The Lifehacker Total Security Guide 
Spotify And Its Rivals: Subscription Music Services In Australia Compared 
The Stupid Things You Do On Facebook (And How To Fix Them) 
How To Kill Time Productively On Your Phone 
An Entire Overseas Trip On One Prepaid Travel Card 
Top 10 Pervasive Tech Myths That Are Only Wasting Your Time Etherpad, a collaborative-minded text editor forged by a group of ex-Google employees, focuses on making documents live and easy to collaborate on. That means that, at this point, the interface is pretty much straight text on numbered lines, but two or more people can work on a document in real time using a single URL to share, with different colours highlighting their work, a chat function for explanation, and revision-minded saving. For JavaScript coders and teams, there’s also a syntax highlighting function, and, well, that’s about it. If you, like many Lifehacker readers, dig the advanced but back-to-basics style of Notepad++, Etherpad might be right up your alley. No sign-up required.
Etherpad [via TechCrunch]Well, that was quick. Google has killed off Lively, the 3D avatar environment it launched with some fanfare back in June. The service will be switched off by the end of the year, a post on Google’s blog confirmed. It’s useful proof that even the Google branding can’t make a 3-legged dog — which is how most 3D online environments still come across — an attractive proposition.
The 2008 Weblog Awards, which acknowledge blogs across the globe in a range of categories, close their nominations this Friday. Of particular note for Lifehacker readers is the category for Australian and New Zealand blogs; if you want to nominate your favourite blog, or your own work, get in quick. (Of course, if you want to nominate Lifehacker Australia as well, I’d be pleased and grateful.) The 2008 Weblog Awards
Twitter aggregator Kvetch collects humorous complaints from Twitter users, displays them at random, and lets site visitors vote on how funny they are. Higher-rated comments are supposed to appear more often, though when I checked in the volume of tweets being drawn upon didn’t seem large enough for that to make much difference. Obviously, this is a huge potential time sink, but it’s also a useful way of coming up with new complaints and insults to share among your friends and colleagues. Kvetch [via Twitter Blog]
Helen Bradley’s Project Woman blog highlights a useful Photoshop hint: if you’ve created a grid using the vanishing point filter in Photoshop but no longer want it, just click on the relevant panel and hit the backspace key. Like many a Photoshop trick, this is rather obvious when you know it but hard to discern if you don’t.
Vamoose the Grid – Photoshop Vanishing Point Filter [Project Woman]In many countries, a small levy is added to the price of all electronic goods to cover the cost of manufacturers reclaiming them at the end of their life and ensuring their components are recycled. In Australia, just 4% of electronic items are properly recycled, and the rest end up at the local tip, Karen Dearne reports at AustralianIT. Despite that poor record, however, the Federal Government doesn’t want to commit to a similar scheme, with environment minister Peter Garrett rejecting suggestions effectively dodging the question:
I want to develop a national waste policy which maximises our opportunities to increase recycling, working closely with state and local jurisdictions to consider the best options for reducing the amount of waste going to landfill. I am not ruling anything in or out at this stage.
Given the current poor record, it seems to me that a financial incentive is the best chance to stop people dumping old electronics. If you’ve got suggestions for other tactics, let’s hear them in the comments.
Garrett rules out electronic waste tax [AustralianIT]If you’re manager tracks your time based on when you log in and out of your machine at work, then are you missing out on pay for the time you’re waiting for your machine to boot up and shut down? That’s what a series of lawsuits by employees from the likes of AT&T, UnitedHealth and Cigna demand. Add those minutes up over a week, and hourly employees are losing some serious pay, argues plaintiffs’ lawyer Mark Thierman, a Las Vegas solo practitioner who has filed a handful of computer-booting lawsuits in recent years.
In other words, does the clock start when you show up at the office or when the computer first logs you into the company network? A lawyer representing the defence on one of the cases argues that the time is generally spent doing personal activities like taking a coffee break or going out for a smoke. Are you getting stiffed time at your desk waiting for your operating system to startup? Photo by Andy Melton Does Your Boss Have to Pay You While You Wait for Vista to Boot Up? [via Slashdot]
Workplace bans on Facebook and other social networking sites aren’t uncommon — just ask our Prime Minister But a new report on a roundtable held by the Future Exploration Network suggests that companies are slowly embracing the social networking concept and getting over access mania: It’s good to read comments like these:
We don’t try to control what people do or where they do it – we have a couple of filters for pornography and games sites. But we don’t get reports on who’s doing what. What if I have one of my best performers spending an hour a day on Facebook – do I really want to stop them? If they are hitting their metrics is it really that bad?
However, it’s a little worrying that all the executives involved have chosen to be anonymous (no comments are attributed, though participants are listed. If social networking strategies are so great, then why the embarrassment at being named?
Enterprise Social Network Strategy Report (PDF)It’s hump day and I was looking for a quick, fun project to try out. So I figured I try something easy I found over at the Make Magazine blog earlier this week—a set of speakers made from paper cups and a pair of earbud headphones originally created by artist Dmitry Zagga (in no small amount of jest). The PaperCup speakers are based on the principle of a megaphone: Energy from sound waves from the earbuds would normally disperse in all directions. Instead, the cups focus the sound waves in a particular direction, making it louder for those in front. While pretty self-explanatory, I figured I’d whip up a how to, especially since the folks at my local coffee shop were happy to provide the materials for free.
Electronic program guide IceTV has added a keyword recording feature, so you can grab every broadcast featuring your favourite actor, host or sport. Of course, choosing a search term like ‘cricket’ could fill your hard drive pretty quickly over summer; there’s also a ‘keyword favourites’ option so you can be alerted to shows of potential interest without automatically setting them to record. Between this and the RSS feeds, there’s really not much excuse for missing a show if you’ve paid up for the service. IceTV
