Friday, February 15, 2008
Hack Your Long-Term Relationship by Embracing the Unfamiliar
3:00PM Adam Pash | Just in time for Valentine’s Day, the New York Times examines the common “date night” tradition, highlighting studies that suggest making date night unfamiliar and exciting rather than the standard dinner-and-a-movie can do wonders for a stale relationship. For example: One group was instructed to spend 90 minutes a week doing pleasant and familiar activities, like dining out or going to a movie. Couples in another group were instructed to spend 90 minutes a week on “exciting” activities that appealed to both husband and wife. Those couples did things they didn’t typically do — attending concerts or plays, skiing, hiking and dancing. The third group was not assigned any particular activity. More »
Manage your mobile phone contacts and SMS online with Bloove
2:41PM Sarah Stokely | Bloove is an online mobile phone management application which supports newer Nokia and Sony Ericsson Symbian and J2ME phones (full list here). The app lets you use your web browser to edit address book contacts, speed dial settings, messages and logs – and even send SMS and initiate calls. It’s aiming to be simpler to use than the management software which comes with your phone, and at first glance it seems to be working.Once the Bloove app is installed on your phone, you can manage it from the web (no application required on the desktop). The signup process is very easy. Navigate to www.bloove.com/m on your phone and download the Bloove application. Now use your desktop computer to sign up for an account at Bloove. It will ask you from the ID from your phone – you just need to open the Bloove app to get the number, type it into the form and you’re signed up. Your phone will automatically synch and you’ll see your contacts and SMSs appear on the Bloove the web page on your desktop.Unfortunately, one big drawback of Bloove seems to be the ridiculously small allowance of only allowing you to archive 15 contacts with the free plan. Most people would have many more contacts than that. They will be adding a paid service which has a higher number of contacts allowed, but I think that the limit of 15 is just too low for the free service to be useful.They allow an archive of 100 SMS messages, which is better, but I suspect that most people would be more keen to backup their contacts than their SMS archive.The SMS management looks pretty fully featured. It automatically backs up your Inbox, Sent and all other folders. They are searchable across folders and you can archive any messages and folders using the web interface -
archived items will be deleted on the phone and will be kept on the
server. There is also an option to delete messages permanently from both the phone and the Bloove archive.In addition, a small blue balloon is displayed near a contact name if there is message
or calls history for it. Clicking on this balloon will show the history.The other major limit on the free account is that you can only have one phone associated with your Bloove account. Otherwise it would be a great tool for migrating your contacts from one phone to another when you upgrade. Again, this is a feature they’ve promised for the paid service.
[via Laurel Papworth - who also offered up the tip that if you have access to wireless internet you can use that to synch your phone rather than chewing up your mobile provider's data allowance]
After the jump, you can read 5 tips from the Bloovers on cool things you can do with Bloove. More » 
DIY IKEA Bike Rack
2:00PM Adam Pash | The IKEA Hacker weblog demonstrates how to turn a few relatively cheap items from IKEA into an attractive, apartment-friendly bike rack. The IKEA goods will still set you back around $40, but the actual project shouldn’t take much time at all and the results are certainly impressive. Looking for a more of a portable bike rack? We’ve got you covered there, too. stolmen bike rack [ikea hacker via Hackszine] More »
YouTube turns 3, still hasn’t sucked up all the world’s time or bandwidth
1:58PM Sarah Stokely | YouTube has become such a ubiquitous part of the internet it’s hard to believe that it’s three years old today. Happy birthday you big timewasting sucker of bandwidth. (Whatever did we do for procrastination fodder in the days pre-YouTube?).Oh, and especially thanks for Project Awesomesocks, my favourite piece of fan-created video awesomeness ever, which mashes up Firefly/Serenity and the musical Wicked. :)
More » 
See the best short films at Tropfest this weekend
1:39PM Sarah Stokely | If you’re looking for something free and fun to do this weekend, look no further than the 16th annual Tropfest short film festival, which is happening on Sunday night.
Tropfest is happening in all our capital cities barring Darwin, and some regional areas too – so check the site for screening details for your area. You can get more information on the Tropfest near you at their website – be warned the page starts up with a blaring promo video. :/
This year for the first time they’ll be streaming Tropfest live over NineMSN, so wherever you are you can watch it live. You can also watch the short films that won previous Tropfests at the 9MSN Tropfest site.
One final note – the event is rated MA 15+ so you’ll want to leave the little kiddies at home. More » 
Wired’s List of 33 Things That Suck!
1:15PM Sarah Stokely | The new Wired has just come through my letterbox, and the cover story is “Why Things Suck“. They list 33 lousy products and failed technologies – from teleconferencing and printer cartridges to spam filters and wireless speakers, and ask WHY?If I had to nominate my pet tech peeve at the moment I would have to say it’s customer service, particularly in the telco space. Don’t get me started on how difficult it was to churn providers recently, and how tempted I was to take my new provider to the Ombudsman for their poor handling of my credit check (the person handling my complaint said that the credit check department had assumed based on my accent that I was a recent arrival from overseas – which was not only incorrect but shows a really revolting bias in their methods too).Time for some unabashed venting, methinks. So what’s your pet tech-related peeve, and how do you reckon it can (or should) be fixed? More » 
Never Forget to Send Another Birthday Email
12:00PM Adam Pash | Weblog TUAW details how to take advantage of your Mac’s built-in automation tool, Automator, to send out birthday greetings on the day-of to everyone in your Address Book. Using the Birthday field in Address Book, putting together automated birthday emails is just a two-step process in Automator. Naturally, you shouldn’t rely on this method as your only means of remembering and recognising birthdays, but it’s a nice way to send simple notes and get a birthday conversation started, especially with people you aren’t in touch with that often. While you’re at it, you may also want to import Address Book birthdays into iCal. Mac Automation: Birthday greetings [TUAW] More »
Extend Your Speed Dial Chops
11:00AM Adam Pash | Reader Dr. Jonas Venture, Jr. loves a good speed dial, but like most of us doesn’t remember any of his speed dial numbers beyond 9. So to extend the usefulness of his phone’s speed dial functionality, he simply repeats the speed dial number for different numbers belonging to the same contact, or adds a second number based on relationships to the first. For example: So 2 would be my fiancee’s cell, 22 would be her home. My brother would be 3, his work would be 33. When I kept dialing my future father-in-law to make plans for a trip, I found it annoying to keep searching for him. So voilà, he became 23, and my fiancée’s mom’s cell eventually became 24. Very clever! The whole idea is very reminiscent of how I build keyword bookmarks in Firefox, and like keyword bookmarks, a good speed dial framework will almost always be quicker than digging through your contacts. More »
Better Gmail Loves You with Fixes and Features
9:37AM Gina Trapani | Firefox only: Happy Valentine’s Day, Better Gmail users! A nasty bug and some Firefox 3 issues have kept some of you from using the extension in the last few days, but no more. New fixes and improvements are fresh out of the oven like pink icing-slathered Valentine’s Day cupcakes: the latest version 0.3.3 restores our beloved Hide Spam Count feature, Brent Nef’s amazing Modfied Gmail Macros script, includes Firefox 3 Beta 3 compatibility, and fixes the hanging inbox bug (caused by the Google Reader Integration script, which, sadly, was our one casualty). Grab the latest version of Better Gmail 2 using Firefox’s built-in Find Updates button, or hit the link to grab the download. Better Gmail 2 is, of course, a free download for Firefox users. Better Gmail 2 Firefox Extension for New Gmail [Lifehacker Code] More »
