Saturday, November 3, 2007
The Week’s Best Posts
9:00AM Gina Trapani | This week’s best posts include: Rebuild Your Mac with 20 Useful Downloads “You erased your hard drive to install Leopard, and now you’ve got to load your Mac up with all your essential software…” Top 10 Free Video Rippers, Encoders, and Converters “To have your favourite clips how you want them–whether that’s on your DVR, iPod, PSP or desktop–you need the right utility to convert ‘em into the format that works for you.” Homemade Halloween Costume Photo Gallery “Last week we put out a call for the best do-it-yourself Halloween costumes lifehackers could come up with, complete with instructions and images. As usual, you did not disappoint.” Turn Thunderbird into the Ultimate Gmail IMAP Client “If IMAP’s got you curious but you’re not sure what desktop application to use with Gmail, consider the extensible, fast, cross-platform and free Mozilla Thunderbird, our beloved Firefox’s little sibling.” Gmail Speeds Up, Improves Contacts “First IMAP support, and now a new version’s rolling out which includes message pre-fetching for speedier performance, a new contacts manager, and more keyboard shortcuts.” Get A First Class Ticket For Coach Class Prices “First class airplane tickets might be less expensive than you think.” Auto-Hide Your Firefox Bookmarks Toolbar “Love the bookmarks toolbar but only want it there when you need it? Reader Andy writes in with a tweak that makes the toolbar hide automatically, unless you mouse over it (like auto-hiding your Windows taskbar or Mac Dock.)” The Simplicity of Time Machine Compels You “If you’re running Leopard and you’ve got an external hard drive, you WILL back up your data, even if that wasn’t your intention when you bought the drive or plugged it into your Mac.” Turn Any Action into a Keyboard Shortcut “The free, open source scripting language AutoHotkey may not be one of the most powerful or popular programming languages on the planet, but that’s okay–it’s not just made for programmers.” More »
Remind Yourself and Loved Ones of Daylight Savings
8:00AM Adam Pash | Weblog TheJobBored suggests setting up an SMS reminder of the Daylight Savings Time change to ensure you don’t forget to roll back the clock this weekend. The post recommends a site called TextMemos to set up quick and simple future texts to yourself. Just enter your number, select your cell provider, and set the date and time you want it delivered. Then set your message text (Roll back those clocks!) and submit the reminder. Alternatively, if you’ve got a friend or family member that’s notorious for forgetting, you can just as easily set up an SMS reminder for their number. While you’re at it, don’t forget to ready your gadgets and perform a few other DST to-dos. TextMemos [via TheJobBored] More »
Take Walmart’s $199 PC Operating System for a Test Drive
7:00AM Adam Pash | If Wal-Mart’s recently released $200 PC sounds like a potentially great deal but you’re not sure about ditching your current operating system for the inexpensive, Linux-based Ubuntu box, head over to the developer’s web site and download the bootable gOS LiveCD (or rather DVD, at 728MB). The gOS operating system sports an emphasis on web applications, with desktop shortcuts to tonnes of Google Apps, Facebook, Wikipedia, and other webapps built directly into the desktop. If you’ve given gOS a try, let’s hear how you like it in the comments. gOS [via Download Squad] More »
Settle a Bet On-the-Go with Mosio
6:00AM Adam Pash | US-centric: Text any question to mobile community Mosio and get answers sent back to your phone from other Mosio members. The success of the site is built on two assumptions: 1) That users want to answer your questions and will do so shortly after you ask it, and 2) that you don’t have a data plan and would rather send a quick text and let someone else find the best answer for your question. In testing the first condition, I was impressed to get my question (What is Lifehacker?) answered (Lifehacker is an advertising-supported weblog about life hacks and software which launched on January 31, 2005) in just a couple of minutes. Mosio seems like an idea that would work best for finding answers to questions for which you wouldn’t really know where to begin looking with something like Google SMS. Mosio is free to use, requires an email address to sign up. If you give it a test, let us know how it worked for you in the comments. Mosio [via MakeUseOf] More »
Troubleshoot Port Forwarding with YouGetSignal
5:00AM Adam Pash | Web site YouGetSignal scans your external IP address to let you know which ports are being successfully forwarded through your firewall and which ports are closed for business. Whether you’ve set up your own home server or gotten down and dirty with BitTorrent, chances are you’ve had at least one run-in with port forwarding, the process that lets computers outside your network through your firewall to access your computer. If you don’t know how to set up port forwarding but would like to, check out our guide. Port Forwarding Tester [YouGetSignal] More »
Display Week Numbers in GCal Without Extensions
4:30AM Kevin Purdy | Firefox users who have installed Lifehacker’s own Better GCal Firefox extension already have an option to display week numbers in Google Calendar, but users of other browsers (and those who stay away from the Greasemonkey scripting engine) can still get discrete weekly labels. Stefan Sundin’s ReCover site offers two calendar subscriptions, for Sunday or Monday week starts, that get the job done. Thanks, Magnus! Google Calendar Week Numbers [ReCover] More »
Work
Deal with Professional Burnout without Quitting Your Job
4:00AM Adam Pash | At one time or another, we can all get a little burnt out with our jobs—even if it’s a job you love. The Simple Dollar weblog suggests several ways to deal with your workplace burnout without quitting your job. For example: Take vacation as soon as possible. File paperwork to take a week or two off, and just do nothing. Seriously. Sit at home and recharge. Get caught up on things you’ve been putting off because you’ve been burnt out. Eat very healthy and get some exercise. Do a few things that are purely fun. In fact, most of these other items work best if done immediately after returning from a vacation. If a break isn’t possible (and let’s be honest, for a lot of us an impromptu vacation isn’t), the post offers several other more realistic suggestions you can apply today. Then again, if professional burnout has you on the brink of quitting, working in a vacation probably isn’t a bad idea. Dealing With Professional Burnout Without Quitting Your Job [The Simple Dollar] More »
Make the Most of Your Dual Monitors
2:00AM Gina Trapani | Now that you’ve added another monitor to your computer setup, you’ve got double the screen real estate to get things done—but are you putting all that space to good use? Whether you want to stretch your desktop wallpaper or taskbar across two monitors or perfectly snap all your windows into place every time, there are a few utilities that can help you make the most of every last pixel of your dual monitors. Let’s take a look. More »
