Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Fully Customisable Sidebar with SideSlide
11:30PM Kevin Purdy | Windows only: Like the convenience of the Vista sidebar but wish it offered more customisation, or even just a hiding option? Free application SideSlide gives you program and website launchers, RSS readers, notepads, reminders, pictures, clipping holders and more in one skin-able bar that hides on the edges of your desktop. It’s the kind of tinker-friendly widget that shortcut lovers can easily get lost in—containers to launch multiple programs at once, feed combiners with group searching and updating and lots of keyboard navigation options, to name just a few hacks. Check out this quick start guide by SideSlide’s makers to get started. SideSlide is a free download for Windows XP, 2000 and Vista, and requires that Microsoft Core XML Services 6.0 be installed (a link is provided on the SideSlide link below, but Vista users should be set up already). Vista users who just want to get more out of their pre-installed sidebar can check out our roundup of useful sidebar gadgets. SideSlide [via CyberNet] More »
Make Your Rainbow Photographs Stand Out
11:00PM Kevin Purdy | As fall rolls into early winter (at least here in the Northeast), rain storms are becoming a more common occurrence. On the brighter side, that means more post-storm rainbows with picture-perfect color. The Digital Photography School blog rounds up the best advice for shooting those rare occurrences, including this not-so-obvious tip: The point where a rainbow hits the ground/horizon is an important point in any rainbow photograph. This is a natural point of interest so think about where you’ll put it in the frame. You might want to zoom in on this spot or even quickly change your own position so that it lines up with some other object in the scene. Novices and seasoned shooters alike will find more tips on aperture, filters, focal length, and other adjustments in the post. Photo by absolutwade How to Photograph a Rainbow [Digital Photography School] More »
Simple Flickr Uploading with Postr
10:30PM Kevin Purdy | Linux only: Applications like
Get More From Credit Card Rewards
10:00PM Kevin Purdy | When it comes to credit cards, getting a “reward” can actually be a setback if you don’t get the right benefits or use them wisely. Over at the Dumb Little Man blog, J.W. Corbett from card comparison website Creditor Web offers some great advice on how to actually benefit from rewards-based cards. He kicks off his eight-point list with a doozie: About 95% of all rewards cards offer the exact same reward; 1% cash back. They each package it differently such as airline miles, points, cash, hotel discounts, etc., but the truth is a “point” or “mile” is generally worth 1 cent. In the end all the rewards still end up being the equivalent of about 1% cash. Corbett’s other tips include reminders to pay off the card’s balance every month and plan how to use the rewards money. How did you choose your rewards card? Leave your own suggestions in the comments. How to Really Maximize Your Credit Card [Dumb Little Man] More »Flashback
9:00PM Tamar Weinberg | One year ago, Lifehacker alum Rick Broida listed 8 killer Windows Media Center plug-ins. More »Get your email inbox to empty
3:49PM Sarah Stokely | The Web Worker Daily takes the blowtorch to email management with its list of five simple hacks to reduce your inbox to zero.
Email triage is very necessary for miminising the time you spend on responding, but also for ensuring that respond in a timely manner to things which need it. I particularly liked the five sentence rule:
“Limit all emails to five sentences or less, and you’ll spend much less time responding to email. Yes, it will force you to say less, and to choose your words more carefully. Yes, that’s a good thing. It will drastically cut your email processing time down.”
Five Simple Hacks to Get Your Email Inbox to Empty [Web Worker Daily]
More » Speedy
3:45PM Sarah Stokely | According to the Sydney Morning Herald, an Australian researcher has discovered how to make ADSL run 100 times faster. Pardon my cynicism, but I’ll just hold my breath til we see those speeds attained in the real world, shall I? More » ASUS mini-laptop here in December
3:38PM Sarah Stokely | ASUS has confirmed it will release its Linux-based mini-laptop, the Eee PC, in Australia in December. I mentioned this mini-laptop a couple of weeks ago. It will cost $500, which is a bit more than I’d expected, given our very favourable exchange rate against the US dollar at the moment (They cost $US300-$400 in the US, depending on spec). I’m still waiting to hear which flavour of Linux it will run too.
More » Facebook apps for techies
3:18PM Sarah Stokely | CNET’s compiled a list of Facebook apps for techies. A couple of them are just geeky time wasters (retro arcade games and the official 100 question geek test) but there’s a couple of interesting ones there including tools for embedding your blog into your Facebook profile, and a “text me” application.
I was also pleased to learn you could embed the xkcd web comic into your Facebook page. :)
Facebook apps for techies [CNET]
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Lifehacker US up for Weblog award
3:04PM Sarah Stokely | Voting is now on for the 2007 Weblog awards, and our esteemed parent blog Lifehacker is a finalist in the Best Technology blog category. You can head over and vote for Lifehacker (or Gizmodo for that matter) here.
There’s also a category for Best Australian Website, and if you want to add to the growing list of people who apparently can’t get enough of All Men are Liars and Sam and the City, head over and cast your vote here.
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