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What Can You Save With Refurb Apple Gear? Invite guests, add events directly to your preferred calendar software, or share post-party photos and blogs at Windows Live Events, Microsoft’s foray into the online event planning field. In addition to standard online invitation features seen at Evite and other spots, Live Events allows the anticipated weather for an event to be displayed, along with pictures and maps chosen by the host. Live Events requires a Windows Live sign-up to use and can pull contacts from Hotmail accounts, but allows syncing through iCal, Google, and Yahoo calendars, along with Outlook.
Windows Live Events [via CNET News.com]Ever baked a fresh homemade loaf of bread? A “no-knead” bread recipe published in the NY Times last year is a super-simple method for even the biggest bread-baking newbs. The blogger at Apartment 2024 gave the recipe a try, and from the resulting mouth-watering photos the spur-of-the-moment project looks like it was a great success. All you need is flour, yeast, salt, cornmeal and about 24 hours. As the recipe’s name promises, there’s no kneading involved—time does all the work. For more scrumptious no-knead bread photos, check out the nokneadbread tag on Flickr.
Recipe: No-Knead Bread [NYT] The Famous No-Knead Bread [Apartment 2024]Don’t want your newborn to grow up to be one of 10 Matthew’s in his class? Soon-to-be father and developer Guy put together a maps mashup that displays the most popular baby names in eight countries. Guy says:
My wife and I are expecting our first child in April. I searched your site and found the NameVoyager. However, I was looking for decent view of name popularity outside the US. I ended up building the Baby Name Map, which is a Google Maps mashup. I’m adding data regularly to increase the international coverage, now at eight countries and growing.
You can also search by name, favourite names, and comment on names from the Baby Name Map, and see popularity charts for a given name over time. Guy also says:
Another site I’m finding useful is Nymbler with which I’m not affiliated. They do name recommendations based on other names you’ve rated highly. This is helping my wife and I narrow our search.
Great resources, whether you’re an expecting parent or a fiction writer. Thanks Guy!
Baby Name MapLinux only: Loading a terminal session doesn’t seem to take all that long—until you have to do it many, many times each day. Luckily, the program Yakuake offers up a lightning-quick terminal that rolls down, gets the job done and packs away, all with a tap of F12 (or any other hot key). Yakuake is KDE-based and a snap to install for Kubuntu users, but GNOME-based systems such as Ubuntu can add it with very little fuss (transparencies might require more work, however).
One of the best tools for fine-tuning Windows XP is the free TweakUI PowerToy utility from Microsoft. TweakUI digs deep into Windows’ settings and can customise its behaviour in dozens of ways, from how many icons appear on the Alt-Tab dialog to Explorer context menu choices to what your program shortcuts look like. TweakUI’s been around forever and we’ve mentioned it here and there throughout the years at Lifehacker, but it’s high time we gave it the full walkthrough it deserves. After the jump, take a gander at 15 useful adjustments you can make to your XP system with TweakUI. More »
Windows only: Freeware application UpdateStar detects what applications are running on your computer and informs you of available updates. In tests, UpdateStar performed much better than previously mentioned AppSnap as it provides shareware and commercial application information, whereas AppSnap does not. UpdateStar’s interface is also a lot snazzier, though that’s really just frosting. To be fair, UpdateStar isn’t entirely accurate: it informed me that Mozilla Thunderbird 5.2 was the latest version available (it’s currently at 2.0.0.6). However, for a product that’s still in beta, it does a fine job. UpdateStar is a free application for Windows only.
UpdateStar [via MakeUseOf.com]Web site WebMD gives advice on when you should stay home from work and when you’re probably healthy enough to make the trip to the office. Good reason to call in sick: You’re contagious “A lot of diseases are contagious before you realise you’re sick,” [physician Michael]Bagner tells WebMD. “Once you know you’re sick, you may not be contagious any more, and may as well go to work.”
But it pays to err on the side of staying home “if you work in close quarters with your coworkers—or you work with elderly or small children or people with cancer or chronic conditions—those are the most vulnerable people in our society,” says Bagner.
The article offers more several suggestions for determining whether or not it’s a good day to hit the grind, but if you’ve got your own litmus test for determining whether or not you’re work-ready, let’s hear it in them comments.
Too Sick to Work? [WebMD]Windows only: Keep your mouse cursor from obscuring your text as you type with lightweight, freeware application MouseAway. As you can see from the animated GIF, MouseAway does just one thing: monitors the proximity of your mouse pointer to your keyboard cursor and, if they’re too close together, moves the mouse pointer out of the way. As is, mouse cursor obstruction has never been that big of a deal, but for a paltry 40K of RAM after running for a bit, MouseAway is easily worth a slot in your startup apps. It doesn’t work everywhere (like Firefox, for example), but this freeware, Windows only utility cuts down on unnecessary keyboard-to-mouse movement.
MouseAway [via NoHeat]Apple has put together a directory of made-for-iPhone/iPod touch web applications featuring applications arranged by category. Strangely, the site isn’t optimised for mobile Safari. More »
Blogger Scott Young suggests 15 ways to take advantage of a spare 15 minutes, like: Two-minute checks – Look at your to-do list and the space around you. Ask yourself if there is anything that needs to be done that could be done in less than two minutes. Do as many of these as you can in 15 minutes to simplify your to-do list.
Granted, if you’re a subscriber to the cult of GTD you know that any to-do that takes less than two minutes shouldn’t be on your to-do list to begin with, but even so, this kind of to-do dash is a great way to cross items off your list and feel a nice sense of accomplishment in just a few minutes. Check out the post for more 15-minute suggestions.
15 Ways to Squeeze the Most From 15 Minutes [Scott H Young via Dumb Little Man]
