Wednesday, October 10, 2007
eBay Launches “Neighborhoods” Networking Feature
11:30PM Kevin Purdy | Share photos, reviews and auction tips with like-minded users in eBay Neighborhoods, a new user group service unveiled today on eBay. The main benefit for users actually looking to buy something at this point seems to be in the graphical search results returned (pictured above), although the links to relevant guides and reviews could be handy as well. eBay Neighborhoods [via CNET News] More »
Battle of the Multi-Protocol IM Clients, Trillian vs. Adium
11:00PM Gina Trapani | If you want to chat on several networks—like AIM, Yahoo Messenger and MSN—using one instant messenger client, on the Mac side you’ve got Adium and on Windows side you’ve got Trillian (and the open source Pidgin.) However, Macworld reports that the makers of Trillian are putting together an OS X version of Trillian’s upcoming version 4 release. Cross-platform users, which multi-protocol IM client do you think is better? More »
Manage Processes with htop
10:30PM Tamar Weinberg | Linux only: View processes running from in Linux interactively—complete with full command lines and arguments—with free application htop. Beyond providing detailed information about processes, htop displays a progress meter that fluctuates based on CPU usage, memory usage, and swap space. Easily terminate one or more processes without remembering the PID. View processes by user or sort by memory usage, processor usage, and more. htop is a command-line application that loads a lot faster than the traditional top application as well as other benefits over top; htop’s a free download for Linux. htop More »
Share a Printer on Your Home Network
8:00PM Gina Trapani | You’re working on document on the laptop in the living room and you want to print—except the printer’s in the home office. Sharing a printer connected to a PC on your home network and printing to it from any other computer, even over a wireless connection, is a breeze. Whether you want to print from a Mac or another PC, here’s how to share a single printer for use by any computer on your home network. More »Work/Life balance – how to make definitive changes
5:23PM Sarah Stokely | A lot of people are drawn to freelancing because it means they get to decide the terms of their work/life balance, but I think anyone who works for a living can relate to the pressure of needing to juggle work and home life. A post on Freelance Switch today helped remind me that I’m in the enviable position of being able to decide how and when I work. I felt inspired to be a bit more proactive about building my client base instead of just reacting to offers of work (I’m so lazy about pitching story ideas to people!):
“What do you want to change about your work life? For me, I want to get
better-paying clients and stop rushing so much. I’ve cut down on other
work to make way for new projects. And when I feel myself getting
rushed or overwhelmed, I stop and remind myself that I don’t have to
work that way. You can change anything you want about your work
life—the key is to identify what you want to change and take small
steps in order to change it.”
The post offers several tips for ‘reformatting’ your relationship to work – and pushy clients! It was nice to be reminded that it’s ok to make small changes gradually too.
Making Definitive Work Life Changes [Freelance Switch] More » Call for banning of energy inefficient plasma and LCD TVs
2:31PM Sarah Stokely | The news that a government-commissioned report has called for a ban on the sale of large plasma screen TVs because of their power consumption has got a lot of tech geeks atwitter today. Asher Moses wrote the story for the Sydney Morning Herald today.
The story says consultant firm Digital CEnergy recommended “onerous” mandatory energy requirements which would mean that most current plasma TV models would be banned from sale in Australia as early as October 2009.
The report, prepared for the Government’s Australian Greenhouse Office, also recommended a tougher second tier of restrictions which would ban almost all current LCD models from the market in 2011.
I’m in favour of reducing power consumption, but realistically can manufacturers turn around lower power usage models in a 12 month timeframe? Somehow I don’t see the government signing off on these recommendations anyway so it’s probably a moot point.
More » 
Geek diet and exercise programs
1:53PM Sarah Stokely | Gah, I hate it when someone writes the exact same article I wanted to write – but it’s happened.Coding Horror has written an article on geek diet and exercise programs. He takes the famous Hacker’s Diet as the starting point and looks at some fairly odd geek exercise techniques (see image to the left!) as well as more popular ones like Dance Dance Revolution and Wii Sports (and a World of Warcraft exercise bike!)On a more practical note, he also links to a weight loss guide called “How to lose weight with a spreadsheet and a website” which has some useful tips. Certainly I can attest to the notion that the first month of habit changing is the hardest, but on the flipside, it gets easier after that.
Geek diet and exercise programs [Coding Horror]
More » Five workplace practices that should be over. Now.
1:37PM Sarah Stokely | The Brazen Careerist has sounded off about unproductive workplace practices including voicemail, the ‘reply all’ email, and having lollies available in the office.
I’m kind of relieved to hear I’m not alone in using voicemail messages as a pager – rather than dialling in to get the message, these days I tend to delete it and call the person back directly.
I think the Australian equivalent of the office candy vending machine is the office charity chocolate box. She’s totally right – it encourages bad snacking which can make you tired at work (and eventually overweight).
Five workplace practices that should be over. Now. [Brazen Careerist] More » 
Browser search plug-ins for StaticICE
12:17PM Sarah Stokely | Savvy buyers of tech online will probably already be familiar with StaticICE – probably the price comparison search engine of choice for antipodean geeks shopping for tech products.
But did you know that there are also Firefox and IE7 search plug-ins for the StaticICE price
comparison engine at http://www.staticice.com.au/tools.html? I didn’t know – thanks David F. for the tip. :) More » Microsoft patch day
12:05PM Sarah Stokely | Microsoft has released its monthly security bulletin containing 6 patches to fix 9 flaws, 4 of which it rates as critical. Microsoft’s security bulletin is here, and CNET’s roundup of the patches is here. IE, Outlook, Word and Kodak Image Viewer are among the affected apps. More » 