Saturday, September 15, 2007
Queue Downloads at the Command Line with DQ
10:00AM Gina Trapani | Bash programmer Jason Hutchinson built a command line download manager called Download Queue (or DQ) based on Lifehacker’s own todo.sh script. In short, you set up a text file called queue.txt, and add the URLs to download one per line, and DQ does the rest, handling filters, automatically continuing broken downloads and more. More »
Terminal
9:30AM Gina Trapani | Mac OS X Hints details how to set each one of your Terminal windows to a different, random >> colour When you’re sick of multiple windows, give the free, tabbed iTerm a try. More »Receive Text Messages Without Revealing My Phone Number?
9:00AM Gina Trapani | Dear Lifehacker, A lot of my students stay in touch by text message, but I don’t want to give out my cell number. Is there a way that they can SMS me at my email or IM addresses? Or can I set up some sort of proxy SMS, so that it gets to me? Concerned about privacy, Teacher/Student More »
Schedule Gcal Events with Launchy and the Google Calendar Plug-in
8:00AM Adam Pash | Windows only: Add events to your Google Calendar on-the-fly with the Google Calendar Launchy plug-in. To install, download the gcal.dll file from SourceForge and copy it into your plugins directory (C:\Program Files\Launchy\Plugins). Then restart and invoke Launchy, right-click the command window, and click Plugins. Tick the gCal checkbox, then click Plugin Options to give the plugin your Gmail address and password. To add events to Gcal once you’ve set it up, invoke Launchy, type gcal, then press Tab, then enter in your event details using Gcal’s plain language syntax. Hit Enter and you’re set. You can even specify the calendar you want to add the event to like so: rake leaves saturday > chores where chores is the name of the calendar you want to assign the event to. I set up a hacked together version of the Gcal quick add when we took Launchy beyond app launching, but this plugin—by the creator of the Todoist plugin, is a step up. Thanks Jason! Google Calendar Plugin [SourceForge] More »Make a Secret Hidden Safe with a Wall Outlet
7:00AM Adam Pash | DIY web site Instructables details how to make a secret—albeit very small—hiding place for your valuables by installing a fake wall outlet. The execution could use some tweaking (surely the faceplate should be a bit more secure, like this fake outlet designed for the task), but in all it’s a fun idea for hiding your mini valuables. If you’re a fan of the secret hollow book, this might be worth a try. Your Own Secret Hidden Safe! For Under $2 [Instructables] More »
Custom Google Search Your Del.icio.us Bookmarks with deliGoo
6:00AM Adam Pash | Search the contents of every web page you’ve ever bookmarked with del.icio.us using a dynamically built Google Custom Search engine from deliGoo. Just point your browser to the deliGoo homepage, enter the username and optional tag you want to search, and then enter your search terms and click Goo. deliGoo will analyse your del.icio.us account and create a Google Custom Search Engine, then use it to search the contents of every site for a match. If you’re a prolific bookmarker and you’ve run into a situation where you know you’ve bookmarked a page, remember what it was about, but can’t find it using your tags, a deliGoo search might be just what the doctor ordered. deliGoo More »
Corral Your Cables with Pipe Insulation
5:00AM Adam Pash | The Unclutterer weblog highlights a simple method for cleaning up your cable mess on the super-cheap with foam pipe insulation. Just cut the insulation to size, slice down the length, and insert your cables. It’s not that we haven’t covered tons of cord hiding and management solutions already, but this is a nice alternative to add to your list of options. The post comes courtesy of this Slovenian blog if you can read it. Reader inspired charging station [Unclutterer] More »
Summarise Long RSS Items with RSS Brief
4:00AM Adam Pash | Web site RSS Brief reads the items of any feed and attempts to condense the content to its main points—which in practice means RSS Brief tries to extract the one or two sentences that encapsulate the post. If it looks like a post you want to read, clicking through from your reader will redirect you to the full post. We do our best to make the content at Lifehacker as brief and dense as possible so you can digest posts and quickly determine whether you’re interested, so our RSS Brief feed doesn’t come off as all that useful. But if you subscribe to feeds that need a little help getting to the point, RSS Brief has some potential (though the alpha release is a little buggy). RSS Brief [via Mashable] More »iPhone
3:59AM Adam Pash | iPhone early adopters stung by the $200 price drop can now claim their $100 Apple store credit online. All you need is your phone number and serial number. More »
