Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Make a Heating Pad for Next to Nothing
11:30PM Kevin Purdy | Whether you’re trying to keep warm or dull aches and pains, a heating pad can offer some soothing relief. Before you head to the store, open your dresser and cupboard, and you might find everything you need to make one yourself. All it takes is two pieces of cloth (or an old sock), any of a number of grains such as rice, oatmeal, or flax seed, and a tiny bit of sewing or cutting. The TipNut blog includes a number of ingredients you can throw in to make your DIY heating pad into a headache reliever or a fragrant relaxing helper. For someone just getting into the shoveling routine again, this sounds worth having on hand. Make Your Own Microwave Heating Pad [TipNut via Dumb Little Man] More »
Leave the Right Holiday Tip
11:00PM Kevin Purdy | The holidays bring around a number of warm, comforting traditions—and figuring out annual tips is not one of them. The New York Times’ City Room blog helpfully delves into the history and politics of tipping and digs up a few helpful suggestions. For instance: A related survey of more than 1,800 Americans found (the) average tip ranges of $10 to $20 for a newspaper carrier, $10 to $25 for a sanitation or recycling collector, $20 to $50 for a child care provider and $25 to $75 for a housekeeper. When in doubt, Consumer Reports advises, a worker who provides a weekly service should be given the equivalent of one week’s pay. The article notes that Postal Service carriers are actually forbidden from accepting more than small gifts from customers—it might be worth checking with any service to see if similar policies are in place. For more tipping, er, tips, check out our previous posts. Photo by aforero. An (Un)easy Guide to Holiday Tipping [NYT via Micro Persuasion] More »
Use an Exclude Dictionary to Master Your Typos
10:30PM Kevin Purdy | Typos are bad enough when they result in gibberish like “procedurw,” but words that are close together and technically correct—like “manager” and “manger”—will easily slip by Word’s spell check. If you find yourself making those kind of situational typos often, the Productivity Portfolio blog can walk you through creating an “Exclude Dictionary” to have Word’s checker prompt you whenever it finds certain words. That way, you’re the one who decides whether you meant the guy who deploys and manages work or the staple of nativity scenes. What are your biggest spell-check frustrations? Offer up your knuckle-whitening gripes in the comments. Catch Mistakes with Word Exclude Dictionary [Productivity Portfolio via TheJobBored] More »
Split and Merge PDFS with PDFSam
10:00PM Kevin Purdy | Windows/Mac/Linux (All platforms): Join PDFs together, split them apart and pull out individual pages with pdfsam, an open-source, Java-based cross-platform tool that’s a free download. The program, just released in a 1.0 alpha, does basic PDF manipulation pretty quickly, and job processes can be saved for common tasks. As with the OS X-native Combine PDFs, it’s a handy tool to tuck away for when you need it, like pulling relevant chapters out of a manual or textbook. Pdfsam is a free download and works wherever Java can, but a Windows installation tool is available. PDF Split and Merge [via Phorolinux] More »
Summize Brings Reviews Together
9:30PM Kevin Purdy | Review aggregation site Summize certainly isn’t the first kid on the multi-site review block, but it’s looking to stand out with the sheer breadth of its coverage. Type in a movie, book, gadget or anything else that someone might have taken a critical eye to, and Summize shoots back a colour-coded summary of what bloggers, user reviewers and other sources had to say about it—divided into segments ranging from “great” to “wretched.” Many of the reviews seem to come from database-type sites like Amazon, IMDB, and the like, but round up hundreds of blogs, dozens of newspapers and user comments on any topic, and you’ll never want for input. The site is free to use, and sign-up seems to mostly be for the benefit of bloggers who regularly contribute to the discussion. Summize.com [via TechCrunch] More »
Transfer Messages from Hotmail to Gmail Using Outlook
9:00PM Kevin Purdy | Have you or someone you know stuck with Hotmail through even its Windows Live rebirth but now yearns to jump into Gmail? Tech blog Digital Inspiration suggests using both Outlook and a free download to get the job done: Install the Outlook connector and then configure your MSN Hotmail / Windows Live Hotmail accounts with Outlook. Once you have all your Hotmail email message available locally inside Outlook, configure Gmail IMAP access inside Outlook. Now copy or just drag-n-drop the Hotmail folders (downloaded in Step 1) over your Gmail Inbox folder in Outlook. If you’re still catching the occasional mail at that address, you could just read your Hotmail from Gmail. You can also, of course, use Gmail’s IMAP friendliness to import messages from almost any mail client. Easily Transfer Emails from Hotmail to Gmail Via Outlook Connector [Digital Inspiration] More »Two years ago, Gina shared her favorite Greasemonkey …
8:30PM Tamar Weinberg | Two years ago, Gina shared her favourite Greasemonkey scripts with the rest of us. What are your favourite Greasemonkey scripts? More »Piracy raid in Sydney
6:01PM Sarah Stokely | ZDNet has reported that the Interville internet cafe in World Square in Sydney’s CBD has been raided today by the Australian Federal Police. It’s alleged the cafe provided “extensive” access to pirated material including illegally downloaded music and movies. At least 10 AFP agents and officers were reported to be involved in the raid, which involved the execution of a search warrant and interviews with employees. More » Do you need that fancy phone?
4:21PM Sarah Stokely | Matt Wood at 43Folders talked about life without a laptop earlier this week – he’d decided to ditch his notebook and go with Apple’s iPhone instead. Certainly it’s a very covetable and fully functioned device, but do you really need it?One thing which might help you decide is considering how many of the features you use in your current phone. I have to admit, I’m a bit of a luddite in this regard. I make calls, I send SMSs and I browse news headlines. I wanted a camera phone but I have never downloaded any of the photos I’ve taken with it, which makes it a bit redundant. When I look at it this way, it’s hard to make the case for upgrading to an iPhone. I’m wondering whether I should go in the opposite direction and just get a basic mobile phone for calling and texting.Of course, it’s not like Apple’s the only horse in the race anyway. If you’ve decided that the iPhone’s not your cup or tea, or you don’t want to wait for the local release, Wired’s published a list of its top 5 “iFraud” phones today. Top marks went to Samsung’s F700, which was awarded five Steve Jobs black turtlenecks out of five as the best iPhone imitator. Another nice looking phone on the list was the HTC Touch.So I’d be interested to know, from those of you who are using or considering the purchase of an iPhone or other smart phone – how many of the features do you actually use? What’s useful, what’s frivilous and what’s just nice to have? More » 
