Beyond the health benefits to regular exercise, there are many other reasons why you should make fitness training a part of your daily routine. One of these reasons is because you can let go of the stress you have at work. Weblog The Next 45 Years writes: Not everyone is born an athlete. Only a select few actually become professional athletes.
Firefox only: Good news for Firefox 3 beta testers—Lifehacker’s home-compiled Better YouTube and Better GReader extensions are now approved and hosted at Mozilla’s official Add-ons site. That means you get secure updates and to sleep easy knowing a third party has vetted our crackhead code and made sure it’s worth your time. Here’s a full list of all the Better Site extensions which are Firefox 3 Beta 3-compatible and hosted at Mozilla Add-ons: Better YouTube Better GReader Better Gmail 2
I’m working on getting the original Better Gmail, Better GCal, Better Flickr Firefox 3-compatible and updated on Mozilla Add-ons. Thanks for your patience.
If ever there’s an internet outage in your geographic area, all hope is not lost. Thanks to mobile phones, you can do lots of stuff online via email, like post photos to Flickr, access your Remember the Milk task list, upload to YouTube, and more. Weblog Digital Inspiration has a full list. Got any other indispensable mobile email addresses you keep on hand when you can’t surf the web? Share them in the comments. 10 Email Addresses That Will Be Useful When You Have No Internet Access [Digital Inspiration]
If you liked the idea behind the DIY IKEA bike rack but don’t feel like spending $40 on supplies, reader Mike Sapak shows us how he rolled his own, very similar DIY bike rack out of a 2×4, some hooks, and a little elbow grease. In all Mike says the bike only set him back around $15 in supplies and took about a half hour to assemble. Not bad! DIY Bike Rack [Mike.Sapak.info]
Using your bargaining chips may not be a bad thing after all. In fact, there’s a lot to be learned by haggling. It’s even the norm in some cultures. Don’t be embarrassed, suggests weblog Wise Bread. It never hurts to ask for a lower price. The more you inquire, the simpler it gets to ask in the future. What’s the worst that can happen? As they say, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Take risks and build confidence to ask again and again. If you don’t get what you want, don’t be afraid to walk away. The seller might shout out the lower price when they realise they may lose a customer. On the other hand, you might just be bargaining a little too low. Whatever the case may be, if you distance yourself from the situation, you may be better able to assess whether it’s worthwhile for your perusal. Photo by H Shap. How Haggling Taught Me About Life [Wise Bread]
If you’ve ever sent out an email or link to a friend and wanted to know if they actually clicked on the link, webapp LinkBlip will inform you. LinkBlip is an easy-to-use application that notifies you by email as soon as someone clicks on a shortened URL that is generated by the service. Additionally, general geographic information is listed so that you know where the person is located. While LinkBlip has potential for large scale mail blasts, it only works once—so that you’re not emailed multiple times if your friends decide it’s fun to click on the link again and again. LinkBlip is free and requires a valid email address for registration and to review the status of the link. LinkBlip
Webapp TypeSpeed makes it easy to learn and improve upon your typing skills with a series of touch-typing exercises and tests. The free site (an email address is required for registration) stores your progress and shows you where improvement can be made. The only downside: if you’re used to hitting the spacebar twice after each sentence in test mode, your results won’t be recorded properly, even if you’re typing the exact words. While the website is not the most visually appealing, TypeSpeed gets the job done of improving your typing skills and looks safe for some downtime at work. For other typing tools, see previously mentioned Windows download RapidTyping and touch typing webapp KeyBR. TypeSpeed
Entice and excite your friends with a strangely addictive trick that utilizes some interesting CSS techniques to allow you to see a highlighted image within text. Choose your desired phrase (a paragraph works too) and input the URL of any image in the text boxes. Then press generate. Voila! You’ll see a huge chunk of text. Now, highlight the text and watch it turn into the image of your choosing. The code can be downloaded to put on any web page so that you can share the love on your own site too. For other cool toys, check out developer Erik Kastner’s Spell with Flickr. Text + Image + CSS3 = Crazy Delicious
