The program also offers the ability to hide all your icons—useful for taking screenshots—and doesn’t have to constantly run, though it installs as a start-up application. Shock Desktop is a free download for Windows XP, 2000 and (at least on my system) Vista only.
Shock Desktop [via Freeware Genius]The folks at Google have put together a series of videos that explain the private and not-so-private features of applications like Google Calendar, Picasa Web Albums and phone number look-ups and instruct users on how to change and opt out of them. Long-time Lifehacker readers may have seen a few of these tips before, but they make good explainers for co-workers and relatives. And until Google rolls out a convenient, all-in-one privacy manager, keeping on top of what Google is and isn’t sharing with the world is the best thing a privacy-savvy user can do.
Google Privacy Tips [via The Official Google Blog]There is, to be sure, no lack of online image editors, but most are helpful only if you trust your instincts when it comes to lighting, sharpness, color balance and all the other tools of the digital image trade. Free web app ImproveYourImages.com is like a web version of Picasa’s “I’m Feeling Lucky” button. Upload your image, check out the improvements, and download the corrected version. I had to scale down and set one of my digital camera pics to 72 DPI before it would take it, but not being all that proficient in Photoshop/GIMP, I’m happier with the results than I would have been trying to tweak it myself.
ImproveYourImages.com [via Techlicious.tv]The Zen Habits weblog has a guest post by wet shaving enthusiast John Koontz, who offers both an introduction to the concept of the most traditional way to lose the stubble and a few compelling reasons to try it. Among the incentives: Outside of the $100 initial investment (of a straight razor and bowl), the daily consumables cost pennies a day. For instance, where a marketing driven cartridge razor can cost over $3 a piece, a typical double edge blade costs a quarter, a savings of over $140 per year on blades alone.
For more advice on getting a closer, less irritating shave, regardless of whether you go the scary straight-razor route or stick with dispoasables, check out Merlin Mann’s tips and another helpful guide. Photo by baronbrian.
The Zen of Shaving: How a Double-edge Razor Can Change Your Life [via LH Australia]Whether you’re a frequent user of large file-sharing sites like RapidShare or frequently get emails with messed-up formatting, you’ve likely had to spend time copying, pasting and trimming URLs to actually work. Linkrr, a free web utility, has a single purpose and fix for the problem. Type or paste in one or more URLs, and the site creates a page of click-able links, along with a button that can launch them all (assuming it can play nice with your pop-up blocker). Might be worth a bookmark for the next time Aunt Gertie sends along all those links to AOL photo galleries.
Linkrr.com [via MakeUseOf.com]Two years ago, we introduced website owners to the art of SEO with some basic tips and tricks.
As Crikey was pleased to point out today, some enterprising soul has put a John Howard pinata up for auction on ebay, just in time to provide “the perfect entertainment for your election night party”. They want $280 for it though, ouch.
