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How To Kill Time Productively On Your Phone Here’s another one for the frugal gamers out there. Previously we told you how to save money when buying computer games, and now Logan over at our gaming site Kotaku has unearthed a pretty awesome Australian website devoted to gaming on the cheap.
The Economical Gamer is devoted to highlighting bargains, catalogues, competitions and freeware games, making it a one-stop-shop for finding games at cheap prices. Sweet! Logan’s done a roundup of EcoGamer’s February bargains here.
Thanks Anthony and Logan!
Windows only: Manage your Netflix Queue and stream Watch Now videos directly through Windows Media Center with freeware Media Center plug-in MyNetflix. Just install, provide it with your credentials, and voilà—you can tackle all your Netflix management from the comfort of your couch. Probably the most exciting feature of this plug-in is the integration of Watch Now movies with Media Center, meaning you can stream any Watch Now movie on demand directly through Media Center without going through your browser. Unfortunately the Watch Now feature doesn’t yet work with Media Center extenders (like your Xbox 360), but the rest of the features should. MyNetflix is freeware, Vista Media Center only. SageTV users can get similar functionality from this plug-in. New Vista Media Center Plugin – MyNetflix (beta) [Anthony Park via Gizmodo]
Apple officially pushed out the 10.5.2 update to Leopard today, a release filled with the promise of numerous bug fixes and stability improvements. We’re talking improvements with your AirPorts, Back to my Mac, Dashboard, Stacks, iCal, iChat, Finder, Mail, Time Machine, and oh-so-much-more. Hated the menu bar transparency from the get-go? Apple has felt your pain, and you can now disable transparency without third party apps. For a full rundown of changes, fixes, and improvements, check out the update details from Apple.
Mac OS X only: Makers of previously mentioned PDF organizer Yep have released a new Finder replacement into public beta called Leap. Getting to your files should be easier than clicking down through folders, so Leap groups documents by characteristics (like file type) and tags. What, you haven’t tagged your files? Leap can display metadata as tags—like dates and a file’s enclosing folder name—so it’s easy to say “show me all the movie files from 2005 saved under vacation.” As someone who’s been pretty organised about her home folder from the get-go, Leap is a paradigm shift, but definitely a time-saving one for anyone who thinks in English versus folder names. Check out the video tour to see it in action. Leap’s public 20 day trial beta is a free download; unclear how much (and when) the software will cost. Thanks, Garfield! Leap [Ironic Software]
Sure you can access Wikipedia from your iPod touch or iPhone’s browser whenever you’ve got an internet connection, but if the idea of putting the entirety of Wikipedia on your phone or MP3 player tickles your fancy, the Wikipedia application is just what you’re looking for. You’ll need a jailbroken iPhone or iPod touch and at least 2.2GB of free space (it’s all of Wikipedia, after all). Then you’ll need to SSH into your device (which I covered here) to copy over the files. Don’t have a fancy new iPhone or iTouch? You can put Wikipedia on your older iPods, too. Wikipedia on the iPhone/iPod Touch [via Mashable]
There are a few great desktop wallpaper sites out there, and many crappy ones—but a new one (to us) called Social Wallpapering goes into the good pile. Browse through thousands of eye-catching images for standard monitors, widescreens, and dual monitors. The minimum resolution at SocWall is 1280×960, and all images are categorized and rated by users, so the “Most Popular” list is a good bet. (Get to it under the Browse menu, Everything.) For more desktop eye candy, see our top 10 sources for free wallpaper, fonts and icons. Social Wallpapering
Mac OS X only: Freeware iPhoto plug-in FFXporter integrates with iPhoto to seamlessly upload your pics to the popular photo sharing web site, Flickr. Exporting pictures from iPhoto to Flickr with FFXporter is simple, and the uploads preserve the transfer of all your iPhoto metadata into Flickr—including titles, keywords/tags, and ratings. FFXporter also supports importing photos into your existing photo sets and can create sets from your uploads. For a slightly more robust but currently shareware iPhoto-to-Flickr exporter, check out Flickr Export. Otherwise the freeware, Mac-only FFXporter handles exports to Flickr with ease. FFXporter
You don’t have to lease server space or keep your home computer always on to access a personal web server—you can run a web, FTP, and database server straight from a USB drive. A slim web server package called XAMPP fits on a USB stick and can run database-driven webapps like the software that powers Wikipedia, MediaWiki. Almost two years ago you learned how to set up your “personal Wikipedia” on your home web server to capture ideas and track document revisions in a central knowledge repository. Today we’ll set up MediaWiki on your flash drive for access on any Windows PC on the go.
Windows only: Get grep-like power at the Windows command line using Find and Replace Text (FART), a simple utility that delivers on its name’s promise. Perform batch find and replace operations over multiple text files throughout directories with FART in the Windows command window. The Hackszine blog outlines one practical FART usage example: stripping out UNIX line endings on a text file. Let’s say a Linux buddy of yours sent you a bunch of HTML files and they have Unix line endings that are barfing in Notepad. One simple command fixes the problem, replacing all the newlines with a full PC carriage return, line feed combo: fart --c-style *.html \n \r\n
FART is a free download for Windows only. FART [SourceForge.net via Hackszine]
Two years ago on Lifehacker, you got the most out of your local library online, secured Firefox’s saved passwords, set up quick-launch workspaces and picked up some advanced Flickr tricks. One year ago, you walked through Windows Vista’s Task Scheduler, copied DVDs to your iPod, backed up and synced your Firefox bookmarks on your personal server, created a master feed with Yahoo Pipes, and used System Information for Windows (SIW) to learn everything you need to know about your PC.
