Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Tweak Photoshop for Faster Performance
11:30PM Kevin Purdy | Macworld has a nifty roundup of tips to make image editing program Photoshop more responsive without having to spend money on a memory upgrade. Among the tweaks: Keep memory usage to 60-65 percent, no matter how much system memory you have. Turn off the Export Clipboard, unless you regularly paste from PS into another program Close the Navigation, Styles and other unnecessary panels unless you use them every session What settings do you toy with to make Photoshop (or even the Gimp) run quicker? Let’s hear your tips in the comments. Improving Photoshop performance on the cheap [Macworld] More »
Flashback
11:00PM Tamar Weinberg | One year ago on Lifehacker, Adam hacked a marathon—and lived to tell us about it. More »What Do You Take With You During an Evacuation?
10:00PM Gina Trapani | After two days of living on the verge of evacuation in wildfire-ravaged San Diego, I’ve had lots of time to think about what stuff to grab and go in case the fire comes my way. Of course the computer, a hard drive or two, irreplaceable photo albums, jewelry like wedding/engagement rings and heirlooms, and important paperwork—like birth certificate, house deed, insurance papers, passport—are all on my list. What about you? If you had 30 minutes to evacuate your home, what would you take with you? Let us know in the comments. More »
Batch Process Images with Photo Drop
8:00PM Gina Trapani | Mac OS X only: Resize, rotate or convert multiple digital images at once with Photo Drop, a small utility that creates programmable image editing droplets. Launch Photo Drop and set the actions you want to perform, like rotating, padding, cropping, resizing, resampling or adding copyright or other meta info and save your droplet. Then, drag and drop any number of images onto the droplet, which processes them and saves them. Great for making high-res digital photos fit for email, watermarking your stuff or resizing a group of images for your blog, Photo Drop is a free download (donations encouraged) for Mac only. Thanks, Susie! Photo Drop [aram kudurshian's web site] More »News
1:15PM Gina Trapani | Download Squad reports that some Gmail users are seeing IMAP support. No IMAP love for my vanilla Gmail account or for my Google Apps for Your Domain account—how about you? More »Wired’s “Test” issue free on PDF
12:34PM Sarah Stokely | The Cool Tools blog has a nice offer for it’s readers today – a free downloadable PDF of the new issue of Wired. It’s the “Test” issue, which means loads of product reviews – 125 pages worth of them in fact. If you’re a tech nut, I imagine you’ll find something you like in the 300+ reviews on offer.
You can also check out the content Wired’s put online from that issue here. Ok that’s it from me, I’m off to read yet another review saying how great the iPhone is (by the way, I got to play with an unlocked one over the weekend, and the touch interface and photo viewing were jaw droppingly good).
Wired Test [free download from Cool Tool blog]
More » YouseTube
12:00PM Sarah Stokely | YouTube has launched a local version of its scarily popular video sharing site. The .au site has a localised homepage and search functions and lets users search the most popular and relevant videos in Australia. YouTube claims to receive 3 millions Australian visitors a month.
More » The Wow
11:50AM Sarah Stokely | According to APC magazine, Microsoft has confirmed that something as small as swapping the video card or updating a device driver can trigger a total Vista deactivation. The problem lies with Windows Activation, apparently.
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Twine – knowledge management with social search
11:30AM Sarah Stokely | Web app Twine (currently in closed beta) attempts to bring social search and bookmarking tools to the wiki, which sounds like an interesting combination. The app offers personal or group knowledge management for sharing, organising and searching for information, includng bookmarks, images and videos.
Web Worker Daily wrote about Twine the other day, and described it like so:
“A ‘twine’ is similar to a wiki, in that it may be specific to a certain subject or project, can have multiple members, allows for permission-based updating, and supports moderation. You tag the content you add to Twine, but the twist is that it tags your content too, by using natural language processing to figure out what it’s about.”
Twine is in private beta at the moment. However, I got in touch with Twine PR to find out if it would be a free or paid app. The word came back that Twine will always offer a free (ad-supported) basic version, as well as a subscription-based professional version. Good stuff.
Twine for Personal Knowledge Managment but Not Yet [Web Worker Daily]
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Get airport Wi-Fi while you travel in Australia
10:02AM Sarah Stokely | Adam’s guide for power travellers got me to thinking about which Australian airports have free Wi-Fi, so here’s a list:
Free Wi-Fi provided by ISPs:
Adelaide Airport (Internode)
Darwin Airport (Internode)
Newcastle Airport (Internode)
Albion Park Aiport, Illawarra (Fish Telecom)
The list of free Wi-Fi spots isn’t very comprehensive, so you may need to pony up if you want to get online.
Paid Wi-Fi options
Like anything you buy at airports, Wi-Fi will be pricey. Optus offers Wi-Fi at Sydney’s T1 and T2 terminals, and at Brisbane airport. You can buy a monthly subscription or pay $13.20 to set up a casual account which costs $12.10 per hour.
Your other option is an airline lounge. Membership is pricey, but frequent fliers might appreciate that internet access is included. Virgin Blue’s member Lounge costs $548 to join, ($349 per year after that) while Qantas Club costs costs $775 for a year (or 150,000 frequent flyer points). However, Virgin Blue does offer a $30 casual rate if you have a Virgin Blue boarding pass, so you can access the Wi-Fi in their Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne or Adelaide lounges.
Qantas covers more airports – they offer wireless at Adelaide, Alice Springs, Brisbane, Cairns, Canberra, Darwin, Gold Coast, Hobart, Melbourne, Perth, Sydney T1 and T2 and Townsville.
That’s about all I’ve been able to discover about Wi-Fi options at Australian airports. I do know that McDonalds, Starbucks and Gloria Jeans often offer Telstra Wi-Fi at their stores, so it’s possible that they may have an airport outlet offering internet connectivity. If you know of other free or paid Wi-Fi spots at Australian airports, please share in comments!
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