Friday, October 26, 2007
Flashback
11:45PM Tamar Weinberg | One year ago, guest writer Jason Thomas explained how he gets things done with GTDTiddlyWiki. More »
Print Your Own Halloween Mask
11:30PM Gina Trapani | Forget a store-bought mask for Halloween: put that photo printer to good use and make a custom mask of your dog, your boss or your favourite celebrity. Microsoft offers instructions on how to print out a handheld mask glued to a piece of balsa wood (or tied around your head with ribbon) with the right photograph. We shameless nerds can download some Star Wars character mask templates for free in the, ahem, kids section of the site. (Totally printing out Chewbacca this weekend and cutting out the eye holes.) Make your own Halloween mask [Microsoft Home] Star Wars Character Printable Masks [via BuzzFeed] More »
Add Custom Right-Click Options With Nautilus-actions
11:00PM Kevin Purdy | Linux only: Automate frequent tasks and avoid unnecessary program hunting with Nautilus-actions, a free extension that adds file-specific options to the right-click menu. Those with a little script know-how can easily hack together their own automators, but some of the freely available actions include resizing and emailing pictures, file conversion and renaming and even a helpful “shredder”—the kind that erases and overwrites a file 10 times to make it unrecoverable. More »Flashback
10:30PM Tamar Weinberg | Two years ago, you started automatically cleaning out that temporary folder full of downloads and email attachments with the hard drive janitor. More »
TextExpander Gets Even Better
8:00PM Gina Trapani | Mac OS X only: The latest version 2.0 of typing utility TextExpander adds some useful new features and on what was already a solid time-saving foundation. We rarely feature software that isn’t free here at Lifehacker, but like Quicksilver, TextExpander has become one of my must-have Mac apps (just like our own homegrown Texter on Windows.) The latest version 2.0.3 of TextExpander adds Leopard support, .Mac synchronisation, AppleScript access, and a few other handy doodads that deserve screenshots of their own. Step into my office to check out some more advanced uses of TextExpander 2.0. More »
Zoho Suite vs Google Docs
2:21PM Gina Trapani | Slowly you’ve been moving the work you used to do in desktop applications online, and you’ve got two major choices to do that: Google Apps or Zoho’s Office Suite. Both the big G and the little Z offer completely browser-based office applications like a word processor and spreadsheet, as well as communication tools like chat and email, as well as collaboration tools like project managers and wiki’s. But the business-oriented Zoho and the consumer-oriented Google applications differ a little bit in offerings, and probably a whole lot when it comes to active users. After the jump, we compare Zoho and Google’s current webapp offerings and you get the chance to pick your poison. More »
21 ways to make someone’s day
12:45PM Sarah Stokely | Here’s a challenge for the weekend ahead – make someone’s day. The “I will change your life” blog has a list of 21 things you can do to make someone’s day. A few of them were predictable (give chocolates, cook them a meal) but to me what stood out where the little things you can do to let someone know you’re thinking of them.
For example – make a mixed CD for a friend and mail it to them out of the blue. Here’s another one I reallly liked:
“Did you just think of a funny event that happened to you and a friend? Or do you have some photos from a recent outing? If so, send a quick email to your friend so that they can relive the memory.”
Another one I’m partial to is making a mental note when a friend or loved one mentions something they’d really like to buy for themselves. Buy it secretly and give it to them months later – they’ll be bowled over that you remembered.
Good luck bringing a smile to someone’s face this weekend. :)
21 ways to make someone’s day [I will change your life]
More » Making Documents Look Much Better in MS Word
12:29PM Sarah Stokely | Like it or loathe it, many of us use Microsoft Word, particularly in the workplace. Like Excel, it’s a fairly feature packed program which many people never delve into. Web Worker Daily wrote up a list of tips for making your Word documents look better.
Some of the tips are pretty basic (view formatting marks, use symbols from the Insert menu) but there were a couple there which even this long-time Word user didn’t know. The article assumes that you are already using the Styles (from the Format Menu, at the Styles and Formatting option).
Here’s one which I know I’ll use:
“Do you often grab text from web sites and drop it into Word documents? The result can end up looking like a ransom note. A quick way to drop the text in without all the formatting from the site is to go to the Edit menu and select Paste Special. Then select Unformatted Text.”
I didn’t know that nuking bad formatting was just a Ctrl-Spacebar away either:
“To get a quick view of how the paragraph is formatted, put your cursor over text within the paragraph and hit Shift-F1. This will bring up Word’s Reveal Codes pane, which will tell you about the formatting. Do you want to go back to default formatting settings? If so, select the paragraph and hit Ctrl-Spacebar to go back to the defaults.”
Making Documents Look Much Better in MS Word [Web Worker Daily]
More » Apple dumps iPhone note synching from Leopard
12:17PM Sarah Stokely | I won’t go on at length, since we don’t have the iPhone here yet anyway, but productivity geeks might be interested to know that Apple seems to have removed iPhone note synching from its new OS, Leopard. Ars Technica pointed out that Apple’s Leopard features website had dropped the section detailing how Notes would sync from the iPhone into Mail.app’s Notes and Gizmodo’s live blogging review of Leopard confirmed that feature isn’t in the new OS.
Leopard backpedals again: No more iPhone note synching [Ars Technica]
More » First review of the Asus Linux mini-laptop
11:52AM Sarah Stokely | The other day I was waxing lyrical about the ASUS EEE PC and how I’d love to take this mini-Linux laptop for a spin. Well as our mates at Gizmodo have pointed out, someone’s beaten me to it. Laptopmag.com gave the little lappy 4/5 saying:
“It’s ten times simpler to use than any Windows machine, starts up twice as fast (no crapware!), and is only about the fifth of the cost of other systems in its weight class.”
First Review of ASUS’ EEE [via Gizmodo]
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