Thursday, February 28, 2008
Use del.icio.us tags to create a wishlist at del.ishli.st
2:27PM Sarah Stokely | Here’s a nifty way to create a wishlist – you can use del.ishli.st to grab all your del.icio.us bookmarks which you’ve tagged ‘wishlist’. Along with various filtering and tagging tools, you can also add items from other people’s wishlists to your own. Neat. [via Web Worker Daily] More »
Google revamps & localises mobile search
1:50PM Sarah Stokely | Google has revamped its Australian mobile search service – accessible at www.google.com.au/m.
The mobile search engine searches through the
web, mobile web, news articles, local business listings, and
image index to get the information needed and provides the most
relevant results.
It also remembers your location, so once you’ve searched for “restaurant Sydney” it will localise your future searches to Sydney results too.
In other Google mobile search news, the Google Operating System blog reports that Google will replace Yahoo! as the default search engine for the Opera Mobile and Opera Mini mobile browsers from next month.
More » Shares
12:30PM Sarah Stokely | The Oz reports that the era of doing share trades by SMS is now upon us. While the major banks had offered WAP-based trades from a limited number of phones, Bell Direct says it will cost 55c to SMS an order to them, and their website claims trades will start at $15 a pop.
More » 
Increase Your Morning Productivity with the 10 O’Clock Rule
12:00PM Adam Pash | Whether you wake up every morning in an anxiety-driven frenzy or a sleep-deprived stupor, weblog LifeClever suggests destressing your mornings and getting more done by setting your watch to beep every night at 10 o’clock (or whatever time works for you), then getting started preparing for tomorrow. That means tackling everything from planning your breakfast and grinding your coffee beans to laying out your clothes and eying your calendar for important events the next day. There are two main benefits to the 10 O’Clock rule. First, you’re much more likely to take care of those end-of-night chores that sometimes get skipped, from washing the dishes to flossing, because you’re tackling them before you’ve completely run out of steam. Second, you’ll be much more likely to wake up on time, and have a pleasant morning. Let’s hear how you plan for a stress-free morning in the comments. The 10 O’Clock Rule [LifeClever] More »
Filter Foreign Language Spam?
11:00AM Adam Pash | Dear Lifehacker, I don’t know what I did to deserve it, but I’ve recently been hit with an overwhelming flood of foreign-language (primarily Russian) spam. I can’t even read these emails, so I have no idea what the point is, other than to make my Gmail inbox a miserable place to be. What can I do? Signed, Exasperated English-Speaker More »
Add Better Sleep to Your MacBook with SmartSleep
10:00AM Adam Pash | Mac OS X only: Freeware application SmartSleep adds a preference pane to your Mac laptop’s system preferences to enhance the usefulness of your Mac’s sleep states. It does so by dynamically adjusting the type of sleep state your MacBook will use based on your battery life. For example, as long as your Mac’s battery has more than a 20% charge or 20 minutes remaining, SmartSleep will tell your Mac to sleep but not hibernate. This will sleep your laptop very quickly, but it will also keep your data in your RAM, which means your battery will still be draining slightly while you’re sleeping. Below 20% will switch to sleep and hibernate mode, which saves your system state to the hard drive, thereby preserving more battery. Last, if you’re at under 5%, SmartSleep will hibernate only. SmartSleep is freeware, Mac OS X only. SmartSleep [via Download Squad] More »Play Back Ripped DVDs in Vista Media Center
9:00AM Adam Pash | In pre-Vista versions of Windows Media Center, DVDs you ripped to your hard drive with programs like DVD Rip would show up for playback in the My Videos folder. For whatever reason, Microsoft decided to disable this feature in Vista as a default, requiring a registry edit to get it working, as detailed in the linked Microsoft support page below. To be perfectly honest, though, despite making this registry edit, I’m still having trouble accessing my ripped DVDs with Vista Media Center even after making this registry modification, so if you have any luck, share your experience in the comments. I’m also very curious to know if this will allow you to stream ripped DVDs to your extenders, particularly Xbox 360 extenders, so let’s hear how it’s working for you. Thanks jtimberman! How to enable the DVD Library in Windows Media Center on a Windows Vista-based computer [Microsoft] More »
DIY Waterproof Camera Enclosure
8:00AM Adam Pash | If you’re a diehard photographer or videographer who leaves your equipment at home in rainy or wet conditions, this detailed, step-by-step guide to making your own waterproof camera enclosure on-the-cheap is for you. The steps are detailed and the results look great, but as an added bonus this smart tip for underwater shooting stood out: I put two Alka-Seltzers in the bag with… the camera. In case of a leak, the seltzer foams, blowing up the bag…. You certainly notice when you get a leak. Between this step-by-step and the smart canary-in-the-coalmine effect of the Alka-Seltzer, this seems a bit safer than the condom method, though perhaps not as robust as this military-grade housing. How to Make Your Own Waterproof Camera Enclosure [via Make] More »
Compare Files Online with Google Docs
7:00AM Adam Pash | If you work with other people, you’ve invariably ended up with multiple versions of the same document. We’ve shown you how to compare and merge file differences with WinMerge, a desktop Windows application, but for those times you either can’t install WinMerge or just need a quick comparison, weblog Digital Inspiration suggests using Google Docs to compare text online. Since Google Docs keeps a running revision history of all the saved versions of a doc, putting this trick to use is simple. Just open a new Google Doc, paste the text of one doc you want to compare, save that, delete it, and then copy the text of the second doc you want to compare in its place. Using the GDocs revision history feature (see the post for details), you can then get a nice highlight and strikethrough comparison of differences between the two docs. It’s not as robust as desktop methods, but for a quick comparison, it’s a clever idea. Use Google Docs To Compare Two Text Files Online [Digital Inspiration] More »
