What tools run Lifehacker headquarters? One year ago, we shared our favourite collaboration tools for the placeless office.
Wired writer Seth Mnookin says that Google’s productivity tools—the iGoogle homepage, Google Reader, Calendar, Books, Scholar, Notebook and the Google Toolbar—all made him more likely to procrastinate getting things done: My campaign to increase productivity had become yet another distraction—and a significant one. Suddenly I needed to time-manage my time management.
Lifehacker reader and space-saving enthusiast Patrick Fitzgerald has posted a detailed but simple to follow guide to storing DVDs in sleeves while keeping the most relevant parts of the cover intact. His tools are an inexpensive ruled paper cutter and an X-Acto knife, and his method allows him to alphabetize and store his DVDs without buying new shelving or filling an entertainment center. Lovers of box sets and special editions might not be willing to take the knife to their nifty packaging, but it could be a worthwhile trade-off for your run-of-the-mill movies.
DVD Storage How-To [BarelyFitz Flickr set]Windows/Mac/Linux (Firefox): Skip the upload process and edit images entirely within your browser with the Picnik Firefox extension, a free download that adds right-click functionality to online image editor Picnik. Once installed, any website image can be right-clicked and sent to Picnik for editing, and entire pages—or just the visible portion—can also be grabbed. For those constantly grabbing screenshots or wanting to do a little cropping, rotation, or resizing before downloading, the extension eliminates the download-and-upload redundancy of online image editing. The Picnik extension is a free download and works wherever Firefox does.
Picnik Firefox extension [via CyberNet]The Linux community is known for its do-it-yourself ethic and extensive support forums, but sometimes a single voice with solid advice fits the bill. Over at homelinux.org, one kind soul has posted an extensive collection of free Linux-related PDF ebooks, covering topics ranging from installation and dual-booting to specific distribution tweaks and programming guides. The owner has instituted a 10-downloads-per-day quota, but the books are meaty enough to make that a non-problem. You could also consider donating a few dollars to the site if you find yourself downloading, say, the 1,400+ page Linux Bible and coming back for more.
Free Linux eBooks [via The Linux Tutorial]The New York Times has posted a profile of Tim Ferriss, author of The 4 Hour Workweek, that explores some of the extreme information-reducing methods we’ve covered before and balances some of the hype. While Ferriss is described as not exactly having a four-hour week himself, he counters with his own assessment of his method’s success: “If your definition of work is something primarily financially driven that you would like to do less of, like with my company, I spend far less than four hours a week on it,” he said.
All that other stuff—lecturing at the corporate campuses of Google and PayPal, blogging incessantly on his www.fourhourworkweek.com—that’s, well, “evangelizing,” he said.
I don’t necessarily follow Ferriss’ logic on, for example, outsourcing email to free up time, but he raises a good point about the divide between financially driven “work” and business-related “pursuits.”
Too Much Information? Ignore It [New York Times]Windows only: Open source personal finance software GnuCash has made the leap to the thumb drive realm, making it easier to keep your financial data consistent across computers—at least Windows computers, anyways. Like its Windows/Linux desktop sibling, GnuCash Portable is still beta and a bit rough around the edges, but offers importing from Quicken and other proprietary formats and integrates with the PortableApps Suite, making it a nice addition to the host of mobile tools you can fit on one inexpensive thumb drive. GnuCash Portable is a free download and requires Windows to launch.
GnuCash Portable [via Download Squad]US-centric: Wired has an article with a solid roundup of tips and tricks on saving money at holiday shopping, be it on Black Friday, Cyber Monday or on the web. Among the advice on deal hunting is this not-so-obvious tip: Clean your cookies. Retailers base a lot of their online promotions and price points on shoppers’ habits. So, it’s not uncommon for shoppers to notice price fluctuations after repeated purchases on the same site. Prices typically drop for these power shoppers as an incentive, but there have been documented occurrences of increases, too. You can check to see if this is happening to you by logging out from the retail site, clearing your browser’s cookies, and then revisiting the product page.
When do you start hunting down holiday deals, and how do you snag the best prices? Let’s hear your shopping zen tips in the comments.
How to Hack the Holidays and Score the Best Deals Online [Wired]
