The Best Ways To De-Stink Your Stuff 
In Memoriam: Our Favourite Apps And Services That Have Gone Belly Up 
How To Prepare For A Move Overseas 
From Saucy Pics To Passwords: How To Share Sensitive Information 
How Do IKEA's Prices In Australia Compare? 
New flybuys Earns Discounts Faster (But They're Not Good Discounts) Windows/Mac/Linux: Open source image editing suite GIMP version 2.4 is now available and features a host of new goodies and long-awaited improvements. Chief among the new features are scaling for all kinds of brushes, intuitive selection and crop tools, a new object alignment guide and advanced tools like perspective cloning and lens distortion filters, but there are many more. GIMP is free, available already in some Linux repositories and for download for Windows and Mac users. For help getting started with GIMP, check out these intermediate video tutorials.
GIMP – Downloads [via OSNews]The New York Times’ David Pogue posts one of the first reviews for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and declares it “powerful, polished and carefully conceived,” but he isn’t a fan of the new see-through menus.
Mac OS X only: The keyboard shortcut loving Mac owner’s favourite app, Quicksilver, has received a minor update, presumably in preparation for the upcoming release of Leopard. Aside from the version update (it’s B52 from B51, despite what Quicksilver’s homepage says at the time of this writing), the most significant difference I’ve noticed is what appears to be a very slight refresh of the preferences, triggers, catalog, and plug-ins manager (I saw a spinner when I switched tabs that’s new to me). But there actually is a little more.
RIM has announced a mobile Facebook application for the Blackberry. The mobile application will let Blackberry users upload photos straight to Facebook and send and receive friend alerts. Yes, but can they play scrabble?
So it seems that games, virtual worlds and social networking sites are becoming entrenched in the way we live and work. No surprise to us geeks, of course. But it seems that some organisations are looking more deeply into how employees interact with these digital worlds, to see how they might harness these behaviours for good.
The BBC published a really interesting feature looking at this trend, and quotes Ian Hughes, IBM’s metaverse evangelist, as saying that many organisations were considering ways of harnessing the skills and familiarity their employees have with virtual environments.
“This familiarity has driven many organisations to consider virtual worlds as places where employees can meet, mix and get on with the job.”
This isn’t pie in the sky stuff, it’s happening right now – Tech Crunch’s Duncan Riley blogged about a recent meeting in Second Life, for example.
The BBC article also talks about a company called Seriosity which is working with businesses to harness game mechanics for the office – for example it came up with a virtual currency for use with emails. Given a limited amount of these Serios, users had to ‘budget’ the amount of emails they sent and which ones they ranked as important – a tool for minimising information overload and helping prioritise work.
And it’s not just productivity in the workplace that can benefit either – CNET reported on a new ‘world of Chorecraft’ game which I think is an ingenious way of harnessing people’s innate love of ‘levelling up’ in MMOs to get them to excel at housework. Chore Wars gives users experience points for various household chores, which can be used to advance your profile in the online game. This could be a great tool for parents or competitive gamer geek sharehouses. ;)
So is your workplace or household using any social networking, virtual world or gaming tools to be more productive? Do you think there are productivity gains to be made, or is it a geeky daydream? Let us know in comments.
When Work Becomes a Game [BBC News]
‘Chore Wars,’ where ‘World of Warcraft’ meets toilet cleaner [CNET]
While we’re on the subject of Mac security, Macworld has published an article which walks readers through some security measures for the mac, giving each a rating for security and hassle. Tips include using the admin account only for admin purposes, creating different accounts so users aren’t sharing accounts, encrypting sensitive files and turning on password prompts. This might sound like basic security information to you, but this would be a good article to pass onto non-geeky friends or family who use Macs.
I will keep my Mac safe from other users [via Schneier on Security]
Google has unveiled a new Google Tip of the Day gadget which you can add to your iGoogle homepage or embed in your web page or blog. And they’ll be adding the ability to submit your own tips too. Nice.
The Zen Habits blog wrote up a great list of decluttering tips today. I particularly liked the “don’t allow stuff in the house in the first place” rule and “one in, two out” – ie if you bring home one new ‘thing’ make sure you get rid of two.
As someone who’s about to move house, I’m in the process of doing a big cull of stuff I don’t need. Here’s a couple of my tips for decluttering.
1. Put a big cardboard box near your front door, and when you find good/useful stuff in the house that you don’t need but don’t want to throw out, put it in the box. When your friends come over, invite them to check out what’s in the box and take whatever they’d use. Explain that they’re doing you a favour by helping you get rid of stuff, then they won’t feel shy about helping themselves. If after a while the box of stuff is still sitting there, donate it to a charity shop.
2. If you have a personal blog, post a list of the items you want to get rid of, and invite your friends to come by and take them away. You could also email this kind of list to your friends. This works really well when culling a book collection!
3. One big decluttering challenge is when you live with a packrat. You know, the “I might need this someday” or “it’s too good to get rid of” types. (I have these tendencies myself, so I know!). My advice for helping a packrat declutter is make sure they feel in control of the process. If you lay down an ultimatum, you can make them feel like you don’t respect or value their possessions, and make them defensive about getting rid of stuff. That doesn’t help. Try suggesting positive ideas, and leading by example – ie, saying “I’m going to go through my clothes and get rid of the things that are old or don’t fit anymore. If you’re interested I’ll help you do your wardrobe too.” Or suggest charities or friends you know would appreciate and use their old items - so they feel that the items they’re getting rid of are going to be useful to someone.
Do you have any tips on how to declutter? Leave them in comments please!
15 Great Decluttering Tips [Zen Habits]
Programmer and blogger Jane Kasprzak rounds up five simple Greasemonkey scripts that combine to make for a much better YouTube (one might even call it a Better YouTube, *wink*). From resizing videos and stopping YouTube from autoplaying videos (a la TubeStop) to adding better titles to YouTube pages so you know what video is in an unfocused tab, YouTube is ripe for a little tweaking—and that’s just what these scripts do. If you’ve got your own favourite YouTube tweaks or Greasemonkey scripts, let’s hear them in the comments.
Five More Useful Greasemonkey Scripts for YouTube [Jane Kasprzak]
