With the launch of Apple’s iPhone and the newer iPods, CoverFlow adds a whole new visual element to your music experience on the go. While iTunes alone can help you get the album cover art you’re missing into your library, it’s not as obvious how to get that eye candy on your iPod device. Here’s how to fill in the missing album art in your iTunes library and add it to your CoverFlow-enabled iPod in just a few steps.
Everyone give our newest guest editor Kevin Purdy a big “Hey!” this morning. Kevin’s rockin’ the productivity bloggin’ from the Eastern time zone in Buffalo, New York, where he’s a features writer for the Niagara Gazette. Kevin’s a closet Ubuntu geek (who we hope will come out here at Lifehacker in the next few weeks), and he comments under the screenname therevan. Welcome aboard, Kevin! More »
Microsoft removed the Windows Genuine Advantage validation requirement from Internet Explorer 7 late last week and re-released it as a “High Priority” update. It might just be a move to increase IE7′s share of the browser market, but those trying to run the browser on virtual machines, or side-by-side with IE 6, might avoid a few headaches. Those unhappy with the unexpected upgrade can still remove IE7 in the Control Panel through “Add/Remove Programs.”
IEBlog [via Slashdot]US-centric: Sure, you’ve signed up to get alerts from the transit companies themselves, but wouldn’t you rather hear how the trains are running from someone already on board? The Clever Commute allows riders and those wondering which line to take to trade information and tips among themselves, or at least make the most of their time in gridlock. The service appears to be limited to New Jersey and NYC-area services at the moment.
The Clever Commute [New York Times, image via Flickr]Smart Company’s Sell Like a Woman blog has a checklist for sales people to use when making sales calls. The pre-call tips can help you organise your thoughts and plan before lifting the phone, while the post-call checklist can help plan your next step with that customer, and also help you improve your game overall.
While it’s sales focused, the checklist could be tweaked for people in other professions who make a lot of information-gathering phone calls (like me!)
Your pre-call & post-call checklist [Smart Company]
Cyclists and geography geeks will want their very own Frida V – the Free Ride Data Acquisition Vehicle. This project’s website describes the project like so:
“Frida V. is a rugged and comfortable bicycle equipped for efficient exploration and mapping of public urban spaces. It carries a small computer, GPS positioning device, 802.11 wireless network transciever and a basic audiovisual recording unit. The consolidated software and hardware assembly enables automated mapping of stumbled wireless networks, easy creation of location-tagged media and opportunistic synchronization with a server resource on the internet. In other words, let the warriding and rideblogging begin!”
As the Make blog notes, all of the open source software and hardware design for the bike can be downloaded from the Frida V. Wiki. Nice.
One for the bloggers out there – the Digital Inspiration blog offers a simple but helpful tip for tracking whether posts from your blog have been submitted to Digg. It basically explains how to search for your URL on Digg and then subscribe to the RSS feed of that search.
This tip came via Problogger, and if you check out the comment thread you’ll see readers there have submitted a few of their own favourite ways of tracking posts on Digg.
Know When People Submit Your Stories to Digg; Get Dugg More [Digital Inspiration]
Lifehackers pride themselves on using their computer as their ‘outboard brain’ so this article from Wired will probably be of interest. Clive Thompson looks at some research which found that we’re remembering fewer basic facts these days – and he argues it’s because we store so much information on computers.
“My point is that the cyborg future is here. Almost without noticing it, we’ve outsourced important peripheral brain functions to the silicon around us.”
Your outboard brain knows all [Wired]
Gina already told you that Lifehacker US is participating in this year’s Blog Action Day, and with a week to go until the big day, I wanted to let you know that Lifehacker AU is also signed up.
Blog Action Day (October 15) is an annual blogger initiative to raise awareness and donation for a particular issue. This year’s issue is the environment, so all participating blogs will devote their posts to environmental issues on that day.
We’ve already got a couple of green posts planned for the day, including an interview with Kate Conroy, Australia’s top environmental podcaster. But we’re on the lookout for more green-themed ideas, so if you’ve got any environmentally friendly hacks, please email them to tips@lifehacker.com.au.
Recently we told you our Top 10 Wi-Fi Boosts, Tweaks and Apps. Reader Krusher_00 commented with a handy localisation tip for using NetStumbler for detecting networks:
“Make sure you’ve got the correct channel selected. In Australia the standard is to use either channel 1, 6 or 11 as these are the only 3 channels that don’t interfere with each other.
If you see your neighbours have points on 1, 3 and 5 for example then your wireless is going to be affected if you decide to use channel six.
You can however have points on the same channel, this just decreases the maximum throughput that can be achieved (more noticeable if they’re using their wireless all the time).”
Thanks for the tip, Krusher. :)
