Via the Cool Tools weblog I came across library nerd nirvana in the form of WorldCat. This Beta aims to let you search the catalogues of 57,000 libraries to find the closest library that holds the book you seek.
I had a quick zip around it, and I’m guessing that a few more libraries in Oz need to get on the bandwagon before it’s much use to us. I looked up David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” and it returned two Australian results – both Queensland libraries which doesn’t help me much here in Melbourne.
I also entered several more obscure Australian authors (Larissa Hjorth and Cameron Rogers, both of whom I know have titles in Australian libraries including the National Library in Canberra) and the search found their books in overseas libraries but no Australian libraries.
In the meantime, I guess one helpful thing we can do is tell our local libraries they should be participating with World Cat by sending them here.
WorldCat – search 57,000 libraries [Cool Tools]
Gmail’s threaded conversations have revolutionised the way many of us interact with our email, but one minor catch to the threaded interface is that if you want to delete one message in the thread, you have to delete them all. However, with a little extra legwork, it is possible to selectively remove messages from a conversation. Here’s how:
Delete the entire conversation by selecting the email and clicking the Delete button. Now search for the deleted message (don’t go to your trash—search). A search as simple as in:trash will probably do. Then find and open that message. Expand the message so you can see every email in the thread. Now just click the Recover from Trash link for every email in the thread you want to keep until all that’s left is the email(s) you wanted to permanently delete.One final optional step you might want to take—to immediately remove the deleted email—is delete the remaining conversation from the trash forever. (Gmail will delete it eventually, but if you really want to get rid of it, you probably want to do it now.) It’s not the simplest way to delete an email, but it’s really the only way to do so selectively in Gmail. Thanks Jay! UPDATE: As Dustin pointed out here, you actually can selectively delete messages from the drop-down arrow on the right of messages.
Google now offers a whopping 25GB of email storage—but only for Google Apps Premier Edition, which costs $US50/year. Regular Gmail users still get their paltry sub-3GB storage. Step it up, Gmail!
Windows only: Freeware application PatchOnClick updates large files by creating patches from the new file and applying those patches to old files with a dead simple interface. At first blush, this may seem like a tool that a normal user has very little use for, but FreewareGenius explains its usefulness perfectly: Let’s say that you have a 50 meg MS Word document that consists of 300 pages. Let’s say, furthermore, that you sent this document to someone by email, but that after you did this you changed a few sentences and added a single page. Instead of re-sending your friend the entire document, wouldn’t it be great if you could send him/her a small 1-2 meg patch file that would simply append the older file and bring it up to speed? This is what PatchOnClick is designed to do.
In fact, PatchOnClick works for any filetype (well, sort of). To create a patch, you’ll need both the old and new version of the document. Then just click the Create a Patch file button and give PatchOnClick both versions. It will examine them and create the relatively small patch file. To apply a patch, you’ll also need to have installed PatchOnClick. Run the program, hit the Patch a File button, then provide the program with your old version and the patch file.
According to FreewareGenius, PatchOnFile works especially well with Word documents and ZIP files, creating patches significantly smaller in size than the original file (meaning that sending a patch will probably be much more efficient than resending the entire file), but when dealing with MP4 videos or Excel files, the patch was actually larger or nearly as large as the original (so it wouldn’t be worth patching those files). When used with the right filetypes, PatchOnClick could be very useful if you regularly distribute large files over email or the internet. If you give it a try with different filetypes, let us know how it worked for you in the comments. PatchOnClick is freeware, Windows only.
PatchOnClick [via FreewareGenius]Wanna know how long your white little MP3 player’s life expectancy is based on model and usage? The iPod Death Clock will take an educated guess for you.
Flickr user danalee advertises her open WiFi network with a simple sign that reads “Steal this connection.” Right on.
steal this connection [danalee's Flickr photostream]According to a new report, the number of web surfers using Macs increased to 6.6% in September, a 40% increase over August. Here at Lifehacker, 14% of readers use Macs.
A computer programmer who’s out to re-program himself has written a set of “personal unit tests” he “runs” every morning to check himself. Coders out there know that unit tests are small programs that run on a daily basis to make sure your software is doing everything it should. These personal unit tests include:
Exercise (health) – Pass iff I got at least 20 minutes of any kind of exercise yesterday.
Empty inbox (mind) – Pass iff, at some point over the course of yesterday, my email inbox was empty.
Those “iff”‘s aren’t typo’s, either—they’re programmer shorthand for “if and only if.” What would your personal unit tests look like? Tell us in the comments.
Personal unit tests [via Internet Duct Tape]Today, October 3rd, is Change a Light Day, and Consumer Reports recommends that you swap out one incandescent light bulb for an energy-saving compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulb. Thanks, Marc!
Since previously mentioned iTunes Album Art Grabber stopped working, programmer Josh Powell has been scrambling to develop a suitable alternative that aggregates the best album covers from three retail sources: Amazon, Walmart, and Buy.com. You won’t get the 1425×1425 pixel quality that iTunes afforded us (and hopefully Apple will offer again), but regardless, if your cover art is looking rather bland, these three sources should keep you occupied.
AlbumArtwork.org
