Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Yahoo Upgrades Its Web Search
11:38PM Gina Trapani | Yahoo rolls out some big upgrades to its web search tool today like the new Search Assistant, a pretty list of dynamic suggestions based on your search terms. (Check out the assistant in action on a search for “lifehacker” above.) You can also watch web video right inside Yahoo’s search results (search site:youtube skateboarding to try it out) and any search with the word photos in it will return Flickr pics. (Here, have some sunset photos.) From “To Do” to “Done” in One Search [Yahoo! Search Blog] More »
Boot Camp
11:22PM Gina Trapani | Apple announces the Boot Camp beta will expire this month when Leopard’s released. To keep using Boot Camp, you’ve got to pony up for the OS 10.5 upgrade when it becomes available. More »Health
11:15PM Lifehacker US Edition | The key to staying productive is to efficiently manage your energy, not your time, says author Tony Schwartz. By removing distractions and focusing on our physical well-being, we’d get a lot more work done and we’d feel better about it too. More »Best Online To-do List Manager?
11:00PM Gina Trapani | Anyone paying attention out there in the productoblogosphere knows that every week, there’s a new web application that helps you keep your to-do list. But which ones are you actually using to, you know, actually do things? After the jump, cast your vote for your favourite web-based to-do manager. More »
Disable and Remap Any Key with SharpKeys
10:30PM Gina Trapani | Windows only: Sick of accidentally hitting the Caps Lock key when you never intentionally use it? You can disable the Caps Lock key entirely with a free Windows utility called SharpKeys. The How-To Geek explains that instead of having to edit the Windows registry yourself to disable and remap keys, SharpKeys does it for you with a convenient interface. You can even add key combinations that map to functions and applications, like Print or your default email client. SharpKeys is a free download for Windows XP and Vista. Map Any Key to Any Key on Windows XP / Vista [the How-To Geek] More »
Search Gmail with a Custom Bookmarklet
10:14PM Gina Trapani | If you search Gmail often by set criteria, you can create a bookmarklet to load up those search results with the click of a toolbar using a generator at the Eclectic Mayhem web site. Of course, there’s always the Saved Searches user script (also built into Better Gmail), but loading your list of saved searches every time can bog Gmail down. Using this form, customise your search and generate a bookmarklet to hop to your results in a click. Remember, you can also use Firefox quick searches to access Gmail as well. Gmail Search Bookmarks [Eclectic Mayhem via Micro Persuasion] More »Buy direct from the musicians online
4:24PM Sarah Stokely | Radiohead have fired the latest salvo in the “music industry versus the internet” battle. The band, now free of a recording contract, will sell their album directly to fans, who get to pay what they think the album is worth.
Tech Crunch has the writeup here, but there’s a little bit of music industry they’ve missed, so I’ll fill in some blanks.
The RIAA’s war on the internet, file sharing and piracy has been going on a while now. Musos have had a few options of how to deal with the P2P monster which was stealing their livelihoods (or at least the few cents per album sale which their recording contracts gave them).
You could go down the path that Metallica and Dr Dre went in the war on Napster and take the war directly to the people trading your music. Our historical time machine Wikipedia reminds us that “both Metallica and Dr. Dre later delivered thousands of usernames to Napster who they believed were pirating their songs”. Nice way to show your fans the love!
Prince was a more recent conscript in the music industry’s war on the net, announcing earlier this month he would sue YouTube to ‘regain control of his music videos’.
But perhaps our biggest musical luddite is Elton John who called for the internet to be banned full stop.
Or you could go the Radiohead path, bypass the music industry completely and sell your music direct to fans online. They’re certainly not the first to ask fans to pay what they think the music’s worth – Jane Silberry (who famously duetted with kd lang on ‘Calling all Angels’) has done that for years through Sheeba. But they are perhaps the most high profile act to try it so far. Good luck to them!
Radiohead Tells Fans To Name Their Own Price For Latest Album Downloads; Gives Them A Reason To Pay [TechCrunch] More » 
FriendFeed allows sharing across networking sites
4:06PM Sarah Stokely | The Google Operating System has blogged about a startup called FriendFeed, which aims to let you grab the data you like sharing with friends (such as photos) from all the places you keep it online, so you can easily share it via one feed.
“FriendFeed ….lets you enter your usernames from different sites and combines all the data in a single feed that can be easily shared with someone. You can also invite your friends and subscribe to their data. The service makes a lot of sense if you use it from a social network like Facebook, so FriendFeed has a Facebook application.”
FriendFeed is in invitation-only beta mode at the moment, you can request an invitation here.
Keep Track of Your Friends’ Shared Items [Google Operating System Blog] More » Keep the Food, Change your Plate
3:53PM Sarah Stokely | Wired has posted an article about the ‘new science of eating’ which is more about psychology than diet itself. It offers up some interesting tidbits of advice aimed at getting out of overeating – including using a smaller plate for meals, placing self-serve food away from the eating area to make it less likely that you’ll keep refilling on autopilot, and a few others.
One bizarre recommendation was to give up emailing while you eat, and switch to the phone. Apparently you’re likely to eat less, and enjoy your food more, if you are on the mobile phone. Please *don’t* call me with your mouth full of food and expect a conversation, ok?
Keep Your Food, Change Your Plate: The New Science of Eating More » 
Aussie auction site Oztion adds 100 point security
12:35PM Sarah Stokely | Australian auction site Oztion has added a couple of security features to its site, including the ability to do a 100 point identity verification through Australia Post. I’m assuming this $20 service will be of most interest to people selling on the site.
They’ve also added a free phone verification service for sellers, which is an automated phonecall which prompts you for a single use password which you enter at the site to complete the verification process.
Oztion claims to be the second largest Australian auction site, with more than 1.2 million Australian visitors in August 2007, and 195,000 registered members in total. I have to admit I hadn’t seen the site before, so I’d be interested to get feedback from readers who have used it. More » 