Weblog Ririan Project offers several tips for breaking (but not necessarily quitting altogether) your TV habit. For example: Throw out the remote control. It’s impressive how much less television you’ll watch if you have to get up every time you want to change channels or adjust the volume. Plus, it eliminates all those hours you spend channel surfing.
The post also suggests reading at least 30 pages of a book or magazine before you start watching TV or rearranging your furniture so the TV isn’t the focal point along several other worthwhile tips for cutting back. And since you’re watching less TV around bedtime, you’ll also sleep better.
TiVo, in a partnership with Nero, appears to be making the jump to PC-based DVRs. Interesting, to be sure, but whether it will be able to compete with your media centre powerhouse remains to be seen.
We’d all love a little GPS on our phone, but generally a device with GPS built in (plus the price of service) costs more than many of us are willing to shell out. Luckily the latest (beta) version of Google Maps Mobile has added a new feature called My Location, which uses data from cell phone towers to provide an approximation of your location on a Google Map—meaning GPS-like results from any phone that can run Google Maps Mobile!
Once installed, just fire up Google Maps on your supported phone and hit ’0′ to view your location (you’re the blue dot). If your phone already has GPS built in, the new Google Maps Mobile will use it to pinpoint your position. If you don’t have a GPS-enabled phone, you may see an approximate location indicated by a blue dot with a lighter blue circle around it so you know there’s a little uncertainty about exact location.
While this isn’t real-time turn-by-turn directions, it’s still a helluva lot better than nothing—and should make putting Google Maps Mobile to use on-the-go a lot quicker and easier. (I’m just waiting for the iPhone Gmaps to update with this.) Google Maps Mobile with My Location is freeware, works on “most web-enabled mobile phones, including Java, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, and Nokia/Symbian devices.” If you give it a try, let us know how well the My Location feature is finding you in the comments.
Google Maps with My Location (beta) [Google Maps via Google Operating System]You may not be able to power an iPod with an onion, but there are plenty of neat tricks and techniques that actually do work with everyday foods. We’ve posted dozens of food and beverage-related stories here at Lifehacker over the past three years, but today we’ve compiled the top 10 most clever, interesting, fun, and useful food hacks of them all, with video clips. Come on in to check ‘em out.
To make his web site feed subscriptions more manageable, blogger Matt Wood organises them not by topic, but by how much he can stand to miss ‘em. So instead of categories like “Sports” or “Blogs,” he uses folder names that range from “Can’t Miss” to “Skip ‘Em” (feeds he only reads when he has time). The folder names are different, but I use the same system because it gives you permission to hit “Mark all as read” more often and with less guilt. How do you organise your feeds? Let us know in the comments.
Sink or Swim: Managing RSS Feeds with Better Groups [43 Folders]If you run Windows on your Mac with Boot Camp with an Apple keyboard, you start to miss certain keys: like Print Screen, Del, the Windows key, and Insert. For a while I was just living without them, but turns out there are key combinations that map to all the Windows keys in Boot Camp, like: Forward Delete in Windows – Fn+Delete
Print Screen in Windows – F14
Backspace in Windows – Delete
Insert in Windows – Help
The rest of the list is over at the Apple site. Good bookmark for that Boot Camp’ed Windows install. Boot Camp Beta: Apple keyboards and keyboard mapping in Windows XP [Apple]
Windows only: See your device drivers and their versions at a glance and back up your “just works” drivers list with DriverView, a free application for Windows systems. The all-in-one-window view is itself a helpful upgrade from looking through devices individually in the Device Manager, but the real value here is in the list generation. Create an HTML-formatted backup list for your future troubleshooting needs or export to text to show friends or forum members just what’s gone wrong. DriverView is a free download and works with Windows Visa, XP and 2000.
DriverView [via the How-To Geek]Tech support website Satisfaction walks the middle ground between the extensive, but nameless, answers found on community forums and official, but not always extensive, answers from company reps. Covering webapps, gadgets, and desktop applications, Satisfaction has more than 400 companies being discussed, and some of them, including Google, Sandy, Twitter and Microsoft, have actual employees helping to answer questions and troubleshoot. If you ask a new question, Satisfaction emails you when the answer appears, or you can follow the thread via RSS. It’s not an all-in-one stop yet, but especially for help with webapps and newer programs, it’s a good place to find help beyond the FAQs.
Satisfaction [via MakeUseOf.com]Linux only: Convert your video files for DVDs, iPods or easily-playable formats from inside your file browser using a simple script. Users of Linux systems running on a KDE desktop just need to download the ffmpegmenu script and place it in the appropriate file browser folder, and a new “Video Encoding” menu will appear in your sidebar. Detailed instructions and download links are at the link below. The ffmpegmenu script works in Linux only and requires a KDE environment, or at least the majority of the KDE tools installed in any desktop.
ffmpegmenu – transcode videos from your file manager [FOSSwire]Childrens’ goods sharing website Zwaggle isn’t just an eBay clone with a focus on cribs, toys, and other kid-specific gear. No money trades hands between “buyers” and “sellers,” but points are distributed for giving away unnecessary stuff (as well as signing up other members) that can be used later to get items that are needed, for only the cost of shipping. The site has a green-friendly focus, and it makes sense—new parents always tend to over-buy or get far more gifts than their child can possibly use. Zwaggle might be a money-saving way for parents to save a few items from hitting the landfill or, just as importantly, cluttering up storage space they’ll definitely need later.
Zwaggle [via CNET News]
