US-centric: The New York Times food critic Eric Asimov rounds up 10 great wines you can purchase for $10 measly dollars or less. If you want to be that classy host with the good taste in wine but you don’t have all that much cash to do it, this list looks like a good starting point. What you get won’t necessarily blow you away, but they also won’t blow your budget. To make it easier on you, here’s the list in its entirety:
Casa Cadaval Portugal Ribatejano , $8.99, *** Domaine de l’Ameillaud France , $9, ** ½ Viña Gormaz Spain Ribera del Duero , $9, ** Georges Duboeuf France , $9, ** Altas Cumbres Argentina Mendoza , $9, ** Wyatt California Cabernet Sauvignon 2005 , $10, ** J. Vidal-Fleury France , $10, ** Domaine Monte de Luz , $7, ** Ravenswood California Vintner’s Blend , $10, ** Paringa , $9, * ½
Happiness for $10 or Less [NYT]Use your cameraphone to create a visual to-do list by following blogger Steve Rubel’s smart guide. The idea is simple: You’ve got your cameraphone with you all the time, which makes it the perfect universal capture device. For example, Rubel snaps shots of empty bottles to remind himself to pick up new products at the store and flowers to remember to buy flowers for his mother. He then sends his to-dos to Flickr from his phone, marks them as private, and tags them “todo.” Sounds like a slightly different take on Gina’s guide to developing your (digital) photographic memory.
Use Your Cameraphone as a Visual To Do List [Micro Persuasion]TV-over-the-internet app Joost will be re-airing MLB playoff games within 24 hours of their first airing, so if you miss or forget to TiVo a game, Joost’s got you covered. Not familiar with Joost? Get to know it here.
Schedule free wake-up calls and reminders online with web site Wakerupper. Just enter the time and date you want your call, your timezone, phone number, email address, and an optional bit of reminder text that will be played text-to-speech style when you get the call. The site requires no registration, though registration is possible if you want to use the service for more than the occasional one-off wake-up call. Most of us have learned to use our cell phones as anywhere alarms, but if you’re paranoid about waking up when you’re travelling or before an important meeting, Wakerupper is a useful tool for creating anywhere, anytime wake-up calls (a little redundancy is always calming).
Wakerupper [via Bnet]Get a better understanding of version control at weblog BetterExplained. Got it? Now set up your own Subversion server and learn to use it with TortoiseSVN.
At some point in your career as a student or professional, you’re going to have to give a presentation—and when you do, you want to be prepared with the right content and applications. Whether your demo’ing software or explicating Melville, a computer hooked up to a projector can either give an audience a great audio/visual experience, or a bullet-studded snoozer. Whether you’re using a Mac or Windows, PowerPoint or Keynote, or simply presenting straight from your web browser, there are a few power tips, apps, and tools that can make your slideshow or demonstration smooth, entertaining and memorable. Photo by jurvetson.
Even though there’s an overabundance of information creeping into our lives, the Download Squad blog says that there are ways to filter out incoming correspondence that we simply don’t need. Review your incoming emails, snail mail, and phone calls. Are they absolutely necessary? If not, you can apply several different tactics to get rid of these messages once and for all.
Too Much Information: Take Back Your Attention Span [Download Squad]You already know that you can auto-complete web site addresses in Firefox’s location bar using keyboard shortcuts like Ctrl+Enter and Ctrl+Shift+Enter. (Oh, you didn’t? Here’s how to never type http://, www, .com or .org again.) The How-To Geek explains how to tweak Firefox’s about:config settings to alter the behaviour of those keystrokes to your liking. So if you visit more .co.uk’s more than .com’s, Ctrl+Enter can fill in .co.uk instead. Just change the browser.fixup.alternate.suffix value to your desired suffix.
Change Ctrl+Enter Behavior in Firefox [the How-To Geek]None of this will be new to power Gmailers, but Wired offers a nice howto on getting the most out of Gmail.
A self-made millionaire mum describes how she uses a digital timer to keep herself focused on getting work done during certain times of the day. As a “work”-from-home mum of a two-year-old, I find it necessary to structure my writing and blogging time according to her schedule and push to GET IT DONE. I write when she’s sleeping in, napping, or enjoying one-on-one time with her daddy.
