Friday, August 24, 2007
RSS for beginners Part 2 – Web-based readers
12:27PM Sarah Stokely | Yesterday I talked you through what RSS is and why you might want to use an RSS reader.
Now I’ll talk you through how to set up and start using a web-based RSS reader. There are a few around, but for this walkthough, I’ll use Bloglines. More » 
When Apple Shortcuts go bad…
12:10PM Sarah Stokely | From the “I’m glad I didn’t discover that the hard way” department…
One of our tipsters alerted us to the fact that there was an Apple shortcut which, used in the Finder, opens a network share. But, used in the Mail application, the same shortcut deletes mail.
I thought I’d check it out. And indeed Apple-K used in the Finder opens the “Connect to Server” window. I opened up Mail, tried the same Apple-K command again… and got a warning message “Are you sure you want to permanently erase the deleted messages in ‘POP Account’? This cannot be undone…”
So yes, in Mail the Apple-K command permanently compacts/empties deleted messages. Our tipster complained that the double-up of commands is particularly worrying since the Finder Apple-K also pops up a dialog that you often click straight through. At least it’s only deleted mail you’d lose if you ignored the alert.
So have you come across any “shortscuts that weren’t” recently? Post ‘em in comments please!
Oh, and thanks Anth and Toby for the tip! More » Deduct Credit Card Charges As You Go
11:58AM Gina Trapani | Personal finance writer J.D. Roth keeps on top of his credit card spending by deducting his card balance from his cheque account register as soon as he makes a purchase. One reason I got into [debt] trouble before was the lack of immediate feedback about how much had been charged to my credit cards. The spending was invisible and painless. Now when I plug numbers into Quicken at the end of the day, I make two entries for each credit card transaction: one to the credit card account, and one to a “dummy entry” in the cheque account. Whether you use Quicken, a spreadsheet or a dead tree account register, this sounds like a good way to make yourself feel the impact of a credit card purchase as you make each one, instead of getting slapped silly with an aggregate “oh crap” payment at the end of the month. A Quick Trick for Tracking Credit Card Expenses in Quicken [Get Rich Slowly] More »Build a fully encrypted NAS on OpenBSD
11:44AM Sarah Stokely | Mark Hoekstra of Geek Technique offers this article on how to build a fully encrypted NAS on OpenBSD.
This is one for the more hardcore hackers in the audience. He assumes a fair understanding of the Unix command line interface and familiarity with OpenBSD including its installation.
And why build your own encrypted NAS?
Well, I believe that my data is my data and not somebody elses. I’m not paranoia nor a pirate but having all my personal data in my network encrypted gives me a peace of mind. I mean, in a time where there are some private(!) organizations who think they can tell you/me/everybody what they should and shouldn’t do, it’s time to take some precautions, that’s all. Like I said, it’s about a peace of mind and of course, because we can. ^_^
How to build a fully encrypted NAS on OpenBSD [via Hackaday] More » Stop YouTube Ads with TubeStop
10:59AM Adam Pash | Windows/Mac/Linux (Firefox): Firefox extension TubeStop disables autoplay on YouTube videos and blocks obtrusive overlay advertisements. Deactivating autoplay will come in handy for anyone who’s followed a YouTube link and accidentally blared a video through the workplace, while the incidental overlay ad “blocking” very quickly dispenses with a new feature that a lot of avid YouTube fans aren’t happy with. TubeStop works by replacing the on-site YouTube player with the embedded player you’d see on another site (which currently doesn’t host ads and doesn’t autoplay). TubeStop is free to download, works wherever Firefox does. TubeStop [Chris Finke] More »
Build a home office from a shed
10:33AM Sarah Stokely | PDA Guy Anthony Caruana converted his shed into a home office. On his blog he shares some photos of the renovation process as well as offering some tips he picked up along the way.
All my power outlets are set at above desk level making it easy to power up and disconnect my gear. In retrospect, I wish I’d had a few wired in at floor level although the electrician left plenty of slack in the internal cabling so adding extra points should be pretty easy.
Here’s the shed as it was:
and as it is now:
Congratulations, Anthony!
My new office is finished [The PDA Guy] More » 
Cashboard – project management & invoicing
10:13AM Sarah Stokely | Cashboard is a free, web-based estimate, invoice and time tracking software program. Features include the ability to:
*create estimates and track your performance
*log time for yourself, your employees and subcontractors
*show your clients what’s going on with their projects
*create invoices and send payment reminders
If you upgrade to a paid subscription, you can get a swag of features including the ability to customise colours and logos, send PDFs and accept online payments through PayPal.
I haven’t had a chance to play with it yet, but considering how lax I am with paperwork, I think I’ll give it a shot. I’ll report back once I’ve had a play with it.
The Freelance Switch blog had a review of Cashboard here.
I also noticed Cashboard offers a free downloadable time tracker widget from their website, cute!
More » 
Quickly Remove Backgrounds with Photoshop
10:00AM Adam Pash | Remove the background from any photo quickly and easily in Photoshop with weblog ThemBid’s quick and dirty tutorial. Using Photoshop’s Extract filter, trace the area you want to extract with the highlight tool and then color in the traced section using the fill tool. Excluding a few of the finer points, that’s about all there is to it, and it works surprisingly well. Previously I’ve used the pen tool for this sort of extraction, but clearly the Extract filter offers the quicker and easier route. This is a great technique to have in your Photoshopping toolbox. Removing Backgrounds Quickly in Photoshop [ThemBid] More »PM’s office in Wikipedia oopsy
8:55AM Sarah Stokely | Seems someone in the PM’s office didn’t read our article on WikiScanner – John Howard’s staffers have made the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald today after Wiki Scanner revealed they’d been editing Wikipedia pages which might have been damaging to the government.
The article claims to have traced 126 edits – on subjects ranging from the children overboard affair to Treasurer Peter Costello – back to the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.
Good to see our government embracing technology, isn’t it?
PM’s staff edited Wikipedia [SMH]
More » 
