Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Kill Runaway Processes from the Task Bar with Task Killer
11:00AM Adam Pash | Windows only: Freeware application Task Killer sits in your taskbar and displays all of your running processes—something like a streamlined version of Windows Task Manager. If you see a runaway process or a process you want to end, just click it and confirm that you want to unload that process. Hanging processes will appear in red so you can quickly hunt down and end that frozen process. Even if you don’t want to kill a process, Task Killer provides a quick view of memory usage of your currently running processes. It’s not as robust as the full-featured Process Explorer, but if you’re looking for a quick way to examine and end processes, Task Killer is a handy, extremely lightweight (under 1MB memory) app. Task Killer is freeware, Windows only. Task Killer More »
Avoid Overloading Your Electrical Outlets
10:00AM Adam Pash | Web site Howstuffworks answers the age-old household safety question on everyone’s mind as they prepare to string lights up around every square inch of their home: How many things can you plug into an electrical outlet before it catches fire? Say you’re using 2,000 watts of power with your holiday lights and other decorations. You divide that number by the volts in your house (usually 120) and you come up with 16.6 amps of current that you’re using. With a 20 amp electrical outlet, you’re using around 80 percent of the available current, which is the most you should be using per circuit. According to the article, out of the 5,300 annual household electrical fires, about 2,000 of those occur over the holiday season. By getting a better idea of how household electricity works, you can avoid the danger and blown fuses caused by overloaded outlets. How many things can you plug into an electrical outlet before it catches fire? [Howstuffworks] More »
Add Video and Audio Chat to Adium with MeBeam
9:00AM Adam Pash | Integrate video and audio chat with the popular open source chat application Adium using the freeware MeBeam plug-in. Once installed, you can start a video chat by right-clicking a contact and selecting “Initiate MeBeam Videochat”; Adium will automatically create a web-based chatroom and send the URL to your contact (sort of like Meebo is doing). As a bonus, the video chat is completely cross-platform and application independent since it lives in your browser. Unfortunately, the quality of the MeBeam chat was mediocre in my tests, with audio dropping regularly and a much lower resolution picture than you can expect with video chat from the likes of iChat. That said, I’d expect the MeBeam service to continue to improve, so if you’ve been dying for video chat integration with Adium, the free, Mac OS X-only MeBeam plug-in will do the trick. MeBeam Plugin [via Adium Blog] More »Visually assign keyboard shortcuts and hotkeys
8:48AM Sarah Stokely | Windows only – The Online Tech Tips blog found a very cool sounding freeware program called Qliner, which lets you visually assign keyboard shortcuts and hotkeys. It displays a virtual keyboard on your screen so that you can easily drag and drop to assign keyboard shortcuts (or just remind yourself of what they were!). It also lets you assign application-specific shortcuts too, which sounds great.This sounds like a simple to use keyboard productivity tool. I can’t wait to get my PC out of jail storage to try it out.
Visually assign Windows keyboard shortcuts and hotkeys with Qliner [Online Tech Tips]http://www.online-tech-tips.com/free-software-downloads/visually-assign-windows-keyboard-shortcuts-and-hotkeys-with-qliner/ More » Listen to Music On-Demand with Songza
8:00AM Adam Pash | Search and play a wide variety of popular music for free with web site Songza. In a nutshell Songza is a search engine for music—most of which is live—that can stream songs as soon as you click on them and create and organize playlists on-the-fly. Beyond that you can share songs via email, with a simple link, or embedded on a web site (as I’ve done above). Songza isn’t the first site aiming to fill the YouTube-of-audio shoes (see Hype Machine, which is incredible), but if you’ve got limited options for listening to music at work and recommendation sites like Pandora aren’t really your thing, Songza is worth a look. Songza More »Tunes
7:30AM Tamar Weinberg | Two years ago on Lifehacker, we satisfied your thirst for new tunes by showing you how to find free music on the web. More »
Extend the Life of Your Razor Blades
7:00AM Adam Pash | Sick of dropping cash on new, pricey razor blades every few weeks because you can only get a couple weeks of use from a new blade before it shaves about as well as sandpaper? The Chicago Tribune suggests that drying your razor after use can drastically increase the life of a razor blade—up to 122%, according to one study. And while there’s no conclusive proof that dry blades will prolong your razor’s life, several people interviewed swear by it, and since it’s not costing you anything, drying your razor between uses is certainly worth a try. If you’ve got your own tried and true methods for increasing the life of your blade, let’s hear it in the comments. Thanks Reinsmith! Photo by KitAy. Extending life of razor blades leaves users dry [Chicago Tribune] More »
Access the Dock and Menu Bar from Your Keyboard
6:00AM Adam Pash | Mac users: Access your menu bar and launch dock items from the comfort of your keyboard with the Ctrl-F2 (menu bar) and Ctrl-F3 (dock) shortcuts. Especially handy for former Windows users used to navigating menus from the keyboard using the Alt key, these shortcuts have a few key differences. You can use the arrow keys to navigate if you prefer, but on the menu bar, for example, there aren’t trigger letters for each item like Windows menus offer. Instead, just start typing the name of the menu bar item you want (for example, Edit) and then hit Enter once it’s selected. You can then repeat this for actions within the drop-down menu. If these shortcuts don’t work for you, you may either need to use Ctrl-Fn-F2/F3 or enable them with Ctrl-F1 (or Ctrl-Fn-F1). Use the Dock without the mouse! [A New Mac Tip Every Day] More »
Double Your Productivity with a Serial Workflow
4:00AM Wendy Boswell | While there’s something to be said for multitasking, a serial workflow—completing one task after another in order of priority—can be much more conducive to getting your work done. Splitting your attention between several tasks at once can slow you down compared to knocking off one focused task after another on an ordered list. Today I’m going to show you how to create a serial workflow platform with just a few simple tools that you probably already use: plain text, a couple handy extensions, and browser tabs. More »
