Thursday, February 14, 2008
Create Quick FedEx Shipments from Outlook with QuickShip
3:00PM Adam Pash | Windows only: FedEx QuickShip is a freeware Microsoft Outlook toolbar that integrates your Outlook address book with FedEx shipments. That means creating a new shipment is as easy as clicking Ship and choosing your contact’s name from your address book. You can also track packages, check shipping rates, schedule pickups, find FedEx locations, and more with the FedEx toolbar. As Download Squad points out, the tool could use even tighter integration (for example, recognizing tracking numbers in emails), but if you do a lot of shipping at work and Outlook is your go-to email client, the QuickShip toolbar is a must-have. QuickShip is freeware, Windows only. QuickShip [FedEx via Download Squad] More »
Going to Work Sick?
2:00PM Adam Pash | The New York Times Shifting Careers blog discusses employees coming to work when they shouldn’t, primarily when they’re sick—a practice known as presenteeism (the opposite of absenteeism). The problem with presenteeism: It’s making your coworkers sick and it may be costing your employer a lot of money. So why do people do it? Generally it’s either due to job insecurity or the feeling that work won’t go on without you. With that in mind, we’re curious: What are your criteria for staying home sick? Do you take yourself out of commission when you start to sniffle, or does it take a full-blown case of the flu to slow you down? Let’s hear your thoughts, including how presenteeism is handled in your workplace, in the comments. Photo by Mussels. Feeling Sick? Stay Home [NYT] More »Tom Tom Home
1:03PM Sarah Stokely | Tom Tom’s sat nav offering just got even better, according to Nick over at Gizmodo. Tom Tom Home is their software suite which lets you plan trips in advance, manage points of interest and upload silly voices (just in case you want John Cleese telling you where to go).
Tom Tom Home just got a major upgrade – it now works on both Mac and PC and Nick describes it as “a user-generated content utopia”. You can upload your own points
of interests as well as download other users POIs and rate other
people’s content. You can also create your own maps.
Tom Tom Home is a free download (although some of the services it offers are paid) and can be downloaded here.
Tom Tom goes Home 2.0 with New Software [Gizmodo AU] More » 
DIY Touch-Activated, Pulsating Valentine Heart
1:00PM Gina Trapani | Want to go beyond construction paper, glue, and scissors this year? Do-it-yourselfer Ian Lesnet wired up a pulsating LED Valentine’s day heart that’s touch activated. Check out the video to see it in action, and download the plan details over at his web site. (Also hit the the via link for more great DIY Valentines for geeks from Make.) Make a touch-activated, pulsating LED heart Valentine’s card [DIY Life via Make] More »
How to be a good geek role model for your kids
12:38PM Sarah Stokely | The GeekDad blog quoted parenting advice from sci-fi author Neal Stephenson today. Talk about cool. :)
Even though I’m not a parent myself, I find myself really enjoying the GeekDad blog for the insights it offers about how to be an encouraging geek parent to your little ones. I know first hand about the stupid social forces which often succeed in dissuading bright girls and boys from pursuing their childhood interest in geeky pursuits like science and maths, so it’s great to read ideas on how to let your kids know that geeky is ok.
It quotes Neal Stephenson’s example of how just doing things in front of your kids can be a way to inspire and teach them ‘in the background’:
“Stephenson said when he was a kid, his dad was constantly tinkering on
some garage project or another, and despite Neal’s complete
indifference for any of his dad’s enthusiasms at the time, he was
influenced by this embedded tinkering. It was part of the family scene,
part of his household, like mealtime style, or the pattern of
interactions between siblings. Later on when Neal did attempt to make
stuff on his own, the pattern was right at hand. It felt comfortable,
easy. Without having to try very hard, he knew how to be a nerd.”
I love this notion. It’s not forcing kids to participate, it’s not ‘do as i say’ – it’s leading by example.
The other thing which rocked about this GeekDad post was that it linked to an audacious Australian experimenter who dabbles in Tesla coils, high voltage and a lot of things that look incredibly cool. His name is Peter Terren and his website is called Tesla Downunder. The image I’ve used is a screenshot from the website. I imagine visiting his house would feel like visiting Doc Brown in Back to the Future. Woo!
Subterranean Tutoring [GeekDad] More »
12:07PM Sarah Stokely | So apparently Valentine’s Day is a prime day for malware types to send out phishing emails – so if you get a romantically titled email from an unknown sender, chances are it’s trying to infect you with the W32/Dorf-AW malware (also known as Storm). Either that or it’s the true love of your dreams trying to e-hit on you. To delete, or not to delete. Tough one, eh? More » 
Monitor Web Sites for Updates with Update Scanner
12:00PM Adam Pash | Firefox only (Windows/Mac/Linux): The Update Scanner Firefox extension monitors web sites and alerts you whenever the site updates its content. While RSS feeds have put an end to your days constantly refreshing most sites worth their salt, there are still web pages that lack feeds that you may want to keep an eye on. Like what? Like a company’s job page, for example, or just sites you love that remain a little behind the curve. You can even adjust scanning intervals and “change thresholds” so insignificant changes are ignored. Update Scanner is free, works wherever Firefox does. Update Scanner [Firefox Add-ons via Extend Firefox] More »Women & Money
11:47AM Sarah Stokely | Personal finance writer Suze Orman has made her book “Women and Money” available for free download for one day only at the Oprah website. She says that women are twice as likely to retire in poverty than men are – if you want to find out why, and how to prevent this, check out the book. [via Wise Bread] More » 
Customize Your Mac’s Logon Screen
11:00AM Gina Trapani | Reader Ace writes in with a nifty customsation that will set your Mac apart from the rest. Find a desktop wallpaper image (Social Wallpapering’s a good bet), save it to your desktop as background.jpg, and in the Terminal type: sudo cp background.jpg /System/Library/CoreServices/DefaultDesktop.jpg You’ll have to enter your password to complete the operation, and when you do, next time you log off, your logon screen will have your new custom background. Slick. Thanks, Ace! More »
LinkBunch: One link to send them all
10:46AM Sarah Stokely | Fans of short messaging formats like Twitter, or people looking for more tab/bookmark management tools for Firefox, will like LinkBunch – an extension which lets you consolidate a bunch of links into one URL.
Once you’ve downloaded and installed the extension (drag and drop it into an open Firefox window or tab to get the Add-on installation dialog) you just need to restart your browser and you’ll see that Linkbunch has become an option in Firefox’s Bookmarks menu.
To bunch your current open tabs, open the Bookmarks menu and click
‘Create a LinkBunch of tabs’. This will open a new tab displaying a page with the created LinkBunch. The page displays a list of all the links in the LinkBunch, and then there’s my favourite link down the bottom – “Open entire bunch”. As it says, if you hit that button it will open up each of the links in a new tab (after politely asking you if you *really* want to open them all).
I can definitely see LinkBunch having a place in my browser alongside TinyURL, and active Twitter users will also be interested to know that LinkBunch is also being integrated into Twitter. The feature isn’t active yet, but if you follow @linkbunch, you’ll be able to send it a direct message with all the links you want to consolidate, and the bot will reply back with your bunch link. Nice.
[via Web Worker Daily]
More » 