Friday, September 14, 2007
Create Custom Menu-Driven DVDs with Free Apps
11:40PM Gina Trapani | Howto video blogger Tinkernut covers burning customised video DVDs with graphical menus using only free software for Windows, including DVD Flick, DVD Styler, and UnderCoverXP to create the inserts and labels. Thanks, Daniel! More »
Birthday
11:30PM Gina Trapani | Ten years ago on September 15, 1997, Stanford grad students Larry Page and Sergey Brin registered the domain name google.com. More »Top 100 Productivity-Enhancing Foods
11:00PM Lifehacker US Edition | Just when you thought we covered everything there is to know about food, the Bootstrapper web site offers 100 more foods that can enhance productivity. Among those listed are papaya (paw paw), pear, dill, salmon, apricots, avocado, soybeans and apples. Some of these tasty treats can give your brain a boost, others can aid in digestion and sleep, while others are good for the heart. Unlike other lists covered, this one is filled with foods that would make for a good nosh. Some snack foods are healthy, after all. Top 100 Foods to Improve Your Productivity [Bootstrapper] More »Flashback
10:30PM Gina Trapani | Two years ago we got our VNC on with How to Control Your Home Computer from Anywhere. More »The Video Demonstration Roundup
11:00AM Gina Trapani | Make a Floating Laptop Dock How to Buy a Car Without Getting Screwed Get to Know Quicksilver from Its Maker Access Files from Your Mobile Phone with SoonR Manage Your Windows with Switcher 2 Build a Laser Spy Microphone On the Cheap Get Eight Watch Batteries From a 12-Volt Battery Turn a flashlight into a handheld burning laser Create an in-cell bar graph with Excel Merlin Mann presents “Inbox Zero”
Search Major Web Sites As You Type
10:00AM Gina Trapani | Webapp SurfWax LookAhead offers dynamic, search-as-you-type interfaces to web sites like Darpa, SEC.gov, IMDb, Wikipedia (featured yesterday) and select RSS feeds. Much like our beloved Google Suggest, SurfWax is super-fast but limits its results to particular sites and suggests terms that exist there (versus Google Suggest’s matching any words that might exist). Sadly Lifehacker’s feed isn’t included in the RSS search, but favourites of ours like the Huffington Post, O’Reilly Radar and Google News are. SurfWax LookAhead More »Keyboard shortcuts
9:30AM Gina Trapani | Learn and look up keyboard shortcuts for a wide variety of online and desktop applications from Firefox to Excel to Google Apps at the KeyXL keyboard shortcut database. More »
Get Weather Forecasts in Your RSS Reader from AccuWeather
9:00AM Adam Pash | Popular weather web site AccuWeather’s RSS Center builds RSS feeds of your local weather so you can get your latest weather forecasts delivered to your RSS reader. It’s nothing big, but if you live in your newsreader, this is one more bit of info you can get directly in your news digest. These one-off information-only RSS feeds—like sports scores or severe weather warnings—are great utilitarian additions to your newsreader. RSS Center [AccuWeather via AppScout] More »How to check that you’re enrolled to vote
9:00AM Sarah Stokely | The pundits are predicting that with the APEC circus behind us, the federal election may be called at any time. Due to recent changes to the electoral laws, the electoral rolls close within a couple of days of the election being called – so now’s the time to make sure that your enrolment is up to date.
Update:
The electoral rolls close when writs are issued, which is between 1-4 days after the election is called by the PM.
For new voters and people rejoining the roll after being removed, the deadline to enrol to vote/update their enrolment is 8pm on the day the rolls are closed. There is leeway of up to 3 working days for other people, but it’s worth checking the details here:AEC Fact Sheet – Close of Rolls
The Australian Electoral Commmission has a handy online tool to check your enrolment. It’s worth checking – I sent in a change of address form a month or so ago, but it seems to have gone missing in the post – and I wouldn’t have found out if I hadn’t checked online.
So if you’ve moved house since the last election, or you just aren’t sure if you are on the electoral roll, it’s worth taking a minute to check that you’re enrolled at your current address.
Australian Electoral Commission Enrolment Verification More » 
Make better use of Post-it notes
9:00AM Sarah Stokely | Post-it notes are a mixed blessing. They can seem oh-so-handy for adding notes to files, flagging salient points in a document, or scribbling down notes while you’re on the phone. But they can be a curse if they get lost or moved; and all too often they’re misused or overused.
If you want to keep the information and be able to track or file it, don’t place it in a post-it. It’s no good saying “I noted that on the file!” if you did so on a post-it which has since disappeared. Post-its also making copying paper files a pain – to be thorough you have to copy the document with and without the post-it, and that’s a waste of time.
I freely admit I’m a post-it junkie. I’m trying to curb my usage. In that spirit, here’s a link to some nice photos of artists making better use of post-its!
Productivity in many colors [Color + Design Blog] More » 