Monday, December 1, 2008
Work
Use Mouse Gestures To Open New Pages With Easy DragToGo
11:30PM Lifehacker US Edition | Firefox only: Easy DragToGo is a Firefox extension which enables interaction with highlighted text and images via mouse gestures. Text actions are determined by whether or not the highlighted text is a URL or not, and by the variables you assign in the preferences menu. An example setup, and my current one, is that all non-URL text when highlighted and dragged becomes a Google search. Drag up to search in a new foreground tab, drag down to search in a new background tab. You assign gestures to opening new URLs, searching text, and saving images. The amount of movement required to trigger the assigned action in Easy DragToGo is minuscule, which makes for some wonderfully lazy mousing. Easy DragToGo is free and works wherever Firefox does. Easy DragToGo More »
Work
Windows 7 Won’t Require Graphics Hardware For Effects
11:00PM Kevin Purdy | UK magazine Custom PC reports that Windows 7 will feature WARP, which lets any computer with an 800MHz processor run Aero-style desktop transparency and, with a certain performance hit, the Direct3D requirements for video games. Microsoft seems to have learned something from the “Vista Capable/Ready” labelling fiasco, so expect less confusion on what can “run” the OS due out in mid-2009. [via Gizmodo] More »
Work
Ubuntu 8.10 And Fedora 10 Eerily Close On Speed
10:30PM Kevin Purdy | The team at the Phoronix site benchmark tested the newly-released Fedora 10 Linux distribution against Ubuntu 8.10 on 32 and 64-bit machines, and found the results nearly identical. Interesting find, and nice to know it’s really the features and interface that sets most Linux distros apart these days. More »
Fix
More Ways To Hide Google SearchWiki Features
10:00PM Kevin Purdy | We’ve already pointed out a Greasemonkey script that hides Google’s new SearchWiki ranking buttons, but there are viable work-arounds for those not using Firefox or its page-styling Greasemonkey extension. The Google Operating System blog points out four other methods. Most clever and convenient among them is heading to your Experimental Feature settings and enabling any other experiment, like keyboard shortcuts, which disables SearchWiki buttons and notes until you clear out your browser’s cookies. Also recommended: Signing out from your Google account and a URL-ending trick, detailed at Google Operating System’s post. More Ways to Hide Google SearchWiki [Google Operating System] More »
Work
Gladinet Mounts Web Storage Apps As Virtual Drives
9:00PM Kevin Purdy | Windows only: Free utility Gladinet Cloud Desktop removes the web interfaces from Google Docs, Picasa Web Albums, Windows Live SkyDrive and Amazon S3 Storage, mounting them instead as folders you can add, remove, or open documents from. Gladinet hides most of the back-end technology that pulls it off, asking you only for a username and password. Once mounted, it’s easy to, say, open a Google Docs file in your local copy of Microsoft Word, or directly add pictures to folders in your Picasa or SkyDrive accounts. Read on for a look at how Gladinet works, along with a 10-minute video that explains more of its features. More »
Organise
Fancy Yourself As A Monopoly Champion?
4:00PM Angus Kidman | OK, we know that gaming is really Kotaku’s bag, but here at Lifehacker we’re great believers in games and puzzles to enhance your mental health. And while we’re not sure that perennial board game favourite Monopoly quite qualifies, it’s certainly good for your basic arithmetic skills. Registration for the National Monopoly Championships has just begun, with six regional championships scheduled in January and February throughout the country to find a contestant who will represent Australia at a global showdown in Las Vegas later in 2009. Get rolling! Monopoly Australia Championships [via OzBargain More »
Travel
2:00PM Angus Kidman | Dell and Vodafone have joined forces to sell the Inspiron Mini netbook like a phone, allowing you to purchase a 3G broadband-equipped device for a fixed monthly fee over 24 months. Is the future of computer purchasing, or just a good way of wasting money?
More »
Is Paying On A Contract The Best Way To Get A 3G Netbook?
2:00PM Angus Kidman | Dell and Vodafone have joined forces to sell the Inspiron Mini netbook like a phone, allowing you to purchase a 3G broadband-equipped device for a fixed monthly fee over 24 months. Is the future of computer purchasing, or just a good way of wasting money?
More »
Work
12:00PM Angus Kidman | Reports of lay-offs by major employers are a daily event right now, so the odds that you might soon be looking for a new job are unfortunately higher than ever. Standing out from the crowd can be difficult in a competitive market, and it seems job seekers need to be more and more creative to even get noticed. I was struck by one Microsoft employee’s plan to send out 1,000 resumes with fake ‘read this’ Post-Its attached, but something tells me that might be the thin end of the wedge these days. What’s the most extreme (and successful) tactic you’ve ever used to score a job? Let us know in the comments. More »
What’s Your Extreme Job-Hunting Strategy?
12:00PM Angus Kidman | Reports of lay-offs by major employers are a daily event right now, so the odds that you might soon be looking for a new job are unfortunately higher than ever. Standing out from the crowd can be difficult in a competitive market, and it seems job seekers need to be more and more creative to even get noticed. I was struck by one Microsoft employee’s plan to send out 1,000 resumes with fake ‘read this’ Post-Its attached, but something tells me that might be the thin end of the wedge these days. What’s the most extreme (and successful) tactic you’ve ever used to score a job? Let us know in the comments. More »
Design
10:02AM Angus Kidman | You might not think there was much more to a cropping tool than selecting the area you want to keep, but you’d be wrong. A handy post at the ProjectWoman blog explains some of the less obvious features of Photoshop’s crop option, including how to customise the colour of the area you’re excluding and how to crop non-rectangular areas.
Smarter Photoshop Crop [ProjectWoman]
More »
Secrets Of Photoshop’s Cropping Tool
10:02AM Angus Kidman | You might not think there was much more to a cropping tool than selecting the area you want to keep, but you’d be wrong. A handy post at the ProjectWoman blog explains some of the less obvious features of Photoshop’s crop option, including how to customise the colour of the area you’re excluding and how to crop non-rectangular areas.
Smarter Photoshop Crop [ProjectWoman]
More » 
