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) Linux only: The GRUB boot-selector tool has made dual-booting Linux and other systems easy, but changing how your boot menu looks requires digging through text files and praying you don’t make a single typo. QGRUBEditor, a free visual GRUB editor, takes the guesswork and some of the hassle out of tweaking your boot settings. You can change menu orders, colors, splash images, and defaults, and preview the effects your changes have without having to reboot. The program has a few non-dire quirks, but it’s still easier than guessing and paging through the menu file by hand. QGRUBEditor is a free download for Linux systems only, and requires three QT (KDE) libraries to run.
QGRUBEditor [via Linux.com]There are countless arguments for using open source applications, but one of the strongest is the benefit of learning how to just one app and using it across Windows, Mac or Linux systems. Web site directory Open Source Living helps you find just the programs you’re looking for and points you to where you can get them for free. It’s not an extensive, all-in-one directory, but it seems to narrow its choices based on quality and widespread acceptance. And while not every application listed at Open Source Living is entirely cross-platform, a good deal of them are. For more free or open source applications, check out a Windows and Mac free software bonanza.
Open Source Living [via etc.]Windows only: Free application ASCGEN, or Ascii Generator dotNET, takes in standard pictures and puts out images generated entirely from simple computer text. While free web apps like ASCII-O-Matic do a decent job with small face portraits, ASCGEN can handle larger files and offers the same kind of brightness, contrast and level modifications as standard image editors—it just changes letters instead of pixels. Once you’re done tweaking, you can output to picture, text or HTML files. ASCGEN is a free download for Windows systems only.
Ascii Generator dotNET [via Digital Inspiration]Google Reader has been opening up more sharing features recently, giving users the ability to publicly share feeds and see Google Talk friends’ feeds. Blogger Steve Rubel points out a not-so-obvious way to share only selected feeds with only a choice group of people. His solution:Add a unique tag to feeds you want to share (like “friendshare”) Select “Settings” from Reader’s upper-right menus, then the “Tags” tab Click the RSS icon on the tag you want to share. Share the “View public page” link only with those you want to see it
Now you’ve got a much more productive (and private) means of sharing select information with a project team or contacts. Neat!
How to Share Items in Google Reader and Still Keep Them Private [Micro Persuasion]Even if your refrigerator isn’t fit to burst with leftover turkey, pies and other holiday fare, winter seems to be a season in which food gets stacked up with no place to go. The Serious Eats food blog has a few suggestions for keeping your fridge a showcase for food you really want to eat, no matter what climate you live in. Your fridge’s crisper, for instance, should only be used for delicate, leafy vegetables. Hardier stuff like apples, squashes, root vegetables, citrus, peppers, beans, onions, and many crucifers (e.g., cauliflower and brussels sprouts) don’t require the TLC of the crisper or even the low temperature of the refrigerator for storage. And, once you purge your crisper of all of these and anything else that doesn’t belong, chances are you’ll have plenty of room for all of your delicate produce.
If you plan to make a de-clutterting tear through your icebox, check out these tips on understanding expiration dates. Photo by Chaparral [Kendra] .
How to Unclutter Your Winter Fridge [via Unclutterer]Two years ago on Lifehacker, Adam showed you how you can control Firefox entirely from the keyboard using shortcuts.
Web site FoodTube aggregates cooking videos from sites like YouTube and Google Video by recipe to give you visual step-by-step instructions for preparing a dish. Some of the videos are user-generated while others appear to be cooking shows uploaded to YouTube, but most of them are very detailed and extremely useful for on-demand instructions when you’re ready to make a new dish (like the sweet sticky rice with mango guide featured on FoodTube above).
FoodTube.netPrivacy and social networking may be mutually exclusive but there are measures you can take to protect your personal information. Lately Facebook’s been under the spotlight for the privacy implications of its Beacon tool which can link up advertisers and third parties to report things on Facebook, like your purchasing habits. (there was a TechCrunch story on it here). How to Split an Atom has written up the easy instructions for blocking Beacon, and they are:
Download and install the BlockSite plugin for Firefox After restarting Firefox select Add-ons from the Tools menu Click the Options button on the BlockSite extension Click the Add button Enter http://www.facebook.com/beacon/* into the input box Click ‘OK’, then click OK again and you’re done.Tips for the Privacy Minded [How to Split an Atom]
At a conference recently I was stunned when Ben Barren of Gnoos admitted to reading something like 800 RSS feeds a day. It brought home to me how important RSS triage is if you’re going to stay on top of your reading without letting it take over your day! I’m a lightweight, with about 60 feeds in my reader, split into 3 groups – work, fun and blogging tools. Admittedly I do tend to add one or two new feeds a day, but that’s about the extent of my RSS management plan.43 Folders today had a post about RSS management which suggests taking a different approach completely, and grouping feeds according to how you read them, rather than by subject. Basically feeds are grouped according to urgency – so the ‘Can’t Miss’ group is for feeds that need to be read daily, while stories in ‘Skip ‘em’ can be left for a quieter time. Another category suggested was for blogs you definitely want to keep track of, but that aren’t urgent, such as friend’s blogs.Since I’m still back in the dark ages with Bloglines and my simple division of RSS feeds into work and fun, I thought I’d throw this question to the readers to get some tips: How do you manage your RSS reading? Do you have a system for “RSS triage”? Please share in comments.
Sink or Swim: Managing RSS Feed with Better Groups [43 Folders]
Is Broadband in Australia going backwards rather than forwards? First we pointed out that iiNet had jumped on Telstra’s bandwagon by tacking upload charges onto its Naked DSL offering, and now it looks like Optus is toying with excess charges for its Fusion home phone and broadband bundles. Yuck.
